Keith Olbermann on Rumsfeld, govt infallibility and fascism

The man who sees absolutes, where all other men see nuances and shades of meaning, is either a prophet, or a quack.

Donald H. Rumsfeld is not a prophet.

Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis--and the sober contemplation--of every American.

For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.

Dissent and disagreement with government is the life's blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as "his" troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.

It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right and the power to which it speaks, is wrong.

In a small irony, however, Mr. Rumsfeld's speechwriter was adroit in invoking the memory of the appeasement of the Nazis. For in their time, there was another government faced with true peril--with a growing evil--powerful and remorseless.

That government, like Mr. Rumsfeld's, had a monopoly on all the facts. It, too, had the "secret information." It alone had the true picture of the threat. It too dismissed and insulted its critics in terms like Mr. Rumsfeld's -- questioning their intellect and their morality.

That government was England's, in the 1930's.

It knew Hitler posed no true threat to Europe, let alone England.

It knew Germany was not re-arming, in violation of all treaties and accords.

It knew that the hard evidence it received, which contradicted its own policies, its own conclusions -- its own omniscience -- needed to be dismissed.

The English government of Neville Chamberlain already knew the truth.

Most relevant of all -- it "knew" that its staunchest critics needed to be marginalized and isolated. In fact, it portrayed the foremost of them as a blood-thirsty war-monger who was, if not truly senile, at best morally or intellectually confused.

That critic's name was Winston Churchill.

Sadly, we have no Winston Churchills evident among us this evening. We have only Donald Rumsfelds, demonizing disagreement, the way Neville Chamberlain demonized Winston Churchill.

History -- and 163 million pounds of Luftwaffe bombs over England -- have taught us that all Mr. Chamberlain had was his certainty -- and his own confusion. A confusion that suggested that the office can not only make the man, but that the office can also make the facts.

Thus, did Mr. Rumsfeld make an apt historical analogy.

Excepting the fact, that he has the battery plugged in backwards.

His government, absolute -- and exclusive -- in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.

It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.

But back to today's Omniscient ones.

That, about which Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this: This is a Democracy. Still. Sometimes just barely.

And, as such, all voices count -- not just his.

Had he or his president perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience -- about Osama Bin Laden's plans five years ago, about Saddam Hussein's weapons four years ago, about Hurricane Katrina's impact one year ago -- we all might be able to swallow hard, and accept their "omniscience" as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact, plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris.

Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina, to the entire "Fog of Fear" which continues to envelop this nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, and their cronies have -- inadvertently or intentionally -- profited and benefited, both personally, and politically.

And yet he can stand up, in public, and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes?

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

The confusion we -- as its citizens-- must now address, is stark and forbidding.

But variations of it have faced our forefathers, when men like Nixon and McCarthy and Curtis LeMay have darkened our skies and obscured our flag. Note -- with hope in your heart -- that those earlier Americans always found their way to the light, and we can, too.

The confusion is about whether this Secretary of Defense, and this administration, are in fact now accomplishing what they claim the terrorists seek: The destruction of our freedoms, the very ones for which the same veterans Mr. Rumsfeld addressed yesterday in Salt Lake City, so valiantly fought.

And about Mr. Rumsfeld's other main assertion, that this country faces a "new type of fascism."

As he was correct to remind us how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that -- though probably not in the way he thought he meant it.

This country faces a new type of fascism - indeed.

Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.

But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: "confused" or "immoral."

Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."

And so good night, and good luck.

Spinning the bullets

This is a good article, read the whole thing (but at minimum, click on the links in cluded below) at:

Spinning the bullets the Guardian Unlimited: News blog

...You can find the roots of [the refusal to accept the reasons behind the bad coverage from Iraq] in the sincere belief among many American conservatives that the media should be used as a partisan tool to advance their political ends - an attitude encapsulated in the infamous Nixon-era memo by late Supreme Court judge Lewis Powell, seen by many as the seed from which the modern conservative media backlash has grown....

...The fact that Washington seems to believe its own propaganda, blaming the media for all this seems astonishing. But as US social theorist Eric Hoffer pointed out, propaganda doesn't so much deceive people, as help them to deceive themselves.

Disaster capitalism: how to make money out of misery

Katrina is a classic example of what you get when you put people (Rethuglicans) whao are ideologically opposed to the government in charge of the government - dithering, delay and disfunction:

The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).

We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent.

But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditure for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatised disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).

I call it the Disaster Capitalism Complex. Whatever you might need in a serious crunch, these contractors can provide it: generators, watertanks, cots, port-a-potties, mobile homes, communications systems, helicopters, medicine, men with guns.

This state-within-a-state has been built almost exclusively with money from public contracts, including the training of its staff (overwhelmingly former civil servants, politicians and soldiers). Yet it is all privately owned; taxpayers have absolutely no control over it or claim to it....

News from the work front

The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.

As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.”

Under Bush - and his congressional enablers - we continue to go backwards: in foreign relations, on civil liberties and in dollars and cents, both at home and with the all time largest Federal budget deficit.

Had enough?

Bush's 'malaise moment'

But in Bush-speak is it not a malaise (as it came to be called when Carter sought to shift blame) but rather a "straining [of] the psyche of our country."

Translation: the American people are to blame if Bush's policies fail.

Yes, this is the critical turning point when the failed politician points the finger of blame not at himself but at the public he has served so poorly. He tried blaming the terrorists, he tried blaming his predecessor, he tried blaming the messenger. And now (like Hitler in the bunker) he has run out of people to blame - so the blame falls upon the people themselves for failing Der Fuehrer.

Make no mistake about it, this is Bush's attempt to fob off blame for his failure as the fault of American citizens' collective loss of nerve, not flawed policies he built upon a house of cards composed of lies and neo-con fantasies.

'Straining the psyche' will go down in history as a moment - like Carter's 'crisis of confidence' malaise speech or Ford's WIN buttons - that crystalized the fact that this man has no clue what he is doing or what he is up against. And that means that the rest of us are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Think Progress - THE ARCHITECTS OF WAR

Mass murder in the skies: was the plot feasible?

So, did the latest 'terror scare' have a snowball's chance in hell of actually taking place? that is the question asked in the following very insightful post:

Binary liquid explosives are a sexy staple of Hollywood thrillers....

Now we have news of the recent, supposedly real-world, terrorist plot to destroy commercial airplanes by smuggling onboard the benign precursors to a deadly explosive, and mixing up a batch of liquid death in the lavatories. So, The Register has got to ask, were these guys for real, or have they, and the counterterrorist officials supposedly protecting us, been watching too many action movies?

We're told that the suspects were planning to use TATP, or triacetone triperoxide, a high explosive that supposedly can be made from common household chemicals unlikely to be caught by airport screeners. A little hair dye, drain cleaner, and paint thinner - all easily concealed in drinks bottles - and the forces of evil have effectively smuggled a deadly bomb onboard your plane.

Or at least that's what we're hearing, and loudly, through the mainstream media and its legions of so-called "terrorism experts." But what do these experts know about chemistry? Less than they know about lobbying for Homeland Security pork, which is what most of them do for a living. But they've seen the same movies that you and I have seen, and so the myth of binary liquid explosives dies hard....

It turns out actually mixing the chemicals is a several hours long process that requires delicate mixing (otherwise the mixture will go 'poof' without the force necessary to do much damage - except perhaps kill the person mixing) and abundant amounts of coolant:

After a few hours - assuming, by some miracle, that the fumes haven't overcome you or alerted passengers or the flight crew to your activities - you'll have a quantity of TATP with which to carry out your mission. Now all you need to do is dry it for an hour or two....

Certainly, if we can imagine a group of jihadists smuggling the necessary chemicals and equipment on board, and cooking up TATP in the lavatory, then we've passed from the realm of action blockbusters to that of situation comedy....

