My Blog

LINCOLN, LINCOLN, YOU'VE BEEN THINKIN'

Lincoln Chafee, working out his post-election blues, wonders whether he'll stay a Republican or not.

Lincoln, it really is a Big Tent party, we welcome all sorts of people, but maybe someone should make clear to you that we don't need you now. You see, when you held a Senatorial seat, you controlled something that was of value to us, and if you had decided to change parties when yours was taken over by radical authoritarian right-wingers, it would have helped us tremendously, and been a boon to the country as well. But, no, instead you decided to stay on with the Republicans, obstensibly so that you could continue to bring pork into your state (never mind that the fact that you wouldn't be able to bring home the bacon as Democrat was a sign of how corrupt and malign the Republican governance of the Senate was), and became a figure without influence in a Congress dominated by neanderthals from your party. You made a stupid, short-sighted choice, despite my practically begging you to come over from the Dark Side (and here, and here, and here, and here), and you lost your seat because of it.

So, if you should decide to join us now, we welcome you, but don't expect to be anything important -- maybe you can run errands or get coffee or something, as you start the long hard slog back up the hierarchy.

P.S. Note to Harry Reid: Given what happened to Chafee, and noting that Susan Collins of Maine is up for re-election in 2008, would it not be a good idea, now that we have something to offer her, to go to work on her to get her to crossover? Wouldn't that be cheaper than mounting an expensive campaign to beat her?

But it's gotta be done soon to give people time to get used to the change.

KEELING: SEND A MESSAGE TO REID

Roger Keeling writes:

Did you see this posting at Glenn Greenwald?

Get over and read it. And then, I think the blogs should act. We need to send out a signal to Reid and other Democratic Senators -- the ones already in the Senate, not the new crop who won't be sworn in until January -- that it's time act already.

Seems that George Bush has signaled that he desperately wants a malodorous piece of crap that Congress almost passed before the election, "The Terrorist Surveillance Act," sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson, passed ASAP. Of course he does: it will give him and all his cronies a get-out-of-jail-free card by conferring legality on his criminal acts. Of course, even if passed, the Act could be declared unconstitutional. But it would be far better just to deep-six this piece of filth in the first place.

And -- lookie, lookie! -- no elections for two full years. So anything the Democrats do right now will be long forgotten by everybody except the GOP itself.

What they need to do is simple: make it well known that if the GOP dares to bring that cruddy bill up, it WILL be filibustered. As long as necessary. Given that any session of Congress convening now is doomed to be a short one anyhow, this would not be a very difficult filibuster to carry off. Just the prospect of screwing up everybody's Christmas should probably be quite enough to make the GOPers back down. (Do I need to point out, however, that they should be eagle-eyed, on the lookout for any sleazy tricks like convening the Senate at 3 a.m. and ram-rodding the bill through before any Democrats even know what's going on?)

Actually, it might be possible to get some of the surviving "moderate" Republicans to sign on in opposition to this thing. Collins and the like might see the wisdom in siding with the Democrats on something like this. Surely there are some inducements that Reid could offer that would more than offset any annoyance from a lame duck Bush Administration.

Anyhow, it may well be that Reid and other "minority" Senate leaders have already decided that this piece of crap should not be passed, and have made up their minds to do something about it. But we don't really KNOW that. So maybe now would be a good time for the netroots to take an interest and start publicizing the issue.

Just a thought.

KEELING: DO SOMETHING ABOUT GOP CHEATING

Roger Keeling:

I would like to direct your attention to a nice posting at TAPPED.

I think this is important stuff. But I also think that it's important for Democrats to do a LOT more than what Perlstein recommends here. They need to really put their minds to this:: assemble a blue-ribbon committee of the left's best strategists and law enforcement-type people, advertising folks, etc., and really come up with a RESPONSE that will blow the Republicans out of the water next election when they try to pull this flim-flam.

It should start with a MULTI-YEAR educational campaign. For example, every single minority voter in the United States -- every last one! -- ought to be reached several times, not just once, with information about these sleazy Republican tricks. Every black church, for example, should be given educational materials for the preacher to relay to the faithful (you don't need to name the Party even, nor talk about it in any partisan way. This is basic civics: voting and every citizen's right to do so). More openly partisan could be direct mailings, interviews in the minority press and radio, etc. They should repeatedly reach people with the messages during the two years prior to the election, and then again intensively in the month or two before the actual elections.

