Coconut Records, "West Coast"

Tuesday Evening Link Orgy

* Buy one truck ... get a second truck free?

* The world's most over-rated 527 packs it in (this might have something to do with it)

* The 10 Commandments of running a smooth Inauguration party

* The story behind the most celebrated newspaper error in journalism

* Michael Lewis and the End of Wall Street

* Something I'd never expected to read on Matt Yglasias' blog: "You really need to read [Jamie] Kirchick’s piece..."

* The best Ann-Coulter-got-her-mouth-wired-shut joke you'll read all day

* Russians are failing to live up to their well-earned reputation for drowing their economic sorrows in booze

Quote of the Day

I’ve worked in government. It’s hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew.

William Kristol

Deep Thoughts

To anyone who laments the emasculation of the "White Man" in contemporary American society, I have only one thing to say to you:

Grow a pair.

Tuesday Morning Link Orgy

* If you thought the Wisconsin state legislature was going to have a helluva time correcting the $5+ billion dollar budget deficit, well, they'll get to it as soon as they figure out where everyone's offices are going to be

* David Kilcullen, who's theory of counterinsurgency could be described as "battlefield (a-hem) community organizing" is a badass: "Counterinsurgency is armed social work."

* Russians, feeling the economic pinch, stop building their enormous towers and -- most distressing of all -- are cutting down on their vodka consumption

* Two pretentious French literary types lash back at critics and the results are awesome:

* Solving the (institutionalized) Somali piracy problem with an iron fist

* The 101 Dumbest Business Moves of 2008

YouTube Escalation

I see your awesome special teams layout and raise you an airplane crashing in the middle of a goddamn baseball game:



[via Coed]

Next Time I Predict an Impending Economic Catastrophe, You All Better Listen

Damn, I'm good.

Written on August 5th, 2007 (or, over 13 months before Lehman Brothers collapsed):

The sandwich board-wearing doomsday crier in me tends to think that there will likely be a recession sometime in the next 18 months.

[...]

Let me first say that I’m probably in the minority opinion on this one (for what it’s worth), but the Cliff’s Notes version of this song and dance is that volatility in the housing and money markets will make the lives of people who live and die on credit or loans very difficult. That’s everyone from the private equity firm manager who needs to borrow tens of millions of dollars to buyout a company to the guy who uses one credit card to pay off another. It’ll be something of a credit reckoning that will force people and businesses to reassess just what kind of financial footing they stand on and I’m afraid that’s not something a lot of folks are ready to do and will likely result in a decrease in domestic consumer spending, a lot of which has been based on some form of borrowing of late.

Most people would say that any expectations of a recession are indicative of a Malthusian pessimism, that the market will “correct” itself soon enough. They could be right. But there hasn’t been a recession since the early 1990s (some people don’t count the economic discord that followed the dot com fizzle and 9/11 as a “real” recession) and there are those who would argue that we’re due.

The reason the “we’re due” line of thinking strikes me as a little more substantial than it may seem at first is that for about 20 years now the financial services sector has been developing or increasingly utilizing new institutions and methods that have made a lot of money for a lot of people. Some of these methods, like sub-prime loans, have turned out to be not as stable as they probably looked on paper not long ago – and I’d be willing to wager that there are a few other schemes out there that we just haven’t heard of yet that will suffer a similar fate.

You Know What Could Really Save the GOP Right About Now? Taking a Valiant and Aggressive Stance on a Total Non-Issue (or, Wither Good Faith?)

From Matt Yglasias, on Nov. 8th:

Am I the only one who’s confused by all this conservative organizing against the re-imposition of the “fairness doctrine” on talk radio? I understand why they oppose that move, but why are they putting so much energy into blocking something that nobody is trying to do. A Fairness Act bill was submitted in the House in 2005, but it only 16 cosponsors. No such bill was submitted in the last conference. Barack Obama opposes reintroducing the Fairness Act. And speaking as a paid-up member of the vast left-wing conspiracy, nobody on our side is getting any marching orders about this.

Keeping this in mind, let's deconstruct how a right wing talking point bounces around the echo chamber which is the Cheddarsphere:

This morning, Patrick McIlheran's column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel focused on a matter of life and death: the fairness doctrine. McIlheran columns generally find their roots in essays and/or articles published by elite East Coast conservative publications (like NRO or the Weekly Standard) several weeks prior to his own spin. Today's is no different. He cites Brian C. Anderson, an editor at the wonderful conservative periodical published by the Manhattan Institute, City Journal:

Obama, nominally, has forsworn the old Fairness Doctrine, in which any broadcast opinion could be permitted only with equal time for opposing views. Other Democrats haven't. "This has sort of been circulating at the top levels of the party for some time," said Brian C. Anderson, editor of City Journal and co-author of a new book, "A Manifesto for Media Freedom." Top congressional Democrats have favored such rules. If they pass them, would Obama veto? Anderson thinks not.

