Shriver contends that genetically engineered pain-free animals are the most acceptable alternative (Neuroethics, DOI: 10.1007/s12152-009-9048-6). “I’m offering a solution where you could still eat meat but avoid animal suffering.”
Pain free animals for farming. I can’t forsee any possible problems there…
AT&T was happy to sign up as many iPhone customers as they could. Their mentality was probably very similar to gyms who sign up as many people as they can in January when everyone makes their New Year’s Resolution to lose weight. Gym are packed the first few months after January but then there’s a drop-off in attendance, because people tend to slack off
In fact, far from being New Years’ Resolution Gym people, iPhone users are probably using their iPhones to stream music at the gym. All the more data for AT&T to try and avoid handling.
Krugman, writing in a blog post, notes the same utterly detached form of group insanity that Joe Klein observed at a recent Arkansas town hall:
The point is that whatever is driving all this doesn’t have anything to do with the realities of what I, or, much more important of course, Obama say or do. Obama could have come in proposing to pursue an agenda identical to Bush, and he would still be a socialist/Commie/fascist, with those of us who don’t see it that way lying Nazis ourselves.
Something is going very wrong in the heads of a substantial number of Americans.
At least on the point of the communist nonsense (and, if you haven’t been following the output of the nuthatch: Obama is secretly larding his White House with Marxists), I think we can parse the madness pretty damned easily. The first signs of it emerged from the fact that various high-level advisors who report only to the President are commonly referred to in the popular media as “Czars.” That must refer to some kind of a Marxist, right? Why, there are more “Czars” in the Obama administration than in Old Russia! Where there was one… and the more frequent english spelling there is actually, uh, “Tsar.” But let’s take it at fully idiotic face value: never mentioned or grasped is the seemingly equally critical fact that Obama’s is the first administration since Reagan (whose team seemingly popularized, but didn’t invent, the term “Czar” in its modern US political usage) that has actually stopped using the term at all. Early on during the transition period, the administration went out of its way to put a stop to the common usage, going so far as getting out there and providing quotes that made it into various stories, such as this one in Politico, which specifically note that:
“Obama aides say that Browner will not be called a “czar,” a term they dislike. They say she will simply focus like a laser beam on energy-reform issues, which the president-elect has named as a top priority and one of the linchpins of his economic recovery plan.”
Of course, the media positively loves the term. And continued to use it. Even when specifically corrected:
Reporter: On Ken Feinberg, I think that he’s maybe the 20th czar-type position you’ve named.
Gibbs: No, I think the title is “special master.”
And now fans the flames of this nonsense by failing to mention any of this, ever. And act as though this is the first administration EVAR to have such positions and to call them something like “Czars”, and it is all so much more evidence of secret Marxism in the Obama administration.
Secondly, that “Something” of Krugman’s post is largely personified in the form of one Glenn Beck. Who holds particular disdain for one Van Jones, Obama’s Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). See, absolutely no mention of “Czar” in there anywhere. Why, that gets us one closer to the number of Tsars around in the time of the Romanovs. In fact, I think we can all probably agree that Jones is a secret Marxist because Color of Change, an organization he co-founded has, as of this moment, successfully peeled off no fewer than 57 advertisers from Beck’s show. Clearly, only a secret Marxist would do such a thing, and a grateful nation owes Glenn Beck much for so selflessly pursuing this issue… That most of those advertisers still have contracts with FOXnews is troubling, but at least it’s a start. One might think that there’s a good MSM article in there somewhere, tracking the various personal vendettas that the right-wing echo chamber turns into grist for the mill. But, no, not interested. It’s just a “strange thing we’re observing on our various excursions flying across the hinterlands. Wonder what that’s all about?” Or, more succinctly:
“Sometimes in life you want to just keep walking… Sometimes, I think, just keep walking…. Some of life just has to be mysterious.”
God help us if we ever get a functional media class. People might actually learn something. Starting with those people in the newly functional media class.
“My fellow Americans, we say that healthcare is a right of all citizens. The other party says that it is a privilege for those who can afford it. If you agree with them that healthcare is a privilege, not a right, then vote for them. We would like to persuade you to join us, but if we can’t, then we are going to defeat you.