But of course, the problems go well beyond the minority community, and the solutions should go beyond that community as well. We should be doing a lot of broad targeting, based on likely states and districts as much as on particular sub-categories of voters. We may need our new Democratic majority in Congress to think about passing some tough laws that will enable law enforcement to ferret this stuff out and really throw the book at the people who engage in it. That might once in awhile catch up an imbecile Democrat, but mostly it'll catch scads of criminally-minded Republicans. After all, what Perlstein said about this kind of filth being woven right into the DNA of the Republican Party is absolutely true; and nothing is going to get it out except a LOT of them going to prison, and LOT of bad publicity for the stinkin' racketeering enterprise that IS their political party.

So I agree with him about the Democrats having ads up a week before the election. I think I already said as much in my last posting on this topic. But it should go far beyond what he suggests. Democrats should plan -- well in advance -- for MAJOR ad buys (radio and TV as well as print) in all the places where this sort of thing has happened a lot, and also in any really tight races that subsequently develop. (How do you stop the kind of degeneracy that came from Laura Ingraham? I don't know ... but if there is ANY way to legally punish her, e.g., lawsuits, boycotts, whatever, then Democrats ought to be doing it.)

Bottom line, just as I said a few days ago: we should never again be caught flat-footed like we've repeatedly been. The best defense is a good offense, and that's what we need: to slam them -- hard -- before they can once again dust off the dirty tricks and start screwing us once again.

The suppression techniques the Republicans use can only be effective when the electorate is effectively divided and, despite my earlier prediction and the result of the election, that is still pretty much the case in enough of the country that we can't be assured of our elections representing the true will of the people unless the cheating is dealt with. This should be a high priority for the Democratic Congress, but I'm also afraid that real action won't happen until we once again have control of the Executive and can insure fair enforcement of the laws. So, in the meantime, we really must take all the defensive actions we can and, as Roger says, also go on the offense with pre-emptive moves.

(3089/898) CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED (2)

262) Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible. This competition is the major selective force in the memosphere, and, just as in the biosphere, the challenge has been met with great ingenuity. For instance, whatever virtues (from our perspective) the following memes have, they have in common the property of having phenotypic expressions that tend to make their own replication more likely by disabling or preempting the environmental forces that would tend to extinguish them: the meme forfaith, which discourages the exercise of the sort of critical judgment that might decide that the idea of faith was, all things considered a dangerous idea; the meme for tolerance or free speech; the meme of including in a chain letter a warning about the terrible fates of those who have broken the chain in the past; the conspiracy theory meme, which has a built-in response to the objection that there is no good evidence of a conspiracy: "Of course not - that's how powerful the conspiracy is!" Some of these memes are "good" perhaps and others "bad"; what they have in common is a phenotypic effect that systematically tends to disable the selective forces arrayed against them. Other things being equal, population memetics predicts that conspiracy theory memes will persist quite independently of their truth, and the meme for faith is apt to secure its own survival, and that of the religious memes that ride piggyback on it, in even the most rationalistic environments. Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes best when it is outnumbered by rationalistic memes; in an environment with few skeptics, the meme for faith tends to fade from disuse.

Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained (1991)

263) As Akins observes, it is not the point of our sensory systems that they should detect "basic" or "natural" properties of the environment, but that they should serve our "narcissistic" purposes in staying alive; nature doesn't build epistemic engines.

Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained (1991)
citing Kathleen Akins
"On Piranhas, Narcissism and Mental Representations: 
An Essay on Intentionality and Naturalism" (1989)

264) In a Thumbnail Sketch here is [the Multiple Drafts theory of consciousness] so far:

There is no single, definitive "stream of consciousness," because there is no central Headquarters, no Cartesian Theatre where "it all comes together" for the perusal of a Central Meaner. Instead of such a single stream (however wide), there are multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go. Most of these fragmentary drafts of "narrative" play short-lived roles in the modulation of current activity but some get promoted to further functional roles, in swift succession, by the activity of a virtual machine in the brain. The seriality of this machine (its "von Neumannesque" character) is not a "hard-wired" design feature, but rather the upshot of a succession of coalitions of these specialists.

The basic specialists are part of our animal heritage. They were not developed to perform peculiarly human actions, such as reading and writing, but ducking, predator-avoiding, face-recognizing, grasping, throwing, berry-picking, and other essential tasks. They are often opportunistically enlisted in new roles, for which their talents may more or less suit them. The result is not bedlam only because the trends that are imposed on all this activity are themselves part of the design. Some of this design is innate, and is shared with other animals. But it is augmented, and sometimes even overwhelmed in importance, by microhabits of thought that are developed in the individual, partly idiosyncratic results of self-exploration and partly the predesigned gifts of culture. Thousands of memes, mostly borne by language, but also by wordless "images" and other data structures, take up residence in an individual brain, shaping its tendencies and thereby turning it into a mind.

