Is there a defibberibulator in the house?

{ 4:07 PM }

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Flashback from the Pickering archives. From the first blocked nomination in March 2002 (via The Nation):

[3/14/2002] The most impassioned defense of groups that fought the Pickering nomination came from Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, who challenged conservative attacks on the NAACP. He contrasted the record of the group, which he described as a prime mover in historic civil rights battles that "changed America for the better," with that of the nominee, who Durbin noted "was not a champion of civil rights."

Maybe Trent Lott's schedule is freed up enough to help Pickering with his public image.

{ 9:59 AM }

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How the stunted imaginations of the wealthy get their exercise. "Cracker chic," or the faux-distressed look of poor folks' homes, is all the rage in Florida according to an article by Queena Sook Kim in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required, so the gist is quoted below):

Architect Jim Strickland bought a 40-by-80-foot lot in a posh Gulf Coast resort community. On it, he's building a poor man's home.

With a corrugated-metal roof, a screened-in porch and clapboard siding, Mr. Strickland's new house has many of the same features as the shacks built by some of Florida's early settlers. The style reminds the 60-year-old Atlanta native of a "less formal, and less affected" time.

[…] Now, several upscale developers and homeowners are embracing the down-at-heels look -- right down to the outhouse, although all these designer projects have plumbing. The trend has even attracted its own, somewhat controversial name: cracker style.

Folksy style: New houses with corrugated-metal roofs and wrap-around porches aim to evoke old Florida shacks.

[…]

"Crackers lived close to nature," says Mike Reininger, a former executive at Walt Disney Co.'s hospitality development group, who is the creative force behind WaterColor, the development where Mr. Strickland is building his home. "The style has a down-home feel." Including lots, houses in the development range from $750,000 to $3 million.

Local folklore has it that the term "cracker" alludes to the sounds of a whip cracking over the wild cattle that early Floridians hunted. Shakespeare used it as a derogatory term to describe boastful ruffians, and British colonizers later adopted it to refer to backwoods settlers throughout the Southeast. According to Dana Ste. Claire, author of the book "Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History," the first significant wave of crackers entered Florida in the 1800s, when the state passed into American hands.

In the early 20th century, crackers were lauded as craftsmen and embraced by some Southerners as a sort of unsung hero akin to the cowboy. But during the civil-rights movement, Malcolm X famously used the term to deride white racists.

Some older Floridians shake their heads at the recent evolution of cracker from a slur to a symbol of architectural chic. Others are bewildered that people would pay big bucks to live in a fancy version of the kind of house that many were happy to leave behind.

"If you have ever been in a cracker home during a thunderstorm," says Curtis Law, a retired Pasco County commissioner who is a fifth-generation Floridian, "you wouldn't want to get back in one."

[…]

At WaterColor, 30 miles outside Panama City in the Florida Panhandle, developers are going beyond architecture to offer the "cracker experience," says Mr. Reininger. Instead of a golf course within the subdivision, WaterColor has fishing pros at a 220-acre natural lake to teach how to bait a hook and reel in a line. Every year, 15,000 bales of pine needles are brought in to hide the white sand and provide a backwoods feel. Large chunks of weathered tree branches are carefully strewn along trails so "it looks like they just fell out of a tree," says head gardener Snookie Parrish.

The desire to get "back to the basics" is what drew Fort Worth native Michelle Coslik and her husband Steve to a two-story, $1 million vacation home in WaterColor, which is being developed by the homebuilding subsidiary of Jacksonville-based St. Joe Co.

Ms. Coslik's home features 1,000 square feet of screened-in porch. The screen door is made of mahogany and fitted with hinges that mute the slam into a sort of soft thud that one WaterColor marketing executive describes as "the sound of growing up in the South." The cost of the door, including handle, is $700.

Ms. Coslik, 36, isn't using her porch to escape the heat as the early settlers once did. She has air conditioning for that. For her, the porch is a place to meditate and practice Yoga. "When I think cracker," she says, "I think of getting back to the essence and away from material aspects of life."

Luckily Florida has a governor and a couple of brothers who fit right into the culture of faux-everything.

Chickenhawks, crackers, cowboy hats in golfcarts — it's all chic now.

UPDATE: Six days later I wrote another post on the same topic which you can read here.

