Change is coming

Change of font, at least.

This drawing makes me very happy.

Manassas

Obama's final rally was in Manassas, Virginia.

Nice symbolism.

Today.

I might cry today. Sorry, whoever is around me.

I realized a couple of days ago that this is the first candidate I've supported in the primaries who's gone on to (with luck) win the election. And I supported Obama early, without reservation, not as a lesser of two evils choice, but full throatedly.

So here we are. Very exciting. This morning, on my iPod song shuffle, up comes David Bowie's "Changes" (really):

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes
But stil the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
Theyre quite aware of what theyre going through

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-changes
Dont tell them to grow up and out of it
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(turn and face the strain)
Ch-ch-changes
Wheres your shame
Youve left us up to our necks in it
Time may change me
But you cant trace time

Sorry for the extra dose of schmaltz. I'll leave with this:

I will be doing so ironically.

Was There Too Much Sex And Profanity In The HBO Presidential Debate?

J-Pop and Politics together!

There are few things I love better than J-Pop. One of them is Presidential politics. Here, now, for the first (?) time ever, the two combined:

one more thing

Q: How do you know conservatism's dead?

A: T. Boone Pickens is now selling wind power. (And yes it's part of an elaborate real estate scheme, but he's calculating that the next political power center will be more likely to allow him to carry on his nefarious ends is going to be pro-wind power. And that sure as shit ain't the Republicans. So now he's OUR bastard.)

Welcome aboard, T. Boone!

Next up: Rupert Murdoch. Just you wait. Fox News is going to go under the knife within six months.

And if there's any justice, someone will find some dirt on Roger Ailes and throw him in prison, then bring every one of those motherf***ing administration officials (they know who they are) up on war crimes charges in the Hague, which we will be party to, because President Obama will have forced through the ratification of the treaty that binds us to the International Criminal Fucking Court. Ah...a man can dream...

things on my mind tonight

Sorry. I'm too lazy to put these in separate posts:

1. Armageddon
   Not maybe so much end of the world, maybe, but the end of the faux conservatism that post-Nixon Republicans morphed into. You know: the kind that wants to make the U.S. an empire. Now we're all going along for the ride! (Something about reaping and sowing is coming to mind.)
2. Democrats
   I'm scared shitless about this whole thing, but let's just take a shallow breath and think about how well the Democrats have been playing this thing, from a purely political standpoint. This definitely proves the "good policy is good politics" theory. They are so in their element it's nearly making me weep.
   
3. Maddow
   I love that thing that Rachel Maddow does where she scrolls through the dozen-plus Republicans she's tried to book on a particular segment to counter her Democratic guest. It's so deliciously aggressive and self-assured for a proud liberal. Again with the near weeping.
4. McCain
   He is so personally unhinged from any objective reality at this point (even his facial expressions have become like cartoon character versions of themselves), it nearly (yeah) makes me weep. But not the same kind of tears.

That's it for now...

Homepage

This should be your homepage.

Go change it. I'll wait.

Seriously.

And another thing (banks part deux)

I read several economics blogs, try to keep up with the Bloomberg website, etc. I've read a lot of breathless paragraphs about the big traditional banks taking over the investment banks and the smaller traditional banks. I have questions:

• Is there an economic upside in concentrating all the bad debt from the various failed institutions in only a few huge banks?
• It seems like a bank such as B of A, which has low exposure to the bad debt, becomes more, not less, unstable by taking on others' bad debt. Am I missing something?
• I keep hearing the phrase "too big to fail" used in conjunction with B of A, JP Morgan Chase, and Citi. Is that supposed to reassure me? Scare me? The phrase is never accompanied by follow-up analysis. If one of these banks is on the brink of failure (because of taking on the bad debt of all the smaller banks it's gobbled up), and the government has to step in, is this something the FDIC is equipped to handle, or will it require some other form of government intervention (nationalization, etc.)?
• Where's Wells in all of this? (see earlier post)
  

Banks

How many banks will be left in six months? Two? Three? And why isn't Wells being forced to swallow any of these bad companies? Why just B of A and Chase?

George Will

Not a fan of John McCain's:

For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people.

Davis and Wolfson

I'm finding it depressing, and not particularly surprising, that two people associated with Hillaryland, Lanny Davis and Howard Wolfson, have both taken jobs with Fox News. Their decisions reinforce the idea that the Clinton campaign was being run by people who don't understand the 21st century media landscape.

