OCLC Top 1000 [OCLC - Research] There are some notable subtilties at play here but a fine example of the free marketplace of ideas, none the less.

OCLC Research has compiled a list of the top 1000 titles owned by member libraries—the intellectual works that have been judged to be worth owning by the "purchase vote" of libraries around the globe.

  ¶ 11/27/2004 01:11:00 AM 0 comments

  Back to Iraq 3.0- Jihad For Hire Chris has got a worthwhile read here. It points, indirectly, at a new tactic to take in our war on terror and an apparent failing of one of our current efforts.

Chris is writing about the effect of Arafat's death on the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Arafat had a fair amount of personal money to spread around the Palestinian camps. He bought friends and enemies as friends. This distribution system will likely dry up. And so might the political goodwill he enjoyed in the camps.

The Islamists are waiting for whoever succeeds Arafat to fail.

"These Islamist groups have two assets, said Soheil al-Natour, a central committee member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. They have a culture of vendetta and revenge, and they have a lot of money. If Mahmoud Abbas fails in the eyes of the refugees, the Islamists will be there waiting to exert their influence, said al-Natour "

We need to insure that Arafat's money continues to flow by whatever means available. We need to find out why the flow of money to the Islamists has not been stemmed.


  ¶ 11/26/2004 11:37:00 PM 0 comments

  Towards More Colorful, Honest Speech Found this on some lefty blogs, taken from a Village Voice article.

As one marine said: "What does the American public think happens when they tell us to assault a city?" one of them said. "Marines don't shoot rainbows out of our asses. We fucking kill people."

  ¶ 11/26/2004 11:29:00 AM 0 comments

  Hit and Run This from Reason, the blog. I can't believe InstaGlenn had a somewhat reasonable, good idea.

Glenn Reynolds is plumping for Vaclav Havel to replace Kofi Annan as head of the
United Nations, and Jonah Goldberg agrees. Unsurprisingly, I think it's a
capital idea, and would likely bring a gust of support behind the growing
"Community of Democracies" reform initiative, supported by the bipartisan likes
of Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Tom Lantos, and David Dreier, and described
in these pages this March by Jonathan Rauch.

  ¶ 11/26/2004 11:09:00 AM 0 comments

  PressThink: Dan Rather: Park Avenue Ordinary Dan screwed-up, big time. He put CBS in a position where it could not do what it needed to do. The network killed an important story prior to the election because of the fall-out from Memogate. To some degree, it seemed that all of the media became somewhat defensive.

I will even grant that he had on some blinders. But it is entirely possible that he believed in the story and it wasn't just a political hack-job. To anyone but a partisan, there is strong evidence that Shrub shirked. Even some of the evidence knocking down the forgery had an element of support to it. There was the secretary that said she didn't type the memo but it was true.

As for the argument that it wasn't covered in 2000 so it was a late attempt at a hack-job, well, the press should have waded through the Rovian horseshit back then.

Hopefully, there will always be another day for the press and Rather to redeem themselves.
  ¶ 11/25/2004 09:58:00 PM 0 comments

  iMediaConnection: The "Long Tail" of the Blogosphere Or was it paid placement as content when InstaGlenn posted a VW Passat image link.
  ¶ 11/22/2004 11:30:00 PM 0 comments

  A new day for the 'old media'? Obviously, not yet time to yield the field as some would.

Inconveniently, if you use the post election (Pew) survey to construct a
composite portrait of the voter who relied most heavily on the Internet for his
campaign news, he was a young non-white male who was not religious, identified
himself as a "liberal Democrat" and lived in a Western state — that went for
Kerry.

  ¶ 11/22/2004 11:22:00 PM 0 comments

  The Agonist | Cross Cultural Khomeini I ripped this from the above.

The core of Khomeini's political philosophy was a concept known as veleyat-e
faqih, which means "rule of the jurisprudent." Khomeini was a devotee of Plato
(a rarity among mullahs), and in his utopian Islamic society, the state would be
ruled over by a theocratic philosopher-king--a man so learned in Islamic law
that all of his peers and all of his countrymen would recognize thatonly he
could provide "right-minded" guidance. Michael Fischer notes that Khomeini was
never able to cite textual bases for the concept of velyat-e faqih, largely
because it was derived essentially from The Republic rather than from the Quran.