{ 9:28 AM }

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The Bloviator diagnoses what's wrong with Krauthammer's cure for the malpractice insurance problem:

The proposal he [Dr. Charles Krauthammer] makes [in Time Magazine] — which is the same type of proposal that most physician groups I've heard has been making — will NOT entirely solve the malpractice insurance problem. It may stop the lawyers from receiving as many dollars per case, and may reduce the number of lawsuits, but it does nothing to repair the critical underlying problems with how malpractice insurance companies invest their money and price their policies. If malpractice insurance companies can continue to offer deep discounts on insurance rates when the market is high and their "float" is paying beaucoup dividends, and then ratchet up their rates when the market goes in the tank, then we will be revisiting this problem the next time the bond markets enter a trough. Who will Dr. K blame then?

Aren't the bond markets expected to enter a trough as a result of the so-called "stimulus" package? Here we have yet another unintended consequence of putting political concerns ahead of economic policy.

{ 5:44 PM }

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The Economist has seen the future and it is, tragically, Texas.

{ 5:23 PM }

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I just found this transcription of Al Franken talking about Katherine Harris, queen of the Florida re(mis)count, on the Conan O'Brian show of 12/18/02 (okay, I'm slow):

AL: But later [following his presentation] we were getting on the bus and she said, “Oh, I really thought you were funny” and I went, [in a falsetto voice] ”Oh, Katherine Harris likes me. I’m so happy.” ...And I said, “Do you want to hear the joke I didn’t tell?” and she said, “Sure.” I said, “Okay, well, five of the freshmen were educated here at the Kennedy School—got their Master’s here, including Katherine Harris. Right here at the Kennedy School is where Katherine Harris learned to purge African-Americans from the voting rolls.” [nervous laughter from the audience] And she said, “Oh, I don’t think the Kennedy School would have liked that.” [Conan and the audience laugh]

CONAN: [laughing] She didn’t say, "That’s not true."

AL: She didn’t say that wasn’t true.

CONAN: Spreading joy wherever you go, Al.

Transcriber Scoobie Davis will be added to skimble's permanent roll within the next few days.

{ 5:02 PM }

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What rhymes with "dynasty"?

The UK's Poet Laureate has written an anti-war poem in which he casts doubts over the motives behind a possible war with Iraq.

[Andrew] Motion, who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1999, has written a 30-word poem questioning US President George Bush's basis for war, suggesting money, greed, oil and his father have influenced him.

Causa Belli
They read good books, and quote, but never learn
a language other than the scream of rocket-burn.
Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:
elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

From the BBC.

{ 4:33 PM }

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Painful economic analysis on disastrous shifts in average household net worth, from dominatrix Candidia Cruikshanks.

{ 1:44 PM }

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"You shot my dog!" screams his wife, distraught and still handcuffed. "Why'd you kill our dog?"

Why care about things like civil liberties and restrictions on law enforcement behavior?

Because otherwise the police can pull you and your innocent family over and shoot the family dog in the head while you watch. From CNN:

In the video, released by the THP [Tennessee Highway Patrol], officers are heard ordering the family, one by one, to get out of their car with their hands up. James Smoak and his wife, Pamela, and 17-year-old son Brandon are ordered onto their knees and handcuffed.

"What did I do?" James Smoak asks the officers.

"Sir, inside information is that you was involved in some type of robbery in Davidson County," the unidentified officer says.

Smoak and his wife protest incredulously, telling the officers that they are from South Carolina and that their mother and father-in-law are traveling in another car alongside them.

The Smoaks told CNN that as they knelt, handcuffed, they pleaded with officers to close the doors of their car so their two dogs would not escape, but the officers did not heed them.

Pamela Smoak is seen on the tape looking up at an officer, telling him slowly, "That dog is not mean. He won't hurt you."

Her husband says, "I got a dog in the car. I don't want him to jump out."

The tape then shows the Smoak's medium-size brown dog romping on the shoulder of the Interstate, its tail wagging. As the family yells, the dog, named Patton, first heads away from the road, then quickly circles back toward the family.

An officer in a blue uniform aims his shotgun at the dog and fires at its head, killing it immediately.

For several moments, all that is audible are shrieks as the family reacts to the shooting. James Smoak even stands up, but officers pull him back down.

"Y'all shot my dog! Y'all shot my dog!" James Smoak cries. "Oh my God! God Almighty!"

