Yearly Archives: 2007

John Yoo: Another Lying, Disingenuous Sack of Shit

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Over at Salon, Glenn Greenwald takes note of Yoo’s WSJ editorial insisting Bush’s exercise of Executive Privilege is justified, normal, and Constitutional.

First, n.b. who Yoo is:

Yoo is not only willing — but intensely eager — to defend literally anything George W. Bush does or would want to do, including — literally — torturing people and crushing the testicles of children if the Leader decreed that doing so was necessary to fight Terrorists. Yoo, of course, is a principal author of most of the radical executive power theories which have eroded our constitutional framework over the last six years.

So, clearly, he’s a guy with a lot of credibility, right? Well, it gets better. Turns out, this isn’t the first time he’s written publicly on Executive Privilege. Back in 1998, when Clinton attempted to use it during the Lewinsky matter, Yoo wrote another editorial with the exact opposite thesis.

John Yoo, you’d be today’s Official Heathen Douchebag if it weren’t for Gonzales. Maybe Abu will share his prize with you.

Abu Gonzales Is Lying Sack of Shit

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Don’t take our word for it. Just go look here, where he quite simply refuses to answer questions. His utter contempt for Congressional oversight is absurd and borderline criminal. Josh lays it out:

It really requires stepping back in this case to take stock of this exchange. Testifying before Congress is like being called to testify in court. You have to answer every question. Every question. You can fudge and say you don’t remember something and see how far you get. Or you can invoke various privileges. And it up to the courts to decide if the invocations are valid. But it’s simply not permitted to refuse to answer the question. It is quite literally contempt of Congress. (Emph. added)

It doesn’t stop there. See more here.

More Secrecy Bullshit

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There exist, apparently, buildings you are prohibited from photographing.

The list itself, knowledge of which is a necessary precondition to following the (bullshit) law, is also secret.

We are not making this up.

The bottom line is that McCammon was caught in a classic logical trap. If he had only known the building was off-limits to photographers, he would have avoided it. But he was not allowed to know that fact. “Reasonable, law-abiding people tend to avoid these types of things when it can be helped,” McCammon wrote. “Thus, my request for a list of locations within Arlington County that are unmarked, but at which photography is either prohibited or discouraged according to some (public or private) policy. Of course, such a list does not exist. Catch-22.”

The only antidote to this security mania is sunshine. Only when more and more Americans do as McCammon has done and take the time and effort to chronicle these excesses and insist on answers from authorities will we stand a chance of restoring balance and sanity to the blend of liberty and security that we are madly remixing in these confused times.

Look, people: any time there are secret laws, or secret evidence, or secret trials, you’re fucked. The whole idea of any of those things is blatantly anti-American, anti-freedom, and anti-democracy. Governments MUST exist in an inspect-able, transparent state.

(Via BB.)

Dept. of Excellent Summarizing Metaphors

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This has apparently been around for a long, long time, but it’s new to us. The author, one Jeff Bigler, attempts to explain the sort of weird apparent courtesy mismatch that sometimes happens between nerds and regular people. His theory is that everyone has a tact filter; it’s just that regular people use theirs when they speak, and nerds use theirs when they listen. Here’s the whole text, reproduced in accordance with the copyright notice on his page.

All people have a “tact filter”, which applies tact in one direction to everything that passes through it. Most “normal people” have the tact filter positioned to apply tact in the outgoing direction. Thus whatever normal people say gets the appropriate amount of tact applied to it before they say it. This is because when they were growing up, their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!”

“Nerds,” on the other hand, have their tact filter positioned to apply tact in the incoming direction. Thus, whatever anyone says to them gets the appropriate amount of tact added when they hear it. This is because when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on, and their parents continually drilled into their heads statements like, “They’re just saying those mean things because they’re jealous. They don’t really mean it.”

When normal people talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they say, and no one’s feelings get hurt. When nerds talk to each other, both people usually apply the appropriate amount of tact to everything they hear, and no one’s feelings get hurt. However, when normal people talk to nerds, the nerds often get frustrated because the normal people seem to be dodging the real issues and not saying what they really mean. Worse yet, when nerds talk to normal people, the normal people’s feelings often get hurt because the nerds don’t apply tact, assuming the normal person will take their blunt statements and apply whatever tact is necessary.

