Second-best grass ever

New Scientist published a little piece on a grass genetically engineered to be hypo-allergenic. It's still years from marketability, but interesting. Consumer-oriented GMOs? Is it possible? Much more on this later...

Who wants some Vietnam?

Lots of people have been saying that maybe Iraq is a quagmire, a new Vietnam. Well, the US military's been spreading a little of that itself. Like when it uses Wagner's The Ride of the Valkyries as its theme music in a raid, a la Apocalypse Now. Reminiscent of the Reagan campaign misinterpreting the doleful, bitter Born in the USA and using it as a theme song.

[Just found out that MotherJones.com and The Nation both covered this. Moving right along...]

I guess I'll catch up on something that I was obsessing over that day Blogger died. [Is there a song about that? And we were singing, bye bye...]

I usually find Maureen Dowd's columns in the NYTimes to be insipid, cutesy, and vapid. No, it's not really that funny that you keep calling him Rummy. But her most recent column is extremely good. Really good. I hesitate to admit it but I got chills from reading it. Maybe I need to get out more. In any case, I don't want to quote it because the whole thing's really good and it derives a lot of its power from the sequence of one pointed observation after another.

I wonder if I should just reprint the whole thing here, seeing as it will go away from the NYTimes' site soon. And it's not as though they'd catch me or anything. Hmmm...

Sometimes you get more than you pay for

I was just starting to really give up on Blogger. I figured hey, it's free, made for dumb people who know no html, what do you expect? But then they just went and changed it and it's waaay better. Impressive. Forget Moveable Type and learning stuff, I'm staying here.

Like father, like son

Unbelievable. Speaking of getting in with Beltway Democrats, Dean said, "It is a bit of a club down there... The Democratic Party, all the candidates from Washington, they all know each other, they all move in the same circles, and what I'm doing is breaking into the country club."

Last week, Dean's son drove the getaway car for a group of kids that broke into... a country club.

Unbelievable.

Will an honest man...

George Will -- whom I once liked because he wrote well about baseball and then came to dislike because he's a conservative tightass -- is the first conservative pundit I've seen to raise serious questions about the WMD bullshit [while managing to get in a dig at new-age bullshit]:

"But unless America's foreign policy is New Age therapy to make the public feel mellow, feeling good about the consequences of an action does not obviate the need to assess the original rationale for the action.

"Until WMD are found, or their absence accounted for, there is urgent explaining to be done."

Taken together with the recent WMD piece from those war-is-awesome kids at The New Republic, I hope this is some kind of sign that the scandal has scandalously nice legs.

Let's get 'em, Larry

Some corporate asshole recently tried to tell Lawrence Lessig that every good idea coming from the 'open' and 'free' movement will be co-opted by corporate assholes and exploited. This is an affront to my faith in and hope for cooperative human organizations, and to show the true cooperative spirit we must smash everything in our communal way.

Lessig links to some kind of debate about how to standardize blogs or something. I can't even get my fargin archive to function right. Sounds like something that Zephoria would know about...

Yes, I'm slobbering on Dean again

Slate says something I've tried to say for a long time now: Dean isn't really all that liberal. I think that image people got into had to do with the fact that he's from a liberal state and signed the civil unions law. I also think that because he comes out very hard on the issues where he takes a liberal standpoint people think he must be really liberal. [The fact that he's determined on his liberal issues is good -- people, including me, like determination and decisiveness.]

It's good that he's not hardcore liberal, because it means he might actually get elected. One thing that is great about him is that he's pro-gun rights. 'A' rating from the NRA. I not only like this position philosophically but think it is a huge winner politically for somebody who might be tarred as an uberliberal.

A recent column by a guy who's apparently pretty influential in Iowa also discussed how Dean is selling himself well there -- being decisive, 'presidential', forthright, and friendly to rural voters. I personally think the Dems should basically just give up all the hardcore red states. Let these people be crazy. To win, the Democratic candidate must carry the West Coast [including Hawaii], the Northeast, and the Great Lakes part of the Midwest [and New Mexico, I guess]. Florida would, of course, be a big help, which instantly makes Bob Graham an attractive veepee candidate. A smart campaign could pick up New Hampshire, Ohio, West Virginia, and Florida -- all states lost by Gore in 2000, any of which would've made him win. [Not to mention Tennessee. Gahhh.]

