Fables of the reconstruction

America's Face

Reza Aslan in washingtonpost.com:

As someone who once was that young Muslim boy everyone seems to be imagining (albeit in Iran rather than Egypt), I'll let you in on a secret: He could not care less who the president of the United States is. He is totally unconcerned with whatever barriers a black (or female, for that matter) president would be breaking. He couldn't name three U.S. presidents if he tried. He cares only about one thing: what the United States will do.

That boy is angry at the United States not because its presidents have all been white. He is angry because of Washington's unconditional support for Israel; because the United States has more than 150,000 troops in Iraq; because the United States gives the dictator of his country some $2 billion a year in aid, the vast majority of which goes toward supporting a police state. He is angry at the United States because he thinks it has hegemony over almost every aspect of his world.

Now, more than one commentator has noted that on all of these issues, the next president will have very little room to maneuver. But that is exactly the point.

He then lists the work ahead, on Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Syria and Iran, Syria and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia's leadership succession, Afghanistan and the Taliban, Pakistan, and Chinese involvement in the Middle East region.

That is how the post-Bush "war on terror" must be handled. Not by "re-branding" the mess George W. Bush has made, but by actually fixing it.

The point being, when picking a president, pick competence, not a symbol.

Promoting Your Enemies

The New York Times hired an op-ed columnist who thinks the management of the New York Times should be executed for treason.

The Onion:

At a press conference Monday, American Civil Liberties Union officials announced that the organization will go to court to defend a neo-Nazi group's right to burn down ACLU headquarters.

ACLU president Nadine Strossen told reporters that her organization intends to "vigorously and passionately defend" the Georgia chapter of the American Nazi Party's First Amendment right to freely express its hatred of the ACLU by setting its New York office ablaze on Nov. 25.

"I am reminded of the words of Voltaire: 'I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,'" Strossen said.

Steve, R.I.P.

Matt Bai memorializes Steve Gilliard:

It was a life both short and loud. What began with a bad cough just after Valentine’s Day became a spiraling infection that ravaged Gilliard’s vulnerable heart and kidneys, and he spent most of his last four months hospitalized. The identities he kept separate for most of his 42 years collided in the days after he died; the few dozen mostly white bloggers who came to Harlem for the funeral saw for the first time the stark urban setting of Gilliard’s childhood, while his parents and relatives groped to understand what kind of work he had been doing at that computer and why scores of people had come so far to see him off. They must have been confused when Gilly’s online pals, sickened by the way some right-wing bloggers were gloating over his death, advised them not to disclose where he was buried, out of fear that someone might deface the site. The grave, like Gilliard himself, is known only to a few.

(Via Scott Lemieux.)

Update:

For Matt Bai to hang the article's hook on how Gilly was a lonely black man who only could make it with white bloggers on-line who didn't know the real Gilly at all is, quite simply, bullshit. Markos isn't white. And neither were a number of other folks who came to the funeral. Matt Bai has that part of the story wrong.

Matt Bai was also wrong about Steve's life. Gilly didn't lead a lonely life. It was rich and filled day to day with his work, family, friends and sports. From his niece and nephew, his mother and father, to his co-publisher Jen, and the bloggers and friends he hung out with on a regular basis in person and on-line, this was a man who had a full, rich life.

It is Bai.

Update 12/30:

Pachacutec at Firedoglake:

It's therefore ironic, in a way, that Bai would be the one to write this piece. I wonder what Steve would say, and how many f-bombs would be in it, were he here to read Matt Bai do his intellectually lazy hanger on shtick once again, this time at Steve's expense, depicting him in part as a socially awkward geek wanting for human warmth (nope, no lazy blogger stereotypes in there, eh, and doesn't everyone know that all single people are hopelessly lonely)?

No rightwing bloggers noted the NYT piece, except for one piece of shit who I will not link to. As I wrote when Steve died, a number of rightwing bloggers who had scraps with Steve in life have decided not even to mention his death. Very weird, but especially so in the case of Jeff Jarvis, the half-wits' guru on the intersection of blogs and news.

The CEO as Rational Actor

Duncan:

I know I'm just a dumb little blogger, but I'm actually quite puzzled that auto execs are so opposed to emission regulation. I really think I have to put this in the "they're just assholes who don't like to be told what to do" category instead of the "rational economic actor" category, though perhaps someone can convince me otherwise...

