That's our Bush. It is clear that, among conservative Republican Americans, Republican politicians are perceived as somehow more honest than their Democratic counterparts, and more sane than their third-party detractors. Republican leaders like Bush, while mostly appearing to be blathering idiots, are in fact (deep down) full of wisdom and integrity; honesty and chivalry. The current administration may be swimming with old Nixon appendages, but that doesn't mean that they have a habit of dishonesty. Nor do we have any reason to mistrust the old Iran/Contra conspirators who are still hanging around the Pentagon... In a CNN.com column, John Dean presents a collection of Bush quotes concerning the supposed WMD in Iraq:

"We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas." - Oct. 7, 2002. "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." - Jan. 28, 2003.

Okay, one last time: how many communists are working in the Defense Department? In his column, Dean for the most part echos my own position, which had been to give the President the benefit of the doubt. But it is getting much later in the day and there is no sign of WMD. There are more signs of manipulated intelligence. Dean has this to say:

Presidential statements, particularly on matters of national security, are held to an expectation of the highest standard of truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist or distort facts and get away with it... Perhaps most troubling, the president has failed to provide any explanation of how he could have made his very specific statements, yet now be unable to back them up with supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi informant thought to be reliable, who turned out not to be? Were satellite photos innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or was his evidence not as solid as he led the world to believe? The absence of any explanation for the gap between the statements and reality only increases the sense that the President's misstatements may actually have been intentional lies. [CNN]

Perhaps Dean interprets the role of President differently from Bush. In Bush at War, George W said this to Bob Woodward during an interview:

"I'm the commander. See, I don't need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."

Oh. Meanwhile, the rally effect is slipping and Bush's approval ratings are in gradual decline. In particular, his rating on the economy is below 50% (I'm suprised that Americans aren't excited about the totally sweet tax break on their dividends). As for Iraq and WMD:

And most Americans, 57 percent, do not believe the Bush administration purposely misled the public about weapons of mass destruction to build support for the war, while 36 percent think it did. Forty-four percent do not think the Bush administration misinterpreted or misanalyzed the intelligence reports they said indicated Iraq had banned weapons; 36 percent of those polled think it did. [NewsMax... ech]

Call me crazy, but it seems to me that 36% is a huge number when the question is whether the President lied to the public to start a war. Dean and others feel that this is a very grave issue:

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

So, effectively, 36% of Americans believe Bush is potentially impeachable. In the mean time, though, at least he's doing a crackerjack job in Israel:

President Bush says he is going to appoint a coordinator to "ride-herd" Middle East leaders along the peace trail. You would be forgiven for not understanding what he meant. Its meaning most likely eluded the leaders from the Middle East who he was meeting. [BBC]

I just read a transcript of a political speech by Tim Robbins. Its actually pretty good. Here's a highlight (Robbins has just made reference to Columbine):

I remember reading at the time that one of the shooters had tried to enlist to fight the real war a week before he acted out his war in real life at Columbine. I talked about this in the press at the time and curiously no one accused me of being unpatriotic for criticizing Clinton. In fact, the same talk-radio patriots that call us traitors today engaged in daily personal attacks on their president during the war in Kosovo. [link]

I posted a comment at Joe Pixel's blog yesterday that may have been a bit cryptic. I wanted to expand on it a little here. The basic idea is this: the current legal, social, and corporate events surrounding the internet and intellectual property law are going to have as much historical significance as the protestant reformation and the Gutenburg press. This assertion is based on the premise that the key contributions of the reformation pertained to the control of information. Scriptures were being translated into common languages and distributed en masse. People were learning to read in greater numbers:

The work of a 14th century monk, John Wycliffe, did much to reform the political structure of England. He laid the foundation of reform of not only the Church but also the State. He resolved to introduce the common people to the New Testament by translating it into the vernacular of the Saxon peasants. Before the 15th century, every Englishman who could read was able to question the teachings of the Catholic Church with regard to both civil and ecclesiastical government. Because of the perceived threat of Wycliffe's followers, the Lollards, who distributed and taught from English New Testaments, the Catholic Church banned translation of the Bible in 1408. The only copies that continued to exist in English were hand copies of the Wycliffe originals. In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenburg began experimenting with novel, mysterious ways of approaching printing. Skilled in engraving and metal working, Gutenburg invented movable typeset and printed 200 copies of the Latin Bible. By the time Martin Luther was born in 1483, Germany had several large printing presses capable of printing hundreds of books at a time. [link]

