Matt Zeitlin

From Dr. Evil to the Pentagon.

Creating armor that renders a soldier invisible. Stimulating the brain to suppress sleep for days. Arming sharks with chemical implants and cameras to work as spies.

This year the Pentagon will spend $78 billion — about half of all government research and development dollars — on a variety of projects, according to the American Association for the Advancement for Science (AAAS).

Are they ill tempered?

Tip of the hat…Pandagon 

Well, my family and I drove the entire distance from Atlanta to beautiful Lexington, Kentucky. That means the entire height of Tennessee plus good stretched of Georgia and Kentucky. Didn’t see too much, because I was asleep most of the time. Stopped at a gas station in Tennessee and saw some nice confederate memorbilia and firecrackers. Tennesse is full of entire stores devoted to firecrackers, which is neat. Being from nanny state California, a good m-80 or Roman candle is hard to come by. Also saw some “choose life” license plates in Tenn, as well as a nice big “WAIT UNTIL MARRIAGE” billboard somewhere between Chattanooga and Knoxville. Meh, I guess that’s the coastal elitist liberal coming out in me. I’m super tired and could barely read my dailiy round of blogs, newspapers and magazine websites, let alone write about anything, so, I leave you with this:

First off, what’s the reference? No googling allowed!

Well, this is something of an announcement, one that will surely disappoint my legions of loyal readers, OK – maybe more my one legion of loyal readers – I’m gonna be holed up in the great state of Kentucky for three weeks for a surely scintillating academic summer camp thing(remember, I’m a rising senior in high school, so i still have this thing called ‘summer vacation’ those of you with jobs may have forgotten what that is). I’ll still be able to post at night and, if I have time, during the day. So, if you are a regular reader, first off – I love you for that, still check the site, posting won’t be as heavy as it has been the last few days, but I’ll get some writing and posting done just about every day, so there will still be some content.

Grr – I’m gonna sound like a cynical curmudgeon, but here it goes.  TNR has an article up by Eric Reeves about Cavaliers Forwards Ira Newble, entitled “How NBA star Ira Newble became a Darfur activist.”  Interesting, because Ira Newble doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of NBA star, in fact, Reeves own description is much better:  “Ira Newble, reserve small forward for the Cleveland Cavaliers”  I’m sorry, anonymous TNR headline writer, but NBA basketball isn’t porn, not everyone is a “star”

Amanda is trying to think up some good protest songs.  Now, as someone who (would have been) of the left since the 60s, I should be a fan of protest songs.  And songs like “A Change is Gonna Come”, “Blowin’ in the Wind” and, of course, Edwin Starr’s “War” are classics of the genre.  In recent years, however, mainstream protest songs have just been awful.  From Green Day’s bitching about the “redneck agenda” (American Idiot) to Conor Oberst’s incomparably whiny “When the President Talks to God,” many protest songs today are basically the left wing equivalent of Toby Keith.

Salvation, as always, comes from Texas…by way of Montreal.  Arcade Fire’s Intervention is a protest song par excellence.  Every lyric is a shot at the Bush administration and the current state of American culture and politics.  The song has genuine feeling and emotion, without treating its listeners like morons.  The message is at the same time subtle and blindingly clear.  And unlike many protest songs, the actual song writing is very solid, you can hum along, dance and hate on the Bush administration all at the same time.  This is how protest songs should be done:

Jen at Feministing doesn’t find this shirt too funny…

Now, maybe the image isn’t really a paragon of gender equality and sensitivity, but cmon, it’s supposed to be irreverent and it isn’t blatantly racist or sexist.  The phrase “bros before hos” is ridiculously common, and it’s misogynistic insomuch as it expresses a desire for male camaraderie over a friend being “whipped” by his girlfriend – now that notion in and of itself could be misogynistic, but it’s hardly a hill worth dying on.   It’s not an expression of male superiority and it’s not calling a woman a “ho” insomuch as that’s insulting, it’s using “ho” BECAUSE IT RHYMES.  Of course, I’m a guy, and so I can’t really understand how women react or feel about such sayings and phrases, but this can’t really be where the feminist blogosphere needs to be focusing its attention.

