For the ultimate proof that mainstream media is both incredibly stupid and biased(except FoxNews -- they're just biased) go here for an incredibly simple and definitive proof that CBS accepted a document obviously produced in Word as as a genuine document produced 32 years ago.
Their only explanation...it's real, trust us.
Try KCRW, an NPR affiliate out of SoCal. More specifically, try Morning Becomes Eclectic, a show on KCRW. I just finished listening to a live performance by My Morning Jacket, from Louisville, KY. How do they sound, you ask? Well, they set up their recording studio in a grain silo, so in a word, big. Now I'm listening to Cat Power for the first time. Viva la musica!
UPDATE: I just got finished listening to the Eels, now I'm on to Belle & Sebastian... oh, and ignore that comment.
I have a couple of comments. First, Napolean Dynamite is a really good movie...probably the best that I know of. Everyone should see it many times. Napolean has lots of skills, like drawing cool warriors, nun-chucks, bow-staff, all that.
Second, I'm trying to decide if I should stay in my Masters of Divinity program and try to be a Unitarian Universalist pastor, or drop out and go to IU instead to study public policy, I guess with the goal of some career in foreign policy. I like theology, philosophy, ethics, spirituality, etc. Thinking seriously about those things has pretty much been my bag for a long time, and I've been thinking about religious leadership for a long time too. But, I also have lots and lots of reservations about Unitarian Universalism, which at best is a creedless community that fosters and supports each individual's search for truth and meaning and at worst is a spiritually shallow club for rich, white, liberal self-absorption and self-congratulation that doesn't seem to recognize its own impotence in American culture, both religiously and politically. But, since I'm not Christian (at least not enough to feel comfortable in a Christian organization) or Jewish or Muslim or any other established tradition, UU is really all there is left.
Foreign Policy seems cool, because the U.S. government is the most powerful force on earth, and if I could help use that power to help poor and repressive countries develop economically and politically, or to intervene in horrible situations like Sudan, Rawanda, Bosnia, etc, that would be cool. I could do a lot more good than I would trying to connect some spoiled woman to her inner-goddess, or even in espousing some issue. (Hey UU's, it's great that you support gay marriage. Guess what? Nobody in Washington gives a shit what you think, cause there's only 250,000 of you in the world!) On the other hand, I'd probably have to deal with a lot of government bullshit, ithe biggest being that I'd have to support policies that I disagreed with.
Whatever. Somebody tell me what to do.
Joe
This year, as in the past, Republicans will portray us Democrats as embittered academics, desiccated Unitarians, whacked-out hippies and communards, people who talk to telephone poles, the party of the Deadheads.
Garrison, you make it too easy.
I have no idea what I'm doing right now.
Anyway, I have to tip my hat to W. He was pretty impressive last night. I think he even teared up a bit when he was talking about dead vets and Sept. 11 families. Kerry really needs to get his ass in gear.
On a side note, I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I'm a liberal republican instead of a moderate democrat. I'm pro-life, ambivalent about guns, relatively pro free-trade (with some reservations). On the other hand, I want all the gay folks to get married if they want to. On Iraq, I'm pissed that the country was manipulated and lied to, but I'm not sure if the war was good or bad in an objective, utilitarian sense. I think we should cooperate with other countries in our foreign policy, and I think we should concentrate more on global economic development and education rather than blowing up terrorists. That being said, I also want to blow Osama Bin Laden's balls off, and we need to do something about North Korea and Iran, especially Iran.
I like the idea of job training instead of complete welfare.
Then I have issues that neither party supports. Mainly drug policy reform. And I have issues that I think are important, but that I have no idea what to do about.
Maybe I'm a compassionate libertarian liberal neo-con wilsonian internationalist. Not to mention being an existentialist neo-orthodox mystic theist.
Joe
This guy is one of my favorite political writers around these days and this post, one of several made after a month long hiatus, deserves a look. As mentioned last night, I'm fully prepared to no longer pay attention to this Swiftvet business, and in an effort to do so this caught my eye. Then when readying myself for another day at work I found that the world is apparently a safer place these days, in terms of large scale conflict anyway. Funny that, I'll have to blame my agoraphobia on something else, but good to know.
Let's get entranced by their... I'm watching the closing ceremonies for the Olympics. I will probably remember this for the gypsies running around behind the pick-up filled with watermelons and the clowny-guy on the bike dragging cans.
Oh my. Jeff Jarvis from BuzzMachine makes a good point... "It's a decent debate [referring to a discussion on his site regarding healthcare]. I said I hoped that we could devote our breath and bandwidth to something useful, like the healthcare debate, instead of useless, like the Swifties and the Mooreites, and, voila, given a real subject that really matters there is real debate. I'm relieved."
David Brooks has this long and very worth-while piece from the NYT Magazine about the evolution of conservatism.
I frankly have heard enough of and from the swifties to make some decisions. I don't appreciate how the parties involved posed and answered questions. Spinsanity offers some analysis (that seems strong) how both of these sets of folks are being dishonest enough to compromise the integrity of their message. And I'd like to see a more comprehensive answer to some of the legitimate questions facing Kerry, i.e., what's up with this "V" stuff and how much hype is too much?
