Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Moved

Check us out on our new site:
http://lemkin.tumblr.com

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Darkseid

Time reports what is essentially the only possible explanation for the sudden concern on the part of the as-yet-briefed:

[...] two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress. Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.
Let's face it, were it just some legally questionable assassination orders for high ranking al Qaeda folks operating, say, inside an ostensibly friendly country (er, Pakistan?) and carrying out said orders would be a violation of various treaties and maybe even a few international laws...there'd be no significant dust-up whatsoever over this. Instead, even GOPers apprised of the situation are well off their normal "partisan witch hunt!" game and actually showing some sober adult sides to themselves that Our Staff never knew existed. And, in fact, that sort of program would hold no real reason to order the CIA to keep it off the books.
The only possible explanation that rises to the occasion (and explains the barely concealed outrage at its outing) is that they were planning to engage in plainly illegal acts, which probably includes but is not limited to: wide scale surveillance of US citizens as well as clearance to execute same without prior authorization. There is no doubt in my mind that the details, should they ever emerge, will fall loosely along these lines. No other reason to conceal at this level. Even for Cheney, whose first impulse is always: conceal.

For far too long now, the CIA has been the go-to agency when illegal acts are called for. Time to shut that agency down. We have far, far too many agencies competing in the spying and secrets arena as it is. Clear the slate and start over with a single, well regulated, and clearly delineated agency. And, just to make this move politically realistic: put John McCain in charge of the panel that lays it all out.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Colonel Sanders

One of those quotes that needs no introduction; independent Senator Bernie Sanders:

"I think that with Al Franken coming on board, you have effectively 60 Democrats in the caucus, 58 and two Independents," Sanders said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "I think the strategy should be to say, it doesn't take 60 votes to pass a piece of legislation. It takes 60 votes to stop a filibuster. I think the strategy should be that every Democrat, no matter whether or not they ultimately end up voting for the final bill, is to say we are going to vote together to stop a Republican filibuster. And if somebody who votes for that ends up saying, 'I'm not gonna vote for this bill, it's too radical, blah, blah, blah, that's fine.'"
Exactly. Naturally, no Democrat in the Senate will see it this way, and they'll continue to be feckless drones to whatever the David Broders of the world seem to think constitutes "serious" opinion. Step Two: ? Step Three: Profit!

Monday, June 22, 2009

PAMtastic Questions and Answers

Still a few days to go, but I think we already have the answer to this little prediction from Palm investor Roger McNamee:
“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two- year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it - If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.”
A: (wait for it) iPhones:
Approximately 12% of consumers who visited a retail store this past weekend to make their iPhone 3G S purchase said they were replacing a BlackBerry handset, the latest sign that Apple continues to make headway against rival Research in Motion in the high-stakes smartphone market.
That data point is one of several interesting statistics to come out of a survey by Piper Jaffray of 256 early iPhone 3G S adopters shopping for their new handsets at Apple retail stores in New York and Minnesota this past weekend.
What a remarkable and unpredictable turn of events! Apple convinced another million rubes to buy their products that, as we all know, are only a temporary fashion and not indicative of a new usage model at all. I thought this introduction would mark the end of the iPhone era as hordes of dissatisfied users fled the sinking, née doomed platform for the Elysian fields of Windows Mobile and Blackberry or scrappy up-and-comer Palm Pre. After all, they've got tiny keyboards. And some other features that are...probably important! RIM (and the rest) can't possibly fail. Right? You don't just walk in and create a "decent phone." It's just not possible. Well, I'm sure these poor, misguided users will be off to RIM, Pre, or Android any day now...

Friday, June 12, 2009

Stonecutters

Time for prediction accuracy measurement everyone! Yes, it's delicious PAM; this time, we review our psychohistorical analysis re: iPhone, Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard), and the magical mystical marble interface. Let's review. I said:
So, carve it in stone: Snow Leopard will be announced and a full demo given at WWDC, cost $129.00, only run on Intel-based Macs, and probably ship reasonably soon after announcement, say right around 9/1/09.
Alright, Snow Leopard was announced and given demo at WWDC: +1
SL will cost, um, $29.00: -1(00)
SL will indeed run only on Intel-based Macs: +1
SL will indeed ship "in September": +1

75%. Not too shabby. Take that, eternal asshat Rob Enderle.
On Marble: Clearly, that'll be the reason the next update reverts to $129 pricing...

iPhone Mini: I "have my doubts" and still do. +1, huzzah! Also a bonus dose of goodwill for noting the notion that existing iPhone tech takes up the "low end" (whether in Mini form or not) while shiny new iPhonery takes the old price-point with feature/memory extension. Fish in a barrel, that one.