And… the shirt is racist?  Jen, that’s just silly.  Again, this phrase is in common currency across ethnic groups, the “bro” can be of any race… those words are picked because they rhyme.   Now, one may ask, why did they pick Obama instead of Edwards if it wasn’t a phrase with racial connotations?  Fair question, but the reality is, among people who buy “irreverent” T-Shirts, Obama is much more widely recognized than Edwards.  So all in all, a little irreverent and possibly a wee bit offensive, yes. The cutting edge of sexist attacks on Hillary?  Hardly.

Salon’s broadsheet brings our attention to a recent Maxim photo spread of female Israeli soldiers. It is, of course, not odd or noteworthy that Maxim has a spread of scantily dressed women, what is odd is why and how this spread was arranged:

The spread was arranged as a public relations effort by Israel’s New York consulate after research revealed that the country is largely irrelevant to most young American men. David Dorfman, a consulate media adviser, told the Associated Press: “Males that age have no feeling toward Israel one way or another, and we view that as a problem, so we came up with an idea that would be appealing to them.”

Maybe it’s my desire not to be seen as a defender of raunch culture, but this ploy seems wrongheaded to me. As these pictures show, any country can put up some women that look pretty good in bikinis and will make for a decent Maxim photo spread.

What Israel has that sets it apart in terms of appealing to young men, and I’m trying to be value-neutral here, is that it’s the baddest motherfucking country around. If you want images of Israel that will appeal to young men, try Moshe Dayan, Israeli fighter jets buzzing over Bashar Assad’s summer home or, to reference Knocked Up, Eric Bana kicking Black September ass in Munich. Of course, there’s the question of whether Israel really needs to be focusing on its public image with young American men when there’s an Islamist pseudo state run by people who don’t acknowledge its existence sitting right on its border, but there’s no fun in talking about that.

UPDATE:  Jill at Feministe takes the other track in discussing this entire situation.  Apparently the Israeli consulate in New York had an event celebrating the Maxim photo shoot and put one of the girls on the invitations.

The Zorro of the blogosphere, Digby, rakes Scalia over the coals for his oh-so-pathetic invocation of Jack Bauer’s All-American Awesomeness:

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

Digby dutifully points out how stupid this is, and she’s right.  But if you put your mind in the right place, cock your head the right way and are willing to let crazy counter intuition flow into your mind, I think that 24 actually is a great demonstration of why torture is so shitty.  I’ve argued before that the exoteric and overall plots of many 24 seasons are very anti-hawk, but this argument is a bit less obvious and involves a bit more interpretation that is hardly obvious from the show and probably not intended by the writers.  Here we go

The most obvious way that 24 doesn’t support torture is that the pure cruelty and sadism is displayed so vividly; like when Jack tortures his brother, he may think he’s trying to get information, but in reality he’s working out all sorts of issues that are secondary to the actual interrogation.  Additionally, when Jack tortures people, it looks so awful and painful and really drives home what torture is.

This is where I’m getting to into heavy interpretative mumbo jumbo that may not make sense, but bear with me.  The fact that Jack is so successful at his torture is some the best evidence a TV show can provide to prove that our current policy of allowing and encouraging torture is a bad one.

Jack basically always gets it right, the people he tortures are usually all actual terrorists and he regularly gets the information.  Any intelligent viewer knows how unlikely that is to happen, that the people you torture have information and that you are able to extract actionable intelligence from torture.  Jack’s constant success, in a contradictory way, is so extraordinary that it drives home just how unlikely torture is to work. Additionally, Jack himself is personally extraordinary – he is brave, virtuous, committed, patriotic and self sacrificing, if we had to pick someone to torture, it would be Jack Bauer.

This is where the pro torture crowd that cites 24 as an example of what we need to, hoists themselves by their own petard.  JACK BAUER ISN’T REAL, and smart viewers know this.  There is NO ONE in the government who would ever actually do government sanctioned torture like Jack Bauer – hell,  there are no humans like Jack Bauer. When Scalia and Tancredo say that they want “Jack Bauer justice,” they’re making total asses out of themselves. If torture is acceptable only when done by a super-virtuous, skilled, smart FICTIONAL character – that is the best proof that authorizing torture is a bad idea.  Because back in the real world, actual human beings will do the torture, not super heroes dreamed up by Joel Surnow.

