Blank Check

One year ago today, the House and Senate voted to give President Bush blank check authority to use military force against Iraq. In infamous Harper's Index fashion, the Dean for America campaign gives us the last year by the numbers. It's not a pretty picture, and it's not getting any better. Is Bush PR spinning right out of orbit? Um, yeah, that happened several years ago, but finally people are starting to notice.

In the race to decide who's going to replace Bush, the Kerry campaign is rumored to be having troubles, and the trouble in the Clark campaign is more than a rumor. Those links come from Scripting News, where Dave Winer is trying to get the campaigns to blog. I think it's a great idea.

Posted 06:17 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004 general politics

R.I.P. Neil Postman

Farewell to Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death (among other things). The book has been sitting on my shelf for years; I bought it simply because it had such an incredible title and because I'd seen it mentioned in so many other books. Judging from the Forward, now might be a very good time to dig it out. Comparing Aldus Huxley's Brave New World to Orwell's 1984, Postman wrote:

Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

Postman claimed Amusing Ourselves to Death was "about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right." It's definitely a thesis worth re-examining in light of, oh, I don't know, the events of the last 50 years or so.

UPDATE: Another Postman tribute.

Posted 05:54 AM | Comments (2) | life generally