The tablet: too soon to score. Certainly the animus directed at AT&T onstage implies a "hey look, it's that Verizon guy!" attitude amongst the Apple powers that be. We shall see. Score it a zero for now, though.

That gives the staff a 4 out of 5, for a glittering 80%. Everyone feel free to take one extra mint on the way out of the office tonight.

Monday, May 11, 2009

Darkside (of the moon)

Lord Cheney of Darkside, until recently so endlessly ensconced in undisclosed locations now can't seem to stop yapping; perhaps his long, silent sojourn on Moonbase Alpha has left him with lots to say. All of it apparently the kind of thing that you just can't hope to get across in any meaningful way to Sandra Benes during long overnight bull-sessions. Among them was a shout-out to Rush, he of the positively delightful, drug addled romps with what will inevitably turn out to be 12 year old boys:
Well, if I had to choose in terms of being a Republican, I'd go with Rush Limbaugh, I think. I think my take on it was Colin [Powell] had already left the party. I didn't know he was still a Republican.
Rush, upon reading the statement (recall his oxycontin-abuse-induced deafness), returned the favor:
What motivates Dick Cheney? He doesn't need the money. He has no further political ambitions. He is not hot for interns. He is not a torture freak. He knows that he is toxic and despised by the drive-by media and the Democrat party and the left in this country. "What motivation does Dick Cheney have to go out and say these things? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is motivated by national interest? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is motivated by love of and for his country? Is it possible that Dick Cheney is speaking from his heart and is not speaking politically?
Love of country? Let's put on our Dr. Sean Maguire hats for a response: It is not an excuse. It is not an excuse. It is not an excuse. It is not an excuse. It is not an excuse.

Does anyone doubt (Godwin's Law alert!) that Hitler loved his country? Or, are we meant to assume that the big H had it in for Germany all along? Can we then agree that it matters not what Cheney is thinking, or what he thinks he is accomplishing, or hoping to accomplish, but instead what really matters are the results of said thoughts? Actual outcome? Then can we just put the motherfucker in jail for the rest of his inexplicably long, evil-extended life span? I hear Noriega has a spare bunk and a lot on his mind.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Kindlegarten

This is one of the strangest statements I've seen in a long time:

We see that when people buy a Kindle, they actually continue to buy the same number of physical books going forward as they did before they owned a Kindle. And then incrementally, they buy about 1.6 to 1.7 electronic books, Kindle books, for every physical book that they buy.

That's Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos as quoted in the NYT (reporting on the introduction of the NOW! Bigger! Kindle DX).

Amazon reports rather impressive sales of Kindle-books, especially given that the article states there are probably fewer than 1M Kindles in circulation as of today. And yet, people who buy the Kindle (a device whose chief benefit would appear to be the avoidance of buying dead-tree books that the buyer has to lug around, store, and etc...) keep right on buying dead-tree books they have to lug around at the same rate as before...they simply supplement those with some Kindle-books.

Are these gift books? Do these buyers understand what their Kindle does (and that it does more than calculate tips)? Particular authors that are not available on the Kindle for some reason? What possible explanation can there be (if we assume that Bezos is being completely open about the underlying stats and isn't simply mistaken on some point). Seriously, this seems to me to be the key moment of the whole presser but it's reported without too much note.
But this admission does go a long way towards explaining why Amazon decided to put out a Kindle reader app for the iPhone: it's unlimited upside to them. If they sell a Kindle once you've read some of their books on the iPhone (and presumably discovered that you could read on the little screen after all, but decide you would prefer to do so on a Kindle for one reason or another) then it's even more profit for them. But, if you don't make the leap to their device, you're still apparently going to buy just as many dead-tree books as you ever did, plus some number of Kindle-reader books for the iPhone.

Vaguely unbelievable, but apparently true.

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Tablet Rasa

Is it just me or is all the speculation about Verizon/Apple/iTablet/iPhone-lite sort of missing the point? Everyone speculating seems to forget how it is the Kindle works and how Apple might improve on that model.

