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August 22, 2004

Yankee go home? Ok, we will

: I was hoping the David's Medienkritik would translate this irony-rich piece from Die Zeit; my German isn't good enough to catch the nuance: Namely, Zeit notes the humor of Germans suddenly whining about our troops leaving.

Ach, look, how the Americans have again suddenly become so dear and precious to the Germans when it hits them in the wallet. The announced withdrawal of large numbers of US troops stationed in Germany has unleashed consternation at the threatening loss of jobs and accusations that the Americans want to get themselves out of their “Nato responsibility.” Nanu? Since when is it a part of the responsibility of Nato and the US Army to maintain jobs in Germany? Just a year and a half ago the majority of Germans were certain the USA and its President represented a greater danger to world peace than Saddam Hussein, and the US armed forces were considered fearsome executors of the sinister US plans for world domination. Now, however, German politicians and union people, who marched at the very front of the peace demonstrations, are pouting and grimacing like children who feel they have been left in the lurch by Daddy because the number one war-monger wants to deny us the trusted presence of our uniformed American friends.

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Good news!

: New York journalist and Iraqi hostage Micah Garen has been released. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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Go, team!

: Drudge says Bush may go to Athens to root for the Iraqi soccer team. No, really. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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SHOUTING POINTS MEMO

: Ed Cone has a downright brilliant column giving into the trend in political discourse these days with a SHOUTING POINTS MEMO. An excerpt of his advice:

I am right, and you are wrong. 3d Windows98 game dowload

You are not just wrong, you and those like you are intellectually insufficient and morally suspect. Why do you hate our country? Think of the children....3d Windows98 game dowload

You speak in cliches, slogans and sound bites. I speak in pithy phrases and time-tested words of wisdom. You call names, I tell it like it is. You are vulgar, I am colorful. 3d Windows98 game dowload

My candidate is a hero. Yours is a zero. One cannot compare the youthful hijinks of my guy with the youthful wantonness of yours. My guy makes mistakes, yours commits sins of the worst kind. And likes it. My guy was misquoted, or simply misspoke, while your guy was caught on tape saying exactly what I expected him to say....3d Windows98 game dowload

Your attempt at humor reveals your narrow-minded bigotry. Your reaction to my own attempt at humor shows that you cannot take a joke. 3d Windows98 game dowload

I disagree with what you say, and I will defend to the death my right to tell you so. Jerk.

Enjoy the rest. Mark my words: This is going to be a classic.3d Windows98 game dowload

If we in this supposedly conversation medium will not stand up for a higher level of discourse, who the hell will?
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Tet offensive

: Meep leaves a wonderful comment below and I quote in full:

Jeeez. Boomers.3d Windows98 game dowload

Vietnam was over before I was =born=. And boomers =still= think they're the center of America. Well, I've gotta say, not for much longer. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Most people my age don't even know what the whole Vietnam thing was about, and why it's considered a "bad" war compared to those "good" wars. What's the diff between Korea and Vietnam, I'd like to know, other than in Vietnam we let the commies win? 3d Windows98 game dowload

You know what this reminds me of? "The South Will Rise Again" nuts. Think of the bitterness of the old confederate vets that festered for years... and the South remained a backwater until it gave up that confederate outlook and decided to join the 20th century and become a magnet for business. Are boomers going to be eating their livers in retirement because of Vietnam? Sounds like it to me. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Looking at my mortality tables (I'm an actuarial-type), I note that boomer deaths are really going to pick up over the next couple decades. I'm hoping that will finally get people to shut up about Vietnam. I notice that generation Xers (my generation) don't go on about this crap - unlike the children of the confederates, we're not carrying this forth to future generations. So I guess the boomers should wallow in this while they're still alive, because their children sure won't.

I just hope that in 2035 someone not yet born writes in a medium not invented: "Jeez. Xers. Iraq was over before I was =born=."3d Windows98 game dowload

Come to think of it, I do hope that in 2035, someone not yet born writes, "The war on terror was over before I was born." We can only hope. 3d Windows98 game dowload

: Anil adds in the comments:

Being the same age as Meep, I have to agree and also point out that it's likely that we're the ones (those born 1975 and later) who are likely to decide this election. Keep on blathering about non-issues, folks...