In his book The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman makes an argument that corporate CEOs oppose universal health insurance because of social pressure among their peers, even though universal coverage would benefit the economy and consequently their businesses. (Sorry, I can't find the cite in the book.)  The idea is that universal coverage would be a successful policy that would lead to all kinds of other progressive  measures that would harm the economic interests of the super-wealthy class that Krugman claims controls the GOP. And corporate CEOs either are members of that class or have their pay set by them, and in any case members of corporate boards from whom CEOs are drawn share social values (such as "the free market") promoted by the uber-rich's propaganda machine. And at the same time, I would add, even though universal coverage would benefit the economy overall, it wouldn't offer individual firms a large competitive advantage, so there is no offsetting motivation for a given CEO or board to swim against their peer group prejudices.

So yeah, they're assholes, but they're assholes motivated by a specific political ideology.

Gmail Hacked! Read This and Check Your Settings - Now

If you use Gmail, read this guy's story and check to make sure you haven't been hacked, too.

(Via Adam Pash at lifehacker.)

I Guess It's Better Than "We're Gonna Taze Your Ass"

Truth in policing:

Each class at the Idaho Police Officer Standards and Training Academy is allowed to choose a slogan that is printed on its graduation programs, and the [most recent graduating] class of 43 graduates came up with "Don't suffer from PTSD, go out and cause it."

How about "Shoot first, make up a reason later"? I like that one, too. 

So how could this outbreak of honesty have occurred?

[Academy Director Jeff] Black said the class president was ex-military, and that the slogan "slipped in." He declined to identify the graduate. Black said future slogans would be vetted by academy leaders.

Oh, I see, he was just back from torturing people, and was just in the habit. That's perfectly reasonable.

Local Programming: Street Cashes Chips

Our mayor, burnishing his legacy:

[Philadelphia] Mayor John F. Street is getting more than $111,000 as he leaves office, money that a city official said came from raises that the mayor was entitled to but did not take.

Mr. Street had vetoed a raise bill in the midst of an election in 2003, and the City Council overrode it. The mayor, however, chose not to take an increase, which at the time would have raised his salary to $165,000 from $146,000.

Now he has decided to collect it retroactively.

I gotta say, although I never liked the guy, considering him a blowhard and someone who turned a blind eye to corruption (although not corrupt himself), I don't hate him nearly as much as many of the white liberals in this town do. And this move is not going to endear him to them one bit more, but I say that if council voted for this pay package, then he deserves it.

Mr. Street is also participating in the city’s Deferred Retirement Option Program, which allows employees eligible to retire to pick a retirement date four years in advance, then amass pension payments while working and collecting their salaries.

The idea was to encourage longtime employees to stay on the job past retirement age, allowing the city time to plan to replace them. Mr. Street wanted to end the program in 2003, saying the city could not afford it.

But he applied for it in 2004 once the city Pension Board voted to continue it. ...

Mr. Street, who was a longtime city councilman before he was mayor, is to get an annual pension of $115,700.

Nice work if you can get it.

A Republic, If You Can Keep It

Andrew Cohen:

We know after this atrocious year in the law that we have the government we deserve. Did you also know we have the legal coverage we deserve? Despite monumental legal developments which shook the justice system to its foundation, only some of which I’ve had the space to include here, the airwaves and the Internet were filled in 2007 with breathless coverage of the legal machinations of skanky starlets (Lohan and Spears) or dismal reality actresses (Smith) or people like Simpson and Hilton who now are famous (or infamous) precisely because they find themselves in legal jeopardy so often.

The hours spent covering these insipid people were hours unspent exploring the mighty ways in which the law has changed since September 11, 2001. They were hours unspent examining the death penalty in America and how its ineffective and often scandalous enforcement has led at least one state, New Jersey, to decide that 2007 would be the year to end capital punishment there. They were hours unspent figuring out who is the next Stimson or Gonzales or Padilla. They were hours unspent on covering the courts across the country, and the Supreme Court, and the judiciary committees in both houses of Congress.

In the carefree summer of 2001, all anyone wanted to talk about was poor Chandra Levy. Then the Twin Towers fell. The year we just endured proves that the Constitution has changed a lot since then. It also proved, unfortunately, that we haven’t.

