American Entropy

Rich Cohen
Huffington Post

The great problem of the age is inherited wealth, and the great danger is the sons and grandsons of the super-rich. We have become a nation of dynasties -- political dynasties, newspaper dynasties, sports franchise dynasties, Hollywood dynasties, literary dynasties. What's more, these dynasties were often founded in the boom after the Second World War, which means they are in their second or third or fourth generations, which are far weaker than the founding generation. You see this in financial scandals where children use money from the company as if it were their own, in institutions that buckle when first put under pressure: newspapers, military, government. The fact is, you do not know the strength of an institution until it is tested; until then it is living on its reputation. In every generation every business is a new business and every nation is a new nation. The name and flag and cities are all the same, but the people are all different. You cannot know their character until they are tested. Which is to say, if you want to understand modern America you have to understand the geometry of inherited wealth -- the way that great fortunes dissipate over time.

{snip}

In the past, it has been the genius of America to reinvent itself every few decades. You turn around and the Roosevelts and the Goulds are gone and in their place are a whole new class of families. (Think of Bill Murray talking to the kids at the prep school in Rushmore: "You were born rich, and you're going to stay rich. But here's my advice to the rest of you: take dead aim on the rich boys. Get them in the crosshairs. And take them down.") We've often been led by new men with new names -- a nation of little brothers, self-invented characters who, as it says in the Tom Petty song, know how to Lose.

But things have changed. In the last few decades, because laws have allowed them to do it, the grandsons and great-grandsons of a bunch of self made men have pulled the ladder up behind them. And now we're stuck with a never-retiring third generation. ...

in full

GOP sleepwalking?

GOP sleepwalking? No. This is the way they govern.

by Kagro X

Daily Kos

Harold Meyerson's piece in the WaPo this morning got me thinking. On the "front page" of the Post's web site, Meyerson's column is billed under the headline, "The GOP, Asleep at the Wheel." But when you click through to the column itself, it's titled, "The Republican Mystery."

Nothing mysterious about that, of course. Maybe he changed the title after finishing the piece and thinking better of it. Or maybe the "title" on the main page was never really his title, but something the web editor came up with. Who knows? Doesn't really matter a whole lot, I guess. But it got me thinking.

Meyerson starts off with an observation that has been made before, often by the commenters right here at Daily Kos, but it's a strong one:

The truly astonishing thing about the latest scandals besetting the Bush administration is that they stem from actions the administration took after the November elections, when Democratic control of Congress was a fait accompli.

Meyerson cites the U.S. Attorneys scandal, of course. And the newly-emerging scandal at the General Services Administration, too. He continues:

During last year's congressional campaigns, Republicans spent a good deal of time and money predicting that if the Democrats won, Congress would become one big partisan fishing expedition led by zealots such as Henry Waxman. The Republicans' message didn't really impress the public, and apparently it didn't reach the president and his underlings, either. Since the election, they have continued merrily along with their mission to politicize every governmental function and agency as if their allies still controlled Congress, as if the election hadn't happened.

In the end, Meyerson offers four possible explanations ("partial explanations," in his words) for this Republican intransigence: 1) they're hoping to be rescued by a non-Bush, non-"insider" candidate in 2008 who will make everyone forget Bush's corruption; 2) they're blocking Democratic initiatives and burying us in oversight work, then planning to run against us as "do nothings"; 3) FOX News has made them stupid, and; 4) they just can't help themselves.

Indeed, this is how Meyerson expresses #4:

And the fourth, pertaining specifically to the inability of the administration to stop politicizing government, is that good government is just not in their DNA. Bush and Rove are no more inclined to create a government based on such impartial values as law and science than they are to set up collective farms.

Number four, of course, comes closest to being the most complete explanation. Consider what we already know about the Republican theory of governance:

• ::
• 
  

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

Now consider what we know about how Democrats said they would be approaching their majority status and oversight prerogative: 1) that it's all about "subpoena power," and; 2) that impeachment is "off the table."

Where does that leave us? Well, if you were still entertaining any notions of bringing the country together and working in a bipartisan fashion to restore... ugh, I can't even say it! You know it's not happening. What's the "administration" really doing here? Are they really "asleep at the wheel?" That's a little too benign a metaphor to cover something like this, don't you think?

If lame-duck Presidents are to achieve anything, they often have to look for ways to go around Congress, especially when it is in the hands of the other party. Clinton used Executive Orders and his bully pulpit to encourage school uniforms, impose ergonomic rules on employers and prevent mining, logging and development on 60 million acres of public land. White House press secretary Tony Snow says Bush may take the same bypass around Capitol Hill. "He told all of us, 'Put on your track shoes. We're going to run to the finish,'" Snow said. "He's going to be aggressive on a lot of fronts. He's been calling all his Cabinet secretaries and telling them, 'You tell me administratively everything you can do between now and the end of the presidency. I want to see your to-do list and how you expect to do it.' We're going to try to be as ambitious and bold as we can possibly be."

