House of the rising Moonglum

Congratulations to the Iraqi people who once again have defied violence to come out to the polls. I don’t know if this batch of candidates are any better (or even that much different) than the last, but they get to pick from different lists, which should help I would think.

Best quote from the NYT: ‘“We have experienced three wars before,” Ahmed Ali, a supporter of Mr. Maliki, said in Ur, “so it was just the play of children that we heard.”’

Well I’m glad the bad children didn’t stop them from voting.

Dear President Obama,

As a citizen of the state of Illinois, home to Abraham Lincoln, I would be proud to accept any and all prisoners from our current conflicts in Illinois prisons. For too long our country has operated outside the rule of law with respect to those who have wronged us. We have laws in place with which to punish them, and if we ever hope to regain the trust of the world we must use them. The first step is to find a place within the bounds of the US to house our most dangerous criminals, and we have at our disposal an empty maximum security prison. The citizens of that town seem happy to help out. Once in place we can bring them to trial and finally have justice done. This country has waited for too long, and the rest of the world begins to doubt our sincerity.

Thank you for your attention in this matter,

Moonglum

p.s. Ignore Mark Kirk, he seems to prefer keeping one prison empty while the rest are overcrowded, when opening this one, while providing local jobs could also relieve some of the overcrowding in the rest of the prisons in Illinois. How this reduces our safety I have no idea.

Just upgraded to the latest version an now this blog supports iPhone. And cell phones apparently, but I’m not sure how much I believe that. Try it out when you get a chance and tell me what you think.

Sent from my iPhone. (sort of…)

Survey says three out of ten people prefer cell phones over sex. 36% of women and 15% of men interviewed (skewed demographics give the final result.) Two thoughts. First, really?! Second, this is breaking news?!

Just saying.

Useful tip for Chicago residents: start dialing 1 + ten numbers.

We are getting a new overlay area code in the 773 (and surrounding) areas. This means that starting November 9th, we all need to dial 1 + area code + phone number for ALL phone calls, even if they are still in the same area code that your number is.

Hey all. You may or may not have seen the video that Microsoft put out that gives you tips for hosting your own Windows 7 party.

Suffice it to say, it is horrible. I mean I love technology, and in fact salivate over new operating systems, but the notion of having an operating system party just bothers me. And even worse, with those people. Fortunately “Windows 7″ was just code. With some minor modifications we know what the part is really about.

Oh my.

I had a friend recently send me a pajamas media video that was supposedly about Obama’s Iconography and Branding. I have been thinking a lot lately about where the whole Obama as Hitler thing is coming from, and had been leaning towards racism, but couldn’t figure out exactly why. (And no, not just Carter.) Basically I’m trying to figure out what is different between this and the far left saying the same thing about Bush for the past 8 years. This video helped me figure some of it out. “Never seen before” “Perpetual leadership” “Only seen in totalitarian regimes” “I won’t show them because it would be obscene to compare the horror they generated, 150,000,000 dead no less, to what’s going on here today. That was mass murder this is merely advertising. We’ve just never seen that kind of thing before here in america.”

I’m sorry, but if this guy is an ad expert and an iconography expert he knows exactly what he is doing, and it is playing on the base fear of the “other”. He is “different”. He is not like what has gone before _in this country_. He is _not us_. This video has nothing to do with iconography, and is full of misdirections and lies. The W disappeared for four years? Please. The DNC isn’t using the presidential seal? That’s because it is ILLEGAL to use it for anything other than official government business. The eagle is flying away? The eagle is ALWAYS flying, for the same reason that the donkey is kicking, it makes the icon more active and exciting. Heck, it’s flying away in _the presidential seal_ as well!

As for the O icon continuing to be promulgated, every official speech the president has done has had the presidential seal on the podium. His weekly podcasts used to be branded with the O, but the day he became president they were rebranded with the presidential seal. This iconography argument is a thin veneer for trying to brand the president a different from all the others, and different from us. And that is where my fear for the racial thing comes in.

I hated George Bush, but at the end of the day he was my president. (If anything the argument against him was that he was _too much_ like us.) This line of thinking and talking is what is driving the far right to “mobilize for action”. This causes people to yell at the town halls and show up with guns at Obama’s speeches. By painting him as on par with the epitome of evil, the right is slowly building up the idea that ANYTHING is acceptable in opposition to him. This iconography video is just more of the same. Sarah Palin’s death panels and Rush Limbaugh saying he has brown shirts. That crazy Baptist saying it’s OK to kill Obama because he supports abortion. Right wing (birther) blogs say that he actually is hitler and is going to round up and kill 6,000,000 jews. People showing up in town hall meetings, or filling up message boards with Obama and Hitler comparisons when the rest of us are trying to talk about healthcare. This causes me to turn into a knee-jerk liberal.

Which is really frustrating, because there is actual discussion that I would like to be able to have about things like economic reform and healthcare reform. Important questions, like what would a public option mean? How would it operate? And if we don’t have one, how can we guarantee that the health insurance companies can’t go on abusing the middle class like they already have been? And if we decide that everyone should have health care, how are we going to get the 40,000,000 people who aren’t covered, covered without a public option? But when I go to a town hall meeting, or a website, and someone comes out with “Obama is Hitler!” it makes me immediately jump to his defense. Because at the end of the day, even though I may disagree with him on some items, like George Bush, he is my president. And that path leads to the end of social discourse.

And I think that is where the difference lies. It feels (to me) like it was easier to have discussions about the ramifications of Bush actions than it is about Obama actions. I suppose it could just be that he is actively trying to be more accessible, and thus the conversation is similarly louder. For example, there weren’t any town halls on the decision to invade Iraq, but the probably would have been pretty tense if there were. But a final note is that Obama gets four times the death threats than Bush did. It just seems unlikely that that comes from policy differences alone. I find it hard to believe that more people are violently opposed to health care than to torture. And much easier to believe that a general culture of hate and painting the black president as different from us has a lot more to do with it.

