tim merritt [dot] net

30 Best Blogs of 2009 – Fimoculous.com. Like I’ll have the time to go and actually read these. I want to, but I have to get stuff done, too.

A fascinating 90-second animation showing who has controlled the Middle east over the last 5000 years. I need to know more world history, for sure.

Via.

Commonplaces from Making Light. Please read them all.

“We are prophets of a future not our own.” (Oscar Romero)

“Peace means something different from ‘not fighting’. Those aren’t peace advocates, they’re ‘stop fighting’ advocates. Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.” (Jo Walton)

“You really think that safety can be plucked from the arms of an evil deed?” (Darla, “Inside Out”)

“The whole point of society is to be less unforgiving than nature.” (Arthur D. Hlavaty)

“Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future.” (Michael Palin)

“Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.” (Teresa Nielsen Hayden)

“Young men and women, educated very carefully to be apolitical, to be technicians who thought they disliked politics, making them putty in the hands of their rulers, like always.” (Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars)

(more…)

A terrific turn of phrase from Josh Marshall.

In case you didn’t already know.

A quick link so I can come back later, and point others to it if need be.

A Primer on the Details of Health Care Reform – NYTimes.com.

Ruth Schmitt gets well-deserved recognition at Creative Loafing’s Fresh Loaf blog. Profile: Ruth Schmitt, war protester briefly explains her background and her participation in six and a half years of anti-war protest at Colony Square. She’s a friend and fellow parishioner at North Decatur Presbyterian Church. Go, Ruth!

Thanks to CL for the pic.

Sent today to the congressman via his web site.

Dear Representative Price,

I am a constituent of yours, a registered independent, and like others in your district I worry about too much control in the hands of Democrats. Today though I’m writing because of my disappointment after watching a video of your $30 million for mice moment this morning on the House floor.
Is this the best you can do? To me it indicates that maybe, at least for now, the Democrats are the lesser of two evils. I have already called your office to complain, and this email is a followup.

After eight years of Republican policy holding sway, President Obama at least appears to be working hard and sincerely to get us out of this situation. What does my congressman do? You join the remaining Republicans and look like an obstructionist tool to everyone but the remaining narrow far-right base. You’re not a tool, so please stop talking and voting like one! This is why so many Republicans lost in the last election! Though this is a very Republican state, and your district historically Republican, in these times that’s no longer a lock. Republican anti-government rhetoric has had its day. Do you want to be part of the future or cling to a failed past?

The stimulus bill is deeply flawed – on that point you and I agree. You could to have made it better if you had constructively engaged with the Democrats. Instead you have gone along with adapting self-destructive public relations plays from Newt’s mid-1990s playbook, and it shows. For your tactics to “succeed,” to make President Obama and the Democrats appear to “fail,” you have to keep the economy from recovering— which means much more suffering for your constituents! It’s bad policy and it’s bad politics, and it helps no one but the narrowest party interests.

Oof. I just saw that the bill passed the House with no GOP votes. You and the Republican party line are just wrong about this. It’s bad for the country, and it’s bad for your party, and it’s bad for your district. Please reconsider, and tell your colleagues the same.

Thank you for reading.

Tim Merritt

Update: Backstory on the mouse uproar from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Political Insider blog: Tom Price and the $30 million mouse.

Looking at these pictures, I’m choking up. So much joy, so much possibility, so much at stake.

Rosa sat so Martin could walk
Martin walked so Obama could run
Obama ran so our children could fly.

Wow.

Chamblee MARTA Station, 12:50 p.m.

I got the quoted paragraph in an email today. My response is below.

QUOTE OF 2008

“From the time Barrack Obama [sic] was sworn in as a United State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan. 143 days. I keep leftovers in my refrigerator longer than that.” – Columnist Cheri Jacobus

Nice! No, really, it’s nice – in that quick condescending reductionist ignore-the-facts Fox News “terrorist fist jab” sort of way.

With this cute little quip, Cheri Jacobus, Pundit, ignores Obama’s years of community organizing in Chicago and other experience, first citing how many days the Senate is in session, and conveniently blowing past the work done over four years in office when not actually in session – from committee hearings to constituent service, and more – and implies that Obama’s only worked 143 days his entire life. Obama will concede he’s a young man, but its not unreasonable to claim that he’s done more serious work and more intellectual heavy lifting than the man he would replace, so let’s not talk about that. Let’s look at who brought us this valuable insight: it’s what we can expect from someone who boasts of her own extensive work experience on her own company’s web site.

“She appears on national television programs such as “Crossfire”, “The O’Reilly Factor”, “Your World With Neil Cavuto”, “Larry King Live, “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” and “Talk Back Live” on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and CNBC, “The Montel Williams Show” and ABC’s “Politically Incorrect With Bill Maher” and many more offering political analysis, commentary and debate. She also has lectured at The Leadership Institute, American University, Young American Broadcasters, American Bar Association Legislative Conference and other groups.”

