He's Engaged

Washington Post: If It's Not About Shut-Ins, the President Is Otherwise Engaged. "The administration has found it useful to provide such reminders, at regular intervals, that the president is paying attention to the issues of the day. International environmental concerns? 'The president has already been very engaged in these issues and plans to be engaged,' Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs, said in August. The India-Pakistan standoff? 'The president is fully engaged,' White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said in June. The review of military resources? 'The president has been engaged,' Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld attested last year. The China spy plane crisis? 'He has been very engaged,' said a senior Bush aide, briefing reporters. This president, it would seem, has been engaged more often than Elizabeth Taylor."

Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Lying Minds

Daniel Gross: Bush's Bushwa. "President Bush opened his final radio address of the year this way: 'In 2002, our economy was still recovering from the attacks of September the 11th, 2001, and it was pulling out of a recession that began before I took office.' Bush concluded 2002 with the same dishonesty that defined his economic policy throughout the year — a mendacity that ranged from denying the tax cut had anything to do with the re-emergence of the deficit to arguing that the terrorism insurance bill would create 300,000 construction jobs."

Happy Anniversary

Re-date.com is a brilliant idea. I have to admit that I never could have done anything like this, not only because I didn't think of it, but also because for me, the most painful programming task is date calculation. But that won't stop me from enjoying the product of someone else's labor, and it shouldn't stop you from celebrating my next lesser anniversary: on 1/27/03 I will be 1.2 billion seconds and, consequently, 20 million minutes old. Party at my place! Oh yeah, and I have an actual birthday 10 days prior.

A Sound Warning

E.J. Dionne: It's Time To Do The Math. "Will 2003 be a 'here they go again' year? Will Democrats again back a fictional 'compromise' that will further deplete the Treasury? You can already see its outlines. Bush may agree to add the Democrats' idea of a payroll tax holiday to his other proposals and pronounce the package 'balanced.' If Democrats do this, they will be complicit in creating a fiscal crisis that will explode after Bush leaves office — at just the time when the baby boomers are retiring and placing heavy demands on government."

This is tough love to be sure, but given the Democrats' track record of collaborating with a very bad Bush economic plan, it's time for Democrats to stand up and demand that federal budget and tax policy actually make a modicum of sense.

Calling Our Bluff

Josh Marshall gets it just about right when he says: "Tough talk sounds great until your opponent calls your bluff and everybody sees there's nothing behind the trash talk. Then you look foolish. That's where we are right now with North Korea. As [Chris] Nelson says, no doubt the NKs are the bad guys. And this is an extremely complex problem with no easy solutions. But the Bush administration has pursued a keystone cops policy on the Korean Peninsula for two years now, mixing think-tank braggadocio with feckless inconstancy. Now we're all going to pay the price."

Then There Were Three

New York Times: Freshman Senator Sees the Presidency as His Next Office. Whatever else, Edwards has the free media thing down. He announces that he will announce his candidacy real soon now and gets a nice profile piece in the Times. And he'll get another round of press when he actually does announce.

VNS RIP?

New York Times: Voter News Service Is in Danger of Dissolution. The 2002 election clearly demonstated that VNS has some serious technical problems, but let's not forget that in 2000 VNS got Florida right the first time — and only bad ballots and a biased Supreme Court combined to cost Gore the presidency.

Our Man in Baghdad

Washington Post: U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup. "The story of America's involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait — which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors — is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy."

Of course, this isn't really news, but this article is important for at least three reasons:

1. It's on the front page of the Washington Post.
2. It highlights the US role in helping Iraq acquire weapons of mass destruction.
3. It contains a nice proof that Rumsfeld is a big fat liar.

Was cooperating with Iraq in the 1980s a good idea? Maybe. Was helping Iraq acquire chemical and biological weapons a good idea? I don't see how you can possible argue it was, now or then.

"Playing the Race Card"

Josh Marshall makes a point that is so obviously true,that I'm surprised I haven't seen this point made over and over again during the last few weeks. Referring to the conservative argument that the Democratic Party is addicted to "playing the race card" (which is meant to take some of the attention away of all those "Southern Strategy" stories): "…the premise that there is a basic equality between appeals to racism and charges of racism. It's a equation which is as morally vacant as it is logically flawed.". Read his whole post.

More Double Trouble

Mary McGrory has more to say on the Korean non-crisis crisis, and emphasizes an interesting dichotomy in Bush's approach to Saddam and Kim: the former is so evil that only bombing the crap out of Baghdad will solve the problem; the latter is so evil that only not talking to him will solve the problem. Huh?

Double Standard

Washington Post: For Wary White House, A Conflict, Not a Crisis. "In the case of Baghdad, the United States is preparing to go to war with a country that has just readmitted a hundred or so United Nations weapons inspectors. In the case of Pyongyang, the White House has said it has no intention of resorting to the military option, even though Pyongyang has just ordered the last three U.N. inspectors to leave."

Two quick questions: 1) Why is Bush deemed "wary", which is a positive description in this context, instead of "clueless", which seems to be a more accurate characterization? 2) Has Bush's crack team of psychoanalysists judged that Kim is not a serious threat due to the fact that Korea's mid-range missle is named the "No Dong"?

Back Home

Feeling oh-so-smart, I bypassed I-95 and instead came back via I-77/I-81/I-66, adding about 45 miles to my trip, but figuring I would miss all the holiday traffic and actually save some time. And I probably would have, except for the accident on I-77 that kept me stationary for about an hour. Best laid plans and all, I guess.

Say You're Sorry. "OK, You're Sorry."

Bill Keller: Who's Sorry Now?. A very interesting piece about how we Americans have mastered the art of the non-apology apology. Perhaps, Keller says, we need to move past the scripted mea culpa and instead focus on the "making up for it" part. And perhaps Frist has something to make up for — be sure to read this to the end.

Digging a Deeper Hole

Steven Mufson: Bush and North Korea: Where's the Big Stick?. "But the administration has not appeared to have any strategy at all for exacting that price [for North Korea's violation of the Agreed Framework]. It did not make demands, as it has with Iraq. It did not make any proposals, declaring that it would not 'negotiate' until North Korea gave up all its nuclear weapons programs. Meanwhile, Pyongyang is moving ahead. A U.S. official was quoted in The Post last week as saying that the administration is playing hardball now. One observer quipped that so far it was doing nothing but taking strikes."