I don't know how Anderson came to McIlheran's attention, but Anderson did author an op-ed in the New York Post regarding on the Fairness Doctrine on Oct. 20th. Anderson's own words aren't all that much different as they are presented through McIlheran:

Yes, the Obama campaign said some months back that the candidate doesn't seek to re-impose this regulation, which, until Ronald Reagan's FCC phased it out in the 1980s, required TV and radio broadcasters to give balanced airtime to opposing viewpoints or face steep fines or even loss of license. But most Democrats - including party elders Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry and Al Gore - strongly support the idea of mandating "fairness."

Would a President Obama veto a new Fairness Doctrine if Congress enacted one? It's doubtful.

(If this sounds familiar its because its essentially the exact same logical formation of the paragraph cited above in McIlheran's column.)

Now here's what I find astonishing: although both Anderson and McIlheran concede that Barack Obama is publicly on the record as not supporting the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, both author's simply refuse to take him at his word.

Here's the policy position as it was outlined in January in Broadcasting and Cable:

"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday.

"He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added.

That's about as clear a policy position as anyone is every going to get from someone working in Washington. Do you support X? No. End of story.

But, of course, it's not the end of the story -- not so far as Anderson and McIlheran are concerned. Instead of just accepting Obama's position -- a position both gentlemen agree with -- both men seem the astonishing: absent any evidence to back up their claim -- and contrary to the very official statement released by the campaign, they promote the idea that Obama does, in fact, support the fairness doctrine.

This breach of good faith argumentation genuinely makes my head ache.

Where are the secret memos advising legislators to unleash the Fairness Doctrine bills in the next congress? What about the discretely recorded speeches at fund-raisers with Obama telling liberal contributors that the first thing he's going to do is shut down Rush Limbaugh and the rest of his ilk? Were are the college classmates who remember Obama arguing passionately in his Intro to Comm Law class for the reinstatement of the Doctrine?

Anderson's article, which McIlheran merely appropriates, offers absolutely no evidence to support his claim that Obama actually support the Fairness doctrine. Instead, Anderson glosses over what the broadcasting industry would look like if it were reinstated. No substance, but plenty of tangentially related speculation.

Absent any empirical evidence to the contrary, the only thing we have to go on is Obama's word, which neither Anderson nor McIlheran seem satisfied with, which might strike some as odd since Obama's position is also Anderson and McIlerhan's position!

I think we all know why this is the case: it's better to be on the offensive -- and to smite one's enemies -- than to expend valuable column inches on defending, justifying, or admonishing one's colleagues with regards to the phenomenal failure the party and ideology has been during the last eight years.

That would take a degree of intellectual courage that McIlheran frankly doesn't have the balls for.

Those are the first two layers of this echo. The third comes via Charlie Sykes, who has a vested interest in both following any and every blips on the Fairness Doctrine radar. Sykes doesn't add a goddamn thing to the conversation -- because, God forbid, he should do something on his blog other than just cut and paste another author's material -- but he does pass on the story to folks like Mary Eden who are now discussing the Fairness Doctrine in her own terms:

I find this murmuring about reenacting some incarnation of the Fairness Doctrine and creating advisory boards to sit in judgment to determine what should or should not be allowed on the air to be truly alarming. Putting such policies in place would clearly be an affront to civil liberties.

There are no murmurs "about reenacting some incarnation of the Fairness Doctrine and creating advisory boards" -- this is simply speculation by people who don't support the Doctrine to begin with. Again, let's go back to Obama's position on the FD:

"Sen. Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters," press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to B&C late Wednesday.

"He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible," Ortiz added.

I don't see a goddamn thing about advisory boards or incarnations or any of the nonsense Mary's trying to pass off. It's simply not there, which is perhaps to be expected from such a knee-jerk ideologue.

(Really, you're going to criticize the guy for not repealing the Bush tax cuts immediately? Is it no longer opportune to call the guy a socialist any more? Now he was just lying about being a socialist? Run with that one, Mary -- by all means. I'm sure it will go over real well ...)

There are dozens of more important things to worry about at this moment: the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- hell, piracy in Somalia is an order magnitude of more importance than the Fairness Doctrine in my book. It's an anachronism that has no prayer of seeing the light of legislative day ever again -- and, if by some freak occurrence it somehow did, some legislator would be smart enough to tie net neutrality to any proposed legislation thus making it a package that neither the left nor the right would want to touch.

So, please Mssrs. Sykes, McIlheran, Anderson and Ms. Eden -- by all means, zealously fight for a topic most people don't care all that much about -- the adults will take care of the real problems.

