davidvoegtle.net

Via the Wall Street Journal:

Barack Obama said a storm like Hurricane Gustav raises “bipartisan concerns” and it’s “fine” that John McCain visited Mississippi’s emergency operations center Sunday morning.

But he reiterated his worry that the security required for either presidential candidate could divert local law enforcement and other personnel from storm preparations. For that reason, Obama, the Democratic nominee, has said he has no immediate plan to travel to the area.

I’m trying to think of a good reason for McCain and Palin to visit the Gulf Coast before Gustav makes landfall that’s not political, but I can’t come up with one. Is his presence necessary? He doesn’t have any direct authority as a candidate to do anything, so other than photo-ops with Republican governors, why is he there?

Obama, on the other hand, is priming his donor network to donate money and supplies as requested (via Forbes):

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Sunday he will tap his huge political network of donors and volunteers to help U.S. victims of Hurricane Gustav after it comes inland.

“I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there, if it becomes necessary,” Obama told reporters after attending St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Lima, Ohio.

Obama is staying out of the way, but still expressing interest, concern, and planning to offer assistance when it becomes necessary. He’s not, however, diverting resources from first responders or tying up elected officials in the pomp of a presidential election campaign. Any person under Secret Service protection surely requires the input and cooperation of, at least, local and state police where he or she visits.

Admittedly, I am a partisan. Perhaps there’s a perfectly innocent explanation which requires McCain’s presence in the region. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Technorati Tags: barack-obama, democrats, gulf-coast, gustav, hurricane-gustav, hurricanes, john-mccain, louisiana, mississippi, new-orleans, republicans, us-news

Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters: “An artificial appropriation of different styles from different eras, the hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture lost in the superficiality of its past and unable to create any new meaning. Not only is it unsustainable, it is suicidal. While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the ‘hipster’ – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.”

Overwrought much?

It seems to me that claiming “hipster” is a sign of the coming societal apocalypse is handwringing at its worst. Every youth movement has had its critics, claiming it (whatever the current “it” was) exposed a dangerous bankruptcy among the youth of the day. Hippies were dead-enders, punks were nihilists, grunge and Gen-X were composed of slackers.

Only in retrospect can people look back and point to the truly innovative parts of the movement, and too often that retrospective view ignores the vast majority of the movement which was just a bunch of kids doing what everyone else was doing. Hipsterdom in this respect is no more or less a victim of this tendency.

Additionally, this is just false:

Hipsterdom is the first “counterculture” to be born under the advertising industry’s microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliations. Less a subculture, the hipster is a consumer group – using their capital to purchase empty authenticity and rebellion.

Anyone who remembers the grunge explosion of the 90s surely remembers that within a season or two, even the catalogs of JC Penney’s and Sears were full of plaid shirts and baggy, ratty jeans. “Lumberjack chic” was adopted so rapidly by some of the biggest names in fashion and advertising that it quickly became a cliché, much to the chagrin of many a person in the American Pacific Northwest.

Countercultures and underground cultures are always a reaction against two things: what is going on in the broader society and the prior generation’s counterculture. If there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure of, it’s this: the hipster scene is not the end of youth culture; its’ just another step along the road. The next “scene” will come along (and, probably, is already developing even as we speak).

Technorati Tags: culture, hipster, indie, society, youth, youth-culture

Hotline On Call: AFL-CIO Drops New Mailers In OH, MI, PA, WI: One of the mailers aims directly to dispel myths and rumors about the IL senator. The other features worker testimonials on Obama’s record on jobs, health care reform and workers’ rights.

Union officials tell On Call that the mailers mark the launch of a massive August campaign to clearly define Obama for millions of union voters, and to contrast the Democrat’s’ policies and plans with those of his GOP rival, John McCain.

(Via TPM Election Central.)

It’s good to see the unions step up to educate their members.

Technorati Tags: afl-cio, barack-obama, democrats, unions, workers

Feminists cry foul over Fat Princess - Video Game Feature - Yahoo! Video Games: She’s Fat Princess, the star of Sony’s upcoming video game of the same name. Debuting at last week’s E3 expo, the colorful Fat Princess is a capture-the-flag game with a twist: you can thwart capture attempts by locking the once-thin princess in a dungeon and stuffing her full of cake, thereby increasing her girth and making her harder for your enemies to haul back to home base.

Somehow abusing women makes for a good video game? C’mon, Sony, you can do better.