"Decades ago our opponents tried to block Social Security and Medicare, using the same bogus arguments that they are using today against healthcare reform. They said Social Security and Medicare would bankrupt the country. They were wrong. Once we fix the cost inflation of our broken medical sector, with some minor tweaks Social Security and Medicare can be made solvent forever.
"Decades ago, our opponents said that Social Security and Medicare would turn the United States into a fascist or communist police state. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. And not only are they wrong, they are hypocritical. Many of our opponents who claim absurdly that universal healthcare will bring tyranny to the U.S. have defended some of the greatest assaults on civil liberties and the rule of law in American history during the previous administration.
"They can draw a Hitler mustache on me. They can draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa, for all I care. They are wrong and we are going to defeat them.
"We won the elections and we are the majority. We would like to build the biggest consensus possible, but progress is more important than consensus. Our job is to help the American people, not split the difference between right and wrong by giving a veto to the party that the American people have rejected.
"In this fight, as in earlier struggles, powerful interests are opposed to the needs of the people. In the 19th century, we the people defeated the Southern slave owners, freed the slaves and saved the nation. In the 20th century, while fighting alongside many other nations to save the world from militarism and totalitarianism, we the people here at home tamed the corporations for a generation and fought segregation based on race, gender and, more recently, sexual orientation.
"Today the campaign for affordable healthcare as a right, not a privilege, is opposed by powerful interests in the medical and insurance industries. They seek to deceive and confuse you. And they seek to bribe or intimidate your elected representatives into serving their will rather than the needs of the public.
"They may win this battle. They may win the next. But we will never stop fighting for the needs of the many against the greed of the few. For more than 200 years, from the time we threw off the tyranny of the British empire and established our republic, we have worked to realize the spirit of ‘76 on this continent and in the world beyond. The enemies of progress have money on their side. We have history on ours.”
Worth noting, in the run-up to James Cameron’s Avatar (his first movie since the Clinton administration), that old JC is just not a very good writer. Don’t get me wrong: he has great ideas, just shockingly little execution in terms of compelling, believable dialogue and/or dramatic events sequencing (this is totally separate from the ability to film a compelling sequence; it’s the narrative string of those sequences and the dialogue that binds them together that he frequently has troubles with). Rather than give a tick-tock of dull examples (to quote Leo upon ice-breaking: “this is bad!”), let’s just hash one out: The Abyss.
Released in 1989, it follows the travails of a team of deep-sea specialists as they are joined by another team of deep-sea not-so-specialists who hope to investigate the loss of a submarine and its various attendant secrets and the occasional nuclear bomb. The Soviets (yep, still around!) are also snooping in the area, and naturally the two teams each contain exactly 50% of a former couple who still love but cannot love. Mayhem ensues; it’s Die Hard on a submersible platform. [Spoilers ahoy!] Turns out there’s a mess of aliens down there. They are more or less set on destroying the Earth from their abyssine fortress, uh, sooner or later, but are convinced by the selfless act of Our Hero to relent and wait to see how (or if) humanity shapes up (recall that Ed Harris chases the nuke that the SEALs sent down into The Abyss and disarms it with great fortune due to some color-perception issues that crop up at the final moment in glow-stick lighting (see: great ideas, poor execution!)). In the aftermath, both the submersible platform and the alien fortress surface (the latter in the form of a pink-hued paper plate filmed in a bathtub), and everyone is happily reunited.
In the “Director’s Cut” we get an extended sequence of events with the aliens. While it’s inconcievable that it could be a worse ending than that which shipped with the original film: it is. Occasionally, the studio is right to fuck with the film.
Now imagine this:
Same set up. Same basic buildup too: a series of odd things happening with increasing frequency as more time is spent below. Are there aliens out there? We occasionally see some odd lights. Perhaps sea creatures of some unknown kind? The Red Menace? Maybe it’s just a problem with the exotic gas mixture (this, conveniently enough, already is basically a plot-point of the film), and, played along with the also already-in-there SEAL commander’s gradual descent into madness (like Ted Striker, he can’t handle the pressure), we could be made to wonder if, in fact, everyone aboard is just going nuts and there’s nothing out of the ordinary happening down there at all. Plug in a few POV-type fantasias (or are they!?!) at key moments to build on each of these potential explanations. Then have the SEAL commander send the nuke due to his own, personal theories. Ed Harris doesn’t know if there’s something down there or there isn’t, but whether it’s the Roosky or the Alien, he’s not risking it, and he goes anyway. Just imagine the glory of these Cameronian lines:
BUD
Baby, maybe there’s something down there, maybe there isn’t. But we’re going to find out. Soon. And for a long time. Now you go live, goddammit, LIVE!