I think Bush's poll numbers are being boosted by the fact that he has atmospheric ratings all over the South; the Dems' chances will look better when they pick a nominee, we get further from the war, and people start focusing on the electoral vote rather than the popular vote.

TNR says Dean sucked on Meet the Press. My mom says he was good. What's a teevee?

My brother says The Economist used the 'total recall' joke before Safire did. Who knew.

Better living through genetic modification

Japanese researchers have concocted a GM coffee bean that has significantly reduced levels of caffeine. More on this to follow.

Deep regret -- real entertainment

This is an old story that I meant to post long ago. The NYTimes ran a good expose on how CBS tried to secure exclusive rights to interview Jessica Lynch by using owning-company Viacom's ability to make her a star using its other media holdings.

Yes, the world is screwed up.

Color -- abounds

There's so much color in this Safire column about the Davis recall effort I don't know where to start.

Yes I do: Yesterday my brother said that people would start saying that if the cali gubernatorial recall effort succeeds and Ahnold runs to replace Davis, people would start calling it the 'total recall'. Well, Bill Safire was listening. 'Thus, if Davis is afflicted with total recall...' Apparently, perceptiveness runs in the family. Humility -- not so much.

And beyond that, Safire wraps up with a particularly nice Emerson quote: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. . . . With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.' Dylan quotes the first part of this line frequently. Props all around.

I like Safire's take on this issue, actually. This means I'm agreeing with him at least twice in one year; recently, he highlighted the liberal-conservative convergence in communitarianism when he opposed the FCC's action to scrap lots of ownership regulations, and then encouraged Congress to pass a law overriding the commission's decision.

Truth be told, I think a congressional action is plainly the best way to go about this. A huge number of voters voiced overwhelming opposition to the new rules. This is exactly the type of occasion when Congress should jump in to support the popular desire and hand down a very democratic outcome.

What would Orwell say?

Kinsley says there existence of WMD in Iraq has already been proven. Sorta. "Are there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Sure there are—in every sense that matters, reality not being one of them." Gaahhhh. You may have to read the rest of the story to really get the idea. I am afeared he's correct. Damn jaded bastard.

Yesterday I made a Watergate reference. Today it's Orwell. Tomorrow I'll make a Nazi reference and then, per Godwin's law, sweet reader, it is time to quit thinkness forever. I believe this is reverse psychology.

Put me in coach -- I'm ready to kick ass

On day 91 for the search for WMDs, I just figured out how the stupidass Democrats can really push the WMD scandal further. A lot of people have been saying Yeah, they pumped up and twisted the reports on WMDs, but the US won the war and now no one will care even if they flat-out lied about why we were in the war.

Well, you remember this little thing called Watergate? [I hate bad Watergate analogies as much as the next guy, but this is good.] People got pret-ty mad that the president had been involved with a second-rate burglary of the hotel, trying to spy on Democrats and their strategy sessions before the 1972 presidential election. McGovern lost that 1972 election by a huge landslide -- Nixon got 60% of the popular vote and 96% of the electoral vote [he lost only Massachusetts and DC]. Nobody was really concerned that the Watergate break-in and cover-up changed the election, because there's no way it made all the difference.

To sum up, it doesn't matter that Watergate had no tangible, discernible effects other than that the president's administration spread lies to the American people. Similarly, it doesn't matter if the WMD scandal didn't cost anything because the US won a just war -- it is wrong and impeachable because this administration passed out flagrantly untruthful material to the people, and in a matter of extreme national security.

This is how the Democrats should push this issue. Push it hard and consistently. Why can't they get this shit? Do I need to step in there, damnit!? Or maybe Howard Dean can do this right...

Novelty items

This is a good new feature from Scientific American called Staking Claims that examines some recent quirky US patents and writes little blurbs on them. Critical that it includes the patent number -- very good for a practical, inquisitive readership.

