Alternate Entries

Friday, September 17, 2004

Part of what makes the "The Wire" so convincing is Simon's passion. A Baltimore journalist who left the profession in disgust over the toothless nature of most newspapers, Simon still talks like an old-fashioned muckraker, and the stories he tells have the zing of a good exposé. The first season, which focused on McNulty's obsession with a far-reaching drug-running Baltimore crime family headed by the mysterious Avon Barksdale, was not a crime show to Simon. Instead, it was "a dry deliberate argument against the American drug prohibition -- a Thirty Years' War that is among the most singular and profound failures to be found in the nation's domestic history." The second season, which eventually found McNulty and crew probing a foreign crime syndicate operating out of the Baltimore port, was really "a treatise about the death of work and the betrayal of the American working class, as exemplified by the decline of a city's port unions." One thing's for certain, this guy Simon is angry. Maybe that's why his show crackles with such fierce conviction.

From Salon.

posted by jeev | 3:48 PM |

I've been going a little crazy with the Library Lookup bookmarklet, having gotten it to work with the Oakland library system after a bit of fooling around. One of the fascinating things is seeing classifications assigned to the various books. For example, Skinny Dip, Cal Hiassen's newest, is listed under these subjects:

Agricultural industries -- Fiction.
Ex-police officers -- Fiction.
Marine scientists -- Fiction.
Hazardous wastes -- Fiction.
Attempted murder -- Fiction.
Married people -- Fiction.
Everglades (Fla.) -- Fiction

Hazardous wastes -- Fiction. Who knew there was a category for that?

posted by jeev | 1:55 PM |

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Wouldn't want your local library to break any laws, would you? Well, this sign is legal. Watch for it.

From librarian.net.

posted by jeev | 11:30 AM |

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Really not talking about actual money:

The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.

A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.

Ah, the sins of omission.

posted by jeev | 3:33 PM |

Not talking:

And don't bother trying to ask the president a question -- unless of course you're part of a pre-screened audience at a campaign event.

As far as I can tell, Bush hasn't actually answered a single question from a reporter since the several interviews he did in late August, just before the Republican National Convention. That's more than two weeks ago.

At least twice in the past week, reporters have resorted to shouting questions, and he's ignored them.

Via Americablog.

posted by jeev | 1:56 PM |

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

The preview release of 1.0 is out.

Just click the little button on the right side Site Tools and Take Back the Web.

posted by jeev | 10:22 PM |

The woman who was fired for daring to keep a Kerry bumper sticker on her car: I love a happy ending:

The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn't return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn't turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. "He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up," Gobbell told me. "He'd read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, 'you let him know you're working for me as of today.' I was just so shocked."

Gobbell accepted Kerry's job offer, "so I reckon I'll be working for John Kerry." Kerry left it that someone from his campaign would call Gobbell to work out the details. Let's hope there's quick follow-through (I'll be checking!), because Gobbell told me she couldn't wait to tell Geddes that she had a better offer.

posted by jeev | 9:58 PM |

James Wolcott has a blog now. So we can all read stuff like this whenever we want:

As soon as I get my greedy mitts on Kitty Kelley's epic tone poem about a certain upper-crust white-trash clan, I intend to provide ongoing interpretation of its findings. Michiko Kakutani was so hopping mad about it in The Times, stamping both her little moccasins at once, that I'm convinced La Kitty is on to something. The Times never gets that indignant about a simple piece of pop trash; it's only when the ruling class is given the tabloid treatment that the paper becomes institutionally huffy. And it's rather rich for a Times writer to squawk about an author using anonymous sources. The Times couldn't function without self-serving leaks from highly placed urinators. It might have been better had the Times assigned the review to Janet Maslin, who has the taste of a middlebrow hausfrau; she could have devoured the book in one sitting and put on seven pounds.

Life is good.

posted by jeev | 9:52 PM |

Monday, September 13, 2004

Own this!

I was just listening to the Al Franken show, and he touched on a point, but didn't make an interesting connection. Colin Powell told president Bush, "if you break it, you own it." And now president Bush is going around talking about having an "ownership society." That's a huge opening for Kerry:

"Mr. president, Colin Powell told you about this war that 'if you break it, you own it.' And now you're going around talking about an 'ownership society.' Well, Mr. President, let me tell you what you own. A million jobs lost. You own that. A thousand soldiers lost. You own that. 1.4 million new people living below the poverty line. You own that. 1.2 million less people covered by health insurance. You own that. A seventeen percent medicare increase. You own that. Health care costs skyrocketing. You own that. The tax burden increasing amongst the middle class. You own that. Mr. President, if you want to talk about an ownership society, let's talk about what you own."

From Daily Kos

posted by jeev | 4:30 PM |

Sunday, September 12, 2004

Uh, Rummy?

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld mixed up Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein twice in a speech Friday.

Among other things, Rumsfeld talked about the world just before the Sept. 11 attacks, whose third anniversary is today. In Afghanistan, he told the National Press Club, "the leader of the opposition Northern Alliance, Masoud, lay dead, his murder ordered by Saddam Hussein, by Osama bin Laden, Taliban's co-conspirator."

Ahmed Shah Masoud, who opposed the ruling Taliban, was killed by suspected Al Qaeda operatives — not Hussein — two days before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Later, Rumsfeld said, "Saddam Hussein, if he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001."

Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq; Bin Laden has not been found.

They're all the same, those guys.

Via Atrios.

posted by jeev | 8:05 PM |