POLIS

Goodnight

2007-06-18T23:24:00.000-05:00

It's barely worth pointing out and far beyond obvious at this point, but for the slim benefit of anyone stumbling across this blog, I feel compelled to say that it is dormant and closed, now and for ever.

Cheers,
-Paul

The Election Day Advent Calendar

2006-09-01T11:18:00.000-05:00

I'm actually following through on a promise! What a concept.

I'm pretty proud of this one: it's the 2006 Election Day Advent Calendar. You guessed it: instead of counting down to Christmas, you count down to Election Day. Instead of opening up doors on wintry scenes, you'll reveal key moments in the history of our electoral process, narrated by the likes of Teddy Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, and Jon Stewart.

The Calendar is the first serious for-sale production of Gerrymander, a new business based here in Chicago that I'm starting with my partner in crime Ben Helphand. Our goal is to make fun, democracy-themed stuff.

The D.C. edition of the DailyCandy featured the Calendar Friday. They ran with the concept and produced a poem in the style of 'Twas The Night Before Christmas, even managing to rhyme "George Stephanopoulos."

I'm particularly excited that überblog Boing Boing picked it up. *sniff*

I do hope you'll check it out and I'd love to hear your feedback.

A nod: new MD politics blog

2006-07-28T12:07:00.000-05:00

I want to give a blogger family shout-out to my brother, who's now blogging about Maryland politics over at The Old Line.

He's going to be attending U. of MD's School of Public Policy this fall, and if I weren't so irreparably biased, I'd say he's a political writer to watch in that blue state.

The one you wanted to have a beer with, part II

2006-06-14T23:06:00.000-05:00

Capt. Phineas Q. Douchebag is up to his wacky old tricks again!

Bush apologizes to vision-impaired reporter
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, who often teases members of the White House press corps, apologized Wednesday after he poked fun at a reporter for wearing sunglasses without realizing they were needed for vision loss.
The exchange occurred at a news conference in the Rose Garden.
Bush called on Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten and asked if he was going to ask his question with his "shades" on.
"For the viewers, there's no sun," Bush said to the television cameras.
But even though the sun was behind the clouds, Wallsten still needs the sunglasses because he has Stargardt's disease, a form of macular degeneration that causes progressive vision loss.
The condition causes Wallsten to be sensitive to glare and even on a cloudy day, can cause pain and increase the loss of sight.

Hilarious!

Electoral politics, meet Skype

2006-06-06T15:43:00.000-05:00

Today I placed calls as a volunteer of MoveOn.org on behalf of Francine Busby, the Democrat running in the special election for the Dukestir's seat, the California 50th. (The Fightin' 50th!) For about an hour I called voters in the district and reminded them to get out to the polls. I have a mobile phone but no landline, and I don't particularly like my mobile, so I went with Skype and it's newly free service, SkypeOut, which lets you call plain old telephone numbers in the U.S. from your computer. MoveOn presents you with a nice web application that guides you as you go through each call, a page for each voter with name and number, along with buttons to follow if they respond, if you reach an answering machine, if there's no answer, et cetera. I simply cut'n'paste the phone number for each voter into Skype, no tedious manual dialing like a sucker. In fact, MoveOn could make it even easier if they included Skype's callto:// links right in the voter info pages (for instance, 202-456-1414), so that you could just click and Skype will make the call. But that's easily fixed: if Firefox is your browser, and you have the Greasemonkey extension, this user script will convert phone numbers into SkypeOut links.

I might do another round to catch the nine-to-fivers coming home. Then sit back and watch the results. Should be an interesting night.

The one you wanted to have a beer with

2006-05-09T13:42:00.000-05:00

Bush visited with some waiting in a courtyard where Frank Sinatra's "Young At Heart" played on the loudspeakers, then he went indoors where people were looking over the laptops. He walked around giving handshakes and hugs to those who rose for his entrance, and greeted a man who remained sitting in a wheelchair with, "You look mighty comfortable."

Al Gore in Chicago

2006-05-04T10:53:00.000-05:00

Last night, I was lucky enough to attend a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's new movie about global warming, at the AMC on Illinois, and the man himself - the former next President of the United States - was there.

Early in the movie, Gore talks about professor Roger Revelle at Harvard, who was the first to blow the whistle on warming, a diligent, careful scientist and clearly a skilled teacher, to judge by Gore's reverence. And at some point later on, after maybe the third or fourth vignette in his lecture, you realize that Gore has become that figure, the great teacher, in command of a vast array of data but never at a lost to explain lucidly. Of course, he's got great material to work with: I've never seen charts and graphs of data have such a visceral reaction from an audience. But Gore walks us through it, the patient teacher, obviously driven by a moral imperative he asks us to share. By the end, you'd be hard pressed to turn it down.

In the Q&A session afterwards, perhaps because he knew he was with the choir - the screening was organized by ELPC and attended by the environmental literati of Chicago - he was a bit flat, gamely trying to field questions that included details such as the amortization of power plants. Which, of course, he's fully capable of answering, just as much a wonk as ever. But towards the end, he seemed to find the fire that's been fueling him since the most powerful position in the world was taken away from him, and looking relaxed and dressed in an all-black suit, he reminded me of Johnny Cash, the Man in Black, up front, daring to tell the inconvenient truth until it becomes history.

You're sorry?

2006-04-20T18:13:00.000-05:00

Oh, you're sorry? You apologized to your girlfriend? Pussy. God! You're an American! And this is America! And you let big bad China scare you? You let Censorship Jim boss you around, make you ashamed of your own country and its freedoms? Looks like he's the one smiling here.

Bush later addressed the matter when he met with Hu in the Oval Office. "He just said this was unfortunate and I'm sorry it happened," said Dennis Wilder, acting senior director for Asian affairs on the National Security Council staff.

What are you sorry about? What? That people are allowed to protest freely here? That we can speak truth to power and that's a right that can't be run over with a tank? What are you sorry about?

You flinched.

Pussy.

Early Voting Blues Brunch: This Saturday

2006-03-07T01:48:00.000-06:00

It's the first time Illinoisans can vote early in an election (without an excuse), so some friends of mine thought we should celebrate.

Come join us for the first ever Early Voting Blues Brunch at the Hideout this Saturday, March 11th, from 11am to 2pm. It's free.

There'll be music from Revelator and delicious food. You need not have already early-voted, so long as you intend to, or are aware that you can.

Yosemite Sam said to be shootin' mad

2006-02-22T16:53:00.000-06:00

Vote early, possibly often, we're note sure

2006-02-15T12:09:00.000-06:00

Illinois' primary election day 2006 is March 21st, but starting Monday, February 27th, you can vote early at any of 21 places in the city of Chicago. You could fumble with the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners' lovely website to find where to go, or you could just find at a glance the polling place closest to you on, say, a Google Map like this one.

Google and online privacy

2006-01-24T15:52:00.000-06:00

Reading Tim Wu's essay on the recent DOJ subpoena of Google for its search records, I thought of translucent databases. The core concept behind translucent databases is that the statistically, or epidemiologically, or biologically, or whateverologically interesting data in a record -- demographics, a web search, health history, credit rating, etc. -- is left in plain cleartext, but the key that uniquely identifies that record, which may be sensitive or personal information like a name, Social Security number, or an IP address, is passed through a secure, one-way encryption algorithm generating a so-called "hash", a string of character that looks to the untrained eye as a random gobbledygook. The encryption algorithm is strong enough that the sensitive data it represents can't be discovered by reverse engineering the hash: without a special passphrase known only to trusted parties, it would take untold computers untold years to de-encrypt any one hash back to the cleartext original. In addition -- and this is the key point -- for any input, as long as that input doesn't change, you get the same hash. In other words, there is, for all intents and purposes, one unique hash for each possible input*. So with translucent databases, institutions can continue to do interesting data analysis without losing the critically important need to uniquely identify and therefore couple records together: the difference is that they can do this work without actually knowing that this record belongs to Bob Smith, or that record is from the IP address 63.161.169.137. And arrangements can be made with the persons about whom data is collected to use aforementioned passphrases to reliably update records without untrusted parties becoming privy to the information underneath.

One part of the media coverage of this Google v. DOJ story that's unsatisfying to anyone who is familiar with IP networks is that an IP address doesn't necessarily uniquely identify something the way most people think it does. They can be dynamically assigned and therefore change regularly (though there is certainly no reason to think that ISPs aren't keeping track of IP assignment history). With the advent of NAT and private IP networks, an IP address is less likely than ever to even uniquely identify a single computer: there could be many Internet-accessing devices behind a router with a single IP address, which is certainly the case in many home and small business networks where the scarcity of available public IP addresses make it infeasible and an administrative burden to try and assign numbers to each machine. Think of a coffee shop with a WiFi access point: each of those macchiato-sipping laptop users are known by the rest of the Internet by the same IP address. It's far more likely that web browser cookies, tracked across many sites with sharing agreements and usually tied to a login session where a user has provided information that could ultimately be traced back to them, would yield interesting, per-surfer metrics.

But there are plenty homes out there with a single PC and connection to the Internet, so why even bother with storing IP addresses? Once a cursory examination of them is done -- for instance, country of origin, which can easily be discovered by widely available tools -- run them through your encryption scheme and toss the originals. Then if you ever do get in a situation where you're forced to hand over the data, you can at least do it secure in the knowledge that you're not compromising your user's privacy. You still have problems, just one less one on your conscience.

* The information space of a typical hash is 128 bits, or 2 to the power of 128, or 3.4e38, or an extremely large number of possible outcomes. So while "collisions" -- two different inputs that yield the same output hash -- can happen, and have, in the case of the MD5 algorithm, the odds of them occurring are infinitesimally small, and in any case would not diminish the practical utility of day-to-day use of such hashes; that is, until quantum computers get their hands on them, but that is another, terrifying matter.

I wish I could quit you -- no, seriously

2006-01-23T15:40:00.000-06:00

Every day Hotline's Last Call has a section called "Shot and Chaser" --
typically two quotes that are somehow strangely related.

Today's was:

SHOT . . .

"The president does not have a personal relationship with Mr. Abramoff" --
Dan Bartlett (1/23/06).

. . . CHASER

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky" -- Bill
Clinton (1/26/98).

(via D)

Gerrymander

2005-12-19T17:48:00.000-06:00

Ben and I are up to something. We'll tell you about it in 2006 (hopefully early in 2006) …

Who stands for you? Find your Civic Footprint.

2005-10-19T15:23:00.000-05:00

In between my geologic-time-scale postings here at Polis, I also do things. Like make web-based applications such as the very brand new Civic Footprint.

Here's the skinny: if you live in the Chicagoland area, in less time than you can say "Cook County Clerk David Orr" you can get a list of the elected officials who represent you and a spiffy map of their districts. Sure, you could try to reverse engineer the info on your voter reg card or tediously crawl through a slew of disconnected and user-unfriendly websites to find this info, but it would still suck a lot more than our one-stop show. Plus, our's looks sweet.

It's a young project but we think it's already pretty cool and we have big plans for it. I hope you like it.

http://www.civicfootprint.org/

civic footprint

I call bullshit

2005-10-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

is this thing on

2005-09-03T17:44:00.000-05:00

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, disputed the notion that Mr. Bush's long-term political viability was endangered and said Saturday that he was confident that the administration would be able to push ahead successfully with its entire second-term agenda. "There are a number of priorities and we will address all of them," he said.

Oh you mean one of the people nervous about the president's long-term political viability dismissed questions about the president's long-term viability. Mm.

