Kerry not Scary

For a good number of people, it's really not hard to figure out why to vote against Bush. For example, here are 100 reasons and Bush by the Numbers has more, just for a start. But some people seem to have greater trouble finding reasons to vote for Kerry (rather than simply against Bush). If you're among those, I suggest you watch “Going Upriver”, a short documentary about Kerry's service in Vietnam and his role in the anti-war movement when he returned to the U.s. The film is available to download from Internet Vets for Truth, or you should be able to find it at your local movie rental shop. I watched it last night and was extremely impressed with the courage Kerry showed both in going to Vietnam and in trying to end American involvement there. The film shows us a Kerry who was never really radical in any way. He went to Vietnam because he thought it was the right thing to do to serve his country. While there, he learned that wasn't necessarily so. He saw lots of senseless death. He came back to the U.S. and acted very reasonably and deliberately, and with restraint and caution, to convince U.S. people and leaders to end American involvement in Vietnam. Apart from “Going Upriver” and Kerry's Vietnam-related record, you'll find more reasons to vote for Kerry if you read the Rude Pundit's endorsement, and look at Kerry's long record of support for progressive issues. Of course, as Time wrote:

Friends and enemies alike can find in his 19 years and 6,500 votes in the Senate whatever they are looking for: bold words that suggest fresh ideas but a lack of follow-through that suggests political caution; shifting positions on education, welfare and affirmative action that show either a capacity for growth or an absence of core beliefs.

Perhaps that's why the Kerry campaign has done such a poor job of using that record to Kerry's advantage. Other people have made important distinctions between the candidates' positions, and it's not hard to find summaries of where Kerry stands. In this comment thread on Three Years of Hell, someone named Martin argues that what defines Kerry is a continuous effort to do the right thing, even when it's unpopular:

John Kerry spent twenty years in the senate, and while he was there he did his damndest to make each vote count. This has got him attacked for flip flopping, but I'm telling you that those votes were about trying to do the right thing, each time even when it didn't matter. He wasn't voting against weapon systems, he was voting against pork. He wasn't voting against $87 billion for the troops, he was voting against $87 billion without a budget or a plan attatched. Things in retrospect that seem like a good idea. Those votes are hard to explain on the campaign trail, but I don't care. This was a guy who tried to do the right thing.

The rest of Martin's brief comments are worth reading as a concise list of reasons to vote for Kerry. As the Bush campaign points out, Kerry has a “liberal” record. Bush wants you to think that's a bad thing, but I'd encourage you to look past the label and the rhetoric. Kerry has shown good judgment, real concern for the environment, for the poor, for promoting peaceful and mutually beneficial solutions to both America's problems and those of the larger world. My read of Kerry's record shows someone who has always been drawn to big ideals, and who has had impressive successes and failures in pursuing those ideals. Kerry has spent his life working to make the world a safer, more peaceful, more fair and equal place for everyone. He's also frequently focused on the responsibilities of elected representatives to their people; time and again he's investigated and tried to end corruption, abuses of power, injustices perpetrated by leaders but paid for by the powerless. If you find that record objectionable, by all means, vote for someone else. But if that sounds more like the goals and values and priorities of the country you'd like to live in, vote for Kerry.

Posted 09:54 AM | Comments (4) | election 2004

Osama bin unforgotten

Top of the news is the Osama video. His major point? We don't hate freedom, we want to be free:

“Your security is not in the hands of (Democratic candidate John) Kerry or Bush or al-Qaida. Your security is in your own hands,” bin Laden said. “To the U.S. people, my talk is to you about the best way to avoid another disaster,” he said. “I tell you: security is an important element of human life and free people do not give up their security.” “If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we didn't attack Sweden, for example. It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls, like those of the 19 blessed ones,” he said, referring to the 19 hijackers. “We fought you because we are free .. and want to regain freedom for our nation. As you undermine our security we undermine yours.”

Of course, he has a point, and neither candidate is really addressing his complaints; neither seems able to say anything other than “terrorism bad.” But regardless of the content of Bin Laden's message, I agree with Dave Winer about how the pundits are spinning this—the bias for Bush is incredible. But even NPR's Daniel Schorr took that spin (that the video helps Bush more than Kerry), and he's usually fairly critical on these things. Sorry, but the fact that Osama's still free to release videos whenever he wants only means Bush's much-vaunted “war on terror” has failed in major ways. Call that spin if you want, but that's how I see it. Elsewhere in the election-related grab bag: Bush's war has killed over 100,000 Iraqi civilians, a large majority of them the result of coalition airstrikes. Here's an enblogment for Kerry. The Electoral College Meta-Analysis provides yet another way to speculate about how the vote might go. [link via John's Ponderings] along with Electoral College Predictions (which has shifted decisively for Bush today) this seems a good way to sort through the polling madness. The Pentagon is saying maybe the military destroyed and/or moved some of the munitions that are missing from Al Qaqaa. Hmm. John Stewart made an excellent point the ohter night on The Daily Show when he ran a clip of Bush saying this about the Al Qaqaa munitions:

[A] political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not the person you want as the Commander-in-Chief.

All Stewart had to say is, “that's true.” Can you say Iraq, WMD, links to Al Qaeda, and more? I knew you could! In more good news for Bush, imaging experts confirm, the Bush Bulge was not bad tailoring. Jesse Ventura is campaigning for Kerry. He's not pulling any punches:

“To me, a president should not put his personal spiritual beliefs in front of science. If we had that type of attitude, we'd probably still have polio today, if we had beliefs that didn't allow scientific discovery. Now, people may say you're not very religious -- yes, I am. I believe God gave me a brain to use,” Ventura said. Ventura also criticized Bush for the growing federal deficit, saying Bush paid for tax cuts by racking up debt on the nation's credit card. And he had harsh words for the Bush administration's handling of the war in Iraq. Ventura says Bush has alienated the rest of the world, and the war has not made the U.S. safer. He says Bush invaded Iraq when he should have been focusing on Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. “I would have hunted down Osama Bin Laden 'til he was dead, before I would have ever entertained anything about Iraq. My parents taught me (to) finish the job at hand, finish the job you got in front of you, before you worry about the other job down the road,” he said. Ventura says leaders shouldn't ask troops to do something they didn't do themselves. He says Bush did not serve with honor when he was in the National Guard, and received preferential treatment.

Sounds like Ventura might like Internet Vets for Truth. So is anyone polling whether Americans think this election will be over next Wednesday? I'm predicting a decisive win for Kerry with 294 electoral votes. In my world he gets Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, and all the other states he's basically wrapped up. What's your prediction?

Posted 10:36 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Holding Pattern

Is anything happening with this election? We wait wait wait for next Tuesday. Meanwhile... A Minneapolis ABC affiliate broke big news yesterday, saying it had pictures of the weapons at Al Qaqaa that were after the Americans moved in there. The NY Times has picked up the story. Again, I don't see that it matters whether the weapons were there when U.S. forces arrived. Sure, it's worse if they were, but the fact that the weapons are missing is what's telling as far as this administration's priorities and lack of planning. Pushing to decrease the third-party factor, a group of international Greens implore Americans to vote for Kerry, and basically sum up the position of many Kerry voters:

The Bush administration has acted with a unilateralism that discounts the opinions of, and demeans the humanity of, non-Western peoples. Though John Kerry is far from the ideal candidate, he will in most respects be a significant improvement to Bush.

Speaking of third parties, NPR is airing part of an interview w/George Bush 41 (the former president) where he says third parties always fizzle "and rightly so," as if the fact that third parties have never achieved strong support in the U.S. is some sign that people prefer a two-party system or that the two-party system is better. Bollocks! When you've got two parties w/massive organization and resources combining to marginalize and destroy third parties, the fact that no third ever grows very large shows nothing more than that the two existing parties don't want any competition. Come on, do you really want to vote for this guy? And since it's almost Halloween: Did you ever consider carving your pumpkin with a Dremel tool? They even provide patterns, but these are still better, I think.

Posted 09:12 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Spin Spin Sugar

I admit it. The Bush team is good at what it does, and if there's one thing this administration has done a lot of, it's spinning. The Bush tactic, which is probably really the Rove tactic, seems to be to know your own weaknesses well enough to pin them on your opponent. IOW, accuse your opponent of doing exactly what you're doing. That's what Bush is doing with the spin on the 380 tons of missing munitions—he's making wild claims by accusing Kerry of making wild claims. He's also saying anything to get elected by saying that Kerry will say anything to get elected. Talking Points Memo has the comments I'm talking about. I wish I had the time to examine all the speeches both candidates are giving in this last week of the campaign and compare the claims each is making to see which is lying the most. Of course both of them are spinning, but I'd like to know it's more than my own partisanship that makes me think Bush is spinning harder (aka, lying more). That aside, it's still funny to hear Bush tell audiences that if Kerry had been president for the last three years Saddam would still be in power and he could be giving weapons to terrorists to attack the U.S. Seems like might have been the Bush administration that gave weapons to terrorists, doesn't it? Salon's War Room has even more on that story. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said:

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

Maybe the Bush campaign never got that memo. But hey, you gotta believe! In the theme of laughing in the face of disaster, Get Your War On continues its ever-brilliant satire of current events:

Do you think Mohamed ElBaradei is currently running around with 380 tons of Schadenfreude?

