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Resolution 1441
July 28, 2014
Back in the Day (Salon)
The Inactivist's Guide
The Turning Point (9/11/02)
The War of the Memes
I want to be Stitch
The Bear Doctrine
No Palestinian State - For Now
Life, Liberty, and Happiness
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04/25 04:00 PM: 04/24 09:04 AM:
Kerry is continuing to draw fire for the somewhat, er, pale complexion of his "inner circle". The latest is a takedown from Colbert King at the Washington Post, who points out that the Kerry campaign is quite literally taking a divide-and-conquer approach to American ethnic groups, but still can't seem to bring itself to let anybody into the management team with a skin color darker than well-tanned:
Let's be fair, you might argue. Doesn't Kerry have a right to surround himself with close friends and top assistants who click with him? Of course. But is it too much to expect that the Democratic Party's top liberal, the candidate who cries that he has "fought for civil rights and equal opportunity for every American my whole life," who brags about his efforts to "enhance diversity," and whose message is inclusiveness, would in fact have a presidential campaign inner circle that is reflective of the diversity of his party and the country? And if elected, will Kerry govern that way?
Tyler Cohen points to John Holbo asking "I don’t think the blogosphere has thrown up nearly enough stylists of true distinction, incidentally. Do you?"
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Kaus, Kaus, Kaus.
I know of no other blogger who has truly morphed his writing style to so consistently and entertainingly show the strengths of this medium.
Please give a big welcome home to Chief Wiggles, and wish his father and family the best.
And what better way to do both of those things than to chip in a bit to Operation Give?
Lair on link whoring:
"NZ Bear went from being a highly observant and astute individual blogging to nothing more than an emcee for his link-engines, a mechanic enslaved by the prison of his own design. He broke free from it. I nearly shit myself with glee, but I made it to the bathroom in time."
It wasn't quite a prison... I have this nice big comfy desk chair, and coffee and beer, and... nevermind.
Thanks Lair. For the kind words, er, not for the extra 'sharing'.
Hey, look, Jane and Mindles haven't been posting much either, so that makes me feel slightly less inadequate. But Jane has a sage post on adoption that contained a nugget of wisdom that hadn't occurred to me, and is well worth your time.
On a lighter note, there's something extremely, deeply wrong in the fact that HP is using The Cure's Pictures of You to sell digital cameras.
I'm just sayin'.
Just finished installing Brad Choate's spiffy MT-Macro plugin. It's powerful stuff, allowing you to do regular expression matching on your blog to save on the typing. At the moment, I've set it up to let me type little macros like 'Eco' in my posts and have it replace it with a nice HTML link to the Ecosystem, but it can do a lot more complex things than that. Check it out!
For the ghoulish among you, don't forget to check out Lair Simon's 2004 Dead Pool!
Kevin at Wizbang is accepting nominations for his 2003 Weblog Awards, including awards specifically aimed at bloggers in each of the major Ecosystem categories. Go check it out.
I'm back from a rather hectic business period and --- heaven forbid --- a little mini-vacation time.
My task of the moment is digging out from underneath my real work, but while you are waiting for me to a) share pearls of bloggy wisdom or b) fix the damned Ecosystem, go visit Spirit of America and do something. Jim Hake and his crew are on a major push to expand their operations o' benevolence, and they need your help.
More thoughts later, but for now you can enjoy Jeff's on your way there...
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Just got an email from the Democrats, stating that they will be issuing press credentials to bloggers for their convention in Boston:
The Democratic National Convention Committee is pleased to announce that for the first time ever, bloggers will be offered Convention access through the official media credentialing process.
Because the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston is less than 90 days away and space is extremely limited, we encourage those interested in this first-ever opportunity to act now. To apply to cover the 2004 Democratic National Convention as a blogger, you will need to submit applications to both the Senate Periodical Press Gallery AND the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) Press Gallery before the May 28th deadline.
The instructions are a bit confusing though: as you can see, they say you must first apply to the Senate Periodical Press Gallery for credentials, but the way I read their requirements it seems like no "pure blogger" would qualify. But they then note that "Bloggers who do not receive convention credentials through the Congressional galleries can still apply to the Democratic National Convention Committee Press Gallery at http://www.dems2004.org/pressgallery."
I've sent an email back asking for clarification on the process; will post an update if/when I receive it. But regardless of procedural complications, kudos to the Dems for opening up to the blogging crowd...
Update: The DNC is truly learning to operate on 'net time: I already received a response to my query from Mike Liddell:
"As I understand it, the Senate press gallery requested that we send bloggers through them, in addition to our press gallery, even though bloggers don't fall within their normal guidelines. I can confirm that if you give me a day or two.
