Deere Santa...

Aww yeah. This is how Santa rolls in the 'Burgh.


December!

I've decided to just periodically yell that at random intervals, to bypass that whole Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays thing.

Help Me, Cactus!

More coworker spam, almost certainly from the same source...

From: Micaela Slaton

Subject: diathermy paramagnetic

have got to be outstanding, so you see I cant mess around with anything that might hurt them. Forgive me, but youre all like kinfolk from a distance, from a time we dont talk about, but its on my mind. Theyre why I need your help. Be clearer, Jason. The Jackals closing in. He found us in Hong Kong and hes zeroing in on me and my family, on my wife and my children. Please, help me. The old mans eyes grew wide under the green shade, a moral fury in his expanded pupils. Does the good doctor know about this? Hes part of it. He may not approve of what Im doing, but if hes honest with himself, he knows that the bottom line is the Jackal and me. Help me, Cactus. The aged black studied his pleading client in the hallway, in the

The spammers really should start stringing these excerpts together into a coherent narrative. If it's compelling enough, then people will keep opening their spam to see how the story turns out. Everybody wins!

All I ask for my genius idea is a mere 1 cent per spam e-mail. And lifetime "spammunity".

Well, That Answers That Question...

I have been mystified for quite some time now about the NYT's bizarre deference to President Bush, but the New Yorker (by way of the NY Daily News) has finally made it clear:

[New Yorker writer Ken Auletta] contends: "Within the newsroom, there is a sense of rudderlessness and a fear that a series of business misjudgments may so weaken the company's finances that the brilliance of The Times … will be at serious risk."

Sulzberger's family has controlled the Gray Lady since 1896. But Times chronicler Gay Talese observes, "You get a bad king every once in awhile."

According to Auletta, Sulzberger "seems to lack the weighty seriousness of his predecessors." His stabs at humor "sometimes strike people as immature or sarcastic."

Among several examples was an editorial lunch with Secretary of State Condi Rice where Sulzberger kept alluding to the fact that a bomb-sniffing dog had thrown up on the carpet. "Thank you for sharing that," said Rice, as "some of the reporters present cringed."

Sources tell Auletta that Sulzberger's most trusted confidante, Times CEO Janet Robinson, discourages staffers from revealing to him what they think.

Well, no wonder Sulzberger goes to bat for Dubya - they're the SAME DAMN PERSON!

Spam Sandwich

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Random Snowless Photoblogging

Okay, no snow shots yet, but it's not like I'll lack for opportunities...


I just looked up, and there it was...


My first photo with the new tripod and the new remote. I believe the exposure was somewhere between 5 and 8 seconds (that's not sunlight).

Cause Or Effect?

Interesting article in this week's NYT Sunday Magazine, entitled "What Men Want: Neanderthal TV," about the increasing moral ambiguity of television's role models for young American males:

When word of Michael's desperate mission [to find his kidnapped son] reaches Sawyer - a booze-hoarding, hard-shelled narcissist who in his past killed an innocent man - his reaction is not what you would call sympathetic. "It's every man for hisself," Sawyer snarls.

Not so long ago Sawyer's callousness would have made him a villain, but on "Lost," he is sympathetic, a man whose penchant for dispensing Darwinian truths over kindnesses drives not only the action but the show's underlying theme, that in the social chaos of the modern world, the only sensible reflex is self-interest.

Perhaps not coincidentally Sawyer is also the character on the show with whom young men most identify, according to research conducted by the upstart male-oriented network Spike TV....

(snip)

The code of such characters, said Brent Hoff, 36, a fan of "Lost," is: "Life is hard. Men gotta do what men gotta do, and if some people have to die in the process, so be it."

"We can relate to them," said Mr. Hoff, a writer from San Francisco. "If you watch Sawyer on 'Lost,' who is fundamentally good even if he does bad things, there's less to feel guilty about in yourself."

(snip)

The most popular male leads of today stand in stark contrast to the unambiguously moral protagonists of the past.... They are also not simply flawed in the classic sense: men who have the occasional affair or who tip the bottle a little too much. Instead they are unapologetic about killing, stealing, hoarding and beating their way to achieve personal goals that often conflict with the greed, apathy and of course the bureaucracies of the modern world.