This week: Viagra gum; using a jet engine to deprive cave-hiders of oxygen [and shake them around, for good measure]; stuffed animals that come with pedigrees -- registered genotypes and phenotypes that are then passed on to 'offspring'; using teevees and computer monitors to mess with your nervous system [perhaps causing 'sudden loose stool']; and a dietary supplement that improves the taste of semen -- the spunk of the anyone who takes the supplement acquires 'a pleasant flavor that is considered by 98.5% of all customers as very enjoyable.' Such exactitude.

Btw, I think I'm going to move to Moveable Type. Blogger SUCKS, if you are at all concerned. Everyone else's blog that's on MT is better. I wonder if they'll let me migrate my posts and post-date them. I know Blogger won't let me do that, the bastards.

Goooooooo community!

A little while ago I highlighted the communitarian/libertarian axis that can be used as a lens to view political views, and how hard-core conservatives and liberals often end up nearby in the communitarian camp.

In that vein, damn-conservative Senator Sam Brownback is going to introduce a bill that takes a couple jabs at the recording industry and, essentially falls in with what would seem to be the liberal-ish position on the matter. Liberal enough that the Electronic Frontier Foundation likes the bill. [A version of the story from a non-subscription site.]

Look in the dictionary under 'clusterfuck'

Add this to the enormous list of stuff that's gone wrong in the aftermath of the US' recent wars: Iran is now gaining sway over western Afghanistan by providing electricity. Yes, the same Iran that has started beating reformist student protestors.

But the #1 sad irony of this whole mishpucha is 'yellowcake'. Yellowcake, what the hell is that? A good illustration of much of went wrong in Iraq. In this year's State of the Union address, Emperor Bush said that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuke-making in Niger in West Africa. It turned out that this was complete bullshit [alert!] and many folks CIA knew it was and reported it to someone but somewhere in between their mouths and Bush's mouth that discrediting was totally lost. The radioactive material in question was 'yellowcake' uranium.

Flash forward four months. The US has won the war over that nuke-making bastardo, potentially saving the lives of tens of millions innocent American children, by the grace of God. But Iraq is al Amok [that almost rhymes]. And in one town, thirsty villagers raid a nuclear research center and grab some old containers for storing water. Thing is that they have some radioactive material and the folks don't know what it is and they're drinking it and hey, you know what? they're starting to get sick because of it. And you know what kind of radioactive material it is? Yes. Yellowcake uranium. Maybe they got it from Niger. Jason got really mad about these people being exposed to radiation, and he's not an angry guy.

Anarchy! Woohoo!

So it seems that Cali Governor Gray Davis might actually get recalled next year: one poll says 48 percent of voters would vote to recall today while 41 percent would vote against.

This has precipitated something of a free-for-all in the state as it would open up the gubernatorial election to any ol' monkey who can scrounge up $3,500 or 10,000 signatures, a piddling fraction of the 900,000 needed to get the Davis recall on the ballot or the 400,000 sigs the would-be recallers have already collected. GOP political consultant Dan Schnur tells the SF Chron, "This will be the closest thing to absolute political anarchy that any of us will see in our lifetimes... There's no precedent for any of this."

Sweet. Anarchy. What it means is that the election is wide open. [The Chron says a candidate with 20% of the total votes might win.] To me, that means a candidate with name recognition has an immediate huge advantage. Arnold Schwarzenegger's golden chance, perhaps. But state GOP bigwigs say they don't want Republican efforts in the recall to interfere in any way with the re-election effort, so that may hurt them. Perhaps Senator Dianne Feinstein would jump in. I, personally, am surprised that I haven't heard the name of SF Mayor Willie Brown mentioned in this context -- Brown served as the uberpowerful House Speaker for ubermany years, he's leaving his mayoral job because of term limits, popular with the state party, name recognition...

In SF, a lot of people don't like Brown for being slick and too conservative. But at the state level he's okay. I think it's a good idea. Can't imagine he's not already thinking of it himself.

Excited about the idea that maybe Peter Camejo, the Green candidate for governer in 2000, might run a good campaign. He says of the bizarro situation: "It creates a peculiar circumstance where a Green or an independent could win." Oh, that would be just too cool if he won. No idea if it's actually possible, but I'm going to dream for a few minutes before coming back to reality.