But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot. Liquids are now banned in aircraft cabins (while crystalline white powders would be banned instead, if anyone in charge were serious about security). Nearly everything must now go into the hold, where adequate amounts of explosives can easily be detonated from the cabin with cell phones, which are generally not banned....

It's a pity that our security rests in the hands of government officials who understand as little about terrorism as the Florida clowns who needed their informant to suggest attack scenarios, as the 21/7 London bombers who injured no one, as lunatic "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, as the Forest Gate nerve gas attackers who had no nerve gas, as the British nitwits who tried to acquire "red mercury," and as the recent binary liquid bomb attackers who had no binary liquid bombs....

Our official protectors and deciders trumpet the fools they catch because they haven't got a handle on the people we should really be afraid of. They make policy based on foibles and follies, and Hollywood plots.

Meanwhile, the real thing draws ever closer.

Of course, what the article doesn't address is WHY the ernest focus on the nitwits - in order to scare the bejesus out of the rest of us, of course. Because when people are afraid they don't ask questions and they rally around the authorities, no matter how incompetent those authorities (Bush and Blair) might be. In short, it is a cynical attempt to shore up declining polling numbers.

Thankfully, according to the polls, by now the public seems to have finally heard the cry 'wolf' one time too many.

Judge to Bush: "No hereditary Kings in America"

The Government appears to argue here that, pursuant to the penumbra of Constitutional language in Article II, and particularly because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.

We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all "inherent power" must derive from that Constitution.

Here is some quick analysis:

...the court made its scorn quite clear for the administration's Yoo [John Yoo, Bush regime lawyer] theory of executive power because, as the court put it, "there are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution." Citing Youngstown again, the court made clear that even in time of war, and even with regard to the President's Commander-in-Chief powers, the President is subject to constitutional restrictions -- a proposition long unquestioned in our system of government until the Bush administration began inventing radical theories of executive power.

Even conservatives skeptical of recent 'terror plot'

Read the whole thing...

So far, no one has been charged in the alleged terror plot to blow up several airplanes across the Atlantic. No evidence has been produced supporting the contention that such a plot was indeed imminent. Forgive me if my skepticism just ratcheted up a little notch. Under a law that the Tories helped weaken, the suspects can be held without charges for up to 28 days. Those days are ticking by. Remember: the British authorities had all these people under surveillance; they did not want to act last week; there was no imminent threat of anything but a possible "dummy-run," whatever deranged guest-bloggers at Malkin say. (Correction, please.) Bush and Blair discussed whether to throw Britain's airports into chaos over the weekend before the crackdown occurred....

...I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.

Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson.

A Primeval Tide of Toxins

In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading.

Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked.

Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

Jeremy B.C. Jackson, a marine ecologist and paleontologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, says we are witnessing "the rise of slime."

For many years, it was assumed that the oceans were too vast for humanity to damage in any lasting way. "Man marks the Earth with ruin," wrote the 19th century poet Lord Byron. "His control stops with the shore."

Even in modern times, when oil spills, chemical discharges and other industrial accidents heightened awareness of man's capacity to injure sea life, the damage was often regarded as temporary.

But over time, the accumulation of environmental pressures has altered the basic chemistry of the seas.

The causes are varied, but collectively they have made the ocean more hospitable to primitive organisms by putting too much food into the water.

Industrial society is overdosing the oceans with basic nutrients — the nitrogen, carbon, iron and phosphorous compounds that curl out of smokestacks and tailpipes, wash into the sea from fertilized lawns and cropland, seep out of septic tanks and gush from sewer pipes.

Modern industry and agriculture produce more fixed nitrogen — fertilizer, essentially — than all the Earth's natural processes. Million of tons of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, produced by burning fossil fuels, enter the ocean every day.

These pollutants feed excessive growth of harmful algae and bacteria.

At the same time, overfishing and destruction of wetlands have diminished the competing sea life and natural buffers that once held the microbes and weeds in check.

The consequences are evident worldwide.

Iran: The Next War

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.
BY JAMES BAMFORD

...In the Pentagon's view, according to one senior official there at the time, Iran was nothing but "a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice." So far, though, the White House had rejected the Pentagon's plan, favoring the State Department's more moderate position of diplomacy. Now, unwilling to play by the rules any longer, Franklin was taking the extraordinary—and illegal—step of passing on highly classified information to lobbyists for a foreign state. Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member of Feith's secret unit in the Pentagon was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran.

It was a role that AIPAC was eager to play. Rosen, recognizing that Franklin could serve as a useful spy, immediately began plotting ways to plant him in the White House—specifically in the National Security Council, the epicenter of intelligence and national-security policy. By working there, Rosen told Franklin a few days later, he would be "by the elbow of the president."

Knowing that such a maneuver was well within AIPAC's capabilities, Franklin asked Rosen to "put in a good word" for him. Rosen agreed. "I'll do what I can," he said, adding that the breakfast meeting had been a real "eye-opener."

Working together, the two men hoped to sell the United States on yet another bloody war. A few miles away, digital recorders at the FBI's Language Services Section captured every word....

It's all about oil?

...We are trained to think of Middle Eastern conflicts as modern flare-ups of ancient tribal animosities. But to uncover why the flames won't die, the usual rule applies: follow the money.

Am I saying that Tehran, Riyadh and Houston oil chieftains conspired to ignite a war to boost their petroleum profits? I can't imagine it. But I do wonder whether Bush would let Olmert have an extra week of bombings, or the potentates of the Persian Gulf would allow Hamas and Hizbullah to continue their deadly fireworks if by doing so they would cause the price of crude to crash.

You know and I know that if this war took a bite out of Exxon or the House of Saud, a ceasefire would be imposed quicker than you can say "Let's drill in the Arctic."

Blame the Bloggers - Joe Conason

The conventional narrative of what may become Joe Lieberman’s final campaign for public office—parroted faithfully by pundits and politicians who admire the Connecticut Senator—is a moving tale of courageous dissent in the very maw of fanatical extremism. It is the story of a supremely decent public servant, purged by party activists with a mean-spirited, shortsighted, single-issue obsession. And it is a fable with a familiar moral, supposedly proving once more that the Democratic Party cannot be trusted to protect America.

Compelling as this account of the beleaguered Democrat’s travails may sound, it is very much like his position on the war in Iraq: wrong, superficial and divorced from reality.

And wingnuts like to mock the French?

But it seems that it is the British, or more specifically, Blair's 'new Labourites' who are the spineless lickspittles of Europe:

You will have your own view - there's so much to choose from - on which part of the open-mic conversation between George W Bush and Tony Blair at the Yo Summit was the most toe-curling. One of my favourite excruciating moments is when Bush thanks Blair for sending him a Burberry sweater as a birthday gift. The American President sends up the British Prime Minister by mocking: 'I know you picked it out yourself.'

There's no question which exchange is most enjoyable for those with contempt for the Prime Minister. It is the moment that makes Mr Blair look like the poodle of popular caricature. Worse, he comes over as a poodle who can't even beg his master to toss him a dog biscuit. It is the same bit of the encounter that has caused the most wincing among the Prime Minister's friends.

When Tony Blair offers himself as a Middle East peace envoy, he is casually rebuffed by the American President between bites on a bread roll. Told by Bush that 'Condi is going', the normally fluent Blair is reduced to inarticulate jabbering. 'Well, it's only if, I mean, you know, if she's got a... or if she needs the ground prepared as it were... Because obviously if she goes out, she's got to succeed, if it were, whereas I can go out and just talk.' Yeah, just talk.

It was awful for Tony Blair to be caught asking for permission to go to the Middle East. It was dire to hear George Bush saying he wouldn't let the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom go out - not even on a pointless trip. It looks even more humiliating when the French Foreign Minister is going.

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis - New York Times

U.S. Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis - New York Times
So much for being an 'honest broker' of any cease fire talks. This is sure to do wonders for our position in Afghanistan and Iraq as well.