Palin '12 !!!

Good.

Sweet.

Christ.

Note to Wisconsin Bloggers: Please do be More Original with Your Content

This does not count as adding to the substance of a previous blogger's point.

It's not plagiarism, but it's certainly closer to it than original content.

Right from the Right, as posted at 10:17 a.m. on Nov. 20th:


Which looks an awful lot like, this post from Philip Klein at the American Spectator's blog posted at 5:44 p.m. on No. 19th:


That will be all.

Made in Wausau

I have only two words to describe the below: fucking awesome!

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Wausau, Wis., company have come up with a 37-inch, bullet and bomb-proof Humvee tire based on a polymeric web so cool looking there's no need for hub caps.

Resilient Technologies and Wisconsin-Madison's Polymer Engineering Center are creating a "non-pneumatic tire" (no air required) that will support the weight of add-on armor, survive an IED attack, and still make a 50 mph getaway. It's basically a round honeycomb wrapped with a thick, black tread.

Wallace, Sykes and a Whole Bunch of Stuff about the Talk Radio Meta-Narrative in Wisconsin

Rob Mentzer is chiming in on the lastest "most egregious assault on talk radio's First Amendment rights this side of the Fairness Doctrine" (or whatever the talking points are ... talk radio's never been accused of choosing the measured and considerate reportage scalpel when the hyperbole cudgel was also lying next to the operating table) by doing the only sensible thing one can do in these circumstances: outsource his response to David Foster Wallace.

Dan Shelley's article in Milwaukee Magazine is serviceable, but wowless. The big picture revelation in the piece -- that Charlie Sykes is a talented prick -- should be derived by any listener who sacrifices a half hour of his life listening to the radio show. Mentzer is entirely correct about about the article suffering from a lack of reporting, but personally, my biggest critique with Shelley's expose is that it's largely about Dan Shelley.

(Anyone interested in seeing how the insider tell-all is really done, get thee once more to the pages of the Atlantic, this time to Matthew Scully's -- the GOP's best speech-writer and former guest on Tony Palmeri's radio show-- amazing "Present at the Creation," which is a clinic on dirt-dishing).

Not that Shelley isn't providing readers with an interesting insight into one of the three faces if Charlie Sykes.

Sykes operates on three platforms. On the radio he's a populist enemy of the media and liberal "elites" -- your classic right-wing blowhard. On television, however, Sykes plays the more moderate role of a mediator facilitating animated, yet civil, discourse on local issues. Then there are his print pieces at places like the WPRI or Townhall.com or the American Thinker, which tend to reek of an author who very desperately wants a place in the pantheon of the Conservative Commentariat -- or, to put it another way, it's the "intellectual elite" side of Sykes he so loves to rail against on air.

This last point is somewhat discernible on his blog at WTMJ -- but let's face it, Sykes Writes isn't so much of a blog as it is an invitation to read over Charlie's shoulder as he eats breakfast. It's short on original content and long on quoting other authors. The generous way of looking at Sykes' blog is that it serves as little more than a supplement to and promotional tool for the radio show. I prefer to think of it as a daily BFF collage to to Sykes' ego confidence in his own ideology.

There's nothing wrong with Sykes wearing a different hat according to what audience he is speaking to. Personally, I genuinely don't find anything wrong with someone who bashes the "elites" on the radio while simultaneously holding the title of "Fellow" at the WPRI -- one may even praise his versatility ... I just think it's piss poor brand management and counterproductive in terms of vertical integration. If you're going to be a fire-breathing, red meat-eating conservative populist blowhard, be one on every platform you operate on and not just the one that allows you the liberty generating canned applause at the push of a sound board's button.

The most interesting thing about Shelley's piece in Milwaukee Magazine was could be considered his loose prediction of how Sykes would respond to the article:

This brings us to perhaps the most ironic thing about most talk show hosts. Though they may savage politicians and others they oppose, they fear criticism or critiques of any kind. They can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

Sykes blog post on the article is a frenzied and clearly rushed piece that would have been far more succinct if he would have just wrote "Naa-ah! It didn't happy like that! You're a poopy pants!" Instead Sykes degrades himself by writing such luminous sentences as

What a load of crappy crap crap.

I'll give Sykes the benefit of the doubt and assume he's deploying some ironic rhetoric in this case. The sad thing is, however, that the argument can be made that this line was written with all the sincerity of a toddler who believes he has been wronged in a manner that he simply doesn't know is negligible.

Instead of such gross displays of infantilism Skykes should have done as Mentzer did and take a lesson in responding to public criticism from ... David Foster Wallace.