  ¶ 11/22/2004 11:15:00 PM 0 comments

  Kevin Sites and the Marines

Mr. Sites was being ravaged in the likes of Freaky Freeperville. Here he addresses his comments to the Marines. I took away from this that he really cares for the Marines he is with.

I interviewed your Commanding Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Willy Buhl, before the battle for Falluja began. He said something very powerful at the time-something
that now seems prophetic. It was this:

"We're the good guys. We are
Americans. We are fighting a gentleman's war here -- because we don't behead
people, we don't come down to the same level of the people we're combating.
That's a very difficult thing for a young 18-year-old Marine who's been trained
to locate, close with and destroy the enemy with fire and close combat. That's a
very difficult thing for a 42-year-old lieutenant colonel with 23 years
experience in the service who was trained to do the same thing once upon a time,
and who now has a thousand-plus men to lead, guide, coach, mentor -- and ensure
we remain the good guys and keep the moral high ground."

  ¶ 11/22/2004 11:02:00 PM 0 comments

  Eschaton As it says in the comments on this one, it's the little symbols that seem to matter; sometimes.
  ¶ 11/22/2004 07:50:00 PM 0 comments

  Third of Americans Say Evidence Has Supported Darwin's Evolution Theory What do you want me to say? The other two thirds also believe the sun moves across the sky in a chariot driven by Jerry Falwell.
  ¶ 11/22/2004 07:40:00 PM 0 comments

  MSNBC - Transcript for Nov. 21 I picked this up at WSJ/James Taranto's Best of the Web. I could virtually make a career of just shooting down the stupid stuff this guy writes.

Russer tries his usual thing on the CIA's "Anonymous" and is repeatedly corrected. Taranto seems to think that pragmatic thinking about our relationship with Israel is wacky. No it's just that it is a big-ass sacred cow.
  ¶ 11/22/2004 06:21:00 PM 0 comments

  Editorial Soliloquy In the past month I've made a couple of statements that, I still feel, were basically true but contemporaneous events cast them in a doubtful light.

In a 10/31/04 post I stated that exit polls were the most accurate polls. Boy, did that turn out wrong this time. The stipulation is that the methodology must be sound.

In a 11/15/04 post on Fallujah I stated that the Marines had employed some more "enlightened" approaches in dealing with the situation in Iraq. As enlightened as you can get in the midst of a brutal war, anyway. Well, that notion got shot in the head. Up to that point, the Marines had deployed some very practical, pragmatic means of dealing with civilians in Iraq.

I've sent a link for the Jarvis pulls an Okrent post to a number of bloggers (and Okrent) after Jarvis didn't reply (or act). As I stated, it should now be worthy of comment from the bloggers.
  ¶ 11/21/2004 02:20:00 AM 0 comments

  Ed Driscoll.com: The Man, In Full Wolfe the same, get to know Rightgod:
I think I got to this one via Instaglenn. He uses the term "urban prole" as he writes that "Blue Staters" are insular: channeling Tom Wolfe as he writes about a Wolfe appearance.

The neoidiots have been having great fun with all the buzz Wolfe is getting (working) for his new book.
  ¶ 11/20/2004 02:55:00 PM 0 comments

  Guardian Unlimited- 'Dr Khan isn't taking calls today' If Shrub is serious about nukes, this guy should be in a prison hospital.
  ¶ 11/20/2004 10:38:00 AM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine..Jeff pulls an "Okrent" Jeff has been on target both with his defense of Howard Stern (though I'm not a Stern fan) and generally railing against censorship. I admire him for doing this. But in this post he kinda drops the ball; he gets venal and dilutes his intellectual integrity in typical blog fashion.