Must read parody

And like the Daily Show this parody provides a more accurate assessment of the Finals and the D-Wade cult than all the ink spilled in the MSM:

D-Wade: The Transcendent Super-human

NBA = WWF

And that's the thing that bothers me about this series: No team depends on the refs quite like the Heat. When the refs are calling all the bumps on Shaq and protecting Wade on every drive, they're unstoppable. When they're calling everything fairly, they're eminently beatable. If they're not getting any calls, they're just about hopeless. I could see the refs swinging two games in Miami's favor during this series, possibly three. In fact, I'm already depressed about it and the series hasn't even started yet. [emphasis added]

Well, after watching the refs hand the game over to Miami but putting Dwyane W. - after an out of control drive against three players resulted in a predictably lame shot that missed - at the free throw line with 1.9 seconds left in a one point game I would have to agree with ESPN's Simmons: the NBA refs have been swinging games to Miami.

The worst of it is that Dwyane was not fouled - as replays clearly showed.

I say the above not being a fan of either team, but a fan of basketball. What we are seeing is no longer basketball - it has become choreographed, scripted, ridiculous. Room is still left for the players to play, but not all the way and not all the time. For example, not only did Dwyane get to decide the game at the FT line, but his FT attempts equalled the entire Dallas team. Not surprisingly Dwyane made more FTs this game than any other player in the entire 50 year history of the NBA Finals.

The refs swing games in subtle and not so subtle ways. For example, Dirk Nowitzki is punished by the opposition every time he touches the ball - actually before he touches the ball. Dirk is 'bodied-up' in the parlance - full body contact to push him and keep him off balance. This is routine - as is the lack of a call. Meanwhile, contrast that with the treatment of Dwyane - where merely a poor shot is oftentimes enough to warrent a whistle as in the case of the final shot of the game. I could go on, but why bother?

It is time for the people who value the sport to speak up. Wait for the sportswriters to do so and you will have a long wait. They know what side their bread is buttered on.

People will say 'but Dallas could have won if...' but isn't the point that both teams should have equal chances? You can play the same game saying 'Miami should have one if...' but they got and extra chance. That is why it is not fair. That is why the NBA and their refs and the favoritism that is rife is destroying any belief in spontaneity as opposed to scripted endings. One team should not have to win by four of more points - it should be fair.

UPDATE:
Photo of 'foul' being called

Video of 'foul' - notice how quickly the ref signals for the foul, before Nowitzki even has an opportunity to push, which in any case he does not.

Another video showing the entire sequence including Dwyane Wade jumping in the air in the frontcourt, catching the ball and landing in the backcourt, then using his left forearm to knock Jason Terry (the Maverick with the high socks) out of bounds right in front of the ref before his out of control drive to the hoop.

NBA Finals - Rileyball: end of an era?

Following the Mavericks's blowout of the Heat on Sunday, Heat coach Pat Riley claimed it was due to the passion and the intensity of the Dallas players.

"This game was about another team's competitiveness and energy," the [Miami Heat] coach [Pat Riley] said. "Their energy and their effort far surpassed ours."

Baaaahhhhmmmmpt!

Sorry, try again.

Riley - whose post-Showtime reputation is one of a motivator first, defensive tactician second (especially on how to exploit the no-longer operative illegal defense rules) and offensive guru last - is as regular as Old Faithful when it comes to his diagnosis of his team's ills. Any of his teams. He sang the same song in LA. He sang it in NY. He sang it before and he is singing it again in Miami. For Riley it always comes down to who wants it more, who works harder, who is more motivated.

It is that sort of tunnel-vision that explains much about why Riley's team has not been competitive in these first few Finals games. Riley has failed the team as much if not more than any other person. He has failed them because he himself has failed to adapt to changing times.

'Rileyball' was an epithet given to the ugly shove'n'grab basketball that Riley promoted at the tail end of his run in LA and throughout his reign at NY and Miami. Its essence is to drain the air out of the ball by making the game a physical wrestling match, permitting the team with the biggest, most committed goons to bludgeon their way to victory.

Essential to this strategy is having a few stars (to, you know, actually put the ball into the basket) and surrounding them with flawed players who possessed the mindset of berserker warriors. The stars would score the ball through isolation and a two-on-two game while the supporting cast would provide the mania, occasionally chipping in with a spot-up bucket.

Not surprisingly, this led to the ugliest basketball this side of the shot-clock. Riley, being the pacesetter he was among the coaching fraternity had a great impact on how the game was played. This impact was heightened by his undeniable success, which was due in part to the good fortune he exercised in selecting the teams whose sideline he would grace and his unparalleled skill in exploiting the rules as they then existed - particularly the illegal defense rule, which he bent and broke on the defensive side (leading to several revisions of the rules) and just as importantly, which allowed him to reduce offense to isolations for his star players while hiding the deficiencies of the 'supporting cast.'

Now Riley was not alone in forging this unholy union between physical D and minimal O, but he was perhaps the most extreme exponent (even if not the most successful - witness Phil Jackson). Eventually, however, the league, facing declining attendence and televisual indifference, acted to restore the flow and beauty to what is intended to be a team game. As Boston sportsguru Bob Ryan put it:

Simply put, isolations had to go.

"My abiding sense," explains commissioner David Stern, "and Jerry's abiding sense [Jerry Colangelo, that is], was that isolation really was -- it seemed designed to hide the talents of a good percentage of our players and that we had to try to do something better than that. Hard defense -- good, smothering defense -- was OK from our perspective. If so, what was the offensive set? You put one guy in the corner and four guys, as I've said, in the parking lot, and that's NBA basketball?

The second problem: "There was a lot of slowing down players on the way to the basket, but not necessarily rising to the level of a foul," continued Stern. Hence the advent of ``points of emphasis" by the 2004-2005 season, which, according to Stern, ``began to allow players to move about without getting clipped on a regular basis so that there was no foul, but by the time they whorled their way to the basket it was as though they had been on a forced march."

Eliminating the 'illegal defense' and permitting zone defenses was a simple and ingenious method to restoring team offense. Why? Because teams with one or two stars could not simply hide their offensively inept teammates and in so doing make their counterparts vanish from the hardwood equation. All five players had to participate on offense or else allow the defense the luxury of any combination of doubleteams and zone defenses. Likewise, the crackdown on physical 'clipping' of players premits a freer flow of players on offense - thereby rewarding movement without the ball, something that had virtually vanished during the Rileyball era.

But what, you may ask, has this to do with the 2006 Finals? Well, it is a funny thing, but coaches, like so many other professional fraternities, are slow to adapt new ways of doing things. The rule changes themselves, although they had some immediate impact with regard to the efficiency of particular players, have not truly been exploited in a systematic fashion that demonstrates what is now possible. That is, not until this year's Finals. It took a coach who is creative and visionary (Avery Johnson), supported by the right organization (Mark Cuban's Dallas Mavericks), to conclusively demonstrate that the future of the NBA lies in a team game - both on defense and offense - and that the deeper and more talented team will benefit from the renewed emphasis on movement, speed, skills (like passing and shooting) and honest-to-goodness teamwork.

Most coaches and teams have stuck to what they took to be the virtues of Rileyball, which is how Riley and his Frankenstein monster of a Rileyball team - the Miami Heat - were able to cruise to the Finals. Not that they didn't encounter a few bumps on the way, but for the most part their opponents stuck to the Rileyball script allowing the Heat - who had the biggest baddest Rileyball star ever in Shaquille O'Neal - to prevail.