"These kinds of characters are so satisfying to male viewers because culture has told them to be powerful and effective and to get things done..." said Robert Thompson, the director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University.

(snip)

Paul Scheer, a 29-year-old actor from Los Angeles and an avid viewer of "Lost," said that not even committing murder alienates an audience. "You don't have to be defined by one act," he said.

"Three people on that island have killed people in cold blood, and they're quote-unquote good people who you're rooting for every week," Mr. Scheer said. The implication for the viewer, he added, is, "You can say 'I'm messed up and I left my wife, but I'm still a good guy.' "

[T]he morally struggling protagonist has been evolving over time, [Fox Entertainment president Peter] Ligouri said, pointing to Detective Andy Sipowicz on "NYPD Blue." Sipowicz was an alcoholic who occasionally fell off the wagon, and he often flouted police procedure in the name of tracking down criminals. Like all good protagonists, Sipowicz was also exceedingly good at his job.

(Jack Bauer of Fox's "24," who seemingly tortures someone every week to get intel on the bad guys, is curiously almost entirely absent from this article, although he is featured in one of the photographs)

As I read all of this, I am struck by the resemblance of the Bush administration to these shady modern protagonists: They lie, cheat, steal and kill, but since it's all for a good cause (War On Terror!), they're still heroes. Indeed, they are even more heroic for not allowing themselves to be bound by the namby-pamby conventions of acceptable and legal behavior. Of course, even that narrative is a lie. The lying, cheating, stealing and killing is an end in itself, or a means to a completely different end from the one they advertised... but their fans don't seem to mind.

So, the question that I have is: Did television pave the way for Americans to embrace the Republican version of morality, or does it simply mirror it? As I outlined in my post about personal narrative, I believe that competitive "reality television" was the phenomenon that introduced this do-anything-to-win mentality into American culture as something truly admirable, something to be emulated. Coincidentally(?), the Reality TV Era coincides almost precisely with the Bush Era, with the nefarious "Survivor" debuting in the year 2000. As I do not believe Bush's presidential "style" was yet apparent when he was elected, I have to conclude that reality TV paved the way for the Bush Era and entered into a symbiotic relationship with it, where real reality and TV reality reinforced each other's expedient amorality.

I don't really want morally conflicted characters to go away; Batman is always much more interesting than Superman. But I would like to see the pendulum start swinging back the other way, to where selfish and amoral behavior is not actively celebrated. And I want to see reality TV go away almost as badly as I want Republican government to. Hopefully, a Democratic victory in 2008 will kill both birds with one stone.

Friday Quote & Cat Blogging

This week's quote is from Freaked, starring Alex Winter, the Bill & Ted guy who isn't Keanu Reeves.

"So many milkmen on the same route - no wonder they fight."

The freaks are attempting to escape the insane carnie who mutated them, played by Randy Quaid, and have inexplicably all decided to disguise themselves as milkmen. Mr. T plays The Bearded Lady without the slightest hint of femininity, Keanu Reeves plays the Dog Boy, and Bobcat Goldthwait has a sock puppet for a head. Did I mention that Deep Roy, Oompa Loompa Extraordinaire, is in it briefly as a tiny mutated Juan Valdez?

But I digress.


And, of course, there'll be other people's cats!


Mocha peers expectantly.

Spamsterdance

Certain people have been known to merrily taunt me with spammer fake names whenever I post any intriguing spam that I receive. To which I say, Take this!:

Trapezes O. Decenter
Sparkle Nelson
Exultation R. Politicians
Maxene Natale (Subject "Daniel Works Very Good")
Perpetrating H. Brattiest
Nuada Paff ("Re: Bens to you")
Coxcombs V. Power
Sigismund Ouk
Mollycoddled F. Flimsy
Tauno Sartor ("Herbert Add sense")
Marva Brundidge ("Rodney Very good pro")
Rustiest I. Printing
Riffled V. Emirate
Naivety J. Outsmarted
Outdated Q. Suwanee
Crescenzo Sipp ("Re: Seths think about it")
Palimpsests F. Cyclotrons
Polyhymnia Deckman ("Re: Freddie's Raw story")


Ha! Ha, I say!!!