There’s more than that, of course, including her helping a friend win the race for class president in 8th grade (I’m not kidding – look it up). What we have here, friends, is just a professional talking head. Heaven knows we need more of those, lest we suffer a moment of actual, ahem, news on cable news. Jacobus is an empty suit with a sneer, denigrating Obama with a cute turn of phrase. Again, nice. Good on you, Cheri! You’re making America better!

Friends, take note of her client list, here. Jacobus is little more than a right-wing sock puppet, a paid apologist – not for “freedom” or “conservative values” – but for high-paying corporate greedheads. There’s no evidence that she has never done a useful day of work in her life. To be fair, maybe some native modesty prevents her from admitting that between TV appearances she volunteers at animal shelters or a food bank or helps lead tours at the Smithsonian. It’s possible. And it’s possible she’s invented flubber, too. Whatever actual work she may have done, she certainly is proud of her service to the Republican cause in the late 1990s.

Remember the Republicans about 10 years ago? We must note that while she worked for a Congressional committee in the late 90s, the Republican congressional leader was Tom Delay, who along with others created the infamous K Street Project (look that one up too), the most corrupt lobbying environment in modern history. (Note that historically, the Democrats are no amateurs when comes to corruption, but come on – the 90’s Republicans were pros.) These guys are still coming to trial. Remember Jack Abramoff? At least he’s in jail now, where he’s likely to do little more harm. (He cried at his sentencing – thats good television!) A key thing to remember about those guys is this: saying they’re corrupt isn’t political rhetoric; they were Republican congressmen and lobbyists prosecuted and convicted under a Republican administration. Not just any Republicans, either, but the most partisan Republican administration with the most ideologically biased Justice Department in modern times (for that, look up former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and the whole fired U.S. attorney scandal). To be so corrupt your own highly biased team throws the book at you? To mention the time period (but not discuss the real work of the folks she was working with) front and center in her resume: that’s something to be proud of… for Cheri Jacobus.

Hmmmm… maybe she’s not the Quoter we want after all, so let’s entertain another possible Quote of 2008. Conservative author and ABC commentator George Will says in his latest book, that among the things the presidency of George W. Bush has brought us is

“a torrent of acrimony about the dubious inception and incompetent conduct of a war that became perhaps the worst foreign policy debacle in the nation’s history.”

That’s a good one. I found it here.

Or maybe check out the coverage of the testimony going on this week about all the innocent people tortured at Guantanamo and Bagram and other places. Did you know that numerous thorough non-partisan reports, including from within the government and even the military itself, have determined that, while there are legitimate terrorists in custody, several detainees were falsely imprisoned and tortured, and when they were discovered to be not “the worst of the worst” but innocent bystanders, or worse, victims of liars seeking bounties, they were still imprisoned so their shameful treatment could be kept secret? If you didn’t know that, would you blame the Liberal Media? The real question, though: How many more innocent people are still there? How many of them died in U.S. custody?

So, following from that, another suggestion for Quote of 2008: A CIA interrogation lawyer, discussing permissible “interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo in 2002, regarding how to do waterboarding:

“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

That would be a hell of a Quote for 2008, even if it is six years old. Find it here.

I’m guessing this would not be a time to play Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American.” Anyone? Bueller? Maybe we’ll cue that one up a little later, when the shame’s had some time to recede a bit.

Friends, if you’re still with me, I know I’ve ranted long here, but snappy statements from wholly-owned hacks like Cheri Jacobus really chap my behind when we’ve got genuine anti-American-values crap like this to live down. And note I am not knocking all Republicans, just the incredible combination of arrogantly misguided ideologues and greedmongering hypocrites who hijacked their party. It’s time for a change, and the tall thin man from Chicago might, just might, have something.

So, for Quote of 2008, what about an Obama speech, say the one he gave in Philadelphia three months ago about race in America.

It’s all over YouTube, if you don’t want to read it. I recommend it highly – whether you like Obama or McCain, it’s an honest take on what divides so many of us and it’s a vision of what might unite us. I’d argue it is worth more of your time than one minute of Cheri Jacobus cracking jokes about her leftovers.

With that, a good night to you all.

I’ve taken to reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog at The Atlantic Monthly over the last few months. I remember seeing him often back in the 1990s when I had time to watch C-SPAN a lot. His stance is an interesting one: a gay Catholic Tory living in America, commenting on American politics. He used to be firmly in the camp of GWB, but has come to see that Bush’s America is a wretched place. He’s largely reasonable on many issues, and willing to entertain other viewpoints. He likes Ron Paul, or more precisely the phenomenon of Ron Paul: a Republican candidate who’s willing to call the big dogs the wrong-headed empty suits they are. He’s positively enchanted with Barack Obama and makes eloquent appeals for him and he’s so anti-Hillary Clinton that you can almost see the spittle on his posts about her (or that guy she’s married to).

