BuzzMachine... by Jeff Jarvis

May 22, 2004

Q/A

: Tony Pierce gives the honest-bloggers-only questionnaire.

Right station, wrong time

: Steven Johnson reminisces about the effort at Plastic.com to turn blogs into a business. Didn't work. Too early. (I was on the board.)

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Parents who blog

: It's bad enough that your mom reads your blog. It's worse that your mom blogs. Says the Star-Ledger:

PARENTS WHO BLOG have no shame. They'll tell the world about their backtalking kids, apoplectic toddlers and surprise encounters with poo. Dads occasionally curse. Moms discuss sex. Some post entries while drunk.

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At the top
VC Jerry Colonna has a wonderful post on being a CEO.

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National Putrid Radio

: I was driving around listening to The Next Big Thing (because, hey, Howard's not on on Saturday) when host Dean Olsher started a too-precious commentary on war, terrorism, and New York, complete with a Woody Allen soundtrack of bustling city noises and jazz (my New York sounds nothing like that; it sounds more like a garbage truck with a bad muffler).

In no time, I was shouting at the windshield: Twit! He talked about people getting flashbacks to September 11 -- something I share and so he sparked my interest. But then he said these flashbacks are not caused by the 9/11 Commission hearings in New York.

They have less to do with September 11 and everything to do with October 7th, 2001, which is the day the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan. That was the day that people I know stayed away from the city and prayed that our government's actions over there were not going to provoke yet another attack over here.

Yes, you can see where this is going: It's our fault. We shouldn't have gone to hunt down and attack al Qaeda because it might make them mad and we wouldn't want to do that, now, would we?

I'm screaming at the windshield: Ass! But it gets worse.

The government has been so determined to forge a link between September 11 and Iraq and now it seems more and more likely that they will do that in fact by bringing about another September 11th....
I can't imagine that the President is still looking for an answer to the question, Why do they hate us? The real question now is when is the next shoe going to drop in the U.S.?...

So we're already anticipating the next terrorist attack and that it will be our fault. By this sad, sick, stupid logic, freeing Iraq of its murderous tyrant justifies terrorism against the U.S.

My windshield is getting wet as I sputter, Amoral cretin! Olsher now recounts a conversation...

...with a colleague who is dismissing the argument that a parliamentary government would have resigned in disgrace if it had allowed an attack on its people like September 11th....

Let me find that colleague and pat him on the back: A sane person at NPR.

At the end, Olsher asks what to do to stop terrorist attacks on the U.S.

There's also an unstated answer, which no one was really free to say out loud for fear of being accused of blaming the victim and that unstated answer was don't make people hate us in the first place....

I want to rip out the radio and throw it out the sunroof (but then I wouldn't hear Howard Monday). So we should stand back and kowtow and cater to slime in Afghanistan or Iraq or God knows where so as not to piss them off.

Olsher contemplates Abu Ghraib and the Iraq war...

...which seems not to have a shred of legitimacy about it and about how both of those things are likely to provoke more terror on American soil.
So I would like very much to ask the President what kind of attack it would take for him to figure out that it's his job not only to protect the American people, it's also his job not to actively put us in danger for no good reason.

There's nothing terribly new in this twit's tripe. It's just so sad that it keeps resurfacing, like modern-day Holocaust denial.

We did not bring the terrorism upon us. Nothing in this world could possibly justify the terrorist attacks that did befall us. We had a right and obligation to go into Afghanistan and stop al Qaeda and protect ourselves (our mistake was not getting them). I believe -- though I know many do not -- that we had reason to go into Iraq and it was not WMD but was humanitarian (and our mistake now is that we do not have enough troops and force there to bring peace to the country). If Olsher the idiot and his ilk keep repeating their cant, then we on the other side must continue to repeat our response.

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Another day, another panel

: I'm going to be on a panel at the New Voices conference for Jewish journalism students on Tuesday, thanks to Steven Weiss and will be joining Dan Sieradski and Jeff Sharlet. The topic: "Can the Internet Change the Way We Interact with Judaism?" I'm an honorary Jewish blogger for the day.

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It's the taxes, stupid

: Add this together:

John Podhoretz said in yesterday's Post that New Jersey is now a swing state. It's no longer safely in the Democratic camp and could lose the election for Kerry.

Why is this significant? First off, it suggests the Bush pounding in the New York media market hasn't killed him — which is good news for Bush not only in the Garden State but nationally as well, because it indicates that his bad press may not be translating into a significant collapse of support.

Second, it means another major state may be in play. And that is dreadful news for Kerry, because New Jersey is supposed to be a state he can depend on.

Every political expert has assumed that New Jersey was safely in Kerry's pocket, largely because Al Gore won the state by 15 percent in 2000 and Democrats have prevailed in statewide elections for governor and senator since then.

And why is this happening? I have a theory. It's a theory that's pretty much always valid in New Jersey politics:

Taxes.

Democratic Gov. Jim McGreevey is raising taxes. And any politician who dares to raise taxes in this state always get Abu-Ghraibed by the voters. [And, yes, I do hope that is the first use of Abu Ghraib as a verb.]

See Fritz Schrank on McGreevy's plan to raise the tax rate on people who earn over $500k by 29 percent. It's positioned as a "millionaire" surcharge (though it's only halfway to a million) and you may think that everybody else in the state who earns less would say, "F the rich." But no. It's still a tax increase. New Jersey hates tax increases. It hates tax increasers more. And they're smart enough to see that if the rich leave the state, that will have an impact on taxes, jobs, and real estate.

And speaking of real estate, McGreevey is raising the real estate transfer tax 76 percent over two years. So all the real-estate "millionaires" whose homes have gone up in value see themselves having to pay the state when they sell.

Now one poll says that McGreevey's approval rating is "inching up" but a plurality still disapprove. And when the Republicans hit the airwaves complaining about "Democrat taxes" McGreevey and Kerry will be lumped together and, so, I think that's how McGreevey can bring Kerry down. We'll see....

: UPDATE: Campaign Desk has a (long) post arguing that NJ is not a swing state, just a weird state. It concludes:

Those familiar with New Jersey politics agree that if, in fact, New Jersey is shaping up as a closely-contested battleground state, then the press is missing a bigger story: An impending landslide for Bush. As the Newark Star-Ledger's Hassell told Campaign Desk, "If it is close in New Jersey, then the [national] race will be a romp for Bush." New Jersey Democratic Rep. Robert Menendez echoed this sentiment in his interview with John McGlaughlin last Sunday: "if we have to fight for New Jersey in this election, then we're in trouble."

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360

: Hans Nyberg has a set of beautiful panoramas from the Danish royal wedding. Another here. How-to story here.

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