19 tornadoes touched down way out in the Chicago suburbs, south of where my parents live.


The reason the President's Daily Briefings are classified (by Tim Cavanaugh)

There there
Reason's Hit & Run noticed how George Will is getting all gloomy on us. This presents me with an opportunity to clarify what the name of this site means to me. In his piece, Will quotes James Q. Wilson:

"So common have despotic regimes been that some scholars have argued that they are, unhappily, the natural state of human rule. This tendency raises a profound question: Does human nature lend itself to freedom? It is not difficult to make arguments for personal freedom, but the history of mankind suggests that human autonomy usually will be subordinated to political control. If that is true, then our effort to increase individual freedom is an evolutionary oddity, a weak and probably vain effort to equip people with an opportunity some do not want and many will readily sacrifice."

This is the typical conservative argument about "wasting money" on trying to change "human nature." To me this is too pessimistic - and stinks of racism - in regards to the average person, whatever nationality. This is a rationalization, pure and simple.

Granted, like anyone I'll have moments of doubt. In Ian McEwan's novel The Child in Time, there's a character so demoralized by tragedy and loss that he's reduced to gaping at daytime TV talkshows - think Jerry Springer. Seeing his fellow humans so eager to humiliate and embarrass themselves, he coins a name for watching the proceedings: "the democrat's pornography."

"Negative Outlook?" is not meant to refer to conservative rationalizations and pessimism. Keeping with the often adolescent-level tone, subject matter, and grammar, the title is taken from a song's lyrics, the Transplants's Diamonds and Guns:

Every last soul must pay the last toll
In the dice game of life, who gets the last roll?
Is it the one with the suit? The one with the sack?
The one who hides behind his fuckin' gun and his badge?
Negative outlook? Well that's how I'm livin'
And like he said, it's a wicked world we live in
It's a wicked world we live in

It's directed at the authority figure or sell-out who's telling you, condescendingly, "quit complaining, stop being such a downer, get with the program, consider how lucky you are." Etc.

For instance, Hitchens has a negative outlook and bucks the herd of independent minds.

Ana Marie Cox chillin' on the porch.

Last month, a party celebrating the start of her site was packed. Held at the Dupont Circle town house of Peter Bergen, the CNN terrorism expert, the party's heavily mediacentric guest list included Michael Isikoff of Newsweek; a former Clinton mouthpiece, Joe Lockhart; the political blogger Mickey Kaus; and a former Howard Dean spokeswoman, Tricia Enright. This is her devoted fan base: Wonkette registered 55,000 page views on its startup date in January, and over a million for the month of March. (The Drudge Report averages over seven million page views a day.)

The Times reports her curriculum vitae as such: "She was writing her own satirical blog, theanticmuse.com, after bouncing from editing jobs at The Chronicle of Higher Education, America Online and National Geographic. She was fired from The American Prospect magazine after six weeks (during which she playfully called its co-editor, Robert Kuttner, "Crazy Bob" behind his back) and was required to sign a confidentiality agreement about the terms of her dismissal." It should have read "She was writing her own satirical blog, theanticmuse.com, after bouncing from editing jobs at The Chronicle of Higher Education, America Online, National Geographic, and Suck..." but that might have given people pause.

The New Deal's Shock Troops
The White Whale for the American Right ever since the 1930s is that collection of institutions and legislation, dare we say "philosophy"?, known as the New Deal. Erected in response to the Great Depression, the New Deal is the source of countless evils and a "Wall" or barrier to greater prosperity, according to the Right .

Today's New York Times has a Michael Beschloss review of a book about the New Dealers who labored in the trenches.

''The Fall of the House of Roosevelt: Brokers of Ideas and Power From FDR to LBJ'' shows why [President] Carter felt free to ignore an event that his three Democratic predecessors would have considered mandatory. In keeping with its scholarly subtitle, Michael Janeway dutifully navigates the ideological differences that developed among the New Dealers and the ways in which the Democratic Party later moved away from their crowd. But his book is far more interesting and original as a biographical study of what human beings will do to acquire great power and try to hold onto it -- especially after their time has passed. (Full disclosure: Janeway writes in his acknowledgments that during his 10-year writing process I helped him with a research question, although I don't recollect doing so.)

