Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/06/18/stumping-for-a-smart-democrat/
I heard the first version of what is perceived to be President Bush’s re-election “stump speech” on the radio this morning and it goes something like this:
“The terrorists declared War on us, so we declared War on them back. Twice! In Afghanistan and in Iraq.”
“I inherited a recession, and already it is getting better. I cut taxes to make things even better!”
Unfortunately, I think many Americans will buy the simple logic that it makes sense to attack Muslim countries when Muslim wackos attack us. Be that as it may, Afghanistan is a neglected mess that is just begging to be brought up by a smart Democrat to haunt President Bush, and Iraq sounds like it is ready to stew and fester and get worse as it is neglected and left to underfunded and ignored efforts at reconstruction. I really hope the Iraqis can mostly pull it out of the fire themselves, but plenty are going to get angry, and cause increasingly photogenic scenes of violence starring American troops, and it will start to look like Vietnam, and proud Americans who might otherwise support war will become angry at the profiteering civilian good ol’ boy network responsible for the flag-draped coffins.
Which connects neatly to that “out of touch with reality” thing that licked Bush I: the economy, stupid! It is already getting better? I myself have left the dot-com wasteland to kick it in Middle America, and it sure doesn’t feel like things are getting “better” out here. Unemployment remains high, wages remain low, and back in the middle class, 401ks remain shriveled. Health care keeps getting worse, and the schools are chafing under more and more standards while their funding gets cut. Things are already getting better? Things are doing what they can not to burst apart at the seams!
There are plenty of us disposed to view the White House as filled with a pack of sanctimonious lunatics hell-bent on making as much personal gain as they can at the expense of our welfare and our liberty. The federal budget is loaded with silly pork-barrel programs that our children and grand-children get to pay for, and we don’t even get an economic bubble to enjoy in the process. A smart Democrat will point out how we alienate the world by rejecting global treaties like the Kyoto Protocol, the prohibition on landmines (OUR military needs something as barbaric as landmines?!) the Convention on the Rights of the Child. And then there’s all the international stuff we like to hold up because when it comes to controlling human populations we dare not let any of our federal money touch abortion … perhaps that is a wedge that can be driven between the lunatic fringe of the right and the more moderate, reasonable American who may find the thought of denying family planning aid to people in unimaginable poverty as even more abhorrent than the possibility that a Hindu might have an abortion.
A smart Democrat … well, maybe not a smart Democrat, so much, for Al Gore is a very intelligent person, but a savvy Democrat …
Here’s to wishful thinking! I just had to rant a little, you know, for the blood.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/06/11/amazoncom-feedback/
Your web site is becoming a useability nightmare, which is discouraging given that this has traditionally one of your core strengths.
I have a gift certificate. I try to buy something with it. I order a used item, I go through all this stuff, and it says NO YOU CAN’T BUY A USED ITEM WITH A GIFT CERTIFICATE. Why not? Hasn’t someone given you $10 to send to a third party?
Okay, so a few days later I want to see your price on color sidekick. You don’t have them. Pity. Ah, but I could afford a heavily-discounted hiptop carrier! Okay, let’s put that in.
And it says “your gift certificate wont cover it” which is interesting because the item is $8 and the GC is $10. How much IS shipping? It won’t tell me HOW MUCH my order costs, just that it needs a credit card, and submitting my credit card is the ONLY navigational option.
Okay … well, let’s do that, and there are items in my cart from WAY BACK, like the used item I tried to purchase the other day. The only option is to confirm my thirty dollar order. Where do I say no? There is what LOOKS LIKE a navigation bar on the top of the screen, but it doesn’t do anything, not even clicking on “Amazon.com” to start over.
So, I go in to my web browser and TYPE Amazon.com to get to the point where I can clear out my shopping cart to just the item I want, proceed to check-out, and you STILL want $3 shipping for a little piece of neoprene. After all this hassle? FORGET IT! I could stuff that thing in a padded envelope and smack an 80 cents stamp on it and send it USPS, but you can’t, because you’re designed to extort money out of your previously-loyal customers.
