Ramblings of the disenfranchised

Renewing the faith

2008-09-13T20:48:00.000-07:00

After reading this, I'm considering getting back into the Church.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/12/u-of-i-priest-charged-wit_n_126112.html

The focus

2008-09-13T17:29:00.001-07:00

I've been sitting here in the pub all day, dealing with emergencies. I am apparently Mr. Fixit.

"The basement has flooded, the server has shit itself. Fix it."
Done
"Hi, this is your upstairs neighbor. My PC's power supply has crapped itself"
Done
"The pub isn't processing credit cards"
In a waiting state.

However, I am able to do something I haven't in a week. Catch up on news. I had heard about Charles Gibson interviewing Sarah Palin in her home state of Alaska. After watching a few clips and reading a couple of artlicles, I'm beginning to get a feel for the McCain campaign post-convention.

Unfortunatley, it's also impeccably staged. How do I know?

She overuses the name of the interviewer.

It seems innocuous enough. In any communication class, they often encourage you to start of each statement with the name of the person you're speaking to. This is fine and acceptable if you want to come off as a computer, or a robot. Its part of the protocol.

SYN SYN/ACK FIN

To borrow from her interview with Charlie Gibson:

"PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend."

"PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option."

"PALIN: Transportation fund dollars still came into Alaska. It was our choice, Charlie, whether we were going to spend it on a bridge or not. And I said, thanks, but no thanks. We're not going to spend it on the bridge."

...etc.

For a machines communication protocol, it's fine. For those in the rest of the world, or those who have escaped after 3 weeks of the class, it's something the majority of people take, regards, then disposes of when they realize they sound like goddamned Robots. There was only two of them speaking. We've established that who we're talking to is Charlie Gibson.

"Charlie" "data" "fin"
or
"SYN" "SYN/ACK" "FIN"

Before the RNC, Sarah Palin spoke in semi-plain language. She would smile, she would pause before speaking. Now she sounds like she's working out of a community college communications textbook. She's being coached. She's being grilled. You can see the cracks in her smile. You can see the seams begin to crack. She's going to leak. The soccer mom is stuck in traffic, and is late to drop off her kids to hockey practice, ballet, and respond to emails on her two blackberries (she couldn't get someone to consolidate her email to one device? Who is she hiring?). She's showing the strains.

I used to talk about McCain, comparing him to Nixon during the 1960 debate vs. Kennedy. Now we're seeing both of them crack. Perhaps it's a deliberate. McCains been out of media sight since the announcement of Palin. All eyes turn to her - moreso than any vice presidential candidate in years.

Why?

The question can be answered, I think, in that she has suddenly become the candidate. As any cold, cool gambler will tell you, it's 6 to 1 that McCain will die before he has finished his first term, if elected. The nation, and the media, is preparing for the worst.

And as I suspected, McCain, as well as Obama and Biden have fallen by the wayside. Perhaps Meg Whitman chose an obscure figure to take away from the leads in this awful race. We know Bidens track record. We know most of what Obama is about. We know all too much about McCain. Now it's time for us to get to know his VP pick. And what we're seeing isn't pretty. But it makes for great copy.

Who's going to win? I have no idea.

But unless the media stops fixating on the Issue of the Minute, we're screwed. Charlie Gibsons interview was hard hitting. He held her to task. It was also, on the whole, absolutely distracted from the key issues. These questions should have been held for John McCain. I have yet to see an interview with McCain regarding these same issues, with the same tenacity.

But it is still early in the race.

Another cut of rambling.

2008-09-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

Jesus, I'm an idiot.

2008-09-10T19:30:00.001-07:00

I just had to shave. I realized I perform this task like some idiot man-child out of a Faulkner book.

The mess was unexplainable. The bodily fluids? Everywhere.

I need to stop doing these things unsupervised.

Regarding the issues with Olbermann, Matthews, O'reilly, etc.

2008-09-07T23:14:00.000-07:00

The only issue with Murrow, Brinkley, etc. - they kept themselves separate, to a certain extent.

What transpired during the DNC, I believe, was a culmination of 30 years of reporters finally having enough. Those who were tired of having to stand on the sidelines.

Olbermann was a commentator. So is Matthews. There is no doubt regarding that. In a time of what Jon Stewart called "yelling television", we know that there was no objectivity in what they brought to the table.

And maybe its time for the media to grow up a bit and embrace it. They can't be apart from the world. They must embrace it. An objective journalist can't properly call bullshit on a candidate.