"You shot my dog!" screams his wife, distraught and still handcuffed. "Why'd you kill our dog?"

If this were a black or Hispanic family, it wouldn't even register on the Richter scale of newsworthiness. Via TalkLeft and Eschaton.

{ 12:04 PM }

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All week long I will be making substantial additions to the lists of links in the right column. Beyond this post, there will be no drum rolls or fanfare for these worthy sites, although each one deserves praise or awe or a bemused grin.

Set aside a few days and be sure to explore them all. Every link back to skimble is humbly appreciated.

{ 12:58 PM }

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Bush to state and local governments: DROP DEAD. More sleight of hand from the plutocrats' poolboy:

Budget experts were still reviewing numbers today, but said the provision on dividends [in the Bush administration stimulus package] would cost state and local governments tens of millions of dollars a year in lost revenue.

The states fear they will lose in two ways. Because state income tax laws are tied to the federal law, the states will also stop taxing dividends. In addition, the removal of taxes on dividends makes stocks a more attractive investment vehicle than the traditionally tax-free municipal bonds.

Over all, the officials said the potential losses far exceed the $10 billion in state aid included in Mr. Bush's 10-year plan, much of which is earmarked to help the unemployed.

See the full article by Michael Janofsky in the New York Times. The municipal bond and other angles are addressed by Ted Barlow.

A further dislocation will occur in the equities markets, where dividend-paying stocks will suddenly gain favor over growth stocks that typically do not pay dividends (Microsoft, Cisco, and so on). Capital spending in technology and R&D will slow as companies move money into shareholder dividends to protect their stock prices. The "tech wreck" — the lack of recovery in the technology industry — will continue for another decade. At the moment of this writing, the day after the fabled announcement of the stimulus package, the Dow is down 0.5%, Nasdaq down 1.3%*. Not exactly a hurrah of endorsement from the markets for blue chips or growth stocks.

We don't need an administration speechwriter's book for evidence of a total absence of policy forethought in the White House.

*UPDATE: At close today: Dow Jones down 1.69%, Nasdaq down 2.13%.

{ 10:38 AM }

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The self-stimulus package. Financial masturbation, writ large:

Based on income reported in his tax returns for 2001, Bush would have saved $16,511 on dividend payments of $43,805 if his new proposal had been in effect for the year.

Cheney, who had dividends of $278,103 in 2001, would have saved $104,823.

From bastion of liberalism Forbes (found at BuzzFlash).

{ 10:13 AM }

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Only a week in, 2003 looks like it already sucks, so go visit Jazz Age Chicago, 1893 to 1934.

Curious that I discover so much about where I live from Plep in the UK.

{ 9:58 AM }

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The logic of thieves, and the impassioned histrionics of their victims.

"...a handful of major media companies, most prominently Walt Disney Co., Viacom, AOL Time Warner Inc., News Corp. and Clear Channel Communications Inc., already own the country's biggest online service; hundreds of television stations; more than 1,000 radio stations; three of the country's four national TV networks; and most of the largest U.S. movie and TV production studios, cable networks and magazines. These include CBS, ABC, Fox; Time, Fortune and People magazines; and MTV, HBO, CNN and ESPN."*

Never mind the consolidations of the last twenty years — media concentration is on the brink of a sudden acceleration (*Jonathan Krim in the Washington Post). More:

Over the next few months, a single federal agency will begin to fundamentally alter the nation's communications and mass-media landscape, rewriting a broad swath of rules that affect the choices consumers have for getting online and the variety of television and radio programming they watch and hear.

If all of the changes being reviewed by the Federal Communications Commission are enacted as proposed, major telecommunications and media corporations will be less regulated, and more free to grow, than at any time in decades.

[...] But analysts are increasingly convinced that, for the most part, the deregulatory agenda of Chairman Michael K. Powell will prevail, marking a definitive turn from the policies of the FCC during the Clinton administration. [...]

In an interview, Powell rejected the notion that he seeks mindless deregulation, or that the contemplated changes would necessarily shift the media and telecommunications balance in dramatic fashion.

"No industry is so fraught with impassioned histrionics as this one," he said. Congress requires the commission to review many of its rules every two years, Powell said, and to toss out those that cannot be justified as providing benefit.

Providing benefit, but to whom?