Shaq - a star who is also a goon - is the personification of Rileyball and to what depths the play in the league had fallen. Although personally beyond reproach, his lack of professional discipline (witness his FT woes) and reliance upon his brute strength to make up for his never having refined a post game by developing a go-to shot were not a handicap to success. Why? Because in Rileyball strength trumps skill, size trumps speed and a few talented individuals can outplay a roster of well-rounded team players. Shaq has never had to develop a proper post game because he could alway simply knock over his man and dunk the ball, or at worst, clear his opponent away with one arm while flipping a half-hook up with his other. And if the shot didn't go, he would simply go get the rebound and try again. He could do this because opponents had to play him one-on-one, allowing his immense size dictate the outcome either initially or in the scrum for the ensuing rebound. Or, if they did decide to double, the defense had to leave someone wide open, since zones were forbidden. And Shaq has never felt compelled to overcome his problems at the free throw line, since his advantages were so overwhelming that he could afford to miss bundles of free throws and still contribute to his team's victory.

None of this is to say that Shaq has not worked hard at his craft (particularly when it came to anything that would allow him to dunk the ball more thunderously), but his lack of basic skills, his indifference to conditioning, his almost arrogant refusal to refine his post game, instead relying for the most part on innate size and relative quickness, and his success despite these factors are symbolic of the rot that had set in with the rise of Rileyball. A player such as Shaq could only dominate the game as long as his team could isolate him on offense close to the basket, where his overwhelming bulk could determine the outcome most of the time.

But that has changed now, even though most of the league still does not realize it. You can now punish teams that are predictable on offense by keying on those predictabilities. Shaq is used to getting the ball, holding it and deciding whether to go for the dunk or pass it to an open player. But without the old illegal defense rules teams no longer have to wait to double team him and if they do they can zone the rest of his teammates. Shaq can no longer simply hold the ball since the double teams will be all the quicker and the open shots will no longer be quite so open. By allowing for team defense the NBA has allowed coaches to try and force teams to play team offense. Rileyball, however, is not predicated on team offense. It depends on isolation, which can mask the deficiencies of an Antoine Walker, a Jason Williams or an Udonis Haslem.

Avery Johnson and the Dallas Mavericks are showing the basketball community that the rules have changed and that the old ways of doing things are no longer sufficient. No longer will it be enough to simply dump the ball into the post and wait for the double team - over and over and over again. No longer will it be sufficient to simply get the bigger, badder frontline thug and let them 'punish in the paint.' Offense needs diversity, passing, ball and player movement - otherwise doubleteams and zones will smother even the biggest, baddest big man of all time.

None of this is to say that Shaq's career is over. He is talented and will continue to contribute for years to come. But the time is coming to a close when he could simply dominate by leisurly brushing players aside, waiting for the pass and either dunking or passing out to a wide open teammate - time after time after time. It is sad in a way, because Shaq clearly is not prepared for the changes that are going to be required of him. He is going to need a go-to post move, one which he can use quickly and reliably time-in and time-out. He also needs to get over his mental block, swallow his pride and learn to shoot free throws, because he can no longer simply make up for misses by bulling over players in the post time and again. These are skills he clearly could develop, but has never had to. Will he in the time left to him?

Regardless of what Shaq decides in the future, however, it seems clear that Riley has not prepared him or his teammates for it. Riley himself seems unaware of how the NBA game has changed. In part, that is due to the inherent conservativism of his coaching brethren. But at the same time, coaches are quick to adopt what works, and if nothing else, Avery Johnson has shown - on the biggest stage of all - how to stop Rileyball dead in its tracks. While Riley rants on about 'competitiveness' and 'energy' and 'effort,' staples of the Rileyball mantra, the rest of the league is witnessing the game as it passes him by. The game has changed but Riley has not. There were no apparent adjustments for the Heat between games One and Two and, if Riley remains true to form, there won't be any during the last few games of the series either.

Wake up: the American Dream is over

Sad, but true. Those in the 'middle class' can continue to leverage themselves up with help from their parents (I don't know anyone in my age cohort who has bought a house without parental support). And of course double income households are a necessity now. But how long can such leveraging continue to prop up the current state of affairs? With debt at an all-time high? With the real estate bubble set to burst? And when it does a large segment of the 'middle class' will become part of the 'struggling-to-get-by class.'

Here is a sobering article (follow the link to read the whole thing) that essentially states the case as objectively from an outside perspective: in short, that the U.S. is becoming a North American Brazil - a land where the elite have rigged the game against the rest of us.

Wake up: the American Dream is over by Paul Harris of The Observer:

Over the past few decades there has been a fundamental shift in the structure of the American economy. The gap between rich and poor has widened and widened. As it does so, the ability to cross that gap gets smaller and smaller. This is far from business as usual but there seems little chance of it stopping, not least because it appears to be government policy....

And still the American government is set on tax breaks for the rich. Bush's first-term tax cuts notoriously benefited the upper strata of American taxpayers. So much so that even Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world who benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, has said the tax cuts 'scream of injustice'. As head of a hugely successful investment firm, it is hard to paint Buffet as a lefty liberal who hates Wall Street (though, bizarrely, some conservatives do try).

Dems need to be addressing the long-term perspective when they discuss economics - not just facts and figures but what kind of nation we want in the future. The options are out there: a land of opportunity or a country characterized by elitism and dashed dreams.

Still the tax cuts go on. This week one of the main political debates in Washington has been about scrapping the 'estate tax' whereby those who inherit large amounts from their relatives will be taxed on it. This overwhelmingly affects the wealthy. The estate tax is already set so high ($400m) that only one in 200 estates pay any tax at all when they are inherited....

Yet the White House and many politicians, overwhelmingly Republican, want to get rid of it. The lobbying campaign against it has been financed mostly by 18 business dynasties, including the family that owns WalMart. At the same time the Bush administration has sanctioned millions of dollars of cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and the education budget as part of a measure aimed at reducing the spiraling deficit. This is, frankly, obscene.

Race and immigration feed into this debate too, of course. Many Americans could care less about the working poor because they are seen as 'different': brown-skinned 'foreigners.' Racial and cultural divides are typically the point where elites seek to drive wedges between people who otherwise share similar interests. That is why the Dems need a realistic policy on immigration. While criminalization is not an option, rigorous enforcement - particularly of corporate violators - should precede the attempt to grant political rights in order to integrate the existing 'illegal' population. A 'guest-worker' solution is no solution at all, since it will only perpetuate an underclass of disenfranchised workers. We need to integrate - with full political rights - the entire American workforce, but politically this is only realistic if the laws on illegal immigration are meaningfully enforced.

The effect of all this has been to scotch that long-cherished notion of the American Dream: that honest toil is enough to reap the rewards and let even the poorest join the middle class, or maybe even strike it rich. A survey last year showed that such economic mobility (a measure of those people trying to make the Dream come true) was lower in America than Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. In fact, the only country doing as bad as America was Britain....

Now this is not some argument against capitalism. Inequality is inevitable. It is a good thing. People need incentives. People need competition. People need markets. Some people will always be poor. Others deserve to be rich. But at the moment it looks like the rules of the game are being fixed in America in favour of the wealthy....

Feingold and "firm principles"

Senator Russ Feingold's interview with Chris Cillizza and Dan Balz was posted on the WaPo today. In it Feingold hits on one issue that has haunted the Dems since Jimmy Carter - that they are a party of vaccilators - 'professional politicians' perpetually with their fingers in the air and with the moral backbone of an octopus.

Let's start with a broad question about the Democratic Party. There's all this talk about what ails the Democratic Party. What do you think the party's situation is these days and what needs to be done about it.

SEN. FEINGOLD:

...There is this deep sense, especially in the base of the party, that we don't have firm principles or that if we have firm principles, we're not stating them firmly. And it is amazing to hear people, almost as if they've had the same script, saying we are tired of Democrats looking weak.

So that appears to be the conviction. I don't think people are as concerned about what the exact issues are as this feeling that we don't act like we are ready to govern this country both domestically and also especially ... standing up to the White House with regard to the mistakes and abuses of the post-9/11 era.

