Finding I left kleenex in a pocket after doing laundry.
"Napoleon ... with dragons!"
"The American Revolution ... with dragons!"
"Apollo 13 ... with dragons!"
"The Holocaust ... with warlocks!"
"The Cold War ... with aliens!"
And most audio posts too. Example: Slate V. I keep seeing rss headlines for Slate articles I think I'd like to read but turn out to be videos. I don't want to load a video, or put my headphones on just to see something I may or may not be interested in. You can scan video or audio the way you scan text. I think Seth Godin blogged some time ago about this being the reason vBlogs and podcasts will not supplant text. But vblogs are popping up everywhere, and that's annoying.
"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend." - Thomas Jefferson
Yes, yes he has all those horrible qualities like charisma, optimism, and hasn't spent the last twenty years in Georgetown, but ... Technorati Tags:
I like Obama because he spent time overseas in school as a kid, has a varied and multi-cultural background, and might be able to stand on the world stage with other world leaders and not be so arrogant. He's the anti-Bush. I really think a President can only set a tone (or invade stuff).
No matter who is the next President there won't be any universal health care and we will be Iraq for another decade.
But the longer this goes on, the more Clinton makes me sick.
Any other the three front runners would be better than Bush because they are all competent. McCain is the hardest to read, because he has reversed himself this year on almost everything he has ever stood for, in order the get the Republican nomination. So the hope with him, is that he is really just I liar and isn't really planning on serving W.'s third term. One thing about him that is consistent is his world view -- namely that war is the natural state on humankind. Maybe that comes from his background from a family of officer-class military elites, maybe it is even true, but it's a little too Julius Caesar for me.
Clinton just depresses me, because she is really invested in the 50/50 blue/red divide. She enjoys perpetual political war. She courts it. In '92 the thinking in congress was that they were going to have to give something in terms of health care reform to the Clintons. Maybe not everything they wanted but something. However, she walled herself and her team off completely, came up with a giant plan in secret, presented it in a take-it-or-leave it manner and accomplished the near impossible in allowing a Democratically-controlled congress to reject it. As President I don't believe she will work with people. She will work against them. Why? Because she would rather fail and be self-satisfied in her superiority, then get something achievable. If nothing gets done in her administration she will always have the Republicans and the media, or sexism to blame. I see it every day in the way she campaigns. Temperament-wise she is closest to W. than anyone else who has run this cycle: "I am right. My side has all the good ideas. If you aren't with us, you're against us." It scarcely matters what the issue is, or who the opponent is: could be Obama, or Kenneth Starr, or MSNBC, or whoever. It doesn't matter to Clinton, an enemy is an enemy.
I don't want to sit through four more years of that.
I think getting a new guy in there, one who hasn't been entrenched in Washington power for close to 20 years is the best chance of shaking things up. The worst thing for our decaying republic is to continue the concentration of power into the few. A McCain or a Clinton presidency won't do much to reverse the Bush years of steady-slide into soft fascism, because it keeps the same people in power that have been in power, and those Bush power plays against the constitution won't be given up easily because power is difficult to give up. But if you get a new group, there is a chance at least. Maybe. The alternatives are either rewarding the party that has destroyed the economy by borrowing billions from China to prosecute an unnecessary war for fun and (by openly embracing torture and trashing habeas corpus) given aid and comfort to radical Islam. Or to put the spouse of a popular former leader into power like a banana republic would.
Politics
via Huffpo:
It will come as a surprise to many people that there are rules in politics. Most of those rules are unwritten and are based on common understandings, acceptable practices, and the best interest of the political party a candidate seeks to lead. One of those rules is this: Do not provide ammunition to the opposition party that can be used to destroy your party's nominee. This is a hyper-truth where the presidential contest is concerned.
By saying that only she and John McCain are qualified to lead the country, particularly in times of crisis, Hillary Clinton has broken that rule, severely damaged the Democratic candidate who may well be the party's nominee, and, perhaps most ominously, revealed the unlimited lengths to which she will go to achieve power. She has essentially said that the Democratic party deserves to lose unless it nominates her.
With leap day successfully passed though, we are now back on schedule.
From Larry Lessig's Free Culture:[A] court in California had held that the VCR could be banned because it was a copyright-infringing technology: It enabled consumers to copy films without the permission of the copyright owner. No doubt there were uses of the technology that were legal: Fred Rogers, aka "Mr. Rogers," for example, had testified in that case that he wanted people to feel free to tape /Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood/.
"Some public stations, as well as commercial stations, program the "Neighborhood" at hours when some children cannot use it. I think that it's a real service to families to be able to record such programs and show them at appropriate times. I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the "Neighborhood" off-the-air, and I'm speaking for the "Neighborhood" because that's what I produce, that they then become much more active in the programming of their family's television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been "You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions." Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important." [23]
23. /Sony Corporation of America/ v. /Universal City Studios, Inc.,/ 464 U.S. 417, 455 fn. 27 (1984). Rogers never changed his view about the VCR. See James Lardner, /Fast Forward: Hollywood, the Japanese, and the Onslaught of the VCR/ (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), 270-71.
A few posts down I mentioned I thought she showed class. I naively believed her conciliatory rhetoric opening the last debate, and stupidly believed she intended to go out with a little class. Clintonistas, you almost fooled me again!
Mayor Bloomberg thinks so: New York Post:
February 19, 2008 -- Mayor Bloomberg charged yesterday that "fraud" was behind the unofficial results in the New York Democratic presidential primary that produced zero votes for Barack Obama in some districts.
"If you want to call it significant undercounting, I guess that's a euphemism for fraud," said the mayor.
Unofficial tallies on election night gave Obama no votes in 78 out of more than 6,000 election districts.
Why? Just because?
I know he doesn't want to swiftly withdraw troops from Iraq. I know he doesn't want to do anything about health care. I know he doesn't have any great interest in economic issues.
I think he would maybe attempt to ban torture, and would not be a cruel on immigration issues as any of the Republican candidates he's already defeated, but none of them are running now, and either Democrat will be better on torture and immigration than McCain.
I'm sure he's for tax cuts. I'm sure he's for reminding "us" daily that the world is a dangerous place, and that he will work to "keep us safe" possibly by applying as much muscle around the world as we have left in the arsenal.
This seems like a delusional campaign. He's running is if there is a yearning among the electorate of four more years of the same.
The press is geared to presenting both sides of an issue, which often implies the two sides are equal. The race in November is not really going to be that close. It's glaringly obvious McCain and the Republicans are hold very weak cards.
Fantasy: The Best of the Year
"Super-Villains"
Corpse Blossoms
"Wednesday"
From the Borderlands
"The Food Processor"
Mota 3: Courage
"The Crossing"
