You Have Got to See This

Seriously. You just can't make shit like this up. Apparently, the Bible (yeah, you read that right) suffers from a liberal bias (not unlike reality and the media), at least according to the adorable folks over at Conservapedia, so they've started translating the Bible into Wingnuttese (I guess that's what you'd call it).

It's called the Conservative Bible Project. And it's only just begun. Check it out here.

Wonder how long before they chuck that Jesus guy under the bus? He had some pretty progressive ideas, as I recall. And with that long hair and beard, why, he's practically a DFH.

(hat tip to John Cole at Balloon-Juice)

Heartwarming Coming Out Story

Here, at Daily Kos. Worth a read, and a real reminder that the Culture War the reactionaries on the right are waging is a war they're bound to lose, because they're wrong.

The lesson is it's easy to hate on folks you never have to see, or talk to, or get to know, but once they become people, and not just a category, then that knee-jerk hatred is a lot harder to maintain. It's just a lot harder to be a dick to real people than it is to hate on somebody you never met for something they can't help. Sure, it's easy enough to be a dick to someone in person if they're a dick to you first, or just by nature, but if you really hate on someone for something they have no control over (sexual orientation, color of skin, gender, ethnicity), then it's you there's something wrong with, not them.

(hat tip to Glenn Greenwald)

Posted Without Comment

Trusting the GOP on job growth is like trusting an arsonist on fire safety.
-Steve Benen, at the Washington Monthly

I'm Probably Not the First One to Ask, But

Why do Republicans hate America?

Used to was, politics stopped at the water's edge, and everybody remembered that we're all on the same side. Anymore, not so much.

It's Like He Stuck His Head So Far Up There It Actually Popped Back Out

Erick Erickson, the managing editor of RedState.com and a city councilor in Macon, Georgia, has called for the abolition of Macon's police force if it votes to unionize.
-Daniel Tencer, at Rawstory.com

You read that right. Radical Republican and Professional Know-Nothing Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com and city councilor in scenic Macon, GA would rather go without police entirely than see the force unionize.

Didn't Republicans used to be the Daddy party, all into law enforcement and making sure the boys in blue had all the toys they needed to make the streets safe for women and children (the white ones, anyway)?

Then again, he's probably thinking that if everyone in Macon just had a gun, they wouldn't need no stinking cops anymore, cuz an armed citizenry can police itself and everyone else just fine. That's in the Bible somewhere, I'm pretty sure.

Invisible Man

Can you spot him? He's there, painted in to the background.

There's no photoshop here. No trick photography. Liu Bolin does it all with paint, painstakingly planned and applied, blending himself into the background like a very still chameleon.

Amazing stuff. More here.

(hat tip to Michael S.)

Alan Grayson is My New Hero

Nice to see one of the good guys not pulling his punches for once.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Let's not kid ourselves. Anyone with the bare minimum requirement of one honest bone in their body knows that Snowbilly Virginia Woolfkiller did not spend the past four months holed up in an igloo of her own furiously typing up her memoirs.
-tbogg

Virginia Woolfkiller. Can't fuck with the master.

"I call do-over!"

So, props to Kevin Drum for letting us know. The same people who threw the shit and the shinola into a blender a few years ago to make those mortgage-backed securities that worked out so well for everybody are at it again, with the very same scam, except this time they're being really careful (pinkie swear!) to include only solvent, performing mortgages in the AAA-rated stuff. They're called -get this- Re-Remics, and they are, so far as I (a non-specialist) can tell, pretty much the same as the Collateralized Debt Obligations that nearly took down the American economy just one short year ago.