In fact, when it comes to deploying its Executive power, which is dear to Bush's understanding of the presidency, the President's team has been planning for what one strategist describes as "a cataclysmic fight to the death" over the balance between Congress and the White House if confronted with congressional subpoenas it deems inappropriate. The strategist says the Bush team is "going to assert that power, and they're going to fight it all the way to the Supreme Court on every issue, every time, no compromise, no discussion, no negotiation."

It is, without a doubt, the intention of this "administration" to ignore anything and everything that gets in their way: voters, laws, subpoenas, everything. They have told us as much point blank. They have told us they will defy troop withdrawal legislation. They have told us they will defy Congressional subpoenas. And we stand poised to let them run out the clock doing it.

So as much as I appreciate the sentiment from Meyerson and others in the traditional media who are waking up to the fact that this "administration" doesn't appear to be paying attention to the fact that Americans have had enough of their corruption, the plain truth is that this isn't "sleepwalking," as Meyerson cutely phrases it in the close of his piece.

This. Is. How. Republicans. "Govern."

Elect another one -- especially if we neglect to lay down the law with this one -- and you're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

Why US attorneys were fired: the evidence so far | csmonitor.com

Look at all the salient and vital facts left out of this maddening article and you tell me how someone reading it could not understand the magnitude of this issue or how clear are the what, why and the how of these transgressions:

Why US attorneys were fired: the evidence so far csmonitor.com

Shot Spotter

"In the past, the best information the police could hope for was a neighbor calling to say, ‘Sorry to bother you, but there may have been a shooting somewhere in my neighborhood,'" says ShotSpotter CEO James Beldock. "Our system can immediately tell them that, say, 11 rounds were fired from a car going 9 miles an hour, northbound, in front of a specific address on Main Street. In some situations, ShotSpotter could get someone on the scene within a minute. That's a level of situational knowledge police have never had."

This kind of coverage requires an array of 12 to 20 specialized sensors per square mile. Roughly the size of a medium pizza and designed to look like a rooftop fan, each sensor contains up to four small microphones. If one of these units detects a loud noise, it forwards a recording to a server at police headquarters along with three pieces of information: location, time, and general direction the sound came from. If a sound is detected by only one sensor, it's probably too quiet to be gunfire, and in any case, the system needs data from three sensors to pinpoint the location of a noise. If several sensors report an event at the same time, the server gets to work. First, the software performs an analysis to categorize the noise as gunfire, firecrackers, bottle rockets, helicopters, or other. If it determines the event was a gunshot, the program makes a simple calculation to triangulate the sound's origin to within 80 feet or less.

Experienced ShotSpotter users can tell a lot about an incident by listening to the recordings. Some say they can distinguish between the pop of a handgun, the crack of a rifle, and the emphatic blast of a shotgun. The company plans to update the software to recognize these variations automatically.

URB

Street Prophets:

A January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune showed a precipitous drop in support for Bush's handling of the war among Utah's Latter-day Saints.

In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something.

Utah is generally among the reddest of the red states, and support for Bush's Folly has been correspondingly strong. But as the article goes on to explain, Mormon leaders in the church and government have been signaling that good Mormons can oppose the war.

% atheists by generation

Mormon Support For War Drops Sharply

By: Nicole Belle
Crooks and Liars

Man, Bush really is losing his base. This was the last polling group to actually mostly approve of Bush's Iraq policies. Can't imagine what it will be like in a Friedman unit.

Street Prophets:

This has got to be like getting slapped across the face with a wet towel:

A January poll by The Salt Lake Tribune showed a precipitous drop in support for Bush's handling of the war among Utah's Latter-day Saints.

In the survey, just 44 percent of those identifying themselves as Mormon said they backed Bush's war management. That's a level considerably higher than Bush gets from Utah's non-Mormon population and the nation at large, but it's also a 21 percentage point drop from just five months earlier. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.7 percentage points.
Such abrupt moves in group opinion are uncommon. Pollsters say numbers generally move gradually, unless "spooked" by something.

Utah is generally among the reddest of the red states, and support for Bush's Folly has been correspondingly strong. But as the article goes on to explain, Mormon leaders in the church and government have been signaling that good Mormons can oppose the war.

FBI agent told to keep quiet over attorney firings - Yahoo! News

FBI agent told to keep quiet over attorney firings - Yahoo! News: "Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record), a New York Democrat, noted that among the shifting reasons given for firing prosecutors was failure to energetically pursue voter-fraud investigations.

Schumer asked Mueller if he was aware of any FBI voter-fraud probe that should have resulted in an indictment but did not."

"Not to my knowledge," the FBI director replied.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:

"Now, one more point. Above I said 'almost' the whole argument. On page two of the letter, Goodling's lawyer asserts as the fourth reason for her refusal to testify that 'it has come to our attention that a senior Department of Justice official has privately told Senator Schumer that he (the official) was not entirely candid in his report to the Committee, and that the official allegedly claimed that others, including our client, did not inform him of certain pertinent facts.'

