Lean Left

Publius has some good thoughts about the broader implications of the NYT rhetoric.  He says it quite well (and appears to be back on his meds), so rather than excerpting or commenting, I’ll just play the role of InstaTgirsch and link it without substantive comment.  Click the link and look for the Broder and Whittman post (he’s bloggered).

For the last year or so, I’ve been using a Magnavox MRV640 DVD+RW recorder, and it’s been frustrating to say the least.  On the one hand, I like the features, but on the other, it’s had some weird and sporadic reliability issues.  DVDs that I burn sometimes skip on other players, and many of them won’t play on other players at all.

Just this week, I burned something down to a DVD+RW.  It plays fine on the Magnavox, of course; it also plays okay on my year-old Dell PC, and on our 3-4 year old eMachines laptop.  It won’t even recognize on my six-year-old Dell PC, my five-year-old set-top DVD player, my three-year-old DVD-ROM drive, or my brand-spankin’-new Sony DVD+/-RW recorder that’s in my other PC.  It’s mind numbingly frustrating not to be able to watch what you record!

Looking around the internet, I see a lot of people complaining of similar problems with other set-top DVD burners, and some opining that it’s the media, rather than the recorder.

I’m totally confused.

So I’m opening up this forum on DVD burners, in hopes that somebody will have some good advice and useful experience.

I’m still pondering a different set-top burner, but what I really want may not exist.  In tgirsch’s dream land, I would be able to record to a DVD+R or DVD-R, then before finalizing the disk, take it over to a PC where I could do the chapter editing and so forth.

Let it not be said that I never admit it.  See a good discussion on Bayes Theorem here and here and here — it is in this last thread where I admit I was wrong. 

This is also a good example of why I’m an ex-math major.  I always sucked at statistics, and it was usually because of the kind of mistake I made here, wherein I misread and misunderstood the givens.  My logic was sound, but it was based on a horrible misunderstanding of the premises.  The bright side is, based on this, I’m halfway to becoming a successful right-wing pundit.  I just need to eliminate the sound logic part. 

So, via publius, we see that Michelle Malkin, she of the internment camp fetish, has oh so cleverly made up parodies of WWII era secrecy posters to accuse the New York Times of treason for printing the story about the Bush Administration’s widespread surveillance of banking records. Malkin, in other words, is a bloody idiot.

That is the only explanation. The Times did absolutely nothing to even remotely threaten national security and you would have to be a world class ignoramus to think otherwise. The article listed nothing that could be considered an important-to-be-kept secret operational detail. In fact, the article had precious little detail at all. It was a 1000 foot overview of the program that essentially informed readers of the programs existence, the banks’ work to keep the program limited in scope, the type of warrant used to get the records, and the very large scope of the program. So the argument has to be, and has been, that merely revealing the existence of the program somehow threatens national security. Unfortunately for the right wingers spewing these talking points, getting to that conclusion takes you deep into the dark hear of complete and total idiocy.

How’s this logic supposed to go? The terrorists, a group of people dedicated to causing as much harm as possible to the most powerful nation the world has ever seen, a group of people who train for months or years before each attack, a group of people whose very lives depend upon concealment and a deep understanding of the forces arrayed against the, didn’t realize that their financial transactions could be scrutinized until the Times told them so. These would be quite stupid terrorists, then, which I suppose is good news: we should have them all rolled up in about a week.

But wait. 9/11 happened more than a week ago, didn’t it? Let’s see, 9/11 was in 2001 … carry the two … adjust for the leap year … Jesus Christ on a pogo stick! It’s been almost five years and we still haven’t caught Bin Laden! And al Qaeda managed to carry off large attacks in in Bali, Madrid, and London in that time! Wow, they must be some smart terrorists. I mean, otherwise, George Bush, who is the Greatest President Ever, the most Rootin-ist, Tootin-ist hombre west of Tehran and the Steely-ist Eyed Steely Eyed Missile Man to ever eye a missile, would have caught them by now.

Yeah, when you put it like that, that must be why George has to do things like attach signing statements to bills outlawing torture saying he doesn’t have to not torture if he wants to torture, and keep people locked away without trial fore ever and ever, and to run the illegal NSA wiretapping program, and claim that Article Two let’s him do whatever he wants when national security is on the line. It’s those darn terrorists — they are just so smart and clever and full of evil book learnin’ that George doesn’t have any choice but to regretfully, though with great determination and an ever so fetching flight suit, just has to use the Constitution as his own special toilet paper.

