On hiatus. The only reward for blogging is emotional, and this hasn't been very much fun recently. I'm tired of being pissed off all the time. Enjoy the marvelous blogs on the left, and vote Democratic in November. Gridlock is good government.

(For what it's worth, the last time I did this, it lasted about a week.)

Blogspot has been spotty, and I'm not feeling too good myself. Back tomorrow, probably.

No comment. Read down to the bottom. What a world.

Re: this post- Matthew Yglesias emails to tell me that divestment campaigns are aimed at trying to get a school to rid its portfolio of all companies that do significant business in country X, not just all companies based in country X. He points me to this page, which makes that pretty clear. I apologize.

More on this tomorrow, probably, inspired by this post by Rob Lyman. (If the permalink doesn't work, search for "D-Squared".)

Welcome Thomas M. Spencer to the blogroll. He's got a mess of good links and commentary; this story, about GOP plans if they win Congress, scares the pants off of me.

Business lobbyists said their wish lists include substantial nationwide limits on the amount of damages that can be awarded in medical malpractice cases, plus a major overhaul of the tax code to reduce the burden on corporations. Both measures have been part of President Bush's agenda and would have a better chance of becoming law if the GOP retook control of the Senate and kept a House majority in the Nov. 5 elections.

Michael G. Franc, the Heritage Foundation's vice president of government relations, said the mood among business lobbyists and economic conservatives is "guarded optimism, bordering on giddiness." He said they are laying plans to take swift advantage if Republicans complete the triple crown of the White House, the House and the Senate. "It's the domestic equivalent of planning for postwar Iraq," Franc said.

But he's got no permalinks, dang it!

UPDATE: I see that Armed Liberal disagrees; he really didn't like Thomas Spencer.

As long as each party can blow enough smoke at the other guys as the cascade of scandal unfolds, they have some prayer that their own venality, self-interest, and corruption will get overlooked. Because I’m a liberal, I’m supposed to overlook the sins of ‘my guys’ and put a magnifying glass to the sins of the ‘other team’. Well, fuck it. They’re all sinners, and until enough of us are willing to stand up and point to the dirt on our hems, this problem isn’t going to go away.

This isn’t a sport, we aren’t divided into teams, and my children’s world is at stake.

Hmm. Am I a hypocrite? I completely agree with A.L. on this point. But, I didn't have a problem with Thomas Spencer's site. If I held my blogroll to A.L.'s standards (which, probably, I should) at least 1/2 of it would have to go. So, arguably, would I. I'll have to think about this.

Via Talk a Blue Streak, a page full of audio samples of backmasking/ reverse speech in music. This could not be more awesome.

Heh heh. The Sgt. Stryker post that I quoted has whipped Bill Quick into a righteous fury. He's replied, in a post titled "PIPSQUEAK."

Not of much interest, except for this comment in the quotes:

bill,
i'll have to refer you to the case of Rubber v Glue 410 U.S. 113 (1979)

Gotta remember that one.

William Burton is just a great, great blogger. He's got a number of furious posts about North Korea that you should read. He's changed his mind about support for an attack on Iraq, and wants war with North Korea right now. I'd have a hard time picking my favorite post (I sure like this and this and this) but this one is important, and you'll never see it in the mainstream press.

The US Government has announced that it will release $95m to North Korea as part of an agreement to replace the Stalinist country's own nuclear programme, which the US suspected was being misused.
Under the 1994 Agreed Framework an international consortium is building two proliferation-proof nuclear reactors and providing fuel oil for North Korea while the reactors are being built.

In releasing the funding, President George W Bush waived the Framework's requirement that North Korea allow inspectors to ensure it has not hidden away any weapons-grade plutonium from the original reactors. ...

Note the difference in Bush's behavior towards North Korea's refusal to allow weapons inspections and the possibility of Hussein interfering with inspections. In the first case, Bush gives North Korea money that was supposed to be predicated upon those inspections. In the second, Off with his head!

Sgt. Stryker:

The main problem is that all these frelling bloggers need to lighten up. It's fun to poke a blowhard with a stick every once in a while and most are deserving of a reality check. I think with all the online press attention lately, most Blog Pundits have gotten it into their heads that they are forces to be contended with and powerful shapers of public opinion when perhaps 1/10th of 1% of the American public are aware of their existence, yet most of their opponents assume such a grave tone of sobriety and infuse their words with such import that it assumes the look of tragic comedy...

