Irving Progressive

In the Financial Times I found this article by Ben Funnell. He begins by laying out his stark hypothesis:

Just why is there so much debt in the Anglo-Saxon world? Bankers and regulators know well that it is in nobody’s long-term interests to have allowed borrowing to escalate to a position where the US now owes far more, as a multiple of the economy, than at the start of the Great Depression.
The answer is capitalism’s dirty little secret: excessive lending was the only way to maintain the living standards of the vast bulk of the population at a time when wealth was being concentrated in the hands of an elite.

It's a very good article. His conclusion, while sounding all too simple, is inarguable:

...we need a new political consensus, one aimed at reducing overall debt levels while reducing inequality by encouraging education, entrepreneurship and investment in innovation.

In 2004, off-duty police officers in Milwaukee engaged in what can only be described as totally psychopathic behaviour when they beat up a bi-racial man at a house-warming party.
The most amazing thing about the whole affair was not that the police force attempted to cover up the incident (sadly, that is exactly what I would have expected a quasi-military body dominated by authoritarians to do), but that the cover-up almost made it through the criminal justice system. It took a civil trial for the extent of the police cover-up to be revealed.
The good news is that a number of officers involved in the incident are now serving long jail terms. The bad news is that Frank Jude is permanently physically and emotionally scarred. As far as I can tell, he has not received a dime in damages for his suffering. There is also no evidence that the Milwaukee Police Department has really made any institutional changes to prevent (a) hiring borderline pyschos as police officers and (b) improving monitoring to prevent abuses and cover-ups like the one seen here.
The case, distressing though it is, does bring to light one of the downsides of public and electoral attitudes to law enforcement. In most industrialized countries, police officers are paid no more than average salaries. This for a job where they are in many places, quite literally in the line of fire. They could go out on a patrol and not come back. This is a quasi-military organization in that respect. Unsurprisingly, military disciplines such as closing ranks, mutual loyalty etc. will trump logical behaviour.
The bigger underlying challenge, however, is that paying police forces poorly is a very dumb strategy. For a start, it makes police highly vulnerable to corruption. A poorly-paid officer with a family to support cannot help but be tempted by sums of money waved under his nose by criminals in return for some variant on "look the other way". Additionally, poor pay is unlikely to attract high-quality recruits. Police forces therefore tend to be dominated by recruits with lower educational attainment, and a correspondingly greater propensity towards emotional, prejudiced or racist attitudes, and (as we saw above) psychopathic behaviour. Add all of these factors together and you have a major institutional problem across the western world.
The bad news is that we are not going to make much headway on solving the issues until we stop paying police officers peanuts, and instead reward them properly for dealing with the nasties and crazies, and also putting their lives literally on the line during an average work week. While the behaviour of the officers in the above story was appalling, and the response of the police department was typically head-in-the-ass, this is not out of the ordinary, and it will continue to be the norm until we significantly improve the pay of police forces. You can't have good-quality anything on the cheap, and law enforcement is always supposed to be at or near the top of the careabouts of electors, so why are we surprised when we get bad behaviour from people who are paid poorly and then exposed to criminals?
This is so blindingly obvious that I should not have to even be writing about it...

As outlined in this article, which shows how excessive reliance was placed on evidence supposedly uncovered by a police dog, and how the various actors in the story on the prosecution side are all closing ranks and engaging in BS, evasion and other dysfunctional behaviours.
For a beautiful summary of what the proponents of the system would probably say if corned on this, read this comment here.
This is a mind-bogglingly frightening and unnerving story, but if you read the section on the criminal justice system in the book "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME), the behavioural pathology at work here is easy to understand. They point out in the book that this sort of misconduct in Florida is not new:

The response of prosecutors in Florida is typical. After 130 people had been freed by DNA testing the space of 15 years, prosecutors decided that they would respond by mounting a vigorous challenge to similar new cases. Wilton Dredge had to sue the state to have the evidence in his case re-tested, over the fierce objections of prosecutors who said that the state's interest in finality and the victim's feelings should supersede concerns about Drudge's possible innocence. Drudge was finally exonerated and released.

As the book points out:

...American law enforcement remains steeped in its traditions, including adherence to the Reid Technique and similar procedures, maintaining a "near absolute denial" that these techniques can and do produce fake confessions and wrongful convictions.

Shorter summary: stories such as this one show that the American law enforcement system has major weaknesses and challenges in its ability to objectively investigate and prosecute crimes. This is quite apart from the fairly mind-boggling statistic that the USA has the highest documented rate of per capita incarceration of any country in the world, which suggests either a country riddled with crime (which I do not see) or an extreme willingness to lock people up. Based on dumb-ass legislation such as the "three strikes" rule, I think that there is a significant incidence of the latter mindset, but stories like this one also lead me to conclude that there are very significant failings in the prosecutorial side of the system, about which all of the actors in the system are in denial.

...in addition to changing the title, I am sure that he would have mentioned Photoshop as a tool used by regimes to manipulate visual images...

I was going to quote from this article, but it stands on its own and is so amazing that you need to read it (it's a short article). My initial reaction and my considered reaction are one and the same = that this is one of the most egregious examples of abuse of the legal system by prosecutors that I have ever read about. This is all in the service of a fundamentally impossible task - the attempt to seal the land borders between the USA and Mexico (and possibly Canada), which in the case of the USA-Mexico border is 1933 miles in length.
Any solution to illegal immigration that is based on a border fence or barrier is fundamentally flawed from a construction maintenance and logistical viewpoint. A permanent durable barrier would make the Great Wall Of China look like a small weekend engineering project. Perhaps the secret plan is to resurrect the post-World War II public works side of the Army Corps of Engineers?

When a society allows deeply dysfunctional individuals to conflate abortion with murder, without sufficient pushback from educated electors and opinion-formers who ought to be awake and alert, instead of mentally narcoleptic, this is the eventual result.
Let us not beat around the bush here. This, folks, is terrorism. I demand that the full weight of anti-terrorism laws in the USA be deployed to find the killers, bring them to justice, and marginalize and discredit the killer's supporters. They are nothing more than amoral, twisted, murdering jerks, and their support groups need to put away their fake apologies and Shut The Fuck Up (yes, Operation Rescue, I was referring to you, you dehumanizing bunch of scumbags).
UPDATE - The police have arrested a suspect, and, based on this article, it seems that the suspect was a disaster waiting to happen. Now, of course, we have a bunch of people who met him and became acquainted with him popping up saying stuff like "he was weird, wacky and had an obsession with abortion". All very interesting to know, but why was this guy allowed to graduate to terrorism? This is all somewhat reminiscent of Michael Ryan, and Timothy McVeigh.
Worse still is that there is a large body of evidence, in the form of threats and illegal behaviour (right up until the present day) towards abortion clinics and medical professionals. U.S. law enforcement has been wilfully and consistently ignoring these incidents and law enforcement issues for a long time. Any law enforcement official who expresses surprise at what has just happened is wilfully obtuse and deceitful, stupid, or both.
PZ Myers has a pretty good posting summarizing some thoughts about this disgraceful event:

In many ways, though, Roeder's religiosity is going to be a distraction. It simply doesn't matter, and the strongest conclusion we can draw from it is that religion fails to provide a reasonable framework for morality, since it is so easily and regularly subverted to rationalize evil. Focus instead on the root of the problem: Roeder was an amoral, obsessed nut who found support for his delusions among a particularly ugly American subculture. Gods don't matter. And when you think gods do, you lose sight of the truth: other people matter.

UPDATE 2 - David Neiwert, who has extensively studied domestic hate groups, weighs in with his thoughts on the Tiller murder.
UPDATE 3 - Jeffrey Feldman explains in this article how authoritarian fascists have succeeded in their attempts to frame abortion as murder. As he explains:

Dr. George Tiller was killed in his church because the right-wing has built a political movement around a violent idea: that America has been transformed by liberals into a culture that "murders" babies.
Like a giant river supported by millions of tiny underground streams, this movement is supported by everyone who defines those with whom they disagree on abortion policy as supporters of "murder."

As Feldman points out, the whole framing process has been perniciously supported and enabled, not only by dysfunctional politicians, but also by the media:

In political debates, right-wing voices almost always use certain controversial procedures to define abortion as "murder," but even when the subject moves beyond those procedures they continue to use "murder" to describe all other aspects of abortion. The phrase "baby murderer," then becomes short-hand for referring to "liberals" in other contexts.
This right-wing rhetorical strategy is used so often, people barely give it any notice anymore. Calling people "murderers" and "baby killers" has become a normal part of U.S. media. Guests on TV and radio shows who routinely accuse their debate opponents of supporting or condoning "murder" are invited back time and time again to repeat the accusation.

As Feldman concludes:

No matter how many or how few late term abortions are performed, so long as the right-wing anti-abortion movement continues to fold dissent into an ever-expanding definition of "murder," then the right-wing will continue to give rise to activists who kill doctors.

All of which begs the question: how long do we have to listen to scumbag bullies on radio and TV describing liberal supporters of reproductive rights as "baby-killers" and "murderers" before somebody in law enforcement decides that they might be inciting violence? Do we have to wait until a talk show host himself engages in violent behaviour before making this connection? Am I the the only person in the world who has noticed that the standard approach of authoritarian scumbags the world over, when faced with dissent, is to shout it down, and if that does not look like it is working, to threaten people with violence and other nasty personal consequences?
Wake up folks. The USA has a deadly undercurrent of acceptance of intolerance that is dangerously close to being out of control. There appears to be insufficient willingness on the part of a majority of the population to slap down, marginalize and ostracise offensive, authoritarian jerks.
Which brings us back to where we came in. Shooting an unarmed doctor in a crowded church in furtherance of a warped, murderous pathology is not merely murder. It is quite clearly a terrorist act, and needs to be treated as such. If animal rights protesters can be pursued by US and UK law enforcement using anti-terrorism laws, why are these laws not being deployed against the far more serious events that just occurred in Kansas?

