Aargh. The enemy is not^H^H^H beyond wrong.
Meanwhile, over at Political Animal, Dan Drezner and Abu Aardvark are having a courteous debate about democratization. I haven't read all the comments, so I don't know if readers are still bent out of shape over it. I don't agree with Mr. Drezner; he has some good points, but nothing can justify or excuse Bush's adventurism. However, even if he's wrong, he's not the enemy. The enemy is not beyond wrong. They are aggressively close-minded and intolerant of anything other than their own propaganda. Mr. Drezner seems open to reason and willing to engage in civil discourse. It helps that Mr. Drum has paired him with Mr. Aardvark, so we're getting a debate, not just soapbox oratory. Good editing by Mr. Drum, a reasonably good debate -- not much to get upset about, aside from the massive stupidity, corruption, and catastrophic results of American policy.
In regards to the polarization of civil society into opposing partisan and ideological camps, I recommend reading Thucydides. There is nothing new about what we are going through. But then, if you don't know tragedy, you are doomed to repeat it.
The link to the "uncomplimentary things" comment needs to be fixed. Try here. Actually, I think it's even snarkier than Kevin's response. I can't argue with Kevin on that one.
As a "be pissed off, be very pissed off" liberal, I admit that I do enjoy the pundits of left-blogistan serving up red meat (preferably rubbed with garlic and herbs and roasted over a hot fire, and served with a big zin from Paso Robles). However, there's more to it. The more I find out about what's really going on, I feel more pissed off, but less inclined to blame myself, and more able to do something about it.
I'm willing to put up with a fair amount of crap if it might help us reverse the Republican takeover of my country. That even includes reading opinions by reasonable people who are part of the problem. We're going to have to deal with them one way or another.
Pigeons would be great if you want a missile that always comes back to where it was stationed. Or if you wanted to attack statues.
Let us be thankful these were only experiments. I can't imagine a more disturbing abomination than an attacking horde of bird/dog pecksniffs.
It's interesting how everyone except Randolph has modified their name. Why? Aren't we all Sister/Brothers?
/s/ Sister/Brother Hand Grenade of Looking at All Sides of the Question
Whoever came up with the idea of an annual collection of SF&F for teens should be congratulated. It's brilliant.
I buy young adult SF&F for my niece, and either read it first or get my own copy. A story collection is good because we can talk about each story. That they are new stories is even better. Thanks!
"No negotiation" means only that the negotiations are secret. We don't want kidnappers to talk about how much they are paid.
If folks don't want to see children blowing up, a good place to start would be not blowing up quite so many children. In the real world.
Landmines are characteristic of the industrialization of violence. We use cheap mass-produced devices to keep people out of an area, so we don't have to hire and train so many soldiers to patrol it. I could comment on other things we send overseas to blow up later, such as chemical plants, but that's another thread.
It is easy for us, the public, who pays for landmines to be built, votes for politicians who decide to use them, and supports the troops that plant them, to disassociate our support for landmines from the consequences. The mines explode far away, often long after they were planted. The victims are foreign and poor. The victim has to trigger the mine, so right-wingers can wonder what the victim did to deserve such misfortune. Anything other than thinking of the murderous intent of using mines in the first place.
Showing the emotional consequences of violence is disturbing because it restores our natural reactions. The normal reaction to violence is to be deeply upset. The only way that we are able to conduct such violent national policies as a group, without breaking down as individuals, is through carefully cultivated and sophisticated mechanisms of rationalization, denial, and desensitization. And nothing is more disturbing than having to contemplate the consequences of our own policies.
The ad is offensive on several levels. It challenges our self-righteousness. It challenges our values, that all people are created equal, but Americans seem to be more equal than others. And it challenges our way of life, where money always seems to be more important than the lives of the poor. That's pretty good for just one ad.
For all you New Yorkers, or those who wish to dream of being there, NASA has posted a high resolution satellite image of The Gates in Central Park. Actually, it's all of Central Park, and good chunks of the city on either side, but you can see the gates very clearly.
Anyway, sorry if that's going off-topic.
Hitting the nail on the head is not illegal, despite what you may have been told.
Seriously, in response to Ken's serious question, I think that mastering the brutality doesn't mean we have to be brutal. If someone posting comments is not doing so in good faith, it doesn't help to pretend we're having a nice civilized debate with them. The equivalent in realspace would be someone coming to a meeting in order to pick a fight. That's brutal by any standard. Showing them the door isn't brutal, it's just necessary. We don't need to be rough or mean about it, just firm.
Temperance, thanks for the clarification.