Please fix your user experience.
Thanks,
-danny
I try to be very laid-back about most things, but I guess I take customer service really personal now, huh? And it is all the more frustrating to be thwarted by Amazon.com because for a long time they distinguished themselves by being pretty clueful and user-friendly.
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/06/09/linux-will-dull-the-pain/
I decided to really really really clean out my e-mail inbox, purging anything I can. So I’m running across little ideas for things I should try and right about, and interesting links, and there is this wonderful post archived on Keith’s web site with this beautiful reflection from Anne:
From what I have observed from my male friends, though, this is exactly the climate required to learn Linux. Without a full and happy lovelife or distraction of soft lips and a reason to kiss them, there is enough room to grasp the intricacies and nuances of such a fine operating system.
It has already begun to happen. As I walk down the street I am not thinking of emptiness, kising, nathan or any other previous SO’s, I am thinking of penguins, rm -rf / and lilo.
I am already convinced that linux will dull the pain better than heroin.
I am reminded that in my youth, during times of family strife, it was suggested that one of the reasons I spent so much time playing with my computer was because it helped isolate me from the unpleasantries swirling around me. Being a geek was an anti-social reflex; I’ve always been such a nice boy, but for a long time I vented my Id on computer networks.
Since the layoffs and that wonderful little trip all over the world, I sense that frustration and a lot of the negative emotional energy is just not useful, so I tend to let it go. Every time I find things that upset me, I figure out a way to explain to myself why I shouldn’t be upset. Legitimate grievances with The Way Things Are are left as a big karmic to-do wall against which to I can formulate frustration in to little bits of positive action.
Or something. We’ll see how it goes.
You know, where computers used to be my escape from a troubling family situation, now it serves as a creative outlet for my surplus of time when I have the energy to interact and refine ideas, but I don’t know of an appropriate audience, so I work out in this little room here, and maybe if someone passes by and notices something and can provide feedback, that is all well and wonderful. But, I’m not waiting for them, because talking to the wall here is cathartic enough.
For the time being.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/06/08/iraqs-underpants-gnomes-step-two/
I am reading Salam Pax’s web log and he is whining about how bungling and inept the American administration is now that it has control of his country, and about how scarey it is that despite all their claims of preparedness to the contrary they haven’t a clue what they’re doing, as if they only said these things to justify their presence there, and I’m starting to think that Salam sounds awfully lot like an American.
Our entire nation went through what sounds like a state of “military administration” when it went into a Total War economy to fight World War II. The stories we get now, somewhat removed from the actual events, is that while our nation was organized for the noblest intentions, it was Hell to live through this well-intentioned bureacracy on the ground. We went through it, though, because defeating fascism and Japanese imperialism seemed worthwhile. That, and it probably beat the Depression.
I am reminded of the Underpants Gnomes, who appeared on an episode of “South Park”, who had a great master plan to justify their nightly sortees of underpants theft:
- Steal underpants.
- …?
- Profit!
We read it at the time as an allegory for the dot-com boom, which has since gone bust. I can look at it now as the story for Iraq. I just hope the noble intentions leave enough room for something that could profit the people there. For now, though, let us acknowledge that Step Two can be Hell live through.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/05/21/sobak-ham/
I stumbled into work about twenty minutes early yesterday, and Gallery Man asked what’s up, and I answered quickly, with a single word, shit, which is the sort of answer that Gallery Man can accept in stride as part of the pulse of things. Then I felt bad because The Boss was sitting over in the cafe. I don’t know if he heard me but when he saw me I asked how I was doing, and I said I was great, which was perfectly true. When I’d answered shit, I was thinking about how my morning started hearing that we were pulling out of our embassies and missions in Saudi Arabia, and an analyst was condemning our reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan as a clear failure because they don’t exist and we are so far repeating this performance in Iraq, while Israel and Palestine are at each other’s throats all the more this week, which doesn’t bother me so much as our nation piling new fuck-ups on its plate.