"This is public property we're talking about," said Copps [Michael J., one of two commission Democrats], speaking about the airwaves. The changes have "the potential to change media choices, for better or for worse, for years to come. And what I keep asking is, what if we make a mistake? How do you put the genie back in the bottle?"

The genie is the corporate concentration and control of public property and, by extension, the levers of public opinion.

If this deregulation isn't "mindless," as Chairman Michael Powell (son of Colin) asserts, what are the specifics of its purpose?

The motivation is clear enough. Astronomical profit aside, there is much to be gained from monolithic media across multiple outlets (television, radio, internet, telephony), namely, control. The existing concentration of media control has already damaged government to the extent that the Bush Junior administration views its job as consisting exclusively of media management (Michael Wolff in New York Magazine):

The Bush people likely see their singular job as managing media. They recognize that if you can’t manage media, then you have a failing presidency. That It’s the media, stupid. Good press, or at least a quiescent press, is the absolute goal.

This is achieved not by personal magnetism, as the Democrats have long presumed, or out of the existential fires of national drama and conflict, but by meticulous execution (people in the Bush administration often call this loyalty or discipline): maximum control over minimum information. The press is purely reactive: If you control its stimulus, you control it.

And if the press has a herd mentality already, let's reduce the size of the herd to control it even more easily. To do that, we need a majority of the FCC commissioners to push a deregulatory agenda — the logic of thieves.

Once again, theft by the corporate class is the overarching theme. Theft of the public airwaves and media competition. Theft of shareholder wealth and 401(k) assets by lying executives with political connections. Theft of oil and gas drilling rights in protected national lands. Theft of an entire war on "terrorism," and the meticulously planned theft of Central Asian resources. Theft of an election. All these things that rightly belong to citizens are being stolen by their so-called representatives — and a complacent monolithic media will not help matters at all.

Today Junior announces his economic "stimulus package." The anti-Robin Hood will not rest until all wealth — worldwide, by the looks of his foreign policy — trickles up, in defiance of gravity, into the hands of the few.

Because of the enormous complexities of these issues, even those who are paying close attention won't know what's really happening if there isn't an independent chorus of diversified voices from a press controlled by more than "a handful" of owner-masters. What Powell characterizes as "impassioned histrionics" is a reflection not of emotional disgust, but of rational outrage.

UPDATE: Rob Carlson points to the Center for Digital Democracy's feedback form where you can send your own comments to the FCC right here.

{ 10:26 AM }

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Monday, January 06, 2003

Media Whores Online is back from its break and offers, besides the election of the Media Whore of the Year, a manifesto — MWO Manifesto '04:  Democrats, Moron-Americans and the Future:

Al Gore won the 2000 election only by the slightest of margins, thanks to an Axis of Incompetence that developed over the last decade and now imposes a decisive influence on elections and has wreaked untold destruction on our democracy: the dangerous combination of incompetent voters whose decisions are shaped by an incompetent mainstream media. [...]

The Bush-Rove strategy is to make sure foreign policy continues to dominate, blame the regime's economic failings on "the war," and make certain there is always a war to blame.  The key to their success is to keep the public anxious and in a state of confusing fear-based wishful thinking with genuine trust and confidence in Bush's leadership.

Democrats must scare them more, not through Rovian dishonesty, misinformation, corruption, and exploitation of tragedy - but with the truth, effectively packaged and aggressively marketed. They must make the case that Bush's idiotic rhetoric does not represent "moral clarity" but immaturity, simplicity, and incompetence, and that his failed leadership due to deficient character and qualification has placed the nation in greater danger than ever of both economic ruin and further terrorist attacks. [...]

As president Clinton summed it up, if you're strong, you can be wrong and win — even if your opposition is right. What Democrats need more than anything else is precisely the opposite of what Sean Hannity and Bob Novak (as well as a few so-called "liberal" journalists who would rather lose than fight) advise. They need aggressive and smart candidates, aggressive and smart pundits, and an aggressive and smart marketing department.

Unfortunately being right isn't good enough. Now the challenge is to be persuasive.

The necessary effort, shy of a charismatic candidate like Bill Clinton, will require strategic planning, tactical genius, and popular implementation. In short, all the tools the right wing uses to cover up their lack of popular policies.

Postscript: Not long after finishing this post, I found Digby's excellent thoughts on the matter.