Random Sky Blogging

Just some random sky & cloud pictures from lunch-hour oot & abootness.


Mmm...Perspective...


If you look really closely, you can just barely make out the USX Tower hiding behind the brick building!


I like it when the clouds kind of work around the building.

Let's Just Declare Victory Over Terror...

It just gets worse and worse. Yesterday, NYT ran a depressing op-ed column by the chairmen of the 9/11 Committee, and their lead editorial today just piles on:

The former members of the 9/11 commission issued a report card yesterday that gives the federal government shockingly low grades on protecting the nation from another terrorist attack. These disastrous marks, which apply to both Congress and the Homeland Security Department, came at a crucial moment. Right now, Congress may be about to make more terrible decisions in two important areas: the homeland security financing formula and chemical plant security.

There can be little doubt that New York is at the top of Al Qaeda's target list - unless, apparently, you are the Homeland Security Department and you are handing out port security money. In the most recent fiscal year, the department gave the port of New York and New Jersey just $6.6 million in port security grants, almost exactly what it gave to Memphis. Houston got $35.3 million, or more than five times as much.

That must be the "Don't Mess With Texas" rider on the Homeland Security budget...

On antiterrorism funds, experts uniformly agree that money should be allocated based on the risk of an attack and the risk of casualties.

But the Senate - led by Susan Collins of Maine, the Republican chairwoman of the homeland security committee, and Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat - is fighting for a formula based not on risk, but on pork. Senator Collins's home state, and other rural states that face little threat, would get a piñata of new programs and equipment under the Senate formula. New York and California would get less money for vitally important programs.

Hey, thanks, Joe! I'm so glad to see that you're still looking out for the country's best interests!

Oh, but wait, it gets even better!

When it comes to failing performances, it's hard to match Congress's thoroughly irresponsible actions on securing chemical plants, where any terrorist attack could cause enormous casualties. To the delight of the chemical industry, a generous contributor to political campaigns, Congress has refused since Sept. 11 to impose reasonable safety standards. Now there is a real danger that Congress will do worse than nothing: it may pass a bill that actually weakens protections.

Congress is considering legislation that would invalidate state laws on chemical plant security. This comes just days after New Jersey, a major chemical manufacturing state, adopted mandatory plant security rules - and shortly after Jon Corzine, a leading supporter of chemical plant safety measures, was elected governor.

It's hard to imagine that Washington will go to war against the states attempting to protect their residents from a potential toxic disaster. If that federal bill is passed, it will be strong evidence that Congress cares more about the chemical plant industry and its political clout than about ordinary Americans at risk in a terrorist attack.

As I keep saying, the Democrats (and Joementum's primary challenger, ohpleasepleaseplease) have to make this a campaign issue in 2006. All Democratic candidates running against Republican incumbents must run campaign ads saying, "The Republicans/my opponent said they/he would keep you safe from the terrorists who want to destroy our way of life. But when it came time for a vote, they voted to divert funds from high-risk target areas like New York and Washington in favor of rural areas that are not in danger. They sided with the chemical industry to weaken chemical plant security regulations. Ask yourself: Which party/candidate is really working to keep you safe?" Some calibration will be necessary for candidates in those rural areas that are recipients of those ill-gotten homeland security funds, i.e., broadening the focus to America's overall safety, and placing more emphasis on chemical plant safety.

As with electoral reform, the Democrats must force the Republicans to defend the indefensible.

Well, This Is A Strange Turn Of Events...

Apparently, as of this moment, this blog is your Number One Online Resource for bad liposuction pictures.

Um, should you need any. (And if you find any here, please let me know where they are)





Please do not ask me to explain this.

We Are All NOLA

This is not exactly news, but the 9/11 Commission confirms that the Bush administration is approaching homeland security with the same kind of zeal and competence they brought to New Orleans, both pre- and post-Katrina:

The 9/11 Commission released its final report today, outlining an array of shortcomings in the government's response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and calling overall progress "disappointing."