So that's what I hear. I'm convinced it is accurate.

I'm convinced that Russ is right on target on this issue. As a college instructor of political science who has worked on the campaign trail, I can't tell you how much people crave politicians to be straight with them. I've had it expressed to me many times by various people that they would prefer a candidate with strong, heartfelt convictions - even if some of those convictions differ from the voter's own - rather than a candidate who appears deceptive about their views, willing to to pander to everyone - in short, one who is indecisive, a 'waffler,' a 'flip-flopper.'

I've read on blogs where people wonder why Bush never gets tagged as a flip-flopper, most recently with regard to the turnabout in negotiations with Iran. Part of any full answer would naturally have to take into account the biases of the press, but even more importantly I think is the fact that Bush does articulate strongly held beliefs in strong language (regardless of what he really thinks on such issues). Given what we 'know' about Bush, any deviation from such beliefs then appears as a statesman-like act.

Contrast that with the caricature of the 'dithering Dems' that has grown up over the past 30 years and epitomized by Carter's malaise speech on the one hand and Kerry's 'I voted for it before I voted against it' on the other. This lack of fortitude is one of the reasons why people have doubts about the Dems when it comes to foreign policy. It is not just the policy themselves, but the behavior of the candidates that sets the tone, as documented by Josh Marshall in his Bitch-Slap theory of presidential politics (Someone who can't fight for himself certainly can't fight for you).

Chris Cillizza, who also wrote up a summary of the interview and of Feingold's career and prospects, notes up front that dithering indecisiveness is not something one has to worry about when it comes to Russ:

"Cautious" is not a word that comes to mind when writing about Russ Feingold.

The Wisconsin senator was the first member of his party to propose a timeline for withdrawing American troops from Iraq last fall, and when news broke about the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping campaign, Feingold introduced a resolution to censure the president for violating U.S. law.

Political suicide, says the Democratic political establishment. Phooey, responds Feingold.

"I've heard these pundits, they are people that are paid by Democrats, many of them were in the Clinton administration, these are paid political pundits and paid political consultants who make their living coming up [to] the Capitol and telling the Democratic leadership this is a loser," Feingold says. "It is bad advice. It is advice we got in 2002 and 2004. And we lost because we were perceived as unable to take the tough stands that are needed to change the course in the fight against terrorism."

That's Russ Feingold at his finest. An anti-politician contemplating a run for the highest political office in the country....

Whether a Democrat is liberal with a capital 'L' or moderate is not so much the issue here; after all, Dean was no flaming liberal but he was willing to fight back for his beliefs.

[Of course, Dean was later labeled as 'too liberal,' but as we know, that has more to do with his willingness to 'Crash the Gates' and stand up to the Dem Establishment than any actual issue of ideology. BTW both the interview and summary go into how Feingold's style differs from Dean's and what he learned from Dean's flame-out.]

What is more important is that a candidate can articulate their beliefs clearly and strongly. This is key for reaching people who are not ideological themselves but who are not comfortable with 'politics as usual' either. Reaching these voters by consistently standing for our core beliefs - whether considered liberal or simply common sense - is as important for rebranding the Dem party as building a 50 state organization.

lies, damn lies and polls

You are excused if you have been confused by the polls showing X number of Americans willing to give away their rights to the faceless bureaucracy of the NSA (and their RNC masters) while another poll shows precisely opposite results. There are very good reasons why you should be confused. Let's look at why:

In the former case, a Washington Post/ABC News poll rushed out immediately in the aftermath of the public exposure of the Bush domestic spying program reported that 63% of Americans were okay with the violation of their Fourth Amemndment liberties while only 35% percent opposed being reduced to so many paramecium-under-glass for the White House microscope. The article reporting this 'finding was titled 'Poll: Most Americans Support NSA's Efforts.'

But then how do we square this with a Newsweek poll that reports that 53% see the spying as 'going too far' while only 41% support the Presidential snooping on the domestic affairs of his so-called fellow citizens?

Well, a poll is only as good as the question put to the individual whose input is sought. It turns out that the question that the Washington Post/ABC News asked was:

"What do you think is more important right now -- (for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy); or (for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats)?

That sort of language can understandably slant a person's veiw of the question, since it poses it in terms of 'are you with the terrorists or are you with us?' The Newsweek poll, while it presumably did mention domestic spying as a potentially 'necessary tool to combat terrorism' was likely posed in not nearly so loaded a fashion. Hence the disparity between the polls. [Dan Froomkin suggests some poll questions that do not set up a false conflict between retaining Constitutional liberties and counterterrorism:

* Do you feel you know enough about how this program works to reach a definitive conclusion?

* Do you think the public should know more about this program and others like it?

* Should the government be able to launch programs like this in secret?

* Do you think President Bush should have asked for approval from the courts or Congress before taking this action?

* Do you trust the Bush administration not to abuse a program like this, when there is no independent oversight?]

Note that in neither case were the polls phrased in terms of violations of Constitutional liberties - which in fact is what we are talking about.

Which is why all this talk about polls is really a red herring. You don't just drop Constitution provisions on the basis of an overnight poll. They are intended to be something a bit more permanent that that. That is why we have a Constitution to begin with (at least that is my understanding, although it has come to my attention that the Busheviks find that kind of reasoning to be 'quaint'). Billmon makes the point eloquently:

The whole point of having civil liberties is that they are not supposed to be subject to a majority veto. Hobbes may not have believed in natural rights, but our founders did. And their opponents, the anti-Federalists, were even more zealous about restraining the powers of the federal superstate, which is why they forced the Federalists to write the Bill of Rights directly into the Constitution.

It defeats the purpose of having a 4th Amendment if its validity is entirely dependent on breaking 50% in the latest poll.

Now, of course, public opinion matters but we are a nation of laws, are we not? And the law and Constitution are unequivocal on the point of domestic spying: probable cause must be provided to a judge for any such surveillance to be legal.

What Bush has done is clearly illegal and a violation of his oath of office to uphold the Constitution, whether 'popular' or not. It would be just as illegal - no matter how popular - if he had all people of Dutch descent ("There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.") taken out and shot without due process of law.

Arbusto Dalenda Est

Update 5/14/05: Editor and Publisher tries to explain the difference in terms of the quick evolution of the issue. Wht WP/ABC poll was done before many people had even heard of the issue.

So what happened? Most likely views changed that much in one day after more negative media reports (including many from conservative commentators such as MSNBC's Joe Scarborough) surfaced. The Washington Post survey took place before many Americans had heard about, or thought about, the implications. The Newsweek Poll also reached twice as many Americans.

The Washington Post/ABC survey was conducted Thursday, just after the NSA news broke via USA Today, and reached just 502 citizens. Newsweek polled 1007 Americans on both Thursday and Friday. It found that even 27% of Republicans voiced disapproval of the phone records program.

While true, I think this is a contributing factor not the entire explanation. In short, the wording of the WP/ABC poll is loaded.

Note, for example, how the secrecy aspect, which is so very important, is completely ignored in the poll question. It would be one thing for the question to be posed openly (even if slantedly) as in the poll, but for the spying be simply be done by fiat without our knowledge - and with the express intention of never informing us - puts the program in an entirely different sort of light. It is not just that 'personal liberties' are 'intruded on' with our consent: it is the fact that the very basis for constitutional liberties has - secretly and without our consent - been declared obsolete.

Researchers have found that individuals given identical situations to analyze in a polling question will give different answers depending on how the question is presented. As a hypothetical example, if you ask people whether they would undertake a rescue mission to save 25 people from a sinking boat at the risk of losing a helicopter crew of 10 they are much more likely to do so if you tell them the odds of success are 30% than if you tell them the odds of failure are 70%. Researchers have found that although mathematically the situations presented are identical, framing the question differently can produce polar opposite results.