Here comes my man

His name is Dean. Howard Dean. For a few years now I have been wondering why Democrats can't seem to deliver fairly simple, straightforward, convincing messages about how badly the Republican Party sucks. Dean says:

"When Ronald Reagan came into office, he cut taxes, we had big deficits, and we lost 2 million jobs. When Bill Clinton came into office, he raised taxes without a single Republican vote; we balanced the budget; we gained 6 and a half million jobs. George Bush has already lost 2 and a half million. I want a balanced budget because that's how you get jobs in this country is to balance the books. No Republican president has balanced the budget in 34 years. …You had better elect a Democrat, because the Republicans cannot handle money. … We're the party of responsibility, and they're not."

And then Slate's William Saletan says, "When you hear Dean talk like this, you wonder why no one else can make the party's case so simply. If more Democrats spoke this way, maybe they'd control a branch of government."

It's true. Most people agree with this approach and the way Clinton handled the economy. If they actually thought about it they would see Bush's policies as the shit they are. I think Dean might really have the right type of personality for this moment, ready to curtly lay down the truthful nuggets while other guys are more politician-y. I know I'm buying into an image, but isn't that what wins [or loses] elections? It's great for him to come right out and praise Clinton's economic policies, even if those had as much to do with the Republican Congress. [It seems that Clinton may have done a great job vis-a-vis what Bush is up to.]

Thomas Friedman hit on a similar theme in his latest column, saying that the message has to come down to a pretty simple point: "Say it with me now: 'Read my lips, no new services — or old ones.'

"Whenever Mr. Bush says, 'It's not the government's money, it's your money,' Democrats should point out that what he is really saying is, 'It's not the government's services, it's your services' -- and thanks to the Bush tax cuts, soon you'll be paying for many of them yourself."

Friedman also goes on to point out that a president wins by connecting with the electorate on "gut insecurities and aspirations." That's pretty astute, and I'm not sure Dean really does; his opposition to the war and assertive foreign policies may be a deal-breaker in this era. But right now I like him.

Deep regret -- my bullshit meter's going off the charts!

A federal judge just made a decision that broadened attorney-client privileges to include client-PR flack communications. Just more bullshit, if you ask me. Also sort of ridiculous to think that people who can afford PR losers will get an edge in court.

And I wonder who this client seeking PR help might be? The article says, "The judge did not disclose the target of the investigation or the PR executive, other than to say it involved a high-profile case that has been the subject of much media attention." But I think we can figure it out. Let's go to a quote from the judge: "Dealing with the media in a high-profile case probably is not a matter for amateurs... Target and her lawyers cannot be faulted for concluding that professional public relations advice was needed." [Emphasis mine, damnit!]

Let's see... Do you think 'Target' might be Martha Stewart? Hm? Just maybe? The same Martha Stewart who's now organizing a whole army to fight her PR battles? Yah, I think it's her, too!

I can't stand her. I hope they throw her in fed prison long enough for her to get over herself, even if it is one of them cushy prisons.

The BS attack on affirmative action

I thought about this Jayson Blair thing for a while and what it means about affirmative action. A post from Mickey Kaus just helped me figure out where I really stand on it. He says,

"I'd say Blair did about as much as one example can do to 'prove' that affirmative action is a bad thing--and not only by illustrating the potential consequences of lowered standards. The very debate Mnookin decries--with black journalists worrying whether other black journalists like Gerald Boyd are being unfairly tarred, etc.--shows in part the damage affirmative action does on an ongoing basis. Again, without affirmative action, Blair would have just been an individual screw-up. He wouldn't have cast a cloud over other minority journalists who now have to worry if they too are seen as preference hires." [Emphasis mine.]

But this is bullshit! If there were no affirmative action, Jayson Blair would be seen as a case study in why black people aren't good enough to be professionals. What's more, there would be fewer black journalists, and fewer black journalists in important positions. So with the help of affirmative action, black journalists are helped a little bit. Better for people to criticize affirmative action than black journalists as a whole. And after a while, people of all stripes will [hopefully] get used to having lots of black journalists. And then people will be justified in criticizing affirmative action. Don't assume that there isn't a strong, under-the-surface feeling in this country that suspects black people aren't smart enough to be professionals -- that's what we have to fight.