(snip)

The commission... criticized the continued lack of intelligence sharing between government agencies; the lack of progress in curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to establish a uniform standard for treating detainees; and the distribution of Department of Homeland Security money based on politics rather than on potential risk.

In a statement, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the progress report issued by the commissioners today, showed that the Bush administration and Congress were "dangerously neglecting the defensive war on terror we should be fighting here at home."

"The report is a top-to-bottom indictment of the federal government's lack of resources, focus and expertise in fighting the domestic war on terror," Mr. Schumer said. "New York State is particularly hurt by the terribly unfair and inefficient homeland security funding formula and the lack of a federal program for communications interoperability among first responders. We can and must do better."

(snip)

At a Washington news conference today, members of the commission repeatedly blasted the government... for its lack of progress on pushing through the recommendations.

"None of it is rocket science," said John F. Lehman.... "None of it is in the too-hard category. We all believe it is possible to get all of these things achieved."

Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic commission member and a former House member from Indiana, asked, "When will our government wake up?" He added, "Al Qaeda is highly dynamic, and we are not."

The commissioners also slammed Congress for turning homeland security funds into just another flavor of pork, to be distributed widely and spent frivolously:

"Federal grants to first responders should be distributed on risk and vulnerability," said [Commission Chairman Thomas] Kean, a former governor of New Jersey. Mr. Kean said the commission had found that one city, which he did not identify, had spent its anti-terrorism money on air conditioning for garbage trucks, while another had bought body armor for dogs.

The Democrats must take a page out of Karl Rove's book and attack the Republicans' supposed strength in 2006 - the Republicans' alleged manly terror-fighting credentials have been their single biggest advantage over the Democrats (remember Dick Cheney saying there would be a terrorist attack if Kerry was elected last year?), but they're a sham. It is vital that the Democrats expose the Republicans' true fecklessness when it comes to terror - not only would it devastate their principal selling point, but it would also provide still another data point in the overall narrative of Republican incompetence and unseriousness when it comes to actual governance.

The Democrats must turn 2004 on its head in 2006, and declare that only the Democrats can keep America safe. All the Republicans know how to do is pick pockets and tell tales.

Must... Control... Fist... Of... Death...

This is one of those occasions where mere words cannot contain my disgust with these people:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised Europe leaders today, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."

In her remarks, the Bush Administration's official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers, Ms. Rice repeatedly emphasized that the United States does not countenance the torture of terrorism suspects, at the hands of either American or foreign captors.

(Oh, I'm sure that makes the Europeans feel much better)

Noting that half-a-dozen international investigations are underway, Ms. Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detentions center. But that was implicit in her remarks.

"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said. "But there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option."

"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.

"Sometimes, these efforts are misunderstood," she said.

(snip)

Ms. Rice insisted that the United States had done nothing wrong.

Many of the imprisoned suspects "are effectively stateless," she maintained, "owing allegiance only to the extremist cause of transnational terrorism. Many are extremely dangerous."

She made an effort to frame the debate as one over the effectiveness of terror enforcement and not over the propriety of holding suspects indefinitely in secret prisons.

"We consider the captured members of Al Qaeda and its allies to be unlawful combatants who may be held, in accordance with the law of war, to keep them from killing innocents," she said. "We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible."

Um, what law of war would that be? The law the President and his merry men and, well, whatever you are make up as you go along don't actually have any international standing, you know.

The European nations must decide, she added, whether they "wish to work with us to prevent terrorist attacks against their own country or other countries."

Were they given that choice up front (or were they bullied into it)? Or are they only know getting to make that decision after the fact, now that you've been busted?

This crap might still play with American audiences, but I don't think it's fooling the Europeans for a second. Of course, the Europeans don't vote in our elections, so they're probably not the target audience anyway.

Bask In That Reflected Glory! Bask, I Say!