UPDATE 5/15/06: we hear this today from USA Today:

A majority of Americans disapprove of a massive Pentagon database containing the records of billions of phone calls made by ordinary citizens, according to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll. About two-thirds are concerned that the program may signal other, not-yet-disclosed efforts to gather information on the general public....

By 51%-43%, those polled disapprove of the program, disclosed Thursday in USA TODAY....

Most of those who approve of the program say it violates some civil liberties but is acceptable because "investigating terrorism is the more important goal."...

About two-thirds say they're concerned that the federal government might be gathering other information about the public, such as bank records and data on Internet use, or listening in on domestic phone conversations without obtaining a warrant.

Two-thirds are concerned that the database will identify innocent Americans as possible terrorism suspects....

The findings differ from an ABC News/Washington Post poll taken Thursday night of 502 adults. In that survey, 63% called the program an acceptable way to investigate terrorism. The findings may differ because questions in the two polls were worded differently. [emphasis added]

Are we all 'sex offenders' now?

New forms of surveillance and control are usually first introduced to control the weak, defenseless and despised of a society before being employed more generally. The poor, the young, the sick, the aged, the immigrants and the criminals stock the laboratory for social control. But none are as loathed and subject to control as those that are classified as 'sex offenders.'

Given the breathtaking audacity of the current regime, have we already passed beyond the 'experimental stage' to the implementation of total information awareness of every citizen? Has each of us already had our privacy stripped away and in essence been reduced to the status of a 'sex offender?'

Washington Post:

...Eric Haskett was merely taking a nap in a car when he roused suspicion in a rural Frederick County neighborhood. A neighbor traced Haskett's license plate to an address once used by a registered sex offender....

...After allaying the concerns of several law enforcement officials over the past few weeks, Haskett also asked them what he could do to clear his name.

"They said the best bet is to leave the area," Haskett said.

Haskett has no criminal record and has not been accused of wrongdoing, according to public court records and law enforcement officials. The confusion arose after he rented a room in a house on Liberty Road where convicted sex offender Donald M. Sanders had also rented a room; the sex offender registry listed only the house address, not room numbers.

Sanders moved out about the time Haskett moved in, and the two men had no other connection, according to interviews with them, their landlord and law enforcement officials.

Special Agent Michelle Crnkovich, a spokeswoman for the FBI's Baltimore office, said agents interviewed Haskett and determined that the incident was a mix-up. Cpl. Jennifer Bailey of the Frederick County Sheriff's Office said her agency also looked into the matter. And so did Sgt. Palmer Grotte of the Maryland State Police, who said he received an e-mail that started the incident. It is not clear how neighbors obtained information about Haskett from his car's license plates -- information that is protected by privacy laws. [emphasis added]

Privacy laws? Are they kidding? That is so pre-9/11!

Barry Leahy, who rented the rooms to Sanders and Haskett, said the incident points out the potential abuses of sex offender registries.

"I see that convicted sexual offenders should be available on a police list. I can't see that people should have access to that list and hold that against him," Leahy, 54, said. "There's too much of this throwing stuff around on the Internet."... [emphasis added]

Oh well, just an innocent individual whose life has been destroyed. No big deal. After all, the amateur snoop who stirred up the lynch mob had the best of intentions:

...Stefani Shuster, who acknowledged in a telephone interview that she wrote the e-mail that put the events in motion, said she had the best intentions.

"I have a family to protect,"...

And as we all know, anything you do to 'protect' your family is A-OK, right? Snooping, violating privacy laws, destroying other people's lives - all fair game, you just have to say the magic words: 'I thought I was protecting my family' - and everything is permitted. Kinda like 'National Security' for the Deputy Fife in all of us.

So what does this tragic tale tell us? It demonstrates how easily our reputation can be ripped from us - by just a few hayseeds on the Internet - when we have no privacy. So imagine, if you can, what is being harvested by our government in the name of 'national security?'

Of course some would say that we all just need to get used to the 'new normal,' as Mrs. Alan Greenspan phrased it during her lecture the other night on NBC. Of course the TV was only flashing pictures of people taking off their shoes at the airport, not of the government logging all our private phone calls, mapping out our 'social networks,' and on that basis deciding who is a 'Kool kid' and who gets an IRS audit. And don't forget, using spy satellites on Americans is also now part of the 'new normal' as well. Sunbathing in your backyard? Big brother is watching!

D.C.-style smear jobs are terrible, but what if that could be done retail? Just imagine the smears that could be manufactured if some petty bureaucrat - or some politico appointee - had access to every detail of your life (with BTK representing the further extreme). Of course, as long as you keep your 'attitude up' (i.e., don't piss off the Kommisar) everything should be hunky dory. But stray just a little... remember, Haskett's 'crime' was napping in his car. Who knows what might lead your neighbor to report you as an 'offender' under the new world order of the GWOT?

So remember 'the new normal' when reading subversive websites like this - 'they' know what (and when) you are reading because by now you have little more privacy under this regime than a sex offender.

German 'Robin Hoods' give poor a taste of the high life

Scotsman.com News:
A GANG of anarchist Robin Hood-style thieves, who dress as superheroes and steal expensive food from exclusive restaurants and delicatessens to give to the poor, are being hunted by police in the German city of Hamburg.

The gang members seemingly take delight in injecting humour into their raids, which rely on sheer numbers and the confusion caused by their presence. After they plundered Kobe beef fillets, champagne and smoked salmon from a gourmet store on the exclusive Elbastrasse, they presented the cashier with a bouquet of flowers before making their getaway....

Hillary loses her shine

Guardian Unlimited:
...To put it bluntly Hillary is the Establishment candidate par excellence. This explains that while the polls show Hillary cruising to the nomination, they also show that most Americans don't think she can then win the White House. This isn't because ordinary Democrats are actively trying to commit electoral suicide (though the effect may be the same) it is just that there are many things that help you win the party nomination and only one of them is persuading voters of your attractiveness. The others involve playing politics and creating webs of patronage. And Hillary and her team are past masters of those games.

Of course, Hillary will still face a fight. Many grassroots activists (some of whom call themselves the 'netroots' due to their use of the internet during Howard Dean's 2004 campaign) will back a non-Hillary candidate. A strong name from the left of the party will be Russ Feingold, an anti-war Senator already generating a buzz. Another from the right of the party will be Mark Warner, a former Virginia governor who many believe offers the best chance to win back independent and southern voters to the Democrats' side.

But what is interesting here is that the fight in the Democrat party will not therefore really be about ideology. It will instead be about power and whether it comes from the top down or bottom up. It is a fight of the netroots versus the Establishment, of the anti-Hillary candidate (whether left or right) versus the Hillary political machine....

In the end it all depends on who you listen to: the political classes with their own tied up professional interests in the Hillary juggernaut, or people like Abby and Cathy, long-time Democrats feeling utterly left behind by a party leadership determined to select a candidate that America clearly does not want. Personally, I would listen to the folks on the ground every time.

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

USATODAY.com:
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime....

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others....

NBA playoffs

It is time for the NBA to seed the playoffs according to team records - period. No more regard to conferences or division winners. Let's see the best teams play each other.

Straight seeding will not only make the playoffs more interesting (due to interconference match-ups just like in the NCAAs or interleague play in baseball) and also make the resulting basketball that much more watchable (since it will include the 16 best teams properly seeded) but it will go a long way towards eliminating much of the current playoff and conference imbalances.

Plus you have a much, much better chance of having the Finals feature the two best teams. Doesn't that make the change worth it right there? No more NJ versus LA 'finals' circa 2001-02 may help ensure the Finals are the marquee matchup and crowning event they are supposed to be. After all, what made that Boston-LA rivalry so great in the 80s? Was it the fact that the best two teams or the fact that they were a continent apart? Of those two factors, which is more important? Which do we want to maximize year-in and year-out?

