For Now, It's All Politics

arschkalt @ 2007-09-29T17:13:00

2007-09-29T21:13:28Z

Someone is coming out with a Conservative MoveOn.

Hilariously, their answer to grass-roots MoveOn is to create yet another group funded by a small group of extremely wealthy millionaires and billionaires that will put out ads, op-eds, and hype in general for one Reagen-esque thing or another.

Why not just add another wing to the Heritage Foundation? Weren't they doing a good enough job?

Incidentally I got to see a guy from the heritage foundation debate an ACLU woman about the merits of our approach (or lack thereof) to immigration and illegals. He was exactly as I had always expected he would be.

Your Diversity is Not Helping

2007-08-05T14:49:38Z

Dear Carnegie Mellon,

...the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. [Putnam's] study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/04/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=1

Sincerely,

-Gerrit Betz

Why does the Attorney Scandal Matter?

2007-06-19T22:12:09Z

(Read this in a sensible format at gerritvb.wordpress.com - I just copy and pasted the code, so it might look like ass.)

'Caging.'

There are other things, but that's one of them and it's certainly one that you care about. You could totally get 'caged' in '08.

Caging is a clever process by which someone sends a registered/certified letter to your address, knowing that you are not there to sign for it. Then, when they receive notice that you did not sign for the letter, they challenge your voter registration status and have you removed from the rolls.

Caging is illegal. However, the Republican National Committee caged a bunch of people last year.

The best people to cage, actually, are young people like us. We often vote in our 'permanent address' district, while we spend little time there because we are at college or serving in the military.

(Yes, I am saying that the RNC supported out troops by disenfranchising the ones that lived in democratic districts while they were watching things explode in Fallujah.)

Remember how they were trying to get the RNC e-mails that Rove deleted? Some of them have surfaced, in fact.

Here's an excel spreadsheet retrieved from one of those emails of names removed from the voter rolls in Nevada:

This really happened.

Since caging is a crime, it is the Federal Attorney's job to prosecute the offenders. Not like it would be hard - certified mail leaves a crystal clear paper trail.

If a republican federal attorney were to try to stop this, or prosecute the RNC people for doing this, that might constitute a 'performance problem' (to quote the White House).

An obedient federal attorney would look the other way, but ones truly committed to justice would probably interfere.

I'm not sure if the 8 fired attorneys tried to stop it, but coming from the sucka MC who orchestrated the disenfranchisement of tons of people in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, there is good reason to suspect that this corruption goes right to the top, with even the Attorney General looking the other way while elections are stolen.

Also on wordpress...

2007-06-15T11:35:18Z

are those great block quotes that you see on 'real' blogs, so that when you paste a large amount of some other article, it's awesome and readable (or skippable if the reader doesn't care)!

Wordpress Questions

2007-06-14T22:17:48Z

I don't know about Janet's question from before - whether one can "embed a WordPress blog into a standalone site." No idea. Their faq is pretty good though.

And as for an LJ feed, I know that Mike Yin has a paid account. Maybe he can make a sweet, sweet feed!

I'm moving my blog to Wordpress.com

2007-06-14T02:17:02Z

I know - what am I thinking?

I am thinking that I want my blog to be part of a community that is more of a community, and from what I can tell, WordPress is a much better blogging site. It has that really positive, 'free as in speech' kind of internet philosophy behind it, and I dig that.

My new blog is at http://gerritvb.wordpress.com. I totally advise that everybody switch - you'll probably like it way better. Composing posts is nicer, for sure. Go ahead and read the Features section to see roughly why I switched.

If you still want to read my blog without having to go there as a separate matter, you can read it as an RSS feed at: http://gerritvb.wordpress.com/feed

Just paste that into any RSS reader (like Google Reader) and you'll b able to view check if I have new posts without really having to check if I have new posts.

Hypothetically I should be posting a lot this summer, but that remains to be seen.

I hope to see that you are reading (I will know if anyone is, since WordPress tells me how many visitors I have)!

Until then,

Gerrit

German 'Der Spiegel' Documents Pro-Bush Media Bias

2007-06-01T23:16:55Z

Here's a great Spiegel article that blasts the US media coverage of the Bush White House's environmental policies. It's German.

Well How-dee

2007-05-31T01:16:00Z

Wolfowitz resigned from the world bank, and so we pick someone from the Project for the New American Century, a conservative militant think tank that sent a letter to Clinton in 1998 asking him to invade Iraq. Scroll down to the bottom of their statement of principles and read through the names. They should look pretty familiar. Jeb Bush, Dan Quayle, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz are names you should all recognize.