But wait. If the terrorists really were smart, then they would have guessed that their financial transactions were being watched. It’s hardly rocket science to figure out that the US, with three separate groups of people dedicated to spying, the FBI, and an entire Treasury Department filled with bankers and accountants and such would try to see where the money for bombs and flying lessons and take out was coming from.

But wait. The terrorists couldn’t be smart, because everyone knows that the Times committed treason by letting the terrorists know that the government was trying to trace their financial records.

But wait. They must be smart, otherwise George would have caught them by now.

But .. but… but… Look! Michael Moore is fat!

You know, when it’s put like that, doesn’t it just seem so compelling? Journofascism must be defeated.

And he’s also absolutely correct:

But no, that’s too much for our brave strong-on-security majority party. For the benefit of an election, they’ve decided to close ranks behind Bush’s Iraq policy. It’s not just that they’re abdicating their responsibility to our soldiers by refusing to demand change, they’re now actually engaged in full-throated cheerleading. And what makes this newfound enthusiasm particularly grotesque is that they now know that Bush’s policy is (and has been) a failure. But they cheer him on anyway, acknowledging nothing and ignoring reality regardless of the human costs.

And to make things even worse, we’re being subjected to this media/pundit narrative that (explicitly or implicitly) praises this “strong” strategy and condemns the Democrats for being divided. People at places like the Note (who Josh Marshall aptly described as imbeciles) are fawning and slobbering over Rove’s new strategy. Even Andrew Sullivan is falling prey.

Well let me tell you something as plainly as I can. If you think this way, you are fucking insane.

We need to be very clear on what exactly this great new strategy is. It is a conscious decision that human life means less than political power. It is a decision that extra dead Americans are worth less than jeopardizing an election by admitting a mistake. And what’s especially infuriating (and unforgiveable) is that the GOP officials know that the current policy isn’t working, but refuse to demand change regardless of the human costs. To use soldiers’ lives as political pawns in this way is the height of immorality.

Only the most mindless of reporters and pundits would see this strategy and put Democrats on the defensive about it. Rather than asking about the divisions in the party that is actually trying to force some kind of change, why not ask Republicans why they’re not demanding change? Closing ranks behind this policy is as absurd as it gets. Why isn’t that the story? Why aren’t those questions being asked?

Go read the whole thing.

Those few of you who are quasi-following the World Cup, as I have been, may be confused as to the “offsides” rule, that seems not to make any sense at all if you’re not familiar with it, and seems to be called anything that resembles “exciting” starts to happen, thus stopping the action.  Well, I’ve finally figured it out, and I’m going to try to explain it to you in plain English.

Basically, the rule is this:  no attacking player is ever allowed to get between the deepest defender and the goal while anyone else is controlling the ball.

What does that mean?  It means that it’s virtually always illegal to get “behind the defense.”  You are only allowed to do this if you yourself are controlling the ball, or if the ball is already on its way to you via a pass.

Let’s put this in (American) football terms.  In Super Bowl XXXI, in the first quarter, Brett Favre recognized that wide receiver Andre Rison was single-covered, and called an audible out of a running play, sending Rison on a “go” route.  Rison juked and faked out the New England corner, and would up running down the field, where Favre hit him in stride for a 54-yard touchdown.  It was an exciting play (especially for a Packers fan like me), and part of what NFL fans love about the game.

In soccer, a play such as this would have been illegal.  Why?  Because Rison got behind the defender before Favre threw the ball.  The whole play would be called back as “offsides.”Now I can see what motivates the soccer rule:  you don’t want an attacker just “camping out” around the goal, waiting to take a pass and knock it in; but the way the soccer rule is, you could be eighty feet from the goal and still be offsides.  Something akin to hockey’s blue line and its offsides rule would solve soccer’s problem, without killing the action, as soccer’s current rule does.  And in any case, it’s physiologically impossible to correctly call offsides:

The ability of the eye to change focus on a far object to one located less than 6 yards (meters) away is called eye accommodation. For most people, it takes around 600 milliseconds. Since the players and ball are spread all over the field, a referee almost always performs eye accommodation when making an offside call.