Elsewhwere in humorpolitik, a campaign to support Bush has decided to support Kerry:

Before breaking with Bush, the Yes, Bush Can team worked earnestly to support him. They went to the Pacific Northwest to promote Bush's Healthy Forests Initiative--and discovered it was enabling the logging industry to cut down our last old-growth forests. They visited a nuclear power plant in Ohio to promote Bush's domestic security policies--and found no one in the guard booth to meet them. In western Pennsylvania, while promoting the President's energy policy, they learned that it allows coal emissions which kill 23,000 people a year. Finally, while defending Bush's war on terrorism, they found out that even Donald Rumsfeld feels the Iraq War has made the world a more dangerous place.

All right, although the depiction of Bush's policies appears accurate, the rest is a joke. But still, their Patriot Pledge is pretty good. Question: Why is the Bush campaign blocking non-U.S. web visitors?

Posted 08:44 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Congratulations Boston!

So it's official, the Boston Red Sox won the World Series! Now let's just hope Boston fans and police play nice tonight...

Posted 11:47 PM | Comments (1) | life generally

Fool Me Once...

So about those 380 tons of munitions that are missing in Iraq. Some people are saying that the weapons may have gone missing before American troops entered Iraq, that Saddam Hussein's troops removed them sometime after the U.N. weapons inspectors last checked on them and found them secure, but before the U.S. could have had a chance to secure them [link via JR]. As I mentioned in a comment here, that's possible. Yesterday's Talking Points Memo argued that that story was bunk (see also many other posts at TPM from the last few days), but who knows? The point is that even if that proves to be the case, we still learn two things from these missing weapons. First, we learn yet again that the planners of the U.S. attack on Iraq put oil at the top of the list, and thought of little else. Securing weapons was not on their agenda, just like securing Iraq's cultural heritage was irrelevant. They secured the oil ministry and the oil fields first and foremost; everything else was an afterthought. Second, we learn yet again that we really may not be more safe now that Saddam is in jail. When Saddam was in power, these weapons were controlled and contained by the U.N. inspectors. Saddam could not have used them against Iraqis, or American soldiers, or anyone else. Now that Saddam is out of power, these weapons are gone, and most likely they have been and are being used to kill Iraqis and Americans. So yeah, thank goodness we removed Saddam from power. But the weapons inspectors were standing in the way of war; they said and still say it wasn't necessary, and Bush was determined to prove them wrong. Over time, it's still possible that Iraqis will be better off thanks to our invasion of their country. It's possible. But it's also possible that leadership far worse than Saddam—and far more dangerous to the U.S. and Iraq's neighbors—could be elected or could come to power some other way. We just don't know what's going to happen. But my point was about that 380 tons of missing munitions, and the bottom line is: Whichever way you slice that story, it's bad for Bush. He led us into this war against the wishes and advice of the rest of the world. And although he likes to say that everyone was misled by faulty intellignece, that's just not true. Oh, and by the way, that 380 tons of missing munitions may just be the tip of the iceberg. In other election-related bits: 100 Facts and One Opinion: The Non-Arguable Case Against the Bush Administration. Of course, we know Bush supporters don't care about about facts, but still, it's a pretty damning list. And the opinion?

If the past informs the future, four more years of the Bush Administration will be a tragic period in the history of the United States and the world

That's what Molly Ivins and others said in 2000—Bush's record in Texas showed he'd be a disastrous president. Now his record as president has proven that. And still he polls at 50%? How!? Why!? Elsewhere, Greg Palast reports on a new potential Florida vote scandal—are Republicans planning mass voter challenges on Nov. 2? The law says any voter can challenge any other voter for any reason, which effectively means that any voter could bring voting to a complete halt at any polling location in the nation. If Republicans stationed challengers at majority Democratic polling places, they could easily suppress a lot of Democratic votes. Of course, the Dems could do the same, or some malicious third party could play the spoiler for all. Palast is basing his report at least partially on some “caging” emails via which Republicans have exchanged lists of voters. I guess we'll know soon enough wether this is anything but speculation. More from Salon's War Room. The War Room also suggests that Justice Rehnquist's condition may be more serious than we're being told. The stakes just get higher and higher. For your audio-visual election-related pleasure, Eminem, now a political activist, suggests we mosh for the future. Errol Morris has also released a cornucopia of Republican-to-Democrat “switcher” vids. For your old-school gonzo journalism take, Hunter S. Thompson is still fighting the good fight. As far as the horserace aspect of the election goes, this electoral college predictions site is rather fascinating. Depending on which numbers you consult, Kerry has a 74% or a 28% chance of winning. Yeah, I'm thinking polls are pretty helpful at this point. Not! And don't forget to download your Kerry or Bush jack-o'-lantern carving templates! Whichever one you find more scary could make a great halloween decoration!

Posted 07:47 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004

Election Protection

By the way, although my last post suggests this, let me be more explicit: If you're a lawyer or law student and you'd like to help make sure voting is free and fair next Tuesday, get in touch with your local Impact coordinator to see how you can help. Impact is non-partisan, so this is a great way to help out, regardless of your political views. If you'd like to be more activist and partisan about your election protection and you live in or near a swing state, I'm betting ACT can set you up with ways to help out. Does anyone know of other cool election protection opportunities out there?

Posted 01:27 PM | election 2004

Laughing in the face of disaster?

It's good to know I'm in good company in being unable to focus on much besides the election. Half-Cocked (and others) might be interested to see this little Nebraska tidbit from Electoral Vote Predictor:

A new poll in Nebraska answers that age-old question: could Nebraska split its votes in the electoral college with a resounding: NO! Bush has huge leads in all three congressional districts. Similarly, Kerry is way ahead in both of Maine's congressional districts and the Colorado referendum is behind. Looks like it is going to be winner-take-all in every state.

It's a shame about the colorado referendum which would split electoral votes among candidates according to their percentage of the total vote. We need electoral reforms like this, but it's not surprising that Colorado isn't going to be the state to lead here. Other numbers on Electoral Vote are also somewhat depressing. Right now it predicts a Bush electoral college win of 285 to 247, and continued Republican domination of the Senate. People should think about that when they go to vote: Do we really want Republicans controlling every branch of government for another four years, or would a little balance maybe be a nice change? So the question of the day: Are negative developments in Iraq and Chief Justice Rehnquist's hospitalization a combined “October Surprise”? While you think about that, have you thought about voting absentee? If you need to vote absentee in D.C., MD, or VA, this article will tell you basically what you need to do. For my own record:

District absentee voters also can cast their ballots in person at the Fourth Street office, above the Judiciary Square Metro station, through Nov. 1. Voting hours are 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday. For more information, voters can call 202-727-2525.

And the DC Board of Elections (or the site of your local election board) might be a good site to check out in the coming days you can be sure of your polling place, ID requirements, etc. Try My Polling Site to find the details you need. [link via Letters of Marque] I spent a couple of hours last night at a training session with the President of IMPACT 2004, which has led one of a couple nationwide efforts to protect the right to vote on Nov. 2. I'm currently signed up to hop a bus to Philadelphia Nov. 1 so I can be there all day on the second watching the polls in a non-partisan way. But I'm kind of torn. I could also go to Ohio starting Saturday and returning after the polls close. I wonder which would be more valuable? Will all those partisan ACT volunteers descending on Ohio be like the orange hats for Dean in Iowa? Some people argue that the huge influx of out-of-state partisans knocking on doors and trying to turn out the vote in Iowa caused Iowans to vote against Dean, rather than for him, because they felt invaded and overwhelmed. I'd hate to see something like that happen to Kerry in Ohio. But hey, that's all like serious and stuff. It's just an election, right? So here's Monster Slash, a funny little flash video highlighting the Bush administration's stellar environmental record. Is it good to be able to laugh at the folly of our supposed leaders? And here's a demo of Diebold's new voting machines. Is it good to be able to laugh at the potential implosion of democracy?

Posted 08:16 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004

Concentration Impossible

Ok, it's official. There's just no way I'm going to be able to concentrate this week. Did you see this about the 380 tons of weapons we “lost” in Iraq? And these most excellent numbers showing Bush's chance of winning plummeting? Yeah, ok, those numbers might be out of date as the disclaimer at the top of the page says, but they're still way more interesting than anything I could possibly be reading about closely held corporations right now. Tell me again why I took corporations law? Stupid stupid stupid. It's going to be a long week.