How do you know if you're avoiding the pratfalls of pathetic discourse? It's quite simple, actually. If the conversation doesn't look predictable or follow the same tired script in use since the Usenet days, then you're on the right track. Take for granted that no one participating in the argument will have some Road to Damascus experience because of your powerful eloquence. They're going to walk away feeling the same way about an issue as they did going in, so you might as well make the event entertaining. Throw some insults, exercise your wit and experiment with the language a bit.

Have fun and entertain us.

Tom Tomorrow:

Blogging is a fine thing to do, and I'm happy that you all take the time to read mine, but let's face it--this isn't something that requires extraordinary talent, or much more skill than the ability to post an html link. It's like being interviewed about eating dinner or going to the movies or something--it's a fine way to pass your time, but it's not much more than that.

They're both right. Maybe blogging really has jumped the shark.

In honor of not taking yourself seriously, here are a few of of my favorite non-political funny links:

Furniture Porn
Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. Read the FAQs, too:

Are you and Margret still together?

Lord yes. As I've said before, the secret of a successful relationship is to become irretrievably embroiled in a bitter struggle to the death. Anyway, if we weren't still together the title of the page would be Things My Former Girlfriend And I Argued About. Which, admittedly, would be a shame as it would mean losing the snappy acronym TMGAIHAA in favour of the clumsy and crashingly uneuphonic TMFGAIAA...

Hello, I'm American. What I'd like to do now is dribble out some pop psychology I saw an airport paperback writer talking about on Oprah once and which I've slavishly used as the basis of my whole life since because I really can't go to the effort of thinking anything through for myself. Clearly, I don't have the reading skills or the intellectual depth to claw my way above the crashingly literal, so I'll use this embarrassing lack of subtlety as a misplaced springboard from which to launch into a critique of your relationship. I'll probably say something like 'For the sake of the children', I simply won't be able to stop myself. Depending upon how I feel, I might even state that 'I have a good sense of humour' too, a fact which, tragically, I, myself, genuinely believe to be true. Can I have a 'I Don't Get It' badge please?

Certainly - there's a box of them by the door.

Fametracker
Seanbaby, esp. the Superfriends page
Pointless Waste of Time
(specifically, I'm going to point to the Keanu Reeves interview:

Q: Right. Anyway, we did some polling on the site, and we came up with a list of fan questions-
A: Great.
Q: -that, I think, kind of encompass what fans everywhere want to know about the sequels. Number one - from NeoStorm13: "The Matrix 2 is in pre-production, but with the impending actor's strike there's serious doubt that the project can finish on schedule, if at all. Is it true you have a third nipple?"
A: Well, the... what?
Q: If you go frame-by frame on the DVD in the bug scene...
A: I... no comment. Heh. Next question.
Q: Number two, from smorpheus: "If Neo does finally get to see Zion in the next film-
A: -We can't do plot points-
Q: -let me finish. "If Neo does get to see Zion in the next film, will he have a third nipple when he gets there?"
A: Okay. Enough with that. Next question.
Q: Do you want to do this or not? Here's question three, from whoa!man69: "Nipple-
A: -the next question that's not about a third nipple.
Q: Oh. (I flipped through my notes for several minutes)

My friend Tim's page

Inspired by Leftbanker, Houstonians may want to attend a free opera recital tomorrow night at 7:30 at the Stude Concert Hall at Rice University. I'll be there. Lots of fun. Here's a link. Here's a map.

D-squared Digest has a rather good reason why no one is calling for divestment from Egypt, Syria, or Egypt.

I would guess that the reason that there is no campaign for divestiture from Syria is that it doesn't have a stock exchange.

There are a few Syrian companies quoted on the bourse in Doha, but they're not exactly mainstream investments. The Egyptian stock exchange is absolutely tiny; I seem to remember that Fleming-CIIC Securities (part of the JP Morgan Chase group) is the only international broker operating there (edit: Google says I'm wrong and that HSBC and ABN Amro have a presence. But google also tells me that the market capitalisation of Egypt is only $30bn), and although the Saudi stock market is capitalised at around $40bn, investment into it by foreigners is tightly regulated; basically, the only way you can buy into it is through a country fund managed by a Saudi bank and listed in London. Unlike Israel, which boasts a number of companies with New York listings and two S&P500 constituents, investment in the three countries mentioned is pretty hard-core emerging markets stuff, not really the widows-and-orphans territory of your typical university endowment.