I wonder how Hillary "vast right-wing conspiracy" Clinton feels about their new gigs. I imagine and hope she's livid.

Too depressing for words

It's been hard for me to focus on anything else this week.  And I should.  I really, really should.

Take it away, Major General Taguba:

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Having read the report, do you have any details to add that might illuminate why Taguba feels that way, Mr. Ackerman?

Some detainees were administered electric shocks, suspended by their arms from great heights and one showed "anal scars consistent with sexual trauma," according to one physician who examined the detainees, Dr. Sondra Crosby of Boston Medical Center.

[A] detainee, "Amir," was arrested in Iraq in August 2003 by U.S. troops. He endured a month of "being kept in a small, dark room" before transfer to Abu Ghraib. At the infamous prison -- around the time it was "Gitmo-ized" by Guantanamo commander Gen. Geoffrey Miller -- Amir was "sodomized with a broomstick and forced to howl like a dog while a soldier urinated on him," the report said. Similarly released without charge, he told Physicians for Human Rights that "no sorrow can be compared to my torture experience in jail."

Our Administration is evil, immoral and insane. And to be completely candid, I feel evil and immoral for not doing anything to try to stop it, relying instead on the inadequate institutions we have to check Executive power.

How I Learned I Was a Moron

For the life of me, I can't figure out why Pacific Park in Santa Monica replaced its solar powered ferris wheel with a new solar powered ferris wheel, but this time one with LED lights.

I'm told it's because the new one is 75% more energy efficient.  But...it's...solar...powered.  Why do I care how energy efficient it is as long as it stays off the grid?  Doesn't greenness then move to the cost of manufacturing a new ferris wheel, not to mention shipping the old one?  Or the chemicals used in manufacturing the 160,000 LEDs used in the new wheel?

My brain is on fire.  Can not compute.

Hillary as VP

My first thought was "no."  There was no upside for Obama, should he win (or vice versa: this was last year), to choosing Hillary that he couldn't find by choosing someone else less tainted by anti-Obama primary rhetoric.

My second thought was "yes."  This was, perhaps surprisingly, after Obama won his 12 primaries in a row.  The two of them had just had a debate, and Hillary had demured when having the chance to attack Obama.  Things are coming to a close, I thought, and Hillary's being a good Democrat, and she deserves the slot.

Turns out that evening of Hillary not attacking Obama wasn't so much a quiet concession as it was a skirmish in some ongoing internecine warfare between factions in Hillaryland.  Sadly, the Fuckwit Faction (Mark Penn) won, Hillary started attacking again, her supporters started doing questionable things, though all the while Obama's nomination grew ever more presumptive.

My current thinking is back to "yes."  As a man, whatever my pretenses to a lack of sexism, I think I tend to naturally underestimate the intensity of many women's reactions to having a woman president.  Although in my mind the problems with Hillary's campaign are based on huge strategic mistakes and her unwillingness to explain/renounce her support for the original Iraq AUMF, the optics of this situation are very bad, and may cause bad feelings more intense than usual between the rival Democratic clans.

(Argh.  Just in the process of writing this post, I reread it and am doubting what I wrote.  Or, more specifically, doubting that picking Hillary would be a good idea.  If Obama is appealing to anti-war Independents, Hillary defuses his message.  Must...stop...pondering...VP...choices...Jim Webb, AYEEEE!)

A Summation of My Feelings About the Clinton Campaign

By someone who's a much better thinker and writer than I:

The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

I'm not a fan of liberal populism, probably because it's so emotionally appealing to wrap up the complexities of our country's economic and social dynamics in a little pink bow. But I do understand the need for populism as a tool of politics, and I suspect we'll see a lot of it from both parties in the fall.

What really burns me up is the calculus inside the Clinton camp that said, "In the primaries, Obama has appealed to better educated people, while our candidate has appealed to less educated people. How can we use that against Obama? Oh, I've got it! Let's steal the rhetoric of the modern Republican party! Let's appear on Bill O'Reilly's show!"

Madness.

Regarding the "gas tax holiday"

Tonight expressing my opinion, Through the Looking Glass:

So, what of Hillary herself? She's touting a plan that's nonsense the way Dubya's war plans were nonsense; the reasons it can't work are widely acknowledged facts which aren't seriously disputed by anyone with relevant knowledge.

Perhaps, after days of publicly touting this proposal, she still doesn't know she's selling snake oil. Or maybe she knows, but doesn't care. Either way, she has left the reality based community.