Beyond that, some Republicans said the perception among some blacks that the White House had been slow because so many victims were poor and African-American undercut what had been one of the primary initiatives of the new Republican chairman, Ken Mehlman: making an explicit appeal for support among black voters, a constituency that has traditionally been overwhelmingly Democratic.

D'oh. Stupid current and history of practicing racism! You're ruining it!

Hooray! Remember how we reelected them?

That was awesome.

...

Culture War Inoculator!

2005-03-21T14:06:00.000-06:00

Strike a blow for federalism! Stand up for the separation of powers! Stick a thumb in the eye of culture warriors!

It's easy!

Instructions!

Download from the list below!
Print it out!
Fill out five (5) fields and sign it in front of two (2) of your friends or family members!
Then they sign it!
Give it to your lawyer or at least put it in with your important files (SS card, birth certificate, deed, etc.), and tell your family and loved-ones of your intentions!
Pass this post on to your uninoculated friends and family!
Done!

Download!

Source: the Illinois Living Will Act (755 ILCS 35)

Update: I fixed the links in the "Download" section. Hooray!

Multimedia players

2005-02-07T15:20:00.000-06:00

Dear NPR's Morning Edition,

Your story "Multimedia Players Compete for Desktop Space" lamented the fact that none of the three major media players support all of each other's native file formats. While it may not be from a known software company---or from company at all---the open source MPlayer supports all of the big three formats, and many more. It's another example of open source software that, like Linux with operating systems, is more feature-rich than its closed-source competitors, because anyone can improve upon it and fill the gaps big companies have left behind. And yes, it's also free.

Sincerely,
Paul

Both Illinois Senators vote "no" on Gonzales nominations

2005-02-04T14:28:00.000-06:00

Sens. Barack Obama and Richard Durbin of Illinois, along with 33 other members of the Democratic caucus, voted "no" on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attoney General.

Sen. Obama made a particularly good statement on the floor before casting his vote.

I had hoped that during his hearings Judge Gonzales would ease my concerns about some of the legal advice he gave to the President. And I had hoped he would prove that he has the ability to distance himself from his role as the President's lawyer so that he could perform his new role as the people's lawyer.

Sadly, rather than full explanations during these hearings, I heard equivocation. Rather than independence, I heard an unyielding insistence on protecting the President's prerogative.

I did not hear Mr. Gonzales repudiate two and a half years of official U.S. policy which has defined torture so narrowly that only organ failure and death would qualify. A policy that he himself appears to have helped develop the dubious legal rationale for. Imagine that. If the entire world accepted the definition contained in the Department of Justice memos, we can only imagine what atrocities might befall our American POWs. How, in a world without such basic constraints would we feel about sending our sons and daughters to war? How, if we are willing to rationalize torture through legalisms and semantics, can we claim to our children, and the children of the world, that America is different, and represents a higher moral standard?

Good stuff.

Anti-municipality telecommunication legislation coming down the pike for Illinois

2005-02-03T16:44:00.000-06:00

A while back I mentioned that 2005 would be a pivotal year locally and nationally for communities, neighborhoods and municipalities to determine their own telecommunications future. SBC, fresh from gobbling up its big daddy, AT&T, is already manuevering next door in Indiana. Expect to see similar if not nearly identical legislation introduced very soon in Springfield that neuters the ability of a muni to provide advanced telecommunications services to its citizens, even if the market has ignored them or actively suppressed innovation and affordable prices. With the recent release of free and open source software that lets anyone deploy their own community wireless network---which runs great on low-cost and even recycled computer hardware: burn a CD, pop it in that old 486 PC lying in your closet, throw a cheap wireless card in it, and you're off---Illinoisans should be wary of laws that preempt their choice, because we've already seen what this looks like in Pennsylvania. Let's not turn out like Pennsylvania.

Word is, the bill won't be introduced until after a meeting of the Illinois Telecommunications Association sometime next week. But community telecom advocates need to be ready for a fight, and it won't be pretty. SBC has Emil Jones et al. in its pocket. There's not much of a political constituency for community wireless just yet. This may change soon ...

Shorter SOTU 2005

2005-02-02T21:21:00.000-06:00

"Freedom freedom freedom---unless you're gay."

Frist off the deep end

2005-02-02T09:51:00.000-06:00

Majority Leader Frist needs to lay off the formaldehyde.

"I can play hardball as well as anybody," he said, unprompted, at the end of a recent interview. "That's what I did, cut people's hearts out. On the other hand, I do it to cure them, to heal them, to make them better."

Is this supposed to be intimidating? You're a doctor: you didn't cut people's hearts out to teach them a lesson. "This is what I do, I gas people. I did it for anesthetic purposes, but they knew who was boss. You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something. I am God."

Half of bankruptcies caused by medical expenses

2005-02-02T08:30:00.000-06:00

A new Harvard study looked at thousands of bankruptcy cases, and found that major medical bills caused half of them, usually from a single severe illness or prolonged hospital stay. And today's insurance packages weren't enough:

The study found that the majority of medical bankruptcy filers nationwide were middle-class homeowners with some college education. They usually had health insurance, too. More than 75 percent of people in medical bankruptcy were insured when they first got sick.

It's the high, one-time medical costs that drive up prices for the rest of the insured and keeps businesses from offering affordable health insurance. Government, as a large entity with major purchasing power, should absorb these top-end bills, which are probably something like 5% of the cases but 75% of the costs. (I'm making up numbers; if only there were more health-care-related bloggers …) Then private insurers and employers could affordably offer the in-patient, prescription drug, and preventative care plans.

This is a crisis for the middle-class, and one that could be fixed with progressive legislation and leadership. While the Cook County Board is working to save the old Cook County Hospital, they could make a real statement with the money they'll claim to save by using it to look at comprehensive catastrophic coverage.

Eyes on the Prize screening by teacher shut down

2005-02-01T17:22:00.000-06:00

The Eyes on the Prize screening campaign being organized by Downhill Battle has received its first casualty: according to the DB blog, a teacher in Virginia has been forced to cancel a planned viewing of the landmark civil rights documentary on February 8th, by threat of lawsuit from a copyright holder. DB is rightly pissed:

We absolutely cannot believe this - we had never anticipated that anyone would try to stop students and community members from watching a film about the Civil Rights Movement. Apparently, the law firm that contacted them says that the school district does not have the proper licenses. This is really unbelievable-- if there is any fair use, free speech right at all, it applies to screenings of a historical documentary in a school (wikipedia on fair use). This is a public screening in an educational, non-commercial, one-time use setting. Messing with a school district in Virginia is a whole different ballgame, don't you think?

On the bright side, this pushes the issue of absurd and harmful copyright restriction into the fore; hopefully an EFF or similar can step up and challenge this right away. Being Black History Month, there may not be better opportunities for political cover like this.

UPDATE: It's gotten back to Downhill Battle themselves: from their website moments ago:

we have taken down the torrent links to these videos at the request of lawyers for Blackside, Inc. This sucks!

I have to believe they were looking for this fight or at least knew it would come. Luckily, I think this was publicized well-enough amongst the major blogs that I imagine the video got pretty well distributed. Folks with friendly web hosting ought to step up and host torrent trackers …

Durbin votes no on Condi

2005-01-26T21:18:00.000-06:00

Although Rice's nomination was never in doubt, Democrats mounted a lengthy and biting protest that showed she will not immediately match Powell's collegial relationship with Capitol Hill.

Democratic senators denounced Rice's job performance and truthfulness. Most criticism focused on Rice's role planning for war and explaining the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Some accused her of avoiding accountability for the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Others said she seemed unwilling to acknowledge errors in planning or judgment.

"In the end, I could not excuse Dr. Rice's repeated misstatements," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said of his vote against Rice.

Sen. Durbin had a good, strong Democrat day, also giving torture apologist Alberto Gonzales the thumbs-down in committee. Kudos, Senator.

Eyes on the Screen

2005-01-26T20:53:00.000-06:00

The incomparable agents provocateur at Downhill Battle are engaging in some wholly justified civil disobediance with "Eyes on the Screen":

According to some, it's illegal for makers of the civil rights documentary "Eyes on the Prize" to put it on DVD or show it in public? But at 8:00 PM on February 8th during Black History Month, Downhill Battle (downhillbattle.org) is encouraging Americans to celebrate the struggle and triumph of the civil rights movement with screenings of "Eyes on the Prize" in homes and public places with the goal of having a screening in every major city in America. The campaign is called Eyes on the Screen.

"Eyes on the Prize" is the most comprehensive and revered civil rights documentary ever made. But the documentary has not been available for public viewing for the past 10 years because of unreasonable copyright laws that impose stifling restrictions on artists and filmmakers. In one instance, copyright holders believe they should receive licensing fees for the song "Happy Birthday," which appears in footage of a group of people singing to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"To celebrate Black History Month, we believe that "Eyes on the Prize" should be seen by as many people as possible," says Tiffiniy Cheng of Downhill Battle. "The civil rights movement is just too important for this invaluable resource to be denied to the public. So, we're going to help distribute "Eyes on the Prize" to a mass audience and communities can have screenings."

Google Video

2005-01-25T02:16:00.000-06:00

The Mountain View geniuses do it again with Google Video, a television show search engine. I haven't read up on the back-end technology, but after playing around with it for a few minutes, it's clear they're doing some sort of speech-to-text and associating stills with the conversions. So when you give it a query, the video stills are relevant in context to when the term occured in the show. I searched "obama" and I got back, among other results, the exact still of the Jeopardy! answer about him, with the corresponding transcript highlighted to when Alex was reading the answer and the contestant replied with the question. You can't actually watch any video via the site, so utility seems limited at the moment. It's still cool, in a way that I think is designed to drum up demand for access to the video contained in your search results. Where that demand goes is anyone's guess right now. Content owners think advocates for sensible copyright restrictions are communists.

Okay, they have figured out how to scrape a video (and presumably audio) feed for human language and put it all in the search relevancy results we've all come to expect. They've only been running their indexer against television feeds since December, but think about it: if it weren't for the stingy copyright, we already have the technology to google any TV show, really any media -- music, movies, audiobooks -- ever. That's pretty fucking amazing. It's not surprising, because all of the pieces to do this have been floating around for a while, and it takes a Google to pull it off, but as I was just sitting here thinking of how we could have truly on-demand entertainment ("oh, what was that one episode of West Wing, with the diary? Let's google it and watch it...," or, "I want to see a movie right now about Vietnam," or "How does that song, Genius of Love, go, again?"), it seemed to warrant mention.

UPDATE (minutes later): Alright, on further examination, it appears they are getting the text from speech via the closed captioning stream, so they've offloaded that heavy-lifting to existing infrastructure. It's still impressive, even if it isn't as sophisticated as it initially seemed :-( Reading the "About" page: who knew?

Obama votes to recommend Rice for confirmation

2005-01-20T01:54:00.000-06:00

The Senate Foreign Relations committee voted 16-2 to send NSA Rice's confirmation as the next Sec. of State to the Senate floor. Illinoisans might want to note Sen. Barack Obama's first high-profile vote, committee or otherwise, in this case being cast in the affirmative to recommend the confirmation. I have no idea what sort of inside baseball goes on amongst committee members of the same party. Clearly Sen. Boxer was sent to be the attack dog in this battle. Sen. Kerry probably has all the freedom he wants at this point. The etiquette for freshmen senators is to stay fast to leadership, keep your head down, earn quiet respect; Sen. Obama, as much as Sen. Clinton before him, needs to keep out of the spotlight and do the hard work of becoming a parliamentarian. All that, and add the nigh-impossibility of voting against another African-American. Really, he had almost no choice in this case but to vote to recommend.