Word from the Take Back America Conference was that Hillary got booed again:

But, this year, the boos were not about Clinton’s position on the war–”end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home,” she said today–but rather her reasoning. Sure, she says she wants to end the war. But instead of admitting that the whole thing was a mistake to begin with and saying she’s really really sorry about that time she sort of helped start it all, she says it’s the Iraqis fault for pissing away our democratic gift.

Obama, on the back of what was, by all accounts, a great speech, finished first in the straw poll by three points over netroots fav Edwards. My widely cited counter intuitive Hillary theory is that she wants as much press that highlights separation between her and the left wing of the Party. She already had has a solid base of support, based on working class voters, women and Democrats who see her as the most experienced, electable candidate. She’s unlikely to lose any of this support, and is equally unlikely to pick up Edwards’ netroots support. The stories about her getting booed at Take Back America, for example, make her seem more centrist, more electable, have more gravitas etc.

Even what she got booed for, blaming the failure of Iraq on the Iraqis instead of admitting the entire venture was always a bad idea and bound to fail, seems more inline with what people in the general election are likely to support, I think it’s only among certain part of the left wing where people are really going agonize over “incompetence dodge” vs “iraqis screwed up” when the end result is withdrawal or massive troop reductions. The Democrats went with their heads over their hearts last time, and with Hillary running well to the left of Kerry in 04, a similar dynamic seems likely to play out.

Bloomberg’s potential candidacy set of a flurry of excitement in our Economist reading, Schwarzenegger enthusiast home.  And the possibility of a third party candidate actually winning some states and getting electoral votes sure is interesting.  But Bloomberg, if he runs, isn’t all that likely to win any states.  He could finish second in states like New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and get a decent amount of popular votes.  Wouldn’t it be better if there was a run-off election, say, 2 weeks after the planned general election where Bloomberg would throw his support to whichever candidate he wanted.  Otherwise, 10-15 percent of the vote is just going down the drain with no real representation or influence.  Of course, we could just get rid of the electoral college and move to a true popular vote, but that’s a post for another day.

Via Auguste, we have can what only be described as a great headline that is only matched by an equally crazy/disturbing story.  Again, kids, don’t do meth.   Here’s the headline:

Stab victim ‘continued masturbating’

I guess you just gotta keep on truckin’…

Readers who’ve been around since the beginning will know that I’ve long had a huge crush on Garance Franke-Ruta. I’ve stopped talking about it so much in posts that reference her, retiring the once common modifier “lovely and talented” and stopped taging posts that mention her (which are still pretty common, 18 of them at last count, about 13% of my the total) with “bloggers and jounralists I have crushes on.” These outward changes, including my declaration of love for another Harvard educated woman, don’t make this any less painful. I’m in a glass case of emoton and am still dealing with the grief that callous rejection so cruelly brings, but through the tears, I have something of a riposte. Here’s her basic take:

Those are classic middle-American tropes that are mockable in much the same way that Hillary Clinton’s choice of a Celine Dion song for her campaign theme is mockable. Neither Romney’s squeaky-clean image nor Clinton’s choice of Dion are bad things, but they are easy targets for the Arctic Monkeys-listening blogger set amused by the high cheese factor in American politics.

This, on face, seems perfectly reasonable and I’m willing to believe that GFR and some others aren’t peddling anit-Mormon stereotypes when they discuss the “high cheese factor” in Mitt’s campaign. Pam Spaulding and Andrew Sullivan, on the other hand, I’m not so convinced are just bemoaning and gently chiding how damn earnest the Romney campaign is. These are two, to say it lightly, that have some issues and disagreements with religous and cultural conservatives. Sullivan himself even admitted that his full-on Tagg Romney mocking was actually a shot at” bland, super-nice “Up-With-People” vibe of Romney’s cultural Mormonism“

So, maybe it’s not part of my imagination that the image Romney projects and his opponents tend to associate with him is part of a greater stereotype/cultural perception of Mormons in general. I’m perfectly willing accept that Garance and I have different perceptions of the “culture” and it’s attitude towards Mormons, but I detect a kind of sneering disrespect that many secular-minded people use when discussing Mormons, because they want to say that it’s a crazy polygamous cult, but, thankfully, such bigoted notions are looked down upon in polite company. So these people instead cast aspersions on Mormons for their “bland, super-nice “Up-With-People” vibe.” This is at least what I observe among people I associate with, South Park and some bloggers, so take it as you will.