Posted 03:42 PM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Reasons 1-2 to vote for Kerry

There are so many reasons to vote for Kerry (all of which are reasons to vote against Bush), I don't know where to begin, but since the election is so close I might spin every post this week into a reason to get to the polls and get us some regime change. Then again, I might not. But today I am, and the first two reasons are two overlooked news stories that should convince anyone that this administration is not good for America. First, the ongoing scandal of sweetheart deals for Halliburton. Billions of dollars in giveaways to the vice president's former company, the company from which he still receives benefits, and very few people seem to care. In another day, something like this would have been enough to bring down an administration all on its own. Unfortunately, the Halliburton scandal is far from the only blight on the Bush administration; we also have the backdoor draft. Two members of the National Guard have sued the military, claiming that the so-called “stop-loss” policy that extended their enlistments was illegal.

Attorneys for the soldiers, citing the report of the Sept. 11 commission that found no evidence of any “collaborative operational relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists, say the executive order did not cover “nation-building service in Iraq.” In the absence of any declaration of war by Congress, the soldiers say the involuntary call is a violation of their enlistment contract. “This is not a frivolous lawsuit,” said Michael Noone, a military-law specialist at Catholic University of America and a former judge advocate in the Air Force. “I had assumed the government had an ironclad case, but the complaint looks valid on its face. I'm really curious how the government will respond.”

The fact that I only heard yesterday about this lawsuit means it's just not getting enough coverage in the media. Oh, and look, here's another one. Why isn't Kerry talking about this every day? Of course, the lawsuit also raises the whole issue of the so-called “war on terror,” which can't be a war because war never declared. Nor can Bush be a “wartime president” as he and the media like to say. Sadly this is almost as much a failure of Congress as it is a failure of the Bush administration or the media. I could probably go on all day about reasons to vote for Kerry all day—and I could even talk about some positive ones, rather than just the “reasons to vote against Bush” variety above—but I probably better go to class. Class blows, but it's better to go than to miss. P.S.: Unless you'd like your dreams to be scary, haunting, and traumatic try to avoid researching the death penalty in the wee hours of the morning just before you go to sleep. Of course, maybe dreams like that would be good preparation for a halloween or the prospect of four more years of Bush, but still, I don't recommend it.

Posted 08:13 AM | Comments (2) | election 2004

Nine More Days?

I don't know if I can take it. The election is only nine days away but I fear they're going to be the longest nine days of the whole darn odyssey. I'm not concerned about the polls so much, both because they're not really changing much and because they may not be measuring a pretty large number of newly-registered voters and cell phone users who could swing the election either way, although they're perhaps more likely to break for Kerry. Still, even if you're not hanging on the polls, there are little bits of news every day that could change the race. For example, how will Wolfpacks for Truth skew the results? ;-) Probably not much, since, according to a new survey, Bush supporters live in a fantasy world. The summary of that survey's results shows that Bush supporters stubbornly refuse to believe findings of the 9/11 Commission or dozens of other experts on issues related to Iraq and terrorism. According to Steven Kull (via Alternet), director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the survey, this is classic cognitive dissidence:

“To support the president and to accept that he took the U.S. to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about pre-war Iraq,” Kull says. He added that this “cognitive dissonance” could also help explain other remarkable findings in the survey. The poll also found a major gap between Bush's stated positions on a number of international issues and what his supporters believe Bush's position to be. A strong majority of Bush supporters believe, for example that the president supports a range of international treaties and institutions that the White House has vocally and publicly opposed. In particular, majorities of Bush supporters incorrectly assume that he supports multilateral approaches to various international issues, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (69 percent), the land mine treaty (72 percent), and the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming (51 percent). In August, two-thirds of Bush supporters also believed that Bush supported the International Criminal Court (ICC). Although that figure dropped to a 53 percent majority in the PIPA poll, it's not much of a drop considering that Bush explicitly denounced the ICC in the first, most widely watched presidential debate in late September. In all of these cases, majorities of Bush supporters said they favored the positions that they imputed, incorrectly, to Bush. Large majorities of Kerry supporters, on the other hand, showed they knew both their candidate's and Bush's positions on the same issues.

So there you have it: Kerry supporters are more well-informed and have a more realistic view of the world than do Bush supporters. Isn't “faith-based” government a wonderful thing?

Posted 02:28 PM | Comments (4) | election 2004

RitzPix Needs Work

When I got a new digital camera just over a year ago (a very generous gift from L.), I started taking lots of pictures, some of which I post, but most of which I don't. The great thing about digital pics is you can take as many as you want for virtually no cost; however, the drawback can come when you want to share a photo with someone in real life, someone who is not online or who would like their own copy of a picture. You can always print your own photos on an inkjet printer, but I've never been thrilled with the result/cost ratio there, so I've turned to different online services for prints of digital pics. I've had good luck with Shutterfly, and I just put in an order with Snapfish, which is a little cheaper. With both services, you upload your photos, order prints or enlargements or other items (i.e., coffee mugs, mousepads, and calendars with your photos on them), then they ship the results to you in a few days. But I recently learned of a new service through Fuji Film. It involves Ritz Camera stores and lets you upload your pictures and then choose a local camera store to print them so that you can go pick them up in just a few hours. They call it Ritz Pix, and for a handful of photos, it works great. I uploaded just a couple of photos the other day, then picked up great prints a couple of hours later. Very cool. So I thought I'd try a few more photos, like 70. Bad idea. The RitzPix site just couldn't handle it. It took forever to upload the photos in the first place, and then, no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to complete an order. On Safari, the browser would time out, on Mozilla, I got a little farther, but still reached a point where the website would no longer respond. Maybe the site really isn't compatible with the Mac. I dunno. What I do know is that if you only want to print a couple of photos and you want the prints quickly, RitzPix works well. For larger orders, I'll stick with one of the larger online services.

Posted 01:05 PM | Comments (5) | life generally

Progressive Peliculas

Cool thing to do this weekend in D.C.: Attend a free screening of a progressive documentary at the Provisions Documentary Film Series. Neato. [link via DCist]

Posted 09:08 AM | ai movies general politics

NaNoWriMo Report Card

Hey, have you started planning your NaNo novel yet? You only have about one week to get an outline or some plot ideas in your head before the mad dash begins! As part of your preparation, be sure to check out the NaNo report card (scroll down or do a find—no permalinks on the page). It's an Excel worksheet that has the whole month of novel-writing all set up for you. All you have to do is enter your daily word count (and how many hours you spent writing that day, if you want), and it will automatically calculate helpful information, such as how many words you have left to reach your 50k goal, how many words/day you'll need to write to reach that goal by the end of Nov., and when you'll finish your novel if you continue writing at your current pace. It even plots your progress on a graph and a pie chart! A detail-tracker's dream! The report card provides a little more insight into what NaNo is all about. People take it very seriously, but they also have lots of fun with it. I'm telling you, if you're thinking you'd like to write a novel (or even a long short story), but think you don't have it in you or you can't spare the time, you should just throw all caution to the wind like I'm doing and commit to spending every spare minute in Nov. during which your brain is functional writing. You will be very glad you did. Every year for the last three I get around to about now and I'm excited about trying to write a novel in a month, but I also start to worry and think about all the reasons why I really shouldn't even try. And then, inevitably, the thing that pushes me to launch into the madness yet another time is the memories of WriMo's past, the caffienated late nights and early mornings and stolen moments between classes or other projects, the hours in coffee shops w/L. writing, watching people, writing, thinking big thoughts about my future as a rockstar novelist, writing, hating the writing, writing more, playing solitaire in the hope that some idea will spring into my head for the next scene, writing more, more coffee, more writing, more juggling other stuff that I don't really care about for the month of November, more writing more writing more writing. And maybe it doesn't sound fun to everyone, but it's really a tremendous feeling, for one short month each year, to put writing first among all the other things that compete for my time and attention. Or, if not first, then much much higher on the list than usual. Oh, and this year, there's another reason to write: Writing can be good therapy, and no matter how this election turns out, I think we're all going to need some of that come Nov. 3rd or so.

Posted 09:06 AM | Comments (1) | NaNoWriMo

Eerie Sports Analogies

Congrats to the Red Sox. Since I know nothing about baseball and pay zero attention to it normally, I am shocked to learn that Boston might face Houston in the World Series. Another way to put that: Massachusetts might face Texas in the Series. Is it just me or would that be an incredibly eerie coincidence? And the Series starts Saturday. Which will be over first: The World Series or the presidential election? Oh, and do you really want a president who feels threatened by people asking him silently to protect civil liberties? Or how about a president who suppresses CIA reports he doesn't like? Houston, I think we have a problem. Is Bush a pirate or an emperor? UPDATE: About the potentially eerie symbolism of a Massachusetts v. Texas World Series? Nevermind: Cardinals 5, Astros 2.