When I was at high school in the UK, our house used to get visited regularly by religious sects. Most commonly it was the Jehova's Witnesses, who were very active locally. The Jehova's Witnesses clearly thought it was OK to drag their children along on these visits - on more than one occasion I would open the door and they would be standing there, children in tow (usually children looking like they would rather be somewhere else, anywhere else but here).
I soon noticed the standard patterns to the Jehova's Witness spiel. They would wave a copy of their house magazine, the Watchtower, and try to interest me in this wonderful publication which was going to change my life. If I demurred, they would produce the Bible and start quote-mining. The book of Revelations was their favorite quote mine, hardly surprising since the whole premise of the Jehovah's witnesses is that when Armageddon occurs, they will be The Chosen Ones, and they seemed to like the impressive sounding numbers quoted in the King James version of the bible in that book, using them in much the same way that Sen. Joseph McCarthy produced his "hundreds of Communists" allegations out of nowhere in the early 1950's.
I soon developed (thanks to an idea from a classmate) a fairly effective way of terminating these unwelcome intrusions. After letting them waffle for a minute or two, I would hold up my hand and say something like "I'm sorry, but this is not of any help to me. I'm an atheist".
They would usually respond with a line like "what benefits do you get from being an atheist?". (not sure why they would ask that, presumably they were looking for something to latch on to and prove I could get more benefits from their wacky sect). This provided me with the perfect response:
"The main benefit I get is that I do not have to stand on doorsteps listening to people like you. Good day". And with that, I would close the door.
I did this three times, it worked every time. They would stand there looking puzzled, then wander off to the next house.
There are better responses..here is a good idea from the comments section of a posting on Pam's House Blend:

I always have a piece of paper and pencil handy by the door. I give it to them and tell them to write down their name and address (no not the address of your church, honeybunch, YOUR personal address) and I'll stop by at a time of MY choosing and insist on telling them my personal beliefs. If they're not home I'll be glad to talk at length with their spouse or kids. Seems they never want to do that.

I shall have to try this. So far I have not been doorstepped here in the USA. It will happen eventually. If I am in a good mood, I will try the Pams House Blend response. If I am not in a good mood, I may just tell them to get the hell off of my property...we shall see.

The authoritarian dimwits who seem to constitute an unhealthy proportion of the conservative base in the USA have gotten themselves all worked up into a frenzy (as usual, aided and abetted by the mainstream media) over a remark by President Obama that one of the qualities he may seek in a future Supreme Court nominee is empathy. They seem to believe that empathy is a Really Bad Thing in a judge - why, it might make the judge sympathetic to one of the parties in a case! They also seem to be of the opinion that empathy is a codeword for what they term "judicial activism", which, based on my attempting to debate the phrase with conservatives, seems to itself be a codeword roughly translated as "judges who make decisions that I don't like".
The trouble with these arguments (as ever) is that they are simplistic, and fall into the trap of a false dichotomy. Where do we begin? How about reminding ourselves of arguments put forward in favour of the nomination of current Supreme Court justices who are generally regarded as conservative. Like Clarence Thomas. As this posting by Susan Bandes points out:

Judicial nominees and their supporters routinely assure Congress that they both intend to uphold the rule of law and are capable of empathy for those less fortunate. Clarence Thomas's controversial nomination to the Supreme Court got a crucial boost when liberal judge Guido Calabresi wrote that Thomas understands "what discrimination really means" and knows "the deep needs of the poor and especially poor blacks." Sen. Danforth (R-Mo.) added his own assurances that Thomas's heart would be with "the ordinary folk" if he were on the Supreme Court. In his confirmation hearings, Samuel Alito sought to reassure those concerned about his capacity to empathize with workers and the poor by describing his Italian-immigrant father and his own upbringing in "an unpretentious, down to earth community."

So, there is nothing new in making empathy a central feature of arguments in favour of judicial nominations to America's highest court.
Another aspect of the hand-wringing about empathy is that empathy is a key diagnostic characteristic for good socialization. A defining characteristic of sociopaths, for example, is their general lack of empathy and bonding with other humans. Arguing against the desirability of empathy takes you down a dangerous road. Are you really in favour of appointing a sociopath to the highest court in the land? Is this really a good idea. Of course, from my amateur viewpoint, it seems to me that a number of the leading figures in the GOP's recent past and present seem to exhibit some of the characteristics of sociopaths. The snarling, dismissive, black-and-white worldview of Dick Cheney and the narcissistic self-centered personal life of Newt Gingrich are not stellar advertisements for lack of empathy.
I therefore have tentatively concluded that the objection to "empathy" is yet another example of coded language, with "empathy" replacing "judicial activism" as another rallying cry for reflexive opponents of President Obama. Of course, it would be nice if those opponents stopped trying to rally around illogical, intellectually defective nonsense like this, but we are talking about the modern USA, where the ability to construct a cogent argument is currently taking second place (at least in the mass media) to fear-mongering, the endemic use of logical fallacies, and general bloviation and hand-waving.

Right now I am getting pissed with President Obama...he has only been in office 100 or so days, and now he is trying to prevent the release of photos which apparently will show detainees being tortured by U.S. military and or/intelligence department personnel.
The fact that torture has occurred does not seem to me to be in dispute, especially when the proponents of and apologists for torture seem to be expending a lot of rhetorical and argumentation energy on advancing the hypothesis that "torture works". If there was any doubt about the reality of past torture, they would still be clinging to the polite (prior) fiction of "we do not torture".
Obama's attempt to prevent the publication of the photos is supported by reasons that, as Lawyers Guns and Money explains, do not even begin to pass any test of logical argument. In short, the justification is flimsy bordering on BS. We also need to remember that this is a legal argument advanced by the Obama Administration to a circuit judge who may or may not be impressed enough by the argument to rule in favour of it. The judge might well decide that the argument is insufficiently compelling, and permit publication of the pictures.
This, of course, may be the outcome that the Obama Administration knows is inevitable; they may simply be going through the motions of objecting to publication so that they can turn round to the military and the intelligence communities and say "we tried...". However, given other evidence of backsliding on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", I am becoming increasingly concerned that the Obama team is meeting my worst expectations of a team that, once granted governance power, is seeking to abuse that power the same way that its predecessor abused power. Not a good sign.

A rather disturbing story, from Ed Brayton's blog at ScienceBlogs:

A formerly anonymous blogger who criticized his prominent Southern Baptist pastor has sued police and state prosecutors for revealing his identify to the church even though an investigation showed he had done nothing illegal.

The blogger's blog is here, with updates on the legal action.
As Ed says, I hope he wins and wins big. This sort of covert investigation under the guise of a "criminal investigation" is nothing more than an invasion of privacy, and needs to be clobbered by the justice system, hopefully in a way that humiliates all of the scoundrels who took part in it.

I remember a few years ago, when the GOP still controlled the Presidency, the Senate and the House of Representatives, a prevailing meme that was always used by Republicans when talking about their opponents was "angry liberals". Seemingly, all opponents were vicious, angry, twisted, warped liberals, and since in authoritarian circles, "liberal" is an all-purpose smear, the inclusion of that word alone would be enough to (as they see it) end the conversation.
Now, in 2009, the GOP finds itself in the minority in both national houses of representation, and the President is a Democrat. Is the GOP behaving graciously in opposition? Based on what I am reading about, it would seem that the answer is No. GOP-sympathetic radio and TV hosts are ranting about all manner of perceived indignities, elected representatives are bloviating about "tea parties" and "fascism". And, not to be outdone, the leader of the RedState website has now lowered the bar further. Describing the soon-retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter as a "goat fucking child molester" not only sets a lower standard for others to aim at (or below), it also seems to me to amply fit the definition of an "angry authoritarian".
Of course, I would be remiss if I did not also observe that it seems like the writings of a classless, moronic little shit...but I hate to have to re-state the obvious.

This article by Glenn Greeenwald is a masterpiece (note for the humor-impaired; the article makes extensive use of both irony and sarcasm...). It is good to see mendacious, duplicitous elected representatives being impaled on the consequences of their own contradictions and hypocrisies...like Rep. Jane Harman. It seems that her interview on NPR has not helped her either - but she apparently hasn't got a bloody clue about the law all of a sudden. See Amnesia.
On a related topic...there is a new reference frame being pushed into the public domain by frightened and embarrassed groups in and around the intelligence and surveillance divisions of government. Apparently, programs are now either "legal" or "extra-legal". If you want an excellent example of Orwellian language, here it is in 4 short syllables. It reads like some sort of advertising slogan ("New Improved Extra Legal! Buy it now!").
When are the brave media folk on radio and TV going to ask the blindingly obvious question "Er, is "extra-legal" not simply a bullshit euphemism for illegal?"
UPDATE - Glenn Greenwald goes back on the offensive against the mind-bogglingly hypocritical bloviations from Rep. Jane Harman at a recent APAIC meeting, where she vented against illegal wiretapping. It certainly appears that, as far as Rep. Harman is concerned, wiretapping is acceptable as a national security assurance tactic as long as it is The Other Guy who is being wiretapped...

This article from the San Antonio News reveals that the police department and the Mayor of Tenaha in East Texas have apparently been egregiously abusing asset forfeiture laws. These laws, originally designed to allow for the confiscation of assets owned by convicted felons, have been abused (in some cases egregiously) for years by many law enforcement agencies. They are attractive laws to abuse, since seized assets can be used to offset the rising cost of law enforcement.
In the case of the city of Tenaha, the asset forfeiture abuse went hand-in-hand with that old legal invention of Driving While Black. A local lawyer has now filed a lawsuit as a result of investigating numerous forfeiture incidents in Tenaha. As the L.A. Times reports:

David Guillory, an attorney in nearby Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession.
But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly -- and discovered that all but one of them were black.

