caught with his pants down

I've been thinking about the right idiomatic expression to capture the weekend, and this one keeps coming to mind.

The sane advice is to let things lay low, to be patient, to let stuff fizzle out. At least, that's the strategy I'd advise.

But you just can't help going for one more fix, one more rendezvous, even if it requires escalatingly hilarious, in retrospect, actions to hide what's happening. At some moment you're caught, your bluff is called, and the exposure itself is what is damaging; you still retain the technical authority to do what you want, but you find that people don't really want to do what they're told simply because they're told to do it.

The Mayor's Office, by its own gambit of escalation, got owned by a couple dozen nobodies* nobody is paying attention to. What strategist is mapping this out? The city abandoned any notion of urgency or danger to the public by its inability to carry out the threat at 3:00pm, with the cameras rolling. The absence of action at that time is the deafening silence of walking in on somebody with their pants down. All the noise thereafter is just that, noise.

And for what? A one night stand?

*okay, might be exaggerating slightly for effect here. It's called hyperbole. Or is it adynaton? Does anybody care?

Anybody?

nothing happened

So for the first time I swung by the OccupySTL. Actually hadn't been down to Kiener Plaza in quite some time, perhaps not in over a year.

The city released an ultimatum to the group that has three fascinating legal angles for me, perhaps most fascinating now that nothing happened. First, the notion that the city would start strict enforcement of ordinances is a plain as day admission of how our two tiered justice system works - selective prosecution is so engrained in the system that it is not even hidden. The city document leads to the obvious conclusion that most city laws are enforced lackadaisically. They exist not so much as rule of law as tool of power. Second, saying effective immediately at 3:00pm sets up a binary choice of confrontation; there is no way for cooler heads to prevail without completely blinking. Third, what does the Constitution's protection of the right to assemble actually mean? Every big city government in the country takes money and other support from laws passed by Congress, and Congress quite explicitly is forbidden from passing any laws respecting the right of the people to peaceably assemble.

At this stage there is a lot of hunger for answers (answers that conveniently fit in an existing, authorized, enclosed box). One of the most subversive acts of the occupy movement, I think, is its focus first on trying to create space for the questions. The right questions then reframe the whole debate.

Which is of course what's so dangerous about letting the rabble gather in public. It destroyed the British empire.

historic

What a week. Oakland police shoot a veteran in the head. Brilliant strategy for mayors and police chiefs everywhere to emulate in showing which side they're on.

European leaders double down on bank bailouts at the expense of reforming the financial system. I'm sure European voters will love that. Plus, the economics of more leverage solving a problem of excess leverage makes obvious sense, and China, one of the poorest countries in the world, clearly should be investing in such a scheme. The classic win-win-win. Maybe the EU's banker-lackeys can hit up Turkmenistan and Algeria next. Or maybe the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. Libya's gold has to be sitting around somewhere.

President Obama's approval ratings have fallen below 50% among Millennials, and a top Democratic fundraiser has openly protested a fundraising event. Representative Cantor is going around cancelling speeches that might be attended by actual Americans. The canon chancellor of St. Paul's cathedral in London has resigned because of pressure by the church and the financial district to use force against protestors. The son of the Vice President, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, has now launched a lawsuit directly against MERS.

But then, of course, there's the St. Louis Cardinals, with one of the most epic finishes in all of sports during one of the most epic finishes in all of sports. Makes the 0-2 Chiefs playing for the division lead on Monday Night Football on Halloween seem downright pedestrian. And what's up with the Big 12? Does it want to be a a major conference or not?

Eh, that can wait til next week.

only banksters get tarps

Wow, I wish I had thought of that. Classic.

The absurdities of our system are absolutely gut-bustingly hilarious. The world is changing, or perhaps more accurately, has already changed. It really is as simple as David Graeber lays out.

“We are watching,” I wrote, “the beginnings of the defiant self-assertion of a new generation of Americans...

Qu'est-ce que le tiers-état?

baseball and wall street

I think the Occupy Wall Street crowd picked impeccable timing. The Yankees and Red Sox are both out of the playoffs. Detroit's the only team left even in the Eastern time zone.

With flyover country carrying the baseball battalion this year, might as well do something else. I'm sure this was an integral part of the planning.

Maybe a Cardinal will do some PR for Veterans for Peace. We could call it learning geography by protest. The corporate media in places like NY and LA might be shocked to learn we Midwesterners despise fraud and inequality and warmongering, too. Red and blue are for sports teams, not the Constitution.



Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

the idiocy of copy protection

When people wonder why there is such hostility to the intellectual property framework in the United States and how companies are allowed to inflict intentional damage into their products in the name of 'copyright protection', Blizzard is a poster child for some of the worst behavior. When you buy a software package from them, you don't actually buy the right to use that software on your computer. You buy the right to maybe sometimes use that software under certain circumstances solely under Blizzard's discretion.

Oh, but I forgot, hampered functionality is what customers are demanding. After all, as senior producer Alex Mayberry helpfully explained to MTV, "with our games as a whole we're tying everything into Battle.net these days...We can provide a much a much more stable, connected, safer experience than we could if we let people play off-line."

Ah, maybe it's just a rogue software developer. Oh, nope, senior executive Robert Bridenbecker shows it's a management decision, stating, "When you look at everything you get by having that persistent connection on the servers, you cannot ignore the power and the draw of that." Let's assume the guy hasn't made it to senior management by being a total idiot himself. Which leaves the only conclusion that DRM crap is, well, crap. Or in Blizzard's words:



How do you like them stable and connected and persistent apples? Apparently Blizzard customer service likes 'em so much they don't even respond to support requests. But the exclamation points make it all okay!