The asymmetry between the Bush administration's reaction to Iraq, which doesn't pose an immediate threat to the US, and North Korea, which is doing all it can to pose an immediate threat to the US, is something I just don't understand. The cynic in me wants to say, "it's all about the oil", but that seems like such a moronic rationale for letting the Korean situation start to spin out of control that even I have a hard time believing that's what Bush is thinking. But what other answer is there?

Reform that Isn't

New York Times: More Schools Rely on Tests, but Study Raises Doubts. "Rigorous testing that decides whether students graduate, teachers win bonuses and schools are shuttered, an approach already in place in more than half the nation, does little to improve achievement and may actually worsen academic performance and dropout rates, according to the largest study ever on the issue."

Pushing standardized tests has always been the first choice of those who want to have their say on education, but who lack any real insight into what is wrong with the current system, and what needs to be done to fix it. Talking about testing and accountability might sound good during the campaign, but it shouldn't be any surprise that this kind of "reform" is counterproductive.

I just noticed that the account creation stuff was broken, and probably has been since Dec 3. It's fixed now, so if you have always wanted to create an account and log in but have been frustrated by bad technology, now's the time.

Lucien Bebchuk: Settling for Less. Regarding deal struck with Wall Street investment firms for misleading consumers: "It might be more accurate to regard the settlement, announced by federal, state and industry regulators, as a slap on the wrist. By any standard measure — its punitive value, its deterrence effect or the extent to which it will bring about structural change on Wall Street — the settlement is rather modest." We could and should have done more here.

Paul Krugman: Lumps of Coal. Reading this summary of the current economic situation, I'm not optimistic that this will all be over soon.

Black and White, or Grey?

Salman Rushdie: Getting Into Gang War. Is the upcoming war with Iraq more like The Two Towers, a battle between pure good and pure evil, or is it more like Gangs of New York, an amoral struggle for "bare-knuckle power"? Rushdie chooses the latter comparison: "In short, we may be in for a gang war on a gigantic scale, and yet, as in Scorsese's movie, that gang war, brutal, cynical, atavistic — a war in which one man's hero is another's villain — may paradoxically succeed in bringing a more modern world into being." Of course, it might succeed in doing exactly the opposite.

Making the World Safe for Torture

Washington Post: U.S. Decries Abuse but Defends Interrogations. Ever wondered what happens to suspected terrorists captured by the US? So have I, and now we know — they are tortured. The prisoners are housed abroad, because what we do to them would be illegal here in the States. And if our "stress and duress" tactics don't work — tactics that our own State Department has said in the past violates human rights — then we hand them off to other intelligence services with a willingness to use even more brutal methods. As one US intelligence officer remarks: "We don't kick the shit out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the shit out of them." Of course, we are told that everything has changed after September 11th. Apparently, that includes the need to practice what you preach.

With Pictures!

Jakob Nielsen: Top Ten Web-Design Mistakes of 2002. While half seem to pertain mostly to e-commerce sites, the other half are good for all seasons.

Websites and Campaigning

Matthew Hindman writes on a topic close to my heart: How the Web Will Change Campaigns. His basic thesis: "…the ability to reach a niche audience to get political contributions inexpensively becomes more important than ever. So starting in 2004, the Internet may well live up to its hype — at least when it comes to campaign finance." I think Hindman is probably right that 2004 will be the year when good websites becomes revenue sources for many campaigns. But to really understand what the web can and should mean to campaigns, we need to dig a little deeper.

For example, just putting up an online contribution page won't raise much money. You need to drive people to the page, which requires a motivating message. So what's the best message to use? If you think of the web as a mass medium, you'll probably agree with Hindman and go with a more aggressive message to appeal to your base. But if you forget about the mass part of the medium, then another answer appears: you talk to each voter individually, about the issues that matter to them most.

Mass media is all about talking to groups, but with the web, a campaign is able to talk to different people differently — as individuals — in ways limited only by what is known about them. Some of this knowledge will come from who does what on your website (what they read and what actions they perform); some will come from offline sources (first or second-hand knowledge of inidividuals, membership in groups, etc.); and some will come from appends to existing databases.

A website that is mostly a static collection of press releases and photos from the trail isn't any more important than the pencil sharpener Hindman mentions. If, as Hindman suggests, a website adds a contribution page and some harder rhetoric for the base, it will be more effective, but will still be limited by the attempt to think of it as a mass medium, like television or print. But a website that is part of a larger, unified, and database-driven voter contact strategy that is able to deliver targetted messaging on an individual level is indispensible and is going to change the way campaigns are waged.

Washington Post: A Last Look Back at the Midterm Election Year. The top 10 political winners and losers in 2002. Here's hoping this list looks a lot different in 2004.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I don't know what it is, but every time I make the trip south to see family, something always manages to go wrong. In the past, I've been gotten caught in terrible holiday traffic, driven thru ice storms, and even had what easily could have been a fatal accident on I-95. This year, the problem was directions, or rather, Yahoo Maps inability to give me directions that worked. Last night, I spent well over an hour driving all over the Charlotte, NC area in the dark and rain, trying first to get to my hotel, and then from my hotel to my sister's in-law's house for Christmas dinner. The country ham was as good as ever, and I got an escort most of the way back to the hotel, so the day wasn't a complete disaster, but it was close.

Today was better — breakfast and opening presents at my sister's house, just a few easy miles from the hotel. A few goodies for me, but the focus was definitely on my nephew Jack, who was in full-bore Santa mode. There were a few more gifts than usual this year, for the new arrivals Sam and Max. The boys got some good gifts, but seemed at least as interested playing with the wrapping paper than with the presents, some of which are definitely a little too advanced for them now.

Now I'm bunked in Columbia, SC for the next few days with my dad. I'll probably be heading back to DC this weekend. But wherever you happen to be — Merry Christmas!

On the Road Again

I'm travelling to North Carolina to be with my family for the holidays, so postings should be light for the next few days. So get off the computer and go have some fun!

News.com: Microsoft ordered to carry Java. Said Judge Motz: "I find it an absolute certainty that unless a preliminary injunction is entered, Sun will have lost forever its right to compete, and the opportunity to prevail, in a market undistorted by its competitor's antitrust violations."

The More Things Change…

The GOP is preparing to give Sen. Frist an early Christmas present by electing him today as Majority Leader. You would think that Republicans would like to capitilze on the news and push the "new face = new senstivity" equation to help with their minority outreach, but a lot of folks didn't get the talking points, according to this story in the New York Times.