But to criticize Olbermann, he stuck to a particular party. He came in during a period of such unbelievable horseshit that he's begun to forget that there is bullshit on the other side of the fence. This isn't so much as a wrestling style ho-down. This isn't good guys vs. bad guys.

This is at its core one major ideology in America vs. another. This isn't candidate vs. candidate. This is one side of our country vs. the other. There is no clear dividing lines. There is no north and south. If there is a war, it won't be fought between a clearly divided border.

Which is why I wish they would cut the democratic out of their reports. Cut the republican. Cut the libertarian.

Focus on the people. Focus on reporting what THEY want, what THEY think should happen.

I don't know. I support Obama simply for one chunk in his acceptance speech. About finding compromise. About gay marriage, abortion, etc where we don't have to agree, but we can find common ground. McCains was about "us vs. them"...but we forget..its not us vs. republicans. or democrats vs. them. It's us vs. our next door neighbor. Against the state next to us.

A system where we defeat one another one year, or destroy the other the next? It won't work. It's a stalemate that never ends. It makes for great ratings.

It sucks for running a country.

Olbermann, he can be a democrat till the day he dies. But when it comes to the brass tacks, he's a channel of a voice of America I don't think he's hearing. When it comes to the conservatives...the O'reillys and the Scarboroughs, etc...they're doing the same disservice.

They have a voice most of us don't. I wish they'd use it better.

A modest proposal

2008-09-04T22:36:00.001-07:00

Journalism has not been what it was in the years since Woodward and Bernstein. So many journalists have been reluctant to push their sources, or push for the juicy tidbits. Entire media conglomerates have buckled under the ideas that their writers might compromise National Security.

They've lost their bite. They've become too entrenched. The White House Correspondent that asks the wrong question may be passed up the next time around. However, Washington needs the media as much as the media needs them.

I was watching the Hunter Thompson documentary recently, when I heard a quote. I paraphrase:

"So I went to Washington. It didn't really matter to me if I burned my bridges, since I was going to only be there for a year."

At which point I remembered that the media, by default, should be adversarial to those who are in power. They're supposed to the eyes eyes and ears of the public. The late Mike Royko of the Chicago Tribune wrote about this in an article explaining why he would not attend white house dinners.

As Royko put it:

"Journalists are human. At least some of us older ones. So if I sit down for dinner with the president, I feel like an "in-person". I am no longer some guy who grew up along Milwaukee Avenue. I am a VIP, big-heat, or why else would the prez invite me to chow down at the White House.

Which is ridiculous. If I was my friend Big John, an expert on the printing industry and many other things, or my friend Danny, who went from laying bricks to running his own construction company, I wouldn't be invited to the white house.

I was invited because by dumb luck, and editors folly, and my willingness to work cheap, I ended up writing a newspaper column.

And that's why President Clinton or one of his flunkies decided to invite me to dine in that great transient home in our capital. It ain't me, it's my job.

But if I went, I would be charmed. Hillary would smile and I would melt. Bill would give me that stiff lower-lip grin and I would be saluting.

That's why I have my own rule of journalistic ethics: Don't get chummy with pols because you will like them. And when that happens, you can't beat them up."

There's an ungodly amount of truth in that, and a truth that used to be part of the journalistic ethic. Unfortunately, It seems to have gone by the wayside.

So this is my proposal. In a years time, get rid of every Washington correspondant. Remove every single one, and replace them with new reporters. Brand new faces that have proved themselves to be objective and capable correspondants. Ones who have been in the field who have proven themselves to ask hard questions, and don't fall for the usual press statement horseshit.

Then set them loose. Washington has learned how to play the press as of late. The press needs to change its tactics. Let them go in, burn their bridges. Politics is a dirty game as old as civilization. But they're slow to adapt. The press is becoming stagnant. They miss opportunities because they'll miss key soundbites.

The print press is already dying. They have nothing to lose by this. Let these reporters burn the bridges. Keep basic ethical principles, but rip those they interview. In a year, they'll be on another assignment. In the case of Brocaw, one who many considered to be unbiased, has recently shown in this election to be heavily in support of McCain. In the case of Olbermann, while he makes no bones about who he supports. But he cannot get key interviews because of his stance.

Washington and other national political insiders will have to take their chances with the press once again. They could get someone sympathetic or they could get a shark. But their need for getting the word out about themselves and their agendas is too great a need to not deal with this obvious attack.