{ 10:31 AM }

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A belated Christmas card from the White House. The Bush administration has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies…

"It was a visible number," said Gary Schlossberg, senior economist at Wells Capital Management in San Francisco. "In times like these, it was a good window on how businesses were cutting back." […]

No announcement was made by the Labor Department, and no prominent mention of the change was posted at the department's Web site.

In fact, news of the program's termination came only in the form of a single paragraph buried deep within a press release issued on Christmas Eve about November's mass layoffs. […]

According to the bureau's final monthly report, U.S. employers initiated 2, 150 mass layoffs in November, affecting 240,028 workers. A mass layoff is defined as any firing involving at least 50 people.

Apparently no extra money was to be found anywhere within the Labor Department, which had a total budget of $44.4 billion last year, up from $39.2 billion in 2001. [Ed.: The mass layoff report received $6.6 million in annual funding.]

"With very finite discretionary resources, we have to make difficult decisions," said Mason Bishop, the Labor Department's deputy assistant secretary for employment training. "We didn't see how this program was helping workers re-enter the workforce."

Coincidentally, the same conclusion was reached in 1992 when the first President Bush canceled the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program amid election-year charges that he had bungled handling of the economy.

The program was resuscitated two years later by the Clinton administration.

Now Bush the younger is following in his father's footsteps, once again deciding that the American people have no real need to know how many mass layoffs are made each month.

We'll never know about the people laid off in December, or in January, or in February…. But at a quarter-million a month, you're talking about a sizable voting bloc by November 2004.

Between the Lays and the layoffs, Junior's legacy on the domestic economy is looking as poor as Daddy's. One-term redux?

The article quoted above was written by David Lazarus for the San Francisco Chronicle.

{ 10:01 AM }

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View the Archive

Greatest Hits · Alternatives to First Command Financial Planning · First Command, last resort, Part 3 · Part 2 · Part 1 · Stealing $50K from a widow: Wells Real Estate · Leo Wells, REITs and divine wealth · Sex-crazed Red State teenagers · What I hate: a manifesto · Spawn of Darleen Druyun · All-American high school sex party · Why is Ken Lay smiling? · Poppy's Enron birthday party · The Saudi money laundry and the president's uncle · The sentence of Enron's John Forney · The holiness of Neil Bush's marriage · The Silence of Cheney: a poem · South Park Christians · Capitalist against Bush: Warren Buffett · Fastow childen vs. Enron children · Give your prescription money to your old boss · Neil Bush, hard-working matchmaker · Republicans against fetuses and pregnant women · Emboldened Ken Lay · Faith-based jails · Please die for me so I can skip your funeral · A brief illustrated history of the Republican Party · Nancy Victory · Soldiers become accountants · Beware the Merrill Lynch mob · Darleen Druyun's $5.7 billion surprise · First responder funding · Hoovering the country · First Command fifty percent load · Ken Lay and the Atkins diet · Halliburton WMD · Leave no CEO behind · August in Crawford · Elaine Pagels · Profitable slave labor at Halliburton · Tom Hanks + Mujahideen · Sharon & Neilsie Bush · One weekend a month, or eternity · Is the US pumping Iraqi oil to Kuwait? · Cheney's war · Seth Glickenhaus: Capitalist against Bush · Martha's blow job · Mark Belnick: Tyco Catholic nut · Cheney's deferred Halliburton compensation · Jeb sucks sugar cane · Poindexter & LifeLog · American Family Association panic · Riley Bechtel and the crony economy · The Book of Sharon (Bush) · The Art of Enron · Plunder convention · Waiting in Kuwait: Jay Garner · What's an Army private worth? · Barbara Bodine, Queen of Baghdad · Sneaky bastards at Halliburton · Golf course and barbecue military strategy · Enron at large · Recent astroturf · Cracker Chic 2 · No business like war business · Big Brother · Martha Stewart vs. Thomas White · Roger Kimball, disappointed Republican poetry fan · Cheney, Lay, Afghanistan · Terry Lynn Barton, crimes of burning · Feasting at the Cheney trough · Who would Jesus indict? · Return of the Carlyle Group · Duct tape is for little people · GOP and bad medicine · Sears Tower vs Mt Rushmore · Scared Christians · Crooked playing field · John O'Neill: The man who knew · Back to the top