Here's my prediction: Verizon, if involved at all, will provide transparent but always-on network connectivity but no traditional phone service. This would be just the same as the way Sprint provides WhisperNet to the Kindle; this way there's no ongoing commitment on the part of the consumer, and assuming this tablet/Verizon thing comes to pass, Apple will contract in a similar fashion with Verizon for the data service and a lifetime connection will be included in the purchase of the device. Maybe Apple throws in a MobileMe subscription for a the first year to make for seemless desktop/mobile doodad integration featuring "instant and anywhere" sync.
Any calls made on an iTablet will be made through Skype (or some other IP-phone service) over normal WiFi connections but never, ever over this mobile data connection Verizon might be providing. That keeps AT&T content for the next couple of years as the butcher gradually sidles up with the pneumatic stunner in the runup to 2010 or so. You can sum it up thusly: Verizon:iTablet::WhisperNet:Kindle.

iPhone Mini: if it exists as a US product (and I still have my doubts, though Gruber makes a nice case), it will be an AT&T device; essentially as he described it on DF: a novel form factor (size- or volume-wise) that is essentially an iPhone 1.0/3G in modified clothing. The top billed iPhone will sport an updated version of the same design we see today, but with suitably gaudy specifications by comparison.

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Lost his Marble

Adam C. Engst seems to think that Mac OS X 10.6 (aka Snow Leopard) will or should be free...or at least nearly free. Say, $9.95 for the DVD. His point mostly rests on the perfectly good notion of simultaneously dragging all the remaining Tiger (and, presumably any pre-Tiger OS user still out there) into the future; the net result is a unified system architecture that helps Apple (and any developer) going forward as less heed may be paid to ensuring excellent Jaguar support in some new application.

Here's why he's wrong: Snow Leopard will be Intel only. In fact, Snow Leopard will be by definition a system bifurcation. Every operating PowerPC Macintosh: stuck at Tiger or Leopard (I mention both because the finest system for the PPC was clearly Tiger); all other Macs: on to Our Brighter Future.

So, carve it in stone: Snow Leopard will be announced and a full demo given at WWDC, cost $129.00, only run on Intel-based Macs, and probably ship reasonably soon after announcement, say right around 9/1/09.

How do you sell that, when this upgrade is supposedly only under-the-hood changes along with some much needed but not-at-all glamorous additions? Interface change, my friends. Marble, here we come.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Kids Are Alright

The horror of sexting! The Wall Street Journal lays it out there for us...but too frequently seems to bob away from the real point of the thing. If only an internet world wide web logging system, or "blog" existed to right such wrongs.

First off, the premise (for those reading from Mars):
The practice of teens taking naked photos of themselves and sending them to friends via cellphones [is] called sexting
Except it turns out that Upstanding DA George Skumanick Jr. has a somewhat broader definition of the "crime":
He has threatened to charge kids who appeared in photos, but who didn't send them, as well as at least one girl who was photographed wearing a bathing suit. One of the accused is 11 years old.
So pretty much anybody under 18 not wearing a burkha, then, is clearly and brazenly guilty of the dread crime: sexting. The WSJ seems to sense as much, and comes back with Louis Natalli's (why, he's a perfessor of something or other!) opinion on the matter:
"The whole tawdry episode seems to call for a little parental guidance and a pop-gun approach, not a Howitzer approach with a felony prosecution,"
Indeed. However, what might you imagine that DA Skumanick Jr. is proposing? (Where did you get that Howitzer? Found it!) Why prosecute (and lose, but we'll get to that) when you can just intimidate? It's the much more personally rewarding approach:
Mr. Skumanick is giving the teens an opportunity to avoid charges [by taking some forced re-education], which he could have filed immediately
Emphasis mine. Translation: charges could have been filed, but Skumanick knew he'd likely lose the case in court. In fact, he already has. But he plans to appeal. Honest. While we're doing that, let's cast our intimidation net as wide as possible, holding out the nuclear CHILD PORNOGRAPHER label over the lives of these, uh, children; then you make sure the media is well aware of your doings. Next step? You hold an assembly:
With the help of school officials, Mr. Skumanick convened a series of assemblies, from fifth-graders to seniors. For the youngest students, he asked them to conjure how they would feel if their grandparents saw a photo of them that is "not nice." He warned the older students that sexting could damage their college or job prospects and could result in felony charges.
I think we've all attended one of those at some point, complete with the requisite runaway authoritarianism:
At one of the assemblies, a student interrupted and accused Mr. Skumanick of trying to ruin the teens' lives. "This isn't a debate," Mr. Skumanick told the senior boy, who was escorted out of the auditorium.
God, that kid was straight out of Central Casting. But then, so was the response.
Next step: Send The Letter to The Parents. How should we word it, though?
On Feb. 5, with the [forced re-education] course outline mostly in order, Mr. Skumanick sent a letter to parents of the students involved, saying their children had been "identified in a police investigation involving the possession and/or dissemination of child pornography." The letter summoned the parents to a Feb. 12 meeting at the Wyoming County Courthouse.
That ought to do. Simple and to the point; no need to panic anyone. Now we get them downtown, tell them their kids are going straight to Statesville for the felony, then stretch out the long pause before the "but...":
...joined a group of about 50 [parents] at the courthouse. Before showing the photos, Mr. Skumanick explained his offer to the crowd, answering one father's question affirmatively, that -- yes -- a girl in a bathing suit could be subjected to criminal charges because she was posed "provocatively."