In fact, on the basis of the above research, I would hazard a guess (and perhaps award a small prize to anyone who can gainsay me with proof), that the major American university endowments have no investments at all in Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia, making it rather fucking pointless to campaign for them to "divest".

It is considered traditional at this point to fulminate about the kind of individual who makes this sort of pig-ignorant blanket assertion without bothering to spend five minutes on google to check the facts, but I'm scared of the blowback from that one.

I think it might help explain to Sully why no one is calling from investment from China or (for God's sake) Zimbabwe. I don't imagine that my alma mater is sitting on huge holdings in Zimbabwe Motors.

I don't want this to seem like payback or anything, but Andrew Northrup really is one of the funniest guys out there. Check this out.

PBS Schedule for Monday, October 21, 2002

3:00 AM - Ken Burns Presents: Professional Wrestling (part 8) Nothing really expresses the repressed homosexual longing at the heart of the American experience quite like the sight of beefy men in mustaches and tights groaning and grimacing as they gallop and heave against each other for an audience of young men who put their posters on their walls. How many professional wrestling characters would look out of place in the Village People? (Answer: zero.) Ken Burns brings this uniquely American activity to life in his own inimitable style. Today’s episode: Koko B. Ware breaks the parrot barrier, and ushers in a new era in wrestling pets....

3:30 PM – Clifford the Big Red Dog The people who drew He-Man make fun of this cartoon. What are there, seven frames of animation a minute? Is it being drawn in real time? I know this is PBS, but really...

11:00 PM – Charlie Rose Charlie interviews V.S. Naipaul about his life in letters, Ken Pollack about the looming war with Iraq, and Ryan Phillipe about producing his new movie “Cruel Intentions 3: Intentional Cruelty”, the latest in the wildly successful series of films for child molestors.

Another link I should post: Leftbanker. He's only occasionally political, but I had a great time reading him. He's a good writer and an inspiration to get more out of life. He extols the virtues of travel, classical music (esp. Bach), reading, and cycling. He makes fun of CNN and encourages you to learn an instrument. I find him to be a breath of fresh air.

Note: I hope that he wouldn't be offended if I called him a "liberal elitist." So if this isn't your cup of tea, you're better off reading another blog.

It looks like Doonsbury's doing a week of blogger cartoons! This is going to be sweet...

A couple of quick hits:

- I have been laughing my ass off all weekend at Homestar Runner. It's a huge world of interrelated Flash cartoons. I can't believe what people just give away on the Internet.

- I promised a link to AllSci for this economic analysis of terrorism. The homepage has some interesting links, too.

Allsci is a science magazine published weekly, except for the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas. In addition to publishing highlights from science newspaper sections, other magazines and websites, Allsci tries to provide scientific explanations or analysis of weekly news topics.

- Steve at Deinonychus had a counter-post to my argument on single-payer health care. I personally don't find it terribly convincing, because (in my reading) it's basically a philisophical libertarian attack on the idea of treating health care as a public good. But I know I'm never going to convince a libertarian to support single-payer health care philisophically; I'd have to do it practically. That is, I'd have to show that countries that have single-payer health care manage to provide better care to more people for a lot less money per patient. I think that's true. Nonetheless, Steve's post is well worth reading.

There seems to be a discussion of left-wing homophobia going on, based largely upon mean nicknames that some left-wing bloggers use for Andrew Sullivan. I think that Tony Adragna gets it right:

But let's not confuse this with homophobia born of an irrational intolerance of homosexuals. The attacks on Andrew Sullivan are something different — a calculated attempt by a cabal of ideologues who share an intense hatred of Andrew Sullivan.

Now, I'd like to think that I've been pretty consistent about gay issues and the left (here and here, for example.) But there's nothing more ridiculous than the crocodile tears of conservatives as they shake their heads at the left's intolerance of gays*.

This point should be obvious, but it apparently isn't. In any list of the serious problems facing gays in America today, "the Montana hairdresser ad" and "meanness to Andrew Sullivan" would not appear. Rather, the list would mention that gays are second-class citizens. In much of the United States (Republican dominated "red" states, generally), you can legally be fired if your employer finds out that you're gay. Your landlord can legally evict you, or refuse to rent to you in the first place. It would mention that gays can't enter a marriage contract or enjoy partner benefits, and courts are very reluctant to give them custody of children in adoptions or divorce. It would mention that some states still have laws against sodomy.