But according to Maruenda, the average running player can move roughly 5 feet (1.5 meters) in the time it takes for the ref’s eyes to refocus, so 600 milliseconds is just too slow.

To make an accurate call, “it is necessary to stop time and to locate all the players who take part in that game in zero milliseconds,” Maruenda told LiveScience. To watch the player making the pass, the player receiving the pass, the defender and the ball at the same time is just too much for our visual systems to handle, especially from the close-up view of the referee.

Now that I’ve finished my rant, here’s someone who explains it better.

UPDATE:  Commenter Kevin Newman points out an aspect I neglected to mention:  You can’t be offsides if the ball is in front of you.  So, for example, if your teammate is charging toward the net and has control of the ball, and you are also charging toward the net, you can get behind the deepest defender without being offsides, as long as the guy with the ball is ahead of you.  He can even pass the ball to you, as long as the pass is laterally or backward.  But if you get ahead him and he passes to you, you’re offsides.

Can we stop pretending that Bush actually believes in liberal democracy?

the court—even if it were to find unlawfulness upon in camera, ex parte review—could not then proceed to adjudicate the very question of awarding damages because to do so would confirm Plaintiffs’ allegations. (emphasis added)

Essentially the Government is saying that, even if the Judiciary found the wholesale surveillance program was illegal after reviewing secret evidence in chambers, the Court nevertheless would be powerless to proceed, because the Executive has asserted that the Program, which has been widely reported in every major news outlet, is nevertheless still such a secret that the Judiciary (a co-equal branch under the Constitution) cannot acknowledge its existence by ruling against it. In short, the Government asserts that AT&T and the Executive can break the laws crafted by Congress, and there is nothing the Judiciary can do about it.

Kings, even ones we elect, are a bad idea. Without accountability, without having to explain themselves to people outside of their circle, leaders and organizations get stupid. They lose touch with reality, forget the value of empiricism, and excuse behavior in themselves that they would justifiably castigate others for. Kings, no matter what their intentions, are always in danger of believing too much in themselves. A spoiled, pampered, arrogant, allergic-to-responsibility popinjay like Bush is almost guaranteed to fail spectacularly without someone looking over his shoulder. A President like Bush is why our Founders set up a republic with three branches equal in power and responsibility, but the principle is the same whether we have a man manifestly unfit for the office or a Lincoln. Accountability is the first defender of liberty and safety.

The real danger is that Bush will get away with it, and that his successors will get away with also. Authoritarianism can be a tempting vice, and one hard to break once it is indulged in. If these arguments are allowed to take hold, if the radical notion that an open ended, undeclared “war” on a nebulous enemy with indefinable victory conditions represents a condition that allows the shredding of the Constitution, then other Presidents will use them to avoid accountability. When that comes to pass, the fundamental nature of our Republic will change from one of liberty to one of authoritarianism. And I don’t know how we would ever change it back.

The first round isn’t even over yet, and there have already been five 0-0 draws.  Five matches in which nobody scored.  In the Argentina-Netherlands match, there were a total of six shots on goal in the match (three a side).  For those keeping score at home, that’s one shot on goal every fifteen minutes (and that’s only if you ignore “stoppage time”).  There were nineteen total shots taken, if you include the thirteen that weren’t on goal.  So barely over one shot every five minutes, on average.   When Americans complain that “nothing happens” in a soccer match, this is exactly what we’re talking about.

While I’m on this rant, there were six 1-0 matches, three 1:1 draws (nine total draws), and fourteen other shutouts (twenty total shutouts if you count the 1-0 matches).  So out of forty matches played, in 25 of them, at least one team failed to score at all.  That’s a staggering 62.5%!  (By way of comparison, there were fifteen baseball games today, and two of them were shutouts; in all but 13.3% of the games, fans of either team had at least something to cheer for; and baseball isn’t exactly known for being the most exciting sport in the world…)

Contrary to what you commonly hear, it’s not just scoring that we like.  We like things happening.  That doesn’t have to mean a score, it can mean a decent attack, a shot, a scoring chance, a big play, whatever.  Incessant passing and jockeying for position with neither team truly attacking or defending does not constitute “something happening.”  Imagine what basketball would be like if 85% or more of a game was spent at center court, with teams just passing the ball around.  And there’s no shot clock.  Ugh.