Apparently Samuel Alito and the White House have hit upon a new strategy to make Alito not look like a total racist, sexist jerk. Similar to Bush's fondness for photo ops with troops and heroes in hopes of some kind of heroism-by-association, Alito is now invoking his dear departed father, who was conservative but (supposedly) egalitarian and non-partisan in carrying out his job responsibilities.

When a Democratic senator asked the Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. why he might empathize with the plight of minorities or the poor, he had his answer ready: the example of his late father, an Italian immigrant who in college once defended a black basketball player from discrimination on the team.

When other Democrats pressed Judge Alito about why he had once disagreed with the Warren Court decision that established the "one person, one vote" standard for state districts, he again recalled the legacy of his father, Samuel A. Alito, who worked for three decades as the director of research for the New Jersey Legislature.

In his bedroom at night as a boy, Judge Alito told senators, he could hear his father clicking away at a manual calculator as he struggled to redraw the state's legislative districts with equal populations, people present for the conversations said.

To some senators, Judge Alito has said his father taught him to "revere" the legislative process. He has pointed to his father as a model of bipartisanship.

There is some counterpoint to this rosy portrait:

The elder Mr. Alito did not want to be called "Italian-American," said Arthur Applebaum, his longtime deputy in the legislative research service. "He just didn't care for hyphenated groups," Mr. Applebaum said, suggesting that Mr. Alito may have seen special consideration for certain ethnic groups as a sort of "reverse discrimination."

Colleagues of Judge Alito said he might have inherited the conservative sensibility his father displayed in private, including an instinctive cautiousness and a traditionalist approach to family life and social matters. Until the 1980's, for example, the elder Mr. Alito forbade women who worked for him to wear pants to the statehouse, long after other offices had accepted it.

In any case, this is all beside the point. It really doesn't matter what kind of person Papalito was - he's not the one nominated to the Supreme Court, and there is simply no reason to ascribe the father's virtue to the son.

Let's hope this strategy doesn't work - it sounds like the story about Papalito putting his college career on the line to protest a black player's benching against a segregated opponent had an effect on Dick Durbin, who said, "I thought it was a very moving insight about a life lesson learned from his father about the issue of race."

It may have been a very valuable life lesson, but there is simply no evidence that Alito actually learned it. I would like to see some of the Democratic Senators ask Alito what his beloved father thought about his membership in Concerned Alumni for Princeton, which advocated against admitting women and minorities to Princeton's hallowed halls. Or about what he would have thought about Alito's dissent wherein he argued that a search warrant extended to strip-searching 10-year-old girls.

The best tribute the Senate could pay to Alito's idealized father would be to reject any nominee who does not share his presumed commitment to equality, duty and country over party.

Late Night B&W Blogging

Just a couple of random B&W shots from my lunchtime wanderings.


I continue to rebel against the high school photo teacher who criticized my first good photo because it had a garbage can in it...


I'm being followed by a balloonshadow, balloonshadow, balloonshadow...

Two Modest Proposals That Will Fix Everything

Well, okay, not really. But I've been thinking about some of the structural problems in our government as it is currently constituted (or un-Constituted, as the case may be), and I have a couple of outlandish ideas for the judicial and legislative branches. I'm open to any suggestions on the executive branch, but I haven't yet come up with anything better than "Don't elect crazy, stupid, and/or evil people."

My first proposal isn't really all that outlandish; it simply requires a shift in perspective and the codification of same. I believe one of the major structural problems with our government is that the judiciary, our last line of defense against unconstitutional laws and government actions, has become an appointed shadow legislature instead. Rather than looking for judges who will interpret the Constitution and the law as objectively as possible, both parties look for judges who will represent their own ideology as much as they can get away with. The end result is that court rulings are often predetermined by the ideological makeup of the court, rather than by any serious attempt to interpret the actual intent of the law.

This flaw is enabled by the notion that the President has wide latitude to pick the judges he wants, and the Senate should only reject them if there's something spectacularly wrong with them. Consequently, the minority party should only use the filibuster in the most extreme cases, like where the nominee is a convicted murderer. If you combine lifetime appointments with the lack of moderation that this attitude engenders, you get a recipe for a lot of ugliness, both on the courts and in the confirmation process.