This is the setup: After an appearance on CNN arguing against censorship Jeff receives an e-mail that he described as evangelism from a church lady. Said lady tells him he is pathetic and without morals. With a "tsk, tsk" he narcs her out for using her work e-mail, Lilly.com, to send the message. Her message was shrill, stupid and a pretty good example of the contemptuous moral superiority that is the flip side to what we secularists feel for the evangelicals.

I'm not getting into a stringent consideration of misappropriation of company communications systems here. Just about everybody uses the phone or whatever for personal matters at some point. Within bounds, it is a pragmatic given. What Jeff did can only serve to stifle any conversation. Jeff obviously takes pride in the fact that it is a conversation between bloggers and their readers. Now, everyone that might want to engage with Jeff while at work will be running their desire through the filter "What happens if he doesn't like what I say?"

Someone takes him to task for outing her (so to speak) in the comments section and his reply is that they e-mailed a blogger and it is "fair game". I agree that there are circumstances when a company should be made aware of how an employee is using the systems. If they are spamming, threatening or such; this is fine. But to say that simply because you e-mailed a blogger all is fair is denying that any code of conduct can exist. I think quite a few in the blogging world would like to say that rules don't apply to us. Yes, we are making some new rules and this is good. But I think one of those rules should be that the conversation takes place without fear of this happening for a relatively minor infraction.

I won't say that Jeff owes this woman an apology, I find delicious irony in that kind of prig gettin' it for breaking the rules. But I think Jeff should explain to the community of his readers that he will not do this in the future unless it is absolutely necessary.

Jeff also quotes/links to Instaglenn's ("If you've got a modem, he's got an obfuscation")comments on his appearance. Instaweenie panders to his perceived audience(s) with remarks that, well, would probably take a lawyer to sort out the meaning:

"I saw the commercial for the first time in that broadcast, and I have to say that it was an absolute disgrace (obligatory concession to his conservative readers), and that it should not have been allowed to air. It didn't show nearly enough of Nicolette Sheridan to justify all the hoopla , and that's a tragedy because, despite her perhaps overdone plastic surgery, she's still hot (earns his props as a red blooded libertarian)."

Follow the link, as Jeff says, to find this:

"(The Sheridan spot, however, really did seem quite tame and I don't understand the fuss.)"

Where, exactly, does Instaweenie stand? And why would Jeff link to such a conflicted post?

Update: Duh, it struck me that this was on par with Okrent revealing an e-mail address. Let's see how the bloggers respond to one of their own doing this.
  ¶ 11/19/2004 10:03:00 PM 0 comments

  skimble- Morality turned upside down

"Farewell, morality. When there is more public
outrage over a soldier photographed smoking a cigarette than there is over a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi in the head (in a mosque, no
less), you know that morality has left American soil, flying away on the
Orwellian wings of corporate media and their master manipulators. "

This is a pretty good example of why I think some of the critics of progressive politics are on target. There has been plenty of negative play given to the shooting in the media but it hasn't quite generated the letters (active expression by the people) that the cigarette did. Go figure.

  ¶ 11/18/2004 10:06:00 PM 0 comments

  LILEKS (James) :: The Blather His writing style is engaging, if somewhat wordy. His thinking leaves even more to be desired.

"Oh: one more thing. The Administration is clearing the decks for the secondterm. Out with the old & tired,, in with new ideas, etc. How’s about themainstream media does the same? Burn up half the deadwood, ease the ossifiedelements off the stage, bring in new writers and editors and announcers andproducers. If they can do it at State, they could do it at CBS."

The same old tired, righty talking points obscuring the simple facts- there certainly is no fresh breeze blowin' over at State. It is the entrenchment of worn-out, ineffectual dogmatism. What new ideas? Certainly not honesty in government.

  ¶ 11/18/2004 09:06:00 PM 0 comments

  RollingStone.com: Politics - The Aftermath

Tom Wolfe (I have considered a hero; here sayin' some goofy things)

I'm going out to Kennedy Airport to wave goodbye to all the journalists (Really, a bunch of lazy-ass journalists want to suddenly develop new beats/careers? I doubt it) I know. They're all leaving for London, and I think someone should go out there to see them off. They're taking this very hard. These are people who are as overcome as if one of their parents had just died.