Posted 09:20 AM | Comments (6) | election 2004 life generally

aliunde, world on fire...

One: Aliunde would be a great name for a blog. It means “from another source, from elsewhere; from outside.” Example in context: “[Co-conspirators' statements are admissible over the objection of an alleged co-conspirator, who was not present when they were made, only if there is proof aliunde that he is connected with the conspiracy. . . . Otherwise, hearsay would lift itself by iits own bootstraps to the level of competent evidence.” Glasser v. United States, 315 U.S. 60 at 74-75 (1942). Because really, everything you see here is aliunde. By the way, the above is not good law. Hearsay evidence is allowed to bootstrap itself to competence at the discretion of the trial judge. Bourjaily v. U.S., 483 U.S. 171. Two: Sarah McLachlan's new song, “World On Fire,” is great. The video is also awesome—it describes how she spent $150,000 on social justice instead of wasting it on a stupid video. Think how much better the world would be if every penny put into music videos went to social justice efforts! Oh, wait, then there would be no more music videos, but this would be a problem how? Three: What does Sinclair Broadcasting think it's doing? You may be hearing reports that it has agreed not to show the anti-Kerry propaganda film it was going to show. Maybe, but don't believe the hype. The company has lost $140 million in market value already over this shenanigan; why not just force it into bankruptcy and take back those airwaves? Maybe it's time for ACT or MoveOn to raise funds to buy some tv stations. ;-) Four: Greens for Impact is trying to get Nader supporters to vote for Kerry. I keep dreaming that Nader's going to call a press conference and humbly ask all his supporters to vote for Kerry. The nation's respect for him would skyrocket, and it might be just what Kerry needs to put him over the top. What can I say? I dream a lot. Five: I know nothing about baseball, but I really really want the BoSox to win game 7 tonight. The Yankees seem like Bush, Microsoft and all other anti-democratic bullies. Boston is the underdog, the team fighting for the little person, the Kerry, the Apple Computer here. Ok, like I said, I know nothing about baseball so what am I talking about? I just want Boston to win.

Posted 08:22 AM | Comments (4) | lists

Dreaming Failure

Reading evidence, trying to catch up on the rule against hearsay, which seems straightforward until you get to all the exceptions. Maybe it's more difficult because I'm so behind and I've missed so many classes. You think? Nah... I had a dream last night that I was enrolled in a class that I have only attended once. In my dream, I just suddenly remembered one day that I was supposed to be in class, then I realized I'd been missing the class for weeks, then I thought about the ways to get out of the class and realized there were none, and then I panicked and thought I was going to fail out of law school. And then I woke up. It was an awful dream—a nightmare, even. Apparently my subconscious is preparing for finals. A quick count says there are five and a half weeks of class left before final exams, but maybe it's closer to six weeks since there's a half-week in there for the fall break (Thanksgiving). Needless to say I'll have a lot of catching up to do over that little “holiday.” NaNoWriMo fits into this where? How? Is this what's known as a reality check?

Posted 03:00 PM | Comments (2) | 2L law school

Is West A Thief? PKD, and...

One: Did you know that West started its online database of caselaw (Westlaw) by legally stealing a database created by the Department of Justice? According to this article, that's true. Does anyone know anything more about this? I can't believe there were no lawsuits related to this, but I haven't found any so far... UPDATE: Ok, I know it's not stealing if it was legal, and in fact the story almost suggests that the DOJ's failure to contract on terms that would have allowed it to retain rights to the work done by West was such a convenient and egregious “mistake” as to be almost intentional. This was the Reagan DOJ; deregulation and privatization were the tenets it lived by. So maybe the DOJ gave the database to West. In my book that doesn't decrease the injustice.... Two: I wish I had time to read Arts & Letters Daily more often. Three: Speaking of time, I wish I had time to tell you more about the Peggy Browning Fund's National Law Students Workers' Rights Conference, which I attended last Saturday. It was awesome, and I highly recommend it for any law student or future law student for next year. I took lots of notes and I hope to post more about it soon. For now I can say that I'm more convinced than ever that being a labor lawyer would be an awesome job. The trouble is, getting the job.... Four: Speaking of labor law, check out American Rights at Work, a new organization designed to offset the multi-million dollar anti-worker, corporate-sponsored National Right to Work Foundation and Committee. (If you didn't know it already, “right to work” is Orwellian doublespeak for “rights of employers to screw their workers.” Or, as the Disinfopedia puts it, “The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is an organization that attacks workers organizations through the US court system.” Five: Some comments from Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on John Stewart's appearance on their show last week. It's like they didn't hear a thing Stewart said. Six: Here's a comment about a Phillip K. Dick essay I haven't read but will when I find the time. I recently read Dick's short story “Autofac”—great little dystopian scenario. A lot of people think he's a hack, and in many ways he is, but if I could do what he did, I could be fairly happy that way... (Dick brought us the stories behind Blade Runner, The Running Man, Total Recall, Minority Report, and more that are not coming to mind at the moment.) Seven: This electoral college prediction is really a beautiful thing: Kerry 284, Bush 247. The pro-Bush interpretation of the polls is different: Bush 274, Kerry 264. This seemingly less partisan prediction says Bush's probability of winning has fallen below 50% (but is trending a bit up) and predicts an electoral college count of: Bush 269.1 to Kerry 268.9. Both candidates are currently trying to scare the bejeezus out of voters. Kerry's try to scare old people by saying that Bush is going to privatize Social Security (which is exactly what Bush is saying, he just doesn't use the word “privatize”); Bush is trying to scare everyone by saying Kerry is weak and won't fight terrorism. I guess people will have to decide which one they think is more credible.

Posted 08:14 AM | lists

More Derrida and Contingent Foundations

For some reason I keep thinking about Derrida, so . . . more links: Derrida online has collected links to obits and the Remembering Jacques Derrida page is like a who's who of rockstar academics. If you're still trying to get a grasp on why Derrida mattered, here's a highlight from a NY Times op-ed by Mark C. Taylor entitled What Derrida Really Meant, which tries to clarify what Derrida meant by “deconstruction”:

The guiding insight of deconstruction is that every structure - be it literary, psychological, social, economic, political or religious - that organizes our experience is constituted and maintained through acts of exclusion. In the process of creating something, something else inevitably gets left out.

To those who think Derrida was just some nihilist/moral relativist:

This is an important criticism that requires a careful response. Like Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, Mr. Derrida does argue that transparent truth and absolute values elude our grasp. This does not mean, however, that we must forsake the cognitive categories and moral principles without which we cannot live: equality and justice, generosity and friendship. Rather, it is necessary to recognize the unavoidable limitations and inherent contradictions in the ideas and norms that guide our actions, and do so in a way that keeps them open to constant questioning and continual revision. There can be no ethical action without critical reflection.

And one of the many reasons Derrida is so relevant today:

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings. And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger. As the process of globalization draws us ever closer in networks of communication and exchange, there is an understandable longing for simplicity, clarity and certainty. This desire is responsible, in large measure, for the rise of cultural conservatism and religious fundamentalism - in this country and around the world. True believers of every stripe - Muslim, Jewish and Christian - cling to beliefs that, Mr. Derrida warns, threaten to tear apart our world. Fortunately, he also taught us that the alternative to blind belief is not simply unbelief but a different kind of belief - one that embraces uncertainty and enables us to respect others whom we do not understand. In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open.

Others have built upon Derrida's ideas in this area, including Judith Butler, who wrote a terrific argument in favor of “contingent foundations” in her contribution to Feminist Contentions. I tried to summarize that argument for a paper a couple of years ago as follows:

In arguing that all foundations are always-already contingent, Butler begins with a brief examination of the question, “What is postmodernism?” in order to discuss the value of the term to feminist social theory. That value, Butler eventually concludes, lies in the fact that “postmodernism”—or more precisely, poststructuralism—reveals the constructedness of all foundations, which are “the unquestioned and unquestionable within any theory” (39). One of the prime foundations of concern to Butler (and many feminists) is that of the “universal,” which, regardless of how it’s defined, always relies upon biased and ethnocentric assumptions. Perhaps because she was writing in the early 1990s, just after the inital Gulf War, Butler uses that conflict between the U.S. and Iraq to demonstrate the consequences of placing any premise beyond question by calling it “universal.” As Butler notes: “We have, I think, witnessed the conceptual and material violence of this practice in the United States’s war against Iraq, in which the Arab ‘other’ is understood to be radically ‘outside’ the universal structures of reason and democracy and, hence, calls to be brought forcibly within” (40). Following a lengthy (and frighteningly prescient, in our current context) dissection of the Gulf War, Butler turns to the category of gender as another example—like “democracy” and “reason”— of a category or presupposition that is constructed, and therefore neither universal nor unquestionable. Butler’s point is that “universals” simply do not exist; under no circumstances (in the real world) can there be premises or principles that are unquestioned or unquestionable. “This is not to say that there is no foundation,” Butler continues, “but rather that wherever there is one, there will also be a foundering, a contestation. That such foundations exist only to be put into question is, as it were, the permanent risk of the process of democratization” (51).