Of all the places in Texas I didn’t expect Austin to suddenly resemble, well,  what some people think of Texas.

A crowd attacked and killed a passenger in a vehicle that had struck and injured a child, police said Wednesday. Police believe 2,000 to 3,000 people were in the area for a Juneteenth celebration when the attack occurred Tuesday night. The man who was killed had been trying to stop the group from attacking the vehicle’s driver when the crowd turned on him, authorities said.

So, the kid didn’t even die, “The child was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries,” and they didn’t kill the driver.  If you’re gonna do mob justice, at least do it right

Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no WiFi coverage, you’ve seen Eric Alterman’s opus on Marty Peretz disastrous/successful tenure as owner of TNR.  I really have nothing new to add to entire Marty/TNR discussion – Wieseltier and James Wood are great, they should be commended for hiring smart, young liberal writers, Sullivan’s editorship was a low point, it’s good that Frank Foer is explicitly taking the magazine to the left, Peretz is an unwashed Likudnik on Israel and is mightily unfair and slanderous towards his enemies, whether they be George Soros, Matt Yglesias, John Mearsheimer, Jimmy Carter or the general litany of liberals that take on TNR. There is, however, one criticism I find tempting but at the same time cheap and muddle headed. The criticism of Marty Peretz that he’s somehow unworthy or should be looked down upon for buying the magazine with his wife’s inherited money.

If I, like other bloggers, find myself in a throwdown with Marty (which inevitably become personal), will almost surely resort to this line of attack – but for better or for worse, we’re on good terms.  The problem with this attack, besides sounding kinda catty, is that it doesn’t really make sense.  What exactly is so objectionable about buying a magazine using inherited money? It would seem a tad sexist to imply that getting money from your wife is somehow worse than using money inherited from your father or mother.  I mean, Marty could have bought a bunch of art, cocaine, models or do any of the things people tend to do with large amounts of inherited/married money. But no, as someone interested in liberal politics, in an albeit idiosyncratic way, he bought a struggling yet well respected magazine and shaped it into his image and made it the most influential publication in Washington for a decade or more.  I mean, would we object if, say, Ezra Klein (or me) married Natalie Portman and used her money to buy the American Prospect or start his own liberal magazine? I think not, so we should stick to criticizing Marty on matters of substance and not use recycled, chauvinistic playground taunts

Robert Reich (hopefully one day my future employer…;) has a lil commentary up on TAP proposing a novel idea for reducing carbon emissions, a “carbon auction”

Companies would have to bid for the right to pollute. And, most ingeniously, the money raised in the auction would be shared equally by all citizens in the form of yearly dividend checks — just like the residents of Alaska now get yearly dividends for their share of the state’s oil revenues.

While this proposal sounds all well and good to progressive ears (make corporations spend money and give that money to the people), it does nothing to reduce carbon emissions from transportation, which account for 511.6 million metric tons of carbon and 1/3 of US emissions.  Not to mention reducing other negative externalities from more people driving. I’m also sceptical is any broad based carbon reduction strategy will be able to survive the inevitable gutting and corruption from various afflicted interests.  Surely there will be some indutsry specific shenanigans for a carbon auction, and while a carbon tax may not be perfect, it is the most likely of any proposal to be applied across the broadest base of carbon emitters.  It’s also unclear how the auction would be implemented, and Reich, probably because this was originally a radio commentary is quite sparse with the details:

In a carbon auction, companies would have to bid against other companies for a portion of the atmosphere they intend to use — within overall limits that reduce pollution levels.