Daniel C. Dennett
Consciousness Explained (1991)

HELP ME DECIDE...

...because I'm having a little difficulty with this: Is James Carville an idiot or anasshole? Or maybe both?

I mean, what kind of idiot talks about canning your master strategist immediately after he's helped to win you a major victory that no one really thought it was possible to win? And what sort of asshole leaks strategic information about your party's candidate to the other side?

I never could understand how Carville and Matalin could be married to each other and still be trusted by their clients -- now it looks like we know that we were the only ones who should have been worried.

But, more fundamentally, you don't can the general after he wins the battle, not if you're really interested in winning the war. And it doesn't really matter if he was the sole reason for the win, or merely a contributory reason, or didn't have anything to do with it at all -- when the line-up wins, don't screw around with the line-up! Life is too complex, and causality too difficult to establish conclusively that you don't make changes to a winning team unless there's a damn good reason to do so. I'm not thrilled about Rahm Emmanuel, but I'm not running around trying to dethrone him either -- and neither are people who matter (unlike me).

What is there about very basic facts of life like these that Carville doesn't understand?

Whoever is behind this totally stupid notion of dumping Dean, whoever is using Carville as their stalking horse, all I can say is s.t.f.u. and go about doing your damn jobs. (Are these people braindead, or is there something in the water in DC that sucks all the sense out of people's minds?)

[Edited for language.]


Update: Roger Keeling sent this around before he had read my post above:

I used to have enormous respect and regard for James Carville. But he married into the enemy camp, and gradually drifted away into insignificance -- it seemed an awful loss, actually. But now it's even worse. Here's why:

The Democrats, as you know, just won an enormous victory, fueled in no small part by the incredible performance of Dr. Howard Dean. Dean raised $51 million last year,about 20% more than the last non-presidential election cycle. He re-established the Party in states -- Deep Red states -- where for all practical purposes the Democratic Party no longer existed. For example, in some places Democratic headquarters offices were literally kept locked up for most of each year. There were NO organizers or field operatives in Indiana, for example. NONE. In some states, the state-level Democratic Party was actually bankrupt.

He bailed them out, and put field directors and communications experts into everystate. He rebuilt the entire National Democratic Party computerized membership and donor lists (an $8 million project by itself), something the GOP had done years ago. He listened to the netroots, and often put money where they -- taken together -- recommended that it go. He did all of this and much more, and his 50-state strategy paid off big-time.

So how do the old hands of the Democratic Party -- including James Carville -- repay all of this? Why, by talking about dumping Dean and replacing him with (are you ready?) the just-defeated Harold Ford of Tennessee. Not taking away anything from Ford, but the idea of him replacing Howard Dean is ludicrous.

Yet that was Carville's suggestion. Carville has signed on with the old-line guys, the DC-insiders, the ranks and rows of consultants who LOST year after year and yet, somehow, never lost their jobs.

I'm disgusted. Carville used to be a tough campaigner, and a plain-speaking breath of fresh air. Now he's just another member of the permanent Washington political class, blowing smoke out his ass. A pity, a profound pity!

NOW THE FACTS COME OUT?

I don't want to seem paranoid, but I was listening to my local all-news radio station this afternoon (WINS), when I heard a business report about a study that showed that companies which contribute more to political campaigns do better afterwards. That sounded reasonable -- by which I mean, of course, not that it's the way things shouldbe, but rather it seems like an accurate reflection of the way things are. Companies that give money to help win elections have, for better or worse, more influence, entree, an ear to listen to their point of view. It's probably usually not a specific quid pro quo(although with the very corrupt Republicans it often seems to have been), just the ability to out across what they want.

But here's the thing: in 12 years of Republican dominattion of Congress, I don't recall hearing a similar report -- why is it that I hear it now, when a Democratic Congress has just been elected?

And, of course, the report didn't say anything about the fact that the companies which give the most are essentially the same for both parties, except that the Republicans get more.

Gretelies Tasche

Zum Mitmachen :-)

*** Bitte nutzt diese Anleitung nur für private Zwecke - DANKE :-) ***

Wenn Du eine Tasche nach dieser Anleitung nähst und sie dann vielleicht in deinem Blog oder anderswo zeigst, würde ich mich über einen Hinweis, woher die Inspiration stammt, sehr freuen! 