Technorati Tags: e3, fat-princess, feminism, sony, video-games

Think Progress » Bush: ‘No regime should ignore the will of its own people.’: In a statement regarding new sanctions against Zimbabwe today, President Bush declares that “no regime should ignore the will of its own people“

(Via nearing @ Newsvine.)

Oh irony. To laugh or to cry, that is the question.

Technorati Tags: george-w-bush, irony, zimbabwe

Coca-Cola to begin using hybrid trucks in Florida: While other companies are shying away from the considerable costs involved, Coca-Cola announced Monday it is rolling out 10 heavy-duty hybrid trucks in South Florida, part of a national campaign to put 142 of these so-called green trucks on the road in North America in the next several weeks.

(Via McClatchy.)

Now there’s no reason to hate Coca Cola for contributing to environmental devastation, just for contributing to obesity, tooth decay, and other associated health problems.

Technorati Tags: coca-cola, coke, hybrid, hybrid-vehicles

Judge removed after racial comment: A South Carolina judge who admitted calling crack cocaine addiction “black man’s disease” has been banned from the bench, the state’s Supreme Court said in an order Monday.

(Via MSNBC.com: Crime & courts.)

Wow. Just wow.

It’s nice to see that the state supreme court stepped in and did the right thing, but it’s still a shame that this could even happen. However, given South Carolina’s recent spate of freak-outs, it’s perhaps not that surprising.

Consider:

State failed to outline Bible classes for schools: I was sure the state board would give this matter the same thoughtful evaluation as it gave courses in aerobics and apparel in our public schools. In fact, the state board’s aerobics standards are specific to the point of making sure students can identify appropriate footwear. Standards for apparel courses specify that students will “apply principles of effective wardrobe planning.”

Surely the best-selling book in history, the book that hundreds of millions of Christians hold as their sacred scripture, would be given the respect and care given to aerobics and apparel.

I was wrong.

(Via Texas Freedom Network.)

When the creationist plurality currently on the state board of education loses a Baptist minister who can get an editorial like this published in the Abilene paper, you know they’ve lost a good part of their base. Texans might have an ornery, independent streak, but no one likes being laughed at. It’s time for voters to recognize the laughingstock this current BOE is making Texas, and vote appropriately at the next election.

Technorati Tags: bible, bible-class, don-mcleroy, sboe, texas-freedom-network

POLITICS: Bush Forced al-Maliki to Back Down on Pullout in 2006: WASHINGTON, Jul 28 (IPS) - Many official and unofficial proponents of a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq are dismissing Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s demand for a U.S. timeline for withdrawal as political posturing, assuming that he will abandon it under pressure.

But that demand was foreshadowed by an episode in June 2006 in which al-Maliki circulated a draft policy calling for negotiation of just such a withdrawal timetable and the George W. Bush administration had to intervene to force the prime minister to drop it.

(Via IPS Inter Press Service.)

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been consistently and regularly browbeat into toeing the administration’s demands on Iraq. It’s no wonder that he’s recently been using rhetoric seeking to establish his independence. For a “sovereign” nation, Iraq sure seems to cave a lot on questions of determining their own destiny.

Technorati Tags: iraq, nouri-al-maliki, occupation, time-table, us-military

Steve Chapman: Are the media biased against Obama?: A study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, which conservatives have always regarded as sympathetic, says the three broadcast networks have been more critical of Obama than of John McCain in their recent news coverage.

(Via Chicago Tribune.)

Not a surprise to many Obama supporters, who have noted a sustained negative campaign against their candidate for several months. As I noted in a Newsvine comment recently in response to someone who claimed Obama received universally positive coverage:

Rev. Wright? Terrorist fist jab? “Limping” across the finish line? Can he close the deal? Can he win over Hillary supporters? Just what is Obama’s probably with white voters, anyway? With Jewish voters? Incessant handwringing about Kentucky and West Virginia? How can Obama win if he doesn’t win the working class (never mind that a Democrat hasn’t won the working class in forty years)? Just why does Michelle hate America?

Every major story (e.g. those stories that go on for multiple news cycles), just about, except this one has been a highly negative one for Obama, except stories dealing with his fundraising (and perhaps the race speech, which itself was tied to the Wright flap).

In politics, there definitely is such a thing as bad publicity. Ask Mark Foley or Geoge Allen.

This, also: Much of what is perceived as media bias is simply bias toward what’s newsworthy, is a point I’ve been arguing regularly. McCain’s own narrative of this campaign, that he is the more experienced in foreign affairs due to his many trips to Iraq (and the many trips themselves), have served to make his overseas trips less newsworthy than Obama’s by dint if their admitted commonness.