The citizen leadership of Tenaha appears to be in total denial about the egregiousness of this bullshit:

Tenaha Mayor George Bowers, 80, defended the seizures, saying they allowed a cash-poor city the means to add a second police car in a two-policeman town and help pay for a new police station.
“It’s always helpful to have any kind of income to expand your police force,” Bowers said.
Local police, he said, must take aggressive action to stem the narcotics trade that flows through town via U.S. 59 — drugs heading north, cash going south.
“No doubt about it. (U.S. 59) is a thoroughfare that a lot of no-good people travel on. They take the drugs and sell it and take the money and go right back into Mexico,” said Bowers, who’s been Tenaha’s mayor 54 years.

I guess my question to George Bowers is: what part of the phrase "probable cause" do you not understand? My question to the electors of Tenaha: do you realize that you have a fuckwit representing you?
UPDATE - News of the lawsuit has now gone national, via this article in CNN. The article itself adds little that was not already public information, but it further provides much negative publicity. Way to go, Tenaha.

1. Texas Secession and all that crap
Not to be outdone by Gov. Rick Perry's inane hints about secession, the Texas State Legislature is now getting in on the act, proposing to use up limited legislative time on a motion re-affirming the existence of the 10th Amendment to the Constitution.
Texas Rep. John Culbertson has also gotten in on the act, pointing out that Texas has the right to subdivide itself into up to 5 states. In his world, this somehow means that Texas can SHAZAM! morph into 5 states overnight, each with 2 Republican senators. Leaving aside any practical considerations of whether all the Senators would be Republican, Culbertson is either stupid or talking total BS, or both. The clause in the agreement by which Texas joined the Union which refers to Texas splitting also states that this must be done within the rules laid down in the U.S. Constitution i.e. the other states have to agree. Somehow I do not see other states agreeing to this sort of a split without some form of matching split (California, which has more electors than Texas, will probably want the same sort of split). Culbertson's bloviating nonsense is yet more evidence that the GOP in Texas are currently a whiny-ass bunch of losers.

2. That Darned Taxpayer Hotel in Dallas
Harlan Crow has spent $2.7 million on the campaign against the hotel and convention center backed by the Dallas City Council and the Mayor. I am getting tired of this group's adverts - they are slick and narrated by people with resonant well-modulated voices, but they are nothing more than innuendo-ridden polemical slams, mostly consisting of ad hominem attacks on Mayor Tom Leppert. Whenever I see a campaign like this relying almost exclusively on the ad hominem fallacy, my BS/sleaze meter gets pegged to the end-stop. Where's the argument?
There is also a rich vein of hypocrisy lurking in the adverts - Crow himself refuses to talk publicly about the campaign, claiming he wants it to be about issues, but as the Dallas Morning News has pointed out, one of the most recent adverts is nothing more than an ad hominem slam against Mayor Tom Leppert.
Crow's campaign is the most egregious example of special pleading (his family business just happens to own the Anatole hotels) that I have seen since the Dallas Cowboys spent millions to con the city of Arlington into ponying up for a second major-league sports stadium in 10 years. That campaign was similarly one-sided in terms of the amount of money being spent by the pro and anti stadium factions.
The Dallas Obsever has a fairly comprehensive article outlining the main facts and issues in this unfolding saga.

3. The Big Bank Bailout
Here is a pretty cogent explanation for why the recent bank bailout was not a very good idea...

As those of you who live in my home state may know, the Texas Board of Education has been under pressure from pro-Creationism members and from external organizations to water down the teaching of Evolution in the science curriculum in Texas. This attempt to completely subvert the integrity of science education in Texas has been going on for years, aided by an electorate that seems incapable of critical thinking when it comes to evaluating the merits of candidates for positions on the board (wake up people!).
This posting from Digby enumerates the extremely negligible qualifications of Don Patton, one of the opponents of the teaching of Evolution as part of the education process in Texas, who testified at recent board hearings on science teaching.
Based on my evaluation of his claimed qualifications, if he can call himself "Dr", then I ought to start claiming myself as a Professor. You see, unlike Mr. Patton, I actually have a degree in Geology, from the University of Manchester (1976).
Sadly, like many dangerous demagogues of the past, Patton does appear to be able to speak superficially plausible nonsense in a resonant, well-modulated voice. His opponents may lack in bombast, but as this posting from P.Z. Myers makes clear, opposition to his brand of unscientific religious nonsense spans most of the spectrum of academia, including (in this case) historians. The contempt of these people for the entire education process appears to know no limits.
In a related set of wackiness, the Insitute of Creation Research, whom Mr. Patton was representing in his appearance before the Texas board, has recently filed a complaint against the Texas Higher Education Co-Ordination Board in federal court for an injunction requiring the THECB to issue the Certificate of Authority and permit ICR to issue Master of Science degrees in science education. This follows the THECB rejection of their 2008 request to permit the ICR to offer a Master’s degree in science education in Texas.
This blog posting by a practising lawyer outlines the numerous ways in which this complaint is a waste of dead tree products and court system bandwidth.
The entire complaint seems to me to be another attempt to create publicity and engage in some martyrdom, with the education and the court systems ultimately being pointed to as the nasty villians.
This sort of devious, intellectually dishonest behaviour from supporters of Creationism is likely to continue until electors start to apply much more rigorous thinking and evaluation processes to education board candidates in Texas. Voting for candidates who, by a process of defective reasoning, seek to elevate the teaching of Creationism to the level of science may make people feel more virtuous (I guess), but if continued, the election of backward-looking, unthinking individuals to positions of power in the U.S. education system will undermine the system over time to the point where it ceases to have any credibility, either inside the U.S.A. or in the rest of the world. The obsession with Creationism is regarded in Europe was a weird, illogical and highly suspect behaviour pattern peculiar to the U.S.A. (Even the Roman Catholic Church, that most hierarchical and conservative of organizations, formally accepted Evolution as an explanation for the development of intelligent life on Earth years ago.)

...explaining why the Nuremburg Defense ("I was only obeying orders") was ruled irrelevant at the time, and why it is still irrelevant as a defense to charges of illegal activity by government and military employees.
The key part of the argument is contained in this neat summary:

...people who act on behalf of the government must be assured that unless they exercise some basic moral and legal common sense reasoning, then they will be held accountable for their actions and prosecuted for violating any laws — most especially obvious laws which any half-conscious adult should have noticed they were breaking.
Government employees and independent contractors are not automatons whom we simply wind up and aim in some desired direction; they are morally responsible adults who must be held morally and legally responsible for actions they choose to take. They have a choice to not take action they suspect may be legally questionable or which appear to be morally dubious. Granted, there are grey areas where it's not always obvious what is legal and what is illegal. I'd like to think that those engaged in actively administering criminal treatments like waterboarding would have noticed that they were breaking the law, but I could accept that not every situation was quite so clear. Is that a reason to withhold prosecution? Absolutely not.

While I was on vacation in the Bahamas, it seems that Rick Perry, our Governor, hinted that Texas could always secede from the Union if it did not like the political direction out of Washington. He apparently made the comments in Austin at one of several "tea parties".
Don't get me started on the irredeemable stupidity behind the tea party concept - the Boston Tea Party was a protest against taxation without representation, while America was a disenfranchised colony of Great Britain. The current "tea parties" are nothing more than publicity stunts by a bunch of pissed voters who have taxation with representation - just not the representation that they voted for. In short, this is nothing more than childish petulance from sore losers.
It seems that Perry has since been heard trying to walk back from his original comments...oops, sorry, I meant he has been clarifying his comments, but in the meantime, his comments have ignited a predictable storm of comment. Political luminaries such as Ron Paul (ho-hum) and Tom DeLay (somebody save us from this fuckwit) have weighed in with their own comments.
I first encountered some Texas secessionists in the UseNet days, when a discussion broke out in a UseNet group about whether Texas could secede. I got myself into a vigorous, but ultimately frustrating debate with one of them, when I pointed out that the U.S. Constitution has no defined process for secession, for Texas or for any other state. It does not forbid secession, but there is no process defined anywhere for how a state can secede. The secessionist that I was arguing with waved aside this issue with a bland "it does not prohibit secession so we can secede if we want to", but totally failed to answer the obvious question "how would you do this?". He also seemed to be unwilling to address any of the practical issues of secession, such as what pro-rated percentage of the US National Debt should be assumed by Texas when it secedes. This, by the way, was one of the issues that choked off the last serious attempt by Quebec to secede from Canada in the mid-1990's, when the then-PM Brian Mulroney told the Parti Quebecois that Quebec would have to assume a pro-rata share of the Canadian national debt if it succeeded. If you want to leave the club, you have to settle your bar bills...if the other states decide to apportion the debt amount on the basis of land area, then Texas is bankrupt from day 1.
The practical reality is that Texas is not seceding from the Union any time soon, and any public figure who suggests that it is even a possibility is engaging in empty bloviation of the most facile kind, bordering on stupid.

...which tries to explain the phenomenon that simplistic, sometimes idiotic arguments made by people with limited knowledge of a subject can overwhelm more complete arguments that require both detail knowledge and time for explanation. This is what I have referred to as "the curse of the soundbite", where a glib, often stupid 30 second summary of a complex issue ends up substituting for any substantive summary of the issue.

