Not an administration firing on all pistons:

President Bush knocks over some lab samples as receives a tour of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory... in Golden, Colo. Bush's trip to the site is part of a two-day, three-state trip to promote the energy proposals he outlined in his State of the Union address. Along the route, Bush has touted longer lasting lithium-ion car batteries and solar roof panels that can turn homes into mini power generators. Bush's visit to the government lab comes as his administration scrambled over the holiday weekend, just before he arrived, to restore the jobs of 32 people laid off in budget cuts.

That's a photo caption, by the way. Emphasis mine.

Energy is an issue nexus I care about quite a lot because I believe it's central to our ability to maintain a good standard of living, rebuild the American middle class, and also to raise up people around the world who are less fortunite. Sort of pathetic to see it made into a complete political shell game by the Republicans.

The Hotline is a very expensive subscription newsletter that covers Washington DC politics. It defines itself as being for insiders. For a certain set of people, if it wasn't in the Hotline, it didn't happen. William Butler has been covering blogs for the Hotline, and recently wrote an op ed for the Washington Examiner that was a little bit sloppy, for which Blogospheric Young Turk Matt Stoller took him to task. The details there are interesting if you're into the mechanics of party politics, but I'll skip them for now.

The point is that Butler took the opportunity to respond in a more open (e.g. longer than 700 word) format on MyDD with In Defense of Hotline's William Beutler (By Hotline's William Beutler). It's getting digested in various places, but here's the quote (and bolded money-line) I want to riff on:

Markos is fond of saying that the neroots aren't about ideology. That may be so, although I wonder if Matt [Stoller] disagrees, as he criticizes me for saying "woe to" a Dem politician who misreads the blogosphere -- it's not rocket science, he says. Not to him, to be sure. But he might consider the fact that a lot of smart people find the blogosphere particularly inscrutable.

William's post is a Good Thing™. It's far too rare that journalists take the opportunity to engage with their Public, and that's really what all this is about. Now, about that bit I bolded...

To the degree that the Blogosphere is "about" anything, it's about a redistribution of power engineered through rather radical changes in how (and to whom) information flows. This is pretty simple, but it means doing business differently. It means working more openly, and dare I say more honestly.

This is true on both the right and the left, and I actually think it's more of a political problem for Republicans. Openness naturally cuts against the monolitic "message discipline" they've come to rely on, and it will make it harder and harder for them to hold on to their more unsavory (crypto-racist, homophobic, misogynist, corpulently corporatist, etc) coalition members.

But back to the Hotline. It's a bit of a simplification, but it seems like there really is an establishment out there which is typified by Hotline's brand of journalism -- an expensive, insiders-only, limited distribution channel of information. The blogosphere is pretty much the opposite: free (as in beer and as in freedom), open, publicly distributed networks for filtering and distributing facts and opinions.

This all seems like the most natural thing in the world to me and mine. What other way could you possibly want to be? I'm only realizing lately the extent to which there are intelligent people who have been working in another fashion for years and years for whom these ideas are utterly terrifying and/or completely inscrutable.

It's not an age thing -- there are plenty of student body presidents younger than me just itching to start climbing the old-school ladder -- but there is something akin to a generation gap here.

Interesting stuff to ponder.

The Hotline is a very expensive subscription newsletter that covers Washington DC politics. It defines itself as being for insiders. For a certain set of people, if it wasn't in the Hotline, it didn't happen. William Butler has been covering blogs for the Hotline, and recently wrote an op ed for the Washington Examiner that was a little bit sloppy, for which Blogospheric Young Turk Matt Stoller took him to task. The details there are interesting if you're into the mechanics of party politics, but I'll skip them for now.

The point is that Butler took the opportunity to respond in a more open (e.g. longer than 700 word) format on MyDD with In Defense of Hotline's William Beutler (By Hotline's William Beutler). It's getting digested in various places, but here's the quote (and bolded money-line) I want to riff on:

Markos is fond of saying that the neroots aren't about ideology. That may be so, although I wonder if Matt [Stoller] disagrees, as he criticizes me for saying "woe to" a Dem politician who misreads the blogosphere -- it's not rocket science, he says. Not to him, to be sure. But he might consider the fact that a lot of smart people find the blogosphere particularly inscrutable.

William's post is a Good Thing™. It's far too rare that journalists take the opportunity to engage with their Public, and that's really what all this is about. Now, about that bit I bolded...