The short story is that blogging is such a new medium that there isn't a standard way to credential bloggers just yet. But we're working to make it as streamlined as possible."
I'll update again if more info comes in.
P.S. - I also sent an email to the RNC convention contact email, asking if they are prepared to make the same offer to bloggers. Will let you know what they say!
P.P.S. - I'd better be careful with this asking-questions-and-writing-about-the-answers thing; somebody might accuse me of doing actual reporting.
Update 5/6: Initial response received from the RNC: "Good question, we shall check. Thank you for contacting the RNC."
Stay tuned!
Update 5/6 (b) : How much would you pay for your favorite blogger to cover one or both conventions? It strikes me that this is an excellent opportunity for "pay-for-coverage" trips where a blogger solicits dollars from their readers in exchange for a pledge to use those funds to cover the convention. (And no, I'm not interested in actually going myself, so this isn't about little old me). So if you'd be willing to fork out a little dinero to have one of your fave's do the coverage: speak up! They might say yes...
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My NPR favorite Anne Garrels is back in Iraq and this time, has chosen to seek out the most unfortunate Iraqis to interview; those most unfairly impacted by the war. Those who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves shut out of the post-war process.
Yes, I'm talking about senior Baathist generals, of course!
Even by Anne's standards, this is fairly pathetic tripe. Not once in the four-minute segment interviewing five senior officers in Saddam's military was there any hint whatsoever that maybe, just maybe, these guys might not actually be angels.
No matter. Everyone is a victim of the U.S. to Anne The-High-Point-Was-Realizing- The-U.S.-Was-Screwing-Up Garrels, and it is that victimhood that defines them. Certainly not any of their, you know, actions...
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Isn't the Catholic Church doing Kerry a huge favor by starting to make noises that Catholic politicians who, like Kerry, support abortion rights are not fit to receive Communion?
Finally, an issue that even Kerry is unlikely to waffle on and can demonstrate Strong Moral Character in his steadfast --- but respectful! --- disagreement with his Church. He's the new Andrew Sullivan, only liberal, and straight!
Let's be serious; would anybody even remember Kerry actually is Catholic if the Church hadn't reminded us? This is just the thing to convince the large swath of Church-going America that Kerry views his faith as something more than a line item on his resumé.
And the cherry on the sundae is the obvious historical memories that bringing up the whole issue of whether a practicing Catholic can be a President independent of Rome raise. The Man Who Would Be Kennedy finally gets some outside support to remind folks that he has more in common with JFK v1.0 than his initials!
It's all manna from heaven (or at least, the local office). I can't wait to see how Kerry's campaign manages to screw it up!
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Looks like the AP is focusing on Headlines of the Obvious this morning:
Report: Airport screeners perform poorly
Jackson's attorneys say star is innocent
Who would have thought?
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More from Jeff:
As various of us try to enable and encourage weblogs and citizens media -- and I'm one of those -- I also try to stay mindful that we can't 'mold it into our image of what we think it should be. It will be what it wants to be -- that's the whole point. Now if we can help it along that path (with technology or financial support or education or attention) great. But the beauty of citizens' media is that it is what it wants to be, not what somebody else wants it to be.
And the "what it will be" is plural, not singular, which is the most important response to those who have met the idea of the Citizen's Media Association with scorn.
Unlike traditional media like television where essentially, all TV programming has evolved into a single standard model, weblogs and other 'net media don't have to --- and shouldn't. The ideas being put forth for the CMA are part of one vision of what this medium can be --- but there can, and should, be a wide spectrum of different approaches to weblogs going forward.
Like the idea of having a trade association to help you? Go the CMA route. Prefer to be an anonymous blogger just chipping in your $0.02 however you feel like it with no one else to tell you what to do? Do that. The different visions don't really have to compete; they complement...
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Jeff Jarvis is leading the charge to develop a "trade association" for bloggers and other citizen's media types, tentatively called (what else), the Citizen's Media Association. In Jeff's proposal, the Association would:
> Gather and disseminate statistics on the size and success of citizens' media in terms of both audience and revenue: total audience; total traffic; audience demographics; author demographics; audience behavior online; audience buying behavior; categorization of interest areas; census of languages and national origins of sites; total projected ad revenue; total projected commerce revenue; collection of success stories.
> Set standards for the means of gathering audience, traffic, and demographic data and for advertising units and measurements.
> Protect citizens media practitioners by seeking libel and liability insurance and by seeking, through courts and lobbying, to assure that the rights of a free press extend to citizens who create media online.
> Promote the medium with advertisers, marketers, media, and newsmakers.
Jeff's seeking comment and discussion, so drop by his place and share your thoughts.