His name isn't stated. But this appears to be a reference to Deputy Attorney General McNulty, the subject of this post from earlier this evening. Here we finally appear to have a bad act that Goodling believes or at least claims may expose her to criminal prosecution -- lying to Congress by proxy by intentionally misinforming an official about to testify before Congress."

for diehard USA firing followers

ABC News: EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Official Ignored White House Guidance:

"March 26, 2007 — The firestorm over the fired U.S. attorneys was sparked last month when a top Justice Department official ignored guidance from the White House and rejected advice from senior administration lawyers over his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee."

Crooks and Liars » Subpoena Standoff: Senator Leahy on Countdown

Crooks and Liars » Subpoena Standoff: Senator Leahy on Countdown

Paralysis Sets In as DOJ Faces Crisis

"You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here."

The fear that virtually any piece of communication will have to be turned over has paralyzed department officials' ability to communicate effectively and respond in unison to the crisis, as has the fact that senior Justice officials themselves say they still don't know the entire story about what happened that led to the crisis. So they are afraid that anything they put down on paper could be viewed as lies or obfuscation, when in fact, the story is changing daily as new documents are found and as the Office of Legal Counsel conducts its own internal probe into the matter.

The paralysis will affect the calculations that Gonzales must make this week as to whether he should stay or go. If Gonzales doesn't resign, there's little doubt that he will get few of his initiatives through for the rest of his tenure and that his people will spend months churning out documents at the behest of angry Democrats who will be investigating virtually anything that moves. But this could also give Gonzales an exit strategy, officials say. He could say that while neither he nor his subordinates did anything wrong, he has decided to resign for the greater good of the department and for justice at large.

The Bush administration is making its own calibrated calculations. A stubbornly loyal individual, the president has had trouble cutting his ties to his embattled cabinet secretaries. However, if he chooses to keep Gonzales on, he is at risk of seriously eroding political capital at a time when his administration is being criticized even by party loyalists.

But if he decides to let him go, then who can fill Gonzales's place? For one thing, who would want the job? And who could Bush find that could get Senate confirmation, since Democrats now run the show? It would have to be a seasoned insider, a consummate veteran or an elder statesman who has bipartisan respect and acceptance and a squeaky-clean record.

mass media

from Daily Kos

Former U.S. Attorney David Iglesias on CBS Evening News

Bloggingheads, The Movie

Sullivan and Marshall making the point we discussed yesterday

Andrew Sullivan raises a very good question about the White House's likely need to find a new Attorney General. A logical person to replace Gonzales might be Deputy AG McNulty. But he's as implicated as his boss. So he's out. So is Bush loyalist Harriet Miers. So she's out too. In fact, most of the Bush insiders who are legal types are implicated. And even setting aside particular people, the senate would probably look very askance on another Bush pal as AG.

The political logic of the situation (ethical logic too, but we're far past that point, aren't we?) strongly suggests that the White House should tap a broadly respected lawyer public figure who can reestablish trust in the Department.

But can the president afford to have someone like that at the Justice Department right now? With all the investigations and potential investigations in play? A straight-shooter who will have justice's back rather than the White House?

This might be the only factor weighing in favor of Gonzales holding on to his job.

-- Josh Marshall

The iRack

via Crooks and Liars

This is an Interesting Discussion

Hear TPMmuckraker's Paul Kiel discussing the US Attorney Purge this evening on Open Source Radio.

Tabletgirl in the Senate Chamber

Did you see Tabletgirl in the Senate Committee? [1]

Oh man. Who didn’t? Unbelievable! You may not yet know what she did: she produced a realtime, simultaneous .ppt, and accompanying .pdf 'whitepaper,' complete with bookmarks, hyperlinks, addenda. While testifying. The materials accompanied her testimony, and were incorporated by express reference. She was nearly flawless. Comparable to the work product of a whole think-tank team over the course of two months. Both document streams were instantly uploaded and globally mirrored, with adequate throughput, even before the senators finished articulating their questions. Time & date stamped to facilitate coordination with the C-SPAN a/v feed. (And then rendered simultaneously into various standard formats, suitable for re-broadcasting. OK, she had a little help with that, outside the committee room, but it all happened in near-real-time is the point, with the most minimal infrastructure, accomplished by a tiny handful of people.)

So, when the witness displayed her .ppt summary (bullet-wise) to the Committee in her first breaths after the first senator's 'question,' the world saw the URL for the first time. News agencies started scrambling to the site & its mirrors. Before long, several were streaming the data out with only a short lag from the live feed. Others had to follow suit, and did, ASAP.

With each successive update from the witness, the lag got shorter and shorter as the newstechs worked out the kinks. The story of this story broke in dozens of outlets, essentially simultaneously, and highly consistently. This resulted in an rapid cascade around the country and the world. Tens of thousands (at least) accessed the feed directly, and millions more are doing so as we speak, further corroborating (and exemplifying) the unanimous media account. Just turn on the TV, or better yet, the Internet, and see for yourself. I haven’t looked in 20 minutes; who knows what’s going on now?

