Legacy

After eight years of denigrating human rights and weakening our country's principles when we ought to have been strong, Dick Cheney doesn't know when to leave well enough alone:

"He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won't be at war," Cheney said in the statement. "He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won't be at war. He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war."

None of this would be relevant - Cheney is plainly a despicable human being committed to atrocities and empire-building in the name of false freedom - were it not for White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer's comments on the matter, which solidify something that many of us have been thinking for some time:

"Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country," Pfeiffer said. "And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the president."

Pfeiffer also took issue with Cheney's contention that Obama was pretending no U.S. war with terrorists existed, saying the president and members of his administration have referred to being at war with al Qaeda several times.

"The difference is this: President Obama doesn't need to beat his chest to prove it, and -- unlike the last Administration -- we are not at war with a tactic ("terrorism"), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies," Pfeiffer wrote.

Cheney's comments represent nothing more than the last snarl of a dog fleeing a property with its tail between its legs, the final whimpering relics of an international philosophy of justified brutality that ought to have taken its last breath by now. Let's see that it stays that way, desperate justifications notwithstanding.

Bachmann Bailouts

The most rabidly anti-gay representatives invariably turn out to be gay, and certain talk show hosts railing against drug use in the inner cities have proven themselves to be quite the pill-poppers themselves, so this is hardly a surprise - Michele Bachmann, long a raging critic of government bailout programs (and who famously insinuated that President Obama may have anti-American views and that Congress should be investigated for the same) received, over ten years, a quarter million dollars in federal subsidies to her family farm. As always, socialism is only socialism when it helps the poor.

It's well known that red states receive more federal funding, though read the article to find further that (ding ding ding ding!) "the top four districts receiving the largest ag[ricultural] payments are represented by conservative Republicans."

Further proving that, sigh, this recent outrage has more to do with making sure that the nation's wealth trickles upward than that Uncle Sam keeps his hands out of the private sector.

link

P.S. By the way, read up on Michele Bachmann - it's quite entertaining. She seems completely committed to saying the most shortsighted thing possible in any given situation.

Intellectual Property destroyed as shop worker allowed to sing in store without performance license, artists suffer

In an unfortunate turn of events, the PRS for Music society of the UK (not really like the RIAA as they're non-profit and aren't a trade group but still comparable in their attitude) has decided to let a supermarket worker off the hook for singing in the store where she works without a performance license, after initially (and rightly) threatening her with a fine.

The organization has done good work in the past according to Wikipedia:

In 2008 the PRS expanded their legal battle to require licensing to include 61 year old mechanic, Paul Wilson, who plays his radio when he works by himself, a bakery that plays a radio in a private room at the back of the shop, a woman who plays classical radio to calm her horses, and community centres that allow children to sing carols in public.

Shaking down schoolchildren and horses is a good start, and this group's shown a tireless dedication in the past to removing music videos from the internet, a step closer toward every good citizen's ultimate goal of making listening to new music little more than a theoretical possibility. Those of us who love the feeling of surprise upon listening to purchased records for the first time (bought at random according to the cover art the way God intended) need to work harder to remove music, and possibly other sounds as well, from the public arena.

Singing in a store may not seem the same as boarding a merchant ship and killing

its occupants, but it's the exact same thing. In fact, "piracy" doesn't even begin
to describe the effect on artists, producers and, most especially, our precious,
precious music industry executives. Stay informed. Stay Jesusamericafreedom.

In a flagrant disregard for the rights of artists, performers and our precious, precious music industry executives, the organization elected to send this unrepentant copyright criminal a bouquet of flowers and an apology rather than stand up for the rights of those who write music and then let others hear it only over their cold, dead bodies. How much is a performance license anyway? Shouldn't we all keep ours in our wallets? "I'm sorry - I can't sing with you. I didn't renew my I'm Walking on Sunshine license."

The village store where Mrs Burt works was contacted by the PRS earlier this year to warn them that a licence was needed to play a radio within earshot of customers.

When the shop owner decided to get rid of the radio as a result, Mrs Burt said she began singing as she worked.

. . .

"When I heard that the PRS said I would be prosecuted for not having a performance licence, I thought it was a joke and started laughing.

"I was then told I could be fined thousands of pounds. But I couldn't stop myself singing.

"They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it."