You may not recognize Norman Podhoretz, but take it from me and David Brock, he's a snake who has been pushing neo-con myths as facts for 20 years, and recently wrote an article about he wishes and prays that Bush will bomb Iran.

Just an FYI.

Two guys to argue for existence of God using science, 'without bible' or references to their 'faith'

2007-05-09T01:30:18Z

no joke. It's airing tomorrow at 2PM live at ABC's Website and at 11:35 PM on Nightline.

Allegedy, Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron will not use the bible to further their claims about the existence of God.

I'm pretty sure that they lose even if they can use the bible. A lot of greater minds than theirs have worked on this problem, and sofar nobody can logically prove or disprove it because there is no evidence either way. Given that there are hypothetically an infinite number of things that fit this description, the odds are low for 'proving' the existence of God, especially 'scientifically.'

I am very interested in watching this. Let me know if you are too, and we can watch it together at 2 online or something.

"Most people equate atheism with intellectualism," explained Comfort in a statement, "but it's actually an intellectual embarrassment. I am amazed at how many people think that God's existence is a matter of faith. It's not, and I will prove it at the debate – once and for all. This is not a joke. I will present undeniable scientific proof that God exists.”

Important!

2007-05-04T17:40:31Z

Internet Radio is gonna be fucked if we don't register our complaints. The US Copyright Royalty Board is essentially proposing a system where "internet radio services pay 60 percent to 300 percent of their revenue in royalties while satellite radio pays 5 to 7 percent and broadcasters pay zero."

Even if you don't listen to NetRadio this is huge - it arbitrarily places a huge burden on radio stations. Many broadcast stations would probably have to stop streaming, including WRCT and local stations. Not even NPR is exempt - there goes my podcast!

So either call or email your congressional representatives to tell them to support H.R. 2060, the Internet Radio Equality Act.

Finally! A list!

2007-05-03T15:57:24Z

Movies released in pairs that are remarkably similar to one another and also within a year of one another.

Add TMNT and Transformers to this list, both linked by a common attack on our generation's youth nostalgia!

Can anyone else think of more?

What's up with Libertarians?

2007-05-02T19:32:24Z

A common question.

My specific question is, why is that Libertarians (Lib's hereafter) have been so prone to vote and register republican instead of democrat? It seems natural if you look at the stated goals of the republican party: great state/personal freedoms and small government - but that's like looking into the induction manual of a fraternity to try to figure out what it's like.

"The mission of Sigma Alpha Epsilon is to promote the highest standards of friendship, scholarship, and service for our members" - SAE website

In fact, Democrats since have been greater champions of social and personal liberty than Republicans in the last 17 years for sure. Look at the legislative records - who tried to ban gay marriage? Who successfully banned an abortion procedure? Who nearly banned flag-burning? Are these not personal freedoms?

Fiscally, Republicans have been abysmally irresponsible since Reagen first took office in 1984. He essentially created the national debt, George Sr. and Jr. exacerbated it, and Clinton left office with a budget surplus. Notably, Republicans created the debt in a moronic way: they over-funded military programs while cutting taxes predominantly for wealthier citizens.

Can any of my Libertarian friends explain this to me? Democrats seem better for libertarians on both fronts - personal liberty and lower government spending - so why the propensity to vote and register Republican?

Is a tax cut so monumental? Or am I missing something?

Irony

2007-05-02T03:30:35Z

In 1999, Bush said he wanted a timetable for troops in Kosovo.

Please send this form letter, for me

2007-05-01T03:46:47Z

to stop a postage rate hike that would unfairly affect small (and therefor independent) media.

Almost since the beginning in America, media sources have gotten postage discounts to subsidize the spread of news to the people, since media are critical to our democratic ideals. Recently, a government agency decided to raise rates by about 30% for small publishers, but only raise rates by about 9% for very large publishers, who would be the only ones who could afford the 30% hike in the first place (source).

Small and therefore independent media outlets will suffer and perhaps go out of business because of this. Please click the above link and send a form e-mail to your congressman, it'll take about as much time as signing into facebook and looking at your wall.

Some fun stuff!

2007-04-30T19:52:19Z

Evangelist to debate athiests. He says he's going to undeniably prove the existence of God without using the bible at all. ABC is taping it, so stay tuned.

Second Life Lawyer. If you know what second life is, no further explanation is necessary.

Wow

2007-04-29T18:24:09Z

former Senator Gravel goes crazy-democratic at the debate.

It's great when you're not a front-runner, because then you can say what you really think.

Old Article

2007-04-27T03:57:24Z

about weed.