The FBI rotates their agents every four years so they don't get too attached to a certain place. This is to reduce the chance of them being compromised. Maybe the press could get some use from that sort of prevention.

-P

Gustav strikes Chicago! Richard Nixon reborn accepts the nomination for the Republican Party.

2008-09-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a soggy day here in Chicago. The remnants of Hurricane Gustav has hit Chicago, drenching the city in a swath of rain that made my quad-annual trek to the office more irritating than it should have been. I kept rocks with me, as per usual, to launch at the unwary and unsuspecting driver that should splash me on my trek to the train. Quick reflexes and a wary eye kept me from getting into any scrapes. This sort of thing happens every time a hurricane hits the gulf coast. The sheer raw power of nature pushes the murderous beast up to the north. The last time this happened three years ago, I spent 3 hours drinking and flipping off the sky. In the book of Lets Pawn Off A Problematic Life On An Imaginary Person, it was said that the worlds imaginary friend would never end the world with floods again.

Apparently it's not above shoving a couple pot shots at the same target over and over again, however.

Just had a great time chatting it up at the Crack Van, watching McCain accept the nomination for the Republican Presidency. The more I see him, the more I am drawn to the idea that he's Richard Nixon. Stiff, lying, a swine willing to murder those who are at least two generations younger than he is. I imagine he and others in his trade try to convince themselves this is the price we pay for freedom. But much like our own generation, we have no great struggle to call our own. We have no Revolutionary war, no Civil War, no World War I or II. Apparently wars have become a defining beacon for a president.

I'm wondering if there will be a difference in the outcome of our country, despite who gets elected. I'm wondering if our goose is cooked. I wonder if we cast the die years ago, the dealer declaring us the loser and long since left the table. Are we simply throwing the dice because it makes us think we have won in our minds? America was, and still is the most powerful country in the world. In a mere 200 odd years, we achieved an enormous amount of power.

But now that we're no longer leading, how do we adjust? Do we push ourselves forward and strive to become better? Or do we continue riding on the coat tails of our ancestors, mouthing "USA! USA! USA!" and trying to fool ourselves that we can get by on faith alone?

I fear the latter.

If this is the case, how will we deal, in the next fifty years, with the fact that we are no longer a superpower? That economically we are weakening. Russia has long felt that they were robbed of their proper place in power. That they should have stood mightily above the world, guiding it. They feel they lost their birthright. How will America react when they finally take that place? Or China? Or any other country?

My suspicion is that it will end badly.

I'm beginning to tire of the country. But unfortunately, the answer does not lie in leaving. Those who leave will merely leave the country to the jackals. Those beasts who lick their jowls at the next meal that happens their way. I see another civil war coming, although this one will be fought differently this time. The dividing lines are being drawn. Families are being split apart. And more than ever, America is afraid of itself once again.

I hope I am wrong. I really really do.

In remembrance - A cautionary tale for the future.

2008-09-03T22:11:00.001-07:00

Yanno, it's almost impossible to get out a wartime incumbent. George W. Bush knew this. It probably explains why he went into a war so early on. Now the game is different. Georges time is up. Now we have McCain attempting to fill his partys place. But is a candidate who's primary stance is more war going to be enough to win him the presidency?

Lets look at an unlikely historical source. George McGovern in 1972.

George McGovern was the Democratic party leader then. He was vilified by the Republican party, supported by union workers, and had, at the time of the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Florida, a %62 lead in the polls against Nixon. He was a rising star due to a variety of factor on the morning of Thursday, July 13th 1972. He seemed to be a sure win.

He then blew the campaign with a series of screwups. Within hours, the VP was decided to be a disaster. Thomas Eagleton, it turned out had received shock therapy in years prior. He tacked this up to "nervous exhaustion". The Nixon camp was elated.

In years past, and since, there seems to be established rules regarding devastating attacks on candidates for both parties. As if there were ground-rules laid down in some murky, hidden back room where rules for the country are made, far away from the eyes of the rest of the unsuspecting country.

Republicans are attacked for their failed policies.
Democrats are attacked for their failed personal lives.

It is not very often these two boundaries are crossed. I can count on my hand the times they have happened in the past 10 years, with the majority of infractions made by Republicans screwing up. Cheating on spouses. Foot tapping in bathrooms. Inappropriate remarks at public dinners.