If you aren’t sufficiently quesy about our neglect of world affairs, the New York Times has a piece on the other Dangerous Lunatic World Leader, from which I’ll cobble together:
Stalin and Mao were revered for their perfect grasp of dialectical materialism, an omnipotent science that made them omnipotent too. Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, are revered, like the monarchs they more closely resemble, for their perfect embodiment of national virtues.
Chief among these virtues is “sobak ham,” a hard-to-translate Korean term that corresponds closely to the word spontaneity in its Marxist-Leninist sense. The Soviets considered the spontaneity of the common people, especially their tendency to violence, to be a dangerous force unless tempered with political consciousness. In North Korea, the people’s spontaneity is seen as one of the country’s greatest strengths.
North Korean novels and movies often show the hero casting off the restraints of his book learning in a fit of wild, sometimes suicidal rage against the Japanese or American enemy. The central villain of Han Sorya’s novella “Jackals” (1951), the country’s most enduring work of fiction, tells of an American child who beats a Korean boy so brutally that he ends up in a hospital — where he is murdered by the American’s missionary parents.
This propaganda appears to be effective even among North Koreans opposed to the rule of Kim Jong Il. When I visited a resettlement center for refugees near Seoul last year, many of those to whom I was introduced as an American recoiled in terror or glared at me in hatred.
I’ve been thinking of plenty of interesting ways to improve my own position in an American context, but it seems far more valuable to improve the situation outside of my prosperous, fat and happy nation. I need to see if there’s anyone lobbying to make sure Congress and George budget money to make Afghanistan a better place – the Afghans need the money far more than the Iraqis, who have oil money and a tradition of economic prosperity. If these people exist, maybe I can help get people to write letters to pressure appropriate congressional representatives where such pressure is due.
More immediately, I need to fix out my sleep schedule, which seems to run from 3-5AM towards noon at this point, which saps productive hours ringing the 3-11PM working shifts to which I’ve been exclusively assigned. But first, I think I’ll head towards work and stop for a Vienna Beef hot dog along the way. Yum.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/05/02/all-the-latest-k-rad-3-day-memezz/
Here’s an interesting thought that compares modern bloggers to the warez couriers of the BBS age. Thanks to my feed aggregator, I can 3-day warez this meme to you. I’m not in it for the ratios though.
I have been watching the blog phenomenon from a bit of a distance – I’ve been doing online journalling forever, in Internet years. Now all the kids have these crazy terms like “backtracks” and “blogrolls” and there was even some embedded reporter who started a blog and blog-ified everything to be hip. For example, he was no longer posting humble photos on web pages, he was photoblogging! Wooh! (Gag me!)
So, I’ve purposely avoided overly-bloggifying my humble web log. (A “blog” is a contraction of “web log” which is a term I adopted myself.) You won’t find “backtracks” here, which is where a blog site lists URLs that link to a particular post in some sort of point-whoring contest. You wont find “feedback forums” with floating heads of friends and bored strangers dissecting the minutea of my life, and I try to avoid the sort of post which basically amounts to “Woah, this link is the coolest thing ever I’ve seen in the past five minutes of web browsing!” (“Holy poop my ass is numb someone please come over and beat me until I get off the computer and interact with some real people!”)
But if someone wants to riff off one of my posts, I now have these little bylines to each post’s anchor. Citations are great, in my opinion, if they act as footnotes to original thoughts or otherwise provide a jumping-off point for discussion on a topic. If a reader has something to add, they can drop me a line.
Back to the aforementioned interesting thought which inspired this little rant, I find myself asking what my role in the, ahem, blogsphere is, in the context of the “blogger as courier” metaphor. And I guess what I am is a shareware author tinkering about as a hobbyist, trying to create the occasional interesting bit of software, or in this case, memes, that I can share with the community. Since I’m a low-budget hobbyist who is more interested in creation than self-promotion, I eschew the whole “warez trader” mentality of trying to be the first to post links out.