Here's how it works: Banks all over are currently stuck with whatever toxic crap they had on the books when the music stopped and the last chair was pulled. Because the crap is toxic, they're required to keep money on hand to cover it in case it goes even further south. The worse the rating, the more money the bank has to keep on hand. So, say you've got a CDO that's seventy-five percent non-crap and twenty-five percent crap. The twenty-five percent that's crap drags the rating of the whole thing down, say to a C, which means the bank has to keep 100% of the value of the CDO on hand, which means they can't use that money to refurbish the offices or buy a politician. Enter the magical masters of the universe, with scissors and calculators and a lovely assistant who draws your attention over here to her lovely boobs while the magician goes to work with the scissors and some glue and -voila!- you've suddenly got two CDOs, one good, one crap. Get the good one rated back to AAA, and suddenly the capital requirement is only 100% on the lesser share; for the newly-minted AAA investment vehicle, the capital requirement goes down, which means the bank can go ahead and call the interior decorator and fire up the corporate jet for some serious fact-finding. And hey, with any luck, maybe they can sell the good paper. There is a sucker born every minute, and nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

On paper, it makes sense. The problem is that the people doing the Re-Remicing are the very same magical masters of the universe that nearly took the whole house of cards down last year, and the same ratings agencies that dropped the ball last time (and have suffered, inexplicably to me, no consequences at all) are still in charge of saying what's shit and what's shinola.

How do you suppose that's gonna work out?

Here's the Email I Wrote to My Senator

Senator Cantwell,
It is my understanding that as a member of the Senate Finance Committee you are participating in debate today over the inclusion of a robust public option in the health care reform legislation being written by that committee. I want to urge you, in the strongest possible terms, to vote yes on the Schumer/Rockefeller amendment, and include a robust public option in the bill. Without a public option to provide a benchmark of fairness against which insurance companies would be forced to compete, I fear (and expect) that the current trend of insurance industry rapacity will continue. We as a nation and a people can no longer afford to spend so much money to prop up an industry that's protected from competition and yet still fails to deliver on satisfactory outcomes, both in the countless individual cases we hear about on the news every day, and in the larger national sense.

Please, vote yes on the public option. And please understand that this constituent's continued support is contingent on that vote.

Thank you,
Dallas Taylor
Seattle WA

I also called. Her number in DC is 202-224-3441.

Today is a Very Important Day

Today the Senate Finance Committee debates the Public Option, an amendment offered by Schumer (NY) and Rockefeller (WV). If you believe, as I do, that without a public option to spur competition and keep insurance companies honest, any health care reform will be, if not meaningless, then certainly toothless, call or email the following Senators right now:

Max Baucus (Montana), Tom Carper (Delaware), Robert Menendez (New Jersey), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), John Kerry (MA), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Ron Wyden (Oregon), Debbie Stabenow (Michigan), Maria Cantwell (Washington), and Bill Nelson (Florida)

Romance Isn't Dead

It's just more an executive than a legislative thing, I guess.

(hat tip TPM)

APOD

Just wanted to take a second and give props to NASA, who, problematic though they are, make up for at least some of it by publishing the Astronomy Picture of the Day, which I use as my homepage. The universe is full of cool stuff, and though I think it's best explored, for now, by robots, I do like looking at the pictures. Like this one today. What a feeling that must be, to be untethered in space, floating free, with only a spacesuit and a nitrogen jet between you and frozen oblivion. The quiet must be immense.

Something that Can't be Made Clear Enough

The United States is the only industrialized democracy that does not offer universal health care to its citizenry, which leads to things like this.

Even the Cubans get free health care. And they ain't got shit, thanks to us.

Sleep Dealer

I should say at the outset that I am not a cinephile. Don't get me wrong. I like movies. But I have to be in the right mood, and I'm picky about what I'll watch and even pickier about what I enjoy. It's not something I've chosen, I'm just that way.

I am, however, a great fan of science fiction, for its fun, escapist aspect (spaceships! lasers! green women with three boobs!), but more importantly because science fiction, as a genre, essentially boils down to a lot of very smart people sitting down and thinking 'Hm. What if the world were thus-like? What kind of lives would people lead? What kinds of conflict would arise? How does that relate to where we are now, historically?' and then working out the answers and presenting them in a narrative form that is not only thought-provoking but also entertaining and engaging.