Mr. Skumanick told them he could have simply charged the kids. Instead, he gave them two weeks to decide: take the class or face charges.

Inconvenient and complete lack of actionable evidence of any crime in otherwise front-page case: solved. Oh, wait:
MaryJo Miller was dumbstruck when she opened her letter, which targeted her daughter, Marissa. Mr. Skumanick later told her he had a photo of Marissa that showed her from the waist up wearing a bra. [...] Neither Marissa nor her mother knows how it got circulated but they don't see the photo as explicit. "It was like an old grandma bra. Nothing skimpy," says Marissa.
Uh oh. Troublemaker alert. Indeed, those pesky bastards at the ACLU subsequently took up the cause:
In the end, parents enrolled 14 teens in the course. But the parents of three other girls, including Marissa Miller, recruited the ACLU's help to sue Mr. Skumanick. At a hearing March 26, a federal judge indicated he thought the girls may be successful in their suit and temporarily blocked Mr. Skumanick from filing charges, pending a June hearing.
That is probably the end of that. But, Skumanick did manage to intimidate 14 families into the courses. Well done, sir. I can only hope you also skimmed a fine or course tuition of some kind.

To its eternal credit, the WSJ includes one extra tidbit; it seems Skumanick included a show-and-tell at his little felony intimidation service:
He then told the parents and teens to line up if they wanted to view the photos, which were printed out onto index cards. As the [anonymous] 17-year-old who took semi-nude self-portraits waited in line, she realized that Mr. Skumanick and other investigators had viewed the pictures. When the adults began to crowd around Mr. Skumanick, the 17-year-old worried they could see her photo and recalls she said, "I think the worst punishment is knowing that all you old guys saw me naked. I just think you guys are all just perverts."
Nail meet head. Perhaps Skumanick Jr. should be prosecuted as a repeat kiddie-porn consumer?

Friday, April 10, 2009

I hardly can believe I'm real

The New Yorker favorably notes the revival of West Side Story, pointing out that certain parts of the libretto have been vastly improved:
Fifty years on, in a multicultural America, this decision makes the production feel fresh; it also allows the show to dispense with some of Sondheim’s rookie mistakes. In “I Feel Pretty,” for instance, he had Maria, an uneducated Puerto Rican teen-ager, only a month in New York, singing with such showy internal rhymes as “It’s alarming how charming I feel.” (“When rhyme goes against character, out it should go,” Sondheim said in 1974, with the wisdom of years.)
Indeed, nothing jerks me out of the gritty cinéma vérité of your typical Broadway Musical than does a bit of overly florid prose or the far too convenient (or clever) rhyme. Why can't those eggheads just let me be gripped by the you-are-there horror of exquisitely choreographed gang wars-of-the-dance and the ever present (and shockingly hardcore) street lingo...any small children may need to leave the web:
Dear kindly Judge, your Honor,
My parents treat me rough.
With all their marijuana,
They won't give me a puff.
They didn't wanna have me,
But somehow I was had.
Leapin' lizards! That's why I'm so bad!
So thank the maker we are prevented from hearing so much as one internal rhyme that defeats the inherent and inexhaustable believability of Maria. And suddenly that name will never be the same to me.

