Sunday, September 21, 2003

Great piece on Clark and his Republican connections - and why they're not a bad thing - by a fellow Salon blogger, Cat M. Check it out.
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I (don't) Heart Vouchers So, like I was saying earlier, vouchers piss me off. Not just because they don't work that well, if I remember the Cleveland situation correctly. Not just because there's something not quite right with tax money going to religious schools. No - because it defeats the whole idea of public education as a public institution. Let's say you have a contract with a private security force. You never need the police, so why should you bother paying for them? No way - you're not paying your taxes for the services you get from the police. You're paying for the institution that is the police, regardless of what services you get from them. Same with the fire department, the highway department, etc...just because you either opt not to use their services or pay to get your own alternative does not mean you should be able to opt out of PAYING for them. That's 'cos taxes are required, not optional, right? So how is it that people seem to think they should get back their tax money to spend on an alternative education? They're not paying their taxes for their children's education - they're paying their taxes for an instutition, that of public education, which provides, among other things, education for their kids. I get even more annoyed when someone with three or four kids complains about not being able to spend their tax money on the education THEY choose...correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't they get back far more in vouchers than they spent in taxes? After all, I don't have any kids but I contribute towards paying for the schools - not that I in any way begrudge this. But that ends up meaning that the voucher recepients are taking MY tax money to spend it on their crazy religious home-schooling, teaching their kids that everyone else is going to hell. I know, that's a particularly nasty example, but vouchers make it very, very possible. Overall, it's just an ugly idea. How can anyone think this through and still support it?

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Faux Windows patch There's a grotesque new virus out there masquerading as a Microsoft Windows software patch. When I received it in my own email it took one look at it and laughed. But it's easy to see where less careful (or jaded) eyes might be fooled. Here's a screenshot. Here are the gory details. Be warned: Microsoft isn't sending out operating system patches as attachments in email! Just as Ebay isn't really asking you to update your account info. Caveat e-mail-ptor. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] I got this too - thought it was some pretty funny stuff. Got another mail later that looked like a bounced mail that originated from the same IP as the faux virus. Funny, funny stuff.

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Two Days 'til Quicksilver Pursuing the 17th-Century Origins of the Hacker's Grail. Neal Stephenson's gargantuan 927-page historical novel, "Quicksilver," imagines a project to organize all of human knowledge. By Edward Rothstein. [New York Times: Technology] Quicksilver (Baroque Cycle, V. 1.) will be officially published Tuesday. I've ordered mine, and eagerly anticipate its arrival. [A blog doesn't need a clever name] I opted not to order it - I'm taking off Tuesday, driving up to Borders, buying myself a copy, and reading the whole damned thing in one sitting. I did that with Cryptonomicon when that came out a few years back, and I'd like to keep the tradition going. =)

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0 To 14% In A Couple Days Clark leads latest Newsweek national poll. Clark is off to a good start: (July results in parenthesis)Clark 14 (*) Dean 12 (12) Lieberman 12 (13) Kerry... [Daily Kos] One of a bunch of links on the Newsweek poll that has Clark coming out of nowhere to take the lead - in the first week he was included. There's also the Wesley Clark Weblog, The Clark Sphere, CalPundit, and the original Newsweek article. Clark's also on the cover of Newsweek this week, beating out Isabel. In head-to-heads between Bush and Clark/Kerry/Dean, Clark did best, 47 to 43, Kerry was at 48 to 43, and Dean was at 52 to 38. Ooooh. That's bad news for Dean right there.

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Marshall On The "Waffling" "Story" Is simplism the... (September 19th, 2003 -- 9:12 PM EDT). Is simplism the new integrity? I guess it is. According to the prevailing chatter, Wes Clark has been waffling on his position on... [Talking Points Memo] Josh Marshall brings the clear thinking, as always.
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Clark on Crime - Encouraging Quote Wesley Clark on Crime. In doing some research on Wesley Clark's position on criminal justice issues, we came across this heartening quote: I'm concerned... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime] Here's the rest of the quote: I'm concerned about the lock-up policy, the 3-strikes policy, putting people in jails and the way we've treated people in prison. We've got to look seriously at the American penal system and what it does when it returns people.to the streets." Source: WBUR Public Radio interview Jun 19, 2003 This guy just sounds better and better every day...

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Guess What? The Right Hates Clark. Bunches. Rhodes Bashing. Andrew Sullivan goes quite a bit overboard in criticizing Wesley Clark: To my mind, the most important thing about Clark is that he was a Rhodes Scholar. Almost to a man and woman, they are mega-losers, curriculum-vitae fetishists, with huge... [Matthew Yglesias] Oh wow. Andrew Sullivan is completely insane. Then again, all the Clark bashing running around these days seems completely insane - they latch onto some small potentially damaging bit in his past (He was near Waco! Some asshole British general kinda accused him of wanting to start WWIII! He, like most Americans, had a hard time expressing exactly how he felt about Iraq! What a HORRIBLE MAN!) and run with it, trying to start the equivalent of Clinton's woman problems or Gore's supposed lying. This time, however, it feels like the mainstream media isn't buying what the Scaife-heads are selling. Good. It's about time they realized that the rightist media is NOT, shall we say, fair and balanced...

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Sorry 'bout the lack of posting yesterday - I was out for most of the day, and then fell asleep at something like 8pm. I had some stuff I wanted to write about vouchers, which I'll try to get to later today...
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