PG&E isn't Satan, they just wish they could be. I don't know about the gold rush days, but for decades PG&E operated in a regulated environment where the major policy decisions were made for them by the PUC: how much capacity they had to build, where it would be, and how much they could charge for it. The executives chafed under these restrictions. They yearned for the opportunity to call the shots and show how they could play with the big boys. They finally got their chance, and we know how it worked out. This is very similar to the S&L debacle, where the executives had plenty of ego and no clue as to how much they'd been protected from the con men and the hustlers.
Actually, PG&E management got off easier than most. They moved their assets to an out of state shell parent company and had the old in-state company declare bankruptcy. The PUC could try to go after them, but the old in-state PG&E has empty pockets so there's not much point, and I think that so far the federal courts have protected the getaway corporation.
So-Cal Ed. did not declare bankruptcy, even though it was really under just as much financial pressure as PG&E. That is a pretty significant difference in behavior.
In context, a lot of people went along with the deregulation boondoggle at the beginning. I voted for it; it seemed to be the way things were going. But that was in Pete Wilson's administration.
Davis was smeared. The only real basis for the smear is that the state and all of us in it were robbed on his watch. But we know who the robbers were, and we know who let them in, and we know who protected them while they did their dirty work. Funny how all of them happen to be Republicans.
Enron was only partially responsible for the California electricity crisis. El Paso Natural Gas was in there, as was Reliant, and several other companies. It was ripoff season, and there was a feeding frenzy.
If you go further back to the origins of the crisis, PG&E and Southern Cal Edison desperately wanted deregulation so they could swap their plants with ones in other states that were not under the regulation of the California Public Utilities Commission. Every big business in California wanted deregulation because the conventional wisdom was that the state had massive power generation over-capacity (due to those socialist over-regulators at the PUC), and the big boys wanted to ensure that most of the inevitable price cuts would flow to them instead of residential customers. The Republicans in the legislature, being a wholly-owned subsidiary of big business, and also suffering from a weird form of brain damage that makes them incapable of seeing the value of the government they serve in, were for deregulation in spades. The Democrats deserve some blame for going along with the deregulation madness, but the Republicans and their allies are the ones that own it. The complexity of the partially deregulated system was not a bug, as the Republican revisionists now say, it was a feature.
During the height of the crisis, Bush and Cheney conspicuously stood by and claimed that nothing could be or needed to be done. They were wrong, of course, because massive fraud was occurring. All it would have taken was a phone call from the top, and a few injunctions, and the party would have been over. The Republicans in the California legislature meanwhile did everything they could to confuse the issue and to interfere with Davis' work to make new deals that would keep the lights and the air conditioners on. I don't believe that the Republican legislators were really in favor of massive fraud, but alternative was admitting that they were idiots who screwed up big, and that their party leaders were crooks. That would have been political suicide, so their only choice was to make the problem worse, deny everything, starting with reality, and to try to find someone else to blame.
So yes, I think the campaign against Davis had everything to do with Enron, but it was "Enron" the movement, not just the one company. We don't know what happened in Schwarzenegger's meeting with Ken Lay before his run, so I don't want to make too much of it. The dynamic behind the recall was much bigger than one ambitious politician or one slimy company.
I am happy to say that my senior Senator from California is not soft on torture.
Senator Feinstein Opposes Gonzales Nomination
“With much regret, I have decided to vote no on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be the next Attorney General. I do not believe he has been candid with the Judiciary Committee about his views on torture or its use despite repeated questions about the issue.
I don't always agree with Senator Feinstein; she tends to emphasize law 'n order over constitutional rights. But even she is not going to get on the wrong side of this issue. I think we should give the Democrats more credit. They aren't soft on torture, and they aren't going to be.
Doc Smith created the literary equivalent of a raised donut with lots of frosting. Verne and Wells provided fabulous wonders, but their products were laden with social criticism and intellectual roughage that was good for you, but not so easy to digest. Doc Smith's writing is an ultimate sugar rush of gosh-wow excitement. Sure, it is loaded with white flour and white sugar. Sure, if you ate nothing but donuts, you wouldn't live long. But a donut every once in a while is a treat. Don't mind the people who say that only a properly made traditional scone or an almond croissant is good enough for them. There are plenty of scones and croissants, and seventeen-grain whole seed vegan rhubarb muffins for the ultra-virtuous. We can appreciate them all, and still sneak a donut now and then. Bite into it, and a wave of sugar rushes over your tongue and the roof of your mouth, making your teeth vibrate with the intensity. Mmmmm.