Monday, April 6, 2009

The Graduate Too

It's remarkable how rarely treasured insights from "The Analysts" are called into question. It happened in the NYT with reference to "Up," a forthcoming Pixar film:

With “Ratatouille,” analysts fretted about whether moviegoers would go to see a movie about a rat in the kitchen. They did. With “Wall-E,” people feared the lack of dialogue would bore children. It did not.

As noted in the article, those films banked box-office business of a quarter-billion dollars. Each. Yet it seems the asshats still control the dialogue and, by extension, the purse-strings:

“We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” he wrote, adding a complaint about the lack of a female lead.

Indeed. We are also Quite Concerned that there is a 17% defect in the sass-back quotient and absolutely no fart jokes. How can you possibly even market a film like that?

Astonishingly, Disney (absolute and unchallenged kings of scarcely animated, direct to DVD cash-ins) even puts some pushback on the side of the creative out there:

“We seek to make great films first. If a great film gives birth to a franchise, we are the first company to leverage such success. A check-the-boxes approach to creativity is more likely to result in blandness and failure.”

That's the best statement I've seen come out of Disney since this comment:

We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.
Walt Disney

That sentiment, however, is clearly too much to hope for.

Friday, March 20, 2009

Poll to Poll

Ladies and gentlemen, the nearly Vice President of these United States:

Of the $288 million that Palin doesn't want, $170 million would go to education, including money that "would go for programs to help economically disadvantaged and special needs students." Other programs affected include "weatherization, energy efficiency grants, immunizations, air quality grants, emergency food assistance, homeless grants, senior meals, child care development grants, nutrition programs, homeless grants, arts, unemployment services, air quality, and justice assistance grants."
Indeed, we don't want to go stimulating those folks or those programs. Next thing you know, Alaskans would be spending less on their energy bills with potentially devastating impact on the OPEC nations...

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The John Erwin Act of 2009

Based off the warm reception the recent AIG retention bonuses have received, I forsee no problem at all for Fannie and Freddie's upcoming round of same.

Here's what it's going to take. First, enact the previous post. Up it to 200%, just to be sure, and include any corporation receiving bailout or TARP monies. Funny how the UAW had to reopen their contracts lest the world surely end, but the millionaires: not so much.

Second, an example needs to be made. Ceterum censeo AIG esse delendam. Starting immediately, AIG shall be taken into bankruptcy. The still very valuable and profitable insurance branch: sold off...on the condition that all its related executives must not be retained beyond six months. Their jobs are over. The dread CDS unit: what's sellable is sold. As to the rest of it, the various counterparties will be approached, and workarounds "negotiated." I'm pretty sure their attidues will soften once the default swap is going to yield a) something -or- b) zero (with the attendant and required revelation on the old balance sheet). What's not unwindable or proves unsellable is held by a resolution trust-style operation and eventually sold. Everyone, and I mean everyone currently employed by AIG that makes above $100,000/yr: goes on the fucking breadline. You can safely fire everyone not in the insurance unit starting tomorrow. And you furthermore ensure that they are not legally employable by any company or proxy of said company that is receiving or received bailout or TARP funds.

Then we wait and see which CEO wants to start off the next round of bonuses for all the hard work and genius. Things have changed. Dramatically. These fucktards just refuse to accept it.

And, media, can we quit with all the "Masters of the Universe" crap? It was foolish and obviously quite sad when times were good. Now it's just pathetic.

Monday, March 16, 2009

100%

Resolved: There shall be a 100% tax on all bonuses, remunerations, inducements, extras, fees, and any other income not classified as "regular" (tax code here) on all employees of AIG for fiscal years through and including 2010.
Resolved: Regular incomes in excess of $50,233.00 shall be taxed at 50% in each of those years for any employee of any institution receiving TARP funds. This shall include all meals, airline flights, club memberships, cars or car services, homes, and any other indirect income received as part of an overall "compensation package" by any individual so employed.

The fucking end. Are you listening, Congress?

Are we really meant to believe that retention bonuses for the very same fucking idiots that crushed the global markets are absolutely required to keep these same "best and brightest" around long enough to fix what they hath wrought? Unbelievable.