So I think the appropriate question isn’t why the US doesn’t care about soccer, but why the rest of the world does care.  What exactly are you watching?

On a side note, I asked a Canadian coworker, and she tells me that Canadians don’t give a shit “aboat” soccer, either.

If you’re looking for a purebred Boxer pup, but want to do a rescue rather than buy from a backyard breeder, now’s your big chance:

!!!URGENT!!!!
BOXAR CONTINUES TO BE IN “PLEADING MODE”.  AS THEY SAY, WHEN IT RAINS, IT POURS.  MEET HILDE AND HER PUPS.  THEY WERE STRAYS.  POOR HILDE APPEARS TO HAVE RAISED THESE PUPPIES ALL ALONE.  SHE SUFFERS FROM A SNAKEBITE TO HER LEG, DEMODEX MANGE AND HEARTWORMS.  OUR VET ADVISED US TO TAKE THE PUPS AWAY FROM HER AS SHE CANNOT CONTINUE TO CARE FOR THEM IN HER CONDITION.  THE PUPS ARE OLD ENOUGH AND CAN EAT ON THEIR OWN.  BUT WE ARE STILL IN NEED OF HELP TO PAY OUR MOUNTING VET AND BOARDING FEES.  IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DONATE, YOU CAN DO SO IN EITHER OF TWO WAYS:  YOU CAN CLICK ON THE PAYPAL BUTTON IN THE LOWER, LEFT COLUMN OR YOU CAN MAIL A CHECK TO BOXAR RESCUE, POB 831, CARLISLE, AR  72024

Please keep in mind our need for foster homes.  Our boarding fees are out of hand and we are in need of loving homes for our Boxers to stay until their adoptive families come along.  Please consider taking a needy Boxer into your home.

 BoxAR Rescue is a good organization.  Our second dog came from them, and they’re top shelf.  They screen you before they even show you the dogs, they follow up, and they require you to neuter/spay (part of a contract you have to sign).

Jon Stewart:

The country is run by extremists because moderates have shit to do.

Stephen Colbert:

Mentioning Jesus in your speech?  That’s small government.  Doing what Jesus asks?  That’s big government.

I know I am not supposed to use words like “wrong” or “evil” to describe anything done by Bush or Republicans in general. Using such language forever damns me to the Ancient Order of the Shrill, forever tainted as unserious and unfit for polite company. But this, this is evil:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

… Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. “I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, “thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target.” And so, Suskind writes, “the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.”

I could point out how this incident perfectly encapsulates the Bush Administration’s “war” on terror: they care more about image than substance, more about appearing tough than being tough, more about justifying their assault on the Constitution than protecting American values. But what Bush allegedly did is, for lack of a polite term, evil. In order to create the appearance of success, Bush publicly inflated the value of a prisoner beyond all bounds of reason. And then, in order to protect his original lie, he suggested that a mentally retarded person be tortured when he had been told that the person was useless as an asset. The person eventually told his interrogators what he wanted to hear and the Bush Administration wasted the time and money of the country’s front line defenses against terrorism. All for the sake of creating the appearance that Bush’s plans were actually effective.

What Bush did was more than wrong, more than simply un-American. What Bush did, at the risk of committing the horrible faux paus of being shrill, was evil. Good men don’t lie to make themselves look better. Good men don’t put the lives of the people they have accepted responsibility for at risk in order to protect their own image. And good men don’t suggest that they would like to see the mentally ill tortured to protect themselves from having to admit a mistake.

Bush once famously said that Jesus was his favorite philosopher. One wonders where in the philosophy of Jesus Christ Bush found justifications for his actions.