Imagine the truly enormous numbers of people who will have heard and read all about this phenomenon by tomorrow. And what was the substance of her testimony? In true self-exemplifying fashion, she was testifying in support of the notion that such phenomena are not only possible today, but in fact exist!

What? She what? I heard what she said, and I know that it’s right on the money. But what are you talking about, simultaneous feeds, indexed video. What?

Oh man. Oh man. You don’t know yet. Well, one key aspect of this was that she accomplished it primarily by herself (on standard XP apparatus, lightly customized and tested with the assistance of a few trusted experts). So, the set-up is available for anybody to use, in business meetings, board meetings; in court, in legislative debates, inside government agencies, military, grass roots organizations, everywhere. Various skills and habits must be developed, and one’s mind must wrap itself around various unfamiliar concepts, so not just anyone can do this, even if they have all the stuff. Instructions are not provided. The digerati truth set has gotten a big a jump on the noise boys, and she really brought that point home today.

And in the hearing room, the Senators were the last to know, impatiently brushing aside incomprehensible whispers from aids rushing into the hearing room. They just kept trying to get the best of their witness, and speechified, as usual. Oblivious.

This is the collective talking, the collective making its presence felt, displaying the new ability of the truth to obviate spin.

Every rhetorical and political trick can be and increasingly is exposed in realtime. It was evident in the hearing room and to the audience, due to the competence & articulate, calm presentation by the witness, and hugely augmented by the realtime .ppt projection – you see, staffers agreed to allow her to display anything precleared by the committee or created on the spot by the witness. (I guess they were thinking along the lines of hand-drawn charts on the overhead, like their college professors used to employ in the lecture hall.)

So, as you well know, this habit has been spreading, and digerati truthpeople have emerged everywhere, and are indeed getting the jump on the noise boys.

Truth and reason are on the offensive. She catalyzed the effort in a big way today. She imagined that such a thing ought to be possible, and then she wrote it into existence.

What does it look like when rigorous reality comes back to roost? Doofus-boy goes down hard: what does it look like?

First tell me what you mean by “Doofus-boy.” I am not familiar with that term.

Oh never mind. That’s just my quite unhelpful shorthand. In a nutshell, Doofus-boy is anyone whose thinking is guided by misleading labels like ‘Doofus-boy.’

Like your own thinking, it seems.

Right. It is shorthand that serves two purposes: For sure, it’s a hyperlink to my increasingly consistent internal model of the human behaviors I am witnessing.

But mostly the term ‘Doofus-boy’ means, “Don’t be Doofus-boy!” That’s a rule I set for myself and try to follow. To the point of necessarily reminding myself of the perils of facile classification of the world in the very act of engaging in the practice. It’s aspirational, nobody is perfect. When I figure out, for example, why certain irresponsible behaviors emerge, that means I think I’ve put my finger here and there on how not to be, or what not to do. If I really believe my own conclusions, they must guide my own actions. But again, it’s aspirational.

Tell me more about your increasingly consistent internal model of human behavior.

I just mean the sense I make of how people behave, how communication habits impact behavior. I say it is increasingly consistent because, for one thing, you yourself have often said that my observations resonate with your own experience of the world. So that’s another vote, outside of my own head. I have many such votes, explicitly communicated to me. No surprise there, as the sense I try to make of the world is as consistent as possible with the thought product of the whole world.

Thought-Product?

Whatever the world has to show for all of humankind’s big-brained activity. Anyway, I am more and more successful at communicating my understanding to others, with you as the prime example of such success. This means I have achieved efficiency in my own thinking, using fewer clock cycles to harmonize more and more observations, which I tell you is perceptible to me as a sort of emotion. You’ll have to take my word for this.

But here’s the key point: Focus on the collective. Not the individual. (And good luck to any individual trying to make that assertion. It’s not generally permitted. Obsession with individuals is the norm.)

Can you bring this back to Doofus-boy?

OK, so Doofus-boy, who I don’t want to be, who the more I am not him, the more standing I can achieve to do something about him. That guy. What does he do? Oh, I could write a whole book. But a unifying theme is that Doofus-boy leverages (and perpetuates) this norm, this taboo against transcending the limitations of individuals. Doofus-boy employs a small collection of rhetorical tricks as both shield and sword. Doofus-boy, for example, when cornered by logic, appeals directly to bare statistical possibilities. He plays his cards close to his vest to preserve his ability to confront individuals with their inability to read the cards. They cannot prove that Doofus-boy is not holding a straight flush, and cannot know or prove that Doofus-boy’s conduct is not entirely justified.

Now, Doofus-boy may be playing the cards close to his vest to mask ignorance or incompetence, to mask an ulterior motive, out of disrespect, or a combination of these; or for other reasons entirely. But the rhetorical bag of tricks is strikingly similar across the board. So, that’s what the term means: it’s a shorthand for my best understanding of how to slice through all of this noise, in all of its guises, and a reminder to heed my own critical thinking in the process.