It's really a remarkable confluence of "I just don't get it" statements. First there is Senator Lugar who, ignoring the last two weeks, believes the GOP's problem isn't the message, just the messenger. Since Bill Frist will be a better messenger than Trent Lott… problem solved. Then, as if to give Frist plenty of messenger work right off the bat, we have several Senators talking about getting Charles Pickering back up before the Judiciary Committee. They are apparently eager to give him a seat on the federal bench despite the rather prehistoric views about race and civil rights that got him nixed the first time around. And Trent Lott is back in form as well, abandoning any pretense of apology or responsibility by claiming that it was all a trap set by his unnamed political enemies because he is a conservative Christian from Mississippi. "I fell into their trap and so I have only myself to blame," he says, just after pointing an accusing finger the other way. But the quote of the week definitely comes from Senator Inhofe (R-OK), who in reference to Lott's bizzare BET interview, said: "He reacted improperly in that he was trying to be compassionate." I know that if Inhofe and the rest of the Senate Republicans have anything to do about it, that's a mistake that they won't make again.

Bob Herbert: The Other Trent Lotts. "Mr. Lott may be gone as Senate Republican leader, but the G.O.P. is still hot for the racist vote. It's a vile addiction that's guaranteed to bring a great deal of additional grief — for the party, and for the rest of us."

Washington Post: GOP Pins Its Future On Wooing Minorities. "'We have just about maxed out with white men,' a key Republican strategist said. 'When you look into the future, all you see is smaller numbers and more and more Hispanics.'" It's hard to see how Republicans will be able to reconcile the ultraconservative issues needed to keep the white male vote with a much more diverse set of issues they will need to attract minorities, especially when some or the former conflict with some of the latter.

News.com: Pop-ups add new twist. The "twist" is coding the ad so that a mouseover zooms you off to the ad sponsor's page, which of course makes it very unlikely you will ever be able to close the popup window without going somewhere you don't want to go. Says the ad agency: "There's an enormous segment of the population that are appreciating these ads." Yeah, right. Which is why the company limits the number of ads it delivers per day to each user: "We try and minimize the annoyance for people." I used to think that Mozilla ability to block popups was just cool; now it appears to be essential.

The Daily Howler has put together a good four-part series on the press's "War against Gore" during the 2000 campaign. Howler writer Bob Somerby's prose can get a bit repetitive, but this is worth reading from start to finish. You can't walk away thinking that Gore got an even-close-to-fair shake by the media.

At the Mall

I actually had a good time Christmas shopping today, probably because I went to the Mall. No, not a big indoor complex of stores, but the National Mall. I bought a few gifts at some of the Smithsonian gift shops, took a few pictures just like a tourist, and just enjoyed the time out. Tomorrow I probably do have to head back to the other kind of mall, but today was a good day.

Edward Ball: Ghosts of Carolina. "Centuries of American apartheid have inflicted so much damage on all of us that it will be a miracle if the nation recovers. When the floodgates of civil rights finally opened in the 1960's and 1970's, it seemed it would be uncomplicated to dismantle the equipment of race privilege and exploitation. But the psychological tentacles of caste reach deep into the mind. They will be much harder to remove than segregation laws, especially since every individual has to extract them alone. Besides, for people who enjoy the benefits of a divided society, it pays to take a page from the playbook of the South: Deny you have a race problem until you absolutely must admit it."

Thomas Wilner: A Year and Holding. "We can do everything we need to do to protect our national security without abandoning the rule of law. But if we fail to abide by it, we undermine our stature in the world community. We endanger our citizens and our troops abroad. And we compromise the very principles we are fighting so hard to defend."

Alter Ego

My last name is not a particularly common one, so I don't often hear about the doings of other Folley's in the news, much less other Eric Folley's. So imagine my surprise when I saw this. OK, I did take a ballroom dance class when I was in college, but I had no desire to take a leadership role. (Thanks for the link, Julie.)

Hagel's Southern Strategy

I looked up the transcript for last night's NewsHour interview of GOP Senators Hagel and Warner, just to make sure I heard last night's exchange correctly. Here's the relevant part:

MARGARET WARNER: But as many critics on the left point out, Senator Hagel, many of the southern Democrats became Republicans and what they say, and I'm thinking of former President Bill Clinton and others, is, not the Senate, but the Republicans have gained a majority, as he said, by playing the so-called southern strategy and by using sort of race-based issues and standing up for "states' rights" and against federal initiatives like affirmative action and civil rights. What do you say to that?

SEN. CHUCK HAGEL: Well, I don't think that's an accurate assessment or an accurate framing of the issue. The so-called southern strategy that then-President Nixon developed was not a strategy that was based on a racist dynamic. It was a more conservative dynamic of policy overall of governance; hence when Nixon ran in '68, he essentially said the Democrats were moving so far left. It didn't have anything to do with racism. It was the issue of governance. In 1972, the Democrats came up with George McGovern- as their candidate. That was the basic philosophy.

Hagel's take is ignorant at best, and an outright lie intended to deceive at worst. The "Southern Strategy" was all about race, and it was instumental in helping the GOP win the 1968 presidential election and a lot of elections since. As South Carolina political reporter Lee Bandy said in his column last week: "Nixon's 'Southern Strategy,' drafted by former Thurmond administrative assistant Harry Dent, played on racial jealousies. It provided the final push in transforming the 'party of Lincoln' into a party favored by the great-grandsons of the old Confederacy. It helped the GOP win five of the past eight presidential elections, ushered in a strong two-party system in the once-solidly Democratic South. And, in 1994, helped the GOP end 40 years of Democratic rule of Congress." Bandy was even clearer on an appearance on CNN's Capital Gang on 12/7/02: "The Southern Republican Party was built on race. Richard Nixon's famous Southern strategy, which, by the way, was developed by Strom Thurmond and his top aide then, Harry Dent. And that was based solely on race."

The Republican Party is never going to gain any credibility on issues relating to race unless and until it faces head-on the fact that racist appeals to Southern whites formed the basis of the modern GOP's electoral success. But it seems that even in the immediate aftermath of the Lott affair, top Republicans still can't admit that truth.

Via TPM, an interesting article on the "colorful" past of Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL). The larger point to be made here, however, is to call the bluff of those "good" conservatives who insist that they are being unfairly tainted by the racism of "bad" conservatives like Lott. While I wait for the start of the Republican-led public outcry against Sessions, I'll keep in mind the words of author Sarah Wildman: "…if Noonan and friends are really 'tired of being embarrassed' by this kind of racial insensitivity, they can't just start yelling once the news hits the stands."

New York Times: Going Electronic, Denver Reveals Long-Term Surveillance. "Police officers have admitted in depositions that they made up rules for monitoring organizations, sometimes deciding to create files on people who merely spoke at rallies." The record is clear: every time the police are exempted from strict oversight, they will abuse their power.