*** NO COMMERCIAL USE, PLEASE *** 

Wegen der Nachfragen, wie ich diese Beuteltaschen nähe, und ich sowieso beim letzten Taschennähen ein paar Bilder für jemand Liebes gemacht habe, zeige ich es hier auch noch mal. Ihren Ursprung hat diese Tasche nach eigenem Entwurf HIER, als sich meine Freundin Ute im Herbst 2006 eine neue Tasche für ihren Urlaub gewünscht hat.

Hier erst mal die Schnitteile, die Größe kann man natürlich beliebig abändern, oder auch einfach mal mit den Proportionen spielen. Dies sind jetzt die Maße, mit denen ich gerade arbeite, als Einkaufsbeutel optimal, die Öffnung oben hat die Weite der üblichen Einkaufsbeutel, aber unten viiiieeel mehr Platz :-)

Das Beutelteil wird 2 x für die Außentasche und 2 x aus Futterstoff ausgeschnitten, unten schön dolle abrunden, damit es richtig beutelig wird. Der obere Taschenstreifen im Stoffbruch 1 x Außenstoff - 1 x Futterstoff.

Möchte man lange Träger für "über die Schulter", schneidet man den oberen Taschenstreifen 2 mal in seiner kompletten Länge minus 3 - 4 cm aus Außenstoff zu. Für normale Henkel, wie ein Einkaufsbeutel, den Taschenstreifen in kompletter Länge ausschneiden und in zwei Teile schneiden.



Den oberen Taschenstreifen im Stoffbruch ausschneiden und den Stoffbruch bügeln, als Markierung.



Die Beutelteile auf die Länge des gefalteten Streifens einkräuseln, dabei am Beutelteil eine zusätzliche Nahtzugabe lassen. (Maße für's Einkräuseln stehen oben)


Dann die beiden fertig gekräuselten Beutelteile rechts auf rechts etwa 20 cm schließen.

Dann rechts auf rechts den oberen Taschenstreifen an das Beutelteil nähen, dabei ist der gebügelte Stoffbruch die Markierung um die Seitennaht zu treffen :-)


Einmal von rechts absteppen.

Dann den Beutel rechts auf rechts ganz schließen, dabei an der offenen Seite des oberen Taschenstreifens beginnen. Das Ganze dann von rechts einmal absteppen. Das Futter wird genauso genäht.

Die Henkel wie Schrägband falten, bügeln und nähen.


Die Henkel rechts auf rechts auf die Tasche nähen (bei langen Henkeln 7 - 8 cm Abstand vom Rand, bei kurzen Henkeln 8 - 9 cm vom Rand). Dabei die Henkel etwas überstehen lassen, für die Haltbarkeit (kann man am Ende noch mit einem Kreuz fixieren, mach ich aber auch nicht)

Dann Futtertasche und Außentasche rechts auf rechts ineinander stecken, dabei trifft die Naht des oberen Taschenstreifens beim Futter auf den gebügelten Stoffbruch der oberen Außentasche. Oh ja, klingt kompliziert, es soll einfach nur so sein, dass man einmal die Nahtzugabe des Futters an der einen Seite und die Nahtzugabe der Außentasche auf der anderen Seite hat. Dann ist das nicht so ein Geknubbel, wenn man am Ende von außen absteppt.

Die ineinandergesteckten Teile zusammennähen, dabei zwischen den Henkeln eine Öffnung zum Wenden lassen. Tasche dann wenden, Kanten schön ausbügeln und oben herum einmal absteppen und dabei die Wendeöffnung schließen. Dabei darauf achten, dass die Henkel rechtwinklig zur Tasche sind.



Und fertig!


Ob die Tasche nun zwei Henkel hat, wie die gepunktete oben von 2008 oder wie diese hier von 2006 mit einem langen Träger quer über der Schulter zu tragen, bleibt euch überlassen. Allerdings würde ich diese dann etwas kleiner gestalten.


Bei diesem Post ist es durchaus erlaubt, die Bilder für private Zwecke zu speichern!

Und noch was für die "Schlaukacker" die hier vorbeikommen:

Ein letztes Mal werde ich diese ganze Geschichte noch kommentieren:

In meiner Anleitung gibt es einen Link zu der ursprünglichen Tasche die ich mal genäht habe, aus der dann die "Gretelies"-Tasche wurde. Diese Tasche habe ich genäht, lange bevor es den Schnitt von Amy B. gab und auch bevor es DIE Taschen bei H+M gab. Der Name "Gretelies-Tasche" stammt NICHT von mir. Das war wohl einfach ein Selbstläufer.

