Instant Karma

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Saturday September 03, 2005 · 11:52 PM PDT

2005/09/03 · 23:52

It's a thing of beauty glimmering in the darkness of the Bush Administration's catastrophic failure: a news media that had taken months and years to expose - too late - the habitual untruth deployed by Administration officials is now debunking the bullshit within hours.

Take this CNN analysis of Michael Chertoff's press conference:

on the flip... Read More

Significant Incompetence

dreamsign

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Saturday September 03, 2005 · 7:41 PM PDT

2005/09/03 · 19:41

Karen Wehrstein's excellent diary on whether or not aid was intentionally witheld has got me thinking about the nature of incompetence. Most people, judging from the poll results of that diary, regard the lack of aid as some mixture of incompetence and intention. This begs the question what's behind the incompetence. The case of FEMA director Mike Brown suggests a ready answer: cronyism, which, if you think about it, is a quality inherent in government by conspiracy. From Mike Brown to John Bolton to Porter Goss, Bush appointments are categorized by their willingness to be 'team players,' in a situation where the team is not America, but a ruling cabal bent on manufacturing the reality in which it is permanently in power.

Krugman on ID, with my letter to Paul!

dreamsign

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Friday August 05, 2005 · 2:18 AM PDT

2005/08/05 · 02:18

Today's NYTimes has a good Krugman editorial on Intelligent Design and the politics of obfuscation. The basic gist of it is that proponents of ID don't have to win the day scientifically, but only to create enough uncertainty to confuse the issue in the minds of politicians, the public and press.

I think he's spot on as regards the overall pattern of inculcating confusion over politically important scientific issues, as epitomized by the campaign to blur the widespread scientific consensus on global warming. However, I think he misses the boat somewhat on ID.

As I discuss on the flip... Read More

Karlgate: tactical truth vs. reality

dreamsign

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Thursday July 14, 2005 · 4:29 AM PDT

2005/07/14 · 04:29

A few days ago, in a comment on another diary, I wrote: "this is a President who has the blood of tens of thousands on his hands. Rove's outing of Plame is absurdly mild relative to Bush's own crime." Richard Cohen of the Washington Post makes the same point more gracefully:

Washington loves farce the way Vienna loves the waltz. It once extravagantly inflated a sex act into the impeachment of a president, and it has now reduced the momentous debacle of the Iraq war into a question of what Rove or someone else said to a reporter on the phone. Soon, the question will turn on whether Rove or others actually cited Plame by name and whether the president's oath to fire anyone who identified Plame as a CIA operative applies to someone who just mentioned her job title. It will all depend on what "is" is or, to put it another way, whether Bush will concede that he inhaled.

In a country that won't reckon the big picture (as in the DSM), we need to trip up the big time criminals with the small stuff.

The Spice Must Flow: Communication and Community

dreamsign

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Monday June 13, 2005 · 2:27 AM PDT

2005/06/13 · 02:27

What follows is a diary in the spirit of the times at DKos, a condition that to my mind expresses something of the general tenor of what we might call our society. Some might call it a loss of manners, while others with just as much validity call it freedom of speech. We are guaranteed this right in the Bill of Rights; but this guarantee does nothing to assure us the capacity it aims to preserve. Free speech is more than a thing allowed. Free speech is a thing that must also be enabled and employed.

It is because of this decisive quality of authenticity that we might look upon the Bill of Rights as equally a Bill of Responsibilities. For otherwise, we fail in our duty as Americans to make use of life and liberty in pursuit of the genuine happiness of being in harmony with outselves.

On a technical note: website problem

dreamsign

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Sunday June 12, 2005 · 4:59 PM PDT

2005/06/12 · 16:59

For the last week or so, off and on, I've been having a problem viewing diaries. The culprit seems to be the blog ads. At first the diary loads, and then when it seems just about done it disappears, leaving only the classified ads, while the status bar continues to whirl, waiting for content from something.blogads.something. Funny thing, I can get back to the diary by hitting the back button and then stopping it before it jumps back to the classifieds. Is anyone else having this problem?

I'm using Firefox 1.0.4, on a Windows 2000 system.

The Spice Must Flow: Duet

dreamsign

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Tuesday May 24, 2005 · 3:49 AM PDT

2005/05/24 · 03:49

Though I've written an installment on the Missonaria Protectiva and the Bene Gesserit, I'm going to put off posting that for a bit and instead address a few of the reactions to my first DUNE diary that touch on an important caveat I neglected to mention.
Read More

The Spice Must Flow: Dune in our Times

dreamsign

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Sunday May 22, 2005 · 4:05 PM PDT

2005/05/22 · 16:05

In response to a few requests for a diary relating DUNE to our current situation, I'm going to write a bit on the most salient - which is to say both obvious and significant - point of comparison: the well-known equation of Spice with oil that author Frank Herbert himself made. I start here because it seems to me a completely unambiguous parallel in terms of which Herbert's work was prophetic. The Spice must flow. Read More

Censorship on DKos? Apparently not.

dreamsign

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Sunday May 22, 2005 · 4:08 AM PDT

2005/05/22 · 04:08

A day or so ago I posted a comment in response to a diary pointing to the recent NYT article detailing the appalling murder of two detainees at Bagram airbase. After being up for a few hours, the comment was removed.

The substance of it was in a sense nothing new. Many have already commented on Scott McClellan's revoltingly disingenuous profession of institutional reverence for the Koran, seen in light of the numerous documented instances of torture and murder within the burgeoning U.S. extra-judicial prison system. My sin, I suppose so far as Dkos' editors were concerned, was to phrase this contradiction in terms of a joke. Read More

Supporting our Troops: the case of Pablo Paredes

dreamsign

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Friday May 13, 2005 · 5:58 PM PDT

2005/05/13 · 17:58

The recent conviction of conscientious objector Pable Paredes raises in my mind a serious argument against the position of those who claim to 'support our troops'. Let me say up front that this position has always struck me as a sort pandering to the mainstream, which is not to say that it is valueless as such. Still, from an ethical perspective, I consider it vacant. Paredes' testimony, as recounted by him in an interview today on Democracy Now, clearly states what seems to me an inescapable conclusion: in supporting our troops in their decision to obey orders and go to war we are supporting them in the commission of war crimes. Read More

Why I Hate Fox's "24"

dreamsign

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Wednesday April 20, 2005 · 3:46 AM PDT

2005/04/20 · 03:46

It's more than the idiotically dense plot twists and implicit transporter beams zapping principles from location to location. 24 sucks for me because it's a season-long ticking bomb used to justify torture and the police state. Read More

Not pure bullshit

dreamsign

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Saturday December 18, 2004 · 10:51 AM PST

2004/12/18 · 10:51

This diary is a copy of something I posted to Kid Oakland's enormous bullshit, pure bullshit diary. The general gist of it is that the issue, stripped of all of the personal attacks and defenses, is in reality not bullshit at all. I have extracted this post so that perhaps it might get read. Read More

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