Umm, how exactly would this work.  Part of the atmosphere? Would the government apportion cubic miles of atmosphere that can have X tons of carbon emitted into them?  The one part of this commentary I agree with is that a carbon tax is likely to hit the working and middle classes hardest, but that’s doesn’t have to be a problem.  A carbon tax could be revenue neutral, the revenue from the could be used to cut the payroll tax, increase the EITC and a whole host of other progressive and redistributionist tax strategies.  Furthermore, using the revenue to increase the EITC would actually be more progressive than Reich’s idea of distributing auction income to all citizens, the EITC increase would necessarily be means tested and progressive.   Us liberals should know that just because Greg Mankiw supports something, doesn’t necessarily make it a bad idea.

I don’t like being mean (sorry cousin, but the qualifiers just kinda flow naturally) but Althouse’s take on the Clinton/Sopranos ad is just bizarre:

 Bill says “No onion rings?” and Hillary responds “I’m looking out for ya.” Now, the script says onion rings, because that’s what the Sopranos were eating in that final scene, but I doubt if any blogger will disagree with my assertion that, coming from Bill Clinton, the “O” of an onion ring is a vagina symbol. Hillary says no to that, driving the symbolism home. She’s “looking out” all right, vigilant over her husband, denying him the sustenance he craves. What does she have for him?

This has to be a joke, right?  There’s no other explanation for such a convoluted, implausible interpretation.  Althouse’s attempt at divining the semiotics of the ad makes the post modern text generator read like Hemingway.  I’m just thinking off the cuff here, but maybe, just maybe Hillary says ‘no onion rings’ to Bill because he had heart surgery and that probably necessities watching what you eat and especially not eating onions dipped into a vat of piping hot grease to soak there and then cool into a circular cardiac destroyer.  Jeez, this kind of mushy headed , purposefully obtuse, fact free Women’s Studies 101 writing is just so lame, even if done by TV writers or prominent feminist bloggers who are otherwise good writers.

From My DD, there’s news that Giuliani rejected a seat on the Iraq Study Group to pursue his lucrative speaking gig. As much as I like bashing Rudy, I really can’t get that angry or indignant over this. Rudy did not, as Todd says, put his pursuit of personal wealth before the the nation’s security.” Last time I checked most liberals and Democrats thought that Giuliani being as uninvolved as possible in the national security of the US is a good thing… or does Todd disagree? Would he rather see Giuliani making high level national security decisions or recommendations? Inquiring minds want to know…

In case anyone is interestedin the minutiae of my blog stats, my two most read posts today are titled, respecitively, Digby Is Kaiser Soze and Daniel Larison is Kaiser Soze!.  At this rate I’m going to have to get palsy in my leg and start hanging out with Gabriel Byrne and Benicio Del Toro.

Color me cynical, but methinks the entire “revealing of Digby” charade going at the Take Back America Conference is just a little lame . And the entire idea of a pseudonymous person being popular or influential because of what they write on the Internet is just a little too reminiscent of Ender’s Game. Should we be calling Digby Demonsthenes or Locke?

UPDATE: Ezra Klein points out that I really don’t know a bunch about the blogosphere.  There is, in fact, a blogger named Demosthenes, and not surprisingly, he got his name from Ender’s Game.  Unfortunately, there’s no sign he’s about to rise to power by the power of his blog posts, so maybe Ender’s Game isn’t the best analogy for the blogosphere.

Via Yglesias, the Clinton Campaign decided to make a spot portraying Bill and Hillary as Tony and Carmela in the infamous final scene of the Sopranos.  Call me cautious, but I don’t think it’s the best idea for a couple who spent the better part of the 90s fending off accusations that they ran something of a mafia in Arkansas to pretend their America’s most famous mob couple.

In case anyone cares, the Hillary campaign picked Celine Dion’s “You and I” as the official campaign song. Hillary just lost my primary vote, well, that is if I could vote in the California primary.  I mean, she’s clearly  decided to orient her campaign to half deaf, muscially retarded,  weepish middle aged people who are responsible for the 1997 Oscars Best Original Song travesty, you can hardly blame for feeling a bit alienated from the cause.