Update: Contrasting the corporate spin with the actual legal agreement is downright hilarious.

13. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES.
THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" BASIS FOR YOUR USE, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND THOSE ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR USAGE OF TRADE. BLIZZARD DOES NOT WARRANT THAT YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ACCESS OR USE THE SERVICE AT THE TIMES OR LOCATIONS OF YOUR CHOOSING; THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE; THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED; OR THAT THE GAME CLIENT OR THE SERVICE ARE FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS.

just a phone

Steve Jobs is so confident that the mobile computing space has been filled out that he's stepping down as CEO. What a run.

Guess my new old iPhone will be my last Jobs smartphone (just in the nick of time, to boot!).

Apple has so defined mobile computing that the 'post' era can simply leave off the smart. From crackberries to droids, they're just phones. We simply expect that our email, contacts, websites, maps, games, alarm clock, weather, sports scores, calendar, stocks, music, photos, and more are available at the touch of a screen. How long we've come since the time when my Nokia phone was stolen and it took me hours to key in phone numbers in that Motorola Razr.

Wanna bet he goes out with a bang this fall?

It will be fun to see what my first Cook phone will be. If the 3GS lasts nearly as long as my original iPhone, I may have to wait a few years!

government by dow 2011

So at work we were discussing some investment things, and it was mentioned that the stock market was down over 4 percent today. That's in one day.

I checked Yahoo Finance just now and yep, it's pretty bad.





'Government by Dow' has been a fun turn of phrase over the past few years, capturing government's capture of the common good by a much narrower set of interests on Wall Street. But when even Wall Street hates your policies, maybe it's time to rethink. Or at least ask, what is going on?

The day the 'grand bargain' a/k/a debt deal a/k/a CYA for cutting popular programs passed the House, the Dow fell from 12144 to 12132. Then on Tuesday, when it passed the Senate and Obama signed it into law, the Dow closed at 11867. Today, the Dow closed at 11384.

In chart form, the past five days look like this:



Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Enjoy the ride.

But, I know, whocouldanode that idiotic public policy is bad? Or maybe the efficient markets theory is wrong, and The Market isn't right that the debt deal is awful.

Wait, what's that about unstoppable force hitting immovable object again?

shorter obama

9/11...blah blah blah...it's all bush's fault...al qaeda is on the run...we need tens of thousands of troops to chase them...even though Afghanistan has 100,000 security forces...don't ask when all the troops will come home because we're trying to turn the page on decades of war

Got it?

dear facebook

I'm posting this on June 23 at about 7:00am.

Just curious when you'll post it on my wall.

Maybe this is the opposite of the Google beta-update-surprise approach. This is the don't do anything at all approach.

happy father's day

Hope your dad lives somewhere safe from our nation's freedom producing bombs and liberty promoting prisons! And if you're a dad, hope your kids aren't locked up or six feet under.

Oh wait, sorry, that's not a Hallmark-approved Father's Day Card. Let's return to our regular programming:

Yay for dads, they're awesome, and we as a society are totally supportive of healthy families! We believe in promoting our values all over the world, from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...in the air, on land, and sea.

in defense of delta

I've been helping prepare some info at work for a press conference tomorrow on our HVRP program, so I've got veterans on the mind. I checked YahooFinance when I got home, and a story about Delta charging soldiers bag fees naturally caught my attention.

On first glance, it appears pretty outrageous that a big company would tack on fees to members of our armed forces for checked luggage on a flight from DC to Atlanta.

But the thing is, as hard a critic as I am of failures in corporate governance, it's important to observe when the policy under scrutiny isn't actually that terrible. Delta (and the other major airlines) actually have quite friendly policies toward off duty members of our armed forces using domestic, civilian transportation networks. Relevant to this story, Delta doesn't charge any bag fees to checked luggage until the fourth bag, even though they do charge bag fees to other customers on the same routes. Southwest Airlines thinks this is such a huge issue that they've invented an entire television advertising campaign highlighting their policy that 'bags fly free'.

What this demonstrates is one specific example of the economic costs of militarism. There are the direct costs shown on the federal budget, which are astronomical. But then there are the indirect costs on the civilian economy which are even larger. It costs money to fly four bags from DC to Atlanta. It costs money to train soldiers on their return to the US from overseas deployments, on what they should expect right down to the logistical details of how to return home (the military reimburses bag fees). Somebody has to pay for all this.

It's right to be angry.

But in this case, don't be angry at Delta. The problem is DC. When you have Presidents and Congresses that are too deceitful and cowardly to fully account for all of the costs of war, those costs don't simply disappear. They're just externalized onto private actors, from the soldiers themselves to their family members and community to the various actors they encounter in the civilian economy.

And of course, if we weren't deploying troops overseas in Afghanistan, there wouldn't be any troops needing to carry four bags back from Kabul in the first place.

welcome to the other america

(PR) Uh oh, I'm ranting about politics...

I obviously haven't been paying much attention because I didn't realize the Clinton blowjob of the early 21st century was an ongoing matter. But apparently, former Senator, Vice Presidential nominee, and Presidential candidate John Edwards has been under an actual, real-life, full blown Department of Justice criminal investigation because he did something absolutely no politician ever does, try to portray a false public narrative about himself that doesn't match his actual nature.

I mean, thank goodness our political leaders (and heck, our business leaders, too, for that matter) are such paragons of virtue and family values.

But what intrigues me most is that the Obama Administration isn't happy with the Usual Punishment* for Being Caught: expulsion from the club (publicly). They actually want a felony conviction.