Maybe it's good for me to see I'm not exactly in the same boat with these Slate neoliberal types. I'm a frickin' card-carrying Stalinist, damnit! Not really. And I don't know why Kaus won't link to his individual posts. I guess it's so you have to look through allll the other posts. Kind of like the way Slate doesn't set up permanent URLs for its individual columns -- you have to look at the homepage, which invariably sucks a half-hour from my day.

More on WMD

The Christian Science Monitor is really good. They're the only paper I see today looking further into the WMD bidness. Interesting points: maybe this WMD inquiry will never go far because the war went so well. So even if Bush had convinced the US to go into war because Saddam had kidnapped Laura Bush, it doesn't matter it was bullshit because we won and hey, who cares. The Monitor quotes some guy who says that these war-related probes usually happen after the war ends, but the Tonkin probe began in 1966, obviously way before the war was over, so I don't know what the hell he's talking about.

The truth is out there

...And it's not really that hard to find. Tapped points out that conservative activists are pretty up-front about what they are trying to do with their tax-cut strategies of phase-ins and sunset provisions -- make it politically infeasible for Democrats to oppose tax cuts, by making it look like opposing cuts is actually supporting tax hikes. Got that? It's hardball, and the Democrats better figure out how to hit back. Oo, bad mixed metaphor. Okay, the Democrats better start corking their bats, a la Mr Sosa.

Incidentally, if you have followed the Sosa thing, I can almost definitely say he's lying when he claims he didn't realize he was using the corked bat during the game. Baseball players obsess over their bats and know exactly what they feel like. There is no chance Sosa wouldn't have realized he was swinging ol' corky while in the on-deck circle. Just so ya know.

Feelin' peachy?

Former Nixon legal advisor John Dean says the WMD debacle may be an impeachable offense: "This is the first potential scandal I have seen that could make Watergate pale by comparison." I think he may be breathing a little too hard on this one [as did Paul Krugman last week], but the article is a good explication of the situation, and also a good recap of some of the more incriminating falsehoods that came crom Dubya's mouth and those of his minions.

[P.S. -- Just saw the Village Voice's question of the day:"Is the WMD scandal worse than Watergate?" I'll dissect and analyze tomorrow. Not that the opinion of a few thousand NY lefties is the be-all end-all...]

New thought on thinkness

I am going to be including more scientificky stuff on thinkness from now on for some reasons of personal interest. I'm going to try to steer toward 'what-does-it-mean' kinds of analysis/observations about science and technology.

This article in Metropolis Magazine is about a dope effort to make architectural components that are influenced by the natural physical properties of building materials, and the way they bend. The guy behind this idea, Haresh Lalvani, says, "By crushing structures we reveal what they want to become." I think it's an amazing idea.

Metropolis points out the similarity between this new naturalistic design idea and some of Gehry's work, like the Bilbao Guggenheim. In Gehry's work, the metal is almost cosmetic, or incidental to the building, whereas for Lalvani the metal skin provides the structure and strength.

The concept reminds me of this tunnel I went through this weekend on the way up to Yosemite National Park. Some of the tunnel was fashioned of your average smooth, flat concrete blocks. The other part was made from rough, chunky, idiosyncratic stone. So pleasing to see the stone, especially compared with the concrete. And that brings to mind the Getty museum in LA. They did a great job to bring in some natural stone, and even though it is but a facade it's still pleasing.

Two-way street

I know I post a lot of stuff from Slate. I know. Truth be told, I really like Slate. Kinsley might be my favorite political columnist. Now Slate has started ganking my stuff, too, so I'm starting to feel better about the relationship.

First War Stories posted a hostage metaphor, clearly lifted from my Die Hard-based Parable of the Hostage. Now Bushisms is taking cues from thinkness. Next stop: world domination.