In World Magazine online, Cal Thomas has a commentary on the Iowa Supreme Court decision. Included among the standard worried hand-waving along the lines of "if they eliminate man-woman marriages, what are the new rules?" (has nobody in the Christian sphere ever understood the concept of informed consent?) is this gem:

To those on the political and religious right who are intent on continuing the battle to preserve “traditional marriage” in a nation that is rapidly discarding its traditions, I would ask this question: What poses a greater threat to our remaining moral underpinnings? Is it two homosexuals living together, or is it the number of heterosexuals who are divorcing and the increasing number of children born to unmarried women, now at nearly 40 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?

Ding! We have a Winner! As numerous commentators have pointed out in the past, the real threat (in numerical terms) to marriage is not single-sex couples getting married, it is heterosexual couples divorcing. Anybody who does not realize this is either arguing from a position of bigotry or does not understand simple math (or both).
And Thomas then hits the nail on the head again in the next paragraph:

Most of those who are disturbed about same-sex marriage are not as exercised about preserving heterosexual marriage. That’s because it doesn’t raise money and won’t get them on TV. Some preachers would rather demonize gays than oppose heterosexuals who violate their vows by divorcing, often causing harm to their children. That’s because so many in their congregations have been divorced and preaching against divorce might cause some to leave and take their contributions with them.

Another home run! Even a cursory view of Judeo-Christian religious activity here in Dallas would confirm that it relies heavily on money (and plenty of it). You don't get to erect the sort of massive churches all over the place that are visible on even a short drive, without large piles of money. Especially when a lot of the money seems to be used to maintain elaborate corporate operations and lavish lifestyles and spending by church leaders...
Churches are big business here, they need lots of money to keep going, and therefore rely heavily on donations from wealthy church-goers. It is very cost-effective to rail from the pulpit about "heathen homosexuals" perverting the institution of marriage - there are unlikely to be any gay donors in the audience to offend, and the threat of "the gays" might actually increase donations. OTOH, reminding those in attendance of their solemn duty to remain married to their (presumably heterosexual) spouses risks offending those in attendance who just traded their last spouse in for the latest model...

An explanation of the two different types of banking...and how/why the banking system is currently in disarray, from a banker based in Paris.
The Tax Foundation publishes a lot of interesting data on taxation in the USA. This table from its web site shows the ration of Federal taxes paid to Federal dollars obtained by the States in the Union.
Calculated Risk is an interesting blog dealing with economics and finance. Amongst its current postings is a pointer to the fact that both Chrysler and GM are coming back for yet more money (who would have guessed? No surprise to me, having watched the slow death of the UK-owned volume car industry in the 1980's for reasons that are partly similar to the issues here).
Doctor Housing Bubble discusses and reports on property market issues, both from a practical dollars-and-cents perspective, and from a wider societal perspective. The Housing Bubble Blog provides a round-up of news on the housing market from around the country by pointing to and summarizing articles and news about housing markets. As you might expect, not much of the news is good right now. Neither blog is afflicted with housing market cheerleading; the last thing I need right now is a realtor attempting to convince me that we have reached bottom in the housing market...
And back in the UK...Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's expenses claim included adult films viewed by her husband...WHHHOOOOPS...

Mike Doogan is a Democratic State Representative in Alaska. A couple of days ago, for reasons which remain unclear, he decided to reveal the name of the author of the blog Mudflats, which deals with Alaska politics and governance. The author operates the blog under a pseudonym.
Doogan chose to "out" the blogger without permission, using a constituent newsletter presumably created using state resources.
Doogan's response to complaints about this action has been dismissive at best, and bullyingly obnoxious at worst.
Doogan has provided no cogent explanation for why he stripped away the author's privacy in this fashion. His action is similar to other such actions taken in the past, usually by authoritarian commentators and journalists, who seem to operate on the principle that one's opponents do not have any privacy rights.
This is nothing more than bullying and threatening behaviour designed to induce fear. It is beneath contempt, and for this reason I have no hesitation in making Mike Doogan my Jerk Of The Week for this action. And Mike, if you're reading this, by all means put me on your "list". I shall accept it as a badge of honor, and when the time comes for your re-election I will donate to your primary opponents. You're a mean-spirited bully, and you need to be removed from elected office before you poison the governance process any further.

While contemplating a lot of things following a spat with a friend online this morning (outcome uncertain), I went off to see if I could find some cogent discussions or elaborations on the nature of patriotism.
Growing up in the UK, I personally observed a positive correlation between claimed patriotism and authoritarianism, often accompanied by a militaristic component. The British National Party, a motley collection of authoritarian and racist scumbags, usually claimed to be patriots, railed against other politicians for conniving in the decay of the UK, and wrapped themselves in the Union Jack. They were not a pleasant or positively convincing collection of people. I also noticed the positive correlation between mob violence (often originating with soccer supporters) and the frequency with which those violent people wore flag grab such as t-shirts and hats. I saw those types of people attempting to demolish bars in my home town as an adolescent.
I thus have a background that has left me extremely wary of any overt claims of "patriotism", and especially wary of any group of people who wave a nation's flag as they seek to assert their patriotism. By extension, I am also wary of people who denigrate other people for being "unpatriotic" either because they refuse to uncritically support their country, or because they do not respect the flag. In the 1970's I saw numerous street demonstrations in the UK where angry demonstrators would burn the Union Jack as a way of demonstrating their dislike for the UK or its policies. Aside from a small community of mostly retired military people, there were few people who were incensed with these displays, and there was no attempt made to ban flag-burning.
I was dismayed by the atmosphere that descended in the USA after 9/11. It seemed that many people were unable or unwilling to understand the difference between dissent and disloyalty. I was personally invited to leave the country during a discussion by a work colleague (he seemed to have temporarily forgotten the irony that he was married to a German) because I disagreed with his worldview. I also had at least 2 other people stop speaking to me because I disagreed with their ideas about how to respond to 9/11. Included in this population was a work colleague who asserted that the Constitution only applied to citizens, and when I produced my copy of the Constitution and asked him to find the exclusion, responded by saying "well it should exclude non-citizens", which essentially terminated the discussion.
All of those incidents, plus the more recent incident, left me wondering "what is patriotism, what types of patriotism are there, and what does research tell us about the worldviews and pathologies underlining patriotism?"
One interesting facet of patriotism as a concept is that there is very little useful empirical research on it. You can't find much in the way of interesting reading on patriotism as a concept. Views of patriotism tend to occupy a dichotomy between the worldview that Patriotism is a good thing (and there should be a lot more of it) and the worldview that (to recycle an old quote) Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
I did find this blog posting, that examined research and posits that there are two basic types of patriotism:

...divide patriotism into two main types: blind and constructive patriotism, and these two types seem to line up almost perfectly with the situation described in the opening paragraph. In this paragraph, they describe the two types:
[B]lind patriotism [is] a rigid and inflexible attachment to country, characterized by unquestioning postitive evaluation, staunch allegiance, and intolerance of criticsm. These factors comprise core elements of Kelman's "sentimental attachment" to country. In contrast, constructive patriotism refers to an an attachment to country characterized by "critical loyalty, questioning and criticism of current group practices that are driven by a desire for positive change". Both orientations are "patriotic" in the core sense of positive identficiation with feelings of affective attachment to country. However, the blind patriot views national criticism and dissent as inherently disloyal, whereas the constructive patriot does not. Instead, the constructive patriot may criticize and even actively oppose the nation's actions because he or she believes they violate fundamental percepts or are contrary to long-term national interests.

Having read the blog posting, I think I am now able to distinguish the pathologies that I have encountered. It seems that some of my post-9/11 encounters were with blind patriots, or at least, people who were behaving in that fashion at the time.
What the articles fail to make clear is how situational the two types of patriotism might be, and the extent to which people can morph their views between the two types. For example, is it possible that a lot of constructive patriots were converted to blind patriots by the shock and horror of 9/11? And if so, have some (or most) of them now reverted to constructive patriotism?
As an adolescent victim of bullying, I find that a lot of the time, blind patriots appear to me as intolerant bullies, which sensitizes me to their presence and arguments. Quite simply, I will not tolerate any behaviour that I construe as bullying. Remarks like "if you don't agree you need to leave the country" are not worthwhile arguments, they are merely the verbal outputs of a bullying pathology that is going to get short shrift from me. When I heard a variant of this argument from my work colleague in 2001, I ended the conversation and did not spend any more time talking to him. Bullies deserve nothing more than contempt from those that they attempt to bully.

As we watch the train-wreck that is the AIG bonus mess continue to unfold, it is worth while remembering that none of what we are witnessing is really new, at least in terms of human behaviour. Not too many years ago, we watched the implosion of Enron, a corporation that, with hindsight, was dominated by a the mindset so appropriately dubbed "Master Of The Universe" by Tom Wolfe in his book "The Bonfire Of The Vanities", which is still one of the great tales of greed, hubris and excess (Gordon Gecko's infamous "Greed is good" speech in the movie "Wall Street" could have been lifted entirely from "Bonfire Of The Vanities").
This interesting article was written a few years ago on the subject of Enron and other related corporate malfeasances of the time.The messages in the article are just as relevant to the AIG fiasco. Here is the most directly applicable one (which is also the most chilling):

The "few rotten apples" theory ignores the fact that affairs like Enron and WorldCom were not isolated incidents—nor were they conducted conspiratorially and surreptitiously. What is now conveniently labeled "misconduct" was an open secret. Information — albeit often relegated to footnotes — was available. The charismatic malignant narcissists who headed these corporations were cheered on by investors — small and institutional alike. Their grandiose fantasies were construed as visionary. Their sense of entitlement—never commensurate with their actual achievements — was tolerated forgivingly. Their blatant exploitation of co-workers and stakeholders was part of the ethos of the virile Anglo-Saxon, natural selection, can-do, dare-do version of capitalism. Everyone colluded in this mass psychosis. There are no victims here—only scapegoats.