That really is an incredible essay (Butler's, not mine), both for the way it explains and justifies the idea of contingent foundations (antifoundational foundations, even!), and also for its description of the first Gulf War alone. I wonder what she's writing about this war.... When I left grad school, I was kicking around ways to sort of build a dissertation around this concept of contingent foundations coupled somehow with Frederic Jameson's idea of “cognitive mapping,” which I think I've mentioned before. (Somehow my site search function appears to be hosed; something I'll fix someday, really!) Contingent foundations could be cognitive maps in that we use those foundations to help us make sense of the world. I'm sure there's a good dissertation project in there somewhere, but it wont' be written by me. Still, the ideas fascinate me and Derrida helped bring them into being.... Note to Michelle Malkin, who was almost giddy that Derrida died: Among critical theorists there's no such thing as deconstructionism. There's just deconstruction. Full stop. An analyst or analysis can be deconstructionist, but the school of thought is called deconstruction—the “ism” is only used by those who don't understand deconstruction. On Derrida, see also: Some Simple Thoughts on Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Using Deconstruction to Astonish Friends and Confound Enemies UPDATE 10-18-04: See also Why I won't be mourning for Derrida by Johann Hari. I haven't finished reading it, but the excerpt here suggests that it's an expression of the typical panic and jump to dystopian conclusions when anyone dares question Enlightenment teleology (which Derrida most certainly did). I don't think it's necessary to chuck the whole of Enlightenment thought into the dustbin of history, but we should recognize its flaws and omissions, as well. There's got to be a balance here somewhere... And none of this really has anything to do with what I should be thinking about and working on right now, so....

Posted 05:47 PM | Comments (1) | general politics

Stewart Stuffs Crossfire

Jon Stewart said yesterday on CNN's Crossfire that the show is hurting America. Get a transcript, download an mp3, and if you can figure out BitTorrents, you can get the video, too (all links from Scripting News). Wow. I didn't see it, but I listened to it and it's incredible. Tucker Carlson told Stewart he should get a job at a journalism school; Stewart replied seriously: “You need to go to one!” Salon's Charles Taylor says Stewart's appearance was completely consistent with his stance on his own show and I tend to agree:

Stewart's “Crossfire” appearance is going to generate talk about how prickly he was, how he wasn't “nice” like he is on “The Daily Show.” But prickliness is just what was needed. If you've built your reputation as a satirist pointing out how the media falls down on the job, you're not going to make yourself a part of their charade.

Will this cause mainstream journalists to do a serious gutcheck? Probably not, but maybe a ball is now rolling that will lead there eventually. Thanks, Jon. Early stories about this elsewhere:

• Jon Stewart Torches from the NY Daily News
• Left Hooks and Right Jabs: Stewart Tangles With Carlson from WaPo
• Jon Stewart bitchslaps CNN's 'Crossfire' from MTV News
• JT Juice 10-16 From Journal Times Online (Wisc.)
• Jon Stewart to Tucker Carlson: “You're a dick.” from Alternet

Posted 06:34 AM | Comments (4) | election 2004

Post Debate Hurry

This would be me having no time to say anything more than I thought Kerry did a great job last night, Bush did much better than in the first two debates, and Bush really did say he wasn't worried about and no longer thinks about Osama bin Laden. That's the only little “fact check” I have time for, but if you spot good bits that expose the mistatements or misrepresentations of either candidate, I'd love to hear about them.

Posted 09:03 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004

Pre-Debate Thoughts

Ok, so the final debate is tonight and it's pretty important. Here are a few tidbits for your brain to kick around as you watch.

One: Get your debate bingo cards here or here.

Two: Bush's Court Picks: Be Afraid. Very Afraid.

Three: From the GW Bush Flip Flop Catalog, something to consider while you listen to Bush talk about putting money in your pocket and neglect to mention any plan for paying for his massive tax cuts:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world’s greatest civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.” — Alexander Tyler, 1778

Four: The following is a transcription of a scene in a 2000 episode of The West Wing entitled “The Midterms.” At least that's what TiVo says; I can't find it on the episode guide. Anyway, it's directed at those who think U.S. public policy should be based on literal readings of the Bible, and might be food for thought when Bush talks about how he's guided by god. Below, President Bartlett is speaking to a right-wing talk radio host:

President Bartlet (PB): I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an “abomination.”

Host (H): I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President, the Bible does.

PB: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

H: 18:22

PB: Chapter and verse! I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you hear. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:07. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be?

H: Silence.

PB: While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff, Leo McGarrity, insists on working on the sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it ok to call the police?

Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean -- Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?

Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads?

Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignorant Tight-Ass Club, in this building when the president stands, nobody sits.

UPDATE: The Unreasonable Man writes to note that the above quote from Tyler may be a hoax. Also, here are two more pre-debate nuggets for you. The first is from an open letter to Bush and Rumsfeld:

Under the military way of life and thought, a commander is responsible for errors that occur under his command whether he knew about them or not. Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush, you are responsible for the inaccurate intelligence assessments, inadequate troop strength, Iraqi prisoner abuses, inadequate logistical support for U.S. forces, and fraudulent contracting billing for the Iraq reconstruction. And you should care about every combat death or injury that occurs.

The second is simply the latest on the Bush bulge. L. and others have speculated that after all the attention the back bulge got in the first debate, Bush moved the radio device from his back to his front. Was he looking quite a bit thicker around the middle than usual? Did his coat appear to fit rather poorly for a man who probably has custom-tailored suits? Will this be one of the mistakes left for historians to decide?

Posted 11:23 AM | Comments (17) | election 2004

CVB Still Amps the Rockage

I just got back from the Camper Van Beethoven show at the 9:30 Club and it was really everything I could have hoped for. Simply a great show. They're touring in support of their new album, New Roman Times [iTMS link], so they played a number of tracks off of that, including “The Gum You Like Is Back In Style,” “Might Makes Right,” and “Hippy Chix” (with funky dance moves and backing vocals from one of their opening bands, The Gaskets. I was trying to keep the playlist in my head but it just wasn't going to happen. I know they opened w/one of my all-time favorites, “All Her Favorite Fruit,” followed pretty closely by the title track from “Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart,” and “Eye of Fatima.” That last one holds a special place in my heart because it's about cowboys on acid (and who wouldn't love that?) and declares that “no one ever conquered Wyoming from the left or from the right; you can stay in motel rooms and stay up all night!” I think the whole song is dripping in irony, but it could just be me. They also slipped in what sounded like a slowed-down, campered-up cover of “White Riot” by The Clash. (Which reminds me, I really need to get some Clash back in my musical collection; all I have is on tape, and the tapes just don't get much listening anymore.) They also played an insanely fast and raucous version of “Club Med Sucks” (there may be no other way to play this song, actually), and afterward David Lowery gave a short political lesson. To paraphrase, he said one of the lines in the song is “I hate golf! I wanna play lacrosse!” Bush is golf, Kerry is lacrosse. And he didn't want to tell anyone how to vote, but he said it should be pretty clear from that. This was a very minor theme of the evening; Lowery opened the show by saying the new album is out today for the first time and they felt it was appropriate to do a show in D.C. on the album's release date because the album is something of a commentary on the times. But this was no big Bush bashing show; these are the only things they said along these lines. Other songs I know CVB played: Border Ska Tania Ambiguity Song The Day Lassie Went to the Moon Take the Skinheads Bowling Pictures of Matchstick Men She Divines Water (possibly my favorite favorite, in close competition w/All Her Favorite Fruit) Tina Sad Lovers Waltz Sweethearts Shut Us Down Wasted One of These Days Interstellar Overdrive (a crazy amazing 10-15 minute version that shook the whole place to its foundations and closed out the encore) As that huge list indicates, the show was packed with goodness. They rarely stopped between tracks and just played and played. Still, they managed to fit in some jokes with each other and Lowery told a good story about seeing Micky Dolenz in a bar and overhearing him tell some people his whole life has been one long night of karaoke or something like that. They looked like they were having a great time. So go see them! And buy their music! (The new disc is only $9.99 at iTMS for 20 tracks compared to $17 at Amazon.) It's fun, it's smart, and it rawks! UPDATE: Here's a photo from the show. Not a good one, but it's a photo. That's another thing to love about the 9:30 Club—they don't take cameras away at the door (but I think you're not supposed to use a flash).

Posted 02:15 AM | Comments (4) | ai music

NaNo NaNo!