Get ready for 'bulls---'

This is what I think is going to happen with the WMD hunt in Iraq: The US will eventually find a little bit of something that is almost definitely part of a no-no weapon system. They'll say See, there are weapons. The thing is that it will be something pretty small, but it will have at least proven that there were WMDs in Iraq at the outbreak of the war.

I think it's critical for people to keep their eye on the ball in this situation and remember what is the really important question: not whether there were any WMDs in Iraq in March, but whether it posed a significant threat to the US or its critical interests. Two milk jugs full of mustard gas that -- worst-case scenario -- could have sickened three GIs don't mean shit. Nothing less than the existence of a very large, very dangerous WMD stash will be acceptable as proof that this was a legit casus belli. Talkingpointsmemo did a good little bit on this, explaining that chemical weapons would've been almost useless against the US and that nukes were really the only W that deserved the MD label [end of this post].

I hope the media don't believe the hype and let the administration get off the hook for its deceit when weapons inspectors find the evil milk jugs.

[The title of this post is referring to Powell's calling some 'intelligence' about Iraq 'bullshit'. And for some reason Salon was the only publication I saw that actually wrote 'bullshit' -- most just wrote 'bull****' or 'bulls***'. This is annoying. Just write the fucking word. Maureen Dowd actually wrote '$%&*#' without including any of the word's real letters. Dowdy is more like it. In any case, it's thinknesses job to protect you from bullshit so I figured I should let you know.]

A shocking display of self-awareness

'"I'm the master of low expectations" and "we accomplished what I hoped we'd accomplish."'

-Dubya in the NYTimes on Middle East peace process

Color -- ain't that the truth

Finally I'm getting a Texan into my color chronic section: 'Error runs around the world before the truth can get its boots on.'

I should probably just troll Ivins and Hightower columns to get color bits. Or I could just trot out one from Dan Rather's bizarro Election2000 performance every once in a while. [Rather also mentioned the horseshoes and hand grenades bit, as I did earlier.]

Color -- processed programming

FCC Commish Jonathan Adelstein on the new, more permissive ownership rules: 'If this is the toaster with pictures, soon only Wonder Bread will pop out.'

By the way, if you read the comments from the five commissioners [available at FCC homepage] the disparity between libertarian and communitarian is quite apparent: All three libs stress their duty to uphold the law adopted by Congress, both coms lean on their duty to help the public interest. It's an interesting split and would for me be a difficult one to maneuver -- how do you balance the competing tasks that come with this nebulous job.

Best story ever

Oh, this is just too cool. Salam Pax is real, and Slate has a dope story on the guy.

If you weren't obsessing over the news, Salam Pax [I would call it a nom de plume de guerre] runs a stellar blog from Baghdad that covered the run-up to the war, the war itself, and the aftermath. [Looks like Salam posted a short response to the Slate story and admits it is correct. Also has a good piece on Internet service in the anarchy zone.]

Salam seems so cool from the article. The Guardian was pretty sharp to sign him up for a column, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised about that any more.

Communitarians unite!

Didn't take long before I came across another textbook example of conservatives and liberals unified by their communitarian leanings. Steven Pinker writes in the Globe ideas section:

'In his book ''Our Posthuman Future'' (just released in paperback), the conservative thinker Francis Fukuyama warns that genetic enhancement will change human nature itself and corrode the notion of a common humanity that undergirds the social order. Bill McKibben, writing from the political left, raises similar concerns in his new jeremiad ''Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age.'''

This reminded me about one other aspect of communitarians: They are generally traditionalists, as opposed to the more futurist libertarians. This isn't inherent to the definition of communitarian or libertarian, but is rather a psychological connection in those types of minds. People who are communitarians are more likely to be good-ol-day-ers who like power in social groups and are more likely to be a bit skittish about designer babies.

Interesting article, by the way. It includes another...

Color -- moon monkeys?

'Why are technological predictions usually wrong? Many futurologists write as if current progress can be extrapolated indefinitely-committing the fallacy of climbing trees to get to the moon.'

All the bases

There is bad news afoot. The FCC voted to scrap some of the rules limiting concentration of media ownership. This story has lots of interesting points.