Well, if I agree to work on this project, I hope you won’t mind if don’t adopt the term. It may enhance your own understanding (and mine, now that I understand what you mean), but it’s a bit off-putting, don’t you think? Hurling epithets does not enhance communication.

Oh, I absolutely agree. That’s why I think you should be the one to take the lead here. You have a cooler head. But do you see? Doofus-boy is the hurler of epithets! The sticker-on of labels, the derogator of the truth through transparent rhetorical trickery. So, tagged as ‘Doofus-boy,’ he is snagged with his own barb. Which fixes it in my consciousness, enabling a correlation of Doofus-boys everywhere, despite their dogged insistence on the uniqueness of every circumstance and every individual. It is possible, Doofus-boy, to achieve a perspective that reveals what you have in your hand. And if you are holding garbage in your hand, Doofus-boy, as is often the case, it will be apparent. Now more than ever, Doofus-boy, in this information age. Do you understand what is happening, Doofus-boy? To the extent you truly do, you are in denial about it, or else are cynically attempting to exploit technology to enhance your ability to noise up the channel and play your rhetorical games. You are certainly being forced to take the gloves off more and more, in public. Your actions are more and more transparent, and more and more outrageous as if to compensate. Do you get away with it, Doofus-boy? Or does the light of reason catch up to you? The light of reason, along with reason’s mushrooming data storage and processing capacity, interconnectivity, and emergent automated signal enhancing capabilities. The light of reason is an increasingly powerful precision laser cannon, aimed at you, Doofus-boy.

What’s to stop Doofus-boy from grabbing control of the cannon, and using it to maintain his position?

I wonder. I’d like to believe that truth hangs together. The collective intelligence, enhanced by information age technology and the emergent behavior it produces, is a truth-seeking machine. If it ain’t true, that means it cannot be harmonized with the great thought-product edifice, and will drop away (unless bolstered by some force that is in derogation of the truth, such as dogma – official, enforced opinion, or actual repression). I fantasize that there is a physical underpinning for that assertion (there is a view of the universe according to which information is the fundamental physical quantity). In any event, an untruth must swim upstream against the current of the truth. Doofus-boy depends on the putative inability of anybody to adduce sufficient, timely evidence of what is true and what is untrue. So you can’t ever say with certainty whether something is going with or against the current, or which way the current is going, or whether there even is a discernible current.

Has the information age changed that? Is the current now a torrent, manifestly against Doofus-boy’s attempted trajectory? Or, to keep my metaphors straight, an increasingly powerful laser cannon, aimed at him? If so, it is still possible for Doofus-boy not to know it yet.

Or is Doofus-boy sitting securely on a great concrete dam, impervious to this puny torrent of truth.

Well, that’s what Doofus-boy thinks, if he even acknowledges that there is such a thing as truth. And there is no question that Doofus-boy has a fairly secure historical footing to undergird this dam impression, given the manifest success of the Doofus-boy strategy set during the whole history of humankind up to this point.

Now, some Doofus-boys do indeed believe that there is such a thing as truth, and they believe that they are in possession of it. They believe they are holding a royal-flush of truth, which enables them to understand what to do, and fully justifies what they do. They cannot show their cards, however, because to do so would be dangerous: the great run of people cannot handle this truth. So they take it upon themselves, the holders of the secret truth cards, to do what needs to be done according to the light of their truth.

But you know better? You are tapped into the real truth, so you can pass judgment on their defective truth?

That’s why it’s not about me, personally, or any individual. It’s the collective consciousness, recorded, available, interconnected, alive! This is the laser cannon. It flows through individuals, but it is not limited by individuals. It is coherent because truth coheres. It corrodes and obliterates untruth. Or at least it can, if given the chance. And circumstances now exist, for the first time in human history, that enable the storage and instant availability of our collective thought product. It started changing the world several years ago. Doofus-boy doesn’t fully know it yet, even though virtuoso information-age Doofus-boys are legion.

Doofus-boy frequently goes down hard, however; history also teaches us that. And Doofus-boy can get arbitrarily brutal, as necessary, to maintain the status-quo and achieve his ends. So, that is the state of play. I cannot predict how it plays out into the future, but possibly I can influence it. That’s where you come in.

I see. First you get me sufficiently focused, then I can do something about it that you can’t do, or in addition to whatever it is you are doing.

Right. And it should be a material inducement to you that you will gain a perspective that is hugely useful in the world, which will assist you in any endeavor whatsoever, however many Doofus-boys remain in the world in the future.

Well, that I can already perceive for myself. I cannot tell you what a revolution you have sparked in my own thinking. Not you, not you, sorry: the influence of the ideas you brought to my attention has been very great.

Ok, so with your label-free lexicon, go see what you can do. I’m tired. I have to rest. You go out there and see what you can do. I will help you. I am here to consult, but I have to rest. It is too much strain, all this battling Doofus-boy.