Still, it must have been hard to press the yea button.

Let me tell you where to put those stickers

2005-01-14T01:42:00.000-06:00

Members of the reality-based community can celebrate a little tonight.

A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution “a theory, not a fact,” saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

Here we have the problem of a word with a strong popular meaning and connotation also having a particular precise application in a more specific context. They only got away with this as long as they did because presumably well-meaning people looked at the term "theory of evolution," and it seemed a little soft, spongy enough to absorb controversy and able to be dismissed or argued by an average but reasonably well-informed person. Theory, in the scientific sense, is a word that's hard and neutral, and the price of admission to argue a scientific theory on its merits is high. Besides, if you start casting doubts about evolution because it's "theory" of evolution, it's a slippery slope: science is pretty much all theories.

While I tend to put myself in the Feyerabend camp and think that a community, not a group of scientists, should determine for itself how best to absorb and integrate scientific knowledge and its applications, if you're Joe Q. Schoolboard from Georgia, you're making a huge mistake climbing into the playing field of science, same with you "intelligent design"ers. It's absurd for you to adopt the framework of the thing you're trying to negate. Haven't you learned anything from your ridiculously successful, tax-cutting political brethern?

Update: I've had a change of heart: I'm pro-sticker.

Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others

2005-01-13T20:36:00.000-06:00

Dan's right that the position that there should be nothing shameful about abortion is not a very popular one, but it's hard to defend a practice if you're conceding that you, too, believe it is distateful, somehow "wrong," should be rare, etc. You've already given up a good bit of moral ground to your opponent. I think there is room to manuever here, in the demystification arena, especially around first-term abortions. T-shirts aren't going to get you anywhere, but a first-term abortion -- so I'm told by my feminist activist friends -- is quick, non-surgical, pain-free, apart from the discomfort. Obviously, there is an emotional component which varies wildly and is attendent both in the abstract and in first-hand experience, but if the actual medical procedure was less of thing only talked about in hushed tones if at all, well, I'll just say that people tend to be less racist when they've seen and known actual other races. On the other hand, I don't know how one would go about demystifying abortions …

Now, this is not to say that the party should go and start being all out and abortion-positive. Politically, it's a landmine where the media is not on our side and which animates the opposition. And I certainly think it's not inconsistent to woo moderates who find abortion morally suspect but aren't single-issue (single-issuers are going GOP every time, anyway, and are thankfully an extremely small group). But I think the advocacy groups that compose the party can try to take some of the taboo out of it, while the party basically stands pat on its current position. As Kevin Drum has pointed out, of all the social policies Democrats might want to bring under the microscope and have a heart-to-heart re-evaluation about, why are we so quick to tinker with the one core pillar that also happens to be the majority position?

Forbidden Words 2005

2005-01-12T13:21:00.000-06:00

A yearly custom that's sure to become an annual tradition, I hereby and humbly present the Forbidden Words Flagger, updated for 2005.

The Uh-Oh's

2004-12-30T01:33:00.000-06:00

John Perry Barlow renews his case for naming our nameless decades the "Uh-Oh's" in a post about a close call for his daughter. I hope she recovers alright; in the meantime, I second his motion:

At the dawn of this psychotic decade, I proposed, on instinct, that we should call it the Uh-Oh's. Decades need names. How else are we map their unique zeitgeists in our subsequent reflections on them? Imagine, for example, how awkward our historical recollections would become if we could not refer to "the 60's," a decade which needed no adjective, unlike, say, "the Roaring 20's?" The name is the frame, and the frame says it all.

But despite my efforts at that time, and occasional subsequent stabs, no one followed my suggestion. Furthermore, despite all the obvious historical hints, you have refused to see the appropriateness of my proposed name. Now, as we reach the mid-point of this critical passage, it remains nameless to everyone but me. You still have no verbal short-hand to refer to the decade that gave us 911, Bush the Younger, the Iraqi Tragedy, the comeuppance of the formerly Almighty Dollar, and now, one of the the most calamitous shit-kickings we've ever taken from Mutha Nature. (70,000 dead and barely counting anymore...) I cannot count the times over the last five years when when various tidings of the epoch made me mutter an involuntary "uh-oh" upon receiving them. And still, you resist my suggestion. What's it going to take, folks? Oh, never mind. You'll either see my point or you won't.

Report from Red America: The Tsunami

2004-12-29T23:45:00.000-06:00

Careful if you bandy about the phrase "act of God" in reference to recent events.

Happily, it's not taken long for humans to make sense of the horror of the Indian Ocean tsunami, and we have our friends in Red America to thank for this development. According to close sources, one actual theory of meaning emerging amongst our fellow Americans is, paraphrasing, "maybe this is God's way of dealing with what those people did on 9/11." Nevermind that the destruction visited upon the peoples of south and southeast Asia and western Africa was not limited to Muslims: this vast region is also populated by Buddhists, Hindus, even many Christians, in India, for example. Forget that the group that was the most displaced and felt the greatest brunt of the killing force of the waves was the very indigant poor, even though Osama bin Laden and his henchmen represent a well-financed extremism. Ignore the fact that the tsunami didn't even take place near where the terrorists of 9/11 came from or were safe-harbored. It just doesn't matter to Americans who are capable of this kind of sick, superstitious thinking. To them, brown people---all of them, apparently---are Muslims who want to kill us and have.

At first I wondered why the Bush Administration has been slow to react to the aid effort; after all, might not a Lakoffian analysis state that this is precisely the sort of situation where a conservative would endorse the action of his government to provide unconditional aid, a natural disaster where no "moral shortcoming" could be blamed for the lot of suffering? But now I wonder if they weren't simply being good representatives. You got to dance with them what brung you.

Preempt the preempters

2004-12-21T01:47:00.000-06:00

With a rewrite of the Illinois telecom act pending this year (the 2001 law expires in July), you'd better believe SBC is already maneuvering to extract maximum benefit from the public marrow. So far the news has been about local phone service regulation.

Something else to keep an eye out for: after Pennsylvania's shocking new law that gave Verizon the right-of-first-refusal over any effort made by any of that state's municipalities -- from townships all the way up to Pittsburgh -- to create their own broadband telecommunications infrastructure (save Philly, of course -- exempted from the bill because their proposed city-wide wireless data network was so heralded that Verizon had to threaten it, who then relented after Gov. Ed Rendell offered the sweeter fruit of the entire rest of the Commonwealth if they left poor Philly alone), and Ohio's recent introduction of similar legislation, look for fellow Baby Bell SBC to follow Verizon's lead and carve out their own preemption statute. They'll try to put the legislative kibosh on the growing community wireless networks (CWNs) movement (disclosure: that's the day job) that threatens their tired old battleship with cheaper, better services over vastly faster and higher capacity infrastructure that's community owned and operated, built on inexpensive and innovative technologies ("mesh" networking, and the 802.11 family of wireless standards: Wi-Fi if you're nasty) and access to our public airwaves (license-free use of the 2.4 GHz spectrum; thanks, FCC!).

Problem is, there's not much of a political constituency for CWNs, yet. Networks are just getting off the ground and municipalities are waking up to the notion of taking their broadband telecommunications future in their hands, at the same time as these preemption laws are popping up on state codes across the country. And of course, SBC has Springfield in a headlock. I'll have more on this over the next few months …

Paging Gary Bauer (or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bah Humbug)

2004-12-20T10:26:00.000-06:00

Our famously born-again Christian President just signed-off his end-of-the-year press conference with a cheerful "Happy Holidays!" Oh my god. The Commander-in-Chief must be the head of the covert and deceptive war being waged on Christmas! The conspiracy goes all the way to the top! Pffft!

Decentralize the federal government

2004-11-29T23:08:00.000-06:00

I'm always disappointed to see the extent of the sprawl of the D.C. metro region whenever I visit my home town of Frederick, Maryland. This past Thanksgiving weekend was no exception. State and local planners have simply not done enough to improve the transportation infrastructure to handle the massive growth north along the I-270 and, past Frederick, the I-70 corridors. Housing prices in the District and in Montgomery County -- the suburban area directly north of D.C. where most government and contractor workers traditionally reside -- are absurd, so people are living in Frederick County, Washington County to its north, and even West Virginia and southern Pennsylvania, commuting an hour and a half or more each way to government jobs. They're driving, of course -- the Metro has not been extended past Shady Grove in central Montgomery County, and a new commuter rail line in Frederick inexplicably takes you out of the way to a place called Point of Rocks before coming back towards D.C. This once semi-rural area in the Catoctin Mountains has become like every other exurb ever, with perpetual rush hour, McMansions and golf courses as far as you can see. Now, I'm no conservative -- I frankly believe the town's new-ish Borders bookstore is a much-needed civilizing and liberalizing force. Accomodating the demands of a changing and more suburban demographic is one thing; making smart and forward-thinking infrastructure decisions is hard but has a far greater impact on quality of life.

But let's just suppose that, despite a history of much-lauded smart growth efforts, Maryland can't get it's act together with respect to the I-270/I-70 corridor as it impacts Frederick County and points north and things continue pretty much along the trajectory that's been set out. The root of the problem is that all the jobs are in one place, and there's only so much space to live in. Is there any reason why we can't or shouldn't decentralize the federal government? Why can't the Department of Agriculture be relocated to Topeka, or the Department of Commerce to Chicago? Does the FCC really need to be in downtown D.C.? It would be easy to make a national security argument for decentralization. Put the State Department in NYC near the United Nations. The Defense Department is likely permanently wedded to Washington because of the Pentagon and the executive command structure, but other than that, to this writer it seems arbitrary in this age of air travel and telecommunications the need for all appendages of the federal government to be clustered together between the banks of the Potomac and Capitol Hill. (Quick update: when I say "decentralize the federal government," I am certainly not meaning by that the typical right-conservative desire for devolution of federal power to the state level.)

SMART Car

2004-11-26T13:05:00.000-06:00

W00t! If you've been to Europe in the last 5 years, you know the SMART Car. Well, it's finally been approved for sale in the U.S. I don't own a car, and I don't really need one where I live (in Bucktown, near the El, and I can walk to work), but the SMART Car to me is cool enough that I might lapse. They get 60 MPG and are small enough that you can park them nose-in to a regular parking space, and fit them three abreast in that space. It's like the iPod of cars, somehow.

Theories

2004-11-23T23:48:00.000-06:00

I'm still pissed off by that Gallop report.

Perhaps this is of a piece of a universal polling problem, where the phraseology can color responses. Is it that people have a fucked-up reaction to the word "theory"? Is it possible that when asked, "what do you think of the theory of evolution," people are like, "oh, theory of evolution," like it's some wishy-washy notion, like scientists are sort of fumbling around, and here, we came up with a theory that, you know, may or may not explain things … I hate to break out with a dictionary reference, but desparate times:

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

Damn straight.

I hate to say it, but I think "theory" needs some moral framing therapy.

WTF

2004-11-23T18:06:00.000-06:00

I want to take a nap when I read stuff like this:

Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

This is functionally equivalent to stating, say, "I don't believe in cheese." Not a whole lot of wiggle room here, people! And somehow I don't think 2/3 of Americans are making a nuanced epistemological challenge about what's knowable, either. While not very surprising, this is all nonetheless highly distressing.