Oh My God!

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) just said on NewsHour that Nixon's "Southern Strategy" wasn't about race. Instead, it was about "conservative values". This kind of myopia has to be intentional, and just says to me that while the GOP has tossed Lott overboard, his ideas are front-and-center in the Republican mainsteam.

Oh, and both Hagel and Warner (R-VA) just said that the White House had no role in Frist becoming Majority Leader. Another big lie. Jesus, do they think we're stupid?

All I Want for Christmas…

…is for someone to tell me, in 500 words or less, how to set up my Canon S300 inkjet to print from my linux laptop. Printing should be easy — it's an old and mature technology — but after an hour reading reams of docs on the net, I'm no closer to figuring it out. Drat.

Paul Krugman: Quo Vadis, Karl?. "It may be that the bad few weeks the administration has just had were the result of random events. But I think the public is finally waking up to the fact that the people in the White House know a lot about gaining power, but not much about what to do with it."

Lott Steps Down

CNN: Lott stepping down as majority leader. As expected. Lott will remain in the Senate, and Frist is running for Lott's old job.

E.J. Dionne: Thurmond's GOP. As Dionne points out, "states' rights" is more than just a code word for the defense of Jim Crow. It's a founding principle of the Goldwater-inspired GOP that justifies a wide range of discriminatory practices, and it's one that Republicans haven't fully unpacked and repudiated.

Bait and Switch at MSNBC

One of the top headlines on the front page of MSNBC right now reads, "Study backs Bush smallpox plan". Clicking on that link takes you to this story, headlined "Health workers wary of receiving smallpox shots". The story begins, "Many doctors and nurses nationwide are wary of President Bush's suggestion that they be vaccinated against smallpox, and some hospitals have rejected the proposal as too risky for their employees." The story does report that many health care workers are willing to be vaccinated, but nowhere is there mention of a "study" that "backs Bush". And a study would be helpful in this situation, as the American Nurses Association indicates: "We want people to be able to make an informed decision. I do not believe we have the answers we need to make that informed decision."

We all know a lot more people will read a headline than will actually read the whole story. And we all know that teasers don't always fully reflect the substance of a story. But in this case, the full story has absolutely nothing to do with the teaser headline, and instead makes a point directly at odds with the headline's tone. I'm not sure what's going on over at MSNBC, but I hope it's just carelessness rather than an attempt to deceive. Either way, though, MSNBC needs to get its act together — issues like this one are just too important for anything except rigorously accurate journalism.

Seth Gitell: Howard's end run. "A medical doctor by training, Dean is a straight talker who pushes a solidly progressive agenda: he supports universal health care and gay rights, and he opposes war with Iraq. But he's also pro-gun and anti-deficit-spending — just the sort of unexpected contradiction that Beltway pundits love." I'm not a fan of the gun position, but I am a fan of Dean. And I'll vote for him if I get the chance. (Via Political Wire)

Just in Time

Mark Pilgrim: What is RSS?. Right as I start trying to figure out this RSS mess, a nice summary appears, along with some sample code. Pilgrim's a Python guy, and I work in perl, but it's a start.

William Kristol asks an interesting question: "The hints and the feints and the background quotes are getting tiresome. Isn't Republican honor in danger of turning into dust? And, if the evasions continue until Jan. 6, won't the lusty exuberance of the president's remarkable Nov. 5 election triumph be reduced to ashes?" Kristol assumes what now seems most in need of proving — the existence of "Republican honor" when it comes to the issue to racism in America — but still, an interesting question.

Bob Herbert: Weirder and Weirder. A better title for this piece might be "Wronger and Wronger", at least when it comes to Sen. Conrad Burns, R-MT, an afficiando of the racist slur. But maybe Herbert is on the mark when it comes to Ward Connerly, the African American conservative who made his reputation by opposing affirmative action, who now appears to be working overtime to pick up Trent Lott's slack: "Supporting segregation need not be racist. One can believe in segregation and believe in equality of the races."

From Folley's Index: "Current number of African-American Republicans elected to federal office: 0."

Washington Post: Lott Says Bush Aides Undermine Bid to Stay. Trent's pissed, but "White House spokesman Ari Fleischer yesterday denied that President Bush or his aides are trying to undermine Lott's bid to remain leader." While Lott tries to reinvent himself, it's good to know that some things in this world remain the same: Ari is still a inveterate liar.

In Canada, officials at Calgary's Springbank High School are looking for the prankster who "spliced 30 seconds of hardcore porn into the 'O Canada' video that plays on TV's in every classroom". Maybe they should try looking in the US Senate.

New York Times: The Doctor Is In, and Busy Hanging a Bigger Shingle. A good, if rather short, profile of VT Gov. Howard Dean.

Washington Post: Bush Aides Split on Bias Case At U-Mich.. Now, the argument isn't over whether affirmative action is a good thing or a bad thing — the Bush administration has made it known that it, unlike Trent Lott, opposes affirmative action programs like the one at Michigan. Rather, the split is over whether to tell people it opposes affirmative action, for fear that telling them will hurt efforts to woo minority voters. How cynical is that?

True Colors

New York Times: Conservatives Are Critical of Their Role in Controversy. This story, by Kate Zernike, is quite a departure from this article, which ran under the same "On the Right" description (what is that, anyways?) in yesterday's paper. Instead of trying to prove that conservatives were way out in front of the whole Lott issue, it does exactly the opposite with a cavalcade of quotes by disgruntled conservatives expressing their anger at Democrats for attacking Lott. Here are some of the best:

Paul Weyrich, Free Congress Foundation: "We should defend Trent Lott to the end of the earth when he is being unfairly attacked as he is now."

Caton Dawson, SC GOP Chairman: "The Democrats have done a wonderful job of painting this story in the most wonderful way. What else do you do in the face of losing almost everything? They're trying to find a way to rerun the last election, and this is part of that process. Have they taken our victory celebrations away from us? Absolutely they have. It's time to end. We've got to get back to business."

Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum president: "I don't think the Democrats have anything else to talk about. I've seen the original statement six or eight times on television. I'm tired of seeing it."

Ann Coulter, neocon hack: "I don't remember liberals being this indignant about the 9/11 terrorist attacks."

Playing with RSS

I've been playing around with RSS feeds today. I've got a low-tech presentation tool which displays individual feeds, but I need to figure out if I want this site feature to do more than this. RSS is easy, but there are different versions with differnt features, and different sites using different subsets of those features, all of which means that coming up with a more unified presentation will be tricky. And I'll need to find an easier way to subscribe to feeds and avoid the current need to hardcode the links.