I move in a remarkably Doofus-free environment, at least compared to you. I have fewer Doofus demons to contend with, that’s for sure. I’m going to need your help, but I think I see what you want me to do. I see the trendlines, and that’s how I place my bets. My money is on the collective consciousness, which will continue to morph the world in its image. Truth will gain market share, even if it does not gain a monopoly. I have been making that case, effectively, and I have evidence that the idea is percolating, cascading in my little corners of the networked networks. And such a thing can be self-catalyzing and self-fulfilling, in certain environments. I have observed this to be happening, I can’t ignore the signs.

Ok, then write it, do it. Exemplify it. I have to rest.

Well, where to begin? I can tell the story, but only from my perspective. You can chime in with corrections, amplifications, additional information, whatever. But I will be entirely honest, and you may not be uniformly flattered by my words.

What does that matter? It’s not about me, remember? And flattery has nothing to do with it.

Well, you asked for it. Thing is, another reason why I have to do this is that you are borderline insane. You lapse in and out of coherence, talking sometimes to me, sometimes to invisible Doofus-boy demons. I can’t always follow you. Plus, your self-accusation of being Doofus-boy yourself appears to be warranted. I’m not saying that it is warranted, just that it appears to be warranted. You are frequently not the master of your passions, which get the better of you, and interfere with your ability to transmit meaning. You lose sight of the gulf between your own mental models (however successful), and the thought processes of your interlocutors. Communication suffers. Misimpressions abound. I know (and you know) that this goes with the territory: if Doofus-boy indeed believes that every individual and every circumstance is unique, then you are starting from scratch in each new conversation with each new Doofus-boy. There isn’t time in life to start from scratch every time, which is part of why the Doofus-boy idea set is successful. Doofus-boy doesn’t have to be doing this on purpose; this just emerges from Doofus-boy’s dogged imperviousness (however explained) to the perception of underlying themes and explanatory frameworks that could reflect negatively on Doofus-boy’s conduct. So you’re starting virtually from scratch each time, enabling Doofus-boy to stay in his comfort zone of continuing to do what is congenial for Doofus-boy.

So much for not adopting the term “Doofus-boy.”

Banished be the term. You are quite right to nominate me, at least over yourself, for the role of chief communicator. I know you are well aware of all of these criticisms; you have told me so explicitly. But now I get to hammer you over the head with them, in print! And all for a good cause, so it’s not gratuitous. This is beautiful. You have to be held up, in my narrative, as an example. Not as a paragon. But an example, a real-world example, of an important aspect of the information age, one that will have to be understood by each individual.

And the aspect is?

An aspect fundamental to any phenomenon involving people, any social phenomenon.

Namely? How messed up you can get when you fence with Doofus-boy?

Well, leaving that disfavored terminology out if it, yes. We’re asking a question whether masses of people will become increasingly rational, and it’s important to focus on what that would look like. What does it look like when an individual behaves more and more rationally and consistently than the norm? What range of behavior is elicited from others in reaction? How do these change from person to person, from circumstance to circumstance, and through time? Real-life examples are important, and you are the one I know the most about. You also happen to have commissioned my participation in this project, so I have access to as much additional information as I may need about to you flesh out my example. And it is not necessarily a good example; it is a cautionary example. I can have my way with you, with your permission! Marvelous. This alone would fuel my enthusiasm for the project, which I admit is growing with each passing second.

Whatever floats your boat.

I can tell you right now that this story is going to include the business in front of the Senate Committee this morning.

Well, duh.

So here’s how I think it should go:

[{Exposition of events, scope & significance, as outlined in first bit above} black-ink guy only aware of what went on in the Senate chamber, ending mere hours before. Saw brilliant Tabletgirl testimony, realtime bulletpoints on overhead, etc., but was not aware (and hasn’t had time to get back to office or see news anywhere of the broader phenomenon), because, like the Senators & their staff, he has spent all morning inside the chamber, with mobile device switched off. Red-ink guy’s account trundles in however much network, sync, emergence, etc., stuff as possible without getting too bogged down, in a nice, self-exemplifying fashion. Black-ink guy sticks with his “I’m master communicator, clear-head master of passion boy” bit throughout, never fully getting over himself (which is fine!), but this fuels much energetic dialogue between the two. If possible, neither black-ink guy nor red-ink guy gets the better of the other, but something greater than both emerges from the interaction. Exemplifying the power of the collective, natch. And appropriately de-emphasizing the individual in favor of the collective.

We get the Senate thing, we get black-ink guy’s truthboy practitioning, we get a wholesale self-similar information cascade (i.e., the idea set spreading is explicitly about the dynamics and impact of idea sets spreading), and we get to peek at what it looks like in various forms, as far as Black and Red ink guys can make out. They have free recourse to the idea-sphere, and they may occasionally cite their references.

They range far and wide over a big broad canvas. They fill the pages of whole ‘books,’ very quickly. The ‘books’ will be extremely congenial to a wide range of people, strikingly transcending conventional divisions of opinion. It will give such people a path to each other, and enable them to join forces in reaching others. A tall order.