And yet, 66.7% of Americans aren't living in caves, aren't disconnected from the electrical or telecommunications grids, aren't without indoor plumbing, aren't not buying digital cameras and laptops, aren't restricted to animal- and self-powered travel, aren't listening to music solely from the mouths of bards and each other, aren't living lives that last three decades, aren't going to bed at sundown, aren't subjugated to the will and whim of a king or emperor, aren't wearing clothes they made themselves, aren't eating only what they could catch or raise. So we're not totally in the hamper, at least; there's some shared functional acknowledgement of basic ontology. But this I would think has to qualify at minimum as an educational and theological crisis. (When I say "theological crisis," I mean, there's no reason Christian Sunday schoolers should be teaching that the fossil record is a hoax or that the science behind the Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer will eventually be discredited.)

Who ever thought "reality-based community" would become such a radical proposition?

Do some reporting

2004-11-21T19:37:00.000-06:00

The CNN headline to the tax returns amendment to the omnibus spending bill story is "Frist: Tax-returns measure indefensible." The story is no longer the amendment, who put it there, or why, it's the "outrage", the damage control. We see this far too often; the media let the politicians move the goalposts, and in this case, we're left with a feeling that the Republicans, of all people, are the victims: "accountability will be carried out," CNN reports Frist as saying.

The story also quotes Frist as saying, "I have no earthly idea how it got in there," and apparently, neither does CNN. You get the sense that the reporter -- unnamed, attributed only to the CNN Washington bureau -- couldn't care less, can't be bothered to investigate the details of the story, is only interested in uncritically parroting what each side is saying. In fairness, I realize how difficult it can be to obtain this information. I mean, I had to use Google like a sucker.

Frank Rich

2004-11-18T01:34:00.000-06:00

I didn't notice when the practice began, but it looks like the New York Times is now putting Frank Rich's Sunday column up on its website the Wednesday before. Odd, but I'm not complaining: he's easily the most compelling writer the Times publishes, so I'm happy to read his stuff a few days early. His election season work always provided the right god's-eye view of the country, weaving cultural and political analysis and making it look effortless. His latest is, as always, obligatory reading.

New rule: sex scandal qualifier required

2004-11-17T01:01:00.000-06:00

All these sex scandals throughout history, it wasn't clear what sort of sex was being had. Thank god for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, which helpfully sets precedent by clarifying that, in the case of James McGreevey, he was embroiled in a gay sex scandal. Okay, thanks, but now the burden is on us media producers. There's nothing we media types hate more than some goody throwing off the curve for the rest of us. I'll be tied up most of the week prefixing normal to all sex scandal references in previous Polis posts about Jack Ryan. Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

Dick Durbin

2004-11-16T13:19:00.000-06:00

Kudos to Illinois' own Dick Durbin on his elevation to the post of minority whip in the U.S. Senate, the Democrat's second-in-command in that chamber. Our senior senator may be overshadowed by his new junior partner for the time being, but Durbin is a party star in his right, a loyal Dem who has shown conviction during assaults on his 100% pro-choice voting record (which has, as a Catholic, put him at odds with the Church's leadership), and who was impressive in his questioning of former Attorney General John Ashcroft during Judiciary Committee hearings on the "torture memos."

The post of whip is a four-year committment, which indicates he's taken himself out of the running for a national post in 2008. He'll have to run for re-election then, and depending on how well the new minority leader Harry Reid does in holding off the impending Republican legislative assault, he'll be well-positioned to throw his hat in for leader. It bodes well for Illinois in any case, as having two powerful (Obama, thanks to his fundraising for other Dem candidates this fall, enters with the effective clout of a third- or fourth-year member) and well-known senators can only mean strong support for bills that are in the state's interests.

One big question arises: how does Mayor Daley feel about the sudden emergence of two powerful homestate Democrats? Daley, who's manage to keep threats to his clout at bay by not letting potential challengers come up from within, may not be too happy to see the political center of gravity shift to the federal level, and, to a certain degree, towards downstate.

A little principle, please

2004-11-10T11:23:00.000-06:00

This has been taped to my monitor for the last few months. I forget who said it, but it's a clipping from an article in the Chicago Reader.

"You might as well steal a page from the right. They don't compromise on their goals before they submit their plans. They aggressively push for what they want. By doing so they push the center in their direction. If you lose, you lose. At least you fought for what you believed in."

This doesn't entirely map to my thinking: I believe Democrats need to be pragmatic as they approach the '06 and '08 elections with a plan to win, not simply to change the center of political gravity. Results matter, and we can hardly afford to lose more ground. But this quote gets to a lot of what's wrong with the way Democrats too often operate.

The next Dem candidate

2004-11-08T13:22:00.000-06:00

In 1996, 100,000 conservative evangelical preachers received video tapes, prepared sermons, and other materials, introducing them and their congregations to George W. Bush.

Republicans knew who their candidate for president was four years before the election. They're probably making the decision for 2008 right now.

Are the Democrats doing the same? Who do we have, realistically? They can pick at least between Guiliani, Pataki, Jeb Bush, Frist. Who do we have?

George Lakoff

2004-11-05T13:50:00.000-06:00

Pretty much everyone can agree that part of the reason Democrats lost was that we let the Republicans eat our lunch on moral values for the last however many years, and that as a party we've done a poor job articulating our core values. We have a set of issues that the country identifies with us, but we've not effectively laid bare the common moral thread from which those issues spring forth.

As we set about thinking how to better express our moral values and reframe the national debate on issues to accomodate them, I urge everyone to take time out to read George Lakoff, who's been doing the grunt work on this for the last decade. Your first stop should be Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, which is the canonical source on the topic. Then read Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives, which is manifesto-sized and topical.

For a taste of Lakoff if you haven't read him or know who he is, see these two articles.

Lesson from Russ

2004-11-04T09:48:00.000-06:00

We're all sorting out the reasons John Kerry and the Democrats couldn't put this election away despite an appalling track record by the incumbent. Certain narratives have emerged, especially the surge of evangelical voters and the prominence of "cultural values" (i.e., hating gays), though I agree with Matt Yglesias that if you combine exit polling about "terrorism" and the "war in Iraq" into "national security," "cultural values" looks much smaller in comparison. Still significant, but smaller.

But there was, let's face it, a problem with the candidate. In key demographics Kerry did miserably because he wasn't perceived as a "strong leader" with "a clear stand on the issues." Without getting in too deep here, Democrats are simply going to have to do better about this in the future, to combat the perception that they are the party of wishy-washy and ineffective leadership.

Democratic candidates ought to take a look at Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. In 2001, he was the lone opposition to the Patriot Act in the Senate. His Republican opponent in the senate race this year, Tim Michels, thought he smelled blood and saw an obvious win: I'm going to nail Feingold to the wall for that vote, I'll make him squirm and force him to take two sides of the issue. So what did Feingold do? He said, without hesitation or focus grouping: yeah, I voted against the Patriot Act, and I'd do it again; here's why. And then he'd elegantly explain his rationale, but the point is, he totally diffused the situation and took the issue off the table. He won reelection by 12 points. Of course, that's not the only reason Feingold won, but there's no way he would have won had he not taken a principled and clear stand on that issue.

It's about leadership.

(More) Republicans for Kerry, Wisconsin edition

2004-10-29T15:54:00.000-05:00

Gary Comer, founder of the Land's End clothing company, took out a full-page ad in the Wisconsin State Journal today, addressed to "Undecided Voters of Wisconsin." Land's End is a beloved business in Wisconsin, a reliable employer of thousands in the politically conservative southwestern portion of the state. In the ad, he doesn't come out and say "vote for Kerry," but the message is clear:

I have been a Republican and voted Republican most of my life. But in my opinion, this administration has high-jacked the Republican Party I knew and is taking Wisconsin and the United States in dangerous directions. If Bush is re-elected, you and your children and grandchildren and mine will pay dearly in their freedoms and opportunities long after his term of office expires. I believe that four more years of President Bush and the people who surround him is not in our Nation's best interest.

You could very well be the deciding factor in the electoral outcome of this election. Think carefully, vote your heart and head. I think of the debt that we will leave ourselves and everyone who follows, and I question the judgment that caused the deaths of 1100 U.S. friends and neighbors in a war that we didn't need to start.

Emphasis his.

UPDATE: Apparently, Rudy Guilani had recently come to the Dodgeville, WI headquarters of Land's End to campaign for Bush, so I would imagine Comer's ad is in response to that action.

Kerry in Wisconsin

2004-10-28T14:34:00.000-05:00

I'm in Madison, WI working with the League of Conservation Voters to get John Kerry elected. Rally today in downtown Madison: 80-100,000 people.

Kerry's evolved into a very fine candidate: he delivered a strong stump speech, forceful, projecting a lot of confidence. I was a little worried that the crowd's enthusiasm would wane after Bruce Springsteen's stirring introduction (he played "No Surrender" solo on an acoustic guitar), but Kerry didn't disappoint.

5 days to go. I'll be here through d-day, posting updates here when I can and photos to my Flickr blog.

Slate votes

2004-10-27T15:40:00.000-05:00

Contributors to Slate show their cards. Skip the article: long story short, they're practically all voting Kerry. Most wrote a paragraph or more explaining their decision, but this is the only one worth reading:

Henry Blodget, Contributor: Kerry

Not perfect, but "reality-based."

That's really all that needs to be said, isn't it?

Meet the Press

2004-10-24T13:29:00.000-05:00

The chairmen of the national parties, and a pundit round-table. 100% substance-free!

Media Self-Flaggelation Begins At Home

2004-09-20T16:18:00.000-05:00

Memo to the hand-wringing execs at CBS and all the tittering masses from other news outlets: shut the fuck up. You do not get to whine about a crisis of journalistic integrity until you own up to the collossal, across-the-board failure to properly inform this country's citizenry during the march to invade Iraq. That's a real crisis, one we've all been living with for almost two years now and will endure the consequences of for some time to come.

Let's Re-Invade Vietnam

2004-09-18T01:15:00.000-05:00

Bill Maher makes the case, for our national healing:

Plus, Vietnam doesn't have any weapons of mass destruction, any links to 9/11, or any ties to Al Qaeda—they're practically asking for it!

Exploding Jet Engine

2004-09-17T21:20:00.000-05:00

It was likely a large bird that got sucked into the engine, tearing it apart and sending fuel spraying into the air. Apparently and not surprisingly, mid-air collisions with birds are quite common. Makes me wonder: can't they outfit the front of a jet engine with a wire mesh, enough to deflect a bird or other airborne debris from entering the engine, but thin enough not to disrupt the air flow? I imagine there are probably interesting things that happen to air when it's blowing in at around 600 miles an hour, where something seemingly inocuous like wire mesh could, say, cause small ripples that are amplified at high speeds, but it seems as if that could be designed away, changing the shape of the mesh or the spacing between wires, something to that effect.

Defeat a Kryptonite Bike Lock

2004-09-17T11:08:00.000-05:00

It's amazing how this story has escalated, really touched a nerve. I first heard of it over at Boing Boing earlier this week, then it circulated at work (we probably have more than an average number of bike commuters), and now the front graphic story of nytimes.com.

Paging David Cross:

"There was murmuring on various Web sites, and so I decided to go home and pick up a pen and see it if works," said Benjamin Running, a graphic designer who lives in downtown Brooklyn. "Sure enough, within 30 seconds I had broken into my $90 lock. I was in awe. My jaw literally dropped to the floor. It was so easy." [My emphasis.]

Oh, shit, dude. Wow—so, what did you do about your disembodied jaw?

Are You Still Using Internet Explorer?

2004-09-16T16:52:00.000-05:00

A little change of pace here—at right, I've added a link button for the Firefox web browser. The result of an open source software development community organized by the Mozilla Foundation, Firefox is a superior modern browser that's quickly replacing Internet Explorer on desktops all over.