NaNoWriMo is creeping up on us, and there's now a brand new website for this year's event! Ryan Dunsmuir has written five NaNo Novels and I think in this short FAQ answer (scroll down) he captures pretty well some of the reasons for doing it:

Now it's a habit.... November without a novel would seem empty, and I'd feel a little like I was missing out. There are always new people to recruit too, which can remind you just how totally ridiculous, yet amazing, noveling is. And if you've ever seen writers as the elite (as in, “how do they DO that? I could never write”) this is the perfect chance to crash their party. All you need is a looming deadline, some peer pressure/support, and lots of caffeine. The most important question to ask in order to reach your word count, and one of the hardest things for our goal-obsessed society to get a handle on, is not to ask what are you writing FOR, but ... what are you writing? You're writing a novel! How cool is that?

This will be my fourth year, and although I've never “won,” the experience has always been incredibly worthwhile. And it is like a habit; it's become one of those things I start thinking about and looking forward to when the weather starts to turn cooler, the days start getting shorter, the leaves change, etc. All of that might mean football and turkey to a lot of Americans, and it means that for me, too, but November is NaNoWriMo, and that's really the best of the fall things. In the same FAQ, Lazette Gifford, who apparently displays “freakish noveling speed,” has a great idea for how to be a NaNo winner:

I usually write an outline in October and tape it to the wall beside my desk. During November I mark off each section as I work through it. Outlines are like cue cards. They jog the memory and keep the story moving along without having to stop and wonder what to do next.

An outline!? I sort of thought that was cheating, but look, it's not (scroll down). Now I'm thinking: Brilliant idea! The hard part is figuring out which of the many different ideas in my head is really anything more than a scene or a short story. Some pre-thinking will be happening in the next two weeks and maybe that will be what I need to push me past the 30k or so words I usually stall at.

Posted 07:29 AM | Comments (5) | NaNoWriMo

Two Years Ago Today

As noted here one year ago, Congress authorized the use of force against Iraq on 10/11/02. Such a sad and tragic mistake, but maybe next time they won't be so quick to do it. Nah, I didn't think so either. Another sad thing: So many of the links in that post from a year ago are broken. What good is the web when its links are so tenuous the cannot even last a year?

Posted 11:27 AM | election 2004

Dred, Electoral College, Alternatees...

One: Could it be that Bush's mention of the Dred Scott decision in last Friday's debate was some coded red meat for the anti-abortion crowd? Wow. That's some serious rhetoric going on. More here on judicial nominations as an election issue. The ACS Blog has also picked this up, as did Fables of the Reconstruction, and now Salon, too. Two: According to a U of Minnesota economist, Bush currently has a 55% chance of winning the electoral college. The page is constantly updated, so it's a good resource to continue checking as the election closes in. Three: Today is Columbus Day. While celebrating the “discovery” of America seems a little perverse, until 5 p.m. last night, I still thought we had the day off from school today. Woops! I was so wrong. Good thing I didn't do a single bit of homework all weekend since I was planning to do it all today on my day off. Yeah, good thing. Four: Shopping for a law student or law-type person? Check out Law School Stuff, featuring shirts w/slogans like “gunner,” “working hard to be average,” and my personal favorite, “Public Interest Law: Twice the schooling, half the pay.” Now if we could just get them to use sweat-free shirts... Five: Speaking of sweat-free shirts, an Alternatee would make a great gift for the progressive politico on your gift list this season. Try the Bar Code Prison or the U.S. World Domination Tour to make some serious statements. All Alternatees are printed on gear from American Apparel, which means means it's sweat-free, but unfortunately not union-made. I disagree with their choice to shun unions, but the fact that they treat their workers so well makes up for that somewhat. Six: I seem to have become a sort of gunner pariah in my labor law class, mostly b/c the law we're learning could be more appropriately termed “anti-labor law.” It all makes me so mad I just can't keep my hand down, and then when I ask a question Prof. Labor Law goes off on a lengthy answer that's generally fascinating but doesn't really respond to my question and tends (I think) to bore most everyone else who's not as fanatical as I am about the subject. To my classmates: I'm sorry. I don't mean to do it. I will try to keep my mouth shut. I promise.

Posted 10:33 AM | Comments (1) | election 2004 lists

RIP Jacques Derrida

As thisdarkqualm notes, Jacques Derrida died yesterday (see also coverage from the BBC). As those stories indicate, Derrida had a huge influence on critical theory, philosophy, sociology, and politics in the last half of the 20th century, and his thinking had a huge influence on me, as well, especially in my first year of grad school. Yes, he may have gone too far at times, but he certainly helped explain the world we live in, and for that he will be sorely missed. If you haven't heard of him or aren't familiar with his work, I'm not sure where to steer you at the moment, but I found this little excerpt from a paper I wrote in my first year of grad school that attempted to explain one of his signature ideas, that of différance.

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Différance refers to the double distance between the words we use and any “real” origin; words both defer their “real” meaning and differ from one another. An immediate example of this is the sentence: “You are reading what I am writing now.” Focusing on the word “now” in that sentence: First it's clear that this word has at least two equally “true” meanings — I am writing this now, December 17, 1999, yet you are reading this now, which is any time after it has been written. Thus, to say “now” is to fix a unique meaning on the word at some point which is always already changing. Any time we use a word we defer its “true” meaning in the sense of “the action of putting off until later, of taking account of time and of the forces of an operation that implies an economical calculation, a detour, a delay, a relay, a reserve, a representation” (Derrida 8). In other words, we can say that the question of the “true” meaning of the word “now” is irrelevant because we are always already, each time we use the word, deferring questions of “truth” to some later time that will never come (because each time we use the word we defer its “true” meaning again in favor of whatever meaning we intend to fix on it in the moment of its use, a process that continues infinitely). Second, the definition of the word “now” is a function of its difference from all other words; “now” is “now” because it is not “then” or “tree” or “onomatopoeia.” This is true for all words, therefore, for language as a whole. Thus, language can be seen as a system of representation, an assemblage of gestures toward “reality” (words) which we use to describe, or re-present, our world to ourselves and others. The above is based on: Derrida, Jacques. Margins of Philosophy. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.

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UPDATE 10/12/04: This slightly longer obit explains a bit more why Derrida was both so famous and so controversial. L. and I were talking about this and I unthinkingly said Derrida was “foundational” to the thinking of any philosopher, linguist, critical theorist, etc. today. That's funny b/c Derrida's main point is that there are no foundations to anything—it's kind of turtles all the way down. For a little fun primer on Derrida, you probably can't beat the Beginners illustrated version. This is a great series, btw; highly recommended for any “big thinker” when you'd like to try to understand the basics of their writing and thought w/out actually spending the rest of your life trying to read it. Other resources on Derrida include: a Derrida documentary made last a year, a PopCultures.com intro, and a Wikipedia entry.

Posted 10:16 AM | Comments (9) | life generally

Post-Debate 2

Ok, so I'm beginning to accept that not everyone saw the same debate I did, or at least it didn't leave them with the same decisive impression. Whatever the press consensus is, I thought Kerry was incredibly strong, and Bush was just frightening misleading, angry, and incoherent. Of course, you'd expect little else from me, wouldn't you? But remember, I have never been a strong Kerry fan. The truth is, with his performance in these debates I feel like he's finally earning my support rather than just getting it by default. Here's a roundup of some good bits I've seen about the debate so far: Factcheck.org has already fact-checked both candidates' performances last night, and it's pretty much what you'd expect—they're both full of it. Watch Bush flip out on Charlie Gibson. Read how Bush bungled one of the few references to authority he even attempted when he tried to talk about the Dred Scott case. Scott Rosenburg hits Bush hard on his infallibility and the condescension he continues to express for the rest of the world ("I know how these people think!"). Josh Marshall also has good thoughts on the godlike president and he's going with the center spin that the debate was a draw. The AP's summary said "Bush Fights Emotion, Scowls In Debate." That's true. He seemed to have a perma-fake smile pasted to his face and every once in a while his jaw clenched as he fought to avoid showing his petulance. I recommend regular readings of Salon's War Room these days for great quick commentary on the election as it develops. Finally, have you heard about Bush's mysterious back bulge? Salon picked up the story from blogs, and the NY Times follows up today. New blogging rockstar (at least in my own little pantheon of blog rockstars) thisdarkqualm covers the story and includes a picture of Bush at the ranch w/the same bulge. So what the hell is it? Check out Is Bush Wired? for ongoing speculation, including links to real devices that may have turned Bush into Rove's remote-controlled toy. Also comments from Andy Card and some strong denials from both campaigns. You think this is just nutty crazy, right? Perhaps. But look at the record of this administration; I wouldn't put anything past them. And apropos of the brave new world of remote-control presidents and Bush as "a good steward of the land" (I can't believe he had the nerve!): I love it when I get email asking me to buy "Soma." If only....

