Spreading Spreading Santorum

What? What's this? A Lazarus sighting in the blogosphere? Is VTK back? No, sorry. VTK is pretty much dead and perhaps I'll do a proper eulogy at some point, but as I predicted somewheresometime down below, microblogging killed the radio star. I just post everything on Facebook and twitter now.

But. (or Butt, I should say.) I just want to do my part in keeping this link at or near the top of a "Rick Santorum" google search. Linking is loving, folks. So, that's done.

And like the wind ... vtk was gone again ...

Note to media

Note to media: at least one person is going to die because you're covering this koran-burning cult crackpot 24-7. Afterwards, that person will no longer be alive. Just because Freedom of Press entitles you to be reckless if the market dictates it, doesn't mean you should be reckless. Just don't cover it. Here's the model: crackpot runs on the field at a ballgame and you turn the cameras away and don't cover it. Everyone begins to think it's less amusing and more of a game-delaying nuisance, he doesn't get as much attention/adulation = less crackpots run on the field. Then you can stroke yourself about how you took the high road and people feel better about themselves for choosing you over your media competition.

Lieberman Socks.

The Revolution Will Be Tweeted

When the US State Department asks you to hold off on scheduled maintenance because the fate of a critically important nation is at stake ... you've arrived. Just a short couple months ago, I was confessing to not really grasping the obsession with Twitter. Well, suffice it to say that the role Twitter has played in the dissemination of information in an otherwise media-blacked-out Iran over the last couple weeks has fully dispelled any doubts I had about the power of the tweet.

Now that the only news coming out of Iran is coming from citizen journalists - protesters and bystanders alike - using their cellphones and twitter feeds, the importance of microblogging should be obvious. But even a week and a half ago, after the election but before the government moved to total media lockdown, the tweets were making themselves heard. Here's an article from stodgy old media stalwarts, The Wall Street Journal, talking about how twitterers were able to push fellow media dinosaurs CNN into better/more coverage of the protests in Iran. Not only did CNN step up their coverage after the online public shaming, they published a stroke job of an article about the emergence of twitter as a news source. This made me wonder what the media landscape will look like in the future if major media felt compelled to respond to trends and popular demands on twitter. Will our news be dictated by those savvy enough to manipulate and mobilize microblogging? The obvious concern for critical consumers of media is the legitimacy and reliability of this potentially massive stream of information. How do we know what's True and what's unverified, unreliable, or even false, manipulated, or engineered?

The picture at the top of the post is from twitterer Iridium24 via The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish. Sullivan is a credible journalist and has been compiling what he considers to be legitimate tweets. Is this the model of the future? Will the modern journalist essentially be a credible librarian, collator, and dispatcher of the data collected and broadcast by the people on the streets? The journalist becomes the editor and the reader becomes the journalist? If you consider journalism to be a skill at all, then there are ramifications from this transformation that extend beyond the idea that it's good to have more people reporting and disseminating news.

Rachel Maddow talked to another tweet gatherer,
Nico Pitney from the Huffington Post, on her show last week about his role in gathering information from the streets of Iran, while in his office in New York:



Since that interview, the media situation in Iran has devolved to the point where these twitter feeds, flickr and youtube images, and other transmissions are literally the only news coming out of Iran other than the obvious propaganda of the government. This type of proletariat micromedia may literally be the last hope of the people. But unfortunately, it might also spell their doom.

Check out this fascinating lecture that technology expert Clay Shirky gave last month, before the Iranian election. It's 17 minutes but I highly recommend you watch it because I can't quote it all:



In discussing the phones, cameras, blackberries and other tools being used by people on the streets to record and report elections in first Nigeria and then the United States, Shirky notes that "these tools don't get technologically interesting until they get technologically boring. It isn't when the shiny new tools show up that their uses start permeating society. It's when everybody is able to take them for granted... Now that media is increasingly social, innovation can happen anywhere that people can take for granted the idea that we're all in this together. And so we're starting to see a media landscape in which innovation is happening everywhere and is moving from one spot to another. That is a huge transformation."

Huge indeed. That got me thinking: could the technology era create a sort of reverse Big Brother situation? In a totalitarian regime, everyone assumes that the government is always watching and awareness of that dictates their behavior. Could the proliferation of cell phones capturing video and the transmission of information via text, twitter, etc., create an environment in which the police, the military, the media, the government, assume they're being watched and have their behavior dictated by the cameras being turned on them? Of course, this phenomenon must compete with governmental secrecy, spying, torture, executive privilege, etc. (and that's just in the US), so it might not be a net gain. But at least it might not be a net loss for the people. Power to the people, 140 characters at a time?

Later in the lecture, Shirky tells the story of how the BBC found out about the massive earthquake in China via twitter, before the US Geological Survey had anything up online about it. He points out that "the last time China had a quake of this magnitude, it took them three months to admit that it had happened. Now, they might have liked to have done that here, rather than seeing these pictures go up online, but they weren't given that choice, because their own citizens beat them to the punch. Even the government learned of the earthquake from their own citizens rather than the news agency." And remarkably, China allowed this reporting of the people to go on. But then the people pushed it further and successfully shamed the corrupt local government officials who had let the collapsed school buildings be built under code, which had resulted in the deaths of the children. This sort of bottom-up power dynamic was happening in China. As in Tiananmen Square China. So, eventually China shut the protests down and arrested the people. And after analysis of the transformation of the technology and media landscapes, they recently decided to shut twitter down (on the 20 year anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre). They could police the internet with The Great Firewall of China, the best in the world, but they couldn't handle Twitter, so they had to shut it down entirely. "The transformation to amateur media [was] so enormous that they can't deal with it any other way", says Shirky.

