My computer thinks I'm French

I'm not quite sure when the transition happened, but sometime in the past month my computer got the idea that I was French, and I'm now getting a good deal of ads popping up in French when I surf the Web. Like this a few days ago:



And this today:



Of course it's not as bad as the guy a while back whose TiVo thought he was gay (not that there's anything wrong with it.)

Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."

"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."

Read the rest of this post...

Another journalist imprisoned by un-American communist dictatorship. Oh, sorry, he's being imprisoned by us.

What are we fighting for again? Oh that's right, we're fighting so that Iraq doesn't turn out like us. Read the rest of this post...

Viewer Mail, the podcast version

I've just published a new podcast episode and devoted this one to viewer mail. In this episode: why Hillary is popular and Kucinich isn't, why DiFi is such a pain and what you can do about it, whither impeachment, why the Dems don't care about privacy (and why they should), on being a former Republican, why Dems are so wimpy (sometimes), and all in haiku! (kidding)

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here, you can subscribe to the podcast's RSS feed here, or you can just listen to the file directly here (it's an mp3).

PS I've been struggling with the album art on this one (the picture associated with our podcast in the iTunes store). I'd like something that plays-off of the logo from AMERICAblog 2.0, I'm attaching it below, but the logo for the iTunes store needs to be 300 pixels by 300 pixels (and this isn't). If anyone wants to take a shot at making me such a logo, using the logo below as inspiration, I'd appreciate it. No promises on what I'll use in the end, but if you want to give it a shot, I promise to check it out, thank you. (Obviously any draft iTunes logo you send me is a gift you're making to the blog for free, that we can use as we see fit for free, that you retain no rights in, blah blah etc. :-)



Okay, now that I'm teasing the new blog. My friend Ari said not to give away the new design till we're ready to launch, but I figured I could tease a little with this. This is the new color scheme, kind of a powder blue. I really like it. Oh, and the American flag comes back too, thank God. Read the rest of this post...

THIS JUST IN: Clinton Slips in Iowa Poll

Joe (in DC) was mocked a week ago for saying that he didn't think Hillary was going to get the nomination, that she'd lost her momentum going into these crucial final weeks. Not so funny any more, per the Washington Post.

The top three Democratic contenders remain locked in a close battle in Iowa, with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) seeing her advantages diminish on key fronts, including the questions of experience and which candidate is best prepared to handle the war in Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Illinois Senator Barack Obama gets the support of 30 percent of likely Democratic caucus-goers in Iowa, compared to 26 percent for Clinton, 22 percent for former senator John Edwards and 11 percent for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. The results are only marginally changed from a Post-ABC poll in late July, but in a state likely to set the course for the rest of the nominating process, there are significant signs of progress for Obama -- and harbingers of concern for Clinton....

Obama is running even with Clinton among women in Iowa, drawing 32 percent to her 31 percent, despite the fact that the Clinton campaign has built its effort around attracting female voters.

I'd still be very surprised to see Hillary not cinch it, but Joe thinks it's going to be Obama. Read the rest of this post...

Death penalty debate

The debate over the utilitarian costs and benefits of the death penalty has been swirling in the blogs (and among nerdy news junkies) over the past couple days, largely fueled by recent studies reported in this NYT article. Several studies seem to indicate that the death penalty has a deterrent effect . . . except that critics say maybe the studies aren't meaningful . . . and the only thing everybody can agree on is that it's complicated and the causation is extremely difficult to isolate from a variety of influential (but tangential) factors. As occasionally occurs when I'm doing some research to write about something, I happened across a post that nearly exactly encapsulates my view. Jack Balkin of Balkinization (and, almost as notably, the Yale Law faculty) writes,

There seems little doubt -- to me at least-- that the death penalty, if applied consistently and predictably enough (so that there is a real chance that it would be applied to a potential criminal defendant) will deter all sorts of crimes. It will deter murder. It will deter embezzlement. It will deter jaywalking. The fact that various economic studies suggest this correlation should hardly startle anyone. . . . Even if we grant that the death penalty deters, [however,] surely the appropriate question is whether the application of the penalty is worth the gains that accrue from it. If it is cruel and unjust, we would not apply it even if it saved lives.

I think this is precisely correct. The debate over the death penalty should not be one of utilitarian calculus, partly because it's virtually impossible to really determine those outcomes, but mostly because it's a *values* issue. In general I'm somewhat less pleased with public policy on a utilitarian basis than some of my ideological peers (though obviously most politics are thereupon founded), and strongly so regarding capital punishment.