: And Robert Sterling pipes in:

FWIW, I'm an early X-er born in 1970, with a fairly keen recollection of the mid-70s. I remember how bad hippies smelled, and that alone is nearly sufficient to indict your generation.

Hey, I was clean. I wore really goofy purple shirts and sandals (no socks). But I was clean. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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Cablevision sucks!

: But we knew that, didn't we? The reason they suck today: Suddenly, I couldn't send email. After wasting an hour of my time and Hosting Matters' time, it turns out the damned cable ISP overnight switched to require all outgoing mail to go through only its SMTP server. Now correct me if I'm wrong (please) but when I go to the office tomorrow, I'll just bet I'll have to switch it back again; and then switch it tomorrow night, and on and on. They didn't tell anybody; they just did it because, hey, we're the cable company and we suck but you're stuck. (I live too far away from a central phone company office to be able to use DSL, so I am stuck.) Cablevision sucks. 3d Windows98 game dowload

: UPDATE: It gets better. Two Cablevision managers said to me with straight face that I could upgrade to a business account. So I could move from my $40 account to one that costs $110 just because Cablevision decided to change a rule to inconvenience its customers (and, by the way, this also shows that Cablevision did not have to change this rule). That's clearly not good, I said. "Well, it's an option," they said. Yes, and so is sitting on top of a flagpole in my underwear. But I think I'll pass. 3d Windows98 game dowload

If you're a Cablevision customer victim, the man in charge is one Wilt Hildenbrand at 516 803 2300. Call and complain. If you walk to Cablevision, demand that your complaint be escalated, as well. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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Not so swift

: The real lesson of the whole Swift Board brouhaha is this:3d Windows98 game dowload

America isn't over Vietnam -- not by a long shot. 3d Windows98 game dowload

I said when Kerry gave his acceptance speech and John-John salute in Boston that I couldn't believe Vietnam had been rehabilitated as a word and a war in America. Well, I couldn't believe it for good reason. What we're really seeing in this alleged controversy now -- besides mud-slinging for mud-slinging's sake -- is the old prowar and antiwar sides fighting over the war once more. 3d Windows98 game dowload

By emphasizing Vietnam, Kerry scraped the scab of the war. And then the Swifties -- backed by Bushies -- poured salt onto it. The wound is not healed. And it's stinging again. If we're not careful, it will start bleeding.3d Windows98 game dowload

Nothing good is coming of this. It's not illuminating anything about the candidates. Oh, you can screech at me all you want about this in the comments -- Lord knows, you have -- but all the screeching won't tell me what to think. As a voter, I still say I don't care. 3d Windows98 game dowload

I don't care about the Vietnam war.3d Windows98 game dowload

We are in a war now. We are in a war against terrorists and Islamofascists and for modernity and civilization and America. That is the war I care about. 3d Windows98 game dowload

You can blame whomever you want for this fuss and muss. I don't care about that, either. You can argue that this is really about character -- Kerry's or Bush's; I'll have a fuller answer to that shortly. 3d Windows98 game dowload

And you can say it's about media but note that news media are doing what news media should do: They are reporting. They didn't just swallow what the Swifties had to say. They dug and found out that everything isn't as the Swifties or as Kerry says; it's never that simple, folks. So see the Chicago Tribune today, where one of Kerry's men points to the untruths of the Swifties. See the Washington Post this weekend sorting through errors of fact or memory on both sides. See the New York Times Friday pointing to inconsistent statements of the Swifties and their Bush backing. Be careful what you wish for: Big news media is paying attention and it's reporting. 3d Windows98 game dowload

But this argument can go back and forth forever and will we be one bit better off? No, we won't be. 3d Windows98 game dowload

I watched the start of Meet the Press this morning (before the kids hijacked the TV for Sponge Bob) and not one second was devoted to how to improve the country, only to the mud. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Vietnam has moved on and we haven't. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Meanwhile, there are issues pressing us today: the war on terrorism and terrorists' war on us; health insurance; the economy; education; free speech; technology innovation; energy independence; and on and on. And we're wasting sweat and bile over this. Throw away your WayBack machines, folks. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Vietnam is over. It's the war we lost and we keep losing it. 3d Windows98 game dowload