But short of Chinese level censorship, how does a government control the message in this modern media environment? It's near impossible - which brings us to Iran's dilemma. My guess is that Iran will be forced to make a decision: whether to follow China's lead or not. And the decision they make will determine the outcome of this revolution. I'm guessing that they're going to choose lockdown and that the situation is going to get worse. But it's also the case that Iran doesn't have the same type of infrastructure, the massive firewall management that China does. This would prevent them from shutting down parts of the internet effectively or immediately. It may end up having a devastating effect on their economy, as well as eliminating any remaining pretense of democracy, both of which would further fuel revolutionary sentiment. Twitter could bring down the whole Iranian government.

Sonia Sotomayor- SCOTUS Nominee, Yankee Fan.

Finally, a proper Yankees fan on The Bench. For years, we've been represented only by that despicable, if hilarious, arch-conservative, Antonin Scalia. Not only is he conservative, but he's from Queens! What kind of Yankee fan comes from Queens?!? The newest nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, grew up in public housing in the South Bronx. Now that's a Yankees fan we can trust. Her confirmation will secure our passage out of a nightmare era in which political representation of Yankees fans was limited to Scalia, Rudy Giuliani, and Ari Fleischer on the right, and Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton on the ... well, on the right. Sotomayor will now be the true face of the Yankees. And it's pretty clear that anyone who opposes her confirmation to the Supreme Court, or who roots against the Yankees, is a racist, misogynist, neo-con.

Obama at the White House Correspondents Din Din

Timmy Takes on Wall Street

In the latest Obe Lincoln political cartoon, Obe satirizes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.


There are some great faces to caricature in politics right now.

Also, check out this song about Paul Krugman:

The Obe Keeps Rolling - Hillary Goes To China

Her first trip as Secretary of State:

What is copyright infringement?

[UPDATED WITH NEW LINKS] In the newest edition of Obe Lincoln, I take on the hot topic of copyright infringement as it pertains to the Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster.


I drew the above picture freehand, obviously copying the Shepard Fairey Obama HOPE poster, which copied Mannie Garcia's (or the AP's) photo. I changed the image to add Baxter Orr's SARS mask. I used ink pens that weren't the same color as the Fairey poster, so I put it on Photoshop to adjust the colors to be closer to Fairey's colors (and to deal with the shortcomings of my crappy scanner). Any difference between this image and Fairey's image is a result of my failure to draw it perfectly freehand, not a result of a conscious attempt to make a significant transformation.

So, am I guilty of copyright infringement?

If you haven't been following the AP/Garcia v Fairey copyright lawsuit(s?), then you're missing out. I'm not a lawyer, but it's pretty fascinating stuff in terms of the questions that arise about art, photography, copyright, ownership, access, appropriation, theft, hypocrisy, consistency, ethics, greed, and creation. Not a bad list, eh? Check it out:

AP threatens to sue Fairey.
Fairey sues the AP.
Fairey's Obey Giant website.
Fairey on Charlie Rose.
Hypocrisy? Fairey threatens to sue Orr.
Orr had appropriated and changed Obey Giant with a SARS mask.
A discussion on copyright and fair use law.
The law.
More discussion on the law.
A blogging copyright lawyer weighs in.
Another blogging copyright lawyer weighs in.
The debate is on,
And on,
And on,
And on,
And on.
And then there's parody. One of the landmark cases about parody is Leibovitz v Paramount Pictures, in which the Naked Gun 33&1/3 parody of the pregnant Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover was upheld as fair use.
Here are a few other interesting cases.
And if all that doesn't have you confused yet, check out this article that points out that parody is protected, but satire is not. I hope the writer of that article, Jesse Walker, won't mind if I quote this insightful analysis:

"In the press or the academy, it's considered normal for more than one interpretation of a piece of art to coexist. In a courtroom, only one interpretation will enjoy the blessing of the law, and there's no guarantee that a judge playing critic for a day will agree with [the defendant's] subtle analysis."

Tommy Dasche Raphael

I like Tom Daschle and I think he would have been a great Secretary of Health and Human Services and all, but perhaps it's for the best. There are legitimate questions about his judgment.

Obe Lincoln - new political cartoon

I just launched a new blog for what I hope to be a monthly political cartoon: Obe Lincoln. You may remember my rant about Obama's Lincoln Complex in the 2008 Review Post. He's taken it one step further - he'll be arriving in DC via train from Philly, ala ... Abe Lincoln. C'mon. As VTK reader lc put it: "kind of a niche thing to be perturbed about". Yes. But it's my niche, dammit! Here's the first one (click for larger view):

Obama Cabinet Report Card - Part One

Thought I was going to bag it, didn't you? Honestly, I considered it. I've been putting it off because, as I said in the last post, there are over 30 cabinet selections and I'm really not that familiar with many of them. For some reason, I felt like this had to be an exhaustive, definitive statement on Obama's cabinet - one that would lead to a specific conclusion about his political orientation at this moment in time and a prediction of what we can expect from his first four years. I guess I thought that would be the sexy vtkesque thing to do. But the reality is that I don't have a degree in economics, I don't work in public policy, foreign policy, environmental or constitutional law. I don't have a highly educated understanding of health care, education, or transportation or energy policy. And I really don't know anything about Agriculture, the GAO, or Small Business Administration (Except what I know about the administration of my small business, which is so small that it can hardly be classified as a business. I'm a step above a Junior Achievement corporation selling knick knacks door to door). Another thing I'm not: a journalist. (ah, the amateur blogger's journalism complex...)