Teenage Lesbian Gives Fundamentalist Teacher a First Amendment Lesson

Good job, Beth:

Bethany Laccone, a 17-year-old senior from Portsmouth, Virginia, takes a hotel management class every morning at I.C. Norcom High School before returning to her regular school for the rest of her classes. An out lesbian for over two years, Laccone sometimes wears a t-shirt which bears an image of two overlapping female gender symbols. On December 10, 2007, Laccone was pulled out of class at Norcom High by a teacher who said she shouldn't be wearing the shirt at school and then sent her to the assistant principal's office. The assistant principal and the teacher then told Laccone that the shirt violated a section of the school dress code that bans "bawdy, salacious or sexually suggestive messages." In a later meeting with Laccone's father, the assistant principal said that he was upholding the censorship, and added that the teacher is "very conservative" and claimed she was so upset by the t-shirt that it "interfered with her ability to teach."

In a demand letter sent [on December 20] to I.C. Norcom High School officials, the ACLU demanded that any mention of the censorship be removed from Laccone's student record, that the school guarantee it would not illegally censor Laccone or other students in the future, and that the school apologize to Laccone for its actions.

The ACLU of Virginia and the national ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project are working together in handling Laccone's complaint.

She looks like she doesn't take a lot of shit from people, doesn't she? 

And the ACLU gets results:

On Friday [December 21], Norcom Principal Lynn Briley said the school would comply.

"Yes, we did make a mistake," Briley told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper of Norfolk.

Briley agreed that Laccone had been censored, but said no note had been placed in her file. She said she would apologize to Laccone and try to meet the group's other demands.

Give to the ACLU.

(Crossposted at Gloria Brame's.)

More Good News From California Courts

Like the shopping mall free-speech case, another example of California courts stepping in to prevent the abuse of private power:

California health insurers have a duty to check the accuracy of applications for coverage before issuing policies -- and should not wait until patients run up big medical bills, a state appeals court ruled Monday.

The court also said insurers could not cancel a medical policy unless they showed that the policyholder willfully misrepresented his health or that the company had investigated the application before it issued coverage.

And a pretty balanced outcome, too, in my opinion: By leaving in an exception for willful misrepresentation, insurance companies can still avoid paying out to actual fraudsters rather than stiffing cancer patients who, say, wrote down a detail incorrectly on the application.

(Via Duncan.)

California Supreme Court Protects Right to Free Speech at Shopping Malls

This is interesting:

A sharply divided [California] state Supreme Court ruled yesterday that shopping malls can't ban protesters from calling for boycotts of mall businesses.

The 4-3 ruling came in a case dating to 1998 involving the Fashion Valley mall and a labor union representing press workers at The San Diego Union-Tribune. The court majority said that free-speech rights – as interpreted under the state Constitution and a 1979 state Supreme Court case – also extend to the private property of shopping malls.

“Urging customers to boycott a store lies at the core of the right to free speech,” Associate Justice Carlos Moreno wrote for the majority.

The dissent made the argument you'd expect:

In a strong dissent, Associate Justice Ming Chin criticized the ruling and said the court should have overturned the 1979 case that extended free-speech rights to shopping malls.

“Private property should be treated as private property, not as a public free speech zone,” Chin wrote.

The core principle of almost all civil liberties law is that individual rights such as free speech and due process apply to the government and not private persons.* That means you have a legal right to stand on your soapbox in a public park, but not on my front lawn. This principle is one that has worked well for most of the country's history, but it started to break down when traditionally public space started becoming privatized. There are two main areas where this has happened: the replacement of local government with homeowners associations, and the death of the "public square" concurrent with the rise of malls and shopping centers. Those two changes meant that many people went from spending most of their day in public spaces - where they have inalienable rights - to spending most or all of their day in private or privately-controlled spaces, where as a practical matter they have no rights.

Whether or not you see this as a problem is purely ideological. If you regard private property as sacrosanct, then you are likely to believe that unequal distributions of power among private actors never rise to a constitutionally cognizable problem. If you regard property rights as just one of a bundle of rights that are sometimes in tension, then you are more likely to think that private actors taking over traditionally governmental roles may require that individual rights be extended to those situations.

The Supreme Court of the United States dithered over this question in the 60s before coming down firmly on the side of capital in the 1970s. The Court's decisions strongly suggest that outside of areas such as "education, fire and police protection, and tax collection", the United States Constitution allows private owners to do what they like.** At the same time, though, the Court upheld the 1979 California Supreme Court case*** mentioned in the article, which held that under the California Constitution, free speech and associational rights extend to shopping mall property. That is to say, the Court likes property rights, but not so strongly that it precluded a state from holding the opposite position.