To the degree that the Blogosphere is "about" anything, it's about a redistribution of power engineered through rather radical changes in how (and to whom) information flows. This is pretty simple, but it means doing business differently. It means working more openly, and dare I say more honestly.

This is true on both the right and the left, and I actually think it's more of a political problem for Republicans. Openness naturally cuts against the monolitic "message discipline" they've come to rely on, and it will make it harder and harder for them to hold on to their more unsavory (crypto-racist, homophobic, misogynist, corpulently corporatist, etc) coalition members.

But back to the Hotline. It's a bit of a simplification, but it seems like there really is an establishment out there which is typified by Hotline's brand of journalism -- an expensive, insiders-only, limited distribution channel of information. The blogosphere is pretty much the opposite: free (as in beer and as in freedom), open, publicly distributed networks for filtering and distributing facts and opinions.

This all seems like the most natural thing in the world to me and mine. What other way could you possibly want to be? I'm only realizing lately the extent to which there are intelligent people who have been working in another fashion for years and years for whom these ideas are utterly terrifying and/or completely inscrutable.

It's not an age thing -- there are plenty of student body presidents younger than me just itching to start climbing the old-school ladder -- but there is something akin to a generation gap here.

Interesting stuff to ponder.

On a whim I p2p'ed a bunch of Rage Against the Machine mp3s. I remember when they hit and I was maybe 15. Seemed like good music then; blows my mind today. This was pure rock and roll revolution if anyone cared to notice, but it was the '90s at the time so... It's slightly shocking that they let these cats put out a bunch of albums, really without too many constraints.

I guess it didn't (doesn't?) really matter back then if your chorus is, "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." How things change.

But it's an open question now, who is reaching these kids. There's a constitency out there for this. Could be anyone, really.

I need a new cellphone.

This is an area of technology that I find kind of infuriating because of the lack of standardization and the desire to "productize" the ability of users to move different sorts of data. But anyway...

What I think I want is a phone that's really a phone (not a PDA) that has the guts to connect to the 3G data networks and which I can use thusly as a cellular modem for my lappy, which I'm rarely without in any kind of work-potential situation. Any pointers?

A blog with a story!

Awesome.

This is the Right Idea. Francene Busby is trying to replace Criminal War Profiteer Duke Cunningham, and she gives a decent stump.

This is a big part of what makes politics work online. You have to build a relationship with the Public. Media is a big part of this. I wouldn't have gotten so hard into Dean if this hadn't been one of first things I saw. Creating compelling candidate media and then supporting it with an active team of talented writers who can create compelling campaign message on an hourly basis is the new-media two-step that's proven to work. It's kind of surprising to me that more people haven't done this.

Yeah, I'm back. DC was good. It's an interesting town, lots of construction going on there. Boomtown. Things to report but not quite reportable yet, so I'll talk about something else...

Rolling back up I finally got a chance to listen to Blue Language in its entirety. There are a lot of old favorites from these quirky and intelligent songwriting friends of mine, but I was surprised at how well the more "sincere" songs came through. My favorite track is JH's The Confusion and Rebirth of my Soul, which is completely devoid of irony or even cleverness.

You can buy the whole double-CD for $14, which is a steal of a deal, considering you get that heartfelt wailing, plus anthems like Vagina Town, Schmemily (A Song That's Obviously Not About Emily) and the Burn the Town Down Blues.

So I'm back in action, drinking coffee and putting one foot in front of the other. More soon.

There's a fair amount of gammering going on around lately wrt Ann Coulter, partly because she recently was a featured speaker at the biggest "movement conservative" convention of the year and scoffed "I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences," According to Max Blumenthal, who "infiltrated" CPAC to report on what went down.

His stuff was picked up eventually by the Huffington Post, which is probably why it was used as an example in the Glenn Greenwald post I linked to the other day about right wing cultism. The rational digestion.

And now the final arc of a Coulter Event, the parody:

Bill Maher, from Los Angeles, CA writes:
Ann, sweetcheeks – call me back, OK? Why is it we only hook up when you’re in LA, lonely, and zonked on Dexatrim? Anyway, I'm having a little bipartisan snugglefest tonight on my vibrating waterbed to break in my new hookah. Would love to have you. Can you hop the next red-eye to "La"?