Friday, February 27, 2009

We were doing it before we had a name for it

One Kimber VanRy was ticketed to the tune of $25 for sipping a beer on his stoop (not a party, not a nuisance, just sitting out there quietly enjoying a beer in the great urban out-of-doors).

Clyde Haberman reports on the long-term outcome of that event while simultaneously showing us how serious journalism is done:

[VanRy was sitting on] the short stoop of the four-story co-op building on Sterling Place in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, in which he owns an apartment. The stoop is set well back from the curb, but does not lie behind a gate, as some other stoops on that block do.

There Mr. VanRy sat, on what was private property — minding his own business, working his BlackBerry and nursing a beer. For the curious, it was a 12-ounce bottle of Sierra Nevada.

Twist top or crown cap?

Anywho:

Last week, a judge tossed out the case on a technicality. The matter had dragged on too long, he said.

For Mr. VanRy, the victory was less than satisfying. Larger questions about stoop sitting and sipping were not addressed.

Agreed.

I can only assume editors cut out the explanation of Mr. VanRy's fucked up last name capitalization schema. Perhaps he's big into R (or perl, perhaps) and wanted his name to reflect a delightful air of utterly random and insanity-making camel-casing conventions. Haberman does mention:

Neighbors drinking beer on their front steps get these “quality of life” summonses, but not people sipping wine at New York Philharmonic concerts in Central Park or knocking back frozen daiquiris at summer movie screenings in Bryant Park.

Rest assured, these people will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Insect Authority and 9/11

Has there been any greater boon to / more effective accelerant thrown upon the eternal flame of Insect Authority than that of the pervasive fear, uncertainty, and doubt that 9.11 implanted and Bush et al. carefully husbanded and amplified? Today's example comes from the New York Times, where a fellow was (legally) photographing the subway in action at a particularly godforsaken stop somewhere in the Bronx:

“[...]According to the rules of conduct, we are allowed to take pictures,’ ” Mr. Taylor said. “I showed him the rules — they’re bookmarked on my BlackBerry.”

Rule 1050.9 (c) of the state code says, “Photography, filming or video recording in any facility or conveyance is permitted except that ancillary equipment such as lights, reflectors or tripods may not be used.”

Then a police sergeant arrived.

He tells me that their rules and the transit rules are different,” Mr. Taylor said. “I tell him, ‘If you feel I’m wrong, give me a summons and I’ll see everyone in court.’ The sergeant told them to arrest me.”

[...I've found the quickest way to an arrest is pointing out a policeman's error in this way; but anyway...]

[Taylor] got a batch of summonses.

The first was for “taking photos from the s/b plat of incoming outgoing trains without authority to do so,” abbreviating “southbound platform.” It cited Rule 1050.9 (c).

The second was for disorderly conduct, which consisted of addressing the officers in an “unreasonable voice.”

And the third was for “impeding traffic” — on a platform that is about 10,000 square feet. “I don’t know if you can impede traffic with 15 people per hour coming on the station,” Mr. Taylor said.
(Emphasis added.)

So, the man here is illegally arrested and held, charged with a bunch of nonsense entirely designed to prevent him from ever asking a question again (nothing here is meant to see to the public safety or even the grudging enforcement of some law that everyone involved in the situation might agree is outdated or silly; this is pure intimidation, and was premeditated intimidation at that: guy asks too many questions, guy goes to jail and subsequently has to appear in court as many times as possible. That all these charges will likely be dropped is immaterial to the officer; the entire punishment is the combination of intimidation and inconvenience.).
And just how many people get arrested for "impeding traffic" or some variant of same every year? Millions? I personally know several in vaguely similar circumstances: police can't actually charge them with anything, and the soon-to-be-arrested know it and have used that knowledge against The Authorities, so they're going downtown for, uh, impeding traffic! Six weeks later, the charge is dropped by a dumbfounded judge, probably at a cost not too far off the $1,500/minute quoted in the piece.

This same pattern extends everywhere, it would seem. I've been questioned by security for looking at a building. From the outside (but on their property, by God, which, to their mind, more than likely extends several feet into the street as well). It seems no structure is sufficiently innocuous to avoid Fort Knox level security measures and potential deportation to Gunatanamo for anyone so much as even slightly stepping out of line. Only when we all decide to start fighting each and every one of these incidents like Mr. Taylor did here will we ever make any progress.