Under the rhetoric of federalism, of course, this is exactly what is supposed to happen: individual states are free to grant their citizens more rights than than those protected by the federal constitution. But I predict that conservatives will abandon their usual pose to denounce this decision because federalism only works for them when it achieves policy outcomes that they like.

* The only exception I can think of is the 13th Amendment's ban on slavery, which applies to governments and individuals alike.

** John Nowak and Ronald Rotunda, Constitutional Law, 7th Ed., sec. 12.2, quoting Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 463 U.S. 149, 163-164, 98 S.Ct. 1729, 1737 (1978), Rehnquist, J.

*** PruneYard Shopping Center v. Robins, 447 U.S. 74, 100 S. Ct. 2035 (1980).

Dies Natalis Solis Invicti

Happy birthday to me!

Humbuggery

I have the mother of all toothaches and probably need a root canal, there is not a dentist (nor codeine) to be had, and I absolutely despise Xmas.

Ho ho oww.

Update: What's worse? Tooth pain, or the weird hangover you get from opiates?

Starts With An Earthquake

George W. Bush v. REM:

Creative.

(Via David Pescovitz at B^2.)

I'm Not Buying a Nissan Rogue, Either

This is hilarious for someone like me who has started watching ESPN every day:

To DirecTV: Your advertising agency needs to be slapped around with sticks and tossed off a bridge. The whole point of commercials is to get people to buy your products, not ram their heads through walls. Every time I see Beyonce Knowles gyrating, foot shuffling, and fierce walking through your spots (which is every 3 minutes), I beg the nearest person to choke me out.

This Upgrade commercial is the most baffling and preposterous ad of all time. I don't know if it's Beyonce's bizarre Axl Rose-like foot shuffle and scallywag, her horrendous speaking ability or the way she rolls over to reveal a gold "UPGRADE" chain in her mouth that was no doubt purchased from a bubble gum machine outside Wal-Mart. The whole spot is truly astonishing in its hideousness. I'm almost inclined to believe it was funded by the cable industry to put you out of business. If so, is Beyonce in on the joke? Likely not; she's too busy 1-click ordering boomerangs off amazon.com.

"Lemme lemme lemme upgradejya-gradejya." Upgrade, indeed. The only thing you're upgrading me to is suicide watch, DirecTV. 2 enthusiastic thumbs down.

Also, click through for flash warner's diamond reaction index.

The Film Has Been Rated As Politically Acceptable

According to the Motion Picture Association of America, this movie poster is suitable for all audiences:

According to the MPAA, this movie poster is also suitable for all audiences:

However, according to the MPAA, this movie poster is not suitable for all audiences:

And according to the MPAA, this movie poster is also not suitable for all audiences:

I hope this makes perfectly clear what is acceptable discourse and what is over the line.

(Via Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing.)

CIGNA Insurance Kills Customer

Capitalism in action:

CIGNA Insurance Company initially refused to cover the cost of the transplant for Natalee Sarkisian, saying the surgery was too experimental.

On Thursday, friends, family and members of a nurses association held a protest outside CIGNA headquarters in Glendale, urging the insurance company to reconsider.

During the protest, Natalee's mother got word CIGNA had changed its mind and would make an exception for Natalee's surgery.

But the decision came too late for Natalee.  Just after six o'clock tonight, her condition worsened.

Natalee's family took her off life support and she passed away.

If I shoot you to steal money from you, that's a capital crime. If I withhold money I owe you and you die as a result, that's business.  There's a crucial moral difference in there somewhere, I am sure.

The invisible hand is around your throat.  Although, in my experience, CIGNA (a business of caring! about their profits - $1.15 billion net income in 2006) is the worst of the worst in terms of denying coverage.

In the meantime, become an organ donor.

(Via Susie.)

QOTD

Daniel Davies:

I wish the greatest of commercial success on "Liberal Fascism". If it really takes off it will be like an infestation of herpes in the credibility of all sorts of leading right-wing commentators.

QOTD

From Bill Maher's list, Dickheads of the Year:

Come on, no list of assholes and fuck-ups could be complete without the Dipshit in Chief. Who will tell this president what everyone but him already knows? The theory of evolution. And the times tables. And where the sun goes at night. And that Iraq is going to be three different countries. And that everyone hates us and we've run our military into the ground and the Taliban is back and we still haven't caught bin Laden and the economy is tanking and we wasted eight years blowing the oil companies while the Earth is melting. We had a pretty nice house when this Cat in the Hat of presidents came in and made the mess of all time. And who's going to clean it all up — Rudy Giuliani?