UPDATE - Here is another interesting article about Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

...was a study eagerly cited to me by a work colleague who argued that the media in the USA has a left-wing or liberal bias. I did try to point out to him that any argument based on "liberal" vs. "conservative" or "left-wing' vs. "right-wing" is obsolete; the right discussion topic is libertarianism vs. authoritarianism. I didn't get very far with that part of the debate.
I read the UCLA study that he cited, and found it to be no different in may respects to several other studies that I have read in the past, all of which claimed to demonstrate some degree of bias within the media. Since I consider the real issue in media reporting to be truth and full coverage of issues, rather than bias, I find most of these studies to be at best peripheral and at worst totally irrelevant to the current reality that most mainstream media outlets in the USA are a waste of human endeavour.
I just found this dissection of the UCLA study in Media Matters. The most important part of this dissection to me was the demonstration of the extent to which the authors either overlooked or ignored a large amount of preceding academic research on the topic.
Whenever I see people who represent themselves as scholars or experts ignoring most of the previous endeavours in their field, I tend to become rather skeptical of their credibility. After all, would you place much faith in the diagnosis of a doctor if during his discussion with you he admitted "I don't read most medical textbooks and articles"?

By commenter Justcorbly, who does a good job of explaining why the media is a terrible forum for any form of balanced discussion:

The way most of the media portrays balance is the way those car magazines I read as a kid reviewed new models: They pair them off in phony combat with some other brand. Camaro vs. Firebird! Corvette versus 911!.
It's the same way PC Magazine would review things like printers in its special annual "All The Printers In The World" issue (just aother 450-page magazine, with printer companies placing ads mysteriously close to the reviews of their products). Epson versus Lexmark! Canon versus Brother!
It was, and is, an effort to frame almost every story as a zero-sum battle to the death. That's what drives much of media, not a compulsion to deliver balance.

When I first arrived in Dallas in 1994 on a 1 year overseas assignment from the UK, it did not take me long to discover that the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) was the sort of organization that Will Rogers would have loved to report on. For examples of incompetence, malfeasance and just plain awful governance, DISD truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
Not too long ago, DISD "discovered" that it had a budget shortfall of at least $60m, and possibly as high as $80m. The fact that nobody seemed to be able to provide a consistent number for the shortfall, or explain how the shortfall had occurred, ought to have been cause for the termination of at least some DISD officials. However, the N.O. Body syndrome appeared to eliminate accountability, and the DISD set about cutting left right and center to balance the books.
Now, courtesy of the Dallas Observer, we learn that on 21st November the DISD proposed to extend the term of DISD trustees from 3 to 4 years. This proposal would be extremely convenient, in that 3 trustees would be up for election early next year, and 2 of them happen to be supporters of the current superintendent, Michael Hinojosa.
The Dallas Observer article, in best Molly Ivins style, summarizes the proposal thusly:

The Dallas school board, in the throes of the worst fiscal crisis in the history of the district and growing voter unrest, this week will consider dealing with its political problems by suspending upcoming school board elections.
No, now, I told you. This is not a joke. This is not a bulletin from Zimbabwe. The Dallas school board at its November 20 meeting will vote on canceling school board elections due to take place next May.
In fact, it's a little worse than that. They don't just want to cancel the election. They want to do it without public debate.

Earlier this year, I kept reading conspiracy theory suggestions that President Bush was planning to cancel the 2008 Presidential Elections on some pretext...but it seems that DISD has boldly decided to actually implement a similar idea to perpetuate the terms of office of trustees, who, I would suggest, ought to be accepting at least some miniscule smidgeon of accountability for the unholy financial mess that the DISD has been mired in. They, as far as I can tell, voted to appoint the leaders and officers who were in charge when DISD suddenly "discovered" its budget shortfall.
This is not like a third world country. The DISD is operating right now as a third world country within a city. This sort of behaviour is just mind-bogglingly unbelieveable. It resembles the worst duplicity, anti-democratic actions and attitudes of Stalinist Russian. Josef Stalin would be laughing from his grave.
It might be worth noting that this sort of unbelievable behaviour is not exactly new in this part of Texas. Next door to DISD, the Wilmer-Hutchins ISD was shut down in 2005 by TEA after continued decline, poor academic performance, and accusations of corruption and malfeasance from all points of the compass. This 2004 article provides some insight into the mess.
UPDATE - It seems that the proposal was passed by a 7-2 majority at the school board meeting, with no serious debate, and in the teeth of clear public opposition.
This sort of egregiously anti-democratic behaviour is going to continue until electors toss all of the current DISD trustees from office. Until electors fire school boards and trustees for Stalinist nonsense like this, the bad behaviour and endemic stupidity and waste wihin the DISD will most likely continue.
Over to the electorate.
UPDATE 2 - Not to be outdone, the Lancaster ISD has now joined the North Texas School Board Malfeasance Contest, via the investigation of their superintendent for various alleged malfeasances. Examples:

...an outside investigator reported that Dr. Lewis used district funds to give employees interest-free loans, authorized payroll advances to himself and other employees and handed out cash prizes to employees.

If these allegations are true, and another superintendent is fired, I'm starting to wonder if there is something in the water in North Texas. Something that electors are drinking, which renders them consistently unable to stop voting idiots into positions of power on school boards. If you wanted to make a compelling case that local electors are not capable of making sound decisions on these aspects of local governance, you won't have to go far to find the evidence.
UPDATE 3 - The Lancaster ISD board has now fired the superintendent...
UPDATE 4 - The Lancaster ISD superintendent has now asked for a public hearing on his case...
UPDATE 5 - A settlement has been reached between Superintendent Lewis and the Lancaster ISD. He will work out his contract until July 2009 and then leave with a cash settlement.

From the UK blogger The Osterley Times comes this highly useful comparison between politics in the USA and the UK.
One of the more amazing memes that has become prevalent here (to my dismay, I have already heard it from at least 3 friends in the last 2 months), is that Barack Obama is a "socialist" or is going to introduce "socialism".
My response is usually to ask them to define "socialism", which often leads to confusion, since they usually got the term off of talk radio, and they have no idea what it means. Another possible response is to point out that in absolute political terms, calling Barack Obama socialist is so far off the mark as to be embarrassing. Most mainstream members of the Democratic Party would be regarded as highly conservative in European countries, including the UK, where Obama would feel right at home in the Conservative Party.
The main thrust of The Osterley Times is to point out that most of the memes and debating points being deployed by fringe commentators in the USA who are opposed to the Obama administration would not be taken seriously in the UK, because they would be regarded at best as irrelevant, and more likely would be dismissed as intellectually and morally bankrupt. To wit:

Bush, when asked about the criticism of waterboarding - which he refuses to see as torture, despite the fact that the US itself has prosecuted people for doing that very thing - asked, "Which attack would they rather not have stopped?" He actually acted as if this could be sold as a "red pen or blue pen" scenario where one has to choose between torture and attacks.
No British politician could dare sit on national TV and make that argument. But in the US, Bill O'Reilly can sit on national television and actually argue that people who oppose torture are "despicable".

As he neatly summarizes:

Every society has politicians who hold disgraceful positions on things like torture, abortion and gay rights; but I can think of no European country, indeed almost no country anywhere outside the Muslim world, where a political party who espoused such views could possibly hope to be taken seriously.

...that does a really good job of explaining how the current asset valuation bubble based on housing developed over time.

Despite all of the fury, light, heat and sound surrounding the McLaren spying affair and the involvement of former Ferrari employee Nigel Stepney, with the Italian legal system launching investigations, and threats of criminal charges against Stepney and McLaren employees, the investigations have apparently ended and the case will be settled via some McLaren personnel paying fines.
Any prosecution of Nigel Stepney risked embarrassment for Formula 1. Stepney was the Ferrari chief mechanic through the Schumacher years, and probably knows more than almost anybody else on the team what interesting, er, actions were taken by Ferrari in their interpretation of the F1 Technical Regulations. He had the potential to severely embarrass not only Ferrari, but F1 in general if he was to be cross-examined. Ditto Mike Coughlan, who Stepney was alleged to have funnelled information to concerning the design of the 2007 Ferrari.
The last thing F1 needed in an economic recession was more scandal, so it is no surprise to me that the case has been quietly settled.

Some of you may have noticed a controversy a couple of weeks ago when Michael Phelps admitted to smoking marijuana after a picture of him inhaling from a bong was published on the Internet. Phelps issued a grovelling apology, and has been banned from competitive swimming for 3 months.
This alternative ghost-written letter is IMHO the letter that Phelps should have written...

This article peripherally discusses a key indicator of whether a housing boom is unsustainable - the spread between rent values and mortgage values. The graph enclosed in the article is instructive...and confirms my suspicion that the housing market in many parts of the country has yet to hit bottom. I forecast no uptick until 2010.

There has been a whole heap of controversy in the last week or so about a change to the Terms Of Service for Facebook. The change would, as strictly read, give Facebook the rights to distribute or sell any user's content in perpetuity after they stop using Facebook.
Not surprisingly, this change has ignited a firestorm of commentary and comment, much of it unfavourable to Facebook. Some clarifications to the underlying reasoning behind the change were issued by Facebook and can be viewed here.
This controversy is a real one; however, the best rule that we can all operate by is the Pandora's Box rule, which I remember discussing with a lady friend of mine back in July 2007, who had been encouraged by some friends to set up a personal web site. My observation was that for all practical purposes, any content that you put on an Internet site that is not password-protected will be public domain, therefore you can expect that anybody can (and sometimes will) appropriate it and distribute it, usually without credit. So...if you were looking to include those pictures of you prancing around naked on a far-away beach...probably best to not do that, unless you want your work boss or censorious aunt to eventually find them. As one commenter noted:

I think a good rule of thumb is to just presume that anything you put on the internet is out there forever and ever regardless if you want it there or not. Follow that logic, and no TOS will catch you off guard.