So, nerds need to understand that normal people have to apply tact to everything they say; they become really uncomfortable if they can’t do this. Normal people need to understand that despite the fact that nerds are usually tactless, things they say are almost never meant personally and shouldn’t be taken that way. Both types of people need to be extra patient when dealing with someone whose tact filter is backwards relative to their own.

(Text copyright © 1996, 2006 Jeff Bigler.)

Your Friday Dose of Surreal Redneckism

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From a discussion on a mailing list regarding the construction of parabolic microphones:

Well first, you gots ta get yerself a parabola. Parabolas mostly come out at night. Mostly. Try putting some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches under the shrubbery and then when you hear them rustling around under there, start beating those bushes real hard with a broom and screamin’ “Hoo Waaaaa! Hoo Waaaa!” The parabola will keel over from fright then you can grab it and wring it’s neck. Don’t wring it too hard, though, cause then you’ll have a hyperbola on your hands, and they ain’t really good for nothing. Then you’re gonna want to take a good knife and carefully peel off the outer layer. Now most people would throw that away, but if you want some real good eating, take it and deep fry it in some hot peanut oil with a few jalapano peppers thrown in. Mmmm, mmmm, that’s good stuff right there. After that, all you have to do is jam a microphone up the parabola’s ass and point it at what you want to listen to. Just last week I turnt mine on and heard my brother and his wife three trailers over doing the weekly deed, if you know what I mean…

This, dear readers, is what happens to smart people in the South. The good ones, anyway. Inshallah.

George, you’re not a king. Get over it.

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From WaPo, as reported in TPM:

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

In other words, he’s asserting that he can short-circuit any such investigation on his own say-so, and that, essentially, he and his branch are not answerable to Congress. More:

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration’s stance “astonishing.”

“That’s a breathtakingly broad view of the president’s role in this system of separation of powers,” Rozell said. “What this statement is saying is the president’s claim of executive privilege trumps all.”

Somebody needs to smack this crap down with a quickness. That just won’t do. Harry Reid, we’re looking at you.

Open Source Runs the World

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Joey makes some great points over at GlobalNerdy. He starts with this Paul Graham quote:

At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don’t.

It’s still very true. The balance of his post is a rundown of named “Web 2.0” firms, together with their apparent server choices. It is Linux, not Windows, that runs Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Photobucket, Wikipedia, and a long list of others. The only top-tier site surveyed on Windows is MySpace, which explains the site’s legendary instability.

If you’re a geek, you should know all of these

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Global Nerdy summarizes the major Laws of Software Development. Yes, Greg, Brooks is there.

(Brooks, for the nonnerdy among you, is Fred Brooks, who wrote (in 1975!) The Mythical Man Month, one of the seminal texts on software development. In it, he formalized his eponymous law: Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. It is counterintuitive, disturbing to management, and absolutely true.)

Bush: More evil than previously thought

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Check out this Executive Order, and note how the words “5th Amendment” and “due process” do not occur despite the fact that the order purports to give the Secretary of the Treasury authority to freeze the assets of anyone who “undermines” efforts in Iraq. This determination may be made secretly, and need not happen before the freeze. (Really. See Section 6.)

N.B. that “undermines” is not defined.

More coverage at The Guardian; that it’s nowhere in the American press is, of course, due to our “liberal” media.

Dear Jackoff Legislators Promulgating the Meth Menace Idea: Fuck off

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From MeFi, find this charming bit of news:

Detective Brian Lewis returns to his desk after lunch, scanning e-mails he missed.

One catches his eye: It says a suspected member of a methamphetamine ring bought a box of Sudafed at

Minutes later, Lewis is in his truck, circling the parking lot, searching for the woman.

Frankly, as one MeFi poster put it, we consider the lack of Sudafed worse than the presence of meth. There will always be drugs. Period. Back before Dennis Miller became a douchebag neocon, he noted well that if all drugs vanished tomorrow, people would spin in circles in their front yard trying to see God. There’s a drug problem IN PRISONS, for the love of Mike (hi, Mike), so what makes anyone with half a brain think that annoying millions of allergy sufferers is going to have any meaningful impact on the ability of the motivated to create meth? Even the clerks know it’s bullshit: we’ve had them suggest that Mrs Heathen buy one of our boxes when we’ve been over the daily limit.