I think this is a good and necessary idea; part of the natural evolution of weblogs. But one question comes to my mind: how, exactly, do we define "citizen's media" to distinguish it from the rest of the media?
This is a real issue, given that the ultimate goal of some Association members is to make money blogging. If they prove successful, do they stop being "citizen's media" at some point because they are making a lot of money?
I have to chew on this myself a bit; I don't have even a suggested answer at this point. But defining clear requirements for membership seems a necessary first step for developing the Association...
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So the Apprentice is done, and Bill is The Donald's guy.
Expecting some great philosophical discussion of the significance of The Apprentice in our culture or the impact of reality television on civilization? Nah. It entertained me, and that was enough.
But I did have one closing thought. As expected, last Thursday Trump finally said the words "You're hired". But the interesting thing is that he did not say the words "You're fired" to Kwame Jackson, the runner-up.
So, I claim that by the Strict Laws of The Apprentice Universe, Kwame is now existing in some odd state of limbo. Not fired --- but not hired! It's like he's some kind of undead reality show zombie, doomed to walk the earth eternally unresolved.
'Course, being an undead reality show zombie seems to be a pretty good gig for Kwame, so hats off to him...
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Salon continues its descent into liberal insanity. Nice photo montage. No, I don't care if it's explained later in the article, thank you very much.
P.S. - Heather, would you please get the hell out of there, so I don't have any reason left to sully my browser with Salon bits anymore?
P.P.S. - Yes, they paid me once. I got over it.
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From the New York Times' feature on Wonkette:
In a relatively short time, she has drawn her share of detractors... Jack Shafer of Slate called Ms. Cox a "heaving puke" in a column that also lambasted Gawker.com, the New York-based gossip blog created in 2002 by Nick Denton, the publisher behind Wonkette.
Well, yes, he did headline the article "The Heaving Pukes Who Write Gawker and Wonkette."
But he subheaded it "Nothing like an abusive headline to grab your interest, eh?", and "lambasted" Wonkette and Nick Denton with such statements as:
"Several times a day—oh hell, a dozen times a day—I click my way to Gawker and Wonkette for a couple of minutes of reading that usually elicit more guilt than pleasure"
"Any assessment of the [Gawker and Wonkette] should first commend the entrepreneur behind them, publisher Nick Denton, for bringing commerce and innovation to the blogosphere."
"...you'd have to salute Gawker, edited by Choire Sicha, and Wonkette for their abundant wit, for the remarkable job they do in aggregating the important and the trivial, and for the way they help me keep up with what my media friends are doing"
To be sure, Shafer has words of criticism for Wonkette, but his overall tone is that of this-is-good-stuff-that-could-be-better. But judge for yourself, and as they say, read the whole thing.
This is a minor item at best, but it seems that either Times' reporter Julie Bosman didn't read Shafer's article closely past the headline (if at all), or deliberately skewed his take to provide the but-some-people-don't-like-the-newcomer paragraph she needed to plug into her story. (And as we know, if Bosman had actually put a little effort into it, finding people who genuinely are peeved at the popularity of Wonkette isn't all that hard).
Just another tiny bit of perspective to consider the next time you're trying to decide whether the Times is feeding you "all the news that's fit to print", or just all the news that fits their predefined storyline...
P.S. - I more or less agree with much of Shafer's criticism of Wonkette (and his praise); it is a regular stop for me but often leaves me wishing for something more. Wonkettte is good, but not so good as to deserve all the attention it has managed to garner in such a short timeframe. (But having been the receipient of similarly overrated attention myself way-back-when, I shouldn't cast stones much).
Oh, and Wonkette still hasn't linked to me. Bitch.
P.P.S. - How clueless do you have to be as a journalist to mischaracterize the writing of another journalist whose gig happens to be as a press critic? Hello!
Hat Tip: The InstaGuy
Update: More thoughts at The Smoking Room and Dust in the Light.
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Listening to Jeff Jarvis drive the "Blogging As Business" session at Bloggercon today on how to make money from blogs.
Best quote thus far (roughly transcribed) from Jeff, as he hurries to run through all the topics: "We've got about twenty minutes left and we [may have to] skip 'ethics'... "
Quips aside, it's good stuff, and I look forward to reviewing the archived RealAudio/conference materials at a more leisurely pace post-facto...
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Last week a few bloggers (see Wonkette; Marc Cooper; Kaus) noted with a snicker that Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani in Iraq has a website which, among other things, dispenses rather specific advice on which sex acts are permissable under the Ayatollah's view of Islam.
Two noted examples of the Ayatollah's Dr. Ruth-like pronouncements were the following Q and A's:
ON ANAL INTERCOURSE:
Question: My question is, what does the holy book Quran and prophet Mohammad (pbuh) say about anal sex even if the wife agrees to experience this with her husband?