I was surprised by the outcome of the election.(So were a lot of journalists. Maybe that's why they're taking it so hard) I talked to so many Republicans who said, "Loyalty's loyalty, but too many things have gone wrong." A good example is James Webb, a man who I respect enormously, one of the most decorated Marines in Vietnam and, like most military officers, a Republican. Here's a guy who knows the military backward and forward, and he considers the Iraq adventure one of the greatest strategic bungles of all time. He just couldn't vote for Bush, even though his opinion of Kerry could not be lower.

If you look at the voting map, it's almost identical to 2000. I interpret that to mean that the war was not decisive, and the campaigns were not decisive. I think it was a cultural election (Eh, maybe, but I think you are underestimating Republican marketing skills) -- if by cultural we mean ingrained values of different groups of people. I call it "championism." It's when you vote for convictions that represent your people, instead of what's good for you financially or in terms of security. (Or that make sense? I think what you might have seen were journalists reacting to a very non-rational response to their belated attempts to portray the realities of the war- their job.) All of us do it (To varying degrees, perhaps, but this is not a good time to be irrational) . Take the Scots-Irish (pimps friend's book), the largest unrecognized ethnic group in America. They spread from the Appalachians into the Midwest, and they voted heavily Republican, even though they are by no means wealthy people. To them, gun control is not about guns -- it's an attack on them and their way of life. They're very independent and very stubborn, and they're damn well going to have their guns.

I'm not immune to those feelings of championism either. Right after 9/11, when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson said that the attacks were punishment for the decadence of the American people, I found myself getting defensive on their behalf: "Robertson went to the same college that I did, and Falwell is from Lynchburg, Virginia. What they said was ludicrous, but these are my people!" You couldn't defend anything they said, but because of championism, I didn't want to see my people abused (Mr. Wolfe, being called to task for saying really goofy things is not abuse).

Not that many people in America who are registered to vote want to be lectured to by Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi and P. Diddy. If you're living in southern Ohio, and you're against gay marriage because you're religious, these guys make you feel like you're being treating like an idiot . . . worse, like a primitive. Bush, on the other hand, is very good at feeding the impression that "I'm one of you. I can hunker down with you anywhere you want." He's acquired a kind of rural accent. But Kerry is incapable of doing that (you mean perpetrating a false impression). Simply as a public speaker, he badly needed a change-of-pace voice, as do all speakers. Even Muhammad Ali, who was a very funny guy, was not funny for fifteen minutes in a row, because he had no change of pace, and the same is true of Kerry.

I've never seen an election taken so personally by people -- not even Nixon vs. Kennedy. But this country is so centrist, we're not really going to go wrong whoever's elected. Our government is like a train on a track: People yell at it from the left, and they yell at from the right, but the train goes right down the middle where the tracks are.

I guess ol' Tom is losing his edge. This is not a middle course that we are upon.

  ¶ 11/18/2004 08:31:00 PM 0 comments

  law.com - open malpractice awards This link concerns a New Jersey web site that posts doctors' malpractice awards. It is said to be having a "chilling" effect on settlements.

Sounds good to me. Doctors are becoming disinclined to make settlements since they will be posted and instead are fighting them in court. It is the nature of the imperfect system that a perhaps deserving party may not get a settlement but it will also tend to lessen the shakedown leveraged by the costs of a legal battle. And it has the added benefit of giving patients the ability to make informed choices in their selection of a physician.



  ¶ 11/17/2004 04:43:00 PM 0 comments

  Industrial (strength) Waste I'm reluctant to give this a link at all but it was the latest, easiest to grab. This photo, of what the neoidiots are claiming is Cheney packing big meat, has been hittin' the indices for a few days. This comes after Mary Cheney, Dick's lesbian daughter, has been in the news for a few days.