Quick, name the 10 most important people the Obama Administration has prosecuted.

Okay, I'll give you multiple choice:

a. George Bush
b. Dick Cheney
c. Condoleeza Rice
d. Donald Rumsfeld
e. Alberto Gonzalez
f. ...uh, this might take awhile...

It's almost comical. I only met John Edwards once (I was a pretty big fan back in 2007 of his candidacy). He struck me in person to actually be a lot like his reputation: he felt like a rich, sleezy used car salesman. I don't invite used car salesmen to my birthday parties. I don't go to movies with them. But you know what, I bought my car from one. They serve a purpose. Where the purpose overlaps with your purpose, they are valuable partners.

I ain't lookin' for a saint; and heck, even saints are sinners.

John Edwards made his cheesy sloganeering about poverty. Even today, you can say the phrase two Americas and largely evoke a pretty coherent narrative that Edwards was telling. Now, he's living the two Americas. The problem with our two-tiered justice system isn't that people down on their luck don't break the law. The problem is when the full weight of the law is selectively administered.

If I knew him well enough to call him John, I'd be in position to talk about how his life has completely fallen apart. I'd wonder what Cate, his eldest daughter the same age as me, is going through. But I don't know the family, and like any other family with moral, and now legal, complications, their challenges are for them to face, to decide how they want to come out the other end. His sin is against his wife, his kids, his family, his faith.

What I do know is that this has a chance to remind us what the rule of law means. It means no one is above it. All are equal under it. Technicalities are all the law is. Create exceptions, and what you've got is two Americas.

* of course, even being caught doesn't necessarily do it. Heck, people as varied as Rush Limbaugh and Tim Geithner have broken the law. And no one in the world avails themselves of more drugs and prostitutes than Manhattan and DC.

not you too macmall

In the increasingly bizarro world of mail-in rebates, MacMall has set a new bar.

Not only is the rebate itself dependent upon people not sending it in, but the next 'obvious' hurdle in the business model that views customers as idiots and employees as expendable is to simply make a policy of denying payments to people who do send in the rebate forms. The reject letter they mail doesn't even have order info to be able to call to complain; you have to look that up separately from your records.

Then when you do call, their poor customer service reps are obligated to maintain the farce that you aren't eligible for the rebate.

It's not until you ask if this is a standard business practice (or yell, or whatever gets through the script to the next response) that they consent and process the rebate. I had specifically emailed MacMall customer service about this precise rebate issue to ensure that there wasn't going to be a problem surrounding the new iMac release.

This is how one-off scammers and shady businesses do things, not legitimate companies that expect repeat business. This must be relatively new, because the last time I ordered I had to submit several different rebates, but at least they processed the ones I submitted.

Part of me wonders if sometime in the not-too-distant future basically every good we buy will simply be shipped from Amazon. Among other things, what interests me personally the most is that it's just dumb business. Instead of being mad at Apple for the delay in shipping the iMac, my memory of the shopping part of this experience will now be MacMall making it painful to do business with them.

one year later

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

We're all flawed human beings. We have our individual problems/challenges/hubris/sins/whatever.

Transparency in our institutions is one of the best tools we have to allow us to function collectively in a civilized fashion.

further down the rabbit hole

I've had a wide range of reactions to a Supreme Court ruling this week. The Court overturned a decision by Kentucky's Supreme Court that had determined that police busting down a door without a warrant violated the 4th amendment.

I mean, obviously, that's unconstitutional. You have to create an entire theory of Constitutional Law out of thin air to justify something as ridiculous as that. The text is clear. The intent is clear. The application to modern times is clear.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated

Because the issue is so straightforward, there's really nothing of substance to add to the background at places like NORML's blog.

But two thoughts I will share for intertube posterity.

First, an issue like this is a good reminder to make sure you know what you believe. Times change, social acceptabilities change, do you know what you believe is right and wrong, or do you float with the wind? If you're an American citizen, is the Constitution your basis of political economy, or do you hold some other idea as being more important?

Second, I think this fits into a broader theme of the shifting sands of power as more and more Americans alive today have grown up without a connection to, or even understanding of, the politics of fear and hate and divisiveness that have characterized so much of our myopic focus on wedge issues at the expense of things that really matter. Like many systems of power that are crumbling, it is doubling down on what worked in the past instead of seeking to maintain leadership in the transition to the future.

It's not just the Fed that has some problems, shall we say, with the concept of exigent circumstances.

drug test corporate criminals

(P) So Missouri Republicans want to drug test poor people.

Might I suggest they look in the mirror? The corporatist wing of the GOP are the biggest druggies on the planet.

And they snort waaay more federal dollars.

beat the streak

Barry Ritholtz has made me think of baseball. He highlighted information from Zillow about housing prices, specifically, an interesting tidbit that prices have fallen for 57 consecutive months.

60 years ago, Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio embarked on two of the greatest feats in modern sports history. Williams finished an entire season with a batting average above .400, while DiMaggio hit safely in 56 straight games.

No hitter has been able to approach 56 since then.

oh noze

So I get this email from MacMall on my order status. Yippee.

But then it has this



Back ordered. Not even an estimated ship date.

It's been a while since I bought a product that exciting.

And I see they went ahead and shipped the freebie 1 year of anti-virus software they throw in. That will be quite useful without the computer.

last call

(P) It's been 21 years since economic sanctions started killing Iraqis in 1990.

18 years since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

13 years since the 1998 African embassy bombings.

11 years since the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

10 years since the 2001 World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings and the invasion of Afghanistan.

8 years since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

5 years since Saddam Hussein was killed in 2006.