Now, in addition to the bullshit at the pharmacy, we find that cops — and cops NEVER misuse their power — are apparently able to track individual purchases, literally inspecting our sundries before we’ve even left the fucking parking lot. That’s unacceptable.

At least we know who the bad guys are:

CVS, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, is participating in the voluntary Kentucky program and plans to install MethCheck in most of its 6,200 stores across the country by the fall.

We plan to do as much shopping as possible in venues that do not “voluntarily” comply with state efforts to track the legal purchases of private citizens. You should, too.

Dept. of mildly disturbing developments

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There’s a small story on the net this week about the FBI cracking a bomb-threat hoaxer over the Internet. The kid made false threats about bombs in his high school and got caught, and is now serving 90 days in juvie.

None of that is disturbing. Stupid kid, stupid idea, but mild sentence because, well, he’s a kid. In this climate, he’s lucky he didn’t get sent to Gitmo, given that the Executive has made clear it believes it can do anything it wants to anybody it wants, but that’s not what this post was about.

The kid was taken up in what’s been called the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which basically means online anonymity makes people act like assholes sometimes. He’d managed to get access to a compromised computer in Italy, which is where he was sending his threat mails from. This implies he was using a botnet, or at least had access to one. Again, not surprising. However, here’s where the story gets weird, and raises some legitimate questions.

The FBI sought and got permission to install, via messaging, a virus on the kid’s computer to aid their sleuthing. It was this virus that allowed them to find the kid. The questions this raises are interesting:

  • How’d they get their virus on his computer?
  • Why didn’t the kid’s anti-virus/anti-spyware tools catch the Feds’ virus?

The first answer is more or less apparent in the article; it got there via some messaging protocol, probably email. Everybody knows Windows is a joke security-wise, but most folks — even kids — have the message at this point that clicking weird shit you get in email is a bad idea. So there’s still some mystery here. Perhaps the Feds did just assume he’d be running IE and Outlook; it’s not out of the question.

The second answer is scarier. We can assume the kid had at least some technical knowledge, since he was using a botnet, so why didn’t his AV software catch the Feds? The possibilities are that either the Feds know about a Windows exploit nobody else knows about (either because they found it and are mum, or because someone built them a back door), or they’ve strong-armed AV makers into whitelisting their pet virus.

In the first case, they’re compromising everyone’s security by sitting on an exploit they think is theirs alone. It’s the responsibility of everyone in computing to alert software makers when flaws are found; the stakes on nefarious intrusion get higher every day, and the notion that this exploit will remain the exclusive province of law enforcement is simply laughable.

In the second case, it’s much creepier. If we paid Norton for a package to protect our machine from malware, we don’t want them to be in the business of whitelisting spybots just because the government says they’re ok. Either detect everything we might not want on the PC, or don’t represent yourself as protection. “Trust the government not to misbehave” is a nonstarter, as is the old “nothing to hide” argument.

Anyway, News.com surveyed several AV makers this week, and all said it was their “general policy to detect police spyware. Some, however, indicated they would obey a court order to ignore policeware, and neither McAfee nor Microsoft would say whether they’d received such a court order.”

The implications are clear: You cannot trust commercial malware-detection vendors. We know trusting governments is a bad idea. The only real option is to use a real secure OS — something Unix-based — and seek open-source solutions to security problems. We doubt the Open Source community will be particularly compliant when the cops come calling for backdoors or whitelists.

Our “liberal” media

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So, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that there’s been some fun in the Senate in the last 24 hours. Basically, the GOP signaled its intent to prevent a vote on a measure calling for troop withdrawal with a filibuster. In modern times, the filibuster is usually not carried through a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; the intent is usually enough, the outcome assumed, and the next move made by the non-filibustering party.