Beschloss notes how, perhaps counterintuitively, many New Dealers sought not only to do good, but to "do well":

Janeway observes that in his sometimes reckless determination to become rich, his father resembled others he knew well. Long after the New Deal, Fortas had to resign from the Supreme Court when his secret cash payments by a foundation were revealed. Corcoran was scarred by charges that he had lobbied the Supreme Court on behalf of his client El Paso Natural Gas. The onetime Truman aide Clark Clifford went down in the flames of a banking scandal. Janeway sardonically notes that these same people had once inveighed against Wall Street's ''unconstrained license and greed'' and the abuse of ''other people's money.'' As he describes it, part of the problem was that they were greedy themselves. More than that, by the end of their lives, ''the Rooseveltians' great chain of dealing had become its own end.'' These once powerful men did not know ''how to leave their active association with power.''

There is no need for us to end the story on such a sour note. Under Franklin Roosevelt, these New Dealers built a lasting monument, showing how government could be made to improve people's lives. But Michael Janeway's book is a reminder that even monument makers can have feet of clay.

Beschloss is an impressive historian. He's deceptively mild-mannered in his TV appearances, but his work demonstrates an eye for the telling detail and a sense of the important grander themes which the equally mild-mannered mainstream rarely confronts.

Heather Havrilesky reminds us of why Chris Rock is still around after all these years. Rock on affirmative action:

But let's keep it fucking real, OK? A black C student can't run no fucking company. A black C student can't even be the manager of Burger King. Meanwhile, a white C student just happens to be the president of the United States of America!

Even partisan conservatives admit Bush's recent combo speech/press conference was C level at most however much they agreed with the content.

I'll never forget when Rock had Cornel West as a guest on his cable show and Rock was visibly amused by West's high-falutant vocabulary. His questions and give and take with the academic/actor demonstrated respect, though.

"Would-be Martyr's" Wish Granted
Abdel Aziz Rantisi killed.

During the mourning period for [Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed] Yassin, Rantisi was defiant about Israel's threats against him. "We will all die one day. Nothing will change. If by Apache or by cardiac arrest, I prefer Apache," he said.

Divide and conquer
The always informative Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo (which won a Bloggie recently) is exasperated at the media's highlighting of Bin Laden's attempt to further divide America and Europe.

Marshall wonders:
"Why are we giving this al Qaida PR stunt so much credence?

Why does CNN report the news like the public is made up of a bunch of circus idiots?

And will Emmanuel Goldstein also be in on the negotiations?"

As polls and elections show, a majority of Europeans are against greater involvement by the West in the Muslim world. They want to back off. (No doubt some of the voters in Spain's recent election felt that way.) Given Europe's bloody colonial history and large Muslim population, it's understandable.

Bin Laden and al-Qaida are just playing upon that fact. My guess is that Marshall is irritated that this news highlights the fact that one of Bin Laden's goals is the same as the Democrats': a less aggressive U.S. and Western foreign policy. Let the Muslim and Arab regions be. Argue for pulling the troops out more quickly than the Republicans would (although Bush did give in to Bin Laden, with good reason in my opinion, by pulling all of the troops out of Saudi Arabia).

His frustration is demonstrated by the mention of Emmanuel Goldstein. In George Orwell's 1984, Goldstein was a fictitious saboteur employed by the state to keep the citizenry fear-stricken and thereby distracted and more accepting of repressive laws.

I doubt Marshall is being literal here - al Qaida exists of course - but his view that Bin Laden is being employed like a Goldstein is common for some (most?) of the Left. They view 911 as an aberration, a one in a million incident that is unlikely to be repeated (like, say, the assassination of JFK). After the next catastrophic attack, fairly likely given the National Security Apparatus's dysfunction, I wonder if Goldstein's name will be bandied about as much.

Democrats on the 911 Commission damn the Bush administration for not taking the pre-911 Emmanuel Goldstein threat seriously, which it in fact did not. But Democrats like Marshall then go on to argue that Republicans are playing up the threat of al-Qaida for political advantage. Republicans, they argue, were too complacent then and are too aggressive now.

"He gave me a look, a kind of wide-eyed, reproachful look, such as a dying newt might have given me, if I had forgotten to change its water regularly." P.G.Wodehouse.

What's your favorite sentence(s) from a novel? (that's not my favorite but it's pretty good. Via Maud Newton)

Que Sera Sera lists a couple of the Universal Laws of Nature.

those hang-overs where it feels like you've been through chemo

He manages to get up to his bedroom, where he has a final cigarette before turning in.Then comes the next morning.

Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

He feels worse when he discovers that a cigarette had burned 1) a large part of a bed sheet; 2) a smaller but still large part of a blanket; 3) a not inconsiderable bit of a “valuable-looking rug”; and 4) part of the top of his bedside table. It took a few moments for the full horror to sink in: “had a wayfarer, a burglar camped out in his room? Or was he the victim of some Horla fond of tobacco? He thought on the whole he must have done it himself, and wished he hadn’t.

Tax and Spend
Rabbit blog is, metaphorically speaking, throwing gasoline on the fire raging in Blogistan. So, here it goes.

After years in the big city, living beyond my means and spending like a drunken sailor on impulse-purchased books and rounds for the bar, I've finally found religion, like the Democrats, and have given in to fiscal discipline. I've forced a Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) upon myself, like what the IMF does to hapless third world countries whose treasuries have been looted by corrupt Western-backed dictators.

What's the first thing I do? I join the 21st century by purchasing a cell phone and offset the increase in my telecommunications bill by getting rid of my Caller-ID and telemarketer blocking service on my old-timey phone line.

Now, when people call at 2:30 on a Tuesday morning I don't know whether it was a wrong number or what. I get to lie in bed and stew about who could have possibly woken me up. And then I get to free associate ... but now I can write my free-associations down and post it on the Internet ...

"Soak the fat boys" was Robert Penn Warren's advice in All the King's Men. And if you think about, when travel writers and "hot spot" correspondents constantly relate how embarrassingly friendly and overly-generous folks often are in poverty stricken parts of the world and how often - but not always - the stinking rich people you come across, say, like Leona Helmsly or the Enron gang, are complete assholes, why not tax the shit out of them and redistribute a la Robin Hood? Yes, the rub lies in the redistributors and the pork and corruption which is why "good government" is essential. When Republicans and some Democrats demagogue the issue by saying "they want to raise YOUR taxes" the YOU they're addressing is 1% of the population, but that's not immediately apparent, is it?

Rabbit Blog says "sanity is overrated." I have to disagree, but I guess it depends on your definition of sanity. For instance, she's so sane and articulate, it's crazy. (By the way, the four most overrated things of all time? Champaign, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.)

Throw the Bums Out
Adam Cohen writes about the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens whose book "The Shame of the Cities" turns 100 this spring.

In a recent Los Angeles Times poll, 63 percent of those surveyed said President Bush is more concerned with corporations than workers, and it is not hard to see why. He has raised more than $180 million in campaign funds, much of it from corporate-minded contributors who want something from government — weaker environmental laws, lower taxes, government contracts — or have already gotten it. John Kerry and the Democrats, of course, raise money from many of the same sources.

Steffens would not be surprised by the extent of the alliance between business and government today. But he would be disheartened if the American people did not start to follow his simple electoral prescription. "Vote in mass on the more promising ticket," he urged, adding that if the choices are equally bad, "throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in." If the voters did that, Steffens promised, "the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it."

PDB PDF
Sometimes I'll watch the Fox News Network - because they're fun in a goofy, gung-ho way - and today they had a panel awaiting the White House's PDF file of the August 6th, 2001 President's Daily Briefing which came up in the 911 Commission hearings.

The panel included a woman who reminded me of a go-go, chubby sorority gal, a charming, nerdy, young Republican/national security expert guy, and, alas, Geraldo Rivera. The fake-looking-in-a-TV-news-anchor-way moderator let the audience know that he'd read the page and half PDB as soon as the PDF hit his monitor, which would be any minute. So everyone was speculating on its contents, except for Geraldo who was pontificating in dramatic fashion. All the while old glory flies up in the corner of tube.

Mr. young Republican made an interesting point which I had heard before. The "muscle" of the group that hijacked the planes weren't aware they were on a suicide mission according to a captured al-Qaida heavy. There may be other sources for that, I don't know. So, obviously only a very few people knew what was coming.

Still, as Ms. chubby, sorority gal pointed out, mistakes were made which is why the 911 Commission was a good idea however partisan it becomes. The moderator receives the PDF and reads it out loud. Apparently, Bush, who was aware of al-Qaida's numerous attacks overseas, wanted a briefing on a possible attack on the "homeland." The PDB said "Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US.'' Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America.'' Al-Qaida members, some of them American citizens, had lived in or traveled to the United States for years, the memo said. Also, bin Laden wanted to retaliate for Clinton's attempt to assassinate him with cruise missiles in 1998.