And now, the White House is set to report the death of Osama bin Laden.

If we don't bring our troops home now from foreign military occupations, we'll be doing this forever.

Forever.

Well, as long as empires last.

Which tends to be shorter than forever.

comedy news network

CNN claims that, "Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is credited with trimming military spending and using a firm hand on tough decisions."

Ha!

revisiting the mobile computing paradigm

I've offered my thoughts long-form before about the development of digital computing from mainframes to personal computers to networking to mobile devices. In short, I advocate the perspective that the Wintel duopoly of the 1990s peak of the personal computing era was extremely rare, rather than the norm for technological development, and that we are currently approaching the peak of the mobile era, rather than just entering its initial stages.

This puts me at odds with analysts like Reggie Middleton and Henry Blodget, both of whom subscribe more to the model that technology tends to standardize around one company, and the New Microsoft is Google.

Well for a couple of days I've been thinking about how to approach Blodget's hilarious line of 'iPhone dead' articles. The gist of it is that Apple is doomed because Android phones make up half the US market and growing while iPhone is stuck in second place with only 25% marketshare. I've decided to assemble a little quiz for Blodget and analysts like him.

Enjoy!


1. Fill in the blank: In what year did the Mac’s marketshare fall below 25%?

A: It’s a trick question! Macintosh computers have never accounted for even one quarter of personal computer sales.

2. True or False: Apple was the biggest loser to the IBM PC Compatible / Wintel.

A: False. Remember Radio Shack’s Tandy? Did you know Commodore’s 64 was the best-selling computer of all time? Atari was an iconic brand. Heck, even IBM (the ‘IBM’ of the IBM PC Compatible) and Compaq (the ‘Compatible’ of the IBM PC Compatible) don’t make personal computers anymore.

3. Word Association: In the 1980s, the GUI (graphical user interface) was

An unserious toy not fit for Real Men / The obvious wave of the future

4. Multiple Choice: The company that best navigated the market changes from personal computing to network computing to mobile computing is

a. Amiga
b. Commodore
c. Radio Shack
d. Gateway
e. Compaq
f. Dell
g. Xerox
h. Netscape
i. America OnLine
j. CompuServe
k. Prodigy
l. Lucent
m. Novell
n. Lotus
o. WordPerfect
p. Broderbund
q. Research in Motion
r. Nokia
s. Motorola
t. Palm
u. Napster
v. Real
w. Pets.com
x. GeoCities.com
y. Flooz.com
z. Apple

5. Essay question: In five paragraphs, explain how licensing ‘the Mac’ to Compaq, IBM, Gateway, Dell, HP, or other OEMs would have prevented Microsoft from using bundling and exclusivity deals to guide the transition of IBM PC Compatibles from MS-DOS to Windows, creating the ‘Wintel’ juggernaut of the 1990s.

* Extra Credit: Explain how Apple would be better off today if it had spent the 1990s copying Microsoft's business model instead of investing in technologies like QuickTime and Newton.

midwesterners for manning

So I haven't been able to sleep through the storm this morning. Maybe I'm excited to go home for Easter.

For whatever reason, I've decided to put down my two cents on the government's move of Pfc. Bradley Manning from Quantico to Leavenworth. For most folks, that's like the middle of nowhere. But I happen to be from a few miles east of there! So I put together a Facebook page and attached this description. If I've done this right, you can even click the Facebook link right here to like it.



With the government’s surprise announcement in April of 2011 that Private First Class Bradley Manning would be transferred from Marine Corps Base Quantico to the Army’s Fort Leavenworth, you may be wondering, where the heck is Fort Leavenworth? For the 99% of the population that doesn’t live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, here’s a brief primer on the military assets in the nation’s midsection.

Scattered around the region are a couple of army ammunition plants, underground storage facilities courtesy of various limestone mines and caves, the old Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base, and Honeywell’s nuclear weapons plant. The major military bases are Whiteman Air Force Base and Fort Leavenworth. Whiteman, a little over an hour east of the KC area, is home to one of the world’s most unique military assets – the fleet of B-2 stealth bombers. On the Kansas side, Leavenworth (also the town’s name), in the northwest corner of the KC area, is the oldest Army post west of the Mississippi River. It serves as one of the Army’s most important training facilities.

But this page isn’t about these installations. This is about a particular human being, raising awareness of his circumstances.

You see, Leavenworth is also home to THE federal prison, the prison of prisons, the Place To Be. Sure, there are infamous prisons like Alcatraz, historic prisons like la Bastille Saint-Antoine, and the superduperultravaluemealmax security facilities that have sprouted all over the country. But if you have been a VIP of the United States Federal Government, you have paid a visit to Leavenworth. (Technical note: there are several separate correctional facilities in the Leavenworth area, so if you are ever writing to or visiting someone, make sure you know exactly where they are, but collectively, it’s easiest to simply refer to them all as ‘Leavenworth’).

Naturally, surprise announcements can cause worry and concern, but two key things about Leavenworth do not need to cause alarm. First, it’s true that this relocation moves Manning away from his attorney and the nation’s capital. But Leavenworth isn’t in the middle of nowhere isolated from the rest of the world. It’s actually closer to a major civilian airport than Quantico. Second, Leavenworth is a major destination for military and civilian prisoners. Places like Quantico and Fort Knox are for lesser sentences of military personnel, and on the civilian side, for much of the 20th century, there were few other United States Penitentiaries of note. (Another technical note: in 2005, the civilian federal prison system expanded and reorganized, building larger maximum security facilities and changing United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth to a medium security installation, ending the prison’s century long role as the largest maximum security prison run by the federal government. The United States Disciplinary Barracks remains the military’s sole maximum security facility.)

