Sunday grab-bag

My Sunday morning TV fix: Propaganda then and now.

Useful background for that is Orwell's Politics and the English Language.

Here's a devastating (and funny) critique of the TSA's security theater, carried by the Atlantic.

And a little bit about Spengler's decline of the West.

And foreign investment into the USA continues to dry up at an astounding rate - of course, these statistics lag reality by a lot, so I have no idea how the worldwide intervention is being accounted for.

Labels: banking, election 2008, politics, propaganda

  ¶ 9:21 AM 1 comments

  Which Hunt?

Some choice quotes from this week:

I'll start with Palin...

Fight back, you hacks! Demand access. Demand accountability! It's our duty. If we cannot ask questions of a total newbie six weeks before an election in which she could become president of the country, then the First Amendment is pointless. Grow some! -
Andrew Sullivan

Glenn Greenwald has also had choice things to say about Palin, too many to list.

Palin is nowhere near as good as Peter Sellers at political speech. Palin comes across as genuinely confused, where Sellars comes across as confusing genuinely.

Given Palin's incoherence on the issues, a comparison to Princess Caraboo seems in order.

And then there was the election...

I try not to be depressed. There was such great comic material in everything that happened this week - Letterman bashing McCain, for example, Palin's swimsuit video, for another. This latter video keeps getting pulled for violating copyright law, and the public keeps reposting them - I have little doubt that the recently passed PRO-IP law will be used to suppress further expressions of mass outrage...

Then there was the bailout...

"I'll go with the guy with one house. The guy with one house is scared about losing his house." - Chris Rock

"Phone calls to my office about the wall street bailout are running 50-50--50% 'No' and 50% 'Hell No.'" - Congressman Ron Kind

"`I nationalize strategic companies and get criticized, but when Bush does it, it's OK. Bush is turning socialist. How are you, comrade Bush?'" - Hugo Chavez

Playboy: Too Big to fail? - Lew Rockwell

... It may be that the former CEO's of some of these institutions ought to be given golden parachutes and made to use them from 20,000 feet... - Jerry Pournelle

In other absurd news... the Chinese released a detailed account of the total success of their spacecraft launch and spacewalk - complete with dialog - hours before the rocket even left the launchpad.

Not to be outdone by the Chinese, the McCain campaign placed an ad claiming that McCain won today's debate - the ad was showing long before debate and even before anybody knew if he'd even attend.

And I don't think the SEC's methods have improved much over the last 5 years.



Lastly, a bit on the life and times of Edward Bernays, who established some of the core ideas behind amoral PR. He found his ideas used by just about everyone, from capitalist to Marxist, and loved that. I had read Manufacturing Consent decades ago, I'd like to find a copy of Engineering Consent to round out my education.

Labels: absurdity, banking, msm, politics, space

  ¶ 9:52 PM 0 comments

  Weapons of Mass distraction used to shield PRO-IP bill passage

Am I the only one that noticed that amid all the hoo-rah and weapons of mass distraction unleashed during the financial crisis that the Senate passed the PRO-IP bill?

It essentially creates a copyright czar reporting directly to the president. The RIAA loves this bill.

My guess is that the extension of copyright's lifetime to the life of the author + 70 years probably will cost the public far, far, far more than a mere 700 billion. That crime was committed years ago.
While the DOJ pushed back, the new PRO-IP bill creates a federal copyright cop which will ultimately put more teeth in the current, wildly violated set of statutes.

Public Knowledge has more.

Labels: copyright, politics

  ¶ 9:40 PM 0 comments

  On the internet, nobody cares if you are a cat

Mark Moreford of the SF Chronicle writes:

I want a president who not only freely discusses and shrugs off his or her loves and sexual desires and even affairs, but dares to enjoy sex and thrives because of it and makes his behavior a part of his perspective and attitude on life and love and leadership and the general sticky messy beautiful evolution of the human soul. Is that too much to ask?

This delightful bit of sanity (do read the link) reminded me of what I'd written during the previous election cycle on the same subject, so I re-read that, thinking maybe it was time to rewrite it, focus it more, and add a few more jokes. Yea, I should do that.

I read a bit more of Moreford's canon. Loved Tax my rich white torturer!

That led to me to re-reading Evan Hunt's profound and wonderful piece on ad pollution, on the utter importance of changing the oil in the omni, which led me back to re-reading Beating the Brand and finding the first part that I'd never managed to incorporate back into the whole.

"RubbermaidRubbermaidRubbermaidRubbermaidRubbermaid" got stuck in my head. I learned there was a name for this problem - Earworm.

All this led me to clicking absently on what used to be the Unbrand America web site. It's been taken over by a domain squatter!