Further weighing down the anticipated (by some, at least) report card post is the fact that the term hasn't started yet so we can't really judge the performances of the cabinet. Beyond being a rhetorical point, this is significant because we don't know what impact the players will have on the team captain and the team's performance. We don't know who will have the ear of the president, who will drive policy, in what direction, or what events will happen that will force changes or realignments of policy. Elucidating these points, Harvard University's Stephen Walt presents a reasonable case for witholding judgement on Obama's foreign policy picks. The question before us is this - if we can't yet judge the individuals' performance, can we judge the individual who chose the individuals?

In answering this, I'm casting aside a few arguments: Forget about the beltway etiquette that says that a president should be afforded the courtesy of his cabinet selections; that etiquette saw the Democrats approve Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Bolton, etc, each of which was a shameful confirmation with regrettable consequences (understatement). Forget about the benefit of the doubt - these are the big leagues and I doubt everyone who has risen to this level of political power. Forget about the politics of the picks which explain that certain selections were token picks to allow the Administration to present a diverse face, and forget about the politics of picking people in order to guard against future political attacks. At what point do we move beyond the politics? ever?

So discarding these obstructions to judgment on cabinet selections, I see no reason why we shouldn't look at all Barack Obama's selections and criticize or praise him for them. He may not have been sworn in yet, but his presidency is well under way, and therefore open to debate - open even to lefty, hack bloggers like me who haven't done enough research. I'm inspired by John Nichols' article for The Progressive, How to Push Obama, which reviews Obama's progressive roots and his migration to the center, and suggests a strategy for pushing him leftward through reasoned, proactive opposition:

The way to influence Obama and his Administration is to speak not so much to him as to America. Get out ahead of the new President, and of his spin-drive communications team. Highlight the right appointees and the right responses to deal with the challenges that matter most. Don’t just critique, but rather propose. Advance big ideas and organize on their behalf; identify allies in federal agencies, especially in Congress, and work with them to dial up the pressure for progress. Don’t expect Obama or his aides to do the left thing. Indeed, take a lesson from rightwing pressure groups in their dealings with Republican administrations and recognize that it is always better to build the bandwagon than to jump on board one that is crafted with the tools of compromise.

I may not live up to this (particularly in the proposing alternatives department), but I reserve my right to hack away (and hopefully open a forum for the readers of this blog).

OK, let's get going. This is a long one. Keep in mind that this is a report card of Obama's cabinet selection choices, not a report card on the performances of the cabinet members - they all get incompletes so far. This also shouldn't be read as a prediction about how Obama is going to rate as a president; it's just an honest taking-to-task of the team with whom he has chosen to surround himself, and unless he turns out to be the greatest micro-manager of all time, they're going to have a big impact. To start you out, here is a mostly-commentary-free biographical breakdown of the team from Huffington Post. And without further ado, here's your VTK Team of Rivals Report Card:

• VP: Joe Biden - B+ - (not sure if VP is cabinet or cabinet-level, but Huff puts him here so I'll follow suit) - clearly a good pick by Obama insofar as Biden helped him to get elected (which is a good thing). Joe had more Joe Sixpack cred than the Hockey Mom or the Joe the Plumber in the end. Am I the biggest Joe fan in the world? No, but I'm not a hater either. It was a smart, effective pick by Obama and I think Biden will sensibly scale back the role of the VP in US governance, which will further highlight Cheney's criminal power usurpation. I wish he were a little less hawkish.


• Sec. of State: Hillary Clinton - C- - readers of this blog know where I stand on Hillary. I think she's a hawk, I think her foreign policy experience has been greatly exaggerated, and I think there were better people for this prestigious post. How about the junior senator from MA, John Kerry? This is a purely political pick and as such, it's irritating to me. But she's far from incompetent. Time will tell how she does.


• Sec. of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner - C? - Here's where my ignorance comes into play. I don't really know anything about Geithner. I know even less about what the right diagnosis for what the country's economic illness is. So I'm about to hit the internet and search my favorite radical lefty sites for an unbiased assessment that will surely leave me outraged. Please hold [insert elevator music]. Ok, I'm back. And still unsure what to think. I found an informative discussion on DemocracyNow!, in which Naomi Klein calls the selections of Geithner and Larry Summers (director of National Economic Council) "a profound disappointment". She calls Obama hypocritical for picking them after all his campaign criticism of deregulation: they "played key roles during very important economic crises in other countries, in Russia, during the Asian financial crisis, during the Mexican peso crisis. And when these countries were suffering a profound economic crisis created by deregulation, they preached more deregulation, more privatization and—this is key—they preached economic austerity to disastrous results."
  
  The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner agrees but is less pessimistic: "I can point to a couple of silver linings here. Number one, in Obama’s own speeches on the subject, he’s been very much on the side of stringent re-regulation of financial institutions as the price of recapitalizing them and also as the necessary policy. There’s a very good person who is going to be in charge of the specifics of what banking regulation should be going forward. That’s Dan Tarullo, who’s one of the two or three real progressives at fairly senior levels inside the Obama administration ... I do think Geithner is a competent technocrat. He’s not an investment banker himself. He’s been a civil servant for almost all of his career. And secondly, when he was pursuing these failed policies, he was doing so as part of a threesome that included Bernanke and Paulson. And of the three, Geithner was the most inclined to tough regulation as the price of bailout."
  
  Amy Goodman hedges Kuttner's optimism by reading a piece from William Greider in The Nation, with which Kuttner agrees: "Geithner was busy executing the government’s massive rescue of Citicorp--the very banking behemoth that Geithner and Summers helped to create back in the Clinton years, along with Federal Reserve [chairman] Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin, Clinton’s economics guru. Now Rubin is himself a Citicorp executive and his bank is now being saved by his old protégé (Geithner) with the taxpayers’ money ... Geithner has been a central player in the deal-making, from Bear Stearns to AIG to Citi. The strategy has not only failed, it has arguably made things worse as savvy market players saw through the contradictions and rushed out to dump more bank stocks.”
  