In other words, the military has taken now 23 year old Bradley Manning out of the purgatory of indefinite detention amongst run of the mill detainees to move him to the place of the federal government’s worst offenders.

Now, I don’t know whether Manning is ‘guilty’ or ‘innocent’ – I don’t even understand exactly what laws the government claims have been broken. As of the time of this transfer, the government hasn’t even started prosecuting him yet, even though he has been imprisoned since May of 2010. What I do know is that every American citizen, every human being, deserves a few basic rights:

1. Due process
2. A speedy trial
3. Humane treatment
4. Protection from cruel and unusual punishment
5. Access to visitors, including legal counsel, friends, and international observers
6. Equal protection under the law

I also know that information about the activities of our government belongs to We the People, not to our employees in Washington. After all, we don’t imprison Daniel Ellsberg, we celebrate him. The government acted so heinously in the Ellsberg case back in the 1970s that the federal judge hearing the trial dismissed all the charges against the man who leaked what we call the Pentagon Papers.

These principles form the bedrock of our justice system, of our way of life, and not just in DC. We Midwesterners happen to believe in them, too.

Thanks for sharing this page with your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and elected representatives.

(Note: This summary was compiled by a civilian (me) with no detailed knowledge of either the military or civilian correctional systems. If you have expertise in editing this to be more precise, please feel free to share!)

For more info about the ongoing treatment of Manning, see this website or this one.

movie shocker

from moviefone.com:





I don't know if that's worth driving all the way to south county to see. None of the theaters around here are screening it. They're all excited for Kiera.

pundit4sale

(P) Something that has fascinated me for several years now is how easily some Democratic pundits seem to shift their principles based upon how the wind blows from party leaders. In the short term, it does provide them significant cover in that it is difficult to discern whether they're bought off or honestly believe what they're blathering. But over time, the only value added Dems bring to the equation is inhabiting the reality-based world, in being interested in doing what works.

It's utter nonsense like this spewed by Matthew Yglesias last week - on a Think Progress blog, no less - that starts warranting comparisons to folks like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin. Yglesias is actively proposing that powerful people should be above the law. That's a direct assault on the Constitution, not to mention a market-based economy.

So here's the question. Is Yglesias bought and paid for, knowing that the rule of law is a good thing but being willing to shill for criminals nonetheless? Or does he honestly believe that poor people should go to prison for petty crimes while the rich and powerful should maintain their liberty no matter how heinous the consequences of their actions?

I'm obviously a little partial to the Heartland, but the one-two transpartisan punch of Bill Black at UMKC and Tom Hoenig at the KCFRB over the past couple years has been much more interesting than most of the 'liberal' commentary from Inside the Beltway about how we need to Protect the Financial Fraudsters for the Good of us All.

I eagerly anticipate wittiness from Yglesias in favor of the rule of law. Oh wait, just look to the Bush years.

Like this commentary on Attorney General Mukasey.
Or this one on Bush lawbreaking more generally.

Black's response is worth reading in full. And here is the underlying New York Times article from Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story that set off Yglesias' defense of our rotten system. By the way, how's that for turnabout? The corporate media runs a big story highlighting a major problem, and the 'liberal' blogger Yglesias defends the status quo!

This is also a good place to tie in some commentary from Barry Ritholtz about another NYT article - yes, that's two positive references from me regarding the Times in the same post! Even as the overall US prison population has exploded, the Bush and Obama Justice Departments radically reduced annual referrals of white collar crimes for prosecution. You know, despite the mid-90s having no systemic domestic financial collapse, while a decade plus later, we confront Armageddon that Requires us to Give Rich People Money.

let me see if i have this right

(P) Over the past couple years, Democratic President Barack Obama has argued that the deficit is a serious problem of an urgent nature. To address the presented problem, the Administration has created a fiscal responsibility commission and advocated various approaches like tax cuts, wage freezes, health insurance exchanges, increased out of pocket costs, and so forth. However, the President's budgets haven't actually proposed that revenue equal expenses. After all, the tax cuts, bank bailouts, and military spending have all increased the deficit.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan has also argued that the deficit is a serious problem of an urgent nature. To address the presented problem, he has proposed a budget that advocates various policy options like tax cuts, wage freezes, health insurance exchanges, increased out of pocket costs, and so forth. However, Representative Ryan's budget doesn't actually show how revenue will equal expenses. After all, an actual budget shows not just how much revenue and expenses are projected, but also, what those sources of revenue and expenses are planned to be.

So, uh, what's this about Moments of Truth and Serious Debate and whatnot?

It sounds like we're not even talking about solutions to the purported problem, let alone exchanging ideas about different kinds of solutions.

closet artsy fartsy

So I'm on the mailing list for both the St. Louis Symphony and the Opera Theater of St. Louis. It makes sense in that I have bought tickets to both venues and do happen to reside in St. Louis.

However, no one would mistake me for having any insight whatsoever into orchestral pieces, choral arrangements, or opera productions.

Yesterday this officially got out of hand. I received a pretty fancy full color fold out mailer from the Artistic Director of the Des Moines Metro Opera. I don't take Julie to enough shows within close driving distance. I'm pretty sure I'm not driving hundreds of miles to do so. And if we were to travel, there's a slightly half decent chance it would be to a theatrical production of a certain relative of the Schroeder clan...

here is a riddle

I haven't pondered before. Your friendly state-issued photo driver ID is now demanded for all sorts of nondriving purposes. It can get ya booze and cigarettes. It can prove identity to the Feds, from employment to flying. You can see gory movies and rent porn.