(Via Michele Grant.)

Football, You Bet

At the Dark Horse on Sunday at 1 p.m., it'll be the Pats over the Jets by 70, and at 4, the Eagles are scheduled to be thumped by the Cowboys (followed by much drunken shouting of "Romo is a homo!").

All y'all are invited. I'll save you a seat.

QOTD

P6:

I have found the greater part of adulthood involved watching people you care for get old or sick, and die.

I had been thinking something very much like this recently. The first part of my life has been discovering reasons to hope; the second part of my life has been searching for ways to hold onto what hope I have. Not to get all maudlin on you.

Technological Meltdown Epilogue

So after a few years of putting up with DSL, because I am a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I finally got cable internet today. The only reason I realized that my former ISP (a) had one-tenth the speed of cable and (b) cost twice as much was that it went out, then in, then out, then in .... so I said screw it and found an alternative.

But in the first I am sure of many installments regarding customer service, Comcast scheduled installation for this morning between 8 and 10. At 11, I called, and the computer told me that my appointment was for 10:30 to 12:30. Okay. At 12:35 I called and got a person - to their credit - who spoke something very much like my language and she told me the install guy was running late. Once he did show up (only 10 minutes later), he was pretty quick and thorough, despite having what appeared to be prison tattoos.

So, that fixes the desktop. My laptop was in the shop for a week, and for $40 they told me the hard drive had failed, although it can boot up and load the safe mode introduction screen. For a mere $355 more, they say they can fix it and retrieve my files. I sought a second opinion and will be attempting a life-saving procedure myself in the next few days. That porn on there was free to begin with and it's going to stay that way.

Technological Meltdown Part the Third

I am in full-on internet withdrawal. My laptop is probably dead, as is my DSL service for the desktop. I am scheduled to get cable internet on Saturday morning, but in the meantime can only post this from a friend's place, like some kind of web vagabond.

Dead As Disco

Is someone at the Washington Post's web division trying to be funny? The RSS feed for yesterday's story on which members of Congress were briefed on the administration's use of torture comes up like this:

Notice anything unusual?

Technological Meltdown Part II

So Thursday, as I was heading out of town, my desktop's DSL connection went down, my laptop died, and my Treo started acting up. Today the phone is fixed, the laptop is in the shop, and the DSL - well, it's up sometimes, down others, and I am going to bite the bullet and switch to Comcast. Hell, Verizon's EVDO would probably be faster than my crappy DSL provider.

QOTD: Dog Pile on the Rabbit

Fred Clark:

This desperate, canine obsequiousness infuses his sniveling speech with fearfulness and flopsweat. Romney is pleading, begging to be allowed to serve as the bullies' toady. As far as that goes, he has probably succeeded. Eager-to-please toadies can come in handy, so the bullies will probably be willing to accept him in that capacity.

But as useful as they may sometimes be, toadies are never liked, respected or admired by the bullies. Nobody likes or respects or admires an unprincipled coward. And the characteristics of a successful toady don't fit with anybody's notion of the characteristics of a potential president. A toady can't get elected president (the best he can hope for is a Connecticut senate seat).

Technological Meltdown

So my home DSL went out, rendering my desktop useless, and then my laptop died, and then my web-enabled phone developed issues, just before I left town for the weekend. I am posting this from an internet cafe in the Chicago airport. Don't think I'll be around much for a few days/ But really is that all that different from the usual?

QOTD: Strictly Comedy

Thers at Whiskey Fire:

Is it really necessary to explain this distinction? I mean, you would have to be pretty thick to totally misunderstand the difference between a "diarist" and a "writer" on the main page. And who on earth could ever be that much of a dummy? Which leaves us with the familiar dilemma when contemplating the Wingnut Mind: lying, or astoundingly stupid?

Just as incompetence and criminality are mutually reinforcing traits, I don't see why we have to choose between the two here. It's both.

Court Martial for Attempting Suicide

A 1st Lt. goes to Iraq, a platoon leader in a medical company, and there, subject to the stress of operations and the constant beatdown of a sexist male superior, finally snaps one day and shoots herself, but she lives. The Army's reaction? Prosecute her, with the intent of kicking her out of the Army after putting her in jail, and then denying her benefits:

Military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined Whiteside after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone. But Whiteside's superiors considered her mental illness "an excuse" for criminal conduct.

Bastards.