When these issues come up for discussion, some conservatives (esp. libertarians) will argue for gay equality, and (maybe) some liberal somewhere will argue against it. But by and large, anyone who's paying attention would have to agree that "the Right" is generally opposed to gay equality, and "the Left" is generally for it. Assaults on gays as a group come from the right, not the left. If you have any counter-examples, put them in the comments.

When it comes to actual politics, it's even simpler; if Democrats don't stand up for gay equality, no one will. Elected Republicans are always more opposed to gay equallity than their Democratic opponents. (Again, counter-examples in the comments.) Just as an example, here is the offical Texas Republican Party Platform on gays, via Charles Kuffner. This isn't some random blogger; it's the President's home party organization:

"Homosexuality – The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, recognition, or privileges including, but not limited to, marriage between persons of the same sex, custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values."

So I'm not going to argue that everyone on the left is always a saint on gay issues. But spare me tut-tutting from Republicans about widespread "liberal homophobia." Please.


*(I want to specifically mention that this isn't aimed at Charles Murtaugh.)

I've got a case of not-in-the-mood-to-blog that I just can't shake. And right after I get the honor of a permalink in TAPPED. Dang. But I've got a few things I want to say.

You never know what is going to be controversial, do you? As I write this, the PETA thread has 93 comments. I've never gotten anything like it, and I still don't understand why so many people are passionately fighting for your right to assault protestors that you don't like. (If you don't like the word "assault", feel free to search and replace. And I should mention that I don't care much about animal rights, strongly support the use of animals in medical testing, and find paint-throwing and such abhorent. PETA doesn't do that anymore, but it's a terrible legacy.)

Let's use a real-life example to see what moral principles anti-PETA posters are defending.

- A pro-Israel protestor is surrounded, harassed and spit on until rescued by the police.

Which of these statements best encapsulates your reaction?

(a) More like this, please.
(b) She wasn't injured, so what's the big deal? She might even have had to take a, take a, take a . . . . bath????
(c) Before I can condemn this, I have to establish that she is not a member of a group which has ever expressed sympathy for any terrorist actions.
(d) These self-righteous animals can go to hell.

I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people who heard about this story felt nothing but revulsion. I'm willing to bet that most people were not interested in hearing arguments about Israel, bulldozing houses or whatever. And I'm willing to bet that there wasn't anyone who giggled about it.

I think that in the case of the pro-Israel protestor, most sensible people would take umbrage at arguments that her assault would have been appropriate in certain situations. Or, that spit just washes off. I think that a defense of the crowd based on the character of the Israeli government would seem beside the damn point. The point is, no one deserves to be physically assaulted for peaceful protest.

Some of the anti-PETA people in the comments are pretty bright, and I have no doubt that they'll be able to construct some clever intellectual gerrymanders . But they should be honest when they construct them. Would it be OK to douse a protestor with Sprite but not Coke? OK to assault peaceful protestors outside a school, but not outside a church? Can we now douse Operation Rescue protestors because we believe that they sympathize with people who kill abortion doctors? Can we douse NAACP protestors because of percieved historic sympathy with the Black Panthers? What if the group in question had abandoned its own violent and disruptive tactics? You know, like PETA has?

Rob Lyman had some sensible comments:

C'mon, now dude, you're a lawyer--can I justify socking some asshole by saying "Well, your Honor, he has been known to punch people in the past!"?

Nope. I think that PETA is mostly composed of jackasses--certainly their public image is one of unmitigated jackassery. And I strongly condemn their violent tactics such as throwing blood on old ladies in fur coats. But their stupid and illegal tactics don't justify stupid and illegal responses.

Even if prior bad acts justified this kind of treatment, our legal and moral system reject group guilt--is their any evidence that the cow-suiters were also blood-throwers? It's one think thing to hunt down and kill al Queda; quite another to assault overzealous but peaceful members of a group associated with violence.

Hey, I thought it was funny, too. But I don't want to see more of it, from any part of the political spectrum.

Finally, Glenn says in the comments, "It seems to me that when the cause is politically correct, anything goes. Otherwise it's Marquis of Queensbury Rules. Bit of a double standard, I think."

Yes, we've all been impressed by the politeness and lack of vitriol coming from the right for the last 10 years or so. I've got 1000 words in reply.