Making her get rid of her radio, which is a device that pulls music from the air that everybody can listen to for free, was certainly a good start. But I don't think I need to inform you of the gravity of this situation. Here's hoping that the people who initially made the decision to threaten this woman remain in their positions and then create a climate where artists can have the freedom they need to create the works of art that enrich our lives in the palm-scanned, soundproofed single-occupancy rooms in which we're permitted to listen to them.

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Morons With Signs

The glorious tradition of modern uninformed process: Morons With Signs. The dumb leading the dumber has never been funnier.

Apple Lied, People Died (Well, maybe not)

To confirm my editorial spin on a story from a few weeks back, Google has released documents essentially confirming that Apple's weasel words are just that - they're lying about not rejecting Google Voice.

Stewart schools McCaughey on the health care bill (Resulting in her resignation)

The following Jon Stewart interview with an increasingly-hysterical Betsy McCaughey is one of the best treatments of the healthcare debate that I've ever seen. Her alien logic and nervous laughter gets uncomfortable after a few minutes, though Stewart's "fake" news show as usual does a better job of providing context and evenhandedness than any of the major networks. Maybe when this stupid line of argument falls by the wayside we can actually consider the bill on its own terms.

And yes, she did resign her post the next day.

Enjoy:

www.thedailyshow.com

Day [X] of the Healthcare Smokescreen

Yesterday Sarah Palin mounted a surprisingly coherent defense of her "death panels" comment, taking a step back and arguing that doctors with an incentive to counsel patients about "advance directives" (read: decisions made during periods of incapacity such as stroke or prolonged unconsciousness) will have more of an incentive to pressure senior citizens into accepting "pull the plug" plans that they may not be prepared for:

Now put this in context. These consultations are authorized whenever a Medicare recipient’s health changes significantly or when they enter a nursing home, and they are part of a bill whose stated purpose is “to reduce the growth in health care spending.” Is it any wonder that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?

Now, calling Palin's defense "coherent" is merely an acknowledgment that all of the words in her article, when strung together, make a form of sense. This is truly phenomenal for Palin, and I wish her only the best in her newfound pursuit of lucidity. Unfortunately the ideas are a little murkier. Here's Palin's original statement:

". . . who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Oh. Palin's original comments have nothing to do with her more recent regrouping. Now we see the problem; for even if allowing elderly people the option of discussing with their doctor what to do if they become vegetative can be somehow compared with images of death squads and grandmamas and papas on the chopping block, Palin's poor little baby is quite safe from Obama's Stethoscope Stormtroopers unless the bill takes a dramatic turn.

Unfortunately it's clear that this is just another volley of Palin hypocrisy and an exploitation not only of her child but impressionable faux-conservatives everywhere on this particular issue - Palin supported "advance directives" as early as last year.

Is this a surprise? No. Should we feign Olbermann-style outrage or think Palin a grandma-killer? No. But this isn't a debate, nor is it a group of principled Americans standing up against a behemoth-in-the making. The "ideas" and principles these people purport to stand by are the result of lies, corporate posturing and the exploitation of the well-intentioned and hungrily patriotic by the cold gears of cynical posturing of the political machine.

It's politics - mere words and soundbytes divorced of context or principle, celebrity clashes of ego where sensational statements are reported as if they form a valid rebuttal to unpleasant facts. If you really believed what you purport to belief, outraged Right-wingers, you'd have better reasons. And if we're going to debate this, let's do it honestly.

UPDATE: Context comes back to kick us all in the back, including, not unexpectedly Glenn Beck. Funny how "the nightmare that is our healthcare system" turns into a chocolate gurney and licorice defibrillator utopia in just a year's time. . .

Of course, cable commentators and politicians are from a world where context and consistency are mere afterthoughts, where moment-by-moment indignance (whatever the target!) carry the day. So, in a way, it's perfectly understandable for these weasels to slag off our healthcare system when playing off of working class distrust for authority, then turn around and praise it literally months later when the Tide of Outrage moves in that direction. Provided you're a goldfish whose memory reboots every three seconds, that is.

UPDATE UPDATE: And this type of doubletalk leads to some awkward moments.

Mama, get the rah-fle

Poor American South. They try so hard. At least they mostly stay out of the way.

(From the Washington Monthly)

Dirtbag power company to charge solar panel users an extra fee

Those looking for a primer in convoluted, selfish deceit could do worse than a recent policy from Minnesota-based Xcel Energy, which plans to begin charging users of solar panels an extra fee. Why?

[I]mplementing the fee would level the playing field for electricity users who are currently subsidizing connectivity fees for solar users, who sometimes use no electricity in a given month and therefore, pay no electrical fees.

