Renders Quaint

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Daily Kos: State of the Nation

You can sum up the differences between the two campaigns by looking at the code that drives their respective web sites. Obama: clean flexible XHTML + CSS, using jQuery, an open-source people powered framework, not dependent on any big company, good standards compliant accessibility. Mobile version of the site for mobile. McCain: closed source and even worse, patented code, relies on HTML tables for layout. No mobile version.

Just view the source of their pages. Obama’s code is lovely, even human readable. McCain’s code, ugly mess, 90’s style table based mess.

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The Washington Monthly

What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?

Obama: If we don’t get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we’ve seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It’s not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that’s required to find alternative fuels. I think it’s very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.

McCain: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.

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Daily Kos: State of the Nation
Here is an interesting summary of five ideas that really make sense… and why they will never happen.

• A five year moratorium on new highway construction
• End to single-purpose zoning
• Bus Rapid Transit with Dedicated Lanes
• Relaxing automotive safety laws
• Fifty-five Mile an Hour Speed Limit

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Here we go… a closer look at McCain. The similarities between Bush and McCain here are getting a little creepy. Bottom 1% of his class? And maybe the Admiral offer is a myth.

Jeffrey Klein: McCain’s Secret, Questionable Record - Politics on The Huffington Post

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain’s Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain’s sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush’s.Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment — to become an aircraft carrier pilot.

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Shouts & Murmurs: Antiheroes: Humor: The New Yorker

I just had a great idea for a TV show: People from all over the world begin to sense they have superpowers. One guy can fly. Another can walk through walls. A cheerleader is impervious to physical harm. A kid can move back and forth in time. You get the idea: normal people, sick and tired of living under constraint, are busting out, into a world without limits!

But here’s the twist: These people, who believe they have superpowers? They don’t. They never have and never will. There is no such thing as a superpower.

The guy who thinks he can fly? Jumps off his minivan and sprains his ankle. The one who can walk through walls? Tries to run through the living-room wall and breaks a photograph of his wife’s mother. His wife is really upset. The cheerleader impervious to physical harm throws herself down a flight of stairs, breaks her back, then lies there waiting for it to miraculously mend. But no. The cat steps over her. So much for cheerleading. The kid who thinks he can move back and forth through time decides to exit a math test early by time-transporting himself back to Mozart’s Vienna. He tries and tries, so hard that he finally farts really loudly in a wet double-burst. The other kids crack up. He tries to time-transport himself back to the instant before the fart, so he can withhold the fart, but no: he tries so hard, he farts again. The classroom just dissolves into uncontrollable laughter. Even the teacher drops her head to her desk, shoulders heaving.

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Daily Kos: SCOTUS, the Constitution, and We the People

Read this great post about last Thursday’s landmark court decision. Dissenters will say that Boumediene “gives terrorists new rights”… but they are either being stupid or lying. As this KOS post wonderfully explains, its not about rights at all… it’s about POWER. Or the lack of. The court reaffirmed that our government is one of limited powers… meaning, the government can’t do anything we (the people) haven’t explicitly granted it via the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence refers to the rights of “all men”, not some, or a few, or where. ALL. And those rights persist, unless we write into the Constitution laws giving the government the power to deny them. Boumediene says that in this case, the government simply does not have that power. Bush can not act in a vacuum, outside the atmosphere of the Constitution.

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Somebody finally says it well. The powers of the role of “commander in cheif” apply only to those in the armed forces. So when the talking head on the news, (or Scalia in Boumediene) refer to him generally as “commander in cheif”, they are mistaken. The POTUS is entirely impotent to do anything to me (a civilian) that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do.

Daily Kos: Not My Commander in Chief
Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution begins:

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.

This is a very specific delineation. When broad powers are claimed for the President, many rightly so, in his role as “commander-in-chief,” these broad powers do not automatically apply to those persons not in the armed forces of the United States. Where they exist at all, they apply to the men and women of the uniformed services of the Army and Navy, the state Guards and other armed services.