For me, I've found that some sites are better visited "in person", while with others, RSS seems a more convenient browsing format. Generally speaking, the more unstructured the data is, the less helpful RSS seems to be. Viewing a blog's RSS feed, for example, doesn't really add much to the experience; being able to see all the NYT technology headlines on one page with short descriptions of each, though, is very nice.

The Beast: 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002. Totally fucking funny. If I had been drinking milk when I got to #1, it would have come out my nose.

The Onion: Bill of Rights Pared Down to a Manageable Six. John Ashcroft: ""We're not taking away personal rights; we're increasing personal security. By allowing for greater government control over the particulars of individual liberties, the Bill of Rights will now offer expanded personal freedoms whenever they are deemed appropriate and unobtrusive to the activities necessary to effective operation of the federal government." This would be funnier if it wasn't so true, but it's still pretty funny.

News.com: Jury Finds ElcomSoft Not Guilty. Yes, this is good news for ElcomSoft, but I think it would be a mistake to read this verdict as a blow struck against the DMCA. "Jury foreman Dennis Strader said the jurors agreed ElcomSoft's product was illegal but acquitted the company because they believed the company didn't mean to violate the law." Apparently, ignorance of the law is an excuse, but I don't see this excuse working a second time.

Don't Believe the Hype

And so it begins, the inevitable spin by conservaties on the Lott affair. Jim Rutenberg and Felicity Barringer write what I think will be the typical take: Conservatives Led the Way in Criticizing Lott's Remarks. Two major claims are being advanced here: first, that conservatives broke the story that the media ignored for too long, and second, that the conservative reaction to Lott's remarks proves there is no right-wing media conspiracy.

Let's look at the conservative argument. Rutenberg and Barringer begin: "Mr. Sullivan, on his Web site, and Mr. Krauthammer, writing in The Washington Post, are among those who have called on Mr. Lott to resign." Indeed, conservates were practically unamimous on the central moral issue, as Sean Hannity of FoxNews points out: "There's really not a lot of disagreement about how conservatives feel about what he said. They didn't like it; they know it's wrong." Why are conservatives so outraged? Says National Review editor Richard Lowry: "I think that's a product of decades of hard work that conservatives have done on racially charged issues out of idealism and principle. To have those positions tarred, even inadvertently, with this backwardness on race is extremely distressing." As a result, even Democrats are having problems with the idea of an agenda-setting conservative media. R&B again: "The intensity of the criticism has even surprised Democrats, who say they are unused to seeing the conservative press take on one of its own so ferociously."

There is a kernel of truth here. Yes, some conservatives were very vocal in calling for Lott's ouster, and yes, even media sources like the WSJ and FoxNews got in on the action. But it is certainly not correct to say that conservative pundits and the conservative media drove this story, and that Lott is gone because of their principled actions. Not even close.

First, let's look at the timeline. Lott said what he said on December 5. Andrew Sullivan didn't say a peep about it until December 8, the WSJ chimed in a day later, and Krauthammer didn't write his column until December 12. Since nearly everyone in the media was late to this party, you might can call Sullivan an early adopter, but Krauthammer waited a full week, and waited until there was already a good deal of conservative cover. But while the "outraged, principled" conservatives were trying to figure out how to react, it was folks like Josh Marshall, writing about Lott since December 6, who started the story and kept it going when it looked like it was already over. For the first few days, then, this story lived and grew mostly on left-leaning websites; the conservaties came to the party later.

But when conservatives joined in, did they really do so with a single voice? Hardly. As Kevin Drum documents, there was some dissension in the ranks with regard to both the substance of Lott's remarks and what should be done about it. Even relatively late in the game, you still heard prominent conservatives trying to give Lott a pass, e.g. Peggy Noonan: "Maybe it was an unthinking mistake, which would be unfortunate in its own way. But maybe it was the kind of thinking mistake politicians sometimes make."

Finally, this episode demostrates very little about how the conservative media works to push certain stories. Yes, the media as a whole, liberal and conservative, trashed one of the most prominent conservatives in the country and cost him his political career. But the point that Gore, Daschle et. al. were trying to make wasn't really about the conservative media as censor, following Reagan's 11th Commandment, but rather about the ties between certain media outlets and the Republican party, which allows the GOP to transmit their message effectively. From the RNC to Drudge to FoxNews to the front page of the Washington Times… that's how certain stories become stories. While most all of the mainstream media missed the Lott story at the start, imagine what would have happened had Lott been a Democrat: within a few hours, we'd be seeing the clip run endlessly on FoxNews, and it would be front-page news all over America the next day. In the case of the Lott story, when it became a story days after he uttered his infamous remarks, it was covered by the conservative media. And while a case can be made that parts of the conservative media like FoxNews went to great lengths to minimize the impact of the story (e.g. Sean Hannity's puffball radio interview with Lott), the dynamic here is clearly different.

Lott's career is over, and he now has virtually no support anywhere outside of the CCC. His Senate colleagues will elect a new Majority Leader in three weeks, and the President won't stand in their way. But before you give the GOP credit for doing the right thing here, look at how long it's taken — almost two weeks, during which the Republican leadership moved just as quickly as it had to in order to keep up with public opinion. Lott is gone only because the situation had become politcally untenable, not because of the GOP's principled fight against racism. If the motivation was purely principled, wouldn't they would have given Lott the boot a week ago?

New York Times: Former New Jersey Gov. to Head 9/11 Panel. Governor Thomas Kean appears not to be a horrible choice. Mr. Bush, you surprise me.

Washington Post: Senate GOP to Decide Lott's Fate on Jan. 6. Lott's a goner, and the only question for him now is whether he will resign or get fired. Bush, who for the last several days has explicitly not called for Lott's ouster, now sees the writing on the wall and is tossing him overboard. So much for decisive leadership, but maybe the thought is that going with the flow can make it look like you know what you're doing. As for Lott's replacement, I'm going to take Frist and the points.

Another trip to CompUSA, and some more time on my knees (don't ask), I now have a working TV tuner on my PC, which totally rocks.

Why did it take so long before the media reported on the Trent Lott fiasco? We all have our theories, but Al Kamen has the most amusing one: "Best answer we've heard is from one Democratic staffer who noted this is the time of year when office space is allocated for the new Senate next month. And who's in charge of those decisions? Of course — Trent Lott."