Now I can't say for sure if talking points are passed down to the chattering masses or this is just the outcome of so many neoidiots fretting over the perceived manliness of the real power behind the Bush. I can just imagine, "A lesbo daughter and his wife writing about them lesbionic fantasies, this ain't the Dick we love" (typical neo-nazi suppressed homo-erotic allusion intended).

Take a good look at the lines in Dick's trousers. It is a rectangular shape. After what came out of the debates about what was under Shrub's coat, I can venture a pretty good guess about what it is. It is the crotch patch from body armor that he is wearing.

Big man, no. Scared little man, yes.
  ¶ 11/15/2004 09:13:00 PM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine-Jeff Scores! (it right) Jeff does a little bit of the seldom seen original reporting in blogs and comes up with a truly insightful look at the "moral majority". The final reduction to that number of 3 may be a little iffy but my gut feeling is that his number is a lot closer to the reality than the FCC's tally of complaints. A million dollar plus fine was levied against Fox (delicious irony) on the basis of an astroturf campaign.

A fine example of Jeff being a voice for moderation.


  ¶ 11/15/2004 08:28:00 PM 0 comments

  Powell Quits, Rice to Be New Secretary of State I don't care what they say over at Boondocks, I think I could make Condi a happy woman. She'd be singing all day long.

We'd both be a whole lot happier than we are going to be with her over at the State Department. The sad fact is that Powell was not able to fulfill his potential (and hoped for) duty as a voice of reason in the administration. This is just part of a larger plan of consolidating the administration's power.

At the same time, there is a purge going on at the CIA for their failures. Their main failure was to not get on board with the cooked intelligence of Wolfowitz and Perle.

This means that we will be effectively blinded in our overseas view by narrow, partisan policy concerns. This is very much not good.

  ¶ 11/15/2004 08:19:00 PM 0 comments

  David Domke: Bush, God and the Election Worth a read.
  ¶ 11/15/2004 07:59:00 PM 0 comments

  Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | The final battle War is hell and terrible things most be done, get over it. No mistake about it, Fallujah had to be neutralized as a base of action for the opposition. But immediately after those points are given, our actions there fall far short of the multiple requirements of fighting this war.

Combat commanders are very pragmatic people. They are also very proud of the people that serve under them. They don't want to see the brave work of their soldiers and Marines in any way diminished or denigrated. It should also be pointed out that the Marines in Iraq have employed some of the more enlightened approaches to dealing with the complexities that are faced.

However, it was announced early in the second Fallujah campaign that a primary objective was the principal hospital in that area. It had been identified as a source of "inflated" civilian casualties from the first battles in Fallujah. I assert that this directive came from above the field commanders and that it was wrong.

Combat commanders have very little concern about how the battle is being spun while it is going on. When they have to assign a limited amount of resources to a tactical situation, their immediate concern is for the mission and their men. I believe that only the pride felt for brave warriors would allow a target with so little tactical weight to be assigned such a high priority. They let their feelings get the best of them and cloud sound judgment.

The result was a most inhumane situation for civilian residents of the city. That will ultimately result in a far tougher tactical situation.
  ¶ 11/15/2004 07:53:00 PM 0 comments

  New York Post Online Edition: Blair finds God That right there is reason enough to doubt the existence of God.
  ¶ 11/15/2004 07:38:00 PM 0 comments

  Network for Good : Steve Aftergood and FAS Steve is doing good things and bringing light on to subjects that our government preferred we not see. If you can, please give.
  ¶ 11/14/2004 05:05:00 PM 0 comments

  The religious right's new kingmaker- Slate via TPM I agree with Crowley that the values issue was misjudged but I don't think there is any question that the Republicans most acknowledge and repay the debt owed to religious conservatives. I was stating that as one of my biggest fears prior to the election. Crowley's assertion that doing so would turn off the moderates doesn't hold water. Shrub's gain amongst the moderate block was not based on a appeal to their moderation but rather to somewhat more widely held, unrefined apprehensions.
  ¶ 11/14/2004 01:52:00 PM 0 comments

  CJR November/December 2004: Blinded by Science This article is an interesting take on so-called "balanced" journalistic writing and also, be it unintended, provides a basis for the Halperin, of ABC, memo that created such a stir.

