Covert hospitality. Houston wants to prettify itself while its shadiest neighbors go on trial:

...the big Enron trial coming up in January featuring former head honchos Ken Lay, Jeff Skilling and Rick Causey as defendants will draw scads of media attention, and Houston's civic leaders want to make sure the city comes off looking good.

Earlier this month, Houston's image makers from the Greater Houston Partnership, Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau, City Hall and county government met to begin forming a strategy to "tell the other side of the story," according to minutes of the meeting.

Among the suggestions discussed: "covert hospitality" — finding out from hotel managers where reporters are staying and then coaching hotel employees on how to answer their questions.

[...]

...the group doesn't want to get too close to the Enron story.

"We should come up with a name for our working committee that does not mention Enron in the title," according to the minutes.

"Possible names suggested were Houston Media Hospitality Committee and Houston Awareness Committee," the minutes said.

Covert hospitality, aka "spin," won't erase the fact that Houston's best and brightest orchestrated the biggest corporate (and possibly political) debacle in modern American history.

And has anyone noticed the price of gasoline lately? Surely Houston has nothing to do with all of that.

{ 10:18 AM }

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A Nation of Cindy. Part 3 of Cryptome's extensive Bush Ranch Protest series, including right here in Chicago:


Michael Berg, father of slain businessman Nick Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq in 2004, holds a sign at Rodney square in downtown Wilmington, Del., in support of 'peace mom' Cindy Sheehan on Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005. Sheehan, whose soldier-son was killed in Iraq, has sparked the support of anti-war movements all over the country including a group from Wilmington, since Aug. 6, 2005 when she began a vigil near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. (AP Photo/The News Journal, Ron Soliman)


Tom Taylor stands at a candlelight vigil supporting Cindy Sheehan, Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2005, in Chicago. Hundreds of candlelight vigils calling for an end to the war in Iraq got underway Wednesday in a national effort spurred by Sheehan's anti-war demonstration near President Bush's ranch in Texas. (AP Photo/Brian Kersey)

"It seems strange that many Americans idolize protesters in other countries and ridicule them at home." — Gary Hart

{ 1:56 PM }

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Dumb as a Post. I don't usually criticize soft features, but this puff piece on iPods in the WaPo is so fucking stupid I had to say something:

Whenever Jason Berkowitz listens to "You're the Best" on his iPod, he recalls that 1984 summer vacation in Fort Lauderdale and seeing "The Karate Kid" for the first time. ("I thought it was the best song ever . I still kinda do and I don't care what people say," says the 29-year-old.) Whenever he listens to Zero 7's song "Destiny," which he first heard at London's Heathrow Airport four years ago, he thinks about meeting his wife, Bethany.

The thing about the iPod is, it's what you bring to it.

"If a song represents a memory in your head, then you listen to your life's memories -- faster than a mixed CD, definitely faster than a mixed tape -- as you listen to your iPod," says the affable, fast-talking Berkowitz, a project manager for a software company, as he sits in his downtown Washington office.

"It becomes an extension of you," he says. "It's like a window to your soul."

Or the lack thereof.

Never outdone by the Post, the Onion already stuck a sharp pin into this piece of puffery two long years ago: "I have my very own iPod--in my mind. I hear those little things carry up to a month's worth of music. Well, so does my mind. I can call up any song I've ever heard, any time I want. And I never have to load software or charge batteries. There are no firewire cords or docks to mess with. I just put my hands behind my head, lean back, and select a tune from the extensive music-library folder inside my brain."

{ 2:30 PM }

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Tinpot dynasty. "There are going to be many different ways to evaluate this period in our history, but the prism of the father-son relationship is perhaps the most compelling --- and maybe the most important. That combination of the second rate son with the manipulating neocon advisors is the stuff of Shakespeare." — Digby

{ 9:15 AM }

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Social Stupidity. Paul Krugman rightly reminds us that the first half of this year was devoted to Bush's failed attempt to privatize Social Security: "...the campaign for privatization provided an object lesson in how the administration sells its policies: by misrepresenting its goals, lying about the facts and abusing its control of government agencies. These were the same tactics used to sell both tax cuts and the Iraq war."

True enough. But one of the chief reasons why privatization is bad is rarely discussed: "individual investors in aggregate are unambiguously dumb." That's what Social Security does — aggregates individuals' assets, minimizes individual stupidity, and unambiguously provides a measure of social security. Hence the name.

Instead of the diversion of Social Security assets, the Bushies have earned the bragging rights to unambiguous stupidity. The administration itself has therefore become its own worst argument for privatization.

{ 9:38 AM }

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Cryptome provides a compelling visual overview of Camp Casey, including aerial shots of the protest site and Bush ranch and photographs of Cindy Sheehan and other grieving parents of fallen soldiers.

{ 1:54 PM }

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