The news organizations report what is newsworthy, not with an eye towards providing one Republican story for every one Democratic story. For a party that worked so hard to eliminate the Fairness Doctrine, they sure whine a lot about perceived unfairness in the media.

Technorati Tags: barack-obama, bias, election-2008, media, Politics, presidential-election

Google Gmail Adds Secure Session Option:

Google has plugged one of the biggest security risks associated with using its free hosted Gmail mail service, still in beta after four years. You can now select an option in your account preferences to make every session require an encrypted Web connection.

(Via TidBITS: Mac News for the Rest of Us.)

This is really great news for those of us who are generally on the Richard Nixon side of the paranoia scale. Having just gone through a process of completely securing my on-line life, it’s nice to have one less thing to worry about.

Also, I hope to have a post up soon discussing some of the best-practice steps I took to increase my security on-line, including making sure to use encryption where available and password practices (including a look at password manager 1Password from Agile Web Solutions).

Technorati Tags: email, encryption, google, security, ssl, technology, tls

Key GOP senator won’t attend party’s convention: WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina won’t be attending the Republican national convention, which begins over Labor Day weekend.

(Via McClatchy.)

Whew. Is this another sign of a possible Republican Party meltdown? As noted in the article, Dole is the latest in a string of Republican Senators who won’t be attending their party’s convention in September, joining Ted Stevens (AK), Susan Collins (ME), and Wayne Allard (CO). Additionally, three others have not committed to an appearance: Roger Wicker (MS), John Sununu (NH), and Gordon Smith (OR). It’s simply incredible to me that some 15% of the Republican caucus in the Senate may not show up to support John McCain

Remember, also, that just two years ago Dole was head of the Republicans Senate campaign committee. She’s not a back-bench party member.

Combined with the current infighting of the state party GOP in Iowa which decided not to include their own Senator (Charles Grassley) in the state delegation, these are not good times for Republicans.

The Republican brand is toxic, and they aren’t doing themselves any favors.

Technorati Tags: election-2008, elizabeth-dole, john-mccain, north-carolina, Politics, republicans, rnc, senate, us-senate

Study shows dementia patients recognize ‘elderspeak’: They may not be as sharp as they once were. Their memory may be failing. But people with Alzheimer’s can still sense when someone is talking down to them.

(Via McClatchy.)

When I was a teenager, I worked at a nursing home with an Alzheimer’s care wing. Quit a lot of people talk down to the elderly, even when they aren’t suffering from a form of dementia, even many family members. It seems to me that basic respect is owed to every person in a conversation, no matter their age or mental ability. I know I didn’t like being talked down to when I was a kid, I certainly don’t like it now, and I can’t imagine I would appreciate when I’m an octogenarian.

Technorati Tags: aging, alzheimers, cognition, dementia, elderspeak, health, medicine, respect

Justice finds that Gonzales aides broke federal hiring laws: WASHINGTON — Aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales violated federal laws and Justice Department policies by illegally selecting employees based on their conservative and Republican leanings, a joint report by two department watchdog agencies reported Monday.

(Via McClatchy.)

I can’t say this is very surprising (more like a “Well, duh!” moment), but it’s good to see that even the IG in the DOJ can admit that the behavior by the political appointees at Bush Justice has been atrocious.

Baby steps. It’s just too bad Bush will be able to run out the clock.

Technorati Tags: alberto-gonzalez, doj, justice, kyle-sampson, monica-goodling, republicans

That is not a competitive campaign. Including third-party options in polls right now clearly benefits Obama. An 11.5% victory for Obama would put him over 400 electoral votes, and put a whole swatch of red states either in play, or in his column. So, the question is, how can Obama go about raising the national numbers for third party candidates like Nader and Barr?

The answer, I think, is just to debate them. Next month, Obama should propose including Barr, Nader and McKinney in one of the presidential debates.

(Via Open Left.)

That’s an interesting idea, although I have to wonder how well it would play out for Obama. Although increasing the stature of the third-party candidates would seem to help Obama out in current polling, that benefit conceivably is contingent on their independence from the two major parties. If either major party is seen using the third-party candidates for tactical advantage, I think that could backfire for that major party in the minds of voters.

Technorati Tags: barack-obama, bob-barr, cynthia-mckinney, election-2008, Politics, presidential-debates, presidential-election, ralph-nader, third-parties

McCain: Ratcheting up the rhetoric - First Read - msnbc.com: NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports that there was never a plan for Obama to take the press to Landstuhl, despite the claim by McCain folks and others. The plan was to go with his military aide, retired General Scott Gration. The Pentagon said Gration was off-limits because he had joined the campaign — violating rules that it not be a political stop.