UPDATE - Facebook has (for now) re-instated its prior Terms of Service. They are promising an overhaul of the entire Terms of Service soon. It appears that they were persuaded by the mostly negative feedback...

While we ponder this most loving of days, let's also take a small amount of time out to consider this delightful letter sent by Pastor Billy Ball of Faith Baptist Church, Primrose, Georgia to Pam Spaulding in 2007.
As one commenter on the blog remarked:

A lot of crayons in a week. I wonder if he still eats them.
Nice handwriting though. He's almost ready to start learning cursive.

A lawsuit has been filed in California's court system by lawyers representing people and corporations who donated money to the campaign to pass Proposition 8 in the November 2008 elections. The lawsuit seeks to prevent the publication of the names of donors to the campaign in favour of Proposition 8. The lawsuit is actually rather pointless, since the names of the donors are already in the public domain on the internet.
Terry Cosgrove in Huffington Post has an article on this lawsuit. He neatly sums up the intellectual and morally bankrupt reasoning behind the lawsuit:

Why does all of this sound so familiar? Perhaps because for more than 30 years, the anti-abortion activists on the right, many associated with the Catholic Knights of Columbus and Mormons (both conveniently oppose measures to prevent abortion and HIV), have been invading the right to privacy of millions of American women seeking medical care with physical violence, vandalism of personal property, harassing phone calls, emails, blacklisting, boycotts, etc. In other words, the law should protect anti-abortion and anti-gay activists from threats, boycotts and violence but these same people should be allowed to participate freely in threats, boycotts and violence against women seeking birth control and abortion. You can't even make this stuff up.

Another good point comes from a commenter in the attached discussion thread:

Frankly, why would anyone who is saving this country from a slippery slope of bestiality marriages and hate crime legislation against preachers be ashamed of their contribution? Shouldn't they be bragging about how they saved "traditional values?"

As a person who was bullied in high school, I understand exactly the pathology that is at work in the debate and campaign over Proposition 8. The supporters of Proposition 8 are nothing more than societal bullies seeking to impose their worldview on others. And, like most bullies, they shy away from any accountability for their actions. When the teachers at my school caught one of my fellow pupils trying to bully me one day, his defence was "I wasn't bullying him, I was merely teasing him". Even at the age of 13, that guy was already deveoping the reasoning ability to dodge accountability. The lawsuit by supporters of Proposition 8 is merely an adult manifestation of the same lack of willingness to be accountable for their actions. The bullies do not want to be forced to endure the same fate as their would-be victims. This is totally predictable given the underlying pathology of bullying. Most bullies are themselves frightened insecure people, hence their fear of being called on their actions. The lawsuit is without merit, and should be tossed, and the supporters of Proposition 8 should accept accountability for their actions. Anything less is merely allowing the practice of societal bullying to continue.

This article in Firedoglake highlights a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee asking for an investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, an elected official who, by all accounts, has little respect for fundamental judicial concepts such as presumption of innocence and due process.
Arpaio's exploits have been highlighted for years by investigate journalists and several local newspapers, yet he consistently gets re-elected by the voters of Maricopa County - five times to be exact. This is therefore a "We The People" problem - Arpaio would not exist as a problem for the House Judicial Committee to investigate were he not returned to office by voters who should know better.

The website GetHuman.com, which lists major customer service organizations and how to get through their Voice Response front-ends and talk to a real live human...

A great musical voice has disappeared...

I have seen a number of amusing complaint letters over the years, but this one from an irate and pissed-off customer of the UK telecom company NTL is my favorite...I first found it on the Internet 5 years ago, lost it, and now I just found it again.
WARNING - Readers not familiar with English vernacular as spoken in the UK may require the translation of certain slang and naughty words...

...is discussed in this diary at DailyKos. The subject of the diary ostensibly revolves around yet another defensive pronouncement from former Attorney-General Alberto Gonzalez. However, the important definition and distinction is contained in this succinct couple of paragraphs:

...in order for the law to work, it must be just. It must be rational. It must treat famous men and ordinary ones, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the meek, the same. The rule of law exists when we live under a system of laws we believe to be just and cheerfully submit to them.
Legalism, on the other hand, is a gimmick. It dresses itself in the clothing of the law but it is arbitrary and capricious. Legalism misuses the language and majesty of the law to attempt to make legal what is illegal, moral what is immoral, and rational what is absurd. Legalism was the modus operandi of the entire Bush administration - from "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forest" legislation that was the height of Orwellian double-speak to the so-called Patriot Act and telecom immunity. Legalism is the facile and idiotic belief that "when the President does it, it's not illegal," and that all laws, all protections and rights of man, which good people have fought for, and bled for, and died for, can be sublimated to some almighty "Commander in Chief Power" that knows no limits or boundaries.
Legalism, in its most vicious and evil form, is the Nuremberg Laws.
Legalism is the basis for the defense of "just following orders."

Having defined carefully the difference between the two worldviews, the author then asks the now-rather obvious and devastating question about Gonzalez' latest attempt at post-hoc self-justification:

So when that mental midget, the affable torture enabler who made a mockery of this country's system of justice declares: "these activities ... They were authorized, they were supported by legal opinions at the Department of Justice," how is that any different from Adolf Eichmann claiming he did nothing wrong because "I never did anything, great or small, without obtaining in advance express instructions from... my superiors"?

Of course, this is a classic example of a devastating argument that cannot, by it's nature, be reduced to a soundbite, and is therefore unlikely to be seen on network television any time soon...

A bunch of links for a change to Interesting Stuff.
I read an article this week in The New Yorker, "The Dystopians" by Ben McGrath (not available unline unless you are a subscriber), a thoughtful look at a number of opinion leaders who have been forecasting some sort of breakdown in the American Way Of Life for some time. It is difficult to write articles about this subject without dragging in all sorts of weirded-out backwoods survivalist nutcases and groups from the likes of rural Idaho, but McGrath focusses instead on thought leaders such as Dmitry Orlov, James Kunstler, Jim Sinclair and Nassim Taleb, who, coming from highly dissimilar backgrounds, all have developed thinking about the future of the USA.
Crooks and Liars has a pointer to a series of articles that explore the reality that Democratic governance has been more likely to yield economic growth, balanced budgets and prosperity in recent years in the USA than Republican governance. The "tax and spend" meme of the impact of Democratic Party policies which is always produced by GOP supporters is rooted in this myth, and it is high time that enough Americans started to see the meme for what is - a mostly dishonest fabrication. The fabrication also has roots in the "trickle down" hypothesis which was deployed by the GOP in the 1980's under Ronald Reagan, the idea being that if governments reduced taxes, the overall governmental model would be improved because overall revenues would still increase due to the liberating effects of removing taxation burdens from income producers. This certainly worked in the UK in the 1980's, but the crucial difference, which keeps being overlooked by trickle-down supporters, is that in the UK we had direct taxation rates for high earners that bordered on confiscation. The USA has never been a highly taxed country, despite what your whining work colleague might have you believe, so the conditions were not the same. As David Stockman discovered during his term as Ronald Reagan's budget director, when the GOP took office in 1980, instead of cutting government spending, they instead greatly increased it (largely via a massive increase in defense spending) while also reducing taxes. That the outcome was a massive federal budget deficit should have been obvious to anybody with even a rudimentary grasp of mathematics; however, the US electorate has been oblivious for decades to the shell game being run by politicians where they promise to cut taxes and still balance budgets. Until electorates wake up and start tossing politicians from office when they run such scams, the current economic mess in the USA will continue.
Meanwhile, I was reminded of the very prevalent American confusion about socialism this week in a conversation with a friend who opined that Barack Obama is a socialist. Coming from Europe, where the Democratic party would be seen in most countries as a rather conservative party, I find the proposition fairly ludicrous, lacking any supporting evidence or any semblance of a supporting argument, and it appears to be largely an origination from talk radio, which paints for it's listeners a simplistic world of false dichotomies, where the USA is a capitalist nirvana and the rest of the world is mostly either a fascist, communist or socialist wasteland. Kollapsnik on Dmitry Orlov's blog has a lengthy post deconstructing the whole area of warped thinking in the USA about "socialism" today.

The website of Dr. Sarah Mednick, who has accumulated research showing that most of the time it pays to nap rather than take stimulants...

...is that the root cause lies with the US electorate. "We the people" elected George W. Bush in 2000, and re-elected him in 2004. The results are with us today.
Barack Obama is not the solution to that underlying issue. I am quite sure that if Obama is percieved to have failed, the electorate will merely be seduced into electing another leader in 2012, and the whole sorry cycle of inadequate governance will continue.
As Oxdown notes:

It was our elected representatives who failed to take a single effective action to hold the regime accountable for its multiple, blatant crimes; it was our media who blessed these actions; and it was we who voted these same people back into office, including a new President and Vice President who helped sanction some of these abuses.

Until we (as an electorate) start voting different people into office at all levels of the political system, the issues that are undermining America's position in the world will continue to work against this country.