: MORE: After writing this post, I read a comment left below by David Crisp, who seems to be editor of BillingsNews faulting bloggers of both sides on this story:

....bloggers have blown the Swift Vets story bigtime. I've been looking through the blogosphere for two weeks for even one fair-minded account of this controversy. Every place I turn, I find only pro-Kerry folks who think it's a nonstory and pro-Bush folks who start with the assumption that Kerry is a liar.3d Windows98 game dowload

That's just garbage. I want the facts before I decide whether it's a story. And I'm willing to entertain the possibility that Kerry might be a liar, but that's not where I want the discussion to start.3d Windows98 game dowload

To get a handle on where this story really stands, I have found no worthy alternative to the mainstream media. They may have moved more slowly than bloggers, but they did real reporting, added new information, put the issues in perspective and made sense of it all.3d Windows98 game dowload

Maybe somebody in the blogosphere has done that, too, but I sure haven't managed to find it. Maybe I rely too much on Instapundit. Please, somebody tell me where to find a balanced blog account. All I find is arrogance, flim-flam and self-congratulation.3d Windows98 game dowload

What's really sad is that bloggers and reporters could make great partners: reporters asking questions on the ground, and bloggers doing research and fact checking and creating a forum for discussion. I would love to run a tough story through a gantlet of concerned bloggers who would help me hone, focus and sharpen it. But as a working reporter, all I seem to get from bloggers is contempt.3d Windows98 game dowload

If blogging is what we have to look forward to as a replacement for newspapers, then I think I'll give up reading altogether.

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Free radio

: Doc Searls writes an amazing piece on the possibly doomed fate of radio -- and more than radio -- at the hands of so many competing forces who have it in their crossfire, including Congress, the FCC, the music industry, and more. I can't summarize it and do it justice -- so go read it -- but I will quote this:

To Congress and the FCC, broadcasting isn't speech. It's transport: a delivery system for "material" and "content".....3d Windows98 game dowload

Think of a metaphor as a box of words. We all think and talk inside the shipping box when we speak about "moving" or "delivering" goods we call "content" to "end users" or "consumers". This is what Powell does when he describes broadcasting as a "medium" through which we "receive" stuff he calls "material".3d Windows98 game dowload

Broadcasting isn't the only business in the shipping box. In fact, business itself lives there. Ever since the industrial revolution created an enormous system in which the few produce for the many, most business finds itself somewhere amongst the distribution chains that run between producers and consumers. That's why we have so many more people "adding value" than creating it.....3d Windows98 game dowload

All the talk about "content" reveals a conceptualization of broadcasting as a delivery system, primarily for visual goods: stuff you see. Not stuff you hear or read as you would with speech--the freedom protected by the First Amendment....3d Windows98 game dowload

Which brings us to the place where we're peaceably assembled right now, the Net. That's what we need to defend, against the very transport metaphors we all unconsciously use. Specifically, we need to fight against the characterization of the Net as yet another medium....3d Windows98 game dowload

We're fighting for a place here. Or, in the original parlance, a space. Either way, it's no freight-forwarding system.

Go read the rest. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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Google: go transparent

: Seth Goldstein makes a good case for Google to be transparent about its clickstream: the number of searches, the number of sponsored clicks, and the average cost per sponsored click. He makes this argument on behalf of investors, now that they are public, since Google has -- with what is, sadly, becoming its typical hubris -- declaring that it's not going to report financial results the way other public companies do. (But just watch: This will deflate the company's value and they will be forced to do what the investment community demands. In the end, the Google IPO turned out the way the investment market would have had it turn out. The marketplace always wins.)3d Windows98 game dowload

But there is another reason for Google transparency: Its customers and affiliates deserve to know what's happening. Advertisers want to know more about where their ads appear and what happens to them. And content owners should get more details on what is served on their sites and what they are paid as a resalt. 3d Windows98 game dowload

Google is now a public company and must be transparent in public. Transparency is one protection against evil. 3d Windows98 game dowload

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