Apparently, though, it's not useful for its most basic purpose: proving identification for driving purposes to the state that issued you the ID.

I say all this because I seem to have temporarily accidentally placed my passport in a clearly defined known unknown nonkinetic position, and I don't wish to cause a squirmish at the DMV 36 hours before I have to have my license renewed.

Hopefully the birth certificate isn't stuck in an open-ended commitment to hiding itself.

P.S. This is why you never wait to the last day to do things. You wait until the next to the last day.

budgeting post script

Time to whip out the Excel charting function one more time.

Apparently, according to Reuters, top Federal Reserve official Bill Dudley was trying to relate to the common man. I suppose he gets props for effort; at least he mentioned something the average American has heard of in a question and answer session that involved more questioning than stenography.

Answer:

"Today you can buy an iPad 2 that costs the same as an iPad 1 that is twice as powerful," he said referring to Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) latest handheld tablet computer hitting stories on Friday.

"You have to look at the prices of all things," he said.

Now, there are a number of interesting questions that might elicit such a response. Something about technology, or innovation, or business strategy, or upsetting Reggie Middleton, or when your real question is censored so all you can ask is Mac or PC.

However, here's the actual Question to which Dudley responded:

But in Queens, New York, on Friday, William Dudley was bombarded with questions about food inflation, and his attempt to put rising commodity prices into a broader economic context only made things worse.

"When was the last time, sir, that you went grocery shopping?" one audience member asked.

So, a questioner asks about this part of the budget (food):


And he answered with this (computers):


What a perfect illustration of how people ask questions about the important things and our leaders talk about the trivial items. And of course, my personal budget probably puts more emphasis on computing than the average household budget.

Keep that in mind the next time some Important Serious Person says they can balance the budget (or any budget, for that matter). It's really not that complicated. Individual households need decent wages and affordable housing, food, healthcare, education, transportation, and energy. Federal and state governments need some combination of increased taxes on the wealthy and reduced spending on the military, financial industry, fossil fuels, prisons, agribusiness, and healthcare. The final combination of those options is determined by the particular political economy we wish to deliver; there's no one 'right' solution to fiscal responsibility.

But talking about much else, from iPads to public broadcasting, from the NEA to the NEA, is a combination of ignorance and malice, varying in relative proportion from pundit to pundit.

By the way, did you notice the typo in that Reuters quote? I don't know how English teachers can possibly compete for students when the corporate media itself has been busy dismantling all writing standards from ethics to proofreading. Reuters is one of the Good Guys of our traditional media outlets, and it appears they pay about as much attention to an article as I do to a blog post.

Maybe they'd have more advertising dollars and readers if the media had spent more time the past couple decades making our leaders answer serious questions with serious answers.

the world is changing

Are you excited for the future?

Or fighting it?

the superiority of social insurance

(P) So I'm testing out the online reporting system for medical information at my work. It's pretty standard and works reasonably well. They brag about how it saves you having to fill out 27 pieces of paper every year.

Whoopdeedoo.

This processs reminds me of one of the basic failures of private health insurance: a fragmented system is extremely inefficient. Take identification. How do insurance companies identify you?

The answer, of course, is that they don't. They panic and run to the obvious solution - socialized medicine [cue scary music].

Here's my challenge of the day for those who believe government should not provide basic social insurance coverages, like health insurance and unemployment insurance. If the government is so inefficient, why do private companies use ID numbers created by the Social Security Administration?

fun on the big screen

For a little pre-Oscars partying I've hooked up my laptop to Julie's TV. Pretty sweet.

So what's a guy to do with a screen 3x his laptop but play around some with Excel's pie chart creator? I mean, after using Office XP/03/04 for so long, 2010/2011 is practically fun to use.

I had been reading up a little bit about oil and budgeting and how speculation and sudden price changes impact personal finances, and there's nothing quite like seeing pie charts as big as your head. While I used to keep a detailed budget when first developing my own financial habits, after a few years now I'm comfortable in the gray(er) area of approximations and estimates. So in rough terms, I thought I'd try and match approximately what my budget looks like compared to the average household put together by John Lohman.

First, here's a snippet of the chart specifically on household expenditures:



I matched his categories and came up with this:



But that left me dissatisfied for a couple of reasons. First, 'other' is way too big a category. Second, this approach doesn't really help sort out what's variable and what's fixed. In other words, what could be changed easily, and what would require a radical departure from present living arrangements?

So a little more playing around in Excel led me to this:



It still has the Big One - housing - and it still has a few small categories of 2 or 3 percent. The improvement is there are now half a dozen categories of in between size that show how my personal expenditures might be changed were a sudden shock to occur. Changing the thermostat is a different degree of change than changing the address. Not traveling to Florida or Washington is a different degree of change than not having a car to drive to the grocery store and not ever going out to see a movie.

I would also use it as a reminder that things like oil shocks and peak oil aren't as big a problem as they are often hyped to be. We possess a variety of simple adaptations which would rapidly become widespread substitutes were there to be serious limitation on our access to cheap oil. Some of these are so mundane, like carpooling, telecommuting, four day workweeks, and bicycling, that we don't even think about them when contemplating high-tech solutions for the 21st century. Others involve a repricing of resources - like increasing the value of abandoned urban property relative to far flung suburban developments - while still others require more centralized, long-term planning, but they're well established technologies, like rail travel. It wasn't cheap oil that helped the Noth in the Civil War or enabled the original ecotourism of the National Parks. It was cheap transportation, and amidst all the fearmongering about the future, don't forget those are two different concepts.

Cheap oil won't last forever, no. But we have plenty of alternatives. Some of them are even improvements on how development has occurred over the past half century.

