digamma.net - notes

If you don’t want to know about Season 4 of America’s Most Incompetent Government Organization, stop reading now.

• Michelle proves herself the only competent employee of the entire United States government.
• Jack’s final phonecall should have been to Kim, not Palmer. I don’t care if Elisha Cuthbert was busy with her Cinemax work - he could have left her voicemail. This idea that Palmer and Jack would be BFF was okay at the end of the Season 3, but they didn’t follow it up.
• No consequences for all the unconstitutional torture. No real ending for my heroes, Chloe and Edgar. There were consequences for the blatant violation of Chinese sovereignty, sort of.
• After his traitorous ex died, Curtis never got a life outside of work, which is what the show is all about. They should have had him turn out to be Keith Palmer’s father. And then Keith could show up and throw him out of a window.
• What was the point of Fake Dick Cheney’s return? They could have stuck anyone in that role and it would have made as much sense. His past history with Palmer was irrelevant after the first episode.
• Carlos Bernard and Reiko Aylesworth are the best kissers on TV. Damn that was hot.
• FOX’s Season 5 promo: “On the first day he saved the President.” That’s false. He saved a candidate for one party’s nomination to the presidency. “On the second day he saved a city. On the third day he saved a country.” Fair enough. “On the fourth day, he saved the world.” Jigga WHO? At best, he saved a city. And that was by pure luck.
• Jon Cassar’s (and Rodney Charters’s and everyone else’s) visuals are so good, they make watching this show worthwhile. I know this season was horribly written. I know. When other shows start looking this good, I’ll stop watching. I’m sorry.

Yeah, I know there are reasons not to like the guy, but….

I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001.

I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

Reading that last paragraph doesn’t do it justice - go watch or listen. I was in tears by the end.

Matt Yglesias and Kevin Drum (an intro that will probably earn me a month of hysterical upbraiding from this guy) say that the whole issue of religion in the town square is one on which Democrats should compromise. And I totally agree. But I see one problem.

Neither cites data showing that a large majority of Democrats really cares about stuff to begin with. I’m inclined to think that zealous church-and-state separators are just another Ward Churchill - an unrepresentative minority that provides smear ammo for the other side. Most Democrats don’t, in my totally anecdotal view, lose sleep if the mayor of a small town sings “O Little Town of Bethlehem” at Christmas.

The real problem here is a much larger one - the Democrats’ overall failure to win the media game. Both parties have their morons, but the GOP manages to keep theirs considered a fringe while putting the Democrats’ embarassments front and center.

Via The Agitator, I see that the city of Denver is rounding up and killing registered pit bulls for the actions of a few that were bred to be killers.

My first reaction to the story was, “Shit, I’d like to see the government try to take my cat away to be slaughtered. Bring it.”

Cute, but I have an apartment, a car, and a career. A straight-up refusal to cooperate with government would threaten all of these things and more. Would I sacrifice my cat to avoid becoming an enemy of the state? I’m sad to say I probably would.

What I don’t want to think about is what else I’d do if the government demanded it.

Atrios, on the elimination of the odious broadcast flag regulation:

When the culture scolds say the Democrats should be standing up to “Hollywood,” it’s this kind of thing they should be talking about.

I’ve mentioned this paradox before, about how Democrats only want to go against Hollywood in illiberal ways.

Meanwhile, who stood up for freedom of speech this week against draconian intellectual property laws? You guessed it: the religious right.

The Family Movie Act is an interesting political case, because it creates a direct conflict between the two main motivations governing the GOP - Christian fundamentalism and crony capitalism. The fundies won this one, perhaps because the historic relationship between Hollywood and the Democrats puts the former at a disadvantage when the latter have no power.

Expect Hollywood to strike back and get in bed with the Republicans any minute now.