So there I was coming home on the El the other day with a friend of mine, and I couldn’t help but stare at the shirt of the guy standing behind her. In huge letters, a certain word was clearly emblazoned across his chest. Unfortunately since he was standing right next to us, I wasn’t able to show my friend without attracting his attention as well, so she never saw it. The person sitting next to us did though, which it good because I’m not sure I would have believed it otherwise.

Apparently, University of South Carolina’s mascot is the gamecock. This has to be one of the most understated wikipedia entries ever. “While the men have traditionally been the Fighting Gamecocks and the women were previously the Lady Gamecocks, this distinction was discontinued in part to help eliminate gender bias in their athletic department.” Because that really gets rid of any gendered connotation in that name. I am still shaking my head about that one. You have to have more collegiate pride than me to walk around with that shirt on.

Just got back from Alaska, where it was pretty hard to find any Palin merchandise. There were actually some pretty good pro-Palin news stories on why it is a good idea for her to step down, even if you believe in her (for local Alaska political reasons, not personal or national political reasons). And this is a good thing, because her actual resignation speech was incomprehensible. I present for your enjoyment, two attempts to fix up her speech a little bit. First, the editors over at Vanity Fair give it a go. Pretty useful comments in there, which actually turn it into a pretty good speech.

Second, and by far my favorite, is a “reading” of the beat poem that is Palin’s speech, as read by William Shatner. Oh yeah.

Here’s a sappy little story about a preschooler in San Francisco who collected over $3,000 for the local food bank. You can make a difference as well.

I saw this sitting on my table when I got home. It was not what I at first thought it was.

The thoughts I had upon seeing it: Hmm, I wonder why my wife is rereading Pride and Prejudice? How odd, I don’t remember the cover having some odd skull bits showing through… I might have to take a look at that when she is done. Oh. Zombies.

John Hodgman did an excellent sendup of Obama’s geek credentials at the Radio & TV Correspondents’ Dinner. I wonder if this is the first time a sitting president has done the vulcan salute?

I just saw a very impressive road test of a Ford Fiesta. It answers all the usual questions, like is it green and is it expensive. It also handily points out that 120 hp is really about as much as you want on marble, a corvette will just spin out because it has too much power. The real question is, though, how will it do as a marine landing craft? Who knew the brits were eXtreme?

Seriously, how much did that little clip end up costing the british tax payers? Good lord.

Important News Citizens!

Slowly raising the temperature of the water in a pot with a frog in it won’t boil the frog. They will jump out. This information will surely change my life and outlook going forward.

Apparently Cheney never thought there was a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Between this and his newfound vocalism about gay marriage, he’s turning into a tree hugging liberal. Next thing you know he’s going to say torture is bad… oh wait, no he’s not.

I read a theory last night that if Obama had announced trials for torture, Cheney wouldn’t be talking at all now. But since he’s shown weakness, Cheney is moving it to the court of public opinion where he has a much better chance.

I found myself wandering State street this evening (as I seem to often lately) when I passed a street-corner preacher. I was engaged at the time, so couldn’t pick up any tracts nor hear what he was preaching about. For some reason this week I have had a number of discussions about religion so I actually was a little interested when I went back by him stopped for a moment to listen. “And if you are gay you can not get into heaven and will go to hell.”

Talk about blood pressure rising and anger surfacing. I’m not sure what made me, but since I already was heading over to hear what he was saying and maybe chat with him, it just came out. I had to quote some Matthew 19:19 at him, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

His response was very interesting. At first he smiled as he caught bible being quoted, then frowned as he realized what part. Then he went back to “fear the lord” and just ignored me. It probably didn’t do anything, but I like to think that it made him think, even if just for a second.

If I could have done anything different it would have been to remember the Romans quote rather than the Gospel: “Love thy neighbor as thyself. Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Romans 13:9-10) But I only know like three bible verses, so I’m pretty surprised that one came unbidden at all.

On the Colbert Report, Colbert showed Fox complaining about Obama saying that their family prays in private and won’t do a big spectacle. Gretchen Carlson: “This was an interfaith recognition day, why would you [pray] behind closed doors?” Colbert: “Exactly! By closing the doors on his prayers, Obama is letting us down almost as much as Jesus did when he said in the Gospel of Matthew, ‘Whenever you pray, go into your room, close the door.’”

I really do wonder how much secrecy is necessary in a democracy. Really, I mean that. If we are expected to be able to vote for the people who are going to make the best decisions, how are we going to know who that is when we don’t know what decisions they are making?

So it appears that someone who just lost his job is complaining that telling the truth risks national security. Really? All this sounds like is sour grapes. He should just be thankful that Obama isn’t charging anyone for crimes committed.

I understand that some secrets are needed, but I really do fear when every little item is classified for “national security”. And Obama is just continuing this trend with (thankfully at least) a few exceptions.

Yet another article showing the progress the EPA is making. I can’t say what a breath of fresh air this is. I don’t know how much of this will actually pan out into policies that are good for our national viability and the environment, but it is nice to see it being talked about at the very least.

Do you listen to Obama’s weekly podcast? (well, video address anyway, what is that a vidcast? a podeo?) This week’s was pretty awesome. He is a pretty awesome preacher, and calmly, in 5 minute sermons each Sunday, calms the hearts and minds of America. (And occasionally of Iran.) Easter and Passover as an excuse to extend foreign relations? That there is some clever talking.