So, something was coming and National Security Advisor Rice told the 911 Commission that protecting "the homeland" from al-Qaida was delegated to the FBI. (They were "tasked" with it. The Democratic Commissioners argued there are no records of the FBI being "tasked.") The CIA was following foreign leads. She was working on a plan to get Pakistan to crack down on Afghanistan, al-Qaida's base. It seems to me the fault lies with both the Clinton and Bush administrations, specifically and obviously the National Security Apparatus in both, for not gauging the severity of the coming threat.

Later, I caught The McGlaughlin Group on PBS. The wonderful James Warren of the Chicago Tribune happened to be on and said he didn't think the PDB/Condi vs. Richard Clarke drama would register with people outside the Beltway. Who they'll vote for will depend on the state of the economy and Iraq.

Perhaps Attorney General John Aschroft, who testifies next week, will get the axe over this. That would be great if they dumped the Christian Right's guy because of some right-wing Islamic nutjobs.

Separated at Birth
911 Commissioner and former Illinois Governor James Thompson and former Illinois Governor George Ryan look as if they could be related. Both are ruddy, jowly and tend to scowl (except when posing for photos). Both also have a reputation for corruption. Must be something in the water.

Another gruff, jowly fellow, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, seems to have taken a page from George Ryan's playbook. Facing possible indictment for corruption, the general who was ultimately responsible for the 1982 massacres in Sabra and Shatila has now proposed unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank, thereby infuriating the right wing and the settler movement he helped found. His supporters will argue that the law enforcement bureaucracy, which is generally more dovish, should not indict him during this critical time.

The conservative George Ryan was facing an ever-expanding corruption probe while governor and decided to make a play for the state's liberals by declaring a moratorium on the death penalty and emptying the state's death row. He was recently indicted anyway which might not bode well for Sharon.

Foreign Hordes
Looks like xenophobia will play an important part in the Presidential election "drama." (Apologies for the following geeky, strained analogy).

Capital, or if you like, the elite who gather annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, scours the globe for cheap labor like Sauron's red, searchlight Eye in Lord of the Rings.

America's economy, a besieged fortress like Helm's Deep or Minas Tirith, frantically attempts to ward off wave attacks of Orc-like darkies, i.e. Latino immigrants and white collar job-stealing Indians.

And, a stretch I know, when told the dusky Iraqis desperately need help shedding tyranny and building anew, many Americans give the same answer a bitter, war-weary King Theoden spits at Aragorn after his plea that Gondor urgently needs Rohan's assistance, "They need our help?! What have they ever done for us?!"

Meanwhile, the Naz-ghoul-like Al Qaeda circle overhead.

Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm (which you should read if you haven't), gets into the weeds to write about the X-factor of the political season, outsourcing.

I'm not sure of this, but I believe J.R.R. Tolkein used South Africa as a model for his Middle Earth. Elves were a stand-in for the British, Humans for the less-cultivated Boer/Afrikaners, and Orcs, of course, for the surrounding sea of African natives. The wizard Sauramon, perhaps, was a stand-in for "Uncle Joe" Slovo and the Commie provocateurs.

In our world, obviously, the Orcs were victorious; shed tyranny and oppression; and now work to build anew in a South Africa where politics, as in Iraq, has returned for good. (No doubt, smarty-pantses will point to the recent violence in Iraq as evidence of the absence of politics. My rejoinder: "In a split between U.S.-picked Iraqi leaders and American administrators, the Governing Council demanded an immediate cease-fire across the country Friday and a halt to military operations that punish civilians." And a cease-fire was declared.)

Jennifer Abrahamson writes in Slate about how the Orcs and Goblins are faring 10 years after overthrowing apartheid:

Rapping Against the ANC

Truth and Reconciliation on Robben Island

From the Frontline to the Bottom Line

Saving Grace

This Land is Our Land

Switched On!
It's been a good month, personally. In the realm of the written word, Lorrie Moore passsed through town which was completely mind-blowing..

Then Stereolab decides to tour, absent Mary Hansen who was hit by a car while riding her bicycle in London about a year and half ago.

Their show tonight was completely mind-blowing, even sans Mary, who was the most friendly, out-going member of the group. They played a song that was quintessentially Mary, "Nihilist Assault Group." One of the many wonderful things about Stereolab is their creative song titles, like "Exploding Head Movie" and "International Coloring Contest."

Distinction with a difference
Reason republished a piece Jonathan Rauch wrote for the National Journal about how "Like it or not, Israel's war with Hamas is America's, too."

I'm not an expert on the Middle East, but my impression is it isn't our war even if we give Israel a ton in foreign aid and Bush gives Sharon a free hand.

Says Rauch, "... America's terror war and Israel's are not separable, however much we might wish they were."

And later he contradicts himself, "Although Hamas has concentrated on Israeli interests while Al Qaeda concentrated on American ones, even that gap is narrowing—inevitably, now that America is making a priority of bringing secular democracy to the Middle East." Secular democracy? Afghanistan, a guide here, has Islam written into its new constitution and Iraq's will certainly have references to Islam as well, given Ayattolah Ali Sistani's pull and the majority Shia population.

Ask yourself which American interests Al Qaeda is concentrating on and why. Compare the experience of the Palestinians, who are fighting the Israelis over contested land, as described by a Middle East expert:

During the first intifada, in the late 1980s, the Palestinians denied themselves the recourse to arms, mounted a civil resistance, produced voices like Hanan Ashrawi and greatly stirred world opinion. For this they were offered some noncontiguous enclaves within an Israeli-controlled and Israeli-settled condominium. Better than nothing, you might say. But it's the very deal the Israeli settlers reject in their own case, and they do not even live in Israel "proper." (They just have the support of the armed forces of Israel "proper.") So now things are not so nice and many Palestinians have turned violent and even--whatever next?--religious and fanatical. Naughty, naughty. No self-determination for you. And this from those who achieved statehood not by making nice but as a consequence of some very ruthless behavior indeed.

The Bad Old Days
Gordon Wood, the historian Will Hunting name drops in Good Will Hunting, writes about the letters between Founding Father John Adams and his wife Abigail. The two had a special thing compared to the other Founding Fathers' marriages and most marriages of the time.

It is difficult for us today to appreciate how different that patriarchal eighteenth century was, not just in its general acceptance of slavery but also in its treatment of women. Women rarely had an independent existence, at least in law. In public records they were usually referred to as the "wife of," or the "daughter of," or the "sister of," a man. Before marriage, women legally belonged to their fathers, and after marriage they belonged to their husbands. A married woman was a femme covert: she could not sue or be sued, make contracts, draft wills, or buy and sell property. It went without saying that women could not hold political office or vote. They were considered to be dependent like children, and their husbands often treated them like children. A husband might address his wife as "dear Child" or by her Christian name, but he would be addressed in return as "Mr."

Nader vs. Kerry
Dan Johnson-Weinberger was Nader's Illinois manager during the 2000 election but is now pulling for Kerry.

His blog links to Eric Zorn's Notebook (registration required). Zorn is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and exemplifies everything wrong with the official Left. Maybe I'm being unfair and Zorn is a smart, knowledgable guy, but his columns almost always cause my eyes to glaze over.

Still, no doubt he helped in a small way to get Illinois to raise its minimum wage.

Advance ticket sales
Tickets go on sale Saturday at noon for the November 13th(!) Pixies show at the Scare-agon Brawlroom here in Chicago.

There's no denying it, I've fallen for Drea de Matteo. (What's a weblog for, but to list your crushes for the world to see). I'm not made of wood. In the latest episode of the Sopranos, her character Adrianna almost hooks up with the mob boss Tony, even though she's engaged to his #2, Chris-tuh-fuh, as she calls him.

Tony is recently separated but nonetheless, the plot line reminded me of something from Martin Amis's novel "Yellow Dog." Joseph Andrews is a high-end porno producer and - sorta like Tony - a semi-retired London crime boss.

'Crazy 'Jo', it turns out, was in the habit of 'doing' his favourite lieutenants' 'birds', and if the lieutenants complained he'd 'do' them as well, though in a different sense. 'Hey Jo. You want to stuff my bird so you can pretend you're me?' suggests Keith the Snake, the most favoured lieutenant of all. 'You want to stuff my bird so you can pretend you're her?' Earlier on, there's an allusion to the scene in Blue Velvet in which the sex-crazed villain, Frank Booth, shows that he's in love with his disturbing associate Ben. But the movie never spells it out, unlike Yellow Dog. 'He wants to have them so he does them,' Xan says. 'And has their wives.' 'Mm,' his interlocutor says. 'Hence the love of pain: he's correcting himself for it.'

I'll never forget a dinner where activist professor Rashid Khalidi confessed he couldn't understand what his son saw in the The Sopranos. The encyclopedic polymath Christopher Hitchens added he didn't like it either, but then he doesn't watch TV. He does go to movies and didn't care for Tom Cruise's Last Samurai.