Of course, I’m not even focusing on memes so much, just trying to flex my muscles, because I enjoy the activity, and I have the vague idea that I could develop the skill into something marketable. I’m just playing, trying to come up with the occasional interesting thought. In the meme-coder realm of the blogsphere, I’m one of the older guys who isn’t into the hip, new scene, but instead puttering away on low-key “demo” releases.
I should try and break into the publishing biz sometime.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/29/cnn-the-reality-war/
I’m too lazy to tune elsewhere, and BBC America doesn’t bother with war coverage anymore, instead showing reality shows where women are filmed with hidden cameras so they can be told how horribly they dress, and then given £2,000 to buy a new warddrobe with the advice of experts. So, I watch CNN a little bit every day, to see what war looks like.
It looks like whiz-bang computer graphics giving you a vague idea of where in Iraq the fighting is, and the vague capabilities of our high-tech weapons. “Well, it flies n miles per hour and is guided by satellites and it can be launched from a ship!”
It looks like grainy, jerky, crappy “live via Videophone” webcam images of guys driving around, getting into firefights.
It does not look like people getting blown up, maimed, wounded, killed, losing their loved ones. It does not show casualties. It does show Iraqi POWs sitting in the desert waiting to be trucked off somewhere, and of course eschews showing all but two seconds of Iraqi footage of American POWs.
The live dialogue always tries to bring up how fantastic their own news coverage is, thanks to technology, and their guys in the field, giving you unprecedented war coverage! Go CNN! And thanks to the philosophy of reality TV they can sink to the most disgusting lows – cheap emotional spectacle.
Last night, and it sounds like they love doing this, they got a soldier on the videophone, and then put his wife online, so we could watch them interact, awkwardly, in public, live: the courtship habits of the American military family. He was a bit shy, making sure to say “I love you,” and she was trying hard not to feel too upset at his being away. The worst of it was when he showed off his missing tooth, trying to reassure her that while he’d been hit with a concussive explosion, the worst he sufferd was a lost tooth. She was clearly distressed at the news he had volunteered that he had suffered a concussion; Sure it was just a tooth, but this just reinforces the knowledge that he’s in a situation where losing body parts is a very real possibility, and he’s being so cocky about it!
It is great, I think, that these two get a chance to talk to each other, but it is cheap, crass, disgusting exploitation that CNN is going to let a family use the videophone for the purpose of airing people’s private lives.
The decision to go to war, the decision to join the military, and the decision to marry a soldier are all very real, serious, difficult decisions that people make with great caution. The decision to be a journalist, and provide real, useful information to people, is far easier, in comparison. You don’t do that by exploiting people’s personal lives for spectacle. Michael Moore thinks Bush should be ashemed, but far more obvious to me is that CNN should be ashamed.
Shame on you CNN! I didn’t want to see you exploiting that family! Stick to the computer graphics of weapons if you are too inept to show us the real war.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/meanwhile-back-in-jordan/
The official and private views of some ranking Jordanian officials appear to be diametrically opposed. Officially, they condemn the war and say they are “deeply troubled” about the repercussions of the war on the region, and describe the situation as “critical.”
Privately, and not for attribution, they say the United States is developing a new opportunity for the Middle East. Said one former prime minister, “If the U.S. can get a new Iraq to recognize Israel as a quid pro quo for a final Palestinian settlement, others will fall into place — Syria, Saudi Arabia, and the other Gulf states. Iran would then have to pull back its military support for Hezbollah.”
Lucky Break for Jordan
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
UPI Editor at Large
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/human-shield-meets-pro-war-baghdad/
I was shocked when I first met a pro-war Iraqi in Baghdad – a taxi driver taking me back to my hotel late at night. I explained that I was American and said, as we shields always did, “Bush bad, war bad, Iraq good”. He looked at me with an expression of incredulity.