My recommendation is that we completely change our mindset about the nomination and confirmation process. It should be much, much harder to confirm justices, not easier. Instead of requiring a simple majority, or 60 votes to break a filibuster for extreme cases, make 60 votes the minimum required even for routine approval, or even a two-thirds majority. This would force presidents to nominate consensus picks that the minority party approves of (or even recommends), meaning much more moderate and non-partisan nominees. The end result would be justices and courts which focus solely on the law rather than advancing an agenda, and which would prevent either party from steamrolling over the opposition and the Constitution.


My second proposal is admittedly a little bit out there. The dilemma as I see it is that far too many congressmen (and -women) are far too beholden to corporate contributors, and consequently value corporate interests over those of the people. But on the other hand, I do believe that corporations are deserving of some level of representation - an absolutist, strictly labor/consumer/environmentalist view of utopia would probably be disastrous for business, and that would probably be disastrous for everyone.

So, my suggestion is, carve out a fixed (minority) number of congressional seats for industry, and apportion them - somehow - among the various individual industries (pharma, finance, insurance, energy, etc.) and let them advocate for big business to their heart's content. The rest of the Congress would then be expected to represent the people, and the people only. And if any of them are caught taking so much as one thin dime from a company or industry lobbyist, they would be sent to prison, and barred from ever holding public office ever again, while the company or industry involved would face extreme sanctions as well (a corporate death penalty might not be practical, but it would have to be something painful enough that no company or industry would dare risk it).

This idea could probably be expanded to include non-corporate interest groups as well, such as the NRA, AARP, and the Sierra Club. Granted, at a certain point it would just become absurd, but no more so than the divided loyalties we have in Congress now. The beauty of it for me is that those starry-eyed idealists who go into government to actually help people would be free to do so without having to sacrifice their principles to stay in office. And those who go into government just to suckle at the corporate teat are free to do so as well, but in such a way that their impact can be contained.

Unlike the first proposal, this one presents all kinds of logistical challenges: How do you apportion the corporate/special interest seats fairly? How do you fill them in such a way that the larger companies or interest groups don't have unfair sway? How do you prevent the wealthy from using their money to hijack the people's side of Congress? (I'm thinking either 100% public campaign financing, or else very low contribution limits)


As I said, neither proposal is perfect by a long shot, but I think they might serve as interesting jumping-off points for digging into some of the core problems and their possible solutions. Any feedback is extremely welcome.

Experimental Night Sky Blogging

While I work on my epic post on How To Solve Almost Everything, here's another foray into the world of night photography. What I'm trying for is night shots exposed to look like day, which will hopefully be creepy and wrong-looking.

This is kind of a proof-of-concept attempt - it doesn't quite get there, and I hadn't yet figured out how to use the camera remote, so there's a bit of shake from my manually depressing the shutter (I think this was a 3-second exposure, but I was on the lowest ISO). It's not going to fool anyone into thinking it's day, but it still looks lighter than it actually was (very late twilight, not full-blown night).


This will work a whole lot better now that I have that remote figured out.

Friday Quote & Cat Blogging

Today's Quote:

"Take that man to Ward A and give him lots of... word association!"

From The Troublemaker, a weird obscure Buck Henry/Godfrey Cambridge movie. And that's pretty much all I remember about it.

And of course, there'll be other people's cats...


My brother's cat Nixie, and a rather large chunk of my brother.

B&W Sky Blogging

Ordinarily, any photo with a nice deep blue sky is a no-brainer to present in color. But every once in a while, some perverse instinct tells me to take a look at it in black & white. And more often than not, I usually like how it turns out. It might be because I used B&W film in my first two years of high school, when I really learned how to be a photographer, and my sympathies just naturally lean that way as a result.

Or it could be that I have Secret Republican Tendencies. Who knows?


I have a strange photographic attraction to the backs of signs. Can't explain it.


Theoretically, this should be a pretty nice color photo (and it is, actually). But for some reason, I just like it better in black & white.

Quote Of The Day

The last sentence of today's NYT lead editorial:

"A president who seems less in touch with reality than Richard Nixon needs to get out more."