To most people, their web browser is the Internet, so the idea of switching to another browser is borderline nonsensical. But the reason I'm pimping it out is simply, if you want to your computer to be secure when you browse the Internet, you shouldn't use Internet Explorer. It's not just an intellectual exercise; there are vulnerabilities in the code of Internet Explorer that, if exploited, could let some shady character out there literally take control of your computer. This is to say nothing of all the annoying worms, viruses, and spywares that Internet Explorer let pass because of its poor quality design. And that's not just me saying it; this is from a division of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Mozilla people will rightly tell you that Firefox stands on its own not just as an Internet Explorer alternative: it's faster and better at rendering HTML. Unfortunately, there are a handful of sites that, for various reasons, only work correctly with Internet Explorer: I keep a copy around solely for my car sharing reservation service (disclosure: I work at the company which runs that car sharing business), a deficiency they are actively working to resolve. I've heard reports that some banking sites won't work with anything other than Internet Explorer. But for practically 99.9% of the WWW, you will have a faster, better-looking, and safer browsing experience with Firefox. And of course it's free! (As in "beer" and "speech.")

One of my day trades is web development, which explains my nerdy excitement over a piece of software. But I think this is one of those cases where the entire Internet-using community benefits; by taking an easy step to protect your own computer, everyone's electronic security is increased.

AA Jet Makes Emergency Landing At O'Hare

2004-09-16T15:21:00.000-05:00

Weird. There was just that report on NPR—I believe it was during All Things Considered—about how American has turned things around after a trip to bankruptcy court, mostly by having the employees make suggestions to improve the specific ways they work. And one of the changes that was highlighted was how the engine mechanics said they could be more efficient if they could have the engines mounted vertically instead of horizontally like they are on the plane. The change was implemented, it made the engines easier and quicker to service, and it's saving American millions of dollars. Of course, I have no way of knowing if these two stories are connected, but it's a coincedence worth mentioning.

UPDATE: Nope: a bird got sucked into the engine.

Credit Where Due?

2004-09-15T16:30:00.000-05:00

Syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker notices bloggers and goes out of her way to pat them on their collective back, now that something has happened that suits her politics:

But the piece de resistance has occurred over the past several days, as bloggers questioned the authenticity of documents CBS News presented allegedly proving that President Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard.

But, they didn't debunk the documents authenticity in any conclusive way. It wasn't until someone with first-hand knowledge came forward that the forgeries were revealed for what they are. The right-wing bloggers just threw a bunch of stuff out there and hoped some of it would stick. Questions they raised, like whether it was possible to produce proportional type in that year, were ultimately dismissed. They were simply astride the issue, a minor piece of the larger conservative bullhorn that shouts down any attempt to discredit Bush.

Outspoken: Chicago’s Free Speech Tradition

2004-09-14T23:08:00.000-05:00

This exhibit at the Newberry Library looks great.

This exhibit about Chicago's vibrant history of free expression includes approximately 130 objects from the collections of the Newberry Library and the Chicago Historical Society. Objects on display include artifacts, photographs, letters, magazines, newspapers, and ephemera relating to: slavery, immigration, labor relations, women's suffrage, communism, women's liberation, 1960s counterculture, presidential elections, Indian rights, Black Power, gay rights, and recent anti-war protests.

Go check out the website, exhibit starts Oct 1 and runs through mid-January. The Newberry Library has an incredible collection so this shouldn't disappoint. Maybe in 50 years, blogs will be on display. I think Zorn and Archpundit should offer to have themselves stuffed and displayed for that. Jeremy Bentham did it and he's a huge crowd magnet in London.

Great Idea

2004-09-14T22:43:00.000-05:00

Why isn't Jon Stewart writing speeches for Kerry? (Thanks, Crumb Crisp Coating.)

Electoral Vote Predictor

2004-09-14T11:21:00.000-05:00

If you've not made the superlative Electoral Vote Predictor a part of your daily browsing, what's the matter with you? If you haven't visited it recently, there's lots of new features to explore, including today's new addition, the cartogram, showing the U.S. map with states sized in proportion to the number of electoral votes they have.

Quote of the Day

2004-09-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

From Burt Constable in the Daily Herald:

Flanked by two turtles, a frog, a toad, a salamander and a snake, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday launched those candidates' campaigns for the offices of Illinois state amphibian and state reptile, confusing those of us who were left to wonder what the heck Alan Keyes has been running for.

Senate Round-up

2004-09-13T21:39:00.000-05:00

I've been away from Polis for a while. I'm going to ease back into it. What better way than with a news round-up of our favorite local political contest?

Obama uses rather strong language in rebuking the UN on Darfur and making a call for intervention on the part of our European allies. A cynic might say that's easy to do now that you have the cover of your Secretary of State, but he has been talking about it on the campaign trail.
Laura Washington writes in the Sun-Times about how Obama's state Senate seat will be filled "if" he wins in November, and uses words like "garrulous" and "obstreperous" to describe the committeepersons in charge of the process. Lots of jockeying for position here, as one might expect for a job that has catapulted Harold Washington, Carol Moseley-Braun, and Obama to prominence. The outstanding question is, will Obama try to leave legacy (and have a friendly face back home) by influencing the choice of his successor?
Hip-hop raconteur and Chicagoan Common name-drops Obama in the Top 20 remix to Jadakiss' "Why?" and takes us to 2012: "Why is Bush acting like he trying to get Osama?/Why don't we impeach him and elect Obama?"
A Young Republican down in Urbana/Champaign delivers the understatement of the minute, reflecting on Alan Keyes after a picnic rally: "I think he's having trouble getting that message out because he's getting hung up on one-liners." Well, actually, I think everyone else is getting hung up on them. And the two-liners (he blamed 9/11 on abortion: "I think that's a way of Providence telling us, 'I love you all; I'd like to give you a chance. Wake up! Would you please wake up?'"), and the two-hundred-liners, for that matter.
The Associated Press discovers Alan Keyes. Welcome to the party, fellas!
The AP discovers Barack Obama's legislative record. Actually, a handy list, but culled from the spartan General Assembly web site and therefore without any context. Some of the votes, of course, speak for themselves, such as "Successfully sponsored requirement that law enforcement videotape interrogations of suspects in some serious crimes. (SB15, 2003)"
And finally, J. Grant Swank, Jr. of MichNews.com puts to bed the issue we've all furrowed our brows over in a vain attempt to understand: ALAN KEYES IS RIGHT: JESUS WOULD NOT VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA. Thanks, J.! P.S. I have it on good authority that the Big Guy is all-in Libertarian this year.

Balloon Bounce

2004-09-03T14:49:00.000-05:00

So there's really not a hell of a lot to say about the RNC. Like the DNC it was
a scripted infomercial to shift the undecided public's perception of the
beleaguered President with scattered servings of redmeat for the faithful.

Of course the whole point of these conventions is to provide a particular
party's interpretation of the stakes of the race and the quality of the other
candidate, but I don't think any objective observer could deny that the GOP
took spin to a whole new level this week. According to the GOP, Kerry and the
rest of the Dems want to create a special veto seat in Congress for the UN,
change the national language to French, and install a special Hugs Department
to combat terrorist attacks (of course after they occur).

I'm not sure who buys this sort of crap, even right leaning moderates aren't
that gullible, but my fear is that, like smear, tactics these sort of
distortions have the ability to stick, despite the fact that everyone knows
that they are b.s.. The fact is that such lies in the end work and when backed
into a corner, even a sitting President will resort to them (he's had good
practice with this of course). The reality of this depresses me.

My convention watching was exclusively with PBS. I like Jim Lehrer and David
Brooks and Mark Shields are pretty decent pundits. The main reason I stuck with
PBS was probably more because that was my only option for full coverage. While
I'm a huge news junkie, I'm also a poor grad student so cable ain't an option
(why the hell is it so expensive?!).

So yes by the end of the week I could barely hold back the urge to knee David
Brooks in the balls and Ray Suarez get creepier and creepier by the minute, but
out of some need for continuity I stuck with PBS even when the other networks
joined in the coverage.

Not known for their humor, the PBS team provided probably the best comic relief
of the week after Bush's speech with a hilarious tongue and cheek analysis of
the balloon drop. Lehrer went on for about two minutes detailing the
preparation, manufacturing, and bio-degradability of the balloons, and Brooks
chimed in that despite the mediocre performance of some the Republican speakers
the GOP balloon drop was in striking contrast to that of the DNC. Shields
suggested that though we may have to wait a few days for poll results, this
balloon factor might give Bush the edge he needs. This leaves the possibility
this elelction might be decided by the balloon bump. Did anyone else catch that
exchange? It really was pretty funny; a fitting end to such a silly week.

The Daily Show out does itself again with this amazing mini-documentary on
Bush's 1st term. [Can't find the direct link, go to the video page and
play "Bush's Words']

This is pretty funny too: Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth

No, Fuck You

2004-09-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

Bill Clinton needs heart bypass surgery. He's already had an angioplasty, and his doctors determined the bypass was necessary. I'm hoping he went to see them in time and is in good hands.

But big fuck yous go to Fox News and Republican Congressman Vito Fossella of New York. This is how Fox ends their report:

"Who knows? It could be the result of a successful Republican convention, said Rep. Vito Fossella, R-N.Y., of Clinton's chest pains. "In all seriousness, though, I am sure the entire nation wishes the president well."

"Seriously—we hope he dies."

Everyone knows how viscerally the right despised and still despises Bill. And I'm sure most people have at some point in their lives wished that a president of the opposing party would meet an untimely end; it's a natural manifestation of partisan frustation. And that's all it is, just a focal point for disenfranchisement, certainly nothing to be said "out loud," and, you would expect, never something to come out of the mouth of an elected official, it would be beyond the pale.

Fossella's remarks—and the fact that Fox decided to give this jackass the last word on the matter—are vile and should be loudly denounced by the leadership. This ugly, chickenshit behavior, though, will likely be silently rewarded (Fossella played "good soldier" a few years back by leading the opposition to Clinton's grant of clemency to members of the FALN terrorist group), and is increasingly all we can expect from the party these days.

UPDATE: From the wires:

"He's is in our thoughts and prayers," Bush said at a campaign rally.

Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.

President Bush. Class act.

UPDATE AGAIN: AP got it wrong. No booing from the Wisconsin crowd.

Interestingly enough, Fox has massively rewritten their piece linked to above; no Fossella quote. Into the memory hole.

Miller Loses It

2004-09-02T00:50:00.000-05:00

What the hell … ? Did Zell Miller really just tell Chris Matthews he wishes he could challenge Chris to a duel? Yeah, he did. Kevin's readers recap the incident nicely in the comments to this post.

Dave Matthews Band to Chicago: Eat Shit

2004-09-01T12:13:00.000-05:00

I imagine that they have a giant, colored lever in their bus that they pull whenever the mood hits them.

In any case, McSweeney's puts it all into context.

I Love C-SPAN

2004-09-01T01:00:00.000-05:00

I'm sort of idly watching C-SPAN's late nite rerun of RNC highlights, and here's Sec. of Education Ron Paige babbling on, proclaiming the success of Bush's programs. As he says something about "students are learning, teachers and principals are beaming with pride," the producers switch to a chubby little boy in his seat, head down and tuned out, blissfully pushing buttons on a Game Boy. Of course, no one in their right mind would expect an eight-year-old to sit in rapt attention to hour after hour of droning adults, but the juxtaposition was a riot.

NPR: Now Pushing Republicans

2004-08-27T08:54:00.000-05:00

Gee, if you listened to NPR, you'd think the President completely reformed our education system, sensibly reduced taxes, fixed prescription drug benefits, and was only thwarted from overhauling Social Security by weak-willed Congress. What an amazing president! Where have I been?