On Sunday I watched a bunch of guys wearing Cowboys uniforms get beaten every which way including up by the Philadelphia Eagles.
The game was not even close. I mentally wrote "game over" in my notebook by midway through the third quarter.
If the guys on the field were Cowboys impersonators, they should have been replaced at half time, on the grounds that they failed the audition. Sadly, we are pretty certain that these guys were the Dallas Cowboys. In which case, God Help Us going forward from here.
The last time I saw a team this comprehensively stuffed in a regular season game was 2 weekends ago, when the New England Patriots steamrollered the Arizona Cardinals. The pattern was the same. The losing team looked out-coached, out-played and out-fought from the initial kick-off.
The biggest issue was that half time did not result in any change in the attitude or the approach of the Cowboys. They continued to look as bad through the second half. In fact, they actually looked worse, as they started turning the ball over with monotonous regularity to a gleeful Philadelphia Eagles team that had no trouble in running up the score against a demoralized defense. Whatever other weaknesses the team had, the major issue was an inability to dig deep and be determined to fight. This team looked like they were mentally and physically elsewhere.
When a team is beaten this badly, we get to find out who the real competitors are, and who the loudmouths are. To his credit, Wade Phillips offered no excuses in his press conference. Tony Romo, who had to be helped out of the shower after the game, seemingly due to rib damage, tried to put the loss in perspective, but his choice of words ("if this is the worst thing that happens to me I'll have been lucky") has only infuriated fans and commentators, who seem to think that Dying For The Team is the only acceptable attitude with the playoffs on the line. T.O., to his credit, did not attempt to sugar-coat the loss, neither did Jason Witten. Zach Thomas, who probably fancied his chances of a Superbowl ring with the Cowboys instead of more futility with the Dolphins, sounded like you would expect him to - a resigned veteran who picked the wrong horse. He will most likely not be back.
Bradie James, seemingly being a bit of a fool, tried to pick a fight with a heckling fan at Valley Ranch today, and is probably going to be lucky to avoid being fined or suspended by the NFL or the team.
(Note to Bradie James - picking a fight with a fan is about as dumb as it gets. If the NFL doesn't fine you, the Cowboys ought to fine you for being an unprofessional dickwad. The reason you are paid all of that money is because you perform in public, the public pays money to see you, so they get to critique you. If you don't like that concept, find another way to make a living.)
The bigger question, after all of the foaming at the mouth about the ineptitude of the Cowboys is..where does the team go from here? Jerry Jones can proclaim all he likes about his intention to keep the coaching staff, but there are major problems with the team and team leadership.
We need to start at the top, with ownership.
Jerry Jones has a habit of being unable to get out of the way of his coaches. After parting company with Jimmy Johnson, he worked through a succession of progressively more inept coaches who were paid poorly, and expected to do his bidding. During that period, the Cowboys became progressively poorer on the field, and some of the players' off-field behaviour also became dangerously unprofessional.
Only after it became clear that playoff football had risen beyond the reach of the team did Jones hire Bill Parcells, who he could not push around. The team improved, but two egos of that size were always going to have trouble co-existing, and Parcells eventually left by way of yet another "retirement". Jones is now back to hiring compliant head coaches. His inability to get out of the way is now haunting the franchise once again. Just as seriously, his gambler's instinct has seen him hand over money and draft picks for Tank Johnson, Adam Jones and Roy Williams. Johnson and Jones have been mediocre; perhaps a life of sobriety and early nights does not sit well with some players. Williams cost the Cowboys a first round and third round pick, yet has been The Invisible Man on offense for most of the season. The Cowboys are essentially back to squandering draft picks on players with major performance and attitude issues. The Roy Williams trade cost them their first round pick for next year, a far cry from the time several years ago when they had two first-round picks, thanks to some nifty trades worked under Parcells.
Wade Phillips showed his lack of leadership steel in Buffalo, where he was unable to resolve a quarterback controversy between the talented but utterly un-smart Rob Johnson and the short, but fiery and competitive Doug Flutie. The controversy split the team, and the Buffalo Bills wallowed around for several years before Phillips was fired. Phillips, a defensive co-ordinator by trade, has bounced through several head coaching positions in the NFL, with mostly poor results. He is not a head coach, lacking the will to impose himself on a team. In the past few weeks he has seemed like a passenger, as team members have whined on and off-record to the media. Whatever else you might think about Bill Parcells, he would never tolerate that kind of behaviour.
The core defensive unit actually looked very impressive for much of the year, with DeMarcus Ware turning into a sack monster, and the unit being very capable at shutting down the run and harrassing opposing quarterbacks. However, the lack of a shut-down cornerback continues to be an issue, and for the last 6 weeks, the defense was carrying the team. With the offense stuttering, the defense was eventually worn down.
The offense is looking like a major overhaul is required. The ability to score at will, much evident in 2007, appeared to vanish in 2008, and the offense did not seem to be capable of grinding out victories behind the running game, due to the issues at running back.
Jason Garrett, who 12 months ago was being hailed as an offensive genius, suddenly finds himself being blamed for most of the offensive woes of the Cowboys. Hero to goat in one calendar year. It is doubtful that the problems with the offense are entirely his fault. The team lost its 1-2 running punch early on with the injury to Felix Jones, and Marion Barber was a pale shadow of his normal self for the last third of the season. Being forced to throw the football too much exposes a team's receivers and pass protection schemes, and Roy Williams, acquired after the start of the season, never seemed to find a role in the offense. However, the Cowboys have looked out-coached on offense in several recent games, and it begs the question of whether the current Cowboys offensive schemes have passed their sell-by date. Garrett suddenly does not look like a head coach-in-waiting.
Tony Romo appears to have regressed. He seemed more and more to revert to the "gunslinger" mentality that Bill Parcells tried very hard to restrain him from. It does not help that both Jason Garrett and quarterbacks coach Wade Wilson are ex-quarterbacks. They can empathise with Romo's issues, but what is needed from time to time is a booming Parcells-type voice to remind him that he can lose a game as much as win one if he heaves the ball in the wrong direction at the wrong time. Romo needs to be challenged to mature to the next level.
The Cowboys have to either zip Terrell Owens or fire him. He quite clearly cannot keep his mouth shut when things do not go his way. The "give me the damn ball" routine has become tedious. He will be 35 this year, and has a limited number of years left at top level. Perhaps he might like to enjoy them somewhere else.
The Cowboys need at least one more durable running back. Marion Barber will wear out rapidly if he is forced to operate as an every-down back. Tashard Choice looks to be a good backup, but the fact that the Denver Broncos have gone through seven running backs this season shows that you can never have too much depth at this position.
Cornerback continues to be a problem; the team does not have a shutdown corner, and without one, they are going to continue to be exposed to any offense with speed receivers that likes to stretch the field.
However, the Cowboys have the biggest issue at quarterback. This season, when Tony Romo was out with a broken finger, the backup tandem of Brad Johnson and Brooks Bollinger looked utterly inept. Why the Cowboys traded for Brooks Bollinger at the start of the season when they could have picked up Chris Simms will always be a mystery to me. Simms, for all of the criticism levelled at him, did start for a team consistently, and damn near died for it.
Without a significant upgrade at the backup quarterback position, the Cowboys will be in dire straits if they lose Tony Romo for any significant period of time in the future. They might look to the East Coast. The New York Giants took a chance this season on David Carr, another quarterback who had been traumatized on the field of play. Carr basically spent the first 5 years of his NFL career running for his life every other play in Houston, and has taken a couple of years to recover from that experience. However, he came on in relief of Eli Manning on Sunday and looked like he was ready again to be a starter in the NFL. His contract is up after this season, and the Cowboys would be wise to look seriously at him.

Attu is the furthest West that you can go in the Aleutians before you find yourself in Russia...
Attu was one of the 2 Aleutian Islands invaded by the Japanese in World War II, and was the only island where US Forces engaged the Japanese in combat when they re-captured the island in 1943. Attu Island is therefore the site of the only instance of military action against Japan in the USA. (A good Trivial Pursuit question there...).
Today, the only inhabitants of Attu are a small crew of US Coast Guard personnel manning a LORAN station. The LORAN system is on borrowed time, since it has largely been superseded by GPS. It is likely that in the next few years Attu will cease to have any human residents.
The Japanese also invaded the island of Kiska, but withdrew without detection from that island several weeks before the US landed on the island in August 1943. The re-capture of Kiska was notable for a number of tragic "friendly fire" incidents, as combat forces confused by poor weather conditions started shooting at each other. Other casualties also resulted due to booby-traps laid by the Japanese, and there were a number of other fatalities caused by the extreme conditions. The final total of fatalities was close to 200 - a rather embarrassing outcome from invading an unoccupied island.
Here is a sailing blog containing many pictures of Attu and Kiska.
And here is a beautiful picture of the Aleutians from a bird-watching tour boat.
Apart from occasional parties of war veterans from both Japan and the USA, the main visitors to Attu since the end of World War II have been bird-watchers. The position of Attu, located between East Asia and the Americas, results in numerous birds being blown to the island, where they fly around as strangers before finding their way elsewhere.
For many years a company named Attours operated birdwatching expeditions to Attu. Here is a web site that includes this report of a bird-watcher's visit to Attu. Attours took over the abandoned Loran-A station formerly managed by the U.S. Coast Guard, and ran trips every Summer to the island. Accomodations were rudimentary, but the visitors ate like kings, thanks partly to the provision of fine food by a gourmet chef. Sadly, the Attours trips ended in 2000 when the infrastructure became too worn out to support any more visits. This is an account of the last trip to Attu in the Fall of 2000.
The climate in Attu is very hard on any man-made item - a constant diet of wind, rain and moisture eventually wears out most building and fitting components. Here is another more detailed account of a birdwatching trip to Attu.
Now the only visitors to Attu are occasional Alaskan cruise ships that drop anchor for a few hours at a time, and the odd yacht that anchors for a day or two in Casco Cove. And...the interestng birds.

While most commentary concerning the US Auto Industry Bailout has been focussed on the manufacturing and employment implications of bailing out (or not bailing out, depending on your point of view) the manufacturing base of the industry, this article makes it clear that, like the housing industry, the auto industry built a house of cards based on unsustainable lending practices. The article summarizes the issue succinctly:

Back in 2003, Forbes magazine observed that GM was better described as a bank that happens to make cars than as an automaker. At the time, as much as 90 percent of the company's profits came from its lending arm (which also had a mortgage branch), not from car sales. For the past decade, much of Detroit's output has been little more than a vehicle for selling credit, and the dealers have done the dirty work for them the way local mortgage brokers generated large volumes of questionable loans for big banks and finance firms.