Point the first -- Color -- he's back already

After the US hit its stride in Iraq II: The Reckoning and started routing the Iraqi forces, lots of folks became big fans of the Iraqi [dis]information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf [or however you want to transliterate it -- more possibilities than Chanukah, or however you want to spell that]. 'Baghdad Bob' managed to decry the puny forces of the invading infidel even as there were laser scopes trained on his beret. Innummerable fansites popped up in his honor. It was only a matter of time before someone referred to him in an attempt to make a serious political putdown: 'If Saddam Hussein had stayed in business, [FCC Chairman Michael] Powell might have made a great minister of information.'

Point the second -- argue, don't kvetch

Overall, I certainly think this move is bad. But I also see a wee bit too much liberal hand-wringing on this issue about blah blah so-and-so, this is all terrible, the world's going to blow up, torch the corporations, etc ad nauseum. I generally agree, but I think there's room for a little better argumentation about what exactly is going on with these policies.

I think that some of the rules are arbitrary, outmoded, and not very effective guardians of the public interest. For instance, the rule limiting one company to owning stations that only reach 35% of US households. There should be no limit at all [the new rule limits one owner to 45% of households]; it doesn't really matter if NBC buys up every NBC affiliate station in the country.

What is far more important is that NBC not own very many stations in any market. Viacom, for example, has undue, monopolistic, and public-interest-shafting control of communication through its ownership of CBS, MTV, VH1, and lots of other cable channels. If I were more liberal about using my G-d power I would smack Viacom down and prevent this kind of concentration of voices.

The overall point is just that yes, there is too much concentration of media power, voices, and money, but that doesn't mean that any limitation on media ownership is bad. We need some better rules, but some of the existing ones are just relics from the broadcast era that don't work and, unfortunately, make all rules regarding media concentration look ridiculous.

Point the third -- hung up in 1D

This media debate also shows the limitation in the common view of the political spectrum as a simple line. Political beliefs, the conventional wisdom says, can be plotted at one point on a line, from communist to fascist, continuing on to the Bush administration. This ignores the next political axis: communitarian/libertarian. Essentially, communitarians believe that government has more of a right and obligation to sculpt policies in the public interest, while libertarians believe the government must do as little as possible as a referee while private actors do everything.

Sometimes, a person's location on the communitarian/libertarian axis is more important than along the liberal/conservative one. And in those cases, you sometimes get liberals agreeing with conservatives. It happens not all that infrequently if you follow the news, but media folks always insist on branding this agreement 'unusual' or 'odd' or something. The media debate is one of these cases: The NRA and NOW are both arguing against changing the media-ownership rules. One is a liberal group, one is conservative, but they are both more communitarian than Michael Powell, which brings me to...

Point the fourth -- praying for the switcheroo

The Post's Shales suspects that Michael Powell might have his eyes on the attorney general spot if Bush is reelected [I was thinking of putting in the two dots above the second e in reelected, all snobby like how the New Yorker does it]. I don't know if he has any information on this, but I say bring it on. From everything I've heard about Powell, he's not such a bad guy. People say he's an 'ideologue', but is that really so bad? Yah, he's an ideologue: He's a real libertarian that thinks that deregulation is good. It's not that crazy, though I happen to disagree. That's just what he believes.

And from what I've seen I'd waay rather have him as AG than Asscock. He probably wouldn't do too much damage there. Libertarian perspectives on crime'n'punishment are pretty normal; administering justice is one of the few things that libertarians think the government should do [as opposed to, say, regulating media companies].

Meanwhile, Asscock is an absolute fucking nightmare as AG. With the Bible in his hand, he speaketh the truth from on high and will punisheth any heretics [i.e. evildoers]. Asscock is a real conservative, as opposed to a libertarian, and would probably have more interventionist ideas about the FCC than Powell. Lots of conservatives oppose the rule changes because they like local control and diversity of voices.

Right now we've got the worst of all possible worlds: the Bible-thumper flaying suspected criminals via divine decree and the libertarian ripping away all the government limits on media concentration. I say switch 'em -- set the Bible-thumper on defending communities and charge the hyper-rational libertarian with fairly prosecuting criminals.

Longest post ever. Thanks for reading. Get to work.