• Did you ever have that day where you thought to yourself, “Gee, I can’t remember the last time I changed my HVAC filter?”  I had that day on Friday, and apparently it had been quite some time.  Yuk.
• Saw a funny bumper sticker today.  It said “Pacifism Kicks Ass.”
• While I’m glad the Miami Heat finished off the Dallas Mavericks (I like Dwayne Wade, and Dallas is, after all, in Texas), I just can’t bring myself to care much about the NBA.
• Despite missing an extra point, Chicago still won by two touchdowns.
• If you ever get the urge to bake chocolate chip cookies when it’s 95 degrees outside, don’t.  At least, not unless you want to sweat like a pig.
• In person, AlphaPatriot comes across as a likeable, somewhat reasonable guy.  So why is it that he comes across as a bat-shit crazy Kool-Aid drinker on his blog?
• So far, two people have come out and said they think that Day By Day is at least sometimes funny.  Neither has provided any physical evidence of this, however.
• Does anyone else miss arcade-style games?  It seems that most PC games that come out these days are the kind that you need to dedicate two months of your life to playing.  What’s wrong with a simple running-and-jumping game, or an “if it moves, shoot it” game that you can learn to play in two minutes, and knock off a quick game in five or ten?  And 3-D first-person shooter, my ass.  Give me a good old fashioned 2-D third-person shooter any day.  (And two buttons is the limit!)  My all-time favorites are 1942 and Sky Shark and Twin Cobra and Gladiator and Mr. Do and Xenophobe and Prince of Persia.  And if you want to go old(er)-school, Miner 2049er and Galaga and Montezuma’s Revenge.  And who could forget Rick Dangerous?  Ahh, the good old days!

I’ve been wondering:  Is it just the US who doesn’t give a shit about soccer (football), or are the Canadians lethargic, too?

Well, it’s over. The Carolina Hurricanes have won the Stanley Cup, taking Game 7 by a 3-1 final. Actually, it was closer than that, with Carolina scoring a late empty-net goal to seal it. But now that the season is over, here are some thoughts:

• When Dwayne Roloson went down in Game 1 of the finals, I was ready to leave the Oilers for dead. And when they lost Game 2 in a blowout, nothing changed my mind. But a funny thing happened on the way to me being wrong as usual: Jussi Markkanen was solid in net, and the Oilers defense clamped played well enough so that he didn’t have to be spectacular.
• Continuing on that train of thought, I expected the Edmonoton goaltending situation to be the story of the series. Instead, it was their power play, or more accurately, the total absence of their power play. The biggest stat you need to know: Edmonton was 0-for-5 on the two-man advantage in the series. Next most important stat: Carolina scored 9 power play goals in the series compared to Edmonton’s 5 (and three of those came in the blowout game 6). Bottom line: Carolina’s power play was good, and Edmonton’s wasn’t.
• Even if the Hurricanes had lost Game 7, I still think the Conn Smythe goes to Cam Ward. For my money, the next-most-valuable player on the Hurricanes was Eric Staal. For all the talk that Rod Brind’Amour received, I think Staal proved more valuable. When Staal had a good game, so did the ‘Canes. When he didn’t they didn’t. And I think Staal played better on the road than Brind’Amour did. Then again, this opinion is tainted by the fact that I have an irrational hatred of Rod Brind’Amour.
• Cam Ward is only 22 years old. I have socks older than Cam Ward, and he’s already hoisting the cup. Life’s not fair!
• I don’t think there’s any doubt that the most valuable player in the playoffs for the Oilers was Fernando Pisani. He’s the goals leader in the playoffs, and scored a key third-period goal in Game 7 to get his team within striking distance and keep the game interesting. My first runner-up for Oilers MVP is Chris Pronger. I don’t think there’s a harder-working player in hockey.
• Speaking of Pronger, watching him play, all I could think was “Is that what a quality blue-liner looks like?” As a Toronto Maple Leafs fan for the last dozen years or so, I’d never seen one before.
• I would have set aside my hatred for Rod Brind’Amour, and he would have become one of my favorite players, if only he had taken the Stanley Cup from NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and promptly beaten him over the head with it.
• I think this series thoroughly vanquished the notion that calling the rules tightly would take the hitting out of hockey.  This was a remarkably physical series, and for the most part, it wasn’t because the refs swallowed their whistles.  A lot of good, clean hitting.
• This (Carolina win) is entirely Kevin’s fault, by the way. As a former Hartford Whalers fan, Kevin would have rather seen Satan hoist the cup than the Hurricanes. But Kevin has a lot of negative Sports Karma coming, with his Red Sox and White Sox winning the last two World Series.
• Fun Fact: The RBC Center (formerly the “Raleigh Entertainment and Sports Arena”) where the cup was won tonight was also the first place I ever saw an NHL game in person. It was December 18, 1999, and the Hurricanes beat the even-more-evil Atlanta Thrashers 4-2. I was there being schmoozed by a company that was trying to hire me, but said company forget to schedule any actual employees to go to the game with us; so my wife and I got free blue line seats to an NHL game, with no boring shop talk. Sweet! OK, it’s not that fun a fact, but it was fun for me, and that’s what’s important (to me).
• I thought the officiating in the series was mostly very good and very tight, but it seemed to me that in games 6 and 7, the officials swallowed their whistles a bit, mostly in ways that benefited the Oilers.
• In games 3, 4, and 6, in Edmonton, the crowd sang along politely with the American national anthem, and enthusiastically with the Canadian anthem. (In fact, the singer only sang the first line of O Canada and let the crowd to the rest). I was upset with NBC for not showing how the Raleigh crowd responded in Game 5, but in Game 7, they showed it, and the Raleigh crowd answered nicely, singing along politely with the Canadian anthem, and somewhat enthusiastically with The Star Spangled Banner. Kudos to them, especially since our anthem is virtually impossible to sing. As a side note, I felt bad for the girl they had singing the anthems tonight — she was obviously nervous, her timing was off, and she was flat on several occasions.
• I do think, however, that just to even the odds, the Canadian fans should be required to sing those few lines in the middle of O Canada in French.
• NBC took some crap for their coverage, but on the whole I thought it was very good. Unlike some, I liked the shift timers they sometimes showed, especially when they showed that someone had just changed onto the ice off-camera, or when someone was having a very long shift. And while die-hard hockey fans may have been annoyed at the lengths at which color analyst John Davidson explained rules and rulings, I thought it was great, especially if hockey wants to expand its fan base.