But it would seem now, the lines are blurring. While traditionally, the Democratic party has been seen as the White Knight of policies, coming in to fix all that ills the nation, their policies have become increasingly under attack by an opposing party - and populace - that has become exponentially brutish and stupid. Instead of the Kennedy-esque attacks of nailing the mistress, getting a BJ on the QT, or the occasional Dirty Sanchez from the night janitor, Democrats are now being attacked for their policies. Republicans are no longer willing to stand by and say that diplomicy works. They're unashamed. This is their hour; their fourth reich.

Democrats are in the same boat. Republicans, are no longer content to simply smear their opposing party for mucking about. Realizing that in a decaying christian moral society, philandering, while newsworthy to those tabloids who publish so much of it, is no longer enough to be able to derail a campaign.

Perhaps it is more effective to whip up public loathing of an unseen, sometimes unnamed enemy. To call those who dissent unpatriotic. To turn the scope of that powerful gun against ourselves to see if we'll actually fire.

Barak Obama has taken a bold, but possibly foolish stance to fire any staffer who uses the recent pregnancy of Bristol Palins pregnancy as political fodder. Palin, despite reports, failed to tell the McCain campaign on her final interview on Wednesday that Bristol was pregnant.

We'll see which of these blunders leads to disaster for either campaign.

Post RNC nonsense.

2008-09-03T20:57:00.001-07:00

Quick comment from a blog I frequent:

"Let me just say this for any of the media and cultural elites dropping by. This election cannot be about Sarah Palin being a nice person and a good mother. If we let them make it about that, about this stupid faux-scandal made-up bullshit, for the umpteenth time, we will lose the argument" - Athenae - http://www.first-draft.com/2008/09/rnc-night-two-c.html?cid=129001702

I think you're right in that this can't be about be about her being a nice person or a good mother. However, this is going to be the argument the moment that John McCain drops in the polls.

He's suffered from the "poor me, I was a POW" attack in the past. He's done it so much in the past 8 years that it has lost its ability to sway people. It's like the angry guy at work. It only works if you reserve your anger for when it is appropriate. But when it is shoved down your throat so much that you begin choking on it, whether you like it or not, then it becomes ineffective. You begin to drown it out.

I was born at the end of the Vietnam Conflict. I was never shoved into a tiger cage. I was never tortured. I never had my desk stolen by veterans and had a teacher guilt me into joining the armed forces to guilt me into earning it for future Americans. I appreciate what Mr. McCain went through to serve our country.

But it has nothing to do with our economy.
It has nothing to do with drilling in protected wildlife preserves.
It has nothing to do with abortions.
It has nothing to do with our country, right now.

It has everything, however, to do with our future.

If we are facing a second cold war from Russia, is having a psychologically damaged man who thinks that a first strike against an enemy is an example of effective foreign policy really our best bet? We have had that already with GW Bush. Fortunately it was not with an enemy capable of firing back at us with anything heavier than ground troops.

Is a party that uses "new ideas" such as limited fuel alternatives really our best bet for winning wars (started by us, or not) really our best bet.

Me, I see war. Against both parties able to be identified and those who aren't.

They say only a fool fights a war on two fronts. What happens when it's multiple enemies from various sides? How do you win that war?

Sometimes diplomacy works.

In any case, we're in the face of history. We can at the very least try to make our mark. Even if evil wins, we can stand up and let history know we did our best to stop it.

-Me

Aside: If Iran and Iraq eventually embrace democracy, I wonder how many of the candidates will use torture administered by the U.S. as a judge of their character in getting elected.

Republican National Convention 2008

2008-09-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows the story here. Palin accepts the McCain VP Nomination tonight. A plethora of hideous soulless, vacant eyed monsters parade in front of a red backdrop reminiscent of my last trip to hell. Only the denizens of this torture are more monotone.

They haven't got a chance in that hell, unfortunately. Not that I support the ticket or the party. My disappointment is that in a country so clearly divided down the middle, a good healthy campaign is no longer possible. It's a political process on the verge of a coronary. 24 hour news, staggering amounts of information coming in from the internet, being passed around company email and IM sessions and text messages across the company, it's impossible to get a grip on it all.

In a side note, this is the first post of the new blog; last one outgrew me.

I'm heading over to the bar to watch most of the convention. The crowd is mostly old-guard Republican, and I want to see if they laugh as hard as I do at the nonsense on the screen. Additionally, someone said they had a picture of Palin in a Bikini showing off a rifle at a pool party.

Hypocrite, gun nut, and her own policies biting her in the ass. The only way she could be more Republican is if she had a dick.