Now, here's the part that makes me a little afraid to venture into the comments: I'm in favor of the death penalty (morally, at least). I don't really care if it's a deterrent -- though if for some reason it added to crime/murders, that would have an effect on my view -- and I don't think it's cruel and unusual. I *do* think there are some crimes for which the only appropriate societal punishment is death. Some criminals deserve death, and, indeed, make a choice to be killed in their perpetration of certain crimes. (In practice, conversely, I think there are all kinds of problems with the processes and administration of the death penalty, but that's a separate thing.)

As Balkin says,

[A]rguments about deterrence are a sort of sideshow that allow people to avoid talking about these larger questions with the hope that they can solve the issue by the application of generous amounts of social scientific studies. The more important question is what the death penalty means morally to its supporters and to its opponents. . . . The question of whether [certain criminals] deserve death -- and whether it is morally just for the state to administer death -- is separate from the question of whether the threat of death would deter them.

Indeed. Read the rest of this post...

Taj Mahal no longer letting tourists pay in dollars

We're number two! We're number two!. Read the rest of this post...

Will the next president inherit the Bush recession?

Auto sales may be hitting a 15 year low next year. Add that to the growing housing debacle, the exploding national debt, a (losing) war without end, a plummeting dollar, and things are going to get mighty interesting over the next year or so. America cannot afford another year of Republican inaction in the White House, and Republican obstruction in the Congress. Read the rest of this post...

Rove refuses to even use Bush's name in Newsweek piece

My friend Marc discovered a very weird little tidbit in the middle of Karl Rove's first Newsweek article (he and Markos, the owner of lead blog DailyKos, are now contributing writers to Newsweek). In discussing how the GOP candidate can beat Hillary in the general election (assuming she wins the primary), Rove says the following about Bush's low approval ratings:

So show them who you are in a way that gives the American people hope, optimism and insight. That's the best antidote to the low approval rates of the Republican president.

The Republican president? That's an odd way to describe George Bush, especially when you spent the last 7+ years as a top aide to George Bush. It's a cold, calculating, distant phrase. It paintfully avoids using Bush's name, and it even implies that Rove is distancing himself (and therefore the candidate) from the Republicans as well - by saying "the Republican candidate" it's almost as if Rove is implying that the Republicans are another party that he and the current GOP candidate aren't connected to.

Rove's most important lesson on "How to Beat Hillary (Next) November" is in what he doesn't say: Stay far away from George Bush and the Republican brand. Read the rest of this post...

Global warming may devastate the South's agriculture, and it's going to be their own fault

We've written before about how the South has a reputation for electing far-right Neanderthal politicians who don't care about much beyond God, gays and guns (embracing the former and the latter, and bashing the guy in the middle). And we've written about how the South's biggest problems, like poverty, have little to do with God, gays, guns or the Republican (or far-right Democratic) politicians they elect. It's therefore funny, yet again, that the conservative South is shooting itself in the foot by siding with politicians (that would be Republicans) who deny the existence of global warming. Why? Because according to a new study, America's South will be among the world's regions worst hit by the impact of global warming on local agriculture.

Check out this map from today's Washington Post. Green and blue are regions where global warming may massively increase agricultural product, and pink are regions where it may massively reduce agricultural production - the south is screwed, while the more-Democratic north does really well:



Now check out a map of poverty levels among US states - anything look familiar?


(Source: State of Minnesota)

By supporting Republicans, the South keeps voting against its interests. And that's partly our fault, in that we don't explain to southerns well enough why they shouldn't be supporting Republicans and should be voting for Democrats (and I don't mean that Democrats should embracing school prayer, Senator Obama, I mean that Democrats need to redefine "values" as meaning being stewards of the earth, loving thy neighbor, and other liberal ideals consistent with Biblical teachings).

Still, when you consider that the South produced the likes of Jesse Helms and is still home to possibly the most bigoted state in the Union, Virginia (which has the proud honor of being the state that most fought against inter-racial marriage and now has possibly the most gay-hating legislation on the books in the entire country), there's still a certain understandable schadenfreude in watching their embrace of the far right lead to their slow self-destruction.

PS If you check out the larger world map in the Post, below, you see that not only will the South be most impacted in the US, but the US South will be among those receiving the worst impact in the entire world. You're number one!

Read the rest of this post...

Recycling computer, cell phones and TVs is causing an environmental disaster

You know, I've always wondered about "recycling" since the time I stayed late at work back in the 90s and watched the late-night cleaning staff first empty my regular garbage can, and then empty my second cardboard-box-y "recyclable" garbage can... into the same bin, then smile and wish me a buenas noches. Seriously, this story is scary:

Most Americans think they're helping the earth when they recycle their old computers, televisions and cell phones. But chances are they're contributing to a global trade in electronic trash that endangers workers and pollutes the environment overseas.