Yes, yes, I know, it can be a bit like putting vitamins in candy. But I don't think that that undermines the essential worthwhile-itude of the genre. They're still vitamins, after all.

Science fiction cinema tends to be a mixed-bag for me. Hollywood (where you pretty much have to go to get the money to do science fiction movies, relying as they largely do on SFX and CGI) tends to trend more escapist than substantive, because they're a capitalist, for-profit industry, and as such they tend to appeal to the lowest common denominator in the hope that it will bring the largest possible number of people to the theatres. This is why most science fiction cinema tends to downplay its thought-provoking aspects in favor of more tried-and-true formulas, meaning that, for the most part, science fiction movies are usually either action or horror movies that just happen to occur in some sort of futuristic setting. Sometimes they're quite good, science-fictionally speaking, but very rarely, it seems, does the cinematic world really sit up and take notice of science fiction's potential for explaining today in terms of our likely tomorrows.

Sleep Dealer, directed by Alex Rivera, is an exception to that rule, and not a half-bad movie to boot. The trailer makes it look all action-y and exciting, I know, but the movie itself is really all about a small set of very human stories that are tied together and nested ineluctably in a near-term future history that is so plausible that it'll make you cringe a little when you see it, because you know that unless we (humanity, that is, not even just us Amur'kins) change course, and soon, that that is likely the shape of things to come.

(spoiler alert: what follows may or may not reduce your enjoyment of the film by revealing the setting and plot outline; I'll try to leave enough blank so as not to ruin the movie, but read on at your own risk)

Sleep Dealer is a movie that could only have come from south of the border. It's not that its portrayal of Americans is unflattering, it's that its fundamental perspective is not one that most Americans will recognize. Set in Mexico (in Oaxaca and Tijuana) in the near future, the world of Sleep Dealer puts a cinematic (and human) face on an all-too-plausible scenario. Memo, the protagonist of the film, is a farmer's son and ham-radio operator in a dusty village in the deserts of central Mexico. His village is dying, dried up and desiccated thanks to the dam on the river, built and maintained by a (literally) faceless corporation. Water must be purchased (cash up front) at usurious rates (around $10/gallon). Although there are actual guards by the reservoir, the gate is remotely operated from America. Every camera has a gatling gun attached, and there is, unsurprisingly, very little compunction on the part of the operators about pulling the trigger. By day, Memo helps his father on the farm. At night, he listens in on the ham radio and dreams of having nodes implanted so he can go online and become a node-worker. The nodes are similar to the Matrix, cyborg tech interfaces that allow the user to enter an online world not unlike virtual reality, and make the remote operation of machinery (and weaponry) both intuitive and easy. Meanwhile, his brother is addicted to American TV, most especially a show called Drones, modelled on COPS, only about the heroic efforts of the drone pilots who find and kill 'terrorists' (people stealing water, say) with high-tech long-range weaponry, probably not unlike what's happening right now in the mountains of AF-PAK.

When his father is killed, Memo makes the pilgrimage to Tijuana, which, though the border is permanently closed, remains a Mecca for those seeking a better life, thanks in no small part to its booming remote-machinery-operation industry, in factories called 'Sleep Dealers' (so called because after a long shift you collapse in exhaustion). Thanks to the good offices of Luz, a freelance writer who sells narrativized versions of her memories on TrueNode (a YouTube style website that functions as an open market for the sale of such things), Memo manages to get some nodes implanted and finds work at one of the Sleep Dealers. The work? Remotely operating a construction droid on a San Diego skyscraper. Just like a real Mexican, only without all the hassle of immigrating.

Luz has her own agenda, of course. She's not a very successful writer, but she does have one client, who's interested in learning more about Memo. The client is Rudy, a Hispanic-American drone pilot whose connection to Memo drives the latter third of the movie and provides the denouement.