My fingers are crossed

That Hillary gives the same answer when she's asked.

The Upcoming Election

It's taken a lot of soul-searching (and Google searching), and I've been on the fence for awhile now, but I've finally made up my mind.

I'm voting for Dana Worthington.

Quiz for the Day

If you catch a fellow student cheating, would you:

A) Ignore it
B) Talk to the student privately
C) Rat him out to your teacher

If you answered (C), you're a prime John McCain voter.

Experiment HS-01, Day 1

On the morning of Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008, having run out of shampoo, I grabbed the first bottle of Head and Shoulders I could find.  Just before applying it, I noticed it had expired in February...of 2007.

Over the next several days, I will be presenting a diary of the results of my direct exposure to expired dandruff shampoo.

9:17 AM.  It's been a half hour since I applied the expired shampoo.  As of yet, there seem to be no ill effects.  But the day is young...

John Adams

UPDATE: This is what I would have written had I had my coffee: "It's all the fun of the Star Wars prequels, without any of the fun."

It's like watching the Star Wars prequels, but with all the fun spaceship and lightsaber stuff taken out, and with unmotivated Batman camera angles. And Laura Linney looking concerned, all the time.

Major Controversy Erupts Over Empire Strikes Back's Inclusion in Suspended Animation List!

DEVELOPING.  

MUST CREDIT OW MY ACHING HEAD:

JASON: Han wasn't put in a suspended animation chamber. As Lando tells Darth Vader "Freezing him in carbonite is risky - it could kill him!" Hence, carbonite's intended use was NOT for putting people in suspended animation. Even C-3PO says that Han could be kept alive - IF - he survives the freezing process. IF!

FRENCHIE: Hmm...that's interesting and all, but we never specified what a "suspended animation chamber" was, nor did we at any point specify the need of a reason for the suspended animation.

Just to clarify, we decided that being frozen through artificial means (the example was Han Solo) was acceptable, because it left the subject in a state of suspension without killing him. Now...if being frozen had killed Han Solo (that would have been fun), then this wouldn't be up for discussion. We know he was alive, and his vitals at least were able to be checked. This lets us know that he was alive while frozen...and very much suspended.

So it counts because he was suspended artificially, and he wasn't killed by it.

PS Was Chewie hairier in the last movies then he was in the first?

Know Your Mexican Emo Kid

Got that memorized?  Good.  Now, ATTACK.

(h/t boingboing)

HELP DESPERATELY NEEDED

UPDATE: JASON X wins the day as the most obvious miss from the list.  I've updated the list with what people (well, let's be honest, what JASON) have added, and added an asterisk to the Empire entry, again courtesy Jason.

I'm trying to compile a comprehensive list of movies (and TV episodes) that feature suspended animation. Here's the list so far:

MOVIES:
• 2001
• Planet of the Apes (both)
• Alien
• Lost in Space
• Rocketman
• Minority Report
• Judge Dredd
• Demolition Man
• Sleeper
• Empire Strikes Back
• Idiocracy
• Event Horizon
• Solstice
• Solaris (original)
• Red Planet
• X Files
• Batman and Robin
• Austin Powers
• Forever Young
• Live Again, Die Again
• Jason X
• Strange New World

TV SERIES:
• Futurama
• Farscape
• Star Trek ("Space Seed" - the episode with Khan)
• Buck Rogers
• Twilight Zone episode "Quarantine" (nice catch, Kathryn)

Sequels don't count (Aliens and Return of the Jedi are OUT). Neither do movies where things are frozen and come back to life when thawed (like The Thing or Brendan Fraser in Encino Man), though that may be a good follow-up list.

There are no prizes and there is no reason I'm compiling this list. It just started as a conversation in Louisiana, continued tonight, and I feel like I'm missing some. So jump in in comments.

The Seventh Bullet Point

People ask me why I'm supporting Barack Obama.  My friends are split between Obama and Clinton supporters (as, until fairly recently, was I).  I listed some reasons back in February, but in person I usually just stick to the seventh bullet point from that post:

That the Iraq war is going to heat way up between now and November, and its renewed prominence in the campaign is going to make Obama's consistent opposition to the war a much bigger deal than it seems to be in the primary.

I always feel a little guilty saying this, because although it seems completely rational and obvious to me, I certainly don't want it to sound like I'm hoping for things to heat up so that it helps get my candidate elected.