It should be obvious that the key factor was that they were the two best teams - their geographic location was an interesting quick, but nothing more. So the league is making a mistake by ensuring that the 'geographic factor' is the constant in the Finals matchup and the 'two-best-teams factor' is hit-and-miss. The playoffs should be designed so that it is the other way around: struture the playoffs so the two best teams always have the best chance of meeting in the Finals and leave the geographic factor to be hit-and-miss. It will make for better drama, better TV, and better basketball.

For those that think this will violate league tradition: eliminating the jump ball after a made shot went against NBA history... introducing the shot clock went against NBA history... allowing dunks went against NBA history... the three-point shot, the elimination of illegal defense, et cetera et cetera.

NBA history has been about presenting the best basketball possible. Sometimes mistakes were made but the goal has always been presenting the sport in a way that has the most potential for being the most entertaining and exciting brand of basketball there is. Seeding the playoffs so that the best 16 teams play and the best teams have the opportunity to play in the Finals is well within NBA tradition.

Perhaps the best thing about this proposed reform, however, is that you can do implement interconference seeding right now. No need to change anything but the seeding. There is no need to change the way the regular season is scheduled (2 games agains teams in opposing conference, 3-4 games against teams in same conference.

As for potential imbalance in strength of schedules, at worst, maybe one team from the weaker conference may beef up its record so that it may edge out a slightly better team from the stronger conference. But contrast that with the way the system is now: already we witness teams with worse records from the weaker conference making the playoffs at the expense of teams with better records from the stronger conference. So, in actuality, interconference seeding will actually ameliorate some of the existing conference seeding imbalance problem. Also, as the weaker conference will end up getting more lottery picks (currently split 7-7 despite team records), the interconference imbalance should even out that much more quickly.

Let the NBA be the best that it can be, Commish Stern! Seed the playoff match-up according to record and record alone. After a few years people will wonder why it was ever done any other way.

King George strikes again

Bush challenges hundreds of laws: President cites powers of his office

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research....

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over ''the whole idea that there is a rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid and which he thinks he can ignore.

"Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said....

Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to "overturn the existing structures of constitutional law."

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply "disappear."...

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch ''to exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the country a democracy," Fein said. [Due to secrecy] "There is no way for an independent judiciary to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

Primer: what happens if this really works?

That is the title of an interesting if confusing movie about what happens to the relationship betwen a pair of friends when an invention they are striving to create actually works.

The movie is complicated by a bunch of jargon (early) and time travel (late). But I recommend it highly. The jargon you can ignore (although it is actually spot on if you know anything about the attempt to create superconductors, the development of which would be akin to the perpetual motion machine).

The time travel is a bit more central to the story. Suffice to say that it gets confusing because you are placed in a position of attempting to find out what has happened 'behind your back' as characters go back in time without your knowledge and revise events you had already witnessed thereby changing what you are presently witnessing.

Eventually this results in violating causality: changing something in the past that led to a future (that no longer exist) that is currently tampering in the past.

I posted the following to the primermovie.com topics forum so beware, SPOILERS AHEAD (it likely won't make any sense unless you've seen the movie anyway).

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There are only two Aarons - meaning that there are only two permanent copies of Aaron. That does not prevent there from being three Aarons at a particular point in the movie, just as there only being one Abe prior to his failsafing does not mean that there are not two versions of Abe walking around (or hiding in a hotel) during previous portions of the movie.

People need to distinguish clearly between permanent copies that result from an interference by a future copy in causality (preventing their former self from entering the box) and 'looped copies' which resolve themselves into one by looping through the box.

Let me address the incident which most people take to be evidence for three separate Aarons: the fight that Aaron2 has with himself while Aaron1 is tied up in the attic. What happens is that Aaron2 is fighting with Aaron1 after Aaron1 has escaped the attic (which we know will happen) and then enters the failsafe to combat Aaron2. That is why Aaron1 (the fighter) is too tired to beat Aaron2: he has just escaped from the privations of the attic and spent a number of days traveling back in time to fight Aaron2.

Aaron1 (attic) will enter the box unless Aaron1 (fighter) prevents this. There is absolutely NO indication that this closure of the loop is prevented. In fact it seems that Aaron1 (fighter) has come back precisely to prevent himself from spawning a permanent double, but can't succeed in defeating Aaron2. So in the face of the evidence it seems reasonable to assume that Aaron1 (attic) will eventually escape - we know he does because we see it and we also see him fighting with Aaron2. After his escape he goes to the failsafe and vanishes, hence: there are only two Aarons: Aaron2 who wears the hoodie and goes to some French-speaking nation, and Aaron1, who will eventually successfully loop with his double and therefore does NOT spawn a third Aaron.

This interpretation is confirmed by the final conversation in the airport, where Aaron speaks of dividing the world into two hemispheres, one for each copy of Aaron and Abe (and jokingly, their wife and girlfriend).

The Common Good

An issue that has received a lot of attention lately is the fact that, although the public is sick and tired of the GOP, the Dems do not seem to offer much of an alternative simply because people have a hard time figuring out what exactly what they stand for. This is a shame, because it is due in large part to the Dems themselves. Not only does it prevent them from presenting a principled approach to a whole variety of issues (hence what you read in the press is about Dem strategy and tactics, not values and commitments) but it also allows the GOP an easier time in defining their opponents.

The historical roots of this problem stem in part from the Watergate upheaval, which introduced a renewed Democratic majority at a time when civil rights was tearing down the old New Deal coalition, but a majority based basically on not being the GOP in 1974 and then hanging on like grim death to the advantages of incumbency. The fecklessness of this approach has been exacerbated by the disfunctions of the Dem party where too many of the same failed tacticians have been calling the shots for campaigns for far too long.

Also, many of the Dems supporters have organized themselves into single interest advocacy groups that fail to take into account the larger picture. For example, feminists may oppose Casey (Dem pro-life for Senate in PA) despite the fact that, as a reliable Democratic vote in the Senate Casey will de facto be supporting a much more 'feminist' agenda regardless of his personal views, simply becuase he will vote for a Dem as a majority leader and will likely vote against regressive judicial appointments - as has Reid (Senate Minority Leader and also pro-life) - on the basis of an evaluation covering a whole host of progressive issues. The Dem interest groups are still acting as if the Dems had the majority, in which case lobbying for a narrow set of goals may make a limited amount of sense - but the Dems do not and the behavior of such groups will help perpetuate that situation by protraying the Dems as kowtowing to particular interests even if their pliciy stances are derived from attempting to uphold the common good for our entire society.

As a result of these factors, Dems appear to many less political people as always trying to play an angle, to play 'politics' with issues that for many people are more than just political footballs. The one consistent charge the GOP tries to make every election cycle (well, well apart innuendo about sexual shenanigans) is that Dems don't stand for anything, they lack 'backbone,' they blow with the preailing winds and 'flip-flop.'

The GOP has realized that people will respect you even if they don't agree with you if those disagreements are a matter of conscientious beliefs. The Dems need to rediscover their backbone and stand distinctly for a set of beliefs and only then address particular political issues. Issues are no substitute for core beliefs. It doesn't matter how many issues you agree with your constituents on if they cannot link those positions up to a much greater, overarching perspective that informs them and gives the voter confidence in the candidate's ability to prioritize and make judgments without bending to special interests.

What makes this even more frustrating is that the Dems do have overarching commitments, but they fail to discuss politics in these terms. The notion of the party of the 'common man' and the 'common good' has been discarded for a long time as old fashioned 'class warfare' and potentially offputting to donors, but it is in reality the Dems best argument for the stances they tend to take and the actions they favor.

Hurricane Katrina should be tattooed on every voters' conscience when it comes time to vote this November, because it encapsulates the differences between Dems and the GOP perfectly. When people are in trouble they do not look to abstractions like 'the market,' they look to government. The GOP loves to spout ideology about big versus small government, but in reality the public only cares if the government is efficient and is fair.