Ann Coulter:
Bill, take it easy, please. This whole "friends" thing was hatched for book cross-marketing purposes, remember? Yes, I was a deadhead for many years, and yes, my 35-foot Eddie Bauer edition Airsteam was party central in concert parking lots from coast to coast. But come on. Weed? Everyone knows I was always an acid queen.

The rest is savage, a lot of it sexual, verging on misogynistic... but if you can stomach it, quite hilarious. The pathology is explored from all angles.

This is the work of an artiste, but crude at the same time. Many critiques of Coulter are inflected by/towards her sexuality. I think it's because politics is still dominated by men with issues with women, especially on that side. I mean, she's literally the most prominant conservative woman in the political mass psyche. Think about that. Creepy.

There's so much weirdness in politics, especially deep right wing politics, it's good fodder for the nerdly mind. Like what was on the other end of that "acid queen" link. Someone had fun making that. The truth is stranger than fiction, and it makes for great humor, list this:

Moon has been talking about saving the world with a tunnel to Russia. But astute AlterNet reader Mitch Kramer points out that his rival, power-hungry doomsday peddler Lyndon LaRouche, was talking about building his own world-saving tunnel to Russia shortly after 9/11, without a Neil Bush endorsement.

That, of course, is Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a vaguely fascist mass cult leader who gives a lot of money to politicians (generally Republicans) and owns the Washington Times, a conservative DC newspaper. He recently provlaimed himself the Massaiah on Capitol Hill. The truth is stranger than fiction.

And on that note, in case you've been in a hole all week, Dick Cheney shot a man.

Anyway, headed down to DC tomorrow, wheeling and dealing with Trellon. We're gonna by buying some drinks for friends Thursday night; email me if you wanna come. Back on Saturday for Frank and Laura's a-Typical Wedding Party. They got engaged and then married by the court. Shazam!

There's a fair amount of gammering going on around lately wrt Ann Coulter, partly because she recently was a featured speaker at the biggest "movement conservative" convention of the year and scoffed "I think our motto should be post-9-11, 'raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences," According to Max Blumenthal, who "infiltrated" CPAC to report on what went down.

His stuff was picked up eventually by the Huffington Post, which is probably why it was used as an example in the Glenn Greenwald post I linked to the other day about right wing cultism. The rational digestion.

And now the final arc of a Coulter Event, the parody:

Bill Maher, from Los Angeles, CA writes:
Ann, sweetcheeks – call me back, OK? Why is it we only hook up when you’re in LA, lonely, and zonked on Dexatrim? Anyway, I'm having a little bipartisan snugglefest tonight on my vibrating waterbed to break in my new hookah. Would love to have you. Can you hop the next red-eye to "La"?

Ann Coulter:
Bill, take it easy, please. This whole "friends" thing was hatched for book cross-marketing purposes, remember? Yes, I was a deadhead for many years, and yes, my 35-foot Eddie Bauer edition Airsteam was party central in concert parking lots from coast to coast. But come on. Weed? Everyone knows I was always an acid queen.

The rest is savage, a lot of it sexual, verging on misogynistic... but if you can stomach it, quite hilarious. The pathology is explored from all angles.

This is the work of an artiste, but crude at the same time. Many critiques of Coulter are inflected by/towards her sexuality. I think it's because politics is still dominated by men with issues with women, especially on that side. I mean, she's literally the most prominant conservative woman in the political mass psyche. Think about that. Creepy.

There's so much weirdness in politics, especially deep right wing politics, it's good fodder for the nerdly mind. Like what was on the other end of that "acid queen" link. Someone had fun making that. The truth is stranger than fiction, and it makes for great humor, list this:

Moon has been talking about saving the world with a tunnel to Russia. But astute AlterNet reader Mitch Kramer points out that his rival, power-hungry doomsday peddler Lyndon LaRouche, was talking about building his own world-saving tunnel to Russia shortly after 9/11, without a Neil Bush endorsement.

That, of course, is Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a vaguely fascist mass cult leader who gives a lot of money to politicians (generally Republicans) and owns the Washington Times, a conservative DC newspaper. He recently provlaimed himself the Massaiah on Capitol Hill. The truth is stranger than fiction.

And on that note, in case you've been in a hole all week, Dick Cheney shot a man.

Anyway, headed down to DC tomorrow, wheeling and dealing with Trellon. We're gonna by buying some drinks for friends Thursday night; email me if you wanna come. Back on Saturday for Frank and Laura's a-Typical Wedding Party. They got engaged and then married by the court. Shazam!