Coincidences happen. I was just thinking about how I'd finally switched my default Windows browser to Mozilla (did that on linux a few months ago), when I'm taking a look at Hack the Planet, and find a link to this: Mozilla Browser of Choice for Playboy Lifestyle. Not exactly the the rep I was aiming for, but I'll take it in a pinch.

Josh Marshall, who helped keep the Lott story alive while the mainstream media studiously ignored it, has been doing yeoman's work regarding GOP accusations of voter fraud in South Dakota. Republicans are screaming that Johnson "stole" the Senate election, and a cover story in the National Review puts this claim out for public consumption. Only problem is, it's not true. Marshall's got the full story, but my favorite bit is this: "…Republican attempts to substantiate their own charges of fraud and forgery end with RNC operatives caught filing perjurious or forged affidavits to prove their phony case. At least, so says South Dakota's Republican Attorney General."

Update: TNR has published a piece in response to the SD AG's findings that there was no voter fraud. Two things to note, however: 1) TNR never addresses the AG's charges of fraud and forgery regarding the affidavits; and 2) never once does the text identify the AG as a Republican.

Washington Post: New Tax Plan May Bring Shift In Burden. Says Rep. Matsui: "The president is making the case that people who earn between $50 [thousand] and $75,000 a year should be paying a third more taxes. I'd love to debate him on that."

The key to the administration's argument is the claim that 12.4% payroll tax isn't really a tax, because you "get it back" as Social Security payments when you retire. But if you're a conservative bent on taxing the poor, you've got to be worried that the Heritage Foundation doesn't think your linchpin argument is a very good one. And even among those who believe that the poor keep too much of their money, there is little agreement on what any additional taxes should look like. I'm not sure what the Bushies are hoping to accomplish here. In the end, all they'll do is piss off the middle class and confuse their base.

But regardless of the specifics, what we need to remember is that the fairness of a tax system is defined not by what percentage you pay, but by how much it hurts. In Economics 101, this is explained as the "marginal utility of money", and it's the reason why a progressive tax is more fair than a flat tax. Taking 25% of a $10,000 income hurts a lot; taking 25% of a $200,000 income hurts far less. Fairness thus dictates that the poor be taxed at a lower rate, and the rich at a higher rate, and explains why attempting to flatten a progressive tax structure is the wrong thing to do.

David Yepson: Without Gore, Iowa is anybody's race. The current standings are Gephardt first, Kerry second, Lieberman third.

The media is now reporting that Gore won't run in 2004. It's wide open — let the primary battle begin. I have to admit that I'm a little relieved. I think Gore would have won the nomination, but I'm not confident he could have beaten Bush. Whether any of the other Democrats can beat Bush… well, fingers crossed.

I found this game on Friday, but now it has 3 new, harder levels and is worth playing some more. Plus, the monkey sounds are cool.

After about the 100th time watching that VW ad for the new Beetle convertible, I broke down and added Strange Magic: The Best of Electric Light Orchestra to my holiday wish list.

The New York Times magazine this week takes a look back at the "Year in Ideas".

Washington Post: Nickles Calls for New GOP Leadership Elections. The conventional wisdom has been that as long as Lott's Senate colleagues stay out of the fray, he gets to keep his job. This is the beginning of the end for Lott, because it gives a lot of GOP Senators who have been biting their tongues another way expressing their anger without doing so explicitly.

I've finally finished breaking up my old material into individual, categorized posts, so my archival work is done. Not counting this particular one, I have posted 1,629 bits of meaningless crap since I first started doing this on October 1, 1998. Whew.

I went shopping today for gifts for me, gifts for others, and a new apartment. I found a couple of things I might get for me; had a little success on the front for others; and I found a place that might very well be my next home. All told, a successful outing. But waiting in line 15 minutes to get out a of a shopping center parking lot can sure suck the holiday spirit marrow right from your bones.

The Daily Howler provides a nice history lesson today about the long-term relationship between Trent Lott and the Council of Conservative Citizens that was extensively reported back in 1999. In response to the criticism, Lott denied he had any real knowledge about the group and denounced racism in general. Lott didn't suffer politically because of that episode, and the public and pudnit outcry was minimal. But when you hear folks say now that Lott has apologized and we should just move on, remember that we have tried that before.

Washington Post: Lott Faces Continuing Resentment From Conservatives. "The explicit pressure to dump Lott comes from such sources as the National Review, the founding magazine of the contemporary conservative movement; a host of southern newspaper editorials; and many of the conservative columnists whose ability to set the tone of public debate was demonstrated throughout the years of Bill Clinton's presidency." Despite the remark by an unnamed GOP hack that, "We don't kill our kings", this might very well be the way it turns out.

CNN: Kissinger steps down as chairman of 9/11 panel. "Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger stepped down Friday as chairman of a panel investigating the September 11 attacks, citing controversy over potential conflicts of interest with his private-sector clients." Finally, some good news.

Halifax Herald Limited: A sea oddity: Multicoloured lobster has both kinds of sex organs. The picture says a thousand words, so I grabbed a copy.

David Coursey: Microsoft's top 10 challenges for 2003.

Joseph Crespino: The Ways Republicans Talk About Race. "…the fact that racial appeals have played a role in the success of the modern Republican Party is not under debate. It is irrefutable. As of today, it remains unacknowledged by the party as a whole."

Paul Krugman: The Other Face. "To win nationally, the leader of the party must pay tribute to the tolerance and open-mindedness of the nation at large. He must celebrate civil rights and sternly condemn the abuses of the past. And that's just what George W. Bush did yesterday, in rebuking Mr. Lott. Yet at the same time the party must convey to a select group of target voters the message — nudge nudge, wink wink — that it actually doesn't mean any of that nonsense, that it's really on their side. How can it do that? By having men who manifestly don't share the open-mindedness of the nation at large in key, powerful positions. And that's why Mr. Bush's rebuke was not followed by a call for Mr. Lott to step down."

New York Times: Republican Party's 40 Years of Juggling on Race. "Ever since the Republican Party in the South was reborn by hostility to the civil rights legislation of the 1960's, the national party has increasingly depended on Southern votes while insisting to Northern moderates that it is still the party of Lincoln." The Lott fiasco makes the latter much more difficult now.

Washington Post: Lott Has Moved Little On Civil Rights Issues. Most of these facts about Lott's troubles with civil rights I've already seen reported elsewhere, but this is a good summary of what we know to date.

Tom Tomorrow on the reaction of conservative pundits to the Lott affair: "What they're doing here is releasing countermeasures, like a jet which launches metallic chaff and high-intensity fireworks to try to keep the heat-seeking missile from locking onto its exhaust. If they can put enough distractions out there, confuse the issue, turn this whole thing into an argument about whether or not racism still exists in twenty-first century America—in short, turn this into an argument about whether or not the sky is blue and the grass is green—then there will follow a brief period of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and then everyone will kind of stumble away like drunks exiting an all night party, blinking in the harsh light of day and wondering what the hell just happened."