The president not only is impotent to hold me without allowing me to demand the charges against me, he is impotent to search or seize my person, goods and papers without a warrant showing probable cause. He is enjoined from quartering his armed troops on my property.

In point of fact, the president of the United States cannot do a damned thing to me that the Constitution does not specifically allow him to do. And this limitation to his powers, embodied in the purposefully broad Tenth Amendment, holds because I am not a member of the armed forces.

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Informed Comment

There have been protests about this in Baghdad, but I suppose it’s understandable that the media here has been preoccupied with both the election, and defending itself from Scott Mcclellan’s assertion that the media dropped the ball in 02/03.

Bush wants Nuri al-Maliki to sign a security agreement. Until he does, up to $20bn of Iraq’s cash that we are holding in the fed, might not be available. The agreement includes “50 bases in Iraq and the prerogative of the US military to act unilaterally and with impunity inside the country.”

Oh… and Maliki also wants to divest its oil sales away from greenbacks, towards Euros. Bush almost spit milk out of his nose at that one. Uhhhh… No. But as eager as Iraqi’s are to escape chapter 7 of the security council and achieve full sovereignty, they also are tired of these clearly imperial demands. There are Iraqi’s old enough to remember going through this with Britain and France. So staying under chapter 7 might be preferred to submitting to this “50 bases, we can shoot anybody, and please prop up our failing dollar” bullshit.

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Daily Kos: State of the Nation

…the Bush “administration” has forced us, for example, to think about what it means to live by and enforce the rule of law. Its “against the law,” to use one illustration, to defy a Congressional subpoena. But if you are the law — or are at least nominally in charge of administering it, anyway — what does it mean to do something thats “against the law” if you can simply decline to prosecute yourself for it? Is that thing that you did still “against the law?” And if not, is that because your position authorizes you to defy the law? Or is it because somethings really only “against the law” if the law is enforced against you?

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FT.com / Columnists / John Gapper - On the pot-holed highway to hell

If anyone doubts the problems of US infrastructure, I suggest he or she take a flight to John F. Kennedy airport braving the landing delay, ride a taxi on the pot-holed and congested Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and try to make a mobile phone call en route.

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Informed Comment
Lebanon is on the brink of civil war.

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This race is still over. But “news” media just wants this thing to go on and on and on. Surprisingly Chris Matthews said it last night, the media has “created the delusion” that Clinton can still win this. She can’t, but interestingly, most of her voters somehow think she can. Unless he just utterly implodes, Obama is headed to the convention with more delegates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

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Daily Kos: “But why didn’t he win?”

Another great post from KOS… worth reading. Summary:

• Hillary owns the political machine in Pennsylvania.  She pushed those buttons hard.
• Demographics… Penn is not a “cross section” of the USA, rather it is Appalachia, older, more blue collar, etc… all heavily slanted toward Clinton.
• Home Court. Hillary has roots there. She crushed NY, Arkansas too, Obama crushed Kansas, Hawaii, and Illinois. It happens.
• Brand identity. Hillary was in the white house for 8, and senator for 8 years.
• Multiple Targets. Obama had to fight against Hillary, Bill, Bush (Rove) and McCain. Hillary had only one target… Obama.
• Kitchen Sink. Hillary has nothing to lose. Her only path to winning the nomination is to go nuclear. She can only make people vote for her by making him look so bad that they have no choice. Obama can’t play this game. He has to stay above it all, and just take her punches.

Despite all this, Obama gained 10 points in the past two weeks in Pennsylvania. In truth, I think the Clinton camp must be crapping themselves that it was such a hard battle there.

My misgivings about camp Clinton are this: She would run the white house the same way she runs this campaign… going nuclear. She will inherit from Bush such a broken country. The only way she can look good as president (and make a second term) would be by making the rest of the world by comparison look terrible. Her only available strategies are negative… this is true now, and it would be true in the white house. And… she would treat plain old Americans like idiots… just as she is now and just like bush has done for the past eight years. She would be secretive, calculating and arrogant.