Well, that’s about it for now. Hockey’s over, basketball has at most two games left, and pretty soon, baseball will have the American sports landscape all to itself. Well, there’s some kind of something-or-other cup thingie going on over in Germany somewhere, that some folks seem to care about, but I wouldn’t know anything about that…

George Bush’s decline in speaking skills, and apparent ability to organize his own thinking, have often been commented on. Observers who knew him say he didn’t always sound like a complete idiot in public. But this is pretty staggering: a direct comparison of Bush speaking in a gubernatorial debate in Texas 10 years ago, and in a debate against Kerry just two years ago. Amazingly, Bush was cogent and grammatical during the Texas campaign - but we all know what he sounds like today. The difference, when you see it, is shocking - and, as the YouTube video points out, very worrisome.

Check it out.

And . . . take precautions.
Hat tip: Lindsay at Majikthise.

This is a very good book. Anyone who reads blogs is probably not going to be too surprised by anything in this book, but the book has value nonetheless. The sheer weight of the evidence is frankly impressive: Boehlert has documented the very large disparity between the treatment of the Clinton White House and the treatment of the Bush White House by the mainstream press. Most of this I already knew, in the sense that I already knew that water is wet before I first tried to learn to swim. In the same fashion that being tossed into a lake (my Grandmother was a bit old fashioned in her methods. Fortunately for me, my Father was in the Coast Guard …) impressed upon me the physical reality of water, reading Lapdogs impresses upon the reader the physical reality, the monumental chasm, that is the difference in treatment between the Clinton and Bush Administration in the press.

This book is not a rant. Boehlert’s style can almost be said to be clinical. He makes no value judgments. He does not pretend to understand the hearts of the writers and television presenters whose work he critiques. He does, form time to time, indulge in some dry sarcasm. But the sarcasm is well earned and Boehlert is never unfair. The attacks on the work, not on the people, and by the time he has finished skewering the work, you feel that he is being overly-kind. After reading about the people at the Note and the chapter on the disgraceful job the press did with the Swift Boat liars you are left whishing that sarcasm could leave welts.

If you have been paying attention, as I said, there is very little new here. But it is an impressive, readable, and comprehensive look at the behavior of the press over the last decade and a half. If you have any interest in history, politics, or the media, this book is one you should have.

Firedoglake is having a discussion on it now.

A small one, mind you, but one nonetheless.