Well, this time it’s different. Reid stated he’d hold the Senate open all night, forcing Republicans to actually DO the filibuster in order to prevent a vote on the troop measure. This is well within the playbook, and is in no way an underhanded move. However, the press is utterly failing to report this accurately, and has on more than one occasion suggested it was the Democrats who were filibustering. Diane Sawyer even claimed that it was Reid who “vowed to filibuster.” Reid can’t filibuster, since he’s in the majority here. Let’s set the record straight.

From MediaMatters:

On July 11, Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) proposed an amendment to the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 (H.R. 1585) calling for troop redeployment from Iraq to begin within 120 days. On July 16, Senate Republicans blocked the Democratic leadership’s effort to schedule an up-or-down vote on the amendment. In response, Reid scheduled a July 18 cloture vote on the amendment, which would require a 60-vote supermajority to cut off debate on the measure. On the Senate floor, Reid criticized the Republicans for “using a filibuster to block us from even voting on” the amendment and announced his intention to extend the debate on the measure through the night on July 17 in order to “highlight Republican obstruction.” From his statement:

REID: But now, Republicans are using a filibuster to block us from even voting on an amendment that could bring the war to a responsible end. They are protecting the President rather than protecting our troops. They are denying us an up or down — yes or no — vote on the most important issue our country faces.

I would like to inform the Republican leadership and all my colleagues that we have no intention of backing down. If Republicans do not allow a vote on Levin-Reed today or tomorrow, we will work straight through the night on Tuesday. The American people deserve an open and honest debate on this war, and they deserve an up-or-down vote on this amendment to end it.

Given the Republican leadership’s decision to block the amendment, we have no choice but to do everything we can in the coming days to highlight Republican obstruction. We do this in hopes of ultimately getting a simple up-or-down vote on this and other important amendments that could change the direction of the war.

A 2003 Congressional Research Service report on “Filibusters and Cloture in the Senate” defined filibustering as “any use of dilatory or obstructive tactics to block a measure by preventing it from coming to a vote.” While senators once routinely mounted filibusters by holding extended debates on the Senate floor, it is more common now for the Senate to recognize filibusters merely through cloture votes. If a cloture motion fails to get 60 votes, debate continues and the measure does not move to the floor for an up-or-down vote. By calling an all-night session, Reid is forcing opponents of the withdrawal plan to sustain the filibuster by actually speaking on the floor.

So, bottom line: The Democrats want to vote on a troop withdrawal measure favored by wide margins, if poll after poll is to be believed, and the GOP minority are hell-bent on keeping this measure from reaching a vote, because it will PASS. They planned to filibuster, and Reid made them actually execute on it rather than just threaten.

Moral: Stock up on batteries. And shotguns.

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We may have covered this before, but Mrs Heathen was wondering “how long will the power last in the event of a catastrophic mankind-eliminating event?”

Well, this is awful close to Straight Dope’s answer to “When the zombies take over, how long ’til the electricity fails?” Cecil covers both sudden and gradual zombification. Sadly, the answer in both cases is “not very long,” though obviously we do rather better in a gradual scenario. Coal plants require nearly constant activity to keep creating power[1], and they form a big chunk of the grid. Add to this the inter-relatedness of the whole affair, and you can see how the failure of a few coal-fired plants could bring down entire regions, if not more.

[1. Yes, we know they’re not “creating power.” They’re actually converting matter to energy. Shut up.]

More TSA Stupidity

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BoingBoing points us to the story of the Menacing Battery Charger. Briefly, a man used a kit to build a two-D-cell charger for his iPod so he could watch more videos on his iPod when flying. TSA goons freak out because “it looks like an IED,” despite thorough checks yielding no trace of explosive residue. They also attempt to confiscate his laser pointer. Police are called, TSA is smacked down, and the writer notes the terrible truth of the situation:

They wouldn’t have grasped that the spare battery for my laptop was far more dangerous than the iPod charger. A dead short of the MintyBoost! would produce a little heat (maybe 4 watts total), a dead short of the laptop battery would likely cause an explosion of the battery…. and I had two of them fully charged.

He continues:

A handful of people with no knowledge of physics, engineering, or pyrotechnics are responsible for determining what is and what is not safe to bring on a plane. They’re paid minimum wage and told to panic if they see something they don’t recognize. Does this make me feel safer?