Posted 09:36 AM | Comments (10) | election 2004

TKO

Just finished watching the second presidential debate between Bush and Kerry and to me it looked like Kerry delivered a knock-out blow. I'm not just saying that to join the post-debate spin machine; that's really how it looked to me. I think Bush lost it when he shouted down Charlie Gibson in his rush to say basically nothing in response to a Kerry answer. Kos already has the factcheck smackdown on Bush's “I own a timber company” smirky retort. I'm sure there's more of this to come. I can't wait to hear what the fact-checkers have to say about Bush's response to the question about the environment. It sounded like complete BS to me. There's more, and you'll be getting it elsewhere, so I'll let the spinmeisters go to work...

Posted 10:40 PM | Comments (1) | election 2004

Free Lunch

I'm late for work but I have a few extra seconds today because I don't have to make a lunch—there's a free lunch waiting for me at work. That's right, every other Thursday the office buys me lunch, and if there are leftovers, I get free lunch on Fridays, too! For those of you who have worked in law firms, I guess this is probably not such a big deal, but I've had quite a few jobs in my life and I don't think any of them has ever regularly bought me lunch, so I think it's pretty cool. (Ok, Backroads paid for my lunch every day, but that was different. How about this: I've never had an office job that regularly bought me lunch....)

Posted 09:01 AM | Comments (1) | 2L

John Stewart, Blog breaks, SYDHT

One: John Stewart will be signing his new book at Politics and Prose on Friday, 10/15 at 1 p.m. [link via DCist] Why, oh why, did I start a job and giving up having Fridays off? Two: Hmm. Near the same time that DG decided to take a break, Kelly at Just Playin' is thinking about going underground. And Musclehead is talking “break' too! Is there a spreading theme here? Three:L-Cubed has started a new feature called ”So You Don't Have To“ in which Scott reads something good in print and posts about it so you can save yourself the cost of the magazine or whatever. Brilliant idea! Four: Do you play computer games in class? In my ConLaw class, one person is usually playing something that looks a little sims-like. In Evidence, every day, for the entire hour, this guy in front of me plays emulated Nintendo games. He occassionally pauses the game to tap in a note about what's happening in class, but probably 98% of his time and attention is on the games. Incredible, really. The game looks pretty fun, though. Oh, another popular one: Snood. Five: Our home network has been down all week and Verizon can't even hook up our phone 'til next Tuesday, meaning we won't have DSL until sometime after that. At the moment, they can't even tell us whether our phone line is DSL-capable—they have to hook up the phone first. If we find the line doesn't support DSL, online life is going to be very sad, indeed. Anyhoo, my severely limited access to the 'net may mean lack of updates or responses to comments or emails until things settle down, just FYI.

Posted 09:52 AM | Comments (3) | 2L meta-blogging

Veep Debate

Political Wire has a good little roundup of post-debate topics. Grouchy Cheney told us to visit Factcheck.com to see the truth about Halliburton. Funny, that link takes me to “a personal message from George Soros” entitled “Why we must not re-elect President Bush.” Cheney obviously meant to send people to FactCheck.org, which seems to be getting slammed this morning, judging by how difficult it is to load the page. I haven't been able to access it yet, but they have a piece up claiming that Cheney & Edwards Mangle Facts. Also not-to-be-missed is Josh Marshall's coverage of how Cheney in particular mislead the world into thinking there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Scott Rosenberg thought Edwards cleaned Cheney's clock, but that's not exactly a unanimous opinion, as he notes. Oh, and don't worry about the election this year—the Florida ballot is completely fixed. [Link via Political Wire] Briefly, since this is getting out late and there are already plenty of opinions afloat on the whole thing, I thought Cheney was grouchy, mumbled a lot, and outright lied several times. Still, he did a heckuva lot better than his running mate. I think if the Republicans had chosen Cheney for Pres instead of vice, Kerry might be in serious trouble. ;-) Edwards did well in answering Cheney's dissembling accusations, and he got some good points across. However, he missed some great opportunities to turn Cheney's criticisms back at him. For example, Cheney kept saying Kerry/Edwards don't have the “judgment” to lead. You want to talk about judgment? Bush claims he agrees that nuclear proliferation is a number one security threat to the U.S. and world, and he's spending millions to research and build more nukes! Does that sound like good judgment to you? There were other examples, but it's easy to armchair-quarterback after the fact. Friday looks to be as important as ever, or more so.

Posted 02:58 PM | Comments (1) | election 2004

Veep Debate

Political Wire has a good little roundup of post-debate topics. Grouchy Cheney told us to visit Factcheck.com to see the truth about Halliburton. Funny, that link takes me to “a personal message from George Soros” entitled “Why we must not re-elect President Bush.” Cheney obviously meant to send people to FactCheck.org, which seems to be getting slammed this morning, judging by how difficult it is to load the page. I haven't been able to access it yet, but they have a piece up claiming that Cheney & Edwards Mangle Facts. Also not-to-be-missed is Josh Marshall's coverage of how Cheney in particular mislead the world into thinking there was a connection between 9/11 and Iraq. Scott Rosenberg thought Edwards cleaned Cheney's clock, but that's not exactly a unanimous opinion, as he notes. Oh, and don't worry about the election this year—the Florida ballot is completely fixed. [Link via Political Wire] Briefly, I thought Cheney was grouchy, mumbled a lot, and outright lied several times. Still, he did a heckuva lot better than his running mate. I think if the Republicans had chosen Cheney for Pres instead of vice, Kerry might be in serious trouble. ;-) Edwards did well in answering Cheney's dissembling accusations, and he got some good points across. However, he missed some great opportunities to turn Cheney's criticisms back at him. For example, Cheney kept saying Kerry/Edwards don't have the “judgment” to lead. You want to talk about judgment? Bush claims he agrees that nuclear proliferation is a number one security threat to the U.S. and world, and he's spending millions to research and build more nukes! Does that sound like good judgment to you? There were other examples, but it's easy to armchair-quarterback after the fact. Friday looks to be as important as ever, or more so.

Posted 11:54 AM | election 2004

Au Revoir?

In a shocking move, Ditzy Genius recently bid farewell to her readers, “probably permanently.” Can this be? Can one of the bloggers I've read so regularly and enjoyed so completely really be calling it quits? Of course I hope she decides to return sometime soon, but at the same time, I also understand that she may have good reasons for taking a break—even a permanent one. I've thought about making the same move probably once a month since starting this thing, and more frequently since starting year-two of law school. It seems common for “law school blawgs” to fizzle before their authors make it through the process, and I've recently had glimpses of why that is. I'm guessing it's something about the demands of year two, the lack of novelty in the process, the priorities turning elsewhere. (Not that any of these reasons necessarily played any part in DG's decision; this is just my own perspective.) But as the process changes, so, too, can the blog. At least I hope it can. The dominant content of aihas changed several times over the last two years (at least I think it has), and that's fine with me. I know I lose readers and gain readers when my focus shifts from one main topic to anther (from leaving grad school/thinking about law school, to the democratic primary process, to 1L of law school, to the sort of transitional grab bag period of the present), but that's how it goes. Maybe somewhere around year two is adolescence for blogs? You know, the difficult years, the growing pains, the identity crisis? Whatever. I still enjoy it, so I'll continue for now.* Still, I understand making a different decision, so best of luck, DG! I know many of us will miss you while you're gone, and we'll be thrilled if you decide to return! *I may have mentioned this before, but to me this blog has become a sort of hobby, a project, a toy. Specifically, I think of a certain stereotype of a man who has a wife and kids and job and responsibilities (which I don't; I'm just painting a picture here), and in every way seems like a nice and normal guy, but you go in his garage and there you find a piece of junk old car that doesn't run and quite probably never will. Yet, whenever this guy gets a free weekend or even a few spare hours on a Wednesday night, he'll either be playing around with the car (“restoring” it), or talking to friends about where to get parts or what modifications to make or whatever. So the car takes up his spare time and money and energy and imagination, and it might drive his friends and family crazy except that they know he enjoys it and it keeps him from getting into trouble doing something else with those resources. So this blog is my piece of junk old car in the garage, my hobby and distractio. Except my piece of junk runs; I can take it for regular drives. Sure, there's always some tinkering I'd like to do under the hood (for example, last weekend I eliminated the annoying bug where all archive links turned into a link to a book about Howard Dean on Amazon; no, that was never intentional), but when I'm short on time I can also just take it for a spin around the block w/a quick post about whatever. I mean, if I ever have a house with a garage where I think I'm going to be able to stay for a good little while, I'll probably have a real piece of junk old car in there to play with. There's actually a 1972 MGB Roadster in Montana that would fit really nicely in my garage if I had one. But, in the meantime, this is my ambivalent hot rod. Perhaps the analogy only works inside my head.