Just finished Iron Sunrise. I now realize that Singularity Sky was the expository lump. I enjoyed it too, but really, when powers get involved essentially to stop the bad guys from speeding, it's not the most compelling plot ever. By comparison, Iron Sunrise was much more of a menace to my sleep budget and my social obligations. It was not quite as scary as "A Colder War", but that is only because nothing is scary as Colonel North.
Recently finished:
Fall of the Kings took me a while to read because the situations in it were so intense, and I haven't been in the right mood very much. I'm glad I kept coming back to it, though, because the ending is a masterpiece of the art of storytelling. This is a book I will reread.
David McCullough's biography John Adams was interesting, but left me feeling that too much of the controversy had been glossed over. But it was well worth the $4.95 that it cost me.
To Conquer the Air by James Tobin is extraordinary biography of the Wright brothers. One of the things I really liked about it was the effort Tobin put into giving a sympathetic and understanding portrait of Langley. The ways in which Langley failed will be very familiar to anyone who has lived through the recent dot bust debacle -- he was brilliant, had massive funding and official support, and built the most powerful airplane engines of his time. I think you really have to understand Langley's failure in order to fully appreciate the greatness of the Wright brothers' accomplishments. Tobin also does a great job of showing the humanity of the Wright brothers, and the obsessive diligence that was required for them to solve the mystery of flight.
Golden Fool and Fool's Fate bring Robin Hobb's trilogy of trilogies to a conclusion. (I read Fool's Errand much earlier, when it came out.) The last trilogy is very different than the Farseer and Liveship Traders trilogies. Not that it is lacking in magic or in danger, but that the little problems of life and love won't go away, and keep pushing themselves to the front. It works. I think this is the truest fantasy that Hobb has written.
I took the plunge and read the first two books in Martha Wells' new series, in the hope that I won't have to wait too long before the next book comes out. They are The Wizard Hunters and The Ships of the Air. If you haven't read her, I would recommend starting with Death of the Necromancer, which takes place a generation before her current series. It's the sort of over-the-top romantic adventure novel that Dumas would have written, if he had gone into horrific fantasy. This goes in the guilty pleasure category, but I think I can eliminate much of the guilt by getting everyone else addicted.
Colossus, by Niall Ferguson, is an interesting book. The arguments are intelligent and provocative, but the conclusions are wrong, sometimes to the point of embarrassment. I'm still trying to figure out all the places where his assertions are unsubstantiated and where he overlooked the counterarguments to his positions. However, I think it is safe to say that our flirtation with colonialism on the cheap in Iraq is not working out. Also, I have yet to see how Social Security and Medicare will destroy the American economy, especially now when the risk seems to be the other way around.
I am now reading The Knight. I could tell right away that this is going to be one of the Wolfe books that I love, although I am not expecting it to match Soldier of the Mist; nothing can.
a frame that separates religion and politics
I was thinking it would be good to tie this thread back to the top, and there's your post.
Andy B wrote: Secular leftist fanatics. And they, unlike rightist religious fanatics, bloody well ought to know better.
Does anyone else feel as stunned as I by the use of secular as a condemnation? Yes, I know Andy B retracted it in regards to our esteemed hosts, but that was about them, not the term. He clearly seemed to think that it means intolerant of religion.
Progressive Christians live in two overlapping communities, that of their faith, and that of the secular society. They are welcome to be leaders as progressives who happen to be Christian, or as Christians who happen to be progressive, but those are distinct roles. Both will be very valuable in the times ahead.
Separating religion and politics doesn't mean eliminating one or the other. It's just a good idea, like not putting all your food in a blender.
Whatever happened to "Air America"? wasn't that the left's response to Fox?
Air America is still growing and I hope it will succeed. However, I don't think a commercial radio network, modeled on existing networks, is going to do everything we need. I'd like to see additional networks that have different structures and different modes of discourse. Particularly, I think we need an independent non-profit network.
Dean showed you can go from zero to contender with little more than an internet connection. But I have a feeling it was what he SAID, not the fact that he had internet access that made him a contender.
I don't think there was that much of a difference between Dean and the other good candidates, such as Kerry, if you look at their policy proposals and what they said. What was special about Dean was how he listened. His use of the internet was two-way. Dean supporters felt they were more involved in Dean's campaign because their input really made a difference.
One thing I'd like to see is that anyone with a camcorder and a story can take their video to the network, get it judged by the network editors, and possibly get national air time. We need a lot more grassroots news. Of course, a lot of home video and cable access TV is dreadful, but all the network has to do is select work that is good or could be made good with a little production and editing. An important part of this process is getting people involved and developing talent.
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