The CJR piece deals with two issues that both have a somewhat religious basis. There is something afoot here and I'm not quite ready to assign the root of the problem to being religious or political.
  ¶ 11/14/2004 01:26:00 PM 0 comments

  law.com - Emboldened by Election, Falwell Eyes the Supreme Court
The Associated Press

Seeking to ride the momentum from an election where moral values resonated with
voters, the Rev. Jerry Falwell announced Tuesday he has formed a new coalition
to guide an "evangelical revolution." He said the group will lobby for
anti-abortion conservatives to fill openings on the U.S. Supreme Court and lower
courts, a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and the election
of another "George Bush-type" conservative in 2008.

I view this from the context of thinking that religion should play a very limited role in politics. In so much as an individual's values may be derived from their religious convictions, that is their personal choice. But when religious organizations (Falwell's standing is because of his "church") start to push a political agenda, that is an entirely separate matter.



  ¶ 11/14/2004 01:10:00 PM 0 comments

  Reuters News Article I've read at least one of the interviews Vanunu gave that's gotten him arrested this time. Anyone who has a genuine interest in nuclear nonproliferation understands this fellow performed a valuable service.

I have a proposal: Let's trade Jonathan Pollard for Vanunu. If we are to appear as fair on this issue, we must be so. No excuses.

Next, we can hunt down Khan, the one man nuclear supermarket, and give him what he deserves. Oops, that might cheese-off the latest dictator we've taken under our wing.  ¶ 11/13/2004 03:43:00 AM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine(and the Blog Bubble) As I've stated before, I really want to like Jeff's blog. I very often learn something from it and I consider him a prominent voice for moderation in the political/cultural scene. I'm not sucking-up; I visit and disagree often. I saw this post the other day and wanted to comment but it got lost in the shuffle. And this is the nicest way I can think of to say something snarky.

Only someone that worked for TVGuide would think that "...the most revolutionary invention in media was not the Gutenberg press but the remote control."


  ¶ 11/11/2004 11:21:00 PM 0 comments

  Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall I'm definitely with Josh on this one, the similarities between the mullahs and our radical clerics are striking. Yes, there is a kind of loose moral equivalence; Car Bombers, meet the Clinic Bombers.

And this also relates to the earlier post on Hitchen's piece about Shrub being the secular standard bearer. There are two forces at play here that are, from my humanist point of view, very much the same.


  ¶ 11/11/2004 08:51:00 PM 0 comments

  AMERICAblog: Gay man to head RNC? I meant that. I had been hearing the rumors that a highly placed individual in Shrub's hedge was gay. I had always figured it was Ari: only a very closeted man could lie like that. Now the rumor mill is fingering (heh, heh) Ken Mehlman. This blog rated high in one of the indices with that rumor.

I find the element of hypocrisy in this just as delicious as any of the rest. There is very much an element to the preachings of Messrs. Cheney and Keyes that people who practice Republican Values (TM) don't have these kinds of things in their lives. That didn't quite work out the way they planned (I've said it before, there is some kind of weird Freudian mojo going on in the Cheney household and it would be an excellent subject for a book).

But I think the progressive community should go lightly on this matter. Don't get me wrong, I think what we need now is some down and dirty fighting in order to get back in the swing. I think it is extremely important that we convey to the electorate just how inhumane some of these purported values are. It's just that there are quite a few dangers in this particular course of action.

  ¶ 11/11/2004 01:31:00 PM 0 comments

  Bush's Secularist Triumph - The left apologizes for religious fanatics. The president fights them. By Christopher�Hitchens Hitchens is so wrong on this one. They are fighting for the glory of their god and not for a triumph of humanist ideas.
  ¶ 11/10/2004 09:21:00 PM 0 comments

  beliefnet: God intervened to re-elect President Bush; George W. Bush and evangelicals; divine intervention in elections So, as I understand this, God is on the side of Bush and not some heathen Papist. Okay. The fundamentalists will be looking to collect on a political debt in their drive for dominion.
  ¶ 11/10/2004 05:17:00 PM 0 comments

  Ashcroft beats feet YIPPEEEE!