Obama had gone to see wounded troops in Iraq earlier in the week, without even confirming he’d been there. No press, no pictures. He has done the same when he goes to Walter Reed — never any press.

(Via TPM Election Central.)

I can’t really say that this is a surprise. McCain has shown he’s willing to campaign dirty, even getting his own hands deep in the filth (despite his earlier claims to want a clean campaign). What’s surprising is that he’s advancing such complete falsehoods which are so easily demonstrated as incorrect, rather than relying on third parties and 527s. Either he really believes this tripe or he’s a political idiot. It’s hard to believe that constantly getting called on this will help him among the independent voters who are the whole reason he’s the nominee for his party.

Technorati Tags: andrea-mitchell, barack-obama, germany, john-mccain, lying, politicizing-the-troops, Politics, republicans, scott-gration

CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar: Well, fortunately, Google has just quietly introduced CalDAV support to Google Calendar. CalDAV is the protocol that iCal uses to transmit data over the web. Although some other mail and calendar programs support CalDAV, right now Google Calendar is only compatible with iCal. Finally, iCal and Google Calendar can sync without having to use third party programs!

(Via TUAW.)

Leah M @ Newsvine just recently posted about CalGoo going free, and I would highly recommend using it first to push your existing iCal updates to gCal. This is what I did:

John C. Coughenour - The Right Place to Try Terrorism Cases - washingtonpost.com: I have spent 27 years on the federal bench. In particular, my experience with the trial of Ahmed Ressam, the “millennium bomber,” leads me to worry about Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s comments last week, urging Congress to pass legislation outlining judicial procedures for reviewing Guantanamo detainees’ habeas petitions. As constituted, U.S. courts are not only an adequate venue for trying terrorism suspects but are also a tremendous asset in combating terrorism. Congress risks a grave error in creating a parallel system of terrorism courts unmoored from the constitutional values that have served our country so well for so long.

Once upon a time we were a nation ruled by laws, not by fear. Once upon a time, we entrusted the courts as the arbiter of justice, not the political branches. Coughenour gets it exactly right when he says:

Courts guarantee an independent process, not an outcome. Any tribunal purporting to do otherwise is not a court.

Any attempt to alter the process so as to arrive at a preconceived outcome ought to be viewed with suspicion. Any attempt to reduce the independence of the panel hearing the case should be rejected. Any law that seeks to justify the creation of kangaroo courts in “land of the free and the home of the brave” must be protested.

Technorati Tags: ahmed-ressam, attorney-general, congress, coughenour, courts, doj, guantanamo, habeas-corpus, john-c-coughenour, justice, Legal News, michael-mukasey, millennium-bomber, ressam, terrorism

The Austin Chronicle: News: Cap Metro Cancels Shuttle Services: What’s going on? Cap Metro says it is retreating in fear of federal guidelines enacted in 2005, in response to special-interest lobbying by the private-charter bus industry. Basically, the private sector didn’t want any charter-service competition from transit agencies, and the current administration capitulated. This spring, the feds clarified a precise definition of charter service, stimulating the recent Cap Metro withdrawal. “Under the new policy by the Federal Transit Admini stra tion that took effect April 30, public agencies cannot operate charter bus service if private charter companies are interested and available to provide the service,” stated a July 17 media release from Capital Metro.

Wow. Having attended the ACL Music Festival for the last several years and having seen the many thousands of people who relied on the Cap Metro shuttles for transport to and from public lots (Zilker Park has limited on-site parking for such a large event, and the only large public parking garages are a couple of miles away), I can’t imagine how ACL is going to pull off the even this year without major disruptions.

Cap Metro provided dozens of busses, running more or less continuously over a 12 to 14 hour period each of three days. Is there a local charter service that has that kind of capacity?

Additionally, without an efficient shuttle system to downtown parking, local neighborhoods are sure to see a dramatic increase in festival parking on their streets. This has already been a source of frustration for many residents around the Zilker Park area. I hope the city and Cap Metro are able to come up with a solution in time for to the festival, now less than two months away.

Technorati Tags: acl, Austin, austin-city-limits, capmetro, charter-busses, fta, lobbying, music-festival, public-transit, shuttles, special-interests

Law.com - Memo: ‘Good Faith’ Protects Against Torture Charge: The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed “in good faith” that harsh techniques used to break prisoners’ will would not cause “prolonged mental harm.”