Obscure ideological debates over the size of government simply distract us from the more central question: is the government doing what it should be to aid the public good or not? It is not an ideological question, it is a simple pragmatic question of practicality. If my neighbors house is burning down, do I ask him if he invested wisely in the fire prevention devices? Do I turn my back and tell him to quit 'whining' for help? Or do I get together with him and other neighbors and put the fire out?

The same is true of the government: whether to use the resources of our government - the govenment that our tax dollars pay for - should not be subject to the GOP ideological mumbo-jumbo over the who the government can help (corporations) and who it can't (individuals). If we need it to serve the public interest, then it should do so. The alternative is Katrina - with the government standing by helplessly because of the ideological blinkers of our 'leaders' - the most power nation on earth unwilling to help its own people in distress. It is the equivalent of the fire department watching a house burn down simply because 'they did not have proper paperwork to fight the fire.'

Dems need to emphasize who what they advocate is in order to better serve the common good of a diverse and dynamic society. There are no answers in advance, as the GOP and its ideology would have you believe. The best answer is the answer that works to advance the common good. That is why the middle class and those who want to be middle class should embrace the Dems - not because of a laundry list of particular issues - but rather because the Dems work to ensure that everyone get a fair shake and that the government works for the people, not the people working for the government so that it can shower rewards on the few.

Katrina is the GOP vision, a country fettered by ideology. The country that won WWII and rebuilt Europe through pragmatic decisionmaking - that is the Dem vision.

WWIII?

The New Yorker: Fact: ...There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’”...

Liars who KNOWINGLY lied to us

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories....

The Democratic Party Plan - the US Constitution

It's an oldy but a goody. It is tried and tested. Its past success is beyond doubt. It is called the Constitution of the United States.

Yep, that is the plan the Democratic Party should suggest every time a talking head suggests that they have 'no plan' (and Bush does?).

What does this plan entail? For one thing it requires independent branches of government. And those independent branches act as checks and balances on each other. We haven't had that since Clinton was in office, and hence... well, you know the rest.

Why are independent branches of government important? Couldn't the Democratic party acted as a check on the GOP all this time? Well, I for one will agree that individual Democrats could have taken a more agressive stance, but institutionally speaking it makes all the difference in the world if you are in the majority as opposed to the minority. Majority status allows you to set the agenda, allows you to realistically bargain with other branches, and perhaps most important allows you to use subpoena's to conduct real hearings designed to air the truth.

Under the GOP rubberstamp Congress, we have all been treated like mushrooms - kept in the dark and fed manure. The best aspect of the Constitutional plan is securing the ability to pierce the veil of lies and talkshow blathering and finally get some true idea of how bad our situation is. After all, the first rule in emergency management is to assess the situation in order to properly set priorities.

Pundits who ask the Democratic Party to come up with a comprehensive plan should be reminded that most of us - including the members of Congress - simply do not know what the true situation is. How does one plan in such an environment? First, by ferreting out the truth. A good start towards that goal would be by actually honoring the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Vaffanculo!

Photographer: Herald got it right

...Smith was working as a freelance photographer for the Boston archdiocese’s weekly newspaper at a special Mass for lawyers Sunday when a Herald reporter asked the justice how he responds to critics who might question his impartiality as a judge given his public worship.

“The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, ‘To my critics, I say, ‘Vaffanculo,’ ” punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.

The Italian phrase means “(expletive) you.”...

news from The Times

Times Online: DOZENS of the world’s cities, including London and New York, could be flooded by the end of the century, according to research which suggests that global warming will increase sea levels more rapidly than was previously thought.

The first study to combine computer models of rising temperatures with records of the ancient climate has indicated that sea levels could rise by up to 20ft (6m) by 2100, placing millions of people at risk.

Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk

File this under O for Obvious

Health News Article | Reuters.co.uk: Older women who say talk shows and soap operas are their favorite TV programs tend to score more poorly on tests of memory, attention and other cognitive skills, researchers reported Monday.
That doesn't mean that daytime television is a brain drain, they say, since it's not clear that there's a direct relationship between the two.

But the findings do point to some association between TV choices and intellectual function, and that could prove useful in evaluating older people for cognitive decline...

TheStar.com

TheStar.com - How to spot a baby conservative: Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.

At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals....

>Cue whining about this study and egg-headed scientists from the Right.<

Independent Online Edition

Climate change 'irreversible' as Arctic sea ice fails to re-form

Nieman Watchdog

Iraq through the prism of Vietnam: The Vietnam War experience can’t tell us anything about the war in Iraq – or so it is said. If you believe that, trying looking through this lens, and you may change your mind....

By Lieutenant General William E. Odom, U.S. Army (Ret.)

Tom Engelhardt

Can You Say "Permanent Bases"?...Sometimes, when trying to cut through a veritable fog of misinformation and disinformation, it helps to focus on something concrete. In the case of Iraq, nothing could be more concrete - though less generally discussed in our media - than the set of enormous bases the Pentagon has long been building in that country. Quite literally multi-billions of dollars have gone into them. In a prestigious engineering magazine in late 2003, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, was already speaking proudly of several billion dollars being sunk into base construction ("the numbers are staggering"). Since then, the base-building has been massive and ongoing....

And replace 'war' with 'security,' 'privacy' with 'loyalty' and 'borrow and spend' with 'fiscal conservative.' 

And the apology was forthcoming on February 17th. 

Update: Dick Cheney - anatomy of moral cowardice

The Poor Man Institute

Keyboard Kommando Komix

Gitmo tactics coming home

Jail Inmates Were Stripped to Deter Riots - Los Angeles Times

More than 100 inmates at a Los Angeles County jail were ordered to strip naked, had their mattresses taken away and were left with only blankets to cover themselves for a day as Los Angeles Sheriff's Department officials tried to quell racially charged violence that has plagued the jail system for nearly two weeks.

The tactics — defended Friday by jail officials as necessary to stop the fighting — were immediately criticized as dehumanizing and highly inappropriate by civil rights activists and the Sheriff's Department's independent overseer.

"I have no problem taking privileges away…. It comes to a different level of basic human rights if you take away clothing and dignity," said Michael Gennaco, chief of Sheriff Lee Baca's office of independent review. "I don't know if it is consistent with the sheriff's core values."

Swing State Project

Here is a link to a good synopsis of why the Dems need to contest every congressional seat.

Swing State Project: CO-05: Hefley (R) Retiring - Band of Brothers' Fawcett Ready to Go: "Hefley's retirement is the perfect illustration of why you run candidates in every district, no matter how hopeless the territory might seem at first blush."

Two degree rise Fahrenheit

Independent Online Edition > Environment:
A crucial global warming "tipping point" for the Earth, highlighted only last week by the British Government, has already been passed, with devastating consequences.

Research commissioned by The Independent reveals that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has now crossed a threshold, set down by scientists from around the world at a conference in Britain last year, beyond which really dangerous climate change is likely to be unstoppable.

The implication is that some of global warming's worst predicted effects, from destruction of ecosystems to increased hunger and water shortages for billions of people, cannot now be avoided, whatever we do. It gives considerable force to the contention by the green guru Professor James Lovelock, put forward last month in The Independent, that climate change is now past the point of no return.

The danger point we are now firmly on course for is a rise in global mean temperatures to 2 degrees above the level before the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century.

At the moment, global mean temperatures have risen to about 0.6 degrees above the pre-industrial era - and worrying signs of climate change, such as the rapid melting of the Arctic ice in summer, are already increasingly evident. But a rise to 2 degrees would be far more serious....

Professor Burke added: "We have very little time to act now. Governments must stop talking and start spending. We already have the technology to allow us to meet our growing need for energy while keeping a stable climate. We must deploy it now. Doing so will cost less than the Iraq war so we know we can afford it."