Sicher ist es möglich, dass andere solche oder ähnliche Taschen schon früher genäht haben. Ich habe lediglich auf Nachfragen reagiert und den Schnitt meiner Version mit Anleitung kostenlos auf meinem Blog zur Verfügung gestellt.

Außerdem habe ich darum gebeten, Taschen, die nach meiner Anleitung genäht werden, nicht zu verkaufen. Nichts anderes. Wenn sich das jemand selber zusammenbastelt, ist mir das völlig egal. Ich habe da auf Ehrlichkeit und Anstand gesetzt. Aber im Ernst, gerade die letzte Zeit hat mich gelehrt, dass Ehrlichkeit und Anstand im Netz eher rar sind.

Ich habe schon öfter diese "Taschen-Diskussionen" im Netz verfolgt, die mir das eine oder andere Mal echt die Tränen in die Augen getrieben haben. Ich habe dann überlegt, die Anleitung rauszunehmen, damit dieses wirklich leidige Thema endlich mal ein Ende hat. Aber ganz ehrlich? Ich freu mich auch, wenn z. B. jemand mit meiner Anleitung seine erste Tasche genäht hat und sich total darüber freut.

So, und ich schwöre, das war das letzte Mal, dass ich dazu etwas gesagt habe ... ich hänge mir hier einen Zettel über meinen Rechner, damit ich DAS NICHT VERGESSE!!!!!!

Trotzdem finde ich es immer noch geschmacklos und völlig daneben, mit etwas Geld verdienen zu wollen, was es schon lange anderswo kostenlos gibt.

Danke für's Lesen und einen schönen Abend für alle.

So, wer's bis hier geschafft hat, ist herzlich eingeladen in den Gretelies-Flickr-Pool. Meldet euch doch an, wenn ihr dort noch kein Account habt, und stellt eure Gretelies-Taschen vor. Wir sind gespannt auf eure Varianten :-)

* gretelies bag pattern *

WHAT THE MEDIA SHOULD DO

Atrios:

The responsible media, or at least those in the media who like to think of themselves as responsible, can't control talk radio and Drudge and Fox, but they can stop taking their cues from them and they can stop legitimizing them by running around going on their shows or having them on as guests. They can, if they want to, close off the puke funnel. They can, if they want to, take responsibility for what they choose to report on instead pretending they're just passive conduits for all this crap.

And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt, which, for me anyway, is pretty damned strained at this point, after years of their irresponsible behavior.

If they are what they say they intend to be, non-partisan, unbiased and neutral, then they have got to begin to behave in that manner, instead of doing petty stuff like this.

A commenter on another thread (elsewhere) writes about

the continual drumbeat by the MSM of Right Wing propaganda. It is subtle...the way a headline is written, the slant of a story, the omission of tremendously important stories that would make the administration look bad. And the drumbeat is not recent.....it has droned on for years;

These aren't the fringe thoughts of a fanatic, they're the commonplace observations of everyone who isn't a wingnut or Republican shill who's observed the change in the mainstream media in the past couple of decades.

The steps Atrios talks about aren't structurally, fiscally, technically or journalistically untenable, they're very doable and should be desireable -- it just takes the will to change, which the media, as a whole, has shown not an inkling of.

A CLOWN FOR A CLOWN

Edward I. Koch, 
former Mayor of New York City

This afternoon I heard a radio ad made by New York City's resident political clown, our ex-Mayor Ed "How'm I Doin'?" Koch, supporting the candidacy of Congressman Peter King on Long Island. Koch, who is (or was, at one time) a liberal Democrat (now he's a member of the "Look At Me" Party) endorsed the conservative Republican Party hack in return for two free 47th row tickets to an Islanders game, a low-sodium box lunch and three day's supply of red-dyed pistachio nuts.

A JOKE

First Ed Koch, now here's another joke -- this one's making the rounds:

Five surgeons from big cities are discussing who are the best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon, from New York, says, "I like to see accountants on my operating table, because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered."

The second, from Chicago , responds, "Yeah, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is color coded."

The third surgeon, from Dallas , says, "No, I really think librarians are the best, everything inside them is in alphabetical order."

The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles chimes in: "You know, I like construction workers...those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over."

But the fifth surgeon, from Washington, DC shut them all up when he observed: "You're all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There's no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable."

Let's hope we win anyway -- we can try doing some transplants later on.