Posted 12:13 PM | Comments (3) | 2L meta-blogging

Focus Grouping

I just got an email from someone connected to Frank Luntz, who is sometimes referred to as “Bush's pollster.” Not surprisingly, the Luntz folks will be focus-grouping the vice-presidential debate next Tuesday, and they're looking for people to be part of their “mini-America.” If you're in the D.C. area and would like to be part of a focus group for the VP debate on Tuesday night, fill out this form and maybe they'll call you. If they do, they'll pay you $50 to watch the debate and answer questions about it, and your opinion could represent the opinions of millions! (Insert evil laugh here.0

Posted 12:34 PM | Comments (5) | election 2004

Republican Canards

The new Republican spin on last week's debate is just too much. Kerry said Bush failed the global test for offensive military action when he failed to convince the U.N. and our traditional allies that a massive invasion and occupation of Iraq was necessary or wise. That's why this is Bush's war—he chose to fight it, and has basically been giving the finger to the global community (and a large percentage of Americans who opposed the war from its first mention) ever since. So now the Republicans are saying that Kerry said he would let U.S. foreign policy decisions be made in foreign capitals, that under Kerry, “the use of troops to defend America” would be “subject to a veto by countries like France.” Sorry, but that's just not true, and the only reason they're saying that is because they'd rather spin than try to defend their record because, frankly, they made a mistake. We all know there's a big difference between working with others and letting them tell you what to do. Since Bush became president, I've often felt the urge to compare political situations to playground etiquette. Here, Bush appears to see only two options for the U.S. on the global playground: we can either be the bully, or we're going to get beat up. But history shows that there's another option that has worked really, really well, and that is to hang out with a bunch of friends on the playground, standing together against the loner bullies and convincing them by example that they're going to have more fun on the playground if they accept the rules that most everyone but them agrees on. Sure, it's possible there will be times when the rest of the world is just wrong and the U.S. has to go it alone on something, but invading Iraq was so not one of those times. The Republican rhetoric is both wrong and dangerous because it's basically trying to convince Americans that global cooperation is unacceptable, that no one can tell the U.S. what to do, but that every other country should do whatever we say. If Americans really accept these ideas, where will it end? Why would any other country ever want to work with us on anything again? And while we're debunking Republican canards, how about we look at the one that says that “No one can seriously suggest that the world is not a better and safer place w/out Saddam in power.” Um, I can. What would have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq in 2003? What if Saddam was still in power and we had continued with the most invasive inspections regime ever, and the sanctions and the global scrutiny and diplomacy? Very possibly something like this:

1. Thousands of Iraqis and over a thousand Americans would still be alive
2. Saddam might be a laughing-stock in his own country and in the world because the inspections would have shown by now that he had absolutely zero in the way of “WMD”
3. The U.N. would have been strengthened and gained credibility through its patient, determined, and peaceful resolution of a dangerous international issue
4. Iraq would have remained stable (if depressed) and would most likely have remained largely free of Al Qaeda-type terrorists (instead it has become a haven for them)
5. American prestige, power, and influence would be stronger than ever because the U.S. would still be acknowledged as a visionary moral leader in the world; the global goodwill the U.S. enjoyed after September 11, 2001 would only have been strengthened as the world saw that the world's most powerful nation was not just strong, but also wise.

Instead, Bush refused to work with anyone; he was right, everyone else was wrong, and consequences be damned. The consequences?

1. Thousands of Iraqis and over 1,000 Americans are dead
2. Saddam is a laughing stock, but so is the U.S. because it used its massive military strength to “protect the world” against WMD that didn't even exist
3. The U.N. has been relegated to a bit player, just where the Republicans want it to be, and the U.S. appears opposed to the idea of non-violent resolution of conflicts
4. Iraq is highly volatile, filled with anti-American terrorists, and there's no real end in sight
5. American has become a global pariah and to some extent a laughingstock; every ounce of respect and sympathy the world had for us after 9/11 has been squandered. Now when the U.S. says “we should do X because it's vital to global security,” the rest of the world laughs and gives us the finger.

So yeah. The world is so much better, and Americans are so much safer now that Saddam's not in power. Right. Gotcha. The fact that this is just taken for granted and simply cannot be challenged shows how good Americans are at managing cognitive dissonance, but also how dangerous Republican spin can be: It spun us into this war against Iraq, and if we buy the whole “global cooperation really means becoming enslaved to France's will” spin, god only knows what kind of tragic debacle we'll end up in next. People: Vote for Kerry. He understands both diplomacy and force, because really, can you understand the latter if you don't understand the former? I think not, but I'll save that for another day... Note: This post has been edited slightly to ad links to the AP story showing the Republican spin on the “global test.”

Posted 10:25 AM | Comments (7) | election 2004

Over the Weekend...

New phones: After 19 months with Sprint, L. and I have switched to Verizon phones. We traveled all the way to Alexandria (so far!) to find the nearest Verizon store and ended up with the LG VX600 picture phone. It's pretty low on geek-cool factor, but I discovered it has an active Yahoo Group for geeks who like to play with their phones. It's also compatible w/an open source program called BitPim, which is supposed to allow you to back up your contacts and pics and text messages, and to upload your own ringtones. I might invest in a data cable to see if it works, because I really need more toys to play with so that I get even less work done. Judging the ADR competition: I “judged” two rounds of the Alternative Dispute Resolution competition Saturday, which I wrote a little more about here. Protesting: The IMF and World Bank protests were this past weekend, but they haven't been a very big deal, it seems. The police have made far bigger problems than the protesters ever could have, but the protesters have made some important statements, nonetheless. Smoke Marijuana, Die in Jail: This is one of the saddest stories of overzealous criminal prosecution and the dangers of our current drug laws that I've seen in a long time. How could this judge have possibly felt that a jail sentence of any length was appropriate punishment for a quadriplegic found in a stopped vehicle—even if there was a loaded gun in the car? Yeah, someone was breaking the law w/that car and gun, but it sure as hell wasn't Jonathan Magbie. So, so, sad. More, including some crazy comments, from TalkLeft.

Posted 10:21 AM | Comments (6) | lists

Work As Break

After three days at the new internship (mentioned here), I'm enjoying it a great deal. I had a very interesting conversation on Friday w/a Denver attorney about Colorado's new Rule of Civil Procedure 16.1, which sort of creates an intermediate step for civil suits between small claims court and “regular” court, allowing suits involving less than $100,000 in dispute to use simplified procedure and seriously curtailed discovery so that litigants can get their day in court faster and more economically. It sounds great in theory, but time will tell whether it's great in practice. What's with Colorado getting all innovative with new rules these days? (A bit more on that here.) The strange thing is that “work” is seemingly almost like a vacation from the rest of my life. When I'm at the internship, I can put everything else out of my mind and just concentrate on the work they have for me to do. Homework? Can't do it there, so no need to worry about it. Applying for summer jobs? Can't do it there, so don't give it a thought. It's kind of nice. Is it a sign that you're sick of school when a job seems preferable? Of course, if I finished school tomorrow and started working full time, I'm sure it would be about two weeks before I started whining about how much better school was. I think it's called “grass is always greener” syndrome.

Posted 06:12 PM | Comments (1) | 2L

Getting It Up

A good friend of mine just published a new book about Viagra. Wanna know why you're always getting so much viagra spam? The short story is because men are insecure and the pharmaceutical industry is working hard to keep them that way by making them think they need drugs to be “normal” men. The long story is The Rise of Viagra: How the Little Blue Pill Changed Sex in America. Here's a great interview w/the author. Of course I think everyone should buy this book, not just because Meika is a friend, but also because what's happened w/Viagra affects us all. Those effects go beyond “sexual dysfunction” to how the profit-motive encourages big pharma to focus its research and resources on lifestyle drugs, which means less research and fewer resources for cancer drugs or AIDS drugs or low-cost treatments for diseases and viruses that continue to kill hundreds and thousands of people every year around the world. You think there's nothing wrong w/for-profit health care? Read this book; you might just think again. I'm pretty sure a condemnation of for-profit health care is not the book's real point (I haven't read it yet), but it's a logical extension of the book's explanation of the lengths to which drug-makers are willing to go just to make a buck.

Posted 03:52 PM | ai books

Meta-Listing

What happens when a blogger gets a little too busy is lists start seeming really attractive. Lists make it easy to jump from topic to topic w/out transitions or excuses or explanations. They also make possible nice and unexpected juxtapositions of seemingly disparate topics. For example, there's often a great deal to read between the lines of the brilliant Harper's Index, the list of all lists. The trouble with lists on a blog with categories is that they're hard to categorize. Since you can cover so many topics, should you place a list-post in all the categories it touches, or in no category, or somewhere else? I'm busy. I'm thinking in lists. I'm going to start a list category. We'll see how it works.

Posted 11:25 AM | lists

Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy birthday to the best mom ever! That would be the Ambivalent Mom, although she's much less ambivalent than I am. Most of you don't know her, so you'll just have to take my word for it—she's the sweetest, kindest, most generous and caring mother you'll ever find, and I hope she has a terrific birthday today!

Posted 09:20 AM | Comments (2) | life generally