I'll leave the remaining plot intricacies here, as I don't want to wholly ruin the movie for those of you that might actually watch it, which I recommend. It's not the best movie I ever watched, in terms of cinematic excellence, but it's a solid film that works both as a story and as social/future-historical commentary. The most striking thing about it, and the main thrust of the this blog post, is the sheer plausibility of its vision of our near future. The outside colonization of developing-world resources, the militarization of their defense (Rudy is a soldier, not a private contractor), and the outsourcing of everything to remote operators in countries where labor is cheaper (there's hilarious scene where Rudy crosses the border into Mexico, and the camera/gun is clearly operated by someowe in India) are all themes that resonate because they're based not only in present reality but in its very obvious trajectories. The power of the film is as much about its vision of the future as it is about the character and narrative arcs, which are determined by that vision but also stand on their own as all-too-human and believable.

It's thought-provoking stuff, a testament to the power of film to make something like this feel real, in a way that would be difficult to attain so viscerally through words and even still images alone. I recommend checking it out, and not only enjoying it for what it is (a decent movie) but also thinking about the future it envisions and what it would mean, and whether or not you think that's okay. Sleep Dealer raises a lot of questions, and they're really not that hypothetical. The finitude of resources like water, and the knee-jerk aversion to immigration on the part of Americans (even while we depend on the cheap labor that results), as well as our vicarious enjoyment of the application of violence to far-away people with darker skin, resonate precisely because they are so grounded in reality. It's a future you could easily see happening. Hell, it might even seem inevitable to the cynics among us. Either way, it's well-worth a viewing, and some pretty serious contemplation afterward.

I Wonder How Much Time He Spent Practicing in the Mirror

Barack Obama's amazingly consistent smile from Eric Spiegelman on Vimeo.

(hat tip to John Scalzi @ Whatever)

It's good to know that, in a world full of change, some things stay the same.

Dispatches from Here: Random Notes from Away from Home

So much to write about here at work camp. Not that it's camp, exactly, in that I sleep in a bed and, though I do often cook food with fire, it is propane fire, on the gas stovetop and on the barbecue Mom had installed on the patio back in the day. But it's work camp in that I'm here mostly alone, and will be until I get all of this shit done. For those just tuning in, I'm in Florida renovating Mom's condo so I can rent it out for a few years, in the hope that the real estate market will, if not rebound, then at very least liven up a little. People who know tell me it ought to, if I can just hold out for a couple of years. I hope that they are right.

It was difficult, at first. Not only because there was more to do than there is now, but because all of Mom's things were still here, in all of the places she kept them. Mom was a bit of a hoarder, you see. Not like the people on that show Hoarders, who sometimes save their own waste. But Mom just couldn't bring herself to throw away something that was still useful, a trait I find I have inherited somehow. In some ways, it was quite impressive. Mom never lost anything. Every tupperware had the original lid, even the stuff I remember from my childhood, stuff we used in the '70s. Every appliance had the manual, usually immediately to hand, near the thing itself. Every nook and cranny of storage was filled, and treasures abounded. I found a coffee warmer circa 196?, still in the original packaging and clearly never not once used. Where did I find such a wonder, you ask? In the laundry closet, in the downstairs bathroom, on the shelf above the dryer, behind the fabric softener, under a box of sterling silver holiday trays that for all I know date back to my parents' wedding.

But that was ages ago, subjectively speaking, though it was less than a month in chronological time. So much has happened and so much has changed since then that it's almost hard to believe. Funny how time seems to dilate the more you have to do and the more that is happening. Even though the time itself seems to pass all the more quickly as you flail day after day through a to do list like a hydra (every time you get one thing done, two more pop up to take its place). Once it's past, the time stretches out. A week passes, but you feel a month older.