Time: Trent Lott's Segregationist College Days. No surprise here: Trent Lott led the fight to keep his college fraternity all white back in the early 1960s. About this episode, Lott remarked in 1997: "Yes, you could say I favored segregation then. I don't now. … The main thing was, I felt the federal government had no business sending in troops to tell the state what to do." Now, everyone knows that when Southern whites want to dress up their bigotry in lofty principles, it is often in the guise of "states rights". It is left as an exercise to the reader to decode Lott's remarks.

Tim O'Reilly: Piracy is Progressive Taxation, and Other Thoughts on the Evolution of Online Distribution "For all of these creative artists, most laboring in obscurity, being well-enough known to be pirated would be a crowning achievement. Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say "may" because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to increased revenues."

UPI: Lott's leadership position tenuous. Two quotes in this story deserve a little attention.

First, from an unnamed GOP lobbyist: "If something else comes out, he's done. The next 48 hours are critical." Given that we already have numerous documented instances of Lott's love-affair with Jim Crow, why does this "something else" become the fabled straw? The cynic in me thinks that Republicans are hoping that everything has already come out, and that by talking about this one more thing so late in game, they're trying to give Lott some cover, to feed the spin that it's all over, time to move on, etc.

Speaking of moving on, here's the second quote, this time from an unnamed GOP Senate staffer: "He's been rebuked by a Republican president for that stupid comment. (Lott) can now move on in leading the party." Of course, it's not about the comment anymore, it's about Lott's continued refusal to reject the values of segregation and bigotry. That aside, though, the staffer should probably resign as well, after implying that getting slapped by the President is some kind of prerequiste for "leading the party". Not to mention that the President is usually considered the leader of the party. Sheesh.

Bush has finally weighed in on the Lott mess. The gist of Bush's remarks was summed up by Ari Fleischer: "The president thought what Trent Lott said was wrong. The president does not think that Sen. Lott should resign." Bush apparently doesn't think that Lott's serial racism is a serious enough issue to warrent Lott paying any real price beyond a few uncomfortable media interviews. Fine, then, we'll be sure to keep that in mind in November, 2004.

The conservative press is doing it's best to spin the Lott debacle, usually by way of trashing Democrats. The Daily Howler has a great piece today on what the spin is, and why it is either irrelevant to the issue or just flat-out a lie (or sometimes both).

New York Times: What's in a Name? Perhaps Plenty if You're a Job Seeker. Take a pool of equivalent resumes, 1300 entry-level jobs, and some names common to whites and blacks. Mix them all together, and what do you get? "Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7 percent of those with black-sounding names." The conclusion? Racism in America is apparently not restricted just to Trent Lott. Via CalPundit.

I'm glad she's found something more worthwhile to do, but I have to admit, it's a little over my head.

It seems to be the season for political flash. Via Blogdex, Technical Difficulties from dubyadubya.com.

Wired asks that age-old question: Would You Buy a Car From a Robot?. Honda's Asimo robot has the features you would expect in a sales droid: it can walk, it can talk, and it can recognize voices and gestures. In other words, it's already more human than some of the car salesman I've met. So yes, I would buy a car from this robot, as long as it never asked, "What would I have to do to put you in a new car today?"

Oliver Willis has put up, AFAIK, the first Bush-Lott ad for the upcoming cycle. I certainly hope the Democrats are running stuff like this 24/7 as we get closer to 11/2/04.

The Clarion-Ledger has put together good summary of Lott's ties with segregationists.

Charles Krauthammer: A Clear Choice of Words "This is about getting wrong the most important political phenomenon in the past half-century of American history: the civil rights movement. Getting wrong its importance is not an issue of political correctness. It is evidence of a historical blindness that is utterly disqualifying for national office." Even neocon freak Krauthammer gets it.

Bob Herbert: Racism and the G.O.P.. "The Republican Party has become a haven for white racist attitudes and anti-black policies. The party of Lincoln is now a safe house for bigotry. It's the party of the Southern strategies and the Willie Horton campaigns and Bob Jones University and the relentless and unconscionable efforts to disenfranchise black voters." Trent Lott might be the most visible symptom right now, but racism is a disease that runs deep in the Republican Party.

New York Times editorial: Fire Trent Lott. "There are 51 Republican members of the United States Senate. Surely they can find someone to be majority leader besides Trent Lott."

The old content I imported yesterday is coming right along — I've reformatted all the old stuff back thru 1/1/2000. Only 1 1/2 years to go…

A Lot About Lott

A little to my suprise, and much to my relief, the media has definitely picked up on the Lott story, and they're running with it. I'm not sure what this means for Lott's political future, but I'm sure he's having a really bad day today.

Apart from the fact that Lott is an unreconstructed racist, his biggest problem seems to be that he doesn't know how to apologize. He's put out three statements to date; the first two made no mention of the a-word. Finally, last night, Lott issued another statement: "A poor choice of words conveyed to some that I embraced the discarded policies of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I apologize to anyone who was offended."

Let's take a good look at Lott's apology in detail. 1) "A poor choice of words" — a choice of words he has made at least once before in the public record. Lott wants to imply he simply misspoke, but the paper trail suggests otherwise. 2) "I apologize to anyone who was offended" — he should, of course, be explicitly apologizing to everyone. By phrasing it the way he does, Lott seems to say that the people who were offended had no real reason to be; after all, he's not a segregationist, "nothing could be further from the truth".

Equally important, though, is what Lott's apology doesn't contain: an explanation of what he could have possibly meant, if he didn't mean what he so clearly said. Lott is in a jam here. He needs to address this issue, but any explanation of meaning beyond the prima facia one would sound ridiculous and evasive.

Here are some wiser words by others:

New York Times: Lott's Praise for Thurmond Echoed His Words of 1980. "After a fiery speech by Mr. Thurmond at a campaign rally in Mississippi for Ronald Reagan in November 1980, Mr. Lott, then a congressman, told a crowd in Jackson, 'You know, if we had elected this man 30 years ago, we wouldn't be in the mess we are today.'"

Terry Neal: Lott's Rhetoric Comes Back to Haunt Him. "Lott's history on the subject is not good. Slip up once, and all can be forgiven. Slip up again and again, and you've got a major problem."