US Attorney Removal Halted Abramoff Investigation

Crooks and Liars via Boston.com

A US grand jury in Guam opened an investigation of controversial lobbyist Jack Abramoff more than two years ago, but President Bush removed the supervising federal prosecutor, and the probe ended soon after.[..]

In Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, investigators were looking into Abramoff's secret arrangement with Superior Court officials to lobby against a court reform bill then pending in Congress. The legislation, since approved, gave the Guam Supreme Court authority over the Superior Court.

In 2002, Abramoff was retained by the Superior Court in what was an unusual arrangement for a public agency. The Los Angeles Times reported in May that Abramoff was paid with a series of $9,000 checks funneled through a Laguna Beach, Calif., lawyer to disguise the lobbyist's role working for the Guam court. No separate contract was authorized for Abramoff's work.[..]

The transactions were the target of a grand jury subpoena issued Nov. 18, 2002, according to the subpoena. It demanded that Anthony Sanchez, administrative director of the Guam Superior Court, turn over all records involving the lobbying contract, including bills and payments.

A day later, the chief prosecutor, US Attorney Frederick A. Black, who had launched the investigation, was demoted. A White House news release announced that Bush was replacing Black.

The timing caught some by surprise. Despite his officially temporary status as the acting US attorney, Black had held the assignment for more than a decade[..]

His replacement, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended for the job by the Guam Republican Party. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove in early 2003.

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:

The Post also got a piece of the Monday document dump. And their piece is now up too. Many of the key points are the same as what appears in the Times. But key new details are also included. Perhaps the most important of which is this: the Patriot Act provision allowing the Attorney General to appoint US Attorneys by fiat was at the heart of this. The Post quotes an email from the now resigned Sampson in which he tells Miers: "I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed. It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately. I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments. [By sidestepping the confirmation process] we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."
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One e-mail from Miers's deputy, William Kelley, on the day of the Dec. 7 firings said Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam" about Iglesias. Sampson wrote in an e-mail a week later: "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)."

Henry Waxman Letters to Condoleeza Rice

Read the letter here.

(via The Gavel)

After Tough Week, Gonzales Says He Remains Focused - washingtonpost.com

After Tough Week, Gonzales Says He Remains Focused - washingtonpost.com:

"'This attorney general doesn't have anybody's confidence,' said one GOP adviser to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could be candid. 'It's the worst of Bush -- it's intense loyalty for all the wrong reasons. There will be other things that come up, and we don't have a guy in whom we can trust.'"

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall:

Now let's cut to the chase, the big story at the heart of all of this: San Diego and the firing of Carol Lam.

Given what we know about New Mexico and Washington state, it simply defies credulity to believe that Lam -- in the midst of an historic corruption investigation touching the CIA, the White House and major Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill -- got canned because she wasn't prosecuting enough immigration cases. Was it the cover? Sure. The reason? Please.

I'm not sure Lam would have been canned simply for prosecuting Cunningham. His corruption was so wild and cartoonish that even a crew with as little respect for the rule of law would have realized the impossibility of not prosecuting him. But she didn't stop there. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process -- kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Those two stories are like mats of loose threads. That's where the story lies.

-- Josh Marshall

Investigation of US Attorneys now turns to White House & Miers

Democrats announced on Friday that they'll directly investigate the role of the White House in the firing of six US Attorneys. The House Judiciary Committee has sent a letter to former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, requesting her testimony.

Democrats also revealed that the Committee is going to call other top administration figures, including Deputy Counsel William Kelley, current White House Counsel Fred Fielding, and some other as-yet unnamed WH officials. In addition, the Committee is requesting documents related to the firings.

This is a major expansion of the probe. Ask John Dean about what happens when investigations of a corrupt and lawless administration settle upon the White House Counsel.

read the whole post, but especially the part about the letter to new WH counsel Fred Fielding:

"Two of the fired U.S. Attorneys, Mr. Bogden and Mr. Charlton, testified that they were fired for political reasons in order to put others in those position so they could build their resumes, contrary to the claim by Justice Department officials that they were fired for "performance related" reasons. Many of the rationales for the terminations offered by Mr. Moschella at our hearing do not appear to hold up to scrutiny....

Mr. Iglesias and Mr. McKay testified that there were several efforts made to influence their prosecutorial decisions... This testimony raises serious issues concerning possible undue influence and obstruction of justice...

Mr. Cummins testified that he received a call from Michael Elston, Mr. McNulty's Chief of Staff [warning that any 'voluntary testimony' to Congress would be seen as 'a major escalation']... On its face, this testimony raises the possibility that the Department may have sought to obstruct Congress' efforts to ascertain the truth concerning these firings."

The letter goes on to request all documents relating to the firings and to the developing controversy, from both the White House and Justice Department, including emails, materials relating to meetings, communications within the WH and DoJ, and communications with the Attorneys before and after their termination.