We lost power for about 16 hours over last night and this morning. There have been several thunderstorms over the last two days, including a bad one last evening. We have a small inflatable pool in the back yard and the kids were out in it. My wife came in from the backyard (I was doing dishes) and told me to help get the kids: the sky was looking dangerous. It had turned green and my wife, something of a weather geek, thought she saw a wall cloud. Not five seconds after we had the kids in, my wife tells me to take them to the hallway: she thought she saw a wall of white moving across the street. The power died just then, and we hustled the kids into the one place in the house that doesn’t have an outside wall. After a couple of minutes, the sky lightened and the wind slacked, so my wife went to check. It seemed as if everything was okay. Since the power was out, we went out to run a few errands hoping, vainly as it turned out, that by the time we got back power would be restored. Traffic in one direction had stopped, and the sub-division’s streets were littered with branches and small trees. But since there had been no sirens or tornado alerts, we wrote it off to straight line winds.

Just now, my wife went to look at the storm damage reports from the National Weather service and read this:

A tornado touched down just south of ******* last evening.

A local storm survey team inspected damage areas in eastern ****** County this morning. The team found evidence of a F1 damage tornado along with straight line wind damage. The primary damage from the tornado was to a residential subdivision. The F1 damage tornado touched down near **** **** Cove in the ****** subdivision off ****** Road around 6:35 CDT. This is just south of hwy ** and teh town of ******* THe tornado then tracked northeast across ***** drive and then lifted. The tornado track was about 500 yards in length and about 50 yards wide. In addition to the damage from the tornado itself there was also straight line wind damage in the vicinity. About 20 homes in the ****** subdivision were damaged including some with roofs partially ripped off.

Moral of the story? Take those severe weather warnings seriously. There were no tornado alerts and no warning sirens at all last evening, and yet we had a tornado touchdown just down the block.

Glenn Greenwald:

It really is striking how so many war advocates insist that all sorts of military Generals and combat veterans are weak, spineless, and cowardly, and whose lack of fortitude aids our enemies. All of that is in contrast, of course, to the bravery and towering resolve of the war advocates, who alone are strong and brave enough to stand tall against our enemies, both foreign and domestic. Nobody has waged as vicious and limitless attacks on the character, integrity and bravery of American veterans and soldiers as the war proponents looking for people to blame for their own shortcomings and failures.

Runner up, our own KTK, who, in response to this:

“A longtime friend of mine is married to a doctor who also performs abortions. At the dinner table one recent evening, their 9-year-old son — having heard a word whose meaning he didn’t know — asked, “What is an abortion?” His mother, choosing her words carefully, described the procedure in simple terms. “But,” said her son, “that means killing the baby.” The mother then explained that there are certain months during which an abortion cannot be performed, with very few exceptions. The 9-year-old shook his head. “But,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what month. It still means killing the babies.”

– Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff.

…says this:

Nat Henthoff’s admission that his thinking about women’s freedom and autonomy is on the level of that of a 9-year-old boy who doesn’t even know what the word “abortion” means is a welcome clarification.

Ouch!

I’m just going to say it: I don’t find Day By Day the slightest bit funny. And no, it’s not because I’m some sort of humorless liberal prick who can only laugh when it’s conservatives who are being made fun of. So it’s not because it’s conservative that I don’t find it funny. It’s because it’s not the least bit funny. Maybe it’s not supposed to be funny. Maybe it’s supposed to be a conservative version of This Modern World, which more intended as a soapbox than as anything resembling humor. But I often hear people refer to Day By Day as “funny,” and I just don’t get that. (And, frankly, I don’t even think Day By Day is nearly as biting in its satire as, say, Doonesbury or This Modern World, but that part may well be colored by my liberal slant.)

If you want a taste of conservative humor that’s actually funny, try to find a rerun of the short-lived This Just In (or any of Steve Marmel’s stand-up), or in many cases Mind of Mencia or, of course, South Park. But Day By Day? I just don’t get it.

Am I alone here?

UPDATE: Commenter Brooklynite points me to these, the last of which actually is pretty funny.   And this one’s pretty good, too.

Jon Stewart:

You weren’t even in the real Baghdad, you were in the Green Zone.  That’s like going to the Olive Garden and saying you’ve been to Italy.

Ha!