LINDSEY BRIGMAN POV–VIRGIL ‘BUD’ BRIGMAN DESCENDS INTO MOONPOOL AND VANISHES
LINDSEY
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Later, we have the same choppy, text-based communications as depicted in the real film; he’s reached the bomb. They tell him what to do. And he is never heard from again. Did he get there? The bomb didn’t go off, but maybe it just malfunctioned at that depth. Was it him? Was it aliens? Sea monsters? Red Menace? They are rescued (though without alien help, as occured in the film), but clearly can’t hope to explain any of the many events that happened. Technicians note some minor helium imbalances in the air handling system and some odd organic residues that could…be…anything.
Roll credits.
Tell me that’s not almost infinitely better, ‘Merica. Tragic, mysterious, and action packed. It’s the fucking American Dream.
David Broder: If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?
Lemkin: Yes.
David Broder: The wheels are turning, but they can still be halted before irreparable damage is done.
Lemkin: My, it’s amazing you think the damage has yet to be done. Why are you employed by a major media corporation, and upon which planet do you spend most of your time?
David Broder: …
Back in July, John Kyl wished all stimulus spending would come to an end. Eric Cantor has come out today in the same vein. Why would they say such a thing?
I’d wager it’s because of the undercurrents of recovery that lead to this Wall Street Journal Headline:
You see, the real issue is that (from the GOP’s point of view) the stimulus must be seen to fail. And miserably. For the stimulus to be regarded as an unqualified (or even a marginal) success is to destroy everything the GOP has been working for. In fact, for it to be successful even in light of being rather randomly pared down to meet arbitrary “centrist” specifications would be an unmitigated disaster for the GOP heading as it is into the 2010 election cycle. Because, you see, they realize that only a fraction of the stimulus has yet become active. Indeed, witness this paragraph from the above linked WSJ:
Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects.
[…]
For the third quarter, economists at Goldman Sachs & Co. predict the U.S. economy will grow by 3.3%. “Without that extra stimulus, we would be somewhere around zero,” said Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman.
Thus the logic for the GOP is rather simple. The stimulus is working; the stimulus Must Be Stopped. It’s the only patriotic position possible. The GOP needs that growth to be “somewhere around zero” for their 2010 campaign ads, after all.
Sir Tom Toles, Lord of TARDIS
Matt Yglesias again comes down on the right side of the argument. The nut of his take:
there is one crucially important difference [between Democrats and Republicans when holding the majority power]. Democrats hand out committee chairmanships by a blind seniority rule. Republicans do not. Chairman need to rotate out of their positions after fixed terms, which then gives the caucus as a whole input over who takes over next. Consequently, the Senate leadership has some meaningful leverage over Republican Senators—even Senators from liberal states. If they’re really determined to make Snowe (and Collins) vote “no,” they have tools at their disposal to make that happen. By contrast, the Democratic leadership heads into tough fights basically disarmed with no real tools of discipline and leverage at their disposal
Yep. True discipline will only occur when some of these senior Senators face losing their beloved power-levers. You vote “No” on cloture over a keynote issue like healthcare, you should lose all seniority. Period. Furthermore, the Democrats could make serious hay by simply offering moderate Republicans like Snowe and Collins certain perks they’d never, ever get by simply party-lining it along with the rest of the GOP. Better committee, Chair of something, bigger office, whatever the hell it takes to procedurally sweeten the pot: do it. That’s how to begin, begin rebuilding anything resembling the much sought after bipartisanship that high-Broderism so values.
Let’s review: healthcare reform is and always has been a debate between liberal and conservative Democrats. To the extent that any GOP votes can be found in the Senate, those individuals should be rewarded by receiving treatment that any conservative Democrat with equal seniority might enjoy. But you can basically forget the GOP as honest negotiators or compromise partners in this debate. Not going to happen. Thus: absolute requirement that every Democrat vote for cloture. Or else.
Lemkin 