But of course, we're nowhere near that stage. Oil isn't getting more expensive for companies like ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. They're simply making larger profits. Funny what happens when you follow the money.

Or for one last chart, here's the war budget (just Overseas Contingency Operations, not the 'regular' security spending, which is 4x larger) next to the Amtrak budget:

sony to stop charging fees

So I watch the Grammy's Sunday night and have fun with Valentine's Day yesterday, and I find out tonight that the world is up in arms about Sony and friends charging licensing fees to use Blu-Ray technology.

I mean, like, demanding money in exchange for nothing. The greed! The arrogance!

Oh, wait, sorry.

It's Sony and friends complaining that Apple wants to charge Sony and friends money in exchange for providing back office support and access to one of the most lucrative store fronts ever created.

It's flabbergasting how hugely massively enormous Apple's victory has been. If I started Nate's Emporium of Digital Magazines, Time Inc wouldn't go around whining that I was charging them 50% for placement in my store; they wouldn't care, because my store doesn't add any value to them.

Why is it that publishers care about the App Store? Aren't we all supposed to be doing everything 'in the cloud'? Aren't there mega transnational corporations that offer an alternative to Apple's ancient 20th century idea of having actual consumers pay actual money for actual content?

Hello?

google's next step

I'm increasingly curious to see where the new old management wants to take Google. Google's core business, Search, is now over a decade old. The concept that supposedly was behind Google's efforts to grow beyond search is the notion of doing everything on the web, 'in the cloud', so to speak. Instead of purchasing specific pieces of software to run on specific pieces of hardware, our data would be accessible everywhere for whatever we wanted to do with it. Users of Google products would provide their personal information for currency rather than paying money for products. After all, Google's core innovation is that they're not a tech company per se, but are rather an advertising company.

Facebook, a closed social network with similar monetization challenges as an advertiser, and Apple, a closed hardware vendor left for dead, have both grown faster than Google over the past few years.The classic knock on Microsoft is that they haven't developed growth strategies beyond Windows and Office. But the thing is, that's at least two products, with the Xbox business looking increasingly relevant, too.

Google's second big thing, their Office suite to the core Windows portfolio of Search, is Android and Chromium; at least, that's what Google has invested heavily in advancing. They've talked incessantly about the superiority of the cloud, of not making dedicated software for dedicated hardware. But now that these operating systems are out in the wild, actually being used by actual customers and developers, Google confronts a strategic landscape looking an awful lot more similar to the one Apple has spent the past few years hammering into consumer heads, not to mention other vendors making their own software, like RIM, HP/Web OS, and Microsoft/Nokia.

Far from being open, Google has been making explicit decisions to exclude support for certain standards in Chromium. And far from dismissing apps as being irrelevant to the web-based life, Android is being pushed for phones and tablets precisely via vehicles that emphasize specialized software separate from the browser. Or to say it differently, what's the point of Android Market in a world where computing happens in the browser, not independent applications!?!

'There's an App for that' has worked so effectively for Apple that even people in disputes with Apple over the future development of the business model use Apple's framework for computing. Specifically, Time announced they were releasing a special Android app for their Sports Illustrated subscribers. Now, the marketing folks may love that, because superficially, it's a public spat. Look, we have apps Apple doesn't.

But here's the scary question for Google strategy folks. Is that the message you want people to hear? That apps, not the browser, is the future? That Android is valuable because of the software developers provide outside the web, not because of its integration with the web?

I never dreamed Apple's digital hub strategy would have been this successful at redefining the computing landscape. It continues to surprise me how deeply the iPhone and now iPad are burrowing into our collective awareness; virtually every smartphone and tablet now looks and feels like Apple's products. I'm beginning to wonder if Google really has an alternative strategy in mind at all, or if they do, why they're having such difficulty communicating it to their partners.

Does this video still describe corporate strategy at Google in the post Eric Schmidt era? It will be an interesting year.

ayn rand movie embraces big government

So I learned about a film adaptation of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged this weekend.

I'm sure the Randians out there will have a field day with how the film's producers, The Strike Productions, embrace Big Government.

Don't take my word for it. This is on the front page of the official movie site:



They're copyrighting this? Asserting reservation of all 'rights'?

Wait, explain to me again, what right exactly does the government have to restrict the actions of individual people? I'm so confused! Isn't the whole point that there are superior methods of freedom and liberty and justice and unicorns and nutritious donut holes than collective action through government?

We'll know it's a real movie about an Ayn Rand novel when the producers offer something better than intellectual property claims enforceable in US and other courts. Until then, suckers, you've been pwned! These oppressive big government commies even want you to do their own marketing for them so they can spend all their time killing babies and making our country weak and whatever else the sellouts to the BG do.

[note, for the googlers who stumble across this searching something about the movie or ayn rand, this tone is in jest. IP law in the US is a mess. The problem is, anarchy is worse...what is needed across a whole range of issues isn't knee-jerk reactions to government but serious proposals that actually address the problems they purport to solve.]

covey edition

In the back of my mind, I keep a list of somewhat humorous variations on 'there are two types of people in the world...'

You know, things like, there are two types of people in the world, those that wear boxers or briefs and those that don't; or, there are two types of people in the world, those who like chocolate and those who love it, etc.

Well, thanks to Olin I have added another one.

There are two types of people in the world:

Those who are familiar with Stephen Covey and those who aren't.

I would wager a small fortune the two worlds hardly even know the other exists

:)

thank you car

for surviving the winter storms.

I'm like the Ayn Rand of the automobile, that famous libertarian who railed against government programs even though she used them.