Further, it requests copies of documents relating to communications about the subject with Members of Congress, and the names of any Members who were given advance notification of the firings (!). The letter also requests the names of all individuals in the WH who were involved in discussions of the issue. It asks that the documents and information be handed over by March 16.

The similar letter to Gonzales asks that he make available for interviews the following DoJ officials: Paul McNulty, Deputy AG; D. Kyle Sampson, CoS to AG; Michael Elston, CoS to Deputy AG; Michael Battle, Director of Executive Office for US Attorneys; Monica Goodling, Senior Counsel to AG and WH Liaison; and William Mercer, US Attorney for Montana.

Mercer of course is the friend who told the US Attorney from Nevada, Daniel Bogden, that the administration wanted to allow as many Republicans as possible to bolster their resumes in the next two years.

Air America 2.0 Begins Today

Today my family formally purchases and takes over Air America Radio. Why? Because if progressive values were a stock, now is the time to buy.

That hasn't always been true, as the cycle of politics demonstrates. In recent decades, politics seems to have been governed by physics - for every action, there's an opposite and equal reaction.

William F. Buckley Jr. started The National Review in the 1950s to rebut what he saw as the dominance of liberalism in the academy and opinion journals like The Nation and The New Republic. From 1970-72, Public Citizen, Common Cause and the NRDC were all created in reaction to Nixon's depredations. Similarly, People For the American Way grew out of the rise of the Religious Right under Reagan in the mid-80s.

New progressive think tanks over the past 10 years, most recently and prominently the Center for American Progress, were created to counter AEI and Heritage. And, of course, the Huffington Post and Air America were born in reaction to the electronic propaganda of Drudge and Limbaugh et. al.

Air America was a large, smart idea to counter the near-monopoly on talk radio by the far (f)right. But like most start-ups, the business plan collided with reality. Six CEOs over its first three years - and various missteps and misspending - sent it into Chapter 11.

It's now ready to go from The Perils of Pauline to The Little Engine that Could. How? First, by focusing on the radio fundamentals of making a strong line-up even stronger; second, by connecting to other progressive membership organizations to be mutually fortifying; and third, by being a multi-media content company involving other distribution platforms - Internet, blogging, audio and video streaming, mobile, social networks, and more. It's time to think outside the (radio) box.

The twin goals are to make it profitable and influential. One without the other won't work. If it's not a business, it'll go out of business.

But it'll be a business with a sharp point of view. The era of on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand liberalism is over -- or as Robert Frost once wrote, "a liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel." For all those who worry about messianic misleaders governing on a right wing and a prayer, Air America 2.0 will be an answer. For all those fearful of plutocracy and theocracy, the pro-democracy hosts of AAR's programs will be an answer. If the conservative media continue to spout propaganda and call it news, there's now the alternative of truth, justice and the Air American way.

It's no longer enough just to hope that The New York Times will cover a rally or press release. The relatively new combination of The HuffingtonPost, Alternet, Moveon, Center for American Progress and Campaign for America's Future, The Nation and The American Prospect, DailyKos and TalkingPointsMemo - and so many labor unions - means that Air America will be part of a larger progressive infrastructure heard by a widening audience. For if we can't grow and prosper now -- given the 110th Congress, given the unmitigated disaster that's Iraq, given a slew of top-quality presidential aspirants -- when will we?

So Air America will aggressively cover national politics and policies in ways that will be informative, opinionated and entertaining. All three. We'll be full of news and views. Two views especially. First, America should stop attacking Muslim countries in ways that multiply terrorism. Second, instead of only talking about exporting democracy, Washington should begin practicing it here at home, for example by making sure elections aren't auctions.

Speaking personally, my brother and I are excited by this important challenge and look forward to working with the Air America professionals - in front of the mic and behind it - who have held this dream together. Steve Green has been a very successful businessman accustomed to making money -- and he doesn't intend for AAR to be an exception. I've been an author, public interest lawyer and the NYC Public Advocate. For me this feels like a continuation of so much I've done in the progressive movement over three decades. Air America is like a public advocate for the country, exposing problems and offering solutions.

We're both optimists in the spirit of Walt Whitman, who wrote that "America is always becoming." Well, Air America too is always becoming.

But that requires a conversation called democracy. In the spirit that dialogue beats monologue, I am today contacting the New Hampshire Republican Party and the New York Post editorial page. Since the Democratic Party of Nevada actually invited Fox News to host that state's Democratic debate, I asked if Air America could host the first Republican debate in New Hampshire, assuring them that "we too can be fair and balanced."

And to Bob McManus, editorial page editor of The New York Post, I proposed that he come on Air America to discuss his views and that Air America commentators would in turn once-a-month write an op-ed on his pages, because "it's better to exchange ideas than insults." His 500,000 readers should hear from us and our 2 million+ audience should hear from him.
We have many fresh ideas for programming, for technology, for partnerships with sister organizations. But it's this conversation called democracy that's the cornerstone of Air America 2.0. We intend to listen to our listeners. To increase our listeners. To hope they will join our journey to better content, better programming, and a better country. To tell them that it's your America, and your Air America.