  Read (or listen to) the whole discussion here, but it seems that they're more concerned about Summers than Geithner. Lastly, is it notable that stocks soared when the news broke about his appointment as Treasury Secretary? Should we trust the market? Fuck if I know. William Greider provides his opinion in the aforementioned article: "[Geithner has] been seen as a weak and compliant regulator of Wall Street firms, someone who did not seem [sic] the storm coming. Occasionally, Geithner would anguish publicly about the accumulating time bombs like credit derivatives and urge bankers to do something, but he did not use his supervisory powers to compel action. In bailout negotiations with Wall Street titans, Geithner and the Federal Reserve were spun around like a top more than once. No wonder the stock markets rallied explosively when they heard Geithner would be their new boss in Washington. They think he is their guy." So, what should we expect? As I said - fuck if I know.


• Sec. of Defense: Robert Gates - D+ - My biggest problem here is that Obama ran as the change candidate on a consistent message of opposition to the Iraq War and consistent criticism of Bush and his foreign policy, and then he decides to invite the Republican (served under both Bushes) Secretary of War (of two wars) to continue on as the head of the Pentagon. I don't want to hear about the politics of this pick, the wisdom of ensuring a smooth transition, the success of the surge, or the relative moderation of Gates compared to his predecessor. The change here shouldn't have been the decision not to change. There must have been capable, qualified candidates who would have signaled a decisive change in the bellicose direction of this country. I don't accept that this is a "defensive" move to prevent Republicans from criticising whatever happens in Iraq while waxing nostalgic about the success of the surge. Frankly, I'm a little sick of hearing about the success of the Surge. So too, I imagine, are the friends and family of the 40 people killed in a suicide bomb in Iraq on Sunday or the friends and family of the 23 people killed in a suicide bomb in Iraq on Friday. So too, I imagine, is former US-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi who recently described the Bush Administration's policies as an "utter failure".


• Attorney General: Eric Holder - B - Let's not let the fact that the Republicans have chosen him to be the subject of their token nomination fight define him as a leftist. He may be, but the fight in the Senate is about the GOP fighting Obama, not Holder. And it's on. Holder's a former Clintonista. On the basis of that alone, I'm tempted to label him a centrist, but I'm wary of assigning guilt by association. The conservative US News and World Report calls him part of the cabinet's liberal core and writes that Democratic officials are saying that he will "serve as a liberal advocate on social issues important to minorities, feminists, abortion-rights advocates, organized labor, and gay-rights activists." Clearly, it's relative, but let's hope they're right. Was there a better pick available? Don't know.


• Sec. of the Interior: Ken Salazar - F - In case you didn't know what the Secretary of Interior did, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, "As the overseer of the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Minerals Management Services, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Endangered Species Act, the Secretary of the Interior is [the] most important position in the protection of America's lands, waters, and endangered species." Here are a few bullets from the CBD about Salazar:
  
  - voted against increased fuel efficiency standards for the U.S. automobile fleet.
  - voted to allow offshore oil drilling along Florida's coast.
  - voted to allow the Army Corps of Engineers to ignore global warming impacts in their water development projects.
  - voted against the repeal of tax breaks for Exxon-Mobil.
  - voted to support subsidies to ranchers and other users of public forest and range lands.
  - threatened to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when its scientists determined the black-tailed prairie dog may be endangered.
  - fought efforts to increase protection for endangered species and the environment in the Farm Bill.
  
  Some would describe the Environmental community's response as mixed. DemocracyNow! hosted a debate between CBD's Kieran Suckling and the National Audubon Society's Brian Moore. Salazar sounds like a fox in the henhouse to me. As far as Obama picking him? Politics - "thanks for voting for me, Colorado; thanks for your support, West." Crappy pick for a crappy reason.


• Sec. of Agriculture: Tom Vilsack - D+ - I don't know much about Agriculture or Vilsack, so I'm going back to the internet. Ronnie Cummins writes for Counterpunch that this pick "sent a chill through the sustainable food and farming community" DemocracyNow! hosted a debate between Cummins and Moore. You decide. Counterpunch points out that this is part of larger divisions within the environmental community. The Vilsack pick also notably drew the criticism of food writer/activist Michael Pollan. I dislike Pollan. But only because he's usually right. And I want to eat cheeseburgers all day.


• Sec. of Commerce: Bill Richardson - INC - He recently withdrew himself from nomination due to untimely questions about some of his contributors. Too bad. This may have gotten a decent grade from me.


• Sec. of Labor: Hilda Solis - A - This from John Nichols of the Nation in his 2008 superlatives list: MOST VALUABLE CABINET PICK Hilda Solis: It has been a long time since the United States had a Secretary of Labor who had a record of walking picket lines. That's what makes California Congresswoman Hilda Solis, Obama's pick to fill this Cabinet post, so remarkable. ... She is the right person for this job, and her selection serves as the single best signal from Obama that he intends to serve as a pro-worker president. Let's hope that Solis is allowed to renew a Labor Department that has been neglected – and disempowered -- by Democratic and Republican presidents.