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Daily Kos: Popular vote

So see what they have done — the Clinton campaign and Jerome have taken the roughly 215,000 net votes Clinton gained in Pennsylvania, and added them to the popular vote count that includes the unsanctioned contests in Michigan and Florida, and excludes caucuses in four states. Hows that for inclusiveness?It gets worse. That Michigan vote estimate? Obama wasnt on the ballot. If you count the “uncommitted” votes for Obama — all of them anti-Hillary votes, remember — that would add 237,762 votes to Obamas total.

Which means that in Clinton and Jeromes world, Clinton is ahead in the popular vote only IF you exclude four caucus states, IF you include two unsanctioned states, and IF you “disenfranchise” every voter in Michigan who voted against Hillary Clinton.

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Watched this and part of the debate tonight.

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Clinton Heckled, Obama Cheered Over Bitter Remarks - Politics on The Huffington Post

This is worth a close listen… its quiet but if you turn up your speakers on Hillary’s comment she says “you know, I know that many of you like me were disappointed by recent remarks that he made… and I think its important that, you know, we give people the chance to compare and contrast us”.

Well… if you listen to the crowd you can hear at least 10 people replying to her “no, not really”.

First… Hillary has a “tell”. Clinton uses the filler phrase “you know” way too much. Listen for it, you will be quickly annoyed. Sure, its just a filler, but fillers are used to mask a lack of mastery, not just of the language, but of the subject you are talking about. It makes her sound slightly smarter, but its just a trick. It’s Hillary’s tell… you know she is lying when she says “you know”

So what is the lie this time?… Clinton is manufacturing all this disgust. I just don’t think people are disgusted by the idea that some are “bitter”. I am bitter. I know lots of people who are beyond bitter, rather simply numb after 7 years of bush, and more. If you are not a little bit bitter about the state of things, where the hell have you been?

Granted… I wish Obama had not said the “cling to religion, guns…” It sounds like he meant that people are religious as a reaction to their lives sucking or whatever. Mabye true for some, but broad generalizations about religion are dangerous.

So, he screwed up, but once again, Hillary’s attempts to manufacture an outrage reaction seems to me much more offensive than his (mostly correct) rhetorical screw up. He made me cringe, she made me want to plunge an ice pick into my frontal lobe.

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Daily Kos: This thing is over

Kos calls it over… its  like Wile Coyote going off the cliff. It’s over, gravity will clarify things, but like Zizek said somewhere (I can’t find the quote, can you?), gravity does not act on Coyote until he looks down, realizing the situation. This is the difference between reality and the real. All that is left is for Hillary Clinton to look down.

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A good read by Juan Cole in Salon.

Why al-Maliki attacked Basra | Salon

Three main motivations present themselves: control of petroleum smuggling, staying in power including keeping U.S. troops around to ensure it, and the achievement of a Shiite super-province in the south. A southern super-province would spell a soft partition of the country, benefiting Shiites in the long term while cutting Sunnis out of substantial oil revenues, both licit and illicit. But all of the motivations have to do with something President Bush established as a benchmark in January 2007: upcoming provincial elections.

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March 20, the 5 year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. What perfect timing…

I’m reading this now… its complex. What is the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)? An arm of the Treasury Department. Patriot Act… North Korea… Oil… Euros… Nuclear etc…

The day the US declared war on Iran

To summarize to this point: (1) the March 20 advisory represents a US declaration of war by sanctions on Iran and a sanctions threat to the international banking community, (2) the US has various unilateral financial sanctions measures at its command in the form of executive orders and Patriot Act Section 311 and (3) the BDA-North Korea sanctions were, at least in retrospect, a test run for Iran.

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Fed eyes Nordic-style nationalisation of US banks - Telegraph

The fed calling Norway to see how we might prop up our banks, but do so without it amounting to a massive subsidy. The rescue of Bear Stearns Cos. rewarded the company and its shareholders for bad behavior.