(We need to get one of these chargers, TSA trouble or no. Sounds like a great device.)

Dept. of Geek Snark

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We’ve finally found a use for the Opera browser!

We’ve always sort of ignored this also-ran in the Browser Wars, largely because their market share is negligible, and Firefox is so good and so free. However, on our phone, the Pocket version of IE just sucks rocks, and fails when we try to do some Important Work online.

As it happens, though, Opera plays Travian just fine.

Maybe someday ours will grow up into one of these

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Jalopnik has coverage of the upcoming Porsche 911 GT2, which has the distinction of being the first 911 capable of breaking 200 mph on the way out of the dealership. Twin turbos on top of the 3.6 liter boxer engine produce 530 horses and 505 lb-ft of torque. Zero to sixty in just over three and a half seconds. Price? Don’t ask; we’re guessing somewhere in the buck-and-a-half range, since this is the upmarket version of the turbo.

(By the way, the headline is tongue in cheek; fast as this is, it’s got a radiator. That’s an automatic DQ.)

Wil and Radley Preach Truth

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Wil has a great post on the bullshit “be vewy vewy afwaid” warnings from Homeland Security head Chertoff; he quotes extensively from Radley Balko’s piece in Reason. Go read both. Here’s a taste:

Wil:

Yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the director of Homeland Security, told the nation that they should be scared out of their minds, because he has a “gut feeling” that Al-Qaeda will launch a terrorist attack within the United States sometime this summer, and a bunch of anonymous government sources are breathlessly leaking truly scary things to Mass Media.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. This is the same recycled crap that we’ve heard over and over again from this administration, and I’m really fed up with my government doing its best to terrify me and my fellow Americans.

Radley:

By definition, the aim of “terrorism” is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count […]. The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It’s to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life, and get our government to change its policies.

In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists’ hands.

Wil brings it home:

This is part of a long-established pattern from this administration: when the public begins to see them for what they are, they scramble to issue a bunch of terrorist attack warnings, so we’ll be afraid and give them whatever they want, so they can “protect” us.

[…]

What’s going on right now? Ah, yes, Bush and Cheney have the highest disapproval ratings since Nixon, and Bush’s approval among Americans is in freefall. The opposition to Bush’s complete failure in Iraq is at an all-time high. The outrageous commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail conviction — well within federal guidelines — because Bush thought it was “excessive” has infuriated Americans across the political spectrum. The Attorney General is quite clearly a liar, acting not to uphold the Constitution, but in fealty to Bush and Bush alone. Cheney brazenly claimed to be his own branch of government. The US Attorney Firing scandal shows no sign of going away, as Congress finally brings some investigation and oversight to a criminal administration which has acted as if the laws don’t apply to it since the day the Supreme Court put them into power. Americans are waking up to all of this, and the reality is difficult to deny: Bush, Cheney, Rove, and everyone in their rotten administration are crooks.

So, in a transparent effort to distract us from the damage they’ve done to our country, all they have is fear. All they can do is terrify people into submission, and it’s disgusting. We’re better than this. We’re stronger than this. We’re smarter than this.

So, please, don’t be afraid this summer. Don’t be part of Bush and Cheney’s Culture of Fear. Don’t let the terrorists win.

True dat.

Way to take responsibility, Georgie

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The President admitted yesterday that the leak of Plame’s name came from his administration, but said that his commutation of Libby was “fair and balanced,” and that he was now “moving on.”

It would be difficult for this to be more clear. Bush’s message is simple: commit a felony breach of national security in the pursuit of political retribution against his enemies, and you can expect to spend zero time in jail. Yet again, we point out that we have never had a president so hostile to the concept of “rule of law.”

Call for Heathen Help

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So, Mrs Heathen’s briefcase broke, and we need to get it fixed. The leather’s fine; it’s just that the side hardware where the strap clips on, well, wore through. It appears the quick-clip on the end of the strap was much, much harder than the D-ring on the bag, since the clip’s unscathed, but one D-ring is worn completely through, and the other is nearly there.