• Sec. of Health & Human Services: Tom Daschle - A - I'm hopeful about this pick and Daschle's desire and ability to push progressive change in American health care. Perhaps the best way to highlight Daschle's liberal credibility is to point out the vitriolic reaction of the Christian Conservative Right: Daschle has a consistent pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, pro-judicial activist voting record. While in the Senate, Daschle voted against schools requiring voluntary prayer; voted no on banning human cloning; voted no to prohibit flag burning; voted no on school vouchers in Washington, DC; voted no on permitting drilling in ANWR and much more ... Daschle was a key leader in blocking Bush’s judicial nominees. During the 2003-2004 session, Daschle and his liberal cronies blocked 10 of Bush’s nominees from getting up or down votes in the Senate ... Daschle was honored by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) for being the “architect of the defeat of the Federal Marriage Amendment” in the Senate ... “Daschle can be expected to gut any pro-life, pro-family policies in HHS and will aggressively push his pro-abortion, pro-homosexual agenda,” said TVC Executive Director Andrea Lafferty.


• Sec. of Housing & Urban Development: Shaun Donovan - B? - I haven't found much reaction online worth quoting. I don't know anything about him, but he hasn't sparked any outrage so far as I can tell and there are a lot of people on the internet looking to be outraged at something. I'll give it an ignorant "B".


• Sec. of Transportation: Ray LaHood - C - WTF do I know (or care) about Transportation or Ray LaHood. Well I do take the subway frequently and drive on the Pike and I95 occasionally. And I do know that LaHood is a Republican from Illinois - from the same district Lincoln was from. Sounds like Obama killed two birds with one stone: a political pick (allowing him to present himself as bi-partisan) and another Lincoln connection to remind people that he's the next Lincoln. Didn't you hear? Obama's the next Lincoln. Anyways, environmental advocates Friends of the Earth had this to say: While his overall record on energy and environment issues is poor, LaHood has in recent years broken with many in his party to support crucial investments in passenger rail and public transportation, and he is a member of the Congressional Bike Caucus. These are reasons to hope that he may be open to the visionary transportation policy that is needed to move our country forward.


• Sec. of Energy: Steven Chu - A - Alright, I'll give Obama one benefit of the doubt pick. I don't know Chu but he sounds alright. He won the Nobel Prize in physics. Andrew Revkin, award-winning science reporter with the New York Times, had this to say on DemocracyNow!: [Chu] knows the science, and he knows it pretty deeply, and he knows how hard it is to get sometimes an idea from a laboratory and to become the new norm for energy ... in the last five years or so, Dr. Chu went to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to create—and he came there with this—his mandate for that lab was that energy is our new frontier. And he started to develop programs there that are very much aimed at trying to sort of have big breakthroughs on non-polluting forms of energy that we’ll need as the world heads toward nine billion people, more or less, with everyone wanting a decent life. We need more energy than we have now, even if you set aside the climate problem. But when you add the climate challenge with these building greenhouse gases, that creates this even bigger imperative. So he’s got the—he clearly has the grounding in both the science and how the science has to translate into products. You know, how do you interface with private sector? How do you make this all happen? So I think the combination shows some possibility of breaking through.


• Sec. of Education: Arne Duncan - C+? - I don't have kids and haven't been involved in any type of organized education for about 14 years. I don't know who Arne Duncan is. Here's another DemocracyNow! debate (which seems more like a tepid conversation really). Lefty Fireballer Greg Palast "slams" the pick.


• Sec. of Veterans' Affairs: Eric Shinseki - A - because he was right. From DemocracyNow!: Shinseki made headlines in February 2003 when he testified before Congress that the US would need several hundred thousand soldiers to stabilize Iraq after the invasion. At the time, Shinseki was Army chief of staff. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking Pentagon officials publicly rebuked him, while insisting that Iraqis would welcome the Americans as liberators.


• Sec. of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano - C - Napolitano appears to be drawing an array of reviews from all sides. This liberal calls it a "terrific choice" and this conservative rag doesn't like it. This liberal academic is concerned about her, saying "on the state level, she pushed some of the most right-wing agendas on immigration enforcement. She went full speed ahead with the Bush agenda to move immigration enforcement from federal to local hands." And this conservative Arizona blogger finds a silver lining in that her nomination virtually assures that AZ's 2 senators will remain Republican for another 7 years (not to mention that her replacement as governor will be chosen by AZ GOP Secretary of State). And of course, centrist PA governor Ed Rendell said she'd be perfect for the job because she has no life. So, is she a hawk? Relativity strikes again. I'm thinking I would have preferred a less hawkish person - with a life - to head security of my homeland. But then again, do we even know what Obama has in store for the Homeland Security Department?


• United Nations Ambassador: Susan Rice - C - According to DN!: She opposed the US invasion of Iraq but has advocated for military action in case of humanitarian crisis. Two years ago, Rice co-authored an article advocating for US attacks against Sudan. She wrote that the United States should consider unilaterally striking Sudanese airfields, aircraft and other military assets. Rice wrote, “If the United States fails to gain U.N. support, we should act without it.” Is that really the best Obama could have done in selecting his ambassador to the UN? Really? Maybe not as bad as Bush picking Bolton, but not great.


• Environmental Protection Agency: Lisa P. Jackson - C? - I know nothing about Jackson but it appears that she's getting mixed reviews from "the left" - mixed between wary and negative. This isn't exactly a glowing report from the Huffington Post. Nor is this from dailykos.

And roughly 3200 words later, there's your report card, Part One. Coming soon: Part Two - Cabinet Rank Members & Top Officials. Find out the VTK take on such fantastic/outrageous selections as Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, National Security Adviser James Jones, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, and National Economic Council Larry Summers.

Teaser: Dennis Blair aided the perpetrators of 1999 church killings in East Timor. (part 2 of that report)

Oh no he didn't. Oh yes he did.

This is an astounding moment in US history, in world history. Is it even possible to overstate the magnitude of this moment? I still can't believe it. The USA elected a black man as its leader. Racism is over! Finally, the scourge of slavery can be wiped from the history books.