In light of my last couple pieces about the mess that the internet is in -

In light of all that - and the troubles that jwz had in resurrecting the web as it stood in 1994, I finally cut loose with the biggest belly laugh I'd had in weeks. I roared. I fell off the bed laughing.

In the end, there's nothing better to do. Look how far we've come! Know how far we have to go!

If I didn't laugh at the world as much as I do I would have slipped off the deep end long ago. (Some would argue that I already have slipped off the deep end)

Problem with all that laughter was that it is 3AM, and I woke up my landlady...

Seeing how humans cope with the world, with machines, and with "progress", is like watching a cat trying to play jazz.

Labels: ads, cats, ipv6, irony, mozilla, networking, politics

  ¶ 11:38 AM 2 comments

  My top ten presidental debate questions

I've noted elsewhere how much I like the msnbc poll, as it both educates and polls, and is at the same time, fair, and easy to understand. The candidates and issues are listed in alphabetical order; the results are shown in shades of green (good) to red (bad). I'd like the poll to also have a tab that showed the number of votes, and various other statistics (repeat votes, vote locations, etc), and for msnbc to publish its source code for this poll so it can be reused and re purposed– but I can't have everything.

The one thing I'd really like to have in that poll – and most others – is the ability to frame the questions myself in categories that I cared about, and for me to be able reach statistically significant numbers of people with those questions.

I'm tickled that 10 questions is trying to pull together a democratically created poll – but IMHO it's too little, too late. The questions need to be sent in via video, and uploading video from where I'm at is an exercise in tedium, even if I looked halfway good on camera. Still, I'd like to participate so I'll use this blog for my questions. Perhaps others will film questions like these.

My top 10 issues for 2008 at the federal level:

1)(Economy) The deficit

2)(Economy) The estate tax

3)(Economy) Alternative minimum tax

4)(Politics) Personal freedom

5)(Science) The space program

6)(Politics) Gerrymandering

7)(Health Care) Health Care

8)(Politics) Immigration

9)(War) the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations

10)(Politics) Enhancing the internet

My top 10 election 2008 questions

If I had control of a polling system, or of a presidential debate of democrats or republicans, these are the questions I would ask. To keep the question short and fair, with a maximum amount of screen time for candidate answers, I might skip the first background sentences entirely, and just ask the questions. I don't want to be as guilty of framing the debate as others are, and I'm doing enough merely by framing the questions thusly:

1)(Economy) In 1999, the budget of the federal government was in surplus, with the elimination of the federal debt seemingly feasible. Now the debt is past 9 trillion dollars and the yearly deficit stands at an amount so staggering I can't even print it. What would you do to cure the debt and restore a balanced budget?

2)(Economy) The estate tax, which used to raise 70 billion dollars a year, is due to expire in 2010. Would you reinstate it? If so, how would you change it?

3)(Economy) An increasing number of Americans are subject to the alternative minimum tax, rather than the normal income tax. What would you do about this situation?

4)(Immigration) How would you reform the H1B visa program?

5)(Space) The space shuttle is due to be retired in 2010, and the earliest a replacement is scheduled to come online is 2014. According to President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, a return to the moon is scheduled for 2020. Do you think these dates are reasonable? Would you continue these programs as is? Cut the budgets? Increase them? Encourage private development of space vehicles? Go for the Moon? Mars? Or aim for the near earth asteroids?

6)(Politics) What, if anything, would you do about gerrymandering?

7)(Health Care) What percentage of the public's health care financing should go to drugs and what percentage to treatment?

8)(Freedom) How would you maximize freedom in America and the world?

9)(Internet) America has fallen far behind the rest of the world in internet deployment and speed. What would you do about that?

10)(War) How would you more effectively govern the occupied territories abroad?

I note that there are three places above where I do directly challenge the conventional wisdom while framing the question.

I can't contain my outrage at the size of the federal debt. I tried.

The Iraq war ceased being a war shortly after Baghdad fell, and became an occupation. I can't bring myself to call it a war anymore, and don't know how anyone can.

The depth of my space question represents my deep interest in science and space and my utter despair at finding a candidate that had ever talked about the issues there.

And perhaps it's a little unfair of me to hyperlink to the facts containing my assertions. (I haven't finished revising this posting to add all the hyperlinks I'd like to add, so please check back later)

I couldn't help myself but frame things that way, but I did limit showing my biases as best as I could. Hopefully that's good enough. I do have my own opinions on all these questions, and I will publish them in my blog over the next week. I look forward to any comments on the above, and hope that others will ignore the current framing of the national debates, ignore me, too - and formulate their own top 10 questions and publish them, in some format, somewhere.

Perhaps some answers - or better questions - will arise.

Labels: debates, economy, election 2008, online polling, politics, space, statistics

  ¶ 9:25 AM 3 comments