Attorney General John Ashcroft will leave the Bush cabinet. Now if we could only get the rest of them to resign for the good of the country.
  ¶ 11/09/2004 07:53:00 PM 0 comments

  Poynter Online - Forums This posting to the Poynter Forums concerns the questions over the election results and what the press should do about them. There are some wild accusations floating out there concerning the legitimacy of the election results. So far the sources of these claims seem to be somewhat short on hard evidence that can't be readily explained. The charges do continue to mount all the same and the Republicans are worthy of suspicion. And I'm also sure that a great deal of these accusations flow from sour grapes and an apparently contagious cognitive dissonance.

I don't know of any news operation capable of seriously handling this issue that would be willing to pick it up. Olbemann over at MSNBC is writing about it at the same time that the network appears to be trying to slide to the right of Fox. I'm not altogether sure what that holds in store. The Democrats aren't willing to touch it after being tarred with the obstructionist brush from the last election.

I don't think it would be wise for anyone to sit back and hope these issues fade away. A great many new voters were brought into the process in this election and they should not be left with a lingering doubt of the usefulness of their efforts. The only way to deal with this matter is to flip it from an accusatory one to an instructive one.
  ¶ 11/09/2004 04:47:00 PM 0 comments

  Philadelphia Inquirer 11/07/2004 Next time, it won't be so pretty

The re-education is ongoing and somewhat more subtle.  ¶ 11/09/2004 04:45:00 PM 0 comments

  Viva La Revolucion

Leon Trotsky held action must aim “to increase the power of humanity over nature and to abolish the power of one person over another”...

Sunday was the anniversary of the Bolshevik uprising. They were later done in by Lenin's followers. And from the manner of Trotsky's murder came the phrase, "Which end of the icepick are you?"

Politics is tough.  ¶ 11/09/2004 02:14:00 AM 0 comments

  The liberal elite hasn't got a clue- Wolfe, Part II

The Guardian Unlimited Article

When I started writing about this article I had no idea how much it would bear on the election. But as I stated earlier, the article points to some ironic twists. It would seem that the span of Wolfe's career as an author mirrors our cultural experience here in the U. S.; from the "Electric Kool Aid Acid Test" to his current thesis that liberals don't understand the religious nature of the majority of Americans, it seems we get that George Carlin joke about going from messed up on drugs to being messed up on the Lord.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have a great love of traditional gospel music. I don't have anything against religion; well, maybe the organized part. Anything more organized than a choir, that's the part that always seems to get into all the trouble. It kinda seems to go against the personal nature of one's relationship with the sublime. Organizing religion also seems to have the unfortunate effect of giving a place for sermonists and demagogues to work their ugly magic. Let's take a quote from the article to use as an example.

"...is about not wanting to be led by... pretensions. It is about not wanting to be led by people who are forever trying to force their twisted sense of morality onto us, which is a non-morality. That is constantly done, and there is real resentment."

That's Wolfe talking about the liberal elite. But what struck me about the passage was that all you have to do is tack on the Palestinian issue on the end of it and it is pure Saudi Wahabbe fundamentalist. And I don't think that's the fire we need to fight the other fire.

I was getting ready to digress there for a second but I'll fight the urge. The point here is that any individual's moral and spiritual life is more dependent on personal action than anything that anyone else does. Dominion is usually the concern of the demagogues and not the members of the flock.

Back to the article. To make it short, the article appears to have editing problems. There are unresolved conflicts between statements that Wolfe makes during the course of the interview. The writer, Vulliamy, seems to overreach in his attempt to add topical currency. I also get the sense that Wolfe was very aware of the Guardian's politics. Wolfe is a bit of a whore here, but he is still a hero. My advice; follow the link to the article and read it(it's not that long). But keep what I've said here in mind.