I've got enough to work with in order to decide, lets get to some substantive debate. Here's a good segway: Which one of these jokers is going to make a move at our rights to say what we want, when we want, and how we want? This is the kind of stuff I want deciding the election, sure the rest of it (the character stuff for example) all enters into the equation, but I want what truly matters to take take precedence in forming the debate.
Proof from the Kerry camp that Bush is really in control of the Swift Vets and....Kevin Bacon
At this point I think most open minded people believe that neither Kerry nor the Swift Vets recollections of Kerry’s brief period in Vietnam are entirely accurate. Time may reveal one or the other as having more veracity, but it seems unlikely either side will be able to completely discredit the other within the timeframe of this election. While this means it’s unlikely the Swift Vets will be able to turn Kerry’s military service into a negative, it does effectively neutralize the “crown jewel” issue for the Kerry Campaign. Without his Vietnam achievements, Kerry is little more than a uniquely unaccomplished 4 term Democratic Senator from a particularly Democrat friendly state who knows how to speak French and windsurf. This will force him to run on the issues and his legislative record which for a Senator who doesn’t seem to believe in anything other than John Forbes Kerry will make it difficult to counter a Bush campaign that seems to have regained its momentum. The completely foreseeable, preventable Dukakis-Snoopy/Dean-Scream moment for this campaign may have been during the Democratic convention when “Lieutenant Kerry report[ed] for Duty”. It was Kerry’s compulsion for self-aggrandizement that made it inevitable.
Neal Stephenson, author of several science fiction-ish opus's as quoted in Locus Magazine: “The analogy (which I've used a lot before) is to the electric guitar. Thomas Edison made electricity into a consumer product and developed the light bulb, probably anticipated washing machines and stuff, but he sure didn't anticipate the electric guitar! That was far too weird of an idea. No one could have predicted that the descendants of slaves could have adopted this and come up with what would become the dominant form of popular music in the whole world. That's the kind of thing real societies do with real technology. One of the things [William] Gibson has achieved is that he put some of that into his world. We've got information technology. How is it going to be used, not just by engineers who design products but by regular people who pick this stuff up and turn it to their own weird ends? Spam is another thing kind of like the electric guitar, though it's much darker, less palatable. Clearly the people who originated the technology never in their wildest dreams could have imagined that everyone on Earth who has e-mail would get 30 penis enlargement advertisements a day!”
Similarly we have the blogosphere (I find that term kinda goofy, but 'in the parlance of our times'...) as part of the internet, morphing from your average weblog/online diary sort of thing to a tool that seems to be taking on that somewhat antiquated/monolithic form of information distribution, in the "media". The Belmont Club makes an apt comparison: "Yet for good or ill, the genie is out of the bottle. Before the Gutenberg printing press men knew the contents of the Bible solely through the prism of the professional clergy, who could alone afford the expensively hand copied books and who exclusively interpreted it. But when technology made books widely available, men could read the sacred texts for themselves and form their own opinions. And the world was never the same again."
For most of us Bloggin' is pretty much a really fast and convient way to get ideas out of our heads so they can play with others. Now I'm talking to the contributers mostly, but this should go for everyone. If you've got a story, tell it. If you have a thought or point of view you want to vet, get it up here and see what happens. In the words of the immortal Lucas of "Lucas with the Lid off" fame: "Whatever bubbles, bubbles up". One way or another this blog should meet it's weird (bubbly) end.
I would really like Kerry's people to come out with something as persuasive as this or this (relates to most recent SwiftVet ad), instead of layering on equally annoying counter-offensives that advocate the numbing of first amendment rights.
But then there are quibbles with the factchecking so who knows? In the end it seems that this bit should be a campaign aside, yes Kerry is staking his relevancy as candidate on his war record, but so is Bush. Which of these wars should be more important now?
Here is a take on the whole Swiftboatvet's ad campaign. It seems reasonable to say that not all of the groups out there creating partisan ads are going about them the same way and the only spots that should carry weight are those that actually make it to TV, their intended destination. If that is the standard (I'm open to argument), Moveon.org doesn't share that much in common with the swifties aside from creating partisan ads. However a good portion of this mess could be solved by Kerry actually releasing his full records
So I just got back from jogging for the second time this week. I've tried running before but have never been able to make it beyond one outing. Hopefully this time will be different since my motivation has changed. In the past my motivation to run was primarily physique-focused, while this time it's more you-better-stop-smoking-and-start-exercising-or-you'll-fucking-die-focused. Wish me luck.
This is also my first attempt at a blog--another thing which I'd like to do more regularly. Aren't you proud of me Ben?
This will be my first attempt at a bonifide blog. With that I will probably take my time in determining what's worth writing about, ideally there will be more voices present here than just me, but regardless, I'm excited to see what this evolves into. So if you have something to say, please do. I have no intentions of censoring what appears here, but if you decide to be particularly vile or disrespectful I reserve the right to boot. Enjoy...