Thanks in no small part to my good friend Heidi, who I've hired to help me get through this monster list of things that need doing, the stuff is gone, carted off to Goodwill and the dump. What remains is all downstairs now. It's as if I live in a spacious studio apartment, downstairs from a construction site. The upstairs is mostly painted, except for the closet in my old room and the high wall in the stairwell, the one I need the sixteen foot ladder to get to all of. Luckily I spent a year and a half on a roofing crew once, so ladders don't scare me. They make me sad and angry sometimes, but they don't scare me.

I'll get around to finishing the painting eventually. Probably when I'm ready to move back upstairs and start painting the downstairs. But before that there is tiling. So much tiling.

Actually, it's only about six hundred square feet. It just feels like much, much more, because I'm a DIY kind of guy, so I'm doing it myself.

On the plus side, I'm starting to get the hang of it, and I think it'll start going faster now. On the minus side, tile is heavy, as is the concrete mortar in which you set it, and every single piece requires effort, concentration, and that little je ne sais quoi that is the difference between a craftsman and somebody with a Home Depot card. Needless to say, I'm trying hard to be or at least become the former and not the latter. I've only fucked up a little so far.

Having so much ground to cover, I was obliged to buy two pallets of tile, which was of sufficient bulk that I had to rent a truck from the Home Depot in order to move it from the store to the condo. I was warned that the tiles were from two different dye lots, which fact engendered some trepidation, but I was told I could just mix and match them and it would look ok, so I wasn't too worried. Turns out that, though you can tell the tiles are slightly different looking, the difference isn't much.

What I didn't expect is that the two lots are different sizes.

It isn't much. I can totally picture the guy at the factory (or quarry, or whatever) setting the machine and getting it just a little bit off (it's less than 1/8 of an inch), so little that probably nobody'd ever pick up on it. But it matters. Cheese on rice does it fucking matter.

At first Heidi and I thought that the thing to do was to go ahead and mix and match, figuring if we split up the lots, then the joint where they met would look funny. So we spent a whole day laying alternating tile, being super-careful to keep the order right and all that, so that the whole thing would look uniform. The problem, as I discovered when I went back up later, was that it makes the seams, which ought to be nice and straight, kind of zig zag back and forth. It's barely noticeable, mostly just one of those things that doesn't seem quite right, but you can't quite put your finger on it, and it makes you confused. But I noticed. And so I decided that I needed to change course, and do the rest of my room in the smaller tile, and save the larger for Mom's old room, the master bedroom. In the end, I think it'll be fine. But it makes doing the rest of my room kind of extra challenging, because some of the seams are set at different widths because of the larger tiles that I've already laid (and no, there is no pulling up tile, not without a jackhammer and a lot of very loud and probably quite nasty swearing), which means that I've got to do some of the spacing by eye, instead of just putting the spacers in, shifting the tile into place, and scraping up the excess mortar. Which is, as you might expect, kind of a pain in the ass. It's doable, and I'm doing it, and there's only one that I messed up badly enough that I might have to bust out the hammer and chisel. But it makes it all go slower, which makes me sad and angry, because even though I like the interruption in my previous lifestyle (because it shakes my head loose of some habits of thinking and living, which is often quite good for a person), I want to get home, so I can get to all the projects waiting for me there. Also my girlfriend is there, which if you've ever had one, you know they like it when you're around, and you like it too, because they let you sleep next to them and tell you nice things like: "I love you" and "You are very smart/sexy/funny/good-looking. Come here and kiss me." And you do, because it's awesome.

But the tiling must be paced. It is difficult, heavy work that makes a man's back hurt and tires him out more quickly than he thinks is right or reasonable. With luck, this will get better, and I have already purchased a back brace to help with the pain and a corded drill to mix the concrete with (the cordless batteries seem to get used up too quickly).

In the end, it will be worth it. If I do rent the place for a few years, it'll save me from having to replace the carpet between renters, and should increase the value of the place when it comes time to sell. People in Florida like tile after all. It's cool, and easy to clean, and it lasts forever, unlike carpet, which lasts for a good long while but absorbs odors and stains and liquids and keeps them forever, no matter how careful you are or how good your vacuum is. But for now, as my grandfather used to say, oh my aching back.

