Diego Doval, whose Plan B blognovel has been rolling out here in Salon blogland, has unveiled the alpha version of a new personal-information manager he calls Spaces. I have not had time to check it out myself but it looks cool. [Link courtesy Metafilter.]
Archives for November 2002
Berkeley repels coffee purists
Never let it be said that my home town never met a government regulation it didn’t like. In their infinite wisdom the citizens of Berkeley, California have defeated a local initiative that would have required our cafes to serve only “fair trade” or organic coffee. We may be a Nuclear Free Zone but we’re not going to turn our coffee into a political battleground. Hey, Peet’s and many other coffeehouses serve fair-trade coffee; you can vote with your order.
Bush wins; Greenspan cuts; markets fall
Well, let’s see: Republicans take full control of every branch of government. Alan Greenspan whacks the federal funds rate again. And the stock market takes a big dive.
Could it be that Wall Street really wants Harvey Pitt back?
Or does the market see the combination of likely fat tax cuts and an expensive war with Iraq as leading to a deadly combo of Big Government and big federal debt — with no brakes?
I think investors may quickly come to miss the stalemates of split government.
Regroup, rethink, refund
The Democratic party is now roughly in the same position the Republicans were in in the mid-1970s, when I came of voting age and began paying close attention to politics: They control neither the presidency nor either house of Congress, they have been soundly repudiated at the polls and they do not have a program.
What did the Republicans do in the 1970s? They went back to their roots and created institutions for the long-term. They spent money on think-tanks and local organizations and decided to build a new party from the ground up that appealed to conservatives. They elected Ronald Reagan in 1980, and the party they built then is the same party that Karl Rove is orchestrating today. The fringe-y think tanks of the ’70s — like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute — now provide an endless supply of talking-head and op-ed support for right-wing policies. And, give them credit, they’re just full of ideas.
If the Democratic Party today wants to move out of the wilderness it needs to learn from the Republicans of the 1970s. It needs to take most of that “soft money” and stop spending it on worthless campaign ads and instead start building the framework for an intellectual revitalization of their side of the aisle.
It’s not as if there aren’t tons of areas in which an effective alternative to Republican policy wouldn’t strike a chord with large numbers of Americans: Health care policy. Tax fairness. Corporate ethics. The vanishing middle class. Voting rights. You can keep going.
The Democrats just lost the Senate because they had no ideas and no program. (Even when Al Gore offered a spirited attack on Bush’s economic policy he failed to put forth any ideas of his own.) Of course the party faithful didn’t rally — there was nothing to rally behind. Voters need to be inspired by a vision, and until the Democrats find one they will continue to get kicked in the teeth.
Sick again
Unbelievably and depressingly, I have been home sick again for a few days after a rough weekend. “Flu” turned out to be an infection of some kind. Getting better now!
Microsoft coverage
My column talks about how the judge’s decision, while seemingly “in the public interest” point by point, fails to reflect the public interest as a whole.
Farhad pulled together a diverse and contradictory set of reactions to the decision.
Andrew Leonard picked the wrong day to be on vacation (or the right one, depending how you look at it!).
Working on Microsoft
Working all afternoon on Microsoft decision coverage. Will post links when the stories go live in a couple of hours.
Microsoft countdown
After months of delay, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly will release her decision in the Microsoft antitrust case at 1:30 PM (PST) today, after financial markets close. Friday afternoon before an election means that the news is likely to be buried. Look to Salon later today for coverage. News.com reports before the announcement here. The decision itself will be available here.
This decision will weigh in on (a) whether the settlement between the Department of Justice and Microsoft is in the public interest and (b) whether the nine remaining states who have pressed for tougher remedies against Microsoft will be granted any of their demands.
Wellstone memorial low road?
Perhaps you’ve followed the whole controversy over the Wellstone memorial: was it somehow “too political,” undignified in its championing of the liberal causes that were Wellstone’s mission in life? Joe Conason has been covering it well and thoroughly here in Salon. But Joe is an outspoken liberal Democrat who would, you know, be expected to take this position. Today I found myself in relatively rare agreement with cranky Slate blogster Mickey Kaus, who offers further good defense of the Wellstone event:
People react to death with something less than rationality, often by plunging headlong into some action — any action — they can take that might restore some sense of control or efficacy. They found Mothers Against Drunk Driving. They file lawsuits, demand compensation, lobby for new procedures to make sure the plane never crashes/building never collapses/blood gets screened/airbag deploys. They campaign for Megan’s Law or the Amber Alert system. Or they try to win the Senate campaign the deceased was in the middle of fighting. |
In the end, Wellstone was the sort of politician who actually cared about the issues he stood for, and the sooner we in the media move on from “who should have said what” questions about the memorial and back to matters of substance, the better.