Two months after "Host" was initially published in the Atlantic, John Ziegler, the subject of DFW's piece, published a letter that offered faint praise and a critique of both "Host" and DFW's refusal to do an interview for air (not to mention some shameless self-promotion of his own radio show). The editor's reply was simple, brief and to the point:

Wallace has turned down a dozen requests to do radio interviews. He works in print.

It's not exactly an excuse Sykes can use given that he works in many media, but there is a larger wisdom to this reply: let it go. Wallace was no doubt pilloried on the air by any number of radio talkers who found offense at the piece, but there's nothing further on the matter to be found from DFW. He simply let it go.

"Host" is an amazing essay -- as is pretty much everything Wallace wrote -- but "Host" both captures the essence of its protagonist subject while using using John Ziegler as a stand-in for regional talk radio hosts across the country. It's not a terrible stretch to see Ziegler and Sykes essentially occupying the same astral plane. They may have very different backgrounds, but they're both on-air hotheads who seem doomed to haunt the smaller market limbos on the AM dial like the ghost of Hamlet's father (who in this analogy can't seem to reach the Elysian Fields of national syndication).

I got to listen to DFW do a book reading when "Consider the Lobster," the collection of essays which includes "Host," was published. During the Q & A session, someone in the audience asked a great question and one that I had been dying to know the answer to after reading "Host" when it originally appeared in the Atlantic: what did he, David Foster Wallace, personally think about Ziegler? It's not quite evident in DFW's article -- largely because the author does an enchanting job being as objective as humanly possible and even praising Ziegler at times for his various skills as a broadcaster.

Wallace grinned at the question and started weighing aloud Ziegler's virtues and frailties, going back and forth between pros and cons for a minute or two before finally abandoning his response to render a final judgment: if I recall correctly, I believe the phrase "a pretty detestable human being" were the final words he used before moving on to the next question from the audience.

I Do Not Need Your Praise ... (Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge)

Allow me to translate Sean Hackbarth:

Please, I'm begging you to nominate my blog for a Webbie!

White Pride Vince

For some unintentionally hilarious blogging, stop by The Conservative, an absolutely masterpiece of blind paranoia. Vince, the proprietor of said blog genuinely believes Barack Obama is the Antichrist (and has some, to be kind, less than profound things to say about race in America).

Here's a highlight from White Pride Vince's ouvre:

I believe Obama is God's chosen vessel to bring about the destruction of America ... We cannot survive an Obama presidency. I believe he is the predecessor to the Anti-Christ.

White Pride Vince should get together with Peter "the Hit Man" DiGaudio for some kind of collaborative project that advances the cause of online douchebaggery in Wisconsin. This way their collective efforts won't overlap and readers can do some good old fashioned one-stop-shopping for senseless commentary.

Once is a Fluke, Twice is a Trend ...

I can see why folks were a wee bit pissed at the Gov. Palin-related backbiting, but I'm sure those same folks can kinda understand where it was coming from: political operatives trying to salvage their professional reputations by drawing the long knives, etc.

In other words, it's easy to dismiss all the criticism over her involvement in McCain's campaign as just the inevitable scapegoating -- but when you read something like this, you really have to start to wonder just how much ill-will Palin is generating among her colleagues:

Some Republican governors tell CNN they were not particularly happy with the way the Republican Governors Association press conference was executed Thursday, saying that they agreed to go as a show of GOP governors’ unity — but they ended up feeling like silent Palin supporters, since it was clearly a press conference called for her.

The GOP governors spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity.

One called it awkward: “I’m sure you could see it on some of our faces.”

Another Republican governor eyeing a presidential run in 2012 told CNN the event was “odd” and “weird,” and said it “unfortunately sent a message that she was the de facto leader of the party."

There has been palpable tension among some GOP governors gathered in Miami that Palin has been sucking up all the media oxygen.

I'm sure some "working class Republicans" -- we're looking at you, Kathy Carpenter -- who see Palin as some sort of future leader of the GOP will find yet more excuses for her, but let's all please come to grips with what's going on here: these are not disgruntled staffers -- these are sitting Governors -- and while any number of them have motive to trash Palin in the press to advance their own national office interests, it's still pretty embarrassing that they have been given such an ample opportunity to do so so quickly after the election.

That being said, we'd like to take this opportunity to whole-heartedly endorse Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be the Republican nomination for the Presidency in the year 2012.

Are You Not Entertained?

Is there nothing Google can't do?

The New Moon Cafe

Via Flickr.

The Old Brooklyn Fire House

Via Flickr.

Downtown Alley

Via Flickr.

St. Vincent's Church

Via Flickr.

Washington Avenue

Via Flickr.

Lighthouse

Via Flickr.

The Paine Art Center

Via Flickr.

The Old Bank Building

Via Flickr.

The Promise Ring