While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 to 400,000 tons of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. each year ends up overseas. Workers in countries such as China, India and Nigeria then use hammers, gas burners and their bare hands to extract metals, glass and other recyclables, exposing themselves and the environment to a cocktail of toxic chemicals.

"It is being recycled, but it's being recycled in the most horrific way you can imagine," said Jim Puckett of the Basel Action Network, the Seattle-based environmental group that tipped off Hong Kong authorities. "We're preserving our own environment, but contaminating the rest of the world."

Read the rest of this post...

OPEC debates dumping the dollar

The Republicans have made us the laughing stock of the world in terms of human rights, and now economics. No one respects us any more. When will someone say enough?

From the Guardian:

On Friday night, during what the participants thought were private talks, Venezuela's oil minister Venezuela Rafael Ramirez and his Iranian counterpart Gholamhossein Nozari, argued that pricing - and selling - oil using the crippled dollar was damaging the cartel.

They said Opec should formally express its concern about the weakness of the dollar when the cartel makes its official declaration at the close of the summit today. But the Saudis, the world's largest oil producers and de facto head of Opec, vetoed the proposal. Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, warned that even the mere mention to journalists of the fact that leaders were discussing the weak dollar would cause the US currency to plummet.

Read the rest of this post...

GOPers think Bush has his swagger back. Good grief.

Wow. Delusion abounds.

This "analysis" in today's Washington Post looks like it was spoon fed to Peter Baker by the White House press operation. You know the Bush team has been pushing this story for awhile -- finally, someone bit. Somehow, because White House staffers and GOP talking heads think things aren't so bad on some fronts (not that things are good, just not so bad), Bush now has his swagger back:

In many ways, the shifting political fortunes may owe as much to the absence of bad news as to any particular good news. No one lately has been indicted, botched a hurricane relief effort or shot someone in a hunting accident. Instead, pictures from Iraq show people returning to the streets as often as they show a new suicide bombing. And Bush has bolstered morale inside the West Wing and rallied his Republican base through a strategy of confrontation with the Democratic Congress, built on the expansive use of his veto pen.

Yet none of this has particularly impressed the public at large, which remains skeptical that anything meaningful has changed and still gives Bush record-low approval ratings. The disconnect highlights his dilemma heading into the last year of his administration: Can anything short of a profound event repair an unpopular president's public standing so late in his tenure? Can tactical victories in Washington salvage a wounded presidency?

The article gets the spin from notables like Karl Rove, who led Bush to the point of being one of the worst Presidents ever. Interestingly, after Baker quotes a slew of Republicans who think Bush is doing a GREAT job, he mentions this tidbit from his own paper's recent polling:

Bush's strategy contrasts with those of Clinton and Ronald Reagan, the last two-term presidents, who recovered from political troubles late in their tenures. Both found ways to work with an opposition Congress to pass important legislation. Reagan left office with a 64 percent approval rating and Clinton with a 65 percent rating.

Neither had sunk as low as Bush, whose numbers are the worst of any president in decades. Just 33 percent of Americans approved of his performance in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, a rating that matches his record low and has not changed in four months. Potentially ominous for Bush is the economy. Only 35 percent of Americans rated it as good this month, a seven-point drop since spring and the lowest in two years.

Bush may be popular with his White House staff -- and may still have the ability to contoct a story like this one in the Post -- but most Americans still think he's a disaster. And, unfortunately, we have 427 days left of the disaster. There's still a lot of damage he can do. Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

This should be a slow news week. But those are often the most intense.

What do you know? Read the rest of this post...

Swiss Re writes down over $1 billion

The subprime fiasco haunts another company. Swiss Re is the largest reinsurance company in the world. Read the rest of this post...

Bangladesh death toll could exceed 10,000

Reports continue to vary as low as 2,000 and the Telegragh is reporting up to 15,000 dead. Either way these are stunning numbers for an already troubled country. For the living, 3 million people are estimated to have been affected by the cyclone and are seeking assistance. Read the rest of this post...

Goldman Sachs: $2 trillion lending "shock" for US

But that's OK because Dick Cheney says the US economy is very resilient. He's been pretty much spot on about everything and what do they know at Goldman Sachs anyway? (Hint: Goldman is holding up OK since they didn't join the subprime hysteria.)

Not to flog a dead horse here, but the Democrats really need to rub Bush's nose in this early and often. Mr Bubble ought to step up and accept his massive failure as well and just go away. When losses remind people of the Great Depression, this just might be a hot issue moving forward. Just maybe. Read the rest of this post...