I hate cars. My favorite vehicular mode of transportation is a chauffeur. We allocate way too many resources to automobiles and way too little to other forms of transit, especially trains.

However, until other forms of mass transit are actually cheap and easy to use, I'm drivin'.

a little time to think

I have felt particularly out of touch with what's going on in the world the last couple weeks. With a little bit of time and energy to catch up, I think I find I'm most surprised that people are surprised about what's going on.

The world is changing, or perhaps more accurately, has already changed. It just takes some time for the 'old regime' to get that; things don't crumble overnight. In the US, despite everything you hear about the aging of the population, the actual median age of the population is under 40. Not only do we not remember the '60s, we weren't even born then. It's even more stark in most of the industrializing world, with many nations' median age under 30.

We just don't possess the same cultural training and socialization for the old explanations to make sense, to mean anything. You either support democracy or you support authoritarianism. Claiming to support democratic processes and acting to support autocratic ones sends a clear message: you don't believe in the benefits of democracy.

Maybe there was some time in the past when 'Democrat' and 'Republican' meant something substantive. But today, the challenges we face are almost entirely nonpartisan. The framework isn't left and right, it's We the People vs. The Special Interests. The key leadership and power centers of both parties advocate policies that consolidate wealth and power and disparage ideas that would create broad prosperity and innovation. Sure, in election season, there are always some interesting differences at the margin, and that was enough for quite some time in the US.

But entering the second generation now of Americans growing up with prospects worse than our parents, we just don't fall for the 'ole divide and conquer wedge issues. We actually believe what our elders taught us, that America should be a beacon of freedom, not a harbinger of oppression. We actually believe that representative democracy is better than autocratic strongmen. We actually believe that the leaders of our government work for the citizenry, not the other way around. We actually believe that we are on an unsustainable path and that in the end, unsustainable things end. We actually believe that a man should be measured by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. We actually believe that women can do whatever men can do.

Maybe there was a time when the traditional media or corporate media or mainstream media or whatever you prefer offered value. Maybe there was a time when they investigated stories and reported news. Many Americans alive today simply can't remember such an occurrence; it hasn't happened in our lifetime.

One of the most important observations from science, I believe, is the one about the process of scientific development itself. New ideas don't convert adherents of old ideas; it's not a frontal confrontation. Rather, a new generation grows up comfortable with a new paradigm and the old adherents simply die off. Look at viewership ratings of the CBS Nightly News and the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Five years ago, most people over 40 had never heard of Jon Stewart. Today, most people under 40 couldn't name the lead anchors on the nightly news. Sure, a few cable commentators have made names for themselves. But as infotainment celebrities, not the people you go to for answers on why we can't provide healthcare and jobs and housing to our fellow Americans.

Change is happening. Not one interested in petty recriminations, but in a substantive reordering of the world and our place as humanity in it. We can be afraid of it, or we can embrace it. We can dig in to fortify the old ways, or we can help bring about change a little faster and better.

When you encounter somebody trying to stop it, you can be forgiven for taking a moment to laugh.

Remember when we were afraid of the Soviets, or the Japanese (the industrial economic competitor, not the bombing Pearl Harbor competitor)?

I don't.

P.S. Thought I'd add five links with a broad overview on these issues.

First, on US foreign policy, especially the Middle East and supporting dictators.

Second, on the abuses of the surveillance state, especially the USA PATRIOT Act.

Third, on the lawlessness with which we treat prisoners, especially torture.

Fourth, on the lawlessness with which we don't protect property rights when it's rich and powerful people committing the fraud and other illegal acts.

Fifth, on the scale of wealth inequality in the US. Mind you, this is before the people whining about deficits gave trillions of dollars of loan guarantees, backstops, free money, sweetheart deals, and other bailouts, handouts, and payouts to the very failed and fraudulent management teams that wrecked the economy in the first place:



Note that none of these issues can be delineated as 'left' or 'right'.

i'm not afraid

Julie goes out of town for 24 hours and I'm ready to blow something up*.

*warning, don't joke about blowing things up in England.

Two bits of information came out on the same day that highlight everything that's wrong with our two-tiered justice system - the one for the rich and powerful, the other for the rest of us. And when I say rest of us, I mean all of us. White, black, young, old, christian, atheist, north, south; if you're not rich, the government can steamroll you.

What am I talking about?

On the same day, we learn that:

1. The government kidnapped and tortured (err, 'allowed' to be kidnapped and tortured) an American teenager in Kuwait.
2. The government has arrested a former intelligence officer for saying embarrassing (err, 'state secret') things, a local man from O'Fallon, MO.

That both men happen to be black is perhaps the icing on the cake.

Essentially, we can't prosecute - or even stop - the most vicious assaults on American citizens. We can't prosecute - or even stop - the most blatant looting of our financial system.

But boy, share CIA secrets about CIA incompetence in the run-up to Bush's oh-so-legal invasion of Iraq, watch out! Wammmo, Obama/Bush/whoever you picture as 'the enemy' will be after you!

I have a special place in my heart for people who go nuts, because I think insanity is the only rational reaction to what's going on in this world of ours. I have some stupid unevolved hangeron in my brain that refuses to give up. I believe this country of ours can still be saved.

But it's worth it yet again to ponder the difference between a US President and a third world dictator. If government agents can arrest patriots and kidnap citizens, what can't be done to any one of us?

I'm not afraid of black people. I'm not afraid of Muslims. Secrecy itself is the cancer eating away at our security. I refuse to be afraid, whether it's a Republican or a Democrat telling me scary bedtime stories. I refuse to accept that this is the way things are.