Ah, the jokes. But seriously, it's amazing to look at how far this country has come. 150 years ago, slavery was legal in the United States. 112 years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed that racial segregation was constitutional (Plessy v Ferguson). 62 years ago, "negroes" couldn't play baseball with whites. 55 years ago school segregation was legal. Discrimination on the base of race was legal until 44 years ago (when Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act). Barack Obama is 47 years old. And he's the 44th President of the United States.

On this day, four years ago, I was devastated. I'd been getting out the vote in New Hampshire for days, had given the maximum donation to the Kerry campaign, and had really believed that the country would reject the despicable policies of Bush and the neo-cons. When they didn't, it was one of the most depressing days of my life. I remember walking around Cambridge and not being able to look passers-by in the eye because I felt that if I saw anything less than equivalent suffering in their eyes, I'd either cry or fly into a rage. In Cambridge! It was brutal. But I also remember emailing with friends the day after the election about an Obama 08 campaign. Earlier that year, Obama had taken the DNC by storm with his keynote speech. He was the chosen one. But could a black man really win the presidency yet? Surely one day, but was it too soon? Where would he get the electoral votes? Wasn't racism still too strong of an undercurrent for this to happen? Even as recently as yesterday, this same question lingered. And now that question is obsolete. Racism, of course, lives on in the US. But - wow - how far the nation has come.

I've said elsewhere on VTK that, while I support Obama for president, he no longer represents the progressive left, and the work to hold him accountable starts the day after the election. I'm going to flip-flop on that. Today's a day for celebration and reflection. Accountability starts tomorrow.

ELECTION 08 LIVE BLOG

UPDATED - 11:20 PM

12:00 Noon - It's on! I just voted. Time to do my other civic duty: live blogging!

I'll be updating throughout the day if I find interesting links or vtkworthy news items. I'll pick up the pace around 6 PM EST. I'm sure you'll be reading/watching your favorite news sources, so I'll try not to be redundant to those. This may end up reading like a giant anxious op/ed piece. I know that I have two polar opposite op/eds cooking in my head right now - one of which will make it out, the other of which will be tossed on the scrap heap. It's a weird situation in that there will be exactly one of two outcomes in a scant several hours, and I can't really believe that either one of them is going to happen: I can neither wrap my head around the idea of a black man being elected president of the US, nor can I fathom the US not electing this black man this year. The former is an amazing possibility, the latter a terrifying one (mostly because it will be the result of racism or fraud). Feel free to join in the live blog via the comment section. Yes you can.


2:00 PM - here are some midday links to get you through the countdown until the polls close:

- Exit Polls - In the comments, Joel brought up the uncertainty and unreliability of exit polling data. This is a good primer from dailykos, explaining what to look for, who to listen to, etc. Personally, I'm not giving any exit poll much credence. The false optimism created in 2004 and its subsequent collapse was too brutal. UPDATE: in fact dailykos and nate silver are now suggesting we ignore exit polls (which don't start coming out until later (5 EST) anyway).
- The Final Pollster - speaking of false optimism... who knows how accurate these polls are going to end up being, but Pollster.com's final state polling has Obama winning 273 electoral votes in the strong category - meaning McCain could win every toss up state and "leaning Obama" state and Obama would still win. Also of note, as pointed out by fuge, Karl Rove is predicting an Obama landslide. Though any sports fan will tell you this is a classic jinx move, so I'm not buying what he's selling either.
- Poll Closing Times - The real shit starts at 7 PM EST when the polls close in VA and IN (parts of IN close at 6). If VA goes Obama early (or at all) that's going to be a huge sign as to what we can expect. If IN is too close to call initially, that's another good sign. If IN actually goes Obama, get out the drape-measuring stick. The Gary, IN area (Chicago media market) is in the Central Time Zone though, so by the time the networks call IN, we might have a good idea of what's happening in VA, NC, and possibly FL and OH so it might be moot. FL and OH will probably take a while though.
- Steelers beat Redskins - This is supposed to mean that Obama's going to win. I don't know about that, but I know it's nice to see Pittsburgh beat a team from the NFC East.


2:30 - Wonk out tonight and follow the Presidential election and all the Senate and House races on the awesome kos electoral scoreboard (go to www.scoreboard.dailykos.com to see tricked out version (map below is a limited version)):



Also from kos, check out this election guide that breaks everything down by poll-closing time.

4:00 - This waiting is killing me. 2 hrs before we find out that KY went for McCain and that IN is too close to call. Question: if Obama/Biden win what happens to their Senate seats? Do the state governors select the replacements? The governors of IL and DE are both Dems.

4:20 - Vote yes on 2 in MA.

4:30 - Joe the Plumber: tax-evader, reckless driver, liar, moron, and ... fraudulent voter! End this, God. Please.


6:55 - excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous excited nervous Polls close in VA in 5 minutes and completely in IN in (inINin) 5 minutes. I was watching MSNBC but Chris Matthews was waxing ridiculous and it was a pretty boring panel. I switched to CNN and they've got graphics and gadgets and poll numbers! Woohoo! That's what I'm talking about. Can we get Chuck Todd to switch to CNN?

7:00 - Obama wins VT! McCain wins KY! Polls are closed in GA, IN, SC, and VA. It'll be a while before they call them in the presidential election though. (D) Warner wins the Senate race in VA. A couple of good pundit points: Conservative hack Bill Bennett gives credit to Howard Dean on his previously maligned strategy of trying to compete in traditionally Republican parts of the country; David Gergen says that the Obama campaign was one of the most impressive presidential campaigns ever. I would add that conversely the McCain campaign was one of the worst campaigns, on any level, ever. What a mess. That would be one of the most discouraging things about a McCain win - that they could run this poor of a campaign, in a year when the Republican brand is in the shitter, and the American people would still vote for them. C'mon, America. No way.