This has all happened before...


Chart of the day (from here). So then, 1929 it is. I guess we can all look forward to 2028 when things really get going again...

On the plus side, the article closes with this tidbit:

It is going to be a buying opportunity of the century.
At least we've got that going for us. That and the long awaited chance to start stockpiling yer gold.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Decline and Fall

We can see a lot of the decline and fall of the MSM at the hands of those damnable innertube world wide web log, or "blog" startups what with their cursing and pajamas and whatnot in last night's press conference.

First, we have the Huffington Post's Stein:

"Today, Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal? And are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?"

Of interest for being the first non-plant blogger called on at one of these thing. Let's compare and contrast to the performance of the MSM, in this case the Washington Post's Michael Fletcher asked:
"What's your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?"

I think we can all agree that that's pretty much exactly what anyone given one question would ask the sitting President. At least it failed to include the traditional four-paragraph lead-in. Been nice knowing you, MSM.

Monday, February 9, 2009

The Year We Make Contact


Interesting results from the folks over to Gallup. Turns out that, despite major (and continuing) assistance from the MSM, 'Merica is seeing right through this shit.

Seemingly forgetting the downright ruly 2-million person mob at their doorstep on Inauguration Day, seemingly forgetting that, in many cases, Obama carried their own districts by large, double-digit figures, seemingly forgetting that, you know, the economy is in freefall and that most everyone in America places blame squarely at the doorstep of the GOP; most of all, seemingly forgetting 2010.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

On behalf of the mob

Ezra opines on the scene:
This is, in other words, no time for moderation. And on the Mall today, you could believe it. The press was seated directly before the podium -- I had a second-row seat to history, you might say -- and behind us stretched the long lawn. And all we could do was gape. It was a sea of people. Millions of people. A mass of moving, yelling, dancing, joyous humanity, filling every patch of green and surrounding the Washington Monument. The image richly recalled the iconic photographs of Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington. And the assembled politicians knew it. Up on the podium, you could see senators snapping pictures on their digital cameras, pointing at the crowd, shaking their heads in disbelief. They weren't pretending to be blase about the scene. This was different. This was dramatic. It was a screaming, laughing, cheering rejoinder to those who would constrain the scale of Obama's ambitions, or question his political assets.
And, as somebody out there moving, yelling, dancing, and actively being humanity: I agree on all points. You'd think the members of both the "loyal" Democrats as well as both the vigorous/healthy and the lunatic, nothing-will-move opposition from the GOP side would look out and have exactly the same moment...and, upon hearing Obama's own "the ground has shifted beneath them" line would combine the two streams of information and move out accordingly in the coming days and months. Instead, Jay Boehner gives us this:

I'm not sure that anyone knows exactly what [Obama] was trying to say.
Indeed, the meaning of the various threads at work on the day were quite muddy. I guess we know what we have to look forward to.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Stanford and Son

You can understand a lot about the iPhone and the iPod Nano (which cost more to produce yet still replaced (at the same price point) the most popular iPod ever, the "mini") from this quote from Steve Jobs, re: Macintosh 25th anniversary

“I don’t think about that,” he said. “When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, ‘Get it away!’ and I shipped all that shit off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”

Then consider this, from the then-titan of the industry:
"I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders."
--Michael Dell, 1997.
And, perhaps even more telling, this notorious quote from Jobs himself, to Fortune magazine in 1996:
"If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth -- and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
Which is basically exactly what he did the next year. At any rate, worth considering the state of Dell today, run to the whim of Wall Street analysts, and the then-doomed Apple (Wired circa 1997: Silence grips Apple Deathwatch). One commoditized, the other innovated. This despite the fact that even Macworld magazine had inexplicably begun running Windows NT tips. And in every major instance, Apple's moves were greeted with derision and a fall in stock value (iMac, iPod, Apple Stores, iPhone were all (wrongly) crowned as the last gasp of a desperate company; after all, even might Dell couldn't figure out how to do bricks and mortar. My stars!).

This is ultimately Steve Jobs value to Apple. The actual products aren't nearly important as the corporate daring, the brass balls that are necessary to tack hard against the wind and discontinue your best seller in favor of something even better. Or to say "fuck it, we will put no floppy drive in there." And etc... Very few other companies of size do the same. Hell, very few Mom and Pops will make moves like that. Worth considering.