Howard Kurtz: Lott's 'Sorry' Doesn't Cut It. "Here's how a political apology is supposed to work: You deliver it, the issue goes away and everyone moves on. By that standard, Trent Lott's semi-expression of regret for his comments about Strom Thurmond was an abject failure."

Paul Krugman: 'All These Problems'. "Now Mr. Lott has apologized for a "poor choice of words." But choice of words had nothing to do with it. What he did, quite clearly, was offer a retroactive endorsement of a frankly racist campaign."

Was it my post yesterday, or just coincidence? Whatever the reason, Bush has nominated a new SEC chair, William Donaldson. He looks perfect for the job Bush wants him to do: don't make waves.

Dana Milbank: DiIulio Saga Highlights Primacy Placed on Secrecy "The apology issued last week by John DiIulio, which echoed White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's denunciation of his remarks as 'baseless and groundless,' is destined for the Pantheon of Famous Recantations."

This would be cool: a spider that would crawl your website, grab the text, spell-check it, and then email you back a list of possible mistakes and corrections.

All That's Old is New Again

I just finished importing all my old weblog content from the old site, going back to October 1, 1998. A few things to note:

1. Some of the HTML is a little wonky. The old system automatically added line breaks when displaying the content I entered into the db; this system does not, so I just wrapped every block in paragraph tags. This probably works most of the time, but I still have a little cleaning up to do.
2. A lot of the links don't work. The old system had a "glossary" that I used to generate some of the links, and these macro calls need to be replaced by actual links.
3. All old stuff isn't broken up into separate entries yet — I'm working backwords to fix this as fast as I can. For the stuff I haven't gotten to yet, each day is a single post.
4. The old stuff that hasn't been broken up doesn't have categories attached to each post, since each day has lots of different stuff in it.
5. The old stuff doesn't have meaningful timestamps associated with each post, so the post time that is displayed is sometimes just set to midnight of that day, or for some of the newer old stuff, to when that day's db entry was first made. Either way, all posts for a day have the same post time.

It took Bush only 3 days to nominate a replacement for ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, but 35 days after SEC Chair Harvey Pitt was fired, nothing. Just something to keep in mind.

Via DaveZilla, a pointer to what well could be the hot holiday gift this year: HuggyJesus, "a huggable doll in His image". The story of the advent of HuggyJesus is truly, uh, something.

Josh Marshall has more good stuff stuff to say in two recent posts (1 and 2) on Trent Lott's rather atrocious remarks. Lott has finally said something about the issue ("My comments were not an endorsement of [Thurmond's] positions of over 50 years ago…"), without, however, actually coming out and apologizing for those comments. Gore, however, strongly criticized Lott in a CNN interview: "It is not a small thing, Judy, for one of the half dozen most prominent political leaders in America to say that our problems are caused by integration and that we should have had a segregationist candidate. That is divisive and it is divisive along racial lines. That's the definition of a racist comment." It is hard to see how Lott's comments could not mean exactly what Gore says they do.

Brad DeLong: "Today we know that it never crosses the minds of the powers-that-be in the Bush White House that good economic policies might be worth pursuing because good economic policies lead to a stronger economy. To the powers-that-be in the Bush White House, economic policies are way to reward favored groups of constituents. And their effect on the economy? They don't need to think about no stinking effect of policy on the economy." Now, I've never been a fan of Larry Lindsey, but DeLong makes the interesting point that Lindsey might well have been the only high-ranking official in the Bush administration that actually understood economic policy, and that was probably what got him fired.

CNET: Amazon blushes over sex link gaffe. "Amazon's automated results for Robertson's "Six Steps to Spiritual Revival" included a second title by Robertson as well as a book about anal sex for men." I don't know why Amazon is so sure this is a mistake; sounds right to me.

Al Kamen: Closing Words of Douglas Feith. "…with the war on terrorism and the expected war on Iraq, it's comforting that top officials still have time to handle important matters of style and punctuation. Who knows but what this may prove the critical factor in Iraq, a land of evil infinitive splitters." Hilarious.

Washington Post: Dreaming Against the Odds. Part two in their series on the new New South.

Dan Gillmor: Accessing a whole new world via multimedia phones. Only a little while ago, I thought having a cell phone with a camera was a rather silly idea. I couldn't imagine that the picture quality would be very good, and the ads for these phones always showed people using them in rather inane ways (e.g. the wife sending her husband a picture of a freshly baked pie to get him home from the poker game with his buddies). But now that I have access to a digital camera, I wish I could have it with me all the time. And I do have my phone with me all the time, so… Of course, it would be nice to be able to do some quick photo-editing, but I'm not sure what a workable interface would look like.

Washington Post: Old South Goes With the Wind. "Until the early 1990s, the three major epochs in Southern history had to do with race: the Civil War, Reconstruction and the civil rights movement. Now comes the fourth. During the past 15 years, an unprecedented wave of immigration swept over the South, transforming the meaning of race in the very place it was defined." This is the first in a four-part series.

My old high school football team made it to the state finals this year, but then sputtered against Rock Hill, losing 19-0. Drat.

Blogdex has been hacked again, this time by some ad company that I don't particularly feel like linking to. Regardless, though, the site is #1 right now, and if you look at the sites linking to it, you'll see a lot of blogs that haven't been updated in a year or so. This is the second time in a week Blogdex has been hacked in this way; they really need to find a solution to this problem.

Christina Lamb: Old Fears in the New Afghanistan "Yet a year after the overthrow of the Taliban and imposition of a Western-backed government, there has been little improvement in the lives of most Afghans, few of whom possess televisions or fine clothes or care about the luxury of free speech. These people spend their days struggling to feed their children on an average annual income of $75."

Good News!

Washington Post: Democrats Triumph in Louisiana. Democrats win the Senate race and LA-5.

MSNBC: Miss Turkey crowned Miss World "With a gleaming smile and a graceful bow, Miss Turkey won the Miss World contest Saturday, bringing to a close an international pageant that incited deadly rioting in Nigeria." Good to know those hundreds of deaths have been given real meaning.

It's a little disappointing when you have to go to MeFi to get your local news, but this piece about the son of an NRA board member arrested for a road rage shooting was just too good to pass up. I'm a little concerned, though, that News4 refers to the father with the euphemism "gun rights activist" instead of the more usual designation, "gun nut".

CNet: Microsoft: IE hole worse than reported. Says security consultant Thor Larholm: "It seems like Microsoft is deliberately downplaying the severity of the vulnerabilities in an attempt to gain less bad press. It sure would look bad to release two critical cumulative updates in just two weeks, but that is exactly what has been done."

I said