Apparently it slows cancer down in lab rats.

Rush Limbaugh Did The Wildest Thing

2007-04-24T22:41:41Z

Barack the Magic Negro

Just listen. I don't know where the images are from, but they're irrelevant since it was a radio broadcast.

If you think this is messed up, then go to this list of Rush's Sponsors and tell them that you think they should no longer run ads during his programming. Stuff like this is how Imus got fired. If anyone knows what station carries him locally, comment on this post with that information so people can write to the station if they want, too.

Good Tax News!

2007-04-23T14:52:33Z

the Democrats are going to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax!

The AMT was designed, as the article will tell you, to prevent the super-super rich from using tax loopholes that were designed for people with lower incomes to avoid paying huge sums of taxes.

Stupidly though, the AMT was not indexed for inflation, so every year it has crept down more and more into lower income classes, increasing an unnecessary crunch on the middle class.

But the Democrats are trying to re-do it so that nobody earning under $250,000 pays the AMT, and people who earn between $250,000-500,000 will pay a reduced AMT!

This is very good news for 98% of Americans! And it's my pet issue, so you're hearing about it.

Sensible Argument about Lowering Drinking Age

2007-04-20T17:29:18Z

read if you like.

Supreme Court Bans Dialation and Extraction 5-4

2007-04-18T17:35:14Z

You probably know it better as "partial birth abortion" thanks to the saturation of the media by right-wing terminology (see also: 'death tax' for estate tax, 'troop surge' for escalation, 'stay the course' for no plan, 'tort reform' for cutting democratic party funding, and 'tax relief' for tax cuts for the rich).

In 2003, our very own Rick Santorum authored the senate bill that banned the procedure, saying it was gruesome and never medically necessary. (I didn't know that he was an MD and OB/GYN! Fancy that.)

While a similar law failed in the supreme court 5-4 in 2000, Bush appointees have confirmed it today. Check this out:

"The opponents of the act “have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion."

I wasn't aware that the lawyers had to argue well if they were right. The fact is previous decisions and laws make it clear that banning dialation and extraction are illegal on grounds of constitutionality. The supreme court should not even have to hear arguments to know this, let alone decide based on whether or not 'the opponents demonstrate' that something is true or not.

It's a matter of opinion, and it just so happens that the opinion of all courts and laws before this one were ruled constitutional again and again, and this court, chosen almost solely on the basis of whether they would one day do exactly this, has, in my opinion, blithely fulfilled their promise to Mr. Bush Sr. & Jr.

That said, I don't think abortion is really an issue of public concern. In fact, that is partly why the supreme court has ruled the way it has up until now - it's a personal choice, not a fertile ground for public policy. (This procedure is especially ludicrous - 90% of abortions occur before 12 weeks, and most P-B abortions occur after week 24, and not usually because the woman no longer wants to have a child, but because something is going wrong medially with the child or mother. This law was just a vote-getter.)

We should be more concerned that the Pentagon budget is higher than the next 20 military budgets of entire other countries combined - and they're almost all our allies. We should be concerned that that figure does not even take into account the rest of our military expenditures like the Army, Marines, navy, air force, Department of Defense - anything. Think about how the pentagon's budget never went down after the cold war, and now the president wants an 10% increase in it!

Think about how, in the 1960's, corporate taxes accounted for 10% of the IRS' revenue. Today, they account for 4% (source). Did corporations start losing money on the order of 60%, or are they just cheating on their taxes, and accordingly cheating us out of public services?

Normally, if I link to the WaPo, it's because of something someone else did

2007-04-18T15:26:20Z

Look at this ridiculous profile of the VA Tech shooter.

"He often spoke in a whisper, if at all, refused to open up to teachers and classmates, and kept himself locked behind a facade of a hat, sunglasses and silence."

OK. I am in a similar field of study as Cho Seung-Hui was, and I can say that there are dozens of students who come into my classes, fold their arms across their chests, put their eyes down, and then refuse to say a singe word for 14-16 weeks.

I would not say that they are locked behind a facade of any kind. Language like that is downright creepy, Washington Post. Why are you making it sound like he's a shell for some kind of demon?

It looks like we're going to go down the same road as we did with Columbine, imbuing a certain appearance with a vast, unseen, sinister character that will be over-applicable to the population at large.

I think that rather than looking for 'what about college, society, immigration, integration, English, etc causes a person to snap like this?' we might see news go back to the conclusion that 'you never know when it will happen to you.'