Unfortunately, my bullet point seems to have become reality.

W.

Though I can certainly see the international appeal of an Oliver Stone film based on George W.'s life, I can't imagine it'll have much of a domestic run.  Democrats are going to carry the psychic scars of this administration with them for a long time, and what Republican is going to go see Oliver Stone's left-slanted Bush-slamming?

Since it's being financed by a foreign sales company, presumably their model makes sense.  But I won't be holding my breath for a summer 2009 release at Grauman's.  Can I hear a round of "straight to HBO?"

Alan Dale

Playing a Brit on Lost, and an American on Torchwood.  He must be very confused.

The Most Incredibly Awesome Video of All Time, Ever

Not normally an Onion fan (anymore), but they've won me over to their video with this:

Jasmine? Jacaranda?

I got back to L.A. (from LA) last night, and all of a sudden for some weird reason it's spring.  Sometimes my trips are like that.  Now, since I've been a kid people have been telling me I'm not the center of the universe.  But if I'm not, what possible explanation could there be for a change in the weather between when I leave and when I return somewhere?

In any case, there's a particular smell in my neighborhood (Los Feliz) at night in spring.  I love the smell, but every year I wonder whether it's the smell of jasmine or jacaranda.  I've heard different people ascribe the same smell to both flowers.  Maybe until I find out I'll start calling it "jasmaranda."  Though that sounds like a genie's name.

The other thing that I love about spring (and summer) evenings in Los Angeles is that, because it's warm at night, people leave their windows open.  Stepping outside into my back yard becomes the auditory equivalent of the scenes in Rear Window where Stewart is staring into the windows of all the people across from him, watching them go about their daily business.  Last night, as I was bundling laundry, I could hear five or six different conversations, all set to "Picture This" off of Blondie's Parallel Lines.

It's good to be home.

This.

[T]hanks to decades of deregulation, the theater doesn’t have a sprinkler system - and the town the theater is in doesn’t have a fire department.

And now we have to put together an emergency response.

Is from this.

Obama's speech

How could anyone not want this man to be our next President?

This is phenomenal

I have never loved McClatchy quite so much.

Term for the day

Moral hazard.

Read this for the depressing details.

By lending massive amounts to potentially insolvent institutions that it does not supervise or regulate and that may be insolvent the Fed is taking serious financial risks and seriously exacerbate moral hazard distortions. Here you have highly leveraged non bank financial institutions that made reckless investments and lending, had extremely poor risk management and altogether disregarded liquidity risks; some may be insolvent but now the Fed is providing them with a blank check for unlimited amounts. This is a most radical action and a signal of how severe the crisis of the banking system and non-bank shadow financial system is. This is the worst US financial crisis since the Great Depression and the Fed is treating it as if it was only a liquidity crisis. But this is not just a liquidity crisis; it is rather a credit and insolvency crisis.

Useless stat of the day

My Macbook Pro, running Leopard, has been running for 33 days, 13
hours and 40 minutes without a restart.

I have the sense that it was only about 5 years ago that I would have
to reboot my computer (hand-built XP desktop) every few days because
some misbehaving background task would get a little too close to the
operating system; of course, I was running professional compositing
software on it, but still, it really does feel like both XP and OS X
are far more stable operating environments these days than ever
before. (I have no experience running Vista.)

These days, pretty much the only reason I have to reboot is because
some software update requires it. (This is more true on the XP side
because I have to run virus and adware software in the background.)

Cudos, Mr. Gates and Mr. Jobs (and presumably Mr. Torvalds)!

Maybe I've watched too much Terminator

For whatever reason, when I watch the following (thanks for tonight's nightmare, Gizmodo), all I can imagine is me, being chased by it:

Superdelegate porn!

Makes me hard just looking at it.

And another test.

This from my computer (the other was from the iPhone).

Does it do lists:

• Bullet point 1
• Bullet point 2

Or numbers:

1. Number 1
2. Number 2

Or red?

What about bold?  Or italic?  Or both?

Test post from my phone

Just seeing if this works.

Does this show up as paragraphs?

This?

--
John Portnoy
Sent from my mobile device. Please forgive any typos.

Exactly.

Exactly:

...[L]et's assume, for the sake of argument, that she actually believes that Barack Obama cannot "cross the commander-in-chief threshold." One of the most important jobs a President has is to defend the country. If she thinks that Barack Obama is not qualified to do that job, then she should not support him over anyone who can. Specifically, she should support McCain over Obama.