Obama is Picking Up a Following in......

2004-08-23T01:16:00.000-05:00

........Kenya. Keyes plans head to that part of Illinois after he campaigns in South Illinois.

Making Sense of Najaf

2004-08-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

As always Juan Cole has the full story. This post is particularly informative of Muqtada al-Sadr's motives, something that is generally glossed over in the mainstream press. John Burns is also doing great reporting for the NYtimes.

Friday Media Misc

2004-08-20T14:21:00.000-05:00

Three Kings is coming back in theaters soon. Most people dismissed the film as a corny George Clooney action vehicle when it was orifginally released (with 'Marky' Mark Wahlberg and Ice-Cube to boot), but I think that was more a problem of how it was marketed. In reality, the film is a delightfully nuanced snapshot of early nineties Iraqi society and the first Gulf war hung on a standard heist plot. I always appreciate films that use generic plots to import weirdness and/or complexity (most recently the amazing In the Cut)--things that normally turn off mainstream audience if presented directly. Beyond being incredible prescient, Three Kings is also beautifully shot with off putting camera angles and a perpetual grainy filter that both serve to underscore the moral ambiguity of the war and the actions of Clooney's unit. This definitely makes a theatrical re-release a plus.

John Sayles is coming out with a new film next month that examines the American political system through the rise of a fictional Colorado Governor with major family connection. It's an obvious dig at Bush, but I'm glad that it isn't limited to that overcrowded subject. At least that's what this NYTimes piece claims. In any case, I've loved almost everything Sayles has made so I'm eagerly anticipating this one. Best Sayles starter film, Men with Guns. Or Matewan, which stars a young Will Oldham.

Slate has a quick review and some good mp3 clips of two intriguing San Francisco musicians that really defy easy categorization: Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. If forced to I'd label Banhart a gympsified Dylan and Newsom an Appalachian Bjork (her lyrics are absolutely captivating). I caught them earlier this summer in Chicago and Newsom especially is utterly compelling live. People I know either love or hate their stuff but it's worth a listen.

Speaking of music, Zorn posted a test to see when you've gotten 'old' based on when you've become out of touch with the yearly summer hits. It's a cute test, but I don't give it much credence because I think it's odd to measure being young by what crappy yearly summer hits you recognize. I'd argue that being old is when you DO recognize those hits. There's nothing lazier and old-manish than just letting whatever the radio spoons out to you be your summer soundtrack. No real music lover gives a hoot what the radio is playing, especially in the last 10-15 years.

This article on Arrested Development from a few weeks ago is a must read. Basically, those Emmy nomination saved this brilliant series from cancellation. Fox is notorious for pulling the plug on great shows that sputter initially in the ratings--see Andy Richter Controls the Universe (doesn't it kill you to watch him in that neutered comedy now on fox) and Undeclared--and apparently Arrested numbers were incredibly low. I usually piss and moan that these awards never get anything right but this time they've saved a gem of a show. Best moments of the show: Job riding around on a segway, Buster blending into the wallpaper, David Cross's never-nude bit, and the stair truck.

Again With The Frickin' Missile Defense

2004-08-19T01:38:00.000-05:00

I'm not surprised that it has resurfaced, given the place and time (Boeing plant in Pennsylvania, middle of campaign), but I am pleased that this time, there's an opponent that can take notice and issue a response:

"Despite this administration's near obsession with missile defense, the greatest threat facing our homeland comes from terrorists who would do us harm. In the months preceding 9/11 George W. Bush and his closest advisors were preoccupied with missile defense and their misunderstanding about the threats we face continues to this day. John Kerry believes an effective missile defense is crucial to our national security strategy. But John Kerry also understands the importance of facing our most pressing national security threats while continuing to develop and deploy a national missile defense which we know will work," said Kerry National Security Adviser Rand Beers.

Obama Should Reconsider Peotone Support

2004-08-18T11:11:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama has come out in favor of building a third major regional airport in the south-suburban area around Peotone. It's a position he ought to reconsider. With delays at O'Hare leading to self-imposed caps on the number of flights by United and American as a reminder, the need to address the region's long-term transportation capacity is clear. Obama supports the expansion and modernization of O'Hare, which makes sense -- it's already a built and heavily utilized airport, the relative displacement of homes and wildlife would be small -- but a Peotone airport would create suburban sprawl (the airport would be 40 miles from downtown Chicago, requiring a estimated 100 miles of new toll roads, and there's no indication that local officials will push for high-density development), endanger the surrounding wetlands and the biodiversity they support, and pollute the watershed from storm run-off, all for a massive airport -- three times the current size of O'Hare -- that the major carriers aren't interested in (they're firmly planted at O'Hare), and so would be depending on low-cost carriers, who are already successful at Midway, an in-town and easily accessible location.

Better to use his political capital for efforts to build out high-speed rail links -- think Chicago-Minneapolis, Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Cleveland in the 2- to 3-hour range. Those 100- to 400-mile trips are expensive to operate by air and constitute a large number of the total flights each day. Building that infrastructure and the linkages to existing airports would create jobs and be less environmentally impactful.

BugMeNot.com Gone?

2004-08-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

Whither the indispensable bullshit-news-site-forced-registration-avoidance tool BugMeNot.com? It's unreachable for me at the moment. Is anyone able to access it? Have the powers that be finally gotten to it, determined to make online news as inaccessible, unfriendly, and hidden from Google as possible?

UPDATE: Well, I may have gone a bit Chicken Little there. Looks like they're just having some technical difficulties. Um … carry on!

UPDATE PART DEUX: Still down, and others seem to think it is probably down for the count. Shazbot.

I agree, suh

2004-08-18T00:37:00.000-05:00

I agree with the Mayor: let's stick up for our very own blogger extraordinaire from Illinois, ArchPundit, and make him the "Best Outside the Beltway."

Discussed in this issue: Keyes, reparations, intent

2004-08-17T23:28:00.000-05:00

Alan Keyes continues to make daily headlines, this time proposing reparations for slavery. At this point I don't think anyone needs to be convinced of the unseriousness of his candidacy. The fact that he would try to outflank Obama to Obama's left in a vain effort to curry favor with blacks, of whom he is tragically alienated from, on perhaps the most taboo political issue around should be enough for whatever beaten-up state GOPers are still hanging on to beg off this campaign. It's clearly not a position he believes in ("The price for the sin of slavery has already been paid, in blood," he wrote, referring to the Civil War), so diehard Republican voters need to ask themselves whether they support an effort to be the antipode to Barack Obama on every issue, no matter where it falls on the political continuum or how inconsistent with your political tribe. This all quite apart from the constant stream of beyond-the-pale remarks. This is a berserker campaign designed, if not consciously by Keyes then certainly by those who sent him into the ring and knew what they were getting, to sully a man, and sadly I fear it is starting to accomplish that, just by his presence in the race, dirty by association.

Stupid Monkey

2004-08-17T19:43:00.000-05:00

Introducing one of NBC's Precious Moments (or Olympic Moments or whatever), Jim Whosits said, "The theory of evolution is controversial." (He was trying to be cute, saying something about how evolution in sports is natural.)

No, you schmuck, what's controversial is NBC's self-indulgent and obfuscated coverage. Actually, it's not so much controversial as it is predictable. It may be that the Olympics will never again have the luster they had in recent decades, but NBC has sure done its part of late to make it as hard as possible to get invested.

What year is this? We're still furrowing our brows over evolution? Taking our talking points from Alan Keyes, are we?

Welcome to the RNC, bitch!

2004-08-17T01:46:00.000-05:00

This is a must-see.

Illinois Martyr Brigade

2004-08-17T00:08:00.000-05:00

God, these guys sound like Hamas suicide bombers before they set off on a mission:

Every individual must decide which side of history they choose to be on. IllinoisLeader.com and its staff, those that have taken leave to work for Keyes and those that are staying to protect the home front, stand proudly with Alan Keyes on the Declaration principles on which he defiantly stands and on which our great nation was founded and built.

And the results will be similarly dubious. When the culmination of history for you is represented by a loon like Keyes you know that your convictions are right on target. Hey Leader folks don't forget to send a postcard to the homefront before you step off the cliff with this guy.

via Archpundit

A Bit of Housekeeping

2004-08-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

I'm switching Polis back to HaloScan comments. It's nice that Blogger tried to integrate a comment system, but you have to log in to leave a comment, even anonymously. That's annoying and I think discourages people from participating. The HaloScan way is easier.

Update: I was informed that you can post anonymously without logging in via the Blogger system. There's still a extra page to wade through. At any rate, I prefer the HaloScan system. Plus it enables trackbacks.

Update of the second: I went a little compulsive and tackled the style of the site. Nothing huge, just tightened up some of the sizing, removed some crufty HTML, and shuffled a few things around, like prominently displaying the byline (there was some confusion recently about who was posting). Reactions?

"May Sway" Predictions

2004-08-16T01:30:00.000-05:00

Reacting to this new AP report, "Expatriate vote may sway U.S. election," I hereby present as a public service to you dear reader, a list of all the possible factors which "may sway" the upcoming contest, each of which having been separately posited as potentially the deciding element of the race, that have been put forth with all seriousness by various pundits, analysts, armchair quarterbacks, handicappers, kibitzers, cranks, kooks, ne'er-do-wells, hangers-on, attorneys general, and prom queens, that I can recall:

The 2004 U.S. presidential election may be swayed by:

a few thousand voters in Ohio.
a few thousand voters in Florida.
a terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
the capture of Osama bin Laden.
the economy.
the situation in Iraq.
an attack on Iran by U.S. forces.
military voters.
absentee ballots.
touch-screen voting machines.
ex-felons.
Fahrenheit 9/11.
gas prices.
Prince Bandar.
evangelicals.
Catholics.
Hispanics.
gay marriage.
working moms.
NASCAR dads.
18- to 24-year-olds.
blogs.
Ralph Nader.
Roy Moore.
Bill Clinton.
the candidate's health care proposal.
the candidate's military service.
debate performance.
debate expectations.
the running mate.
GOTV operations.
527s.

Me, I think it will come down to a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil. F&*%ing chaos butterfly!

Politicizing A Disaster

2004-08-15T23:07:00.000-05:00

The devastation caused by Hurricane Charley on Florida comes at a opportune time for the President: he can bestow a large amount of relief funds to the swing state that's sure to boost his favorables, tour around consoling with families while getting ample press coverage on the tax payer's dollar -- a freebee campaign stop -- and contrast himself yet again against his father's one-term presidency, who was famously slow to respond to Hurricane Andrew. With recent polls showing a consistent lead by his opponent in this state, the President can hope to pull a few percentage points back into his column by showing leadership.

What a cynical, bitter analysis, right?

If John Kerry, or anyone else, were president right now, I'd expect him to be doing more or less the same things. Disperse the resources of the federal government to help rebuild: this is exactly the sort of thing our government should do and does best, that is, buffer people from catastrophe, be it natural disaster or health emergency or sudden unemployment. And he should generally provide comfort to the grief-stricken, which is one of the roles we call on our president to perform.

But of course we have this president, and this president would never try to exploit a tragedy for political gain, right?

The president promised rapid assistance for Florida, where officials estimated damages of up to $11 billion to insured homes alone.

When asked about why he made such a quick trip to Florida in this election year, Bush said: "If I didn't come, they would've said we should have been here more rapidly."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was sending teams of medical, urban rescue and communication workers; at least 60 semitrailers containing cots, blankets, meals, portable toilets, wash kits and other necessities; and truckloads of water and ice.