The simple ability of individuals to read and evaluate scripture was catastrophic to the authority of the priesthood. The technology of the printing press catalyzed the changes that led to the modern era. I believe the internet is having a similar impact. It has provided us with a new substrate for communication -- one which is more complete, more efficient, more broad and less controllable than any that has existed before. It is at the same time an instrument of mass- and intimate communications. It is the substance of the marketplace of ideas. Among other things, the internet challenges the notion that information, once exposed to the public, can be controlled. This is the old lie of the priesthood, echoed today by corporations who claim "intellectual property" over everything from musical recordings to peoples' names. If the technology is allowed to develop as it should, unimpeded by legal meddling, then the new age of ubiquitous connectivity will finish what Wycliffe started. Some recent cases of interest:

• Blogs beat newspapers in online searches. Do a Google search for some current event, and you'll likely get a lot of blog results. Is this "blog noise," as some have called it? Or is this phenomenon levelling the concept of authority in news and commentary? During the Iraq war, whose news was more interesting: CNN or the war bloggers? I think there was a lot more interesting information to be found in weblogs of independent journalists and residents of the affected areas (remember the Dear Rayed blog that was evidently posted from Baghdad before the war cut him off?)...
• Nervous government. In spite of all past rulings guaranteeing free speech in the US, judges and politicians perpetually insist that the internet is somehow different. Some would have us believe that all speech is commercial speech online, and other nonsense. The latest case is particularly strange: Miss Vermont has successfully sued someone who claims to be a former boyfriend.

  Judge Lewis ruled on May 6, before Mr. Max was notified of the suit and without holding a hearing. She told Mr. Max that he could not use "Katy" on his site. Nor could he use Ms. Johnson's last name, full name or the words "Miss Vermont." The judge also prohibited Mr. Max from "disclosing any stories, facts or information, notwithstanding its truth, about any intimate or sexual acts engaged in by" Ms. Johnson. That prohibition is not limited to his Web site. Finally, Judge Lewis ordered Mr. Max to sever the virtual remains of his relationship with Ms. Johnson. He is no longer allowed to link to her Web site. [NY Times]

  Like many rulings which involve the internet, this is unprecedented and idiotic. I have to wonder if the same ruling would be made if Mr Max had been mailing newsletters instead of posting a web page.

Such knee-jerk prohibitions are rooted in the same nervousness felt by the catholic church when the Bible was translated. The ability to speak and be heard without restriction is itself a threat to common notions of authority. The vestiges of priestly authority remain, insisting that certain sights, sounds, and topics are taboo. There are few powers greater than the ability to restrict what people can transmit and receive. But now the ability of each person to transmit and receieve what they damn well please is becoming too great to control. In the long run, I don't think anything -- government or corporation of family-values-grassroots-watchdog-group or copyright protection -- will be able to restrict the total freedom that people demand.

SCO's lawsuit against Linux is illustrated using The Dukes of Hazzard at this site.

The new Blur album, Think Tank, is extraordinary. It took me four or five listens to wrap my head around it, but now I think it might be as good as Parklife or their self-titled 1997 album. It's very different, but not as much as you might think it would be, having been ditched by their very distinctive guitarist, Graham Coxon, part-way through recording. It seems like a natural next step to me. And I dig it a lot. It was recorded during the build-up to military action in Iraq, and some say that the whole album is essentially about existing in a world that doesn't make a lot of sense and may be headed toward destruction. I think I can see it. My current favorite tracks are "Out of Time", "Crazy Beat", "Good Song", "Caravan", and "Sweet Song", and they all could be interpreted as the musings of someone with impending war on his mind. Problems: 1) The album tastefully features the "Parental Advisory -- Explicit Lyrics" stamp on the front. "Well, Damon must sing the fuck word a few times," you might be saying to yourself. Alas, no. In one song, he uses the words "cocaine", "crackwhore", "horny", and "acid". That's it. The song is about the arbitrary line between "bad" and "good" drugs. No Cop Killer, no 2 Live Crew nursery rhymes, no nothing. But because of that darn sticker, I had to call my parent to advise me before I purchased the album. 2) Most Americans only think of "Song 2" when they think of Blur, which is strange. In a way, "Song 2" was sort of an anti-Blur Blur song. For this reason (association with one rather non-representative song only), Think Tank is bound to do not as well as it deserves to in the U.S. It's also less poppy and more challenging than some of their more well-known stuff. Another drawback. (Oddly enough, these things will probably only help sales of the new Radiohead album. I don't understand Radiohead. They're not that interesting and the lead singer's voice is boring. Indie rock snobs -- those who hate any album that's sold over 200,000 copies -- love them, and they've sold millions of records. I don't get it. There's something here I'm missing. As far as I'm concerned, they're not even in the same class as a band like Blur. Consider the titles of their new albums: Think Tank versus Hail to the Thief, the latter, by all reports, directly referring to George W. Bush and the bizarre election that brought him to power. Which title is subtle, and which one is stupid and obtuse?)

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