January 12, 2009 archive

Jan 12 2009

Why I like Wikipedia

A Stars Hollow Gazette

A lot of people (including Stephen Colbert) are down on Wikipedia because it is edited by just anyone.

First of all this is not exactly true and with just a little bit of surfing ability (which I’d tell you all about in excruciating detail except I already have 17 lives) you can find all the fights just as surely as you can in orange.

Oh you mandarins get that, I know you do.

And that’s exactly the point.  When you cite Wikipedia you are citing the common wisdom, the battleground, the future history.

The contested record.

So if your facts contradict Wikipedia you’d maybe like to cite an alternate source.

What I don’t like about Wikipedia is they’re making all the articles shorter which makes narrative harder to put together and some parts much weaker than others.  When I was sketching out my history of the Revolutionary War I found pivotal events that had been a minor part of a collective battle or campaign in context either minimized to an unquotable obscurity or expanded into a tome of self indulgence (a very powerful magic item indeed).

I mention this in the context of some long term research I’ll be sharing into Martin Luther King Jr. and his teachings about activism, and Keynesian Economics.  If I tend to quote the most simplistic summaries it’s simply because they are common and accepted.

Wikipedia has sadly fallen down in the area of pop culture, partially due to copyright cops deleting many quotes and redacting plot summaries and story arcs.  As ever anything you read about a celebrity is carefully vetted by their publicist and lawyer if they have any self respect at all.  Even so I never find a paucity of undeniable facts to hate.

Ditto corporations and politicians, if you’re muckraking Wikipedia isn’t the place to start but it is a public record.

Jan 12 2009

Late Night Karaoke

Oh The Humanity

Alice Cooper No More Mr. Nice Guy


Jan 12 2009

Quote for Discussion: Facing our Failure

I, too, am glad-elated, really-that Bush’s absurd, colossally tragic reign is nearing an end. But that doesn’t change the fact that we failed. We all failed. Congress failed, the courts failed, and the American people failed. We have suffered through two terms of plainly illegitimate, nakedly contemptuous tyranny in a country that was designed to facilitate overthrowing tyrants, and we failed to do so.

I have no doubt that Obama, as disappointing as he will no doubt turn out to be, is a vast improvement over the past eight years, and may even be the best president of my lifetime-a dubious achievement at best. But it’s not enough to look forward and move on. If anything is to be learned from the Bush disaster, it’s important to look back, and to understand how terrible our failure has been.

As citizens, our expectations have fallen far and fast. When Nixon ignored a subpoena, the nation was outraged. Even Republican congressmen were vocally outraged, and Nixon was forced to resign to avoid impeachment. When Nixon tried to fire a special prosecutor, his Attorney General resigned. Then his Deputy Attorney General resigned. When Reagan lied to the people about crimes far worse than Nixon’s, it was a scandal, but our expectations had already been dramatically lowered. There were hearings, but no impeachment. A few years later, a Republican congress abused the impeachment process as an instrument of prudery, in an act of supreme political perversion…

…All of this could have and should have been avoided, if the congress or the American people had any sense of duty, or responsibility, or really any sense at all. The fact that Bush, Cheney, and the rest will walk out of the White House and back into lives of decadent opulence and ballooning bank accounts is a shame, a damn shame of historic proportions. And the shame is ours. Bush is the worst outlaw ever to occupy the White House, and it is not enough that he simply leave. The message we have sent to power-mad, totalitarian presidents of the future is clear: Do whatever you want; we will do nothing to stop you. The press will do everything in its power to gloss over your worst excesses, and marginalize your critics, and when the public finally catches on, the press will simply ignore you in favor of optimistic coverage of your possible successors. At least that’s how it works for Republicans.

Bush lied about Iraq; it’s nothing if not clear at this point. And what the hell did we do about it? Bush failed miserably in New Orleans, dashing the image of Republican competence. But what did we do about it? Even now, as Bush’s economic team fools us into pouring an insane, gargantuan amount of money into the largest banks in the world, pulling a classic scare-and-switch tactic we should all be familiar with by now, nobody even murmurs about holding him accountable. As we all hold our breath and wait for Obama to take office, we allow the most craven, criminal administration in American history to keep right on pillaging our laws, our money, and our collective sense of decency right to the end. We, as a nation, are a miserable failure.

-Allan Uthman, The Great Shame

Jan 12 2009

After Hours Semi Factual

I was one of those aimless teenagers probably just as likely to end up working at a chicken processing factory as going on past highschool.

Jan 12 2009

Bush’s Too Easy Torture Defense

Cheers to the US for convicting Charles Emmanuel for torture he committed in Liberia.  It’s a no-brainer that the US prosecuting Emmanuel while not seriously considering prosecuting US officials for torture under any law is hypocritical. However, some progressives cite the Emmanuel case as evidence of US hypocrisy and legal precedent to prosecute Bush. But, in the legal context of torture prosecutions, hypocrisy arises only if the law used to prosecute Emmanuel is applicable to Bush but the US decides against prosecution.

While Emmanuel used different means of torture than the US, torture is torture…unless the law is the one used to prosecute Emmanuel. Emmanuel was prosecuted under a US law that creates a bifurcated torture system that distinguishes between Bush’s permissible “torture lite” and criminal “severe torture.” In fact, Bush created his “torture lite” system based on the law used to prosecute Emmanuel and likely decided to prosecute precisely because it creates legal precedent that Bush can cite to either prevent a prosecution or provide a defense creating reasonable doubt in one juror’s mind to set him free. Thus, progressives spotlighting this Emmanuel case may increase the odds against prosecution of US officials.  

Jan 12 2009

Depose A Dharmanian! Special Ask Obama Edition

Docudharma is a small community of very smart (albeit funny looking) people. We may not have all the answers, but we certainly are witty and crafty enough to reply in an amusing fashion! So if you have a question, whether snarky, simple, political or philosophical, be it meta, meaty, maddening or impossible to answer,….what the hell? Post it here and see what happens! You have nothing to lose but your underwear! Heck, there is a chance it might even get answered, possibly even correctly!

Any questions?  

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