FEMA said the state has requested catastrophic housing for 10,000 people, and more than 4,000 National Guard troops have been activated.

"It's going to be awesome -shock and awe -that's our goal," said Gov. Jeb Bush, the president's younger brother.[Emphasis mine.]

!

In other news, the word "chutzpah" exploded today, wounding us all deeply.

The Uncertain Future of Communication

2004-08-13T16:00:00.000-05:00

We take telephone service for granted, but here in Illinois, that service is firmly under the thumb of the local incumbent and dashing monopolist, SBC. (Well, by and large -- there is a Verizon component to some small town service areas, and a bunch of rural mom-and-pop providers that have existed for eons.) In any case, this control extends beyond our ability to choose (or not choose) who we pay to give us this service---SBC is one of the most powerful political forces in the state, and throughout the Midwest. They can basically ram any favorable legislation through Springfield, usually co-written by their legal team. (How're you feeling these days, MCI and AT&T?) The net effect of this power is that, as consumers, we feel the pinch anytime the marketplace actually does what it should do, that is, innovate and provide competition.

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is radically reordering the world of telephony. A technology that converts your voice to 1s and 0s, sends these bits out over the Internet, and reassembles them at the other end, VoIP is much less expensive per call, because it costs very little to make a connection between two servers on the Internet, compared to keeping a circuit open on the copper wires of Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS). VoIP makes the concept of long-distance calls obsolete: from Chicago to St. Louis is practically equivalent in terms of Internet traffic as from Chicago to Bangkok. VoIP exploits the best feature of the Internet, which is that it's an agnostic platform for innovative technologies. And the best feature of VoIP is that anyone can get in the game. The reason there are no competitors to SBC is that they literally own the physical wires that voice traffic travels own; prospective competitors are put in the shameful position of having to pay to lease access to these lines and then be subject to the onerous terms of agreement. As MCI and AT&T found out, SBC can just leverage its monopoly power to make the barrier to entry high enough to keep everyone else out.

But if you are a young braniac with a great new idea for a VoIP feature that transcribes your voice messages to email, you just do it: there's no regulatory agency or imposing monopolist to prevent you from accessing the Internet and offering your cool new service to the world. The Internet is called the world's greatest end-to-end network---"end-to-end" means the intelligence, the applications, exist on the end points, the PCs and web-enabled cell phones and PDAs, while the underlying network cares not what kind of applications are passing through its hubs and routers. It's this combination of end-to-endiness and regulatory freedom that allowed for the greatest period of sustained technological innovation in history to occur (i.e., the past decade).

As I'm sure comes as no shock, the major telecommunications companies have been carpetbombing Washington over the past year, seeking to bring VoIP under the same sort of regulatory environment that they have had to live under. Funny that that burdensome environment has created a situation of telecom concentration and monopoly that rivals MaBell. What they seek is to squelch the little guys, the start-up VoIP companies and the medium-sized old-style carriers who are offering low-cost telephone service to their customers. The technology is disruptive to the SBCs, so they want to poison the growth medium in the petri dish. Fundamentally, the scary thing is the precedent Congress might set, a precedent of tinkering with the internals of the world's most successful and useful communications network.

Ironically, all of the major telecoms are and have been furiously changing their core networks over to VoIP, so that the bulk of their communications traffic already flows over the Internet. So their lobbying efforts are not about the technology per se, but about who gets to control it.

Nothing guarantees that the Internet today will look like the Internet tomorrow, and nothing guarantees that the spirit and market of innovation we've seen in Internet technologies will be allowed to persist. As it so often happens, it comes down to who's interests are our representatives responding to, our's or the industry's? Congressman Rick Boucher, filling in over at Prof. Lessig's blog, alerts us to the upcoming rewriting of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. While it is unlikely that Illinois will able to set its own telecommunications agenda without SBC's veto authority any time soon, the nation's Telecommunications Act will set the guidelines by which everyone has to play. I encourage you to take a look at his comments.

Do The (Electoral) Math

2004-08-13T12:32:00.000-05:00

I hope Polis readers are already familiar with the Electoral Vote Predictor; if not, it should be part of your daily reading. It's updated every morning with the latest available polling from each state. The recent numbers should be soothing to hand-wringing Democrats worried about tight but meaningless nation-wide popular vote polls. Be sure to read the "News from the Votemaster" that accompanies each update; from today's:

Consider the significance of the map today. Kerry is leading by 116 votes in the electoral college. Suppose Bush loses Ohio and Florida? What can he do to catch up? He might win West Virginia, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Minnesota, Oregon, and Maine are currently barely Kerry, but it is likely Kerry will carry them in the end. Michigan and Pennsylvania are increasingly solid for Kerry. Bush has little hope there unless the September and October jobs reports are unexpectedly stellar.

So if Bush wins West Virginia, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, the electoral college score is Kerry 294, Bush 244. If Bush wins Florida as well, he wins 271 to 267 like last time unless the Colorado referendum passes, in which case Kerry will get 4 votes in the electoral college from Colorado and still win the election. All this goes to show that without Ohio, Bush has to win all the Midwestern states still within his grasp and pray the Colorado referendum either fails or is shot down by the Supreme Court, which is probably not keen on deciding another election. Conclusion: a few tens of thousands of undecided voters in Ohio may swing the election. And remember, historically undecideds break 2 to 1 for the challenger against the incumbent.

No surprise there on the conclusion, but the number of possible paths this election could take is being reduced every day. There are still so many uncertainties with 80 days to go, and it promises to become very unpredictable as Bush et al. realize it's slipping away from them and start pulling out Plan Bs. But unthinkables aside, numbers like these let Kerry reach out to moderate Republicans and keep Bush near his base, throwing red meat (i.e. Kerry-hatin').

Get Ready: It's On To Iran

2004-08-11T13:46:00.000-05:00

Najaf is looking more and more like a disaster, and the question is begged: why does it seem as if we are deliberately angering and provoking Shiites throughout the Middle East by destroying their holy city? Hmm, what nearby country is ruled by Shiites?

With their every dream, ambition and prediction for Iraq in ruins, the Bush administration and its neocon court are now in a panic. What can they do next? How can they distract the American people from their catastrophic and incompetent record on Iraq before the November election?

The answer is simple. It was stated quite expressly by Rice this past weekend: Don't worry about our failure to find any evidence of WMD after our preemptive war on Iraq -- we may be forced to take such preemptive action very soon against its neighbor, Iran.

If that October surprise doesn't rally voters back around Bush and ensure four more years for him and the neocons, what will?

The pattern of preparation for this is all too familiar from the buildup to war with Iraq. First, the war drums are sounded by the same old "experts"; then they are amplified by alarmist columnists. Once you see Krauthammer or Ledeen opining, as they have over the past two months, that Iran's nuclear capability poses the gravest possible threat to Civilization as We Know It, and that The World Cannot Afford to Wait and Negotiate, then you can guarantee -- conveniently close to the election to panic voters into supporting the president -- that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld will pick up the chorus.

Ledeen has already written at least two columns on the subject. Krauthammer, prophet of the Iraq war, has made quite clear his determination to unleash a new one. In his July 23 Post column he wrote: "The long awaited revolution [in Iran] is not happening. Which makes the question of preemptive attack all the more urgent ... If nothing is done, a fanatical terrorist regime openly dedicated to the destruction of the 'Great Satan' will have both nuclear weapons and the terrorists and missiles to deliver them. All that stands between us and that is either revolution or preemptive strike."

From the perspective of the chimerical and deranged weltpolitik, or "global strategy," of the neocons, targeting Iran is not merely a tactic of desperation but the fulfillment of what their plans were from the beginning. For the subjugation of Iraq under the puppet Chalabi was always seen as only the first step toward toppling target No. 2 -- Iran -- in the president's famous "axis of evil."

Interesting side note: this piece is from Martin Sieff, who's the "chief news analyst" for Sun Myung Moon's UPI.

UPDATE: Moments ago:

[T]he supreme leader of neighboring Iran warned that U.S. combat operations in Najaf constitute "one of the darkest crimes of humanity."

Keyes The Right Pick After All?

2004-08-10T23:39:00.000-05:00

Like most, I've been simply baffled at the state Republicans' choice of Alan Keyes, especially so after watching him come out of the gate and look so ridiculous (cf. the "slaveholder" comment, the carpetbagging hypocrisy). Even after the incompetence of the past few months since Ryan bowed out, this guy seems to mark a new low for Judy Baar and the gang.

But then I read this graf by Kos and I have to question my take on this:

The Illinois GOP screwed up horribly. Keyes isn't running for Senate, he's running for higher ratings and book sales.

Well, yeah, that's right: Keyes doesn't give a flip about Illinois and must be smart enough to know he's unelectable, so it has to be for his ego and profile, and maybe a little bit for the cause of far-right reactionary Declaration-of-Independence-as-religious-text-fetishists in general. And, at the risk of giving them too much credit, the state GOP must know he can't beat Obama. So perhaps this is their way of, in effect, conceding the race and "keeping their powder dry." Remember there was a lot of talk by Zorn, Archpundit, here at Polis, et al. a few weeks ago about conceding the race, conserving money and talent for the next cycle? Now they can do it without an unthinkable public declaration as such. No up-and-comer or party loyalist need sacrifice a safe county commissioner or state rep seat. And they don't have to support the logical choice - the guy who came in second in March - and incur the undying wrath of Bush and Rove. If and when the race is lost, it wasn't one of their own, no carcass left behind, he's back to Gaithersburg. They can say, hey, you know, these were unusual circumstances, we had to make a decision and pick the best possible counterpart to Obama, but you know, he didn't really represent our party in this state. Maybe that's one reason they're all scattering like cockroaches when asked about supporting the pick, or as Jon Stewart put it, "coming up with alibis." Financing is a minus, you would like to have had a self-funder, but Keyes' ideology and the high-profile race will likely lead to conservative dollars flowing in from outside the state.

The biggest flaw in my argument (no, besides that it's completely speculative) is that, under this scenario, they would be knowingly sticking it to the down-ticket races by giving them no coattails, and possibly suppressing turnout in some areas, even. Well, I give up - I can't explain it, either.

Provisional Ballots

2004-08-10T22:01:00.000-05:00

Having witnessed the use of provisional ballots first-hand during the March primary election, I agree with the main thrust of this AP report, that problems could be caused if vote margins are close and a large number of provisional ballots are issued, now that their use is mandated across the country. In principle, they are a good thing, allowing people to vote despite bookkeeping foul-ups or other voter roll nonsense. In practice, they introduce a level of complexity and uncertainty into a process that is otherwise fairly unambiguous: you come in, you produce i.d. or a registration card, you either are or are not on the rolls, and you vote or you don't vote. Of course there are contigencies at each step, but what's nice about this process is that there's a fairly straightforward decision tree for election judges and poll watchers. Since the issuance of a provisional ballot is sort of a catch-all for election day, the potential for making mistakes or mischief is higher. As a coordinator of several precincts' worth of poll watching during the primary election, we were at times in different polling places when voters were issued provisional ballots and shouldn't have been (they didn't have an affidavit or person vouching for their identity) and times when they weren't issued provisional ballots and should have been (the election judge didn't understand the guidelines, or gave the voter a regular ballot). I don't believe any malfeasance was taking place here - really, it was more that the judges were out of their depth and not properly trained - but as the article says, the process didn't result in many actual votes.