We had a not-terribly-good experience with Houston Shoe Hospital on a handbag repair a while back. Where else might we go to have this done? We need to get it done soon, since Levenger has agreed to reimburse us for the repair cost. Reply in comments or via email. Thanks!

Today’s Wikipedia Find

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43-Man Squamish, a sport designed to be unplayable. Under “Participants,” we find:

Each team consists of one left and one right Inside Grouch, one left and one right Outside Grouch, four Deep Brooders, four Shallow Brooders, five Wicket Men, three Offensive Niblings, four Quarter-Frummerts, two Half-Frummerts, one Full-Frummert, two Overblats, two Underblats, nine Back-Up Finks, two Leapers and a Dummy — for a total of 43.

The game officials are a Probate Judge (dressed as a British judge, with wig), a Field Representative (in a Scottish kilt), a Head Cockswain (in long overcoat), and a Baggage Smasher (dressed as a male beachgoer in pre-World War I years). None has any authority after play has begun.

Gameplay is described thusly:

Before any game, the Probate Judge must first flip a coin, usually a new Spanish peseta, while the Visiting Captain guesses the toss. If he guesses correctly, the game is cancelled immediately. If not, the Home Team Captain must then decide if he wishes to play offense or defense first. Play begins after a frullip is touched to the flutney and the recitation “My uncle is sick but the highway is green!” is intoned in Spanish. Penalties are applied for infractions such as walling the Pritz, icing on fifth snivel, running with the mob, rushing the season, inability to face facts, and sending the Dummy home early.

The offensive team has five Snivels (equivalent to downs in football) to advance to the enemy goal. Carrying the Pritz across the goal line is a Woomik and scores 17 points; hitting it across with the frullip counts as a Durmish and only scores 11 points. Except in the 7th Ogre (and the 8th, if it rains), only the offensive Niblings and Overblats are allowed to score. In this case, the four Quarter-Frummerts are allowed to kick or throw the Pritz, and the nine Finks are allowed to heckle the opposition by doing imitations of Barry Goldwater.

Best Headline Today

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From Rob: British Blamed for Basra Badgers:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

[…]

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.

Bush Still Hates Science

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Former Bush surgeon general says he was muzzled:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

“The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

We keep saying this, but it bears repeating: if your political beliefs run afoul of facts, and you respond by suppressing facts, you are the worst sort of craven bastard. Bush’s administration has made a habit of this since 2000, and they and their party have made it abundantly clear that this is part of their platform. Voting for them means voting for ideology over science and facts whenever someone doesn’t like what the data shows. It has implications in virtually every sphere of life — public health, the environment, the military, you name it.

David Brooks and “GoogleStupid”

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Tom Tomorrow points out an interesting new coinage: Googlestupid. It’s defined as the unfortunate tendency of someone to make pronouncements that are trivial to investigate with the Internet, and getting them wrong. This week’s best example is yet another bit of idiocy from the Times’ David Brooks, who is called out this week for a column complaining about two female pop singers (Pink and Avril) promulgating ideas in their lyrics hostile to marriage before 30 (this, in Brooks’ world, is apparently bad). The Googlestupidity is, of course, found in the fact that Pink, 28, and Avril, 22, are married.

Anyway, this particular example of Brooks being a lazy fuck brought another article to light, this one a fairly brutal deconstruction of Brooks’ famed post-2000-election Atlantic piece “One Nation, Slightly Divided,” which we read at the time and thought little of. The author, Sasha Issenberg, has no trouble documenting that Brooks basically fabricated nearly every supposed “division” between Red and Blue America, and did so in a way that was trivially easy uncover with the most cursory of fact-checking.

Brooks’ article hinges on the comparison of two counties near DC: Montgomery County, MD, where he lived, and Franklin County, PA, which was his stand-in for Red America. We’ve been to Franklin County; it’s decidedly rural, but not at all as far from suburban DC as Brooks would like us to believe.

For example, Brooks begins (as quoted in Issenberg’s piece):

“I went to Franklin County because I wanted to get a sense of how deep the divide really is,” Brooks wrote of his leisurely northward drive to see the other America across “the Meatloaf Line; from here on there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters.” Franklin County was a place where “no blue New York Times delivery bags dot driveways on Sunday mornings … [where] people don’t complain that Woody Allen isn’t as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny,” he wrote. “In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing.”