Does that reasoning confuse you?

But when pressed, [Xcel spokeman] Henley admitted that currently, no Xcel electric customers pay extra to fund solar connectivity fees. In reality, Xcel absorbs those fees. The money from the proposed fee would not go into the pockets of electric customers, but would go back to Xcel. Henley said the fee is a preventative measure to ensure that, down the road, solar customers do not get free rides.

The game so far:

#1 Lie
#2 Admission of Lie
#3 Reiteration of Lie

But don't worry: Energy-efficient customers won't be punished as long as they compensate by being extra-wasteful in other ways:

Henley disputed that, saying some solar customers who used a sufficient amount of electrical energy each month would never have to pay the connectivity fee.

It's nice to know that we still have corporations around who aren't afraid to reject the traditional "provide a service, receive a reward" model of capitalism, instead policing their consumers and punishing those who are doing their best to save the planet and be responsible but might interfere with their future profits.

Xtort Power and Their Fees

The Lies of Sarah Palin (Andrew Sullivan)

Naturally, I'll be spreading this again in 2012 if we hear a word about a possible Palin nomination (GOP suicide, naturally), but now it seems helpful to document the gross lies, incompetence and excuse-making of a shifty governor who couldn't be cute and personable enough to cover her inability to govern in a world of Wikis and fact-checking (I hesitate to say "bloggers" since I am, after all, merely linking to and summarizing The Atlantic).

Palin lied when she denied having said that humans do not contribute to climate change; in fact, she had previously proclaimed that human activity was not to blame.

Palin lied when she claimed that Alaska produces 20 percent of the country's domestic energy supply; in fact, the actual figures, based on any interpretation of her words, are much, much lower.

Palin lied when she told voters she improvised her convention speech when her teleprompter stopped working properly; in fact, all reports showed that the machine had functioned perfectly and that her speech had closely followed the script.

The Lies of Sarah Palin

EDIT: Uh, I should note that this type of behavior isn't particularly uncommon among politicians, and that I'm biased in that Palin's over-the-top self-righteousness and belief in self-fulfilling airs of competence puts me on edge with her.

Absurd TSA disclaimer

In response to recent events (and a few older ones) I began a brief correspondence with a senior regional TSA agent at one of our nation's larger airports in an attempt to get the Administration's side of the story. I'm used both to reading and writing incendiary assaults on government organizations when an infringement on basic freedoms is suspected or agents misbehave in the performance of their duties, yet I realized that the TSA side of the argument was likely a little more sophisticated than the "Security Through Slavery" zealots many of us are used to imagining.

As I'd hoped I found the man's comments good-spirited and even informative, though most of my original concerns as a Bill of Rights/civil liberties nerd remain. But I can't discuss any of what we discussed due to a backward, ridiculous disclaimer at the bottom of each of his e-mail messages:

WARNING: The information in this email is confidential and may be legally privileged. Access to this email by anyone other than the intended addressee is unauthorized. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, any review, disclosure, copying, distribution, retention, or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it is prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient, please reply to or forward a copy of this message to the sender and delete the message, any attachments, and any copies thereof from your system.

So the part of his message that reveals him as a man concerned with security while remaining conscious of the problem of preserving individual liberty is "classified," while the ridiculous, restrictive disclaimer that ties my hands is fair game. I can't talk about what we discussed here, reproduce it or even show it to anybody without fearing some possible reprisal, but I can tell you that I can't.

I don't understand - the contents of his e-mail were transparent discussions of TSA policy, with nary a factoid that might jeopardize our nation's security - in fact, they served to humanize his organization significantly in my eyes. But they've decided that they have the authority to restrict each and every message they send, and I've never been one to create undue trouble for myself.

Too bad.

"Ketchup" equals "American," unless it's Heinz

Somehow I missed this last month - Conservative "pundits" (including the desperate liar Sean Hannity) attacking Barack Obama for ordering a hamburger with "fancy" dijon mustard and no ketchup. We expect this from Sean, who has of late become more and more of a puppet for the ramblings of the syphilitic dementia that will eventually take his life, but what's Laura Ingraham's excuse?

Link

Sigh. . . unless he does something newsworthy (like offer to be waterboarded), I promise that I will ignore Sean Hannity from now on. Watching the guy isn't so much like watching a car crash as experiencing an unusually painful bowel movement, and about as relevant.

But I offer the following unscientific Google-ing:

Results for "Sean Hannity is a tool": 660
Results for "A screwdriver is a tool": 186

Sean Hannity makes idle promise to be waterboarded for charity. . .