Answer: As deduced from narration anal sex is permissible; but it is strongly undesirable. Permission is bound to wife’s agreement and consent to anal sex. If she is not consenting, it would be impermissible.
ON ORAL SEX:
Question: I am really sorry that I have to ask this type of Question. But Since I grew up in a western country; I rally don't much about our religion. And I can't ask this Question to my parents due to subject matter. Brother my question is, can we have an oral sex before or after the sexual intercourse or can we have oral sex at all? Is it haram?
Answer: Oral sex act is permissible with the consent of both husband and wife provided that no liquid gets into the mouth.
Admittedly, it is always funny in a fifth-grade kind of way to see serious and scholarly folk talk about the pros and cons of various methods of getting your freak on.
But I think it is worth noting, at a more serious level, a common thread in these two responses. In both cases, Sistani makes clear that consent of the woman is an absolute requirement.
Isn't that a good thing?
And, er, don't these answers --- which boil down to "yup, go ahead and do it as long as both parties agree" --- amount to a fairly open-minded view of sex? How many conservative Christian leaders would go this far in blessing anal and oral sex? (Yes, Sistani seems to have a thing against masturbation, but nobody's perfect).
To be clear: I'm not holding up Sistani as some great savior, or strong liberal voice, or ideal moderate Muslim cleric. I don't know enough about him to make those judgments. But in judging these individual statements, they seem to be pretty darned progressive to me.
As background, I'll share with you that I learned a bit about Sistani from listening to Terry Gros' interview with Juan Cole the other day, which gives a good outline of the differences between Sistani's view of Islam, and that of Muqtada al-Sadr. I won't leap to any huge conclusions based on a single source, but Cole's basic argument is that al-Sadr represents a Khomeni-like devotion to full-blown theocracy, whereas Sistani's view is that clerics should not be involved directly in government. I'll judge both on their actions, but the perspective was useful...
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Frankenfreude \fran-KEN-froy-duh\ ; noun: A salicious satisfaction in the misfortune of self-important and unfunny leftys.
Apologies to Dictionary.com.
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Everybody's been commenting on Kerry's editiorial in the Washington Post laying out his plan for Iraq more clearly, so since I bashed him for it the other day, I figure I owe him another pass.
I'm lazy and tired, though, so I'll just reproduce some of my favorite passages here for your edification. I might have mistranscribed a word here or there, though, so fair warning...
A Strategy for Iraq
By John F. Kerry
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime. To date, that has not happened in Iraq. It is time it did.
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At the 9/11 hearings yesterday, Commissioner Fred Fielding opened his questioning of former FBI Director Louis Freeh with the following statement:
FIELDING: I am sure it's no surprise to you or anybody here that there's a lot of interest in today's hearings and there's a lot of interest simply because on September 11th we were totally beaten. We were beaten and all our systems failed.
Our systems to stop hijackings failed. Our intelligence, domestic and foreign apparatus failed. We had 19 people who were able to -- some of whom were known by the CIA to be terrorists -- entered our country, got visas, were living under their own names in this country, took flight lessons. They beat the security screening with knives to get into the aircraft and turn four aircraft into missiles.
And they had to have -- it was interesting -- they had to have 100 percent success in order to do this and they did.
What troubles me about Fielding's statement is that all of our system's did not fail. One of them succeeded --- the ability of the citizens of this country to identify a threat and take action as individuals to elminate it. The ability that was demonstrated so dramatically --- and successfully --- by the passengers on Flight 93, the only hijacked plane where the terrorists failed in their mission to crash into a valuable target.
As I wrote one year after the 9/11 attacks, I don't believe that America began responding effectively to Al Qaeda when we invaded Afghanistan. I believe we began responding effectively the moment that the passengers of Flight 93, fed information via cellphone calls from the ground, recognized what the terrorists on their flight planned to do --- and acted to stop it.
After all the hearings that the commission has had on the failures of our government to prevent 9/11, or even to respond effectively while it was happening, shouldn't there be at least one hearing to discuss what went right on that day? Where is the session devoted to studying the actions of the passengers of Flight 93, and their success at foiling the terrorists they confronted? Is there nothing at all to be learned from their actions, and their sacrifice -- or is the comissison just more interested in finding fault than in actually recognizing success?
Or is it a more basic blindness --- is the 9/11 commission, and our government in general, incapable of recognizing a defense against terrorism that merely consists of individual Americans willing to fight when it becomes necessary? That a defense that doesn't require a huge appropriation bill and a massive administrative army simply doesn't fit with the Washington mindset?
Update: Jay has related thoughts.
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