Posted Without Comment

The banking fiasco still underway is at once a proxy for the larger failure of the American economy and the greatest fissure in it. Put as simply possible: we can't service our debt, we can't generate more debt, and the notional "capital" we thought we possessed is dissolving into nothingness. The federal government and Wall Street remain committed to supporting all the rackets associated with a suburban sprawl economy that has entered its own zone of remorseless failure. It is failing as a capital investment first, and is secondarily failing as a practical living arrangement. The two failures will continue in a close race toward terminal entropy.
James Kunstler

Pabst Blue Ribbon, you are my friend.

Look! Look at the Shiny Ball! Look! It's Shiny!

I was heartened and relieved to read this:

The Justice Department is preparing to impose new limits on the government assertion of the state secrets privilege used to block lawsuits for national security reasons. The practice was a major flashpoint in the debate over the escalation of executive power and secrecy during the Bush administration.

The new policy, which could be announced as early as Wednesday, would require approval by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. if military or espionage agencies wanted to assert the privilege to withhold classified evidence sought in court or to ask a judge to dismiss a lawsuit at its onset.

Until I read a little further, and got to this:

Leading Democratic lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have filed bills that would restrict how the privilege could be used. The Obama administration has not taken a position on those bills, but the new policy, which is intended to rein in use of the privilege by erecting greater internal checks and balances against abuse, could blunt momentum in Congress to pass legislation.

And I realized that it's a head fake. One of the things that's been so alarming about the Obama Administration has been their enthusiasm for following in the Bush Administration's footsteps in using the state secrets privilege to keep the press and the citizenry in the dark about not only the policies and clusterfucks they've inherited, but also the policies and clusterfucks they've created. Given Obama's campaign promises involving transparency and open government, promises, I should add, that were instrumental in this writer's early and enthusiastic support for the campaign, it's hard not to be disappointed in how quickly we've gone from brand new day to same old shit.

It's not even that I don't believe that Eric Holder wouldn't or won't do the right thing. It's that in a nation of laws we make rules to fix problems, rules that count no matter who's in charge, and while I believe Eric Holder probably does mostly want to do the right thing, for something as important as when the state can say 'no, sorry, you're not allowed to know that, national security, you know' I don't want to put my trust in the goodness and righteousness of a single man (or those who will come after him). I want to put my trust in a clearly articulated law that spells out when and why and how the government can claim the state secrets privilege, with sunsets, outside enforcement, and clearly articulated consequences for breaking said law, which are not contingent on the character of the enforcing officials.

Cuz that's what the rule of law is all about. And if we learned anything from the Bush Administration's eight years of catastrophic cowboy-ism, it's that if you put your trust in things like character and tradition and settled practice, without clear articulation of laws and limits, then you will eventually and inevitably find yourself dealing with people who don't have character, or respect for tradition and settled practice, and they'll do whatever the fuck they want until they run into those laws and limits, and even that might not stop them.

Which is another reason we need to see high-ranking officials from the Bush Administration on trial for all their various law-breaking. After all, if they didn't do anything wrong, they have nothing to hide. But that's a rant for another day.

Just remember what Louis Brandeis said: Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Let's hope the Obama Administration remembers, and lives up to their campaign promises.


UPDATE
I should add that I do consider this a small step in the right direction. Anything that makes it harder for any government agency to hide anything they're doing behind the state secrets privilege is a good thing, in my book. What concerns me is that by confining the change to administrative policy rather than legislation, the possibility is left open for abuse, so long as Eric Holder or any of his successors can be convinced it's necessary or legitimate.

There's a lot of walking back from a lot of very dangerous moral precipices to be done, thanks to the previous Administration. But even given the sheer quantity of such challeges that we face as a nation and a people, more than baby steps need to be taken back from each and every one of those brinks. Our country and all it's supposed to stand for are at stake.