Oh, mercy me. Transcript from the Huffington Post:

"[Charles] GRODIN: You're for torture.

HANNITY: I am for enhanced interrogation.

GRODIN: You don't believe it's torture. Have you ever been waterboarded?

HANNITY: No, but Ollie North has.

GRODIN: Would you consent to be waterboarded? We can waterboard you?

HANNITY: Sure.

GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?

HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families."

Leaving aside the question of what exactly is going on in Hannity's brain ("Troops' families! Ollie North! RONALD REAGAN!!!"), obviously this will probably never happen. Still, the fact that Hannity's BFF Ollie North has done it might make give us a faint possibility of seeing something that will surely turn out to be entertaining for us and deservedly humiliating for the conservative icon. Christopher Hitchens lasted about ten seconds when he was waterboarded, and Hannity's going to have a tough time spinning his inevitable sputtering concession as a positive. After all, in real waterboarding they don't stop when the prisoner gives the signal.

Snarky bit warning:

Still, the idea of Hannity being kept awake at all hours of the day and night by high-decibel rap music and maybe held in a corner as snarling dogs bark in his face has a certain appeal. After a few months maybe he'd have the moral authority to wish it on others.

Obama keeps contents of copyright treaty secret for "national security"

From the article:

In one of his first acts as president, Obama signed a memo saying FOIA "should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure."

I guess he's changing his mind already. I'm not a conspiratorial guy, but this whole thing almost looks like a plot to get everybody excited about the country's future and then send them back into deeper recesses of crushing apathy. Good one, O.

EDIT (9/10/09): From now on, I'll try not to report on redundant articles regarding Obama failing miserably to live up to his high promises of change and honorable government. Suffice it to say that anybody who checks the news will see why it's largely business as usual for this administration in spite of initial lofty ideals.

Fundamentalist nutjob cartoonist Jack Chick explains the error of fictional holiday figures in a gripping tale of murder and spiraling insanity

Most Jack Chick tracts exhibit a slow-burning incivility, a quiet offensiveness and absurd overstatement that makes them unsuitable as a subject of anger. The parsing of small, out-of-context snippets of Biblical verse into the text to emphasize whatever evangelical talking point Jack had in mind at the moment - coupled with text added to the verses whenever the Bible didn't make the same point Jack wanted - absurd consequences for sin ("Charlie smoked marijuana against his parents' wishes and was run over by a car!") and outlandish, subtlety-free writing hardly elevate it above, say, Mary Worth as a subject of religious education or parody.

Nevertheless I've been reading a couple of his online tracts this afternoon with the cynicism I reserve for irony-free douchebaggery, neither offended nor particularly amused. Until on the third strike I ran into his tract "Fairy Tales," which hit comedy gold. For those without the desire to read the story I'll summarize the gripping tale of self-destruction below:


We witness a veritable mural of emotion, a group of protesters - murderous, obese trolls on the left side (including the rather amusing goblin near the edge of the panel mumbling "Kill, Kill!"), bespectacled religious conservatives on the right. Harry's parents insist that this can't be happening!; their son was always a "sweet little boy." The answers are simpler than reasonable people would imagine, and only require a brief trip into Harry's past:


Harry's parents unfortunately fall into the trap of other well-meaning, but ultimately Satanic and hellbound parents - they begin to indoctrinate Harry with the lies of secular society, teaching him about the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny (and, no doubt, about the moon landing and flouridated water). Obviously deeply disturbed, Harry gathers these fictional creatures up until they form the core of his very identity, until one fateful day. Oh, let's watch:


This is when things start to get awesome. Just so you know, the wide-eyed little Edward Scissorhands in the story really does kill a kid in the schoolyard. And this kid's murdering spree isn't over, you'll be happy to know:


Keen observers will notice that this story is a little devoid of warm-hearted religious significance at this point, so this is when Jack ramps up the story; Harry's cellmate learns about and accepts Jesus. Harry, uh, doesn't:


After all of this carefully-constructed buildup Harry's end seems almost a little too abrupt:


Other ironic fans of Jack Chick may enjoy the thrilling twist at the end of "Oops!" or the story where Satan kills a bunch of teenagers with a chainsaw.