In software development - and I'm sure in other fields like engineering - we talk a lot about the "80/20 rule," which means the first 80% of a given project can be finished in 20% of the total time allotted, and then the final 20% of the project takes the remaining 80% of the time. The reason is that it's easy to rough in the structure of a system; it's much harder to deal with all the edge-cases and finely-resolved detail. Provisional balloting as currently implemented feels a bit like the first 80%.

Keyes On Eight Forty-Eight: Yikes

2004-08-09T14:34:00.000-05:00

I wonder how soon before the state GOP says to itself, "We have the buyer's remorse." WBEZ's Eight Forty-Eight gave Illinoisans their first real glimpse of Alan Keyes as the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate this morning, and it wasn't a pretty sight. Host Steve Edwards went relatively easy on him, I'm sure to ensure return visits, but with a figure like Keyes, you just get out of his way and let him do his thing. You really need to hear him for yourself, so I suggest checking out the archives tomorrow when BEZ posts the RealAudio of the show if you missed it.

The biggest problem with Keyes, beyond his high-tension voice that is just murder early in the morning, he's one of those guys that uses a blustery rhetorical style of the kind where it sort of sounds like something smart is being said, if you unfocus your ears, but really, nothing too substantial is being put forth, at least nothing to justify the verbal diarrhea. This style also lets the speaker disguise his inability to make a convincing argument. He's like the political bastard child of Don King and Damon Wayans' pontificating inmate from In Living Color.

And it didn't matter when a question called for a succinct reply - EVERY SINGLE ANSWER was long-winded and prone to irrelevant asides. Which can be ingratiating in the hands of a very talented few, but Keyes' stridency is a major turn-off - there's nothing about him to warm up to. At first I was sort of entertained by his mania, but I quickly fatigued at both his tone and the tediousness of his thoughts. Republicans: as wasteful with our words as with our natural resources.

GOP Gives Alan Keys To Their Senate Hopes

2004-08-04T23:02:00.000-05:00

The state GOP has asked Keyes; he wants the rest of the week to make a decision.

Members of the Republican State Central Committee that chose the candidate said race wasn't the important factor; the committee wanted "somebody who appeals to a broad spectrum of voters," said co-chairman Stephen McGlynn.

Hilarious!

Considering that they did run through a number of non-black potentials in the recent weeks, the first part of that graf may seem plausible to someone who hasn't been paying attention. But everything changed last Tuesday when their challenger turned into the hottest black politician in the country. Then Barthwell's and Keyes' names go to the top of the list.

"Somebody who appeals to a broad spectrum of voters": considering Keyes' far-right and fundamentalist views, I'm guessing the balance of that quote reads "in Wheaton."

Why Keyes?

2004-08-04T16:39:00.000-05:00

I agree with Archpundit: the Austin Mayor makes a valiant effort trying to rationalize why, given the sheer unwinnability of the contest and the fact that Keyes has no connection to Illinois politics whatever, the state Republicans are courting this bizarre figure. Certainly, if I were a low-down, long-term-thinking GOP party loyalist, I would be thinking of ways to throw a little mud on Obama and hope it stains him enough to be remembered at some far off point in the future when the senator runs for president.

But I agree with the "on the other hand" point more: this kind of speculation - that the state Republicans are treating this race like part of a larger, complex game of chess - simply ascribes the lot of them far more intelligence and sophistication than has been demonstrated to date.

I was walking with a friend today who's had experience in state politics, and he said, you've got to remember, these people just aren't that smart. Sure, on occasion they're savvy or evince a bit of cunning. But it's no prerequisite for the job.

I think what happened here boils down to, "Hey, they've got a black guy; uh … here's our black person! Eh?"

GOP Looking To Carpetbagger Keyes

2004-08-02T21:56:00.000-05:00

Illinois Republicans are courting their own Harvard-educated African-American to run for Senate, according to the Sun-Times:

Hoping to add real electricity to the U.S. Senate race, Illinois Republicans have been secretly talking to former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes about taking on Democratic nominee Barack Obama — a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.

And Keyes is thinking it over, GOP officials said today.

“What a home run that would be,” said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama.

“It would be a classic race of conservative versus liberal. And they would be enjoyable debates. It would make an exciting race. It would put this race on the map in this country — just for excitement.”

Keyes is a familiar figure to me beyond his presidential campaigns 1996 and 2000 — he unsuccessfully ran for Senate in Maryland twice, against Paul Sarbanes in 1988 and against Barbara Mikulski in 1992.

Keyes is a far-right conservative who's opposed to women's rights. He believes that free speech and a free press are OK as long as it leads to people behaving according to his religion. He's a fundamentalist fixated on a hyperreligious interpretation of the Declaration of Independence, of all things, and implicitly questions the patriotism of any American who doesn't subscribe to this reading.

So, yeah, big home run there, GOPers. A guy who's way out of the mainstream, will turn off moderate, undecided Illinoisans, and doesn't even live here, but you're going after him because he's black. How cynical can you get?

On the other hand, he does represent what Republicans has become — dragged into pending oblivion by religious fundamentalists and "starve the beast"ers — so, like I've said before, it makes sense to run your true ideologues when you know you're going to get your butt kicked, just to get your issues out there. And in the frenzy that would ensue should Keyes get the nod, they can be sure of an attentive media.

It's all academic right now; we'll find out one way or another tomorrow.

Obama Elevates the Debate

2004-08-02T09:26:00.000-05:00

The reason I loved to watch The West Wing until it went off the air last year (you know what I mean) was that, beyond from being a great drama superbly executed, it scratched my itch for thoughtful, constructive political dialogue, even though it was taking place in an alternate universe. Then Barack Obama came along last winter, and suddenly here was a guy who could talk that talk, but in a real, meaningful, this-universe way. His DNC keynote not only brought that style to the masses, but transformed his already formidable message to Illinoisans into a transcendent, American one. The remarkable reaction his speech is still generating hints at what a yearning there was - lying dormant amidst all the Rovian, Rumsfeldian, and, yes, even Clintonian cynicism - for an honest sense of shared hope not puffed up with empty rhetoric.

WaPo columnist William Raspberry outlines nicely why Obama is causing such a stir:

The political marketers have become so adept at finding America's fault lines that they have almost convinced us that we are mindless elements of a jigsaw puzzle, incapable of complex beliefs. If we take religion seriously, then we must be undereducated bumpkins with no appreciation of the Constitution or science. If we believe the government has a duty to protect the weakest among us, then we must be silly tax-and-spend liberals.

Obama was saying: It's not that simple.

And my conservative Republican friend Ed Chinn was saying from Fort Worth: "My gosh! I so resonate to that. I hope his comments catch on like a prairie fire through the land.

Friday Funny

2004-07-30T17:37:00.000-05:00

Two of my favorite blogs are ones I've just recently gotten to know. Jay Pinkerton, recently of the National Lampoon and a moderate blogosphere hit, makes me laugh almost the same that Sam Henderson's Magic Whistle does. Currently, he's winding his way through the "News Skim Comics," which starts thusly:

Spamusement is a clever concept: silly one-panel comics inspired by familiar spam "Subject" lines, like "Never be sick again," "We have located several horny women in your area!," "you were wrong cabinet sanchez" (which is of the variety that starts with a real phrase and then appends two random words), and possibly my favorite: "Tiny teen takes on the giant one-eyed monster!" (Not to worry, all work safe)

I'm Smitten

2004-07-29T23:37:00.000-05:00

I'm watching pretty much uninterrupted coverage of Kerry, Edwards et al. at a concert with the Boston Pops and a massive fireworks display over Boston (on Fox News of all places), one last finale after the convention. And Teresa Heinz-Kerry is standing with everyone watching the fireworks go up in time to rousing music like the 1812 Overture, but every once in a while she goes off in her own little world and does a little air conducting. As The Ride of the Valkyries starts, she makes little short, rapid motions mimicking the violins, and then throws her body into it as it climaxes. It was like she was a little kid! Yeah, she's an eccentric billionaire and has some weird tics, but this moment was pure, unadulterated Teresa. I loved it.

Misc.

2004-07-29T13:38:00.000-05:00

More Obama praise here and here. It's impossible to keep up with it all.

And it looks like Jack be gone. What a let down, I was hoping for a late August gun fight at high noon between him and Judy.

I'm off on vaca for few weeks and probably won't post much. Unless Ted Nugent rocks his way into the race of course.

Vote With Your Dollars

2004-07-29T00:33:00.000-05:00

Catching up on some convention blogging … Interesting observation from Matt Ygelsias over at the American Prospect:

If the party leaders had had their way, not only would Obama not have been delivering the keynote address at the convention, he wouldn't be the party's candidate for U.S. Senate at all. Plan A was to hand the nomination to Blair Hull, a millionaire who could have self-financed the race. That's a recruiting tactic the party's increasingly relied on since the early 1990s; as we saw last night, it can deprive the country of some of the most dynamic and committed public servants out there in exchange for bland nonentities like Herb Kohl. Money matters in politics and I wouldn't suggest the Democrats try to ignroe [sic] it, but this just brings home the need to expand the sort of fundraising success Howard Dean and John Kerry have had at the presidential level further down the ballot.

Thinking about the Daily Kos' dKos 8, it seems like the effort is there. I don't know if any of the 8 were written off or challenged by the national party, but I believe the criteria for selection included that they were enthusiastically supported by the grass roots. Visitors to the site have raised several hundred thousand dollars - not much more than a drop in something like a U.S. Senate race, but they're getting hundreds of new donors.

The point is that voters get engaged early and send the party a message to ensure they get the candidate they want. Problem is, it's hard to get people to care about general elections, let alone the period well before a primary. And once the main force focusing people's attention on politics goes away - W - it may be hard to sustain the grassroots netactivism that has sprung up in the past few years. The national party might default to self-financers in the "lean" years when interest is down.

Google As Your Hard-of-Hearing, Conservative Grandfather

2004-07-28T18:40:00.000-05:00

I was checking the Polis referrer logs, and noticed that some visits had come via the Google query "Reactions to Obama's Speech Last Night." Of course, Google sometimes doesn't hear exactly what you say:

No, Pop! No, it's Obama! Yes, he's a nice man from Illinois! No, of course the Democrats aren't voting for the terrorists!

Obama and the Sports Metaphor

2004-07-28T15:54:00.000-05:00

It's irresistable to journalists, the framing of success in any field in terms of sports. It's obvious why this is the case; it's easy and it provides a common, understandable context especially when dealing with a subject or people that may not be that widely known.

By far the most common phrase used in the past two weeks to describe Barack Obama to the larger public is "rising star." Which can evoke "sports star," but just as easily "movie star," there's some neutrality there. But after last night's keynote success, the sports metaphor has taken over.

David Brooks, immediately following the speech on PBS, said it was like "watching Tiger Woods play for the first time." Today's Trib editorial, The Phenom ("phenom" rarely without modifiers like "tennis"), starts off with a baseball analogy, and they brand Obama the "can't-miss kid." Archpundit says "he hit it out of the ballpark."

I don't want to make too much of this: it was an exciting moment, and we want to convey that excitement and the relationship between expectations and performance under pressure which is such a core piece of major league sports. But it's just a wee bit depressing to hear this metaphor applied to a multiracial man, whom most would identify on first sight as black, who's just had a major achievement in a field which has chronically restricted access to and representation of people of color. As in, we can only make sense of this if we frame it in terms of a context where, fairly or unfairly, the general public have seen blacks as having the most success.

I want to be clear, I don't think any condescension was intended in any of these pieces, and clearly it's not anywhere close to racism. But perhaps because this is such a sensitive point, writers could go out of their way to avoid using the sports metaphor in this sort of case, even if they have or will use it with white politicians.