That's why I think some enterprising reporter should ask her whether she would support Barack Obama if he were nominated. If she would, then she should be asked why she would be willing to support someone she does not believe is qualified to be commander in chief.

Whatever her answer, it would tell us something we need to know: either that her doubts about Obama are so serious that she would not be willing to support the nominee of her own party, or that she would support someone she thinks is unfit to serve, or that she does not believe a word she said about Obama, and is willing to impugn a fellow Democrat's fitness to serve as President because her own interests matter more to her than her party's or the nation's.

Anger

For the first time in this Democratic primary, I'm actually angry at Clinton, and not just her campaign (Mark Penn) or her surrogates. Every time I see this:



It makes me angry. And not (just) because Clinton is mocking the aspirational in politics, which clearly exists and is an important component of getting people to follow you as a leader. It makes me angry because if Hillary becomes the nominee, she is going to have alienated a lot of young, eager, inspired voters who are currently Obama supporters.

And don't even get me started on this:



That's way over the line. As is the continued hinting that they may go to the convention and try to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. The campaign may sleep at night thinking that they're signaling strength against the Republicans with this burn-the-place-down strategy, but what's the point in that if they've disenfranchised a large base of Democratic voters?

Maybe she still wins the presidency, maybe. But what of the down-ballot races? 2010 begins the redistricting process. Picking up state Democrats this cycle is crucial to making sure we can un-gerrymander Texas and several other states.

There's a lot that I agree with Clinton on, and clearly she's a strong candidate. But her early reliance on terrible campaign strategy has put her in a position where she believes (or is it Penn?) that she can win only by spouting the kinds of things normally reserved for campaign surrogates. And hearing that shit from her lips is nauseating me.

As of yesterday, I'm now actively hoping for Hillary to lose.

Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles

The frustrating thing about this show is how, on the one hand, it does a great job tapping into the paranoia associated with the creep of seemingly autonomous technology in everyday life, but on the other tries to convince us that dual-core computer technology is super plus new, or that a virus can be written for a computer program, sight unseen.

Given how ubiquitous technology is these days, I would have expected more than a Terminator version of the flux capacitor.

What the...

What kind of person reads Gizmodo? Look at these results! How could anyone take a poll and vote for anything over "Robots You Can Have Sex With?"

What kind of world are we leaving for our children?

Now that HD-DVD has lost...

Let me be the first (?) to propose it's time the hyphen in Blue-ray (Blue-Ray?) go the way of the hyphen in email.

Fast Forward: April 26, 2008

Mike Huckabee was nominated today by the Constitution Party and has agreed to launch an aggressive third-party Presidential campaign. George Soros, chief campaign financier to Republican candidate John McCain, weeps.

Someone at Amazon.com has a sense of humor.

It's Tuesday!

February 5, 2008. You all know what that means.

HAPPY FUCK COLIN POWELL DAY.

Why I'm Voting for Obama

In no particular order:

• His policy on Cuba
• His support by red-state politicians, who see his ability to create coattails in their states
• His tech policy
• His lack of the name "Clinton" (not that I didn't like Bill, but I honestly do believe we shouldn't have Bush/Clinton/Bush/Clinton in the White House)
• How much he's pissing off Paul Krugman, whom I love, but honestly, dude, it's politics, and if he has to piss you off to get Andrew Sullivan and George Will to say nice things about him, I'm 100% all about it.
• That, on balance, I believe his splitting the independent vote and keeping the anti-Clinton forces at bay will be a November winner against McCain.
• That the Iraq war is going to heat way up between now and November, and its renewed prominence in the campaign is going to make Obama's consistent opposition to the war a much bigger deal than it seems to be in the primary.
• The fact that his "I'll bring Republicans and Democrats together" schtick is so utterly transparent, the way Bush's "compassionate conservative" schtick was an eye-roller, and yet so far it's having the brilliant effect of blunting the usual anti-Democratic candidate messaging by MSM centrists, and even (so far, and though I doubt it will last, a lot of people are going to have some 'splainin' to do) bringing some Republicans into a sort of detante with him.

There's more, I'm sure. I'll update later...

Just overheard on CNN

Hillary adds an application on FACEBOOK.  Can the youth vote be far behind?

Co-ed baby showers

The excruciating baby shower, something until recently men only heard moaned about by their women, has gone co-ed.

It's enough to make me vote Republican.