In another vein, today he posted a message from a reader, a fiction writer who has worked in the video game industry, about the challenges of bringing the mechanics of storytelling to video gaming. I don’t know that I follow all this reader puts forth, and there is further material linked, including Irreconcilable Differences: Game vs. Story, an analytical lament for the basic differences in the two:

The audience must on the one hand disbelieve in the preparedness of stories, and on the other believe in the unpreparedness of games.

It’s all provocative, and since Will is considering a career along the lines this writer describes, it’s worth a look.

Eric Alterman and others on the best pop and rock albums of 2007. Must revisit these lists!

Media Matters – Altercation: For Goodness’ Sakes: The Altercation Music Lists

I sent Stefan “a link to David Foster Wallace’s introduction to the 2007 edition of Best American Essays. I have enjoyed his magazine pieces, and own two of his books, so I sent the link unread with a promise to him to come back to it later. Stef sent back a grumpy rant about the piece, and without getting into the nature of his complaints, what impressed me most was the closeness of his reading and the concentration he must have brought to bear. It forced me to realize that I don’t as a matter of course bring more than minimal attention to what I read – I’ve been scanning, not reading, and my mental muscles are weak. They need to do some weight lifting, and so do I.

Yes, “Tim” is an anagram for TMI, “Too Much Information.” Email messages unread: 68. RSS items unread: 625. Current browser tabs among 5 windows: 11. Too. Much. Information.

So where to cut back? I don’t want to lose more sleep. I would have trouble giving up reading political coverage during this run-up to an election year, especially when the Republicans are fielding such a bizarre misguided flip-flopping fear-mongering group of candidates. And the Democrats, ah the Democrats… they’re so amazingly timid about really pounding on the most incompetent regime America’s seen in my lifetime, and on the Congressional Republicans that have enabled it. George W.Bush makes Nixon look like a smart progressive on most issues. Who’d have thought we’d pine for Nixon? Ever? And in a situation like this, how can I keep from following it?

But back to Too Much Information. There’s always something new just a click away, whether it’s one of those emails, or in a feed, or on a site I haven’t checked this last foru minutes, or something. And I have this blog, see, the one you’re reading? Having a domain, and a blog, implies a commitment, and I have not kept that commitment. I have a camera, too, that camera implies another commitment, to take and publish pictures. I have not kept this commitment either.

Will Richardson writes and lives the Read/Write web, and I do not. Too much reading and not enough writing/photographing/publishing. I’ve allowed the too-many opportunities for something new to become data smog and I have to filter more of it out. I guess that output would become more of the smog for someone else, but the exercise of doing it myself would be better for my mind and my health.

A letter I sent to the local newspaper yesterday morning:

Consider these two stories on the front of the paper today: “Public defenders’ jobs cut” and “Sotheby’s enters Atlanta market.” A prestige name in auctions and real estate enters our burgeoning market for luxury homes – a very good thing – and yet the state can’t afford attorneys to protect the rights of indigents. Remember as well that the recent legislative session couldn’t find the money for PeachCare health insurance for poor children, either.

I love that this great city and this great state can support such economic growth. It makes me proud. At the same time, it’s shameful that we claim we cannot afford to provide essential legal and medical support for those who cannot afford it.

I’ll bet you can guess which party is in charge of both the legislature and the governor’s office in this great state.

Update: An hour after I sent the letter, an editor called and said they’d try, other news allowing, to print it on Wednesday, and asked if it was okay to change the end of the first paragraph to say “couldn’t find enough money for PeachCare,” since the legislature did appropriate some money for it. I said sure. I looked this morning, and they published it online, at least.

I have my hosting for this site and some others at Textdrive, which has an active, informative, and entertaining forum. I’ve learned a lot there about hosting web sites from the generous and talented people, customers and employees, that post there. It is a real community. I particularly enjoy the off-topic area known ast Textdrivel, where member Besonen started this thread with the post below.

You’ll be glad you watched this.

It’s a Flash video; you may hate Flash video. Take a chance on it. I know I’m glad I watched.

Pass it on.

Just a moment to wish all a Happy New Year for 2007. Many changes and new things are coming for me and my family, and I wish us and you the strength and wisdom to meet what comes with equanimity and even joy. Embrace it when you can, tolerate it when you need to, endure it when you must. Look out for each other, look out for grace when it finds you.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall November 5, 2006 07:04 PM

Readers are posting to Josh’s site claiming that Republicans are making repeated and annoying calls to voters claiming to be Democrats, in an effort to make themselves look good. It seems it’s all they have to run on….