Funny, right? Also, sadly for Brooks, bullshit. Issenberg notes that one of Goodwin’s strongest markets is deeply rural McAllen, TX, and that QVC does profoundly well in urban, wealthy areas. But Brooks was too busy to check on things like “facts.” Issenberg, though, wasn’t, and took a trip to Franklin County to check things out for himself.

Issenberg discovered many things we find not at all surprising. For example, Franklin County boats both a fine Thai grocery and gourmet coffee company (we’ve been there as well). Notwithstanding Brooks’ assertion about Red American and Woody Allen, it turned out he couldn’t rent Annie Hall at the Chambersburg Blockbuster, but only because someone had beaten him to it. Even more absurdly, Brooks had claimed he was unable to spend more than $20 on dinner anywhere in Franklin County, and further called out their Red Lobster by name as one location where he tried. Issenberg found, as any normal human knows, that Red Lobster’s menu includes plenty of options to get a single dinner tab over that mark, including a surf-and-turf for $28.75. We’ve spent many evenings eating in that area, and can tell you from personal experience that keeping a dinner tab below $20 would be the real trick — i.e., just like anywhere else in the country.

The inescapable conclusion is that Brooks basically just makes shit up; Issenberg’s money quote:

As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home.

This comes as no surprise to anyone who’s read him or his babble for the last several years, of course. Brooks, of course, didn’t see it this way, and clearly tried to intimidate Issenberg:

I called Brooks to see if I was misreading his work. I told him about my trip to Franklin County, and the ease with which I was able to spend $20 on a meal. He laughed. “I didn’t see it when I was there, but it’s true, you can get a nice meal at the Mercersburg Inn,” he said. I said it was just as easy at Red Lobster. “That was partially to make a point that if Red Lobster is your upper end … ” he replied, his voice trailing away. “That was partially tongue-in-cheek, but I did have several mini-dinners there, and I never topped $20.”

I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being “too pedantic,” of “taking all of this too literally,” of “taking a joke and distorting it.” “That’s totally unethical,” he said.

“Unethical,” Mr. Brooks, is making up facts. Brooks turns out to be employing a novel “rings true” standard, which we’re sure would be at home in any Yellow Peril article from 1885 or Jim Crow editorial from 1955, but falls a bit short of modern journalistic standards, even for editorial writers. Brooks isn’t the only one doing this, but its our dollars that keep him employed and read at his rarefied level. It’s certainly not news that people like to read what the recognize, and accept and reward “analysis” that confirms prejudices, but we’d hope that the gatekeepers in the “old media” would at least make some cursory efforts toward quality control. We know the hope is vain, but we keep it anyway.

The Lessons of History via Aussie TV

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This is brilliant. Aussie TV show decides to determine who, exactly, remembers the lessons of the Trojan Horse. It’s like that stupid Jay Leno news quiz thing, but funny:

(Hat tip to RFB, who notes that the other “Chaser” videos on YouTube are probably worth your time as well, especially their bits on airport security and Fox News.)

Today

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Today, we are sleepy, because we stayed up late finishing that Goddamn Harry Potter book, but at least now we’re clear to see the film and have ample time to read Half-Blood Prince before Deathly Hallows drops.

(We’d have finished earlier, but we had to go watch Sam Jackson chain up a nymphomaniacal Christina Ricci for two hours.)

Hmmmmmmm

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Internet Jesus (a/k/a Warren Ellis) points out TheVeidtMethod.com, the supposed web site of a firm owned by Adrian Veidt. Advance marketing, maybe, for a film of the least filmable comic ever? Perhaps:

$ whois theveidtmethod.com
Domain name: theveidtmethod.com

Registrant Contact:
   Type40 Internet Marketing and Promotion
   Michael Regina (xoanon78@hotmail.com)
   +1.5149475221
   Fax: 1.
   42 Marcel Meloche
   Kirkland, QC H9J1K6
   CA

Also, Wikipedia thinks there’s a 2008 film in the works.