Other tales of the kookiest side of religion:

Why Santa Claus is the Devil
The Philippines' [Voluntary] Good Friday Crucifixions
A Jack Chick parody with quotes from the Necronomicon (PDF)

Misguided moral crusaders vs. the First Amendment - Round 2

To honor Utah Governor Jon Huntsman's veto of House Bill 353, the Jack Thompson-sponsored bill which would have codified the ratings of the private Entertainment Software Rating Board into law, it seems appropriate to link to this list for reference of the seven ways the mainstream media gets the facts wrong on gaming - distorting and ignoring facts, building hysteria and outright making things up in an attempt to stir controversy and play the part of the moral crusader. (And few have proven more prominent or more fitting for this feature than Fox's Glenn Beck, pictured above. Don't worry - you won't have to watch him pretend to cry in the article's clips.)

The Top 7… hated habits of the mainstream media (GamesRadar)

Adorable Authors' Guild wages futile war on text-to-speech technology

Few things are more adorably self-righteous or toxic to policy and discourse than a misguided, uninformed organization with the utmost confidence in their cause. In matters of intellectual property, things gets even crazier when artificial concepts of ownership of information get pushed into the real world.

The Roy Blount-led Authors' Guild is no stranger to this sort of thing - in October of last year they sued Google for their revolutionary Book Search feature, a service which allows users to search for keywords within books without having access to the full text. Never mind the benefit of the service or the fact that the full text of the books were still unavailable (meaning that, barring some review, Google most likely qualified under Fair Use law and encouraged users to seek out the books rather than just read them online) - the Guild threw a legal temper tantrum and eventually agreed to a megamillion-dollar payout, a small percentage of which were given to authors. I guess when massive amounts of cash are concerned, it doesn't matter when enforcing copyright law and protecting writers' profits are not the same thing.

Now the Guild is making an adorable stink over an online service that reads e-books aloud through text-to-speech technology, BoingBoing Gadgets reports:

Kindle 2's flagship feature is the reading of text out loud, in the same way as software that's already built into desktop computers and Prof. Stephen Hawking's famous voice box. This has caused a "stir." Paul Aiken, executive director of the Author's Guild, told the Wall Street Journal that you have no right to use this feature. It's a free audiobook, see.

They don't have the right to read a book out loud," said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. "That's an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law."

An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider.

What's the point of fighting a pointless fight just for legal technicalities? Limiting convenient consumer options for absolutely no reason (a computer voice does not duplicate nor replace the role of an audiobook) when people are eager to add free functionality to your product is shortsighted and miserly, less like protecting your rights than spitting in somebody's coffee. Rob Beschizza sums up the concept nicely:

Ideas grow to fill the containers they imply, and the problem with bad ideas is that their containers are leaky and misshapen. Even if you firmly believe in broad copyright laws, intellectual property is a bad idea because it recasts a legal device as its own philosophical justification. This journey from the utilitarian to the exalted creates a sublime monster that can't help but govern not only the duplication of things, but every aspect of their expression and the culture that makes them meaningful.

The alternative is a set of obnoxious, unintuitive loopholes the like of which I found online in this totally real example:



Authors' Guild claims text-to-speech software is illegal (BoingBoing)

More straight talk from presidential press secretaries. . .

It's nice to know that President Obama's press secretaries will be just as evasive and moronic as any other administration's. The clip starts around 3:45.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Obama: Day 15

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

It's alright - we'll find somebody else to live vicariously through

It is with an anarchic sense of glee that I post this image of 14-times gold medal winner and Face of America Michael Phelps bonging it up at a South Carolina party. The article, from UK taboid NewsoftheWorld, is exactly as sensationalistic and trashy as you'd expect from, well, a UK taboid, using the most colorful of descriptive language and quoting anonymous sources who say things like:

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

I guess we'll find out whether we'll be seeing some more truly awful magazine covers in 2012 - Olympic regulations place a four-year ban on drug use. Presumably because he might win another dozen and some-odd medals and create a new generation of Cheeches and Chongs.

80-year-old shot by police posing as drug dealers

From (jacksonville.com):

"The family of Isaac Singletary is suing in federal court, claiming his civil rights were violated and police used “unnecessary and excessive force” in shooting Singletary four times.

Singletary was known to run drug dealers off the yard in front of his Westmont Street property, and his family has said Singletary did not know the men pretending to be drug dealers were actually police."

When police officers don't identify themselves and dress up as criminals, overzealous citizens everywhere are in more than a little danger. This isn't an issue of self-defense (as long as they seemed to be in danger) but of the legitimacy of undercover or sting operations.

Related link: Reason Online - "Collateral damage" of the war on drugs