7:40 - Well ... uh. well. I like that Indiana is too close to call still. I don't like the numbers from VA so far. Florida's looking good - with 2% of the vote in. Can't really say anything about anything yet. Looks like (R) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's in for a tough fight for his Senate seat in KY. The graphics on CNN are much better than those on MSNBC.

8:00 - tons of CNN projections, none of them significant. MSNBC called Pennsylvania for Obama?!!? Switching channels... This would be huge. CNN hasn't called it yet. Did Gergen say CBS called NC for McCain? searching ...

8:05 - MSNBC not backing off the Penn prediction. NC still too close to call. No Reds switched to Blues yet but the PA serve-hold is huge. Stealing PA was a major piece of the McCain campaign's strategy. VA not looking great, but I don't know if the heavily Democratic areas have reported yet. C'mon VA, c'mon VA!!

8:13 - MSNBC called NH for Obama too. CNN hasn't called PA or NH yet. The MSNBC calls are clearly based on exit polls - troubling. Jeanne Shaheen beats incumbent John Sununu in NH. Good pick up for the Dems. KY McConnell vote not looking great.


8:43 - CNN called PA too, so that seems solid. Dole lost to Hagan in NC to give the Dems another Senate seat (+3 so far). #'s looking decent in the presidential race in NC. I wasn't expecting to win that one. It would be a nice consolation for a VA loss though (not looking great there, but again, I don't know what part of the state is lagging in reporting). Still no reds to blues. And I recall being ecstatic over the Kerry PA win, only to be devastated later on that night. In other news, I'm starting to develop a massive headache.

8:49 - Gergen and Bennett think the PA/NH wins close the door on McCain. they're not dumb and they're not liberals. I still have a headache though.

9:00 - Obama sweeps the upper-midwest blue states - MI, MN, WI. Solid holds. Still no red to blues yet. Can I get a MO? Can I get an NC? Can I get a tylenol? VA still too close to call according to MSNBC - but they said that they're still waiting on Northern VA. That's good. Chris Matthews: "it's a good time to order a pizza. We're not going to be able to call this until well after 11." fuck me. Dems have picked up 4 Senate seats so far.

9:15 - David Gregory just interrupted Chuck Todd to call Arkansas for McCain. You don't fuck with the Chuck Todd. Never interrupt Chuck Todd. Especially not for something that obvious an inconsequential. Todd's not as optimistic for Obama as the CNN gang is. He doesn't think VA's looking good for Obama. But NC's still looking decent. I'll swap that for VA.

9:26 - 0 FUCKING HI O !!!!! MSNBC's calling Ohio for Obama and I think CNN's about to follow suit. Huge huge huge. My headache just went away.


9:43 - CNN called OH, McCain's victory party is focusing on Hank Williams Jr, not the news, John King and his fancy big board "cannot get McCain to 270". It's only my well known paranoia/superstition that's stopping me from giving Obama the coveted VTK call. It's real close though. And my head really does feel better. How bout that.

9:55 - Brian has started a Call The Final Obama Electoral Vote Tally contest in the comments section. He has 364. I have 339. Anyone? (note - this does not constitute an official call from VTK; this is strictly for contest purposes). NM goes Obama. big. Headache's still gone.

10:02 - ** VTK OFFICIAL CALL ** IT'S OVER. BARACK OBAMA WILL BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. CNN just called Iowa. Assuming CA and HI goes Obama, that's game, set, match. Yes!!


10:16 - Also, for those of you not paying attention to the MA election, Prop 2 passed!! Spark it up, Massachusetts!! Possession of less than an ounce of marijuana in MA is now decriminalized. I gave up smoking years ago, but I strongly believe this change in law is long overdue.

11:00 - + CA = USA elects an African American to be the President of the United States of America. Awesome. I'm so proud.

** ELECTION REMINDER **

Don't forget to check in to the VTK special Election Day Live Blog tomorrow.

(did you think I was going to remind you to vote? If you forget to vote, you probably don't have the internet.)

Decision 08 – A Paranoid Presidential Top Ten

Five days from now, barring a two month recount battle, we should know who the next president of the United States will be. If you take the word of the pundits, you probably think we already know. Here are the top ten paranoid anxieties which make me wonder if Tuesday night might be longer and tenser than we expect. Worse yet, could some combination of these factors add up to a stunning disaster (a McCain/Palin win)? I’ll be live-blogging on Tuesday night, possibly throughout the day too, so if you’re not at a bar or an election party, feel free to stop by (in person or on the internet).

10. Karl Rove - What about Karl Rove? I don't know. But he makes the list because he’s Karl Rove and he can do stuff. And there are a lot of hours left before the polls close.

9. Joe Biden – Muzzle thyself, Gaffey McGafferson. There are a lot of hours left before the polls close.

8. November Surprise? Too late? Is it?

[ok - those three were mostly filler. now we get into my real paranoid anxieties:]

7. Malfunctioning Machines – There have been reports of electronic voting machines that have been flipping people’s votes – they choose the Democrat candidate and their selection is switched to another candidate instead. They just need to be recalibrated? What if they still don’t work after recalibration (as happened in West Virginia (see video below))? And isn't it possible that this recalibration bullshit is going to open the door to massive fraud? And what if people are given a paper receipt? Should we be happy then? Not if there’s no way to verify that what’s going on inside the machines is accurate. Am I being paranoid? Why are all the reports of machine vote flipping about flipping away from Democrat selections? Wouldn't the Republicans be raising hell if this was happening to them? It's probably not going to matter for Obama in West Virginia (which will likely go McCain), but it might make a big difference in Pennsylvania where voting machines were breaking down across the state in the primary season. When you vote on Tuesday, bring your camera and video your vote. Raise hell if there's something fishy going on.