Daniel Pepper
I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/24/this-modern-world/
Dave Bort has recently put some effort into making some very funny cartoons. I’m not Dave Bort. This means I get plenty of sleep, but I haven’t put enough serious effort into developing my ideas. Still, that doesn’t mean I can’t idly mess around once in a while. I thought I’d borrow from Tom Tomorrow:
It was actually good practice with the GIMP such that by the later frames I was making effective use of moving layers around and whatnot.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/23/i-really-hope-im-wrong-but/
| <Adam> |
Well, at this point I am torn between hoping this war gets over with soon, which would vindicate those who think it is a good idea and worthwhile, and hoping it lasts longer or obviously fails to change anything (when the next domestic terrorist attack happens). |
| <dman> |
Well, I think hoping for prolonged War and domestic terror to prove you right is vain and destructive. |
| <dman> |
In fact, I’d suggest that you’re in an excellent position to take the line, “I really hope I’m wrong, but …” |
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/22/blix-notes-iraqi-weapons-violation/
According to the New York Post:
Even though he wanted more time for inspections, Blix said yesterday that he didn’t know if he could ever be sure that Iraq wasn’t hiding the illegal missiles.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/21/dispatch-from-the-dawn-of-the-twenty-first-century/
I just finished watching a movie, so I decide to flip channels and check on the War. The satellite television is tuned to BBC America, and is in the middle of a live audio report from a British reporter who is reporting from the front lines as Marines take in Iraqi Prisoners of War.
The War in question is being broadcast live around the world. It is being waged so far with an eye towards avoiding not only allied casualties, but civilian casualties. At the same time cities around the world are dealing with protesters, who oppose the war because they see it as the precedent of imperialism on the part of the contemporary empire.
The empire regards itself as a fairly benevolent, often isolationist Republic that is being forced into acting in this war on the grounds that since it is the world’s great empire, it is threatened by barbarians who pose a magnified threat because in our time, there are weapons of such fantastic destruction and cruelty that would be used without warning.
I think a good reason to have children, is so that if I live long enough to meet them, my grandchildren ought to blow me away on a consistent basis.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/20/response-of-an-american-citizen-on-the-morality-of-the-iraq-war/
From an e-mail responding to an Argentine friend who is suddenly extremely upset about the War, typing in all caps and on the cusp of anti-Semitism. I try to explain things from the perspective of an American Citizen:
Changing Iraq’s government is only one reason I support the War. We strengthened Saddam’s hold on power when he fought Iran, we left him in power in 1991, when we shouldn’t have. America is already responsible when he tortures Iraqis, just as we are responsible for Pinochet’s crimes. In removing Saddam, we are trying to right a wrong that is our doing. Just as it is wrong to go to War, and it is wrong to impose our will on other peoples, it is also wrong to strengthen a brutal leader and then ignore the suffering of his people, it is also wrong to leave that leader with weapons that he could sell to terrorists, it is also wrong to believe that “containment” will work when it has apparently only further strengthened the bad guy and increased the suffering of the people, and it is also wrong if you believe that you will have to go to war to wait longer to fight when waiting will only make the situation worse. I see two sets of wrongs to choose from. The lesser of these evils is the “right” answer, in my mind, to a question that has no true answer.
As for the Palestinians, nobody has rationalized a solution to help them out. It is the Israelis who are rightly scared of the Palestinians, and the Palestinians who are rightly angered that nobody in the world will ever help them. We are guilty of Palestinian suffering because of our aid to Israel. The rest of the world, especially the Arab world, is guilty of Palestinian suffering because they will not give the Palestinians refuge. If America proposed a solution to this problem, I might support that as well. But we haven’t, and there are a million other injustices that are not being addressed, so I don’t see what the problems of the Palestinians has to do with America’s entanglements in Iraq. I am neither an Arab nor a Jew: I’m an American who is, as always, trying to figure out if the things my leaders do in my name is right or not.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2003/03/20/rachel-corries-legacy/
Say what you might about the folly of getting in the way of bulldozers, but thanks to the power of the Internet, and international travel, Rachel Corrie provides us with an insight into life in the occupied territories. If you’re going to risk your life and die doing something, the cause of helping the world understand itself is certainly a noble and worthy one.
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