It's a bit outdated now (2000), but the book Culture of Fear is worth a read if you're interested in inflated news media portrayals of events. You can even get it at the Carnegie Library for free. It's a quick read.

who the fuck is don imus

2007-04-16T18:47:52Z

Just the other day, there was a news story about a German military training video (watch it in just german here) wherein a drill sergeant tells a recruit to imagine that he is in the Bronx, and that three "Afro-Amerikaner" approach him. Then he tells him to "give a loud 'motherfucker'" before every shot burst. (I can also tell from his tone of voice that he is saying it jokingly, whatever implications that may have for you personally)

It's a headliner if you search for any news about Germany, and I have to say that I am sad that it's happening. So let's talk about Germany.

From this news article, this quote is pretty good:

"The German government obviously has work to do to correct something that is insidious." Said Adolfo Carrion Jr. on Saturday. "Clearly these folks don't know anything about African-Americans or the Bronx."

Germans, in fact, do not know very much about America. What they think they know, they know from music, music videos, movies and TV. Unlike in America, a typical German cable service includes 4 music video channels that play only music videos all day.

Some common stereotypes of us are:

We all drink coke, eat pizza, bugers and fries
We are fat
We are cowboys, and have the hats and boots and everything
We don't know or care about the world outside the US, unless we are invading it
Everything we have and do is huge - supermarkets, cars, and again, we are super fat.
We are religious and nationalistic fanatics

Given the media that reaches Germany, chiefly movies and music (videos), it's not surprising that they think such a ridiculous thing about black people in the Bronx.

Now, I'm going to steal a thought from Roots of Rock n Roll, and say that blackface minstrelsy has never really stopped. From the 1800's on, there has been this strange set of rules about performance and entertainment that reinforces charicatures and stereotypes. This isn't to say that all black performers are doing this, but that many still are, if inadvertantly. What's more confusing is that there are white performers who emulate black performers who are emulating white performers from 1800 who were charicatuing black people.

Don Imus, a radio host, got fired the other day for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team 'nappy headed hos.' Some people are saying it's about time, and that he has been bigoted for a while, which is true. Others are saying that firing him is a flagrant abuse of free speech, which it isn't (because it was not done by law). Others, like Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee, think there's a big inconsistency if only Don Imus gets the boot. They are right. Rush and O'Reilly and dozens of entertainers earn their daily bread on worse things than 'nappy headed ho's.'

Think of a typical German. Did you think of the first google image result for 'German?'

What that training sergeant told that soldier to do was fucked up, but it's also fucked up that lots of Americans think that Germans are Nazis. The Germans as a whole haven't done or said anything remotely conservative, let alone 'nationalistically social' in over 60 years, but we pump their eyes and ears full of media that stereotype us as fat, violent cowboys. Apparently, we pump our own eyes full of stereotypes of Germans that are lederhosen wearing Bavarians with Hitler mustaches.

As Obama often says, we should reflect on things like this more.

EDIT

2007-04-11T06:16:42Z

Instead of 'podcasts' that I subscribe to, I prefer to call them audio-logs, or Audlogs for short.

Please adopt this nomenclature.

Podcasts

2007-04-10T01:54:50Z

Here are the podcasts that I listen to. Maybe you'll like listening to them on your mp3 player or computer, too!

Media Matters with Bob McChesney: This one is about the media generally, and news that affects the media in a way that harms democracy generally. It keeps me up to speed on all the mass acquisition things, new FCC guidelines and how they will affect our lives, stuff like that. Recently they had some guests on and were talking about how the RIAA wanted internet radio stations to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for songs played over the web retroactively starting a year ago.

Ring of Fire from Air America Radio: This show is hosted by two outspoken liberals, and it's always good to hear their perspective. Mike Papintonio (sp?) is as fiery as any of those conservative radio hosts, but he's your buddy this time, and he's never mean about it. Although he is always openly delighted when Republicans who break the law go to jail.

NPR World Story of the Day: A short program, usually only 5-10 minutes, but it showcases something from a foreign country in relatively in depth coverage, which is nice. The other day I learned about how schools are going to shit in Afghanistan! Shit!

NPR Technology: A basic, short collection of all the tech related stuff from NPR in a given week. It's to the point, and I often hear about things here first, rather than on other news sites etc.

Also, NPR's Podcasts are huge in number and include podcasts from lots of local partner stations. You could listen to podcasts all day just from what's on npr's site alone.

Also, in the rare event that you are reading this and you don't have an iPod (like me), I recommend Doppler to manage your podcast subscriptions, it's what I am using now.

Yeah, most of them are political, but that's a pretty good thing if you're not into sorting out all the news constantly. And there's a ton more out there of all kinds!