6. The Bradley Effect - In 1982, the black mayor of LA, Tom Bradley, ran for governor of California and enjoyed a lead in both the pre-election polls and the exit polls. And he lost. The effect named after him suggests that people didn’t want to appear racist so they told pollsters they voted for him when in reality they had not. I don’t think this is going to be a huge factor in this year’s race, but it’s possible that there will be some effect. I saw one Princeton poli-sci professor who suggested that black politicians factor in 5 points worth of Bradley Effect when looking at their polls. That’s scary. But the Bradley election was 26 years ago. We’ve grown as a nation since then. Haven’t we? Have we?

5. The Undecideds are all going to vote McCain - Some analysts seem to think that all the undecideds are going McCain; others see no reason to think they won’t be split. Paul Begala suggested that it’s not the people who say they’re going to vote for Obama who can’t bring themselves to vote for him (Bradley Effect), but the people who say they’re undecided who would rather say that than that they won’t vote for him.

4. The Fear Factor – Will people be swayed by the desperate and irrational fear-mongering of the McCain Campaign and decide that it’s just too risky, too dangerous, to vote for Obama? This concerns me. If we’ve learned anything from the past 7 years it’s that the American people are very susceptible to fear mongering.

3. The Stupid Factor – Will people fail to understand that we already have a fucking progressive tax structure in the United States and that Obama’s tax plan is in no more socialist/Marxist/communist than George Bush’s or any other non-flat-tax-pushing politician?

2. Republican Electoral Shenanigans – Forget about the bullshit misdirection of the ACORN hubbubabaloo. They haven’t done anything wrong or illegal. The real threat to the very fiber of democracy is the continued, systematic, Republican voter suppression effort – which has ranged from disenfranchisement (voter roll purging) to intimidation to discouragement (disproportionate number of voting booths in white and black neighborhoods). In 2000 it was Florida; in 2004 it was Ohio. What state will it be in 2008? Pennsylvania? Virginia? Nevada? Will it even matter this year?

1. Obsolete Polling Methodology? – Are we all being completely fooled by inaccurate polling information? Here’s an interesting interview with UberStatMonkey Nate Silver about polling this election cycle. Silver is the managing partner of the highly respected baseball stat site, Baseball Prospectus, and the brains behind the popular polling site, fivethirtyeight.com. Of particular interest is this exchange:

NATE SILVER: Well, what I'm worried about is that this reliance is happening at the same time the polling itself is getting more and more difficult to do. You know, it used to be considered good if you could get 40 percent of the people to pick up the phone when you called and responded to your survey. That used to be kind of the benchmark. And now, if you get 20 percent of people actually responding, or even 15 percent, that's considered good to adequate. You know, people screen their phone calls a lot more now. People who have cell phones aren't called, in the first place, by most of the pollsters; there are some exceptions. You know, people have Vonage, these services on the internet, where they don't even have a telephone. So it's hard to reach people who are busy, who are distrustful of a random number coming up on their land line. And so, the non-response problem is becoming, you know, very serious. We might have to move into some kind of a hybrid, where you do try some kind of a survey instrument on the internet, combine that with a telephone sample. But these polls, you know, as we saw numerous times in the primaries this year, are not terribly accurate. It's not because the pollsters are dumb. There are a lot of very smart people in the industry. It's just inherently very hard to do when you're trying to do a survey, and, you know, four out of five or five of six people won't take your phone call. It's kind of very hard to balance everything to kind of make up for that fundamental problem.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And is there any concern and any analysis been done of the people who are refusing to be polled, whether they have any particular political perspective or viewpoint that might end up skewing your—the total results of a poll?

NATE SILVER: There are different kind of groups. Usually older people still pick up the phone more than younger people, women still more than men. You know, there's some thought that maybe people who are quite conservative won't pick up the phone as much as people who are more liberal. So it does depend. In this election, those kind of different kind of things balance out, where you might get too few young people, but maybe too few conservatives. That would kind of balance out. But, you know—but there definitely is what's called non-response bias. What the pollsters try and do is say, you know, if the woman answers the phone, to say, "I want to speak with the person having the next birthday," for example. But you can't always correct for that. Some of these polls use automated scripts; they're so-called robopolls. And so, they won't have a chance. Someone can say they're are a woman, if they're in fact, you know, not a woman, if that's what they feel, if they feel like trying to mess with the polling script and stuff like that. So there are kind of numerous problems with your kind of selection and with your non-response bias.



Are we chained to the floor in Plato's Cave, taking the puppet shadows for reality?

Verdict: I think Obama's going to win. But these ten things will keep me anxious and uncomfortable until he reaches 344 electoral college votes. I need a solid 74 ECV comfort zone this year.

Obama v McCain - The Dance-Off

O'Bama vs. McCain

Here's a little ditty to get you pumped up for the third presidential debate:



I'll be semi-live-blogging in the comment section if anything interesting happens. Feel free to stop by.

I'm a dork.

I love this new pollster graph with all the breakdowns and tools to manipulate it. I suspect that I would hate it if the blue and red were reversed.



UPDATE - I had to switch from the interactive graph to a picture because it was causing VTK loading delays. Go to pollster.com to see the interactive graph and dork out on manipulating the tools function. Or enjoy the state-by-state, updated-daily, color-coded electoral breakdown from electoral-vote.com. I put a link to this one in the right margin. And if you're a total addict, check out the data from the links underneath the chart. But I guess I don't need to tell you all this if you're a total addict. I like the cartogram myself.

That One v.2

A VTK and TPS Collaboration:



I've been bested: