Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) is running for President.
Here’s what I’d like to know. Is there anyone reading this who believes, or has even ever met anyone who believes, that Biden ought to be President? (And it’s hard to see what ticket he enhances as Vice-President, otherwise a perhaps more attainable goal.)
Daily Kos contributor “Hunter” thinks he’s spotted a sea change in inside-the-beltway political discourse, one likely to have national impacts if it really exists.
[Newsweek’s Howard] Fineman was remarkably blunt in his assertions that the “ethics” and other attacks on Murtha are being orchestrated by Karl Rove — by name — and the White House, which intends to hit Murtha with everything “necessary”. He stated directly that the White House sees everything as a political operation. He was blunt in Murtha’s record and leadership position in the war, and in attributing to Murtha the behind-the-scenes voices of many top Pentagon voices who are unhappy with both the state of the war effort and with Rumsfeld’s planning in the specific.
In short, he made it perfectly, bitterly clear that the White House itself sees Murtha as a tremendous threat, considers itself at war with Murtha, and that Rove — again, by name — intends to hit him with everything at the administration’s disposal.
And without betraying any secrets of the Washington press corps, I’d have to say that Fineman, for one, met the airways today genuinely either angry or disgusted with the effort.
… There is something different in the air, the past few weeks. Murtha has managed to tap a tuning fork that the whole war sounds off of — one I’m not sure he ever intended to find.
…
Whether or not Karl Rove survives the excesses of being Karl Rove, I have to wonder if the same crass, one-note song will play, or if the audience has changed. When the only weapon the White House is capable of using is to impugn the very patriotism and Americanness of their opponents, what happens if the reactions to that attack change?
What happens if the press decides that dissent is, after all, patriotic?
Now wouldn’t that be something.
Bruce Perens blogs a funny/sad incident involving Richard Stallman, WSIS, RFID and, yes, tin foil (well, aluminum foil, actually):
Richard is opposed to RF ID, because of the many privacy violations that are possible. It’s a real problem, and one worth lobbying about. At the 2003 WSIS in Geneva, there was objection to the RF ID cards that were used, resulting in a promise that they would not be used in 2005. That promise, it turns out, was not kept. …
You can’t give Richard a visible RF ID strip without expecting him to protest. Richard acquired an entire roll of aluminum foil and wore his foil-shielded pass prominently. He willingly unwrapped it to go through any of the visible check-points, he simply objected to the potential that people might be reading the RF ID without his knowledge and tracking him around the grounds. This, again, is a legitimate gripe, handled with Richard’s usual highly-visible, guile-less and absolutely un-subtle style of non-violent protest.
During his keynote speech at our panel today, Richard gave a moment’s talk about the RF ID issue, and passed his roll of aluminum foil around the room for others to use. A number of people in the overcrowded-to-the-max standing-room-only meeting room obligingly shielded their own passes. UN Security was in the room, not only to protect us but because of the crowd issue, and was bound to notice. Richard and I delivered our keynotes, followed by shorter talks by the rest of the panel and then open discussion.
… I was busy with the press for two solid hours. So, I didn’t see what happened with Richard. But a whole lot of the people in the room did, and stayed with Richard for the entire process.
Apparently, UN Security would not allow Richard to leave the room.
There’s lots of other funny/sad stuff in the whole post.
Ironically, this comes close on the heels of an MIT study showing that aluminum foil hats don’t actually work to block CIA mind rays but may amplify them.
Matt Stoler has a pair of interesting posts on John McCain. Since they dovetail pretty well with why I like some things about McCain but think he shouldn’t be President, ever, I recommend them : MyDD :: ‘Reform Republicans’ – The McCain Scam and BOP News: Coming Back to the Blogosphere.
People often focus on the wrong things when worrying about ID cards. For me, one of the right things to worry about is price discrimination. Not necessarily the illegal sorts, like redlining, but the legal sorts, in which firms try to sort buyers by their ability to pay, or their intensity of preference. In economic terms, in some cases its an attempt to shift consumer surplus to producer surplus; in other cases it’s an attempt by a local monopolist to move the apparent supply curve. (I’ve discussed aspects of this problem in a number of articles, the most accessible of which is probably DeLong & Froomkin, Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow’s Economy.)
For a real-life example of the kind of price discrimination I mean, see Ed Foster’s Gripelog || Dell Has Three Prices For One Part.
Have a ball — visit the Blue Ball Machine.
Where does Ann Bartow find these things?
Jotwell Blenderlaw