Wait a minute, wait a minute. I thought it was we atheist pinko liberals who were supposed to be the moral relativists. Now we find out that situational ethics apparently is A-OK if you’re torturing people, so long as the torture doesn’t cause “prolonged mental harm”? What kind of bunk reasoning is that?

Is it possible for any torture not to cause prolonged mental harm? It’s torture; that’s kind of what it’s supposed to do.

Crikey. I can’t wait until January.

Although it does kind of give a whole new meaning to “faith-based initiatives”.

Technorati Tags: cia, good-faith, moral-relativism, terrorism, torture

Law.com - High Court Justices Go Digital to Access Founding-Era Documents: U.S. Supreme Court justices on both sides in the landmark D.C. v. Heller gun rights case resorted to original documents in making their case about the meaning of the Second Amendment. But they used a little-known digital resource to get there, a project whose mission is to digitize thousands of Founding-era documents that shed light on the original meaning of the Constitution.

The Constitutional Sources Project, which launched publicly last September, has digitized and made freely available online more than 11,000 historical documents relating to the Constitution and the amendments.

Definitely a neat resource, and it appears to be usefully organized. You better believe it’s been bookmarked.

Technorati Tags: constitutional-sources-project, dc-v-heller, digital-documents, scotus, supreme-court, technology, winston-strawn

T

he Austin Chronicle: News: Texas Fiction Science: The State Board of Education does its part to fantasize biology: There’s nothing the evil overlords of the fictional future like more than a nice, healthy round of brainwashing. Whether it’s George Orwell’s totalitarian government of Oceania thwarting rebellious citizens in 1984, the “conditioning” of children in Brave New World, or the large-scale human reprogramming in The Matrix, mind control is all the rage for governments looking to cultivate a herd of submissive subjects. And it’s so simple, too! All that’s necessary are a few moldable minds and a strict party line.

But here’s a bit of nonfiction: The Texas State Board of Education has just those two things.

This is the danger of introducing politics into our educational system. When people are able to essentially dictate what the science is, despite not having any relevant expertise, in order to fit their own religious biases, then our educational system is in real trouble. The SBOE is ignoring the recommendations of their own expert panel in pursuing this change, as well as the appropriate professional organizations.

Texas will be a laughingstock should these changes be allowed to be implemented. It’s time for Texans concerned with the education of our children to throw these bums out. Let them preach in their churches whatever they want. The schools are not to be a platform for their parochial views.

Technorati Tags: biology, board-of-education, creationism, don-mcleroy, education, evolution, intelligent-design, sboe, Texas, texas-freedom-network

The Austin Chronicle: Screens: The Hard Question: Why don’t zombies just eat one another?: So the question must be asked: Why don’t zombies just eat one another?

There. Someone had to say it, and I suppose I have thus unloosed the elephant in the living room. I realize this may be an unpopular proposition, but hear me out. There are many reasons why zombies simply ought to look to one another to address their nutritional needs.

Is there a good reason why zombies can’t eat each other? Do they derive life force from their feeding, so dead flesh is just useless to them? Or maybe in the case of “infectious agent” zombies they recognize their own kind. Interesting question; a perfect ponderable for a Friday afternoon.

Technorati Tags: deep-thoughts, food, living-dead, nutrition, zombies

U.S. citizens in Europe give more to Obama - Decision ‘08- msnbc.com: “Barack Obama’s campaign has received roughly 10 times more money from declared U.S. donors living in Germany, France and Britain than his Republican rival, reflecting his popularity in Europe as he makes his first tour of the continent as the presumed Democratic nominee.”

Interesting story, but I wish they had included a comparison with how Kerry and Bush did among a similar demographic in 2004. Presumably Obama is doing better, but how much better? As I recall stories back then, many Americans living abroad were already pretty tired of Bush and the damage he had caused to America’s reputation overseas.

Technorati Tags: barack-obama, britain, europe, france, fundraising, germany, john-mccain

newsobserver.com | HIV strikes fast, study finds: “HIV infects and attacks the body within days — much faster than previously thought — drastically narrowing the window of time when intervention is possible, Duke University researchers have found.”

Not good news, especially given this:

“We can narrow that window down, but we’re never going to be able to identify all of these folks,” Leone said. “We just can’t.”

The window in which action might be taken to prevent the infection taking hold is just to narrow to ever completely eliminate the risk. Oh well. More knowledge is always better in the long run, but it’s still sad to see that scientists and doctors don’t have as long as they used to think they did before significant damage occurred.

Technorati Tags: aids, duke, health, hiv, medicine, peter-leone