This fits neatly into the narrative from a talk that I attended at the Dallas chapter of the PMI back in 2003, which was given by a project management consultant who had worked at GM, mostly on the OnStar offering. In a general discussion afterwards, he opined that GM was moving towards a new business model, whether everybody in the corporation realized it or not - in the long-term they would quite cheerfully sell cars at a loss, since the financing of the vehicles and the provision of post-sale subscription services such as OnStar would be where they would make their money. Effectively the car would be a finance and services platform.
One point in the article that I find flawed is the harping on about consumers being "upside down" on their loans. Pretty much all auto loans result in the consumer being upside-down, since for new vehicles, simply driving the car off the lot reduces its value by 15-20% immediately. Even if you have a 20% down-payment, that puts you almost in "upside down" territory in 5 minutes. Add on a couple of years of depreciation, and you will probably be holding a loan balance that comfortably exceeds the value of the car. This is more likely to be true in an era where loan terms have extended from 48 to 60 months and beyond. The monthly repayment drops slightly, but the consumer ends up paying a lot more over the life of the loan, and the length of the loan pushes the owner's ownership of the vehicle into that 4-6 year zone where middle-age depreciation tends to steepen.
Another point that I would take issue with is the title of the article ("Why The Auto Bailout's a dead end"). A strategy based on handing over money at intervals to the Big Three may not be a wise medium-term strategy, but it may be a valid short-term tactic, especially in the current recession. What the article does show is that without addressing some of the dubious lending practices of the auto makers and dealers, simply subsidizing the manufacturing side of these corporations is even less likely to give the desired results. We already know that the property price crash was made worse by bizarre, duplicitous (and in some cases illegal) lending practices by builders, mortgage brokers, realtors and other intermediaries. If we have the same issue in auto finance, those issues need to be addressed also.

Our candidate for this new award? Step forward Elizabeth Shelton, the daughter of Texas juvenile court judge Pat Shelton:

...Shelton, the daughter of juvenile judge Pat Shelton, is accusing truck driver Lance Bennett of negligence in the Oct. 23, 2007, wreck that killed her boyfriend Matthew McNiece.
Shelton had a blood alcohol concentration more than three times the legal limit, two tests showed. She was sentenced to eight years' probation and had to serve four months in jail.
Shelton, her family and the family of the boyfriend who was killed are suing for $20,000 for the destruction of the Lexus SUV she was driving and an undetermined amount for mental anguish, pain and suffering.
Bennett was driving the box truck that Shelton rear-ended on the Southwest Freeway near Kirby around 2 a.m.
Bennett's attorney, John Havins, said the lawsuit, filed in October, was the last chance to make a claim before the statute of limitations ran out.
He noted that Shelton named 16 defendants, including insurance companies and banks. "They're just throwing everything against the wall to see if anything sticks," Havins said.

So far, this is the most batshit egregious legal try-on I have heard about this year. Either this woman is an out-of-touch entitlement-riddled idiot, or her family is.

Adak is described by one blogger as "The End of America". His blog here does a really good job of tracking the history and current existence of Adak, which over the last 15 years has gone from a massive post-Cold War military facility to a run-downm, economically marginal community eking out a living from unpredictable fishing.
This is an updated Wikipedia page for Adak that was inexplicably deleted. It gives a lot of information about this windy hellhole that is not on the "official" Wikipedia entry.
This is an account of a trip to Adak in 2006. It gives some idea of the remoteness, general decay and struggles that the island's residents operate under.
The latest event in the ongoing saga of Adak's power supply problems is that a new electricity supply utility has been assigned the job of electric power generation. TDX started to supply power on Adak on December 1st instead of Adak Electric, whose license has been revoked after numerous allegations of malfeasance.

I have written before about some ways in which the United States resembles a Third World country.
From South Carolina, I can now pass on the strange, dysfunctional and frightening story of State Representative Wallace Scarborough (R-Charleston). As the article explains, Scarborough was defeated in the election on November 4th by his Democratic opponent Anne Peterson Hutto by a margin of 211 votes. The outcome was not changed despite Scarborough's frantic legal attempts to get voters disqualified after the event.
However, there is now a more serious and ominous development in the case. Although his term of office has officially expired, Scarborough is still acting as though he is the elected representative for the district:

...last weekend, Scarborough participated in the Folly Beach (a small beach town in the district) Christmas parade. He rode in an open convertible with a banner on his car claiming to be the official state representative for the town, even though his term had expired. Hutto wasn’t invited to participate in the parade.

The background to this seemingly flagrant flipping off of the election result is contained in the article:

South Carolina has some pretty strange laws on the books reminiscent of a third world nation. One would think that any further appeal from Scarborough would go to the courts, right? Wrong. In South Carolina, any further appeal goes to the South Carolina House of Representatives. The SC state constitution provides the SC House with the ultimate responsibility of seating their members. The SC House is controlled by a bunch of very partisan Republicans who, in my opinion, don’t always care much for the rule of law.
A week and a day after his protest was rejected, Wallace Scarborough filed an official appeal with the SC House. He is now asking his former GOP colleagues to ignore the election results on November 4th. He’s asking them to put aside the decision made by the voters and void the election results. This is no longer about the law; this is about partisan politics at its worst.

So...we may yet get to watch a Republican-dominated House in a State ignore the verdict of an election and vote to seat one of their own. If that is the outcome, it will not be the first time that a State House of Representatives has thumbed its nose at electors. As a commenter points out, the Wisconsin House twice refused to seat the winner of a state-level election because he was a Socialist...

When I was coming of age in the UK, I grew wearily used to highly predictable talking points in the political process. One totally predictable one was the tendency of defeated politicians and political parties to whine about "media bias" after they lost elections.
I have been watching the same phenomenon unfolding in this recently-concluded election cycle, with numerous folks writing complaints about perceived media bias. Phrases like "the media is in the tank for Obama" have been dropping into cyberspace like so much wedding confetti.
Yesterday I had a lengthy exchange of views (not always polite) with a work colleague who is convinced that the media is biased in favour of what he termed "the left". He also believes that the media is biased against Christianity (but that is another issue to be explored another time). He produced cites to support his contention of bias, and was unmoved by my response that I can produce one competing cite for every one of his cites.
What I was attempting to do (unsuccessfully) was to shift the debate from "you say I say" mutually annihilating accusations of bias towards a more sober reflection about the underlying issue.
When I got home and debriefed my own personal frustration with the exchange, I came to realize that I have a fundamental underlying disconnect from people who would whine about "bias", which explains why I regard arguments about bias as mostly a waste of time.
The underlying reason why I pay relatively little attention to the bias issue is that I do not watch TV, listen to the radio or read books, websites etc. to have my own opinions reflected back at me. In fact, if I realize that this is what is happening, I rapidly lose interest. I go to sources of information for ideas, and challenges to my current mode of thinking. Most of my favorite books are books that forced me to look at issues in a different way.
If you watch TV to have your opinions and emotions reflected back at you, and you decide that is not happening, what is your reaction going to be? Most likely you are going to become frustrated and start wondering why you're getting information that you do not agree with.
One of the more important lesson take-aways from George Lakoff's studies on cognitive framing (summarized in his 1997 book "Moral Politics" and in other related books since) is that, when confronted by information that disputes their worldview, most people will seek to discount or discard the information, rather than attempt to process it. Accusing an information or opinion source of "bias" is one of the most convenient ways of discounting conflicting information. (Another one that I have heard recently is the dismissal of facts with the exclamation of "that's just your opinion...").
I'm not expecting information sources to always provide me with information or opinions that totally agree with (in fact, if I find that happening, it bores and worries me), because I am going to process the contrary information and attempt to make sense of it. I may end up discounting or dismissing it, but I am going to try to process it first.
My key careabouts for information sources are therefore very different from a lot of people's. I am looking above all for completeness and accuracy in information provisioning. I am going to be frustrated by incomplete or misleading information, poor presentation, poor argument construction, fallacious reasoning more than I am frustrated by any perceived "bias".
I regard the topic of "bias" as a sterile and largely pointless discussion topic, since it usually degenerates within a few seconds into a "I think they say therefore they are biased" type of discussion, where the arguers retreat to familiar cliches like "liberal media", "corporate media" etc. and hurl competing cites at each other before sitting there in "see, I'm right" poses. The main issue is the endemic, institutionalized acceptance of poor research, reporting and follow-up on media stories. Egregious examples of all of these abound.
The bottom line is that the mainstream media is simply pervasively and egregiously incompetent. We can argue for days about the root causes, and possible remedies. In the meantime I have basically stopped watching network television and listening to the radio. I get my information almost entirely from the internet, books, and magazines. The "bias" debate can continue until Hell freezes over for all I care. Until the fundamental shortcomings of the media are addressed, I am a bemused spectator for most of the bias shouting matches.
UPDATE - A blogger on the Rocky Mountain News website has written an article which appears to be (at least partly) blaming services like CraigsList for the current poor outlook for newspapers in the USA. (The Rocky Mountain News is suffering from circulation and revenue drops, like many local and regional newspapers).
The article has ignited the usual cries of "media bias" from commenters on both sides of the political spectrum, but it takes me right back to my comments above - cancelling a publication subscription just because you don't agree with the articles, and blaming "bias", is really just an indirect way of saying that mostly you just want newspapers to reflect your opinions back at you.
I stand by my argument that the underlying issue with the established media is lack of competence, not bias.

Interviews with Wilson are available here.