I'll be posting more on this "values" issue. And one last thing. There appears to be three whole religions in this world that have yet to learn that the road to Jerusalem has never been traveled well by an army.

  ¶ 11/06/2004 09:17:00 PM 0 comments

  Exit Polls I'm not ready to climb aboard the conspiracy train and say that the elections were rigged because exit polls didn't match up with the outcome. The Repug's would do that kinda thing with Venezuela. But here in the reality based community, that's one of those conspiracy theories that would require far too many people keeping their mouths shut than is likely to happen.

But given that the exit polls were so wrong on the outcome, why is the "values" result being given so much credence?
  ¶ 11/06/2004 11:51:00 AM 0 comments

  Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits Ouch. I guess it is all for naught as one of our own slams the blogger community.

Update Oh yeah, gonna see if we can't do something about political blogs having no weight.  ¶ 11/04/2004 08:34:00 PM 0 comments

  Poynter Online - The Moral Values Question

"There's a seeker born every minute"
I'll be posting on this subject more extensively later. The judgement on the value of this issue is being discussed on the basis of exit polls. I think this matter isn't getting the treatment it deserves.
  ¶ 11/04/2004 04:04:00 PM 0 comments

  BuzzMachine Pledge We don't need no stinkin' pledge, so to speak. I'm not taking one. This effort by Jeff strikes me as one more example of his cuttin' edge orthodoxy. It is delusional statesmanship. I need no other (though they abound) justification for my stance than the example of unstatesman-like behavior provided by the Rovian tactic of voter suppression organized along racial lines. These are not nice people. I'm sorry; in anyway overlooking, condoning, sanctioning or rationalizing this tactic points to a fundamental flaw.

With a few notable exceptions such as the execution of organizational efforts at GOTV of your base; the hardball, hard work of politics is played between election days.

No, I pledge to fight. The stakes are far too high to give up now. We know exactly the nature of the beast we fight here. I can think of no reason to sugarcoat it.


  ¶ 11/03/2004 10:39:00 PM 0 comments

  Guardian Unlimited/The liberal elite hasn't got a clue So,now get this: I've gotten to a Guardian Unlimited article via Instatoady. There's hope, yet. And that's the point of this post, that is, coming full circle.

Guardian(For the Colonies) is interviewing, my hero, Tom Wolfe (By the way, P. J. O'Rourke, you couldn't carry his jock-strap, never mind his sweeping, intelligent view). Just about the time I was reading his "New Journalism" I was entering j-school and was coming of age to vote in my first presidential election. To date myself; the first and only time I've voted, it was for John Anderson. I've registered to vote in this election.

Instatoady tags the link by saying that Wolf says "...his own liberal elite doesn't have a clue". Directly contradicting this in the article (of course), Wolf says," There is something in me that particularly wants it registered that I am not one of them". When I read "Radical Chic", those tales of the vainglorious, I recognized those people from my own life. Only after I had wondered in the political wilderness for some time was I able to resolve the troubling aspects of these feelings (for people that I had so much in common with).

Wolfe, for a long time now, has been accepted by and been amongst those that he felt himself so estranged from. That's also more or less the tack of the Guardian's writer, Ed Vulliamy; the differences for Wolfe and in our country. There appears to be a kind of dance going on between Wolfe and Vulliamy in the course of the interview as each strives to tie in topical currency and a new book. As in one of Wolfe's novels, there are ironic twists that rise to the level of cosmic comedy.

I came to see much of what Wolfe wrote about the liberal elite to be true. I've also seen real sweat and blood for progressive causes. For better as for worse, the things that Wolfe and the effete each represented have come to affect us. These blogs are directly drawn from the principles of the "new"(Take that Jeff Jarvis)journalism. So is much of the opinionated, "take my word, the unidentified source said it" journalism that is soiling the craft. As for the effete, if you want a fresh perspective on Wolfe's "Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers", think of that picture of the Republican honcho's outside the Florida elections board for the "preppie protest".

TO BE CONTINUED

  ¶ 11/01/2004 09:30:00 PM 0 comments