For those of you who don’t live in this primitive backwoods state of Georgia, I just thought I should update you on what a pathetic day Tuesday is going to be.
The state is going to kill a man on our behalf and they haven’t got a damn clue what they’re doing. Troy Davis, 39*, was convicted of shooting a Savannah police officer and is sentenced to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m., Tuesday, September 23. Quasi-religious Republican bullshit about a “culture of life” aside, here’s what sucks.
No physical evidence tying Troy Davis to the crime.
Murder weapon never recovered.
Conviction based entirely on witness testimony, but wait, there’s more:
“Seven of Nine” is not just a hot busty cyborg on Star Trek. Seven of nine of the witnesses against Troy Davis have since recanted, some citing pressure and coercion by police to extract their testimony.
The eighth of nine is the only other chief suspect in the case, who has been implicated by others in affidavits.
The Board of Paroles and Pardons doesn’t give a crap about any of that. The Supreme Court of the United States agreed, before the date of his execution was set, to hear his appeal on September 29, six days after he’s dead; the Board of Paroles and Pardons doesn’t give a crap about that either, they want to hurry up and kill him first.
That is SO Jesus-like of our government. And they’re doing this on my behalf. That’s just great. But don’t worry, so-called Christians, I’ll pray for you. Maybe.
* Oh and, just to prove what a bunch of competent attention-to-detail type people they are, the Board of Pardons and Paroles list Troy Davis’s age as 38 in their statement denying him clemency, even though he’s 39 and they said he was 38 last year (correctly). Glad they’re making life-or-death decisions.
Oh yeah, just for the record, even Pope Benedict has called for officials to reconsider the case, but I guess politicians of this sort only listen to him when he’s talking about blastocysts.
First and foremost, thank you. Not to Iowans in their bizarre political shenanigans and inability not only to be polled but even to bother to get their lazy asses registered as voters prior to caucus night. No, thanks go to those of you who tuned in, made the chat room lively, kept me updated to the conversation via text message, and of course, dropped a little somethin’ in the tip jar. I really appreciated your virtual companionship on the nerve-wracking and ultimately disappointing campaign trail, as I do your assistance in subsidizing that trip of a lifetime.
I also really ought to thank the folks on Joe Biden’s campaign who put their trust in me as a hybrid supporter-citizen journalist and basically threw open their doors and let me pick and choose where I would do some reporting and where I would do some volunteering. The fact that they ever wanted my help with some YouTubery or other online communications efforts over the last several months has really kept me going when I’ve wondered why I’m trying to balance my technically-challenged dissertation and, well, anything that is not dissertation. They were a great bunch of people to work with, even though it was largely over the internets until the last couple of days.
Their trust was made even more special when it survived an ugly Off the Bus episode the morning of the caucus, thanks to the bizarre and unsourced rumor promulgated by one of my OTB cohorts, Beverly Davis. She claimed to have spoken to one of the Biden campaign’s “national consultants” at a bar on New Year’s Eve, and this anonymous source suggested that a deal was in the offing between Biden and Obama, described by Davis in such a way as to make Biden’s campaign for President sound suddenly less serious, more like the speculative “He’s just running for VP” crap that’s always alleged of any second tier candidate. No one at Biden HQ had any idea what “national consultant” Davis might have been speaking to, nor was there any such deal ever in the work; Biden has a fine day job and was in this to do as well as his bluntly stated positions could get him. The story was posted on the 2nd, I believe, and by the time I got to the office on Thursday morning it was already keeping Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach’s blackberry buzzing furiously. Lucky for me, Beverly Davis referred to herself in the aggrandizing institutional third person, saying, “Off the Bus spoke to…” about her drunken gossiper, leaving a tiny grammatical question in a few people’s minds at that morning’s staff meeting. “She didn’t mean Shelby, did she?” That was apparently one fleeting thought that was quickly dismissed — and solidly confirmed when I talked to staff in person. I wasn’t even in Iowa for New Year’s Eve, and they know me well enough by this point to have faith that I wouldn’t run with such speculative crap without confirming it more solidly with someone who knows what the hell they’re talking about. There was a similar moment in Greenville, SC, when the wheels came off the wagon for a few minutes and the whole campaign caravan fractured into several disconnected clusters when the Senator wanted to sneak off for a quiet lunch away from the crowds and the remaining aides lost track of the day’s agenda for a few minutes. I lingered outside the college fair where Biden was supposed to shake hands for a while and his former bodyman and a state committee member tried desperately to reconvene the group via multiple cellphone messages. The latter, not knowing quite who I was (but only seeing my fake press badge), looked askance at me before he was reassured that I could be trusted not to use this perfectly ordinary moment of campaign chaos to write a smear article, or I would under no circumstances be allowed within earshot of these phone calls in the first place.
That kind of trust raises a much broader question about this new-fangled citizen journalism stuff, as was reiterated to me yesterday by Leonard Witt, professor of communications at Kennesaw State University and networked journalism enthusiast. I will be co-hosting a dinner table discussion on politics and new media with our friend Grayson at the upcoming Southern Social Media Convention in a few weeks at Leonard’s request. In our emails I mentioned that while in Iowa I was a sort of hybrid campaign volunteer/embedded reporter, and it was tricky explaining to some people how that worked; he said he, too, would have questions about how that worked, and justifiably so. Just what kind of “journalism” could you expect to get out of me regarding the now defunct Biden campaign? Would I basically be shilling propaganda under the cloak of news? Absolutely not. For the most part, I provided video to Huffington Post, so what you saw is what you got. The text article I wrote about the Greenville trip was basically presenting the mood of the meetings, the policy topics discussed, and even a mention of the caravan’s consistent lateness and my speeding across South Carolina to keep up. I was not blowing sunshine up anyone’s skirt, to butcher a cliche. But there was certainly a lot of trust between me and a campaign I liked, and I was not going to rush to publish something before making sure it was a real story just for the sake of a gotcha. After the Beverly Davis flap, I asked the communications staff what the real deal was and said I’d be interested in publishing my own piece on their response, whether it was a denial or a “no comment” or what have you. The Press Secretary pointed out that Marc Ambinder had already published the official campaign statement on his blog, and that slowly some of the major news outlets were updating their parrot stories appropriately; as far as the campaign was concerned, that was the end of the story. My decision not to follow up on my own was two-fold: first, and most objectively, I had plenty of other things to work on, story-wise, so if Ambinder had already written it up, there was little point in my repeating old news; second, and perhaps biased on my part, if I continued to make a story of the non-story, the non-story would BE the story, and I’d just give legs to what was bunk in the first place. I didn’t want to do that to the candidate I was most fond of, and so to that extent, I was a biased citizen journalist.
So what does that say about citizen journalism? I guess the usual as with any kind of reporter: caveat emptor. In most of these new media outlets, the goal is not to eliminate or stifle bias, as in the old model, but to own up to and publicize it. You want to hear a bunch of pro-Obama fuzzy lovin’? Read just about everyone else on Off the Bus. You want straight coverage of the positive points of second tier brainiacs like Biden? Try me. You want mud? Try Drudge.
For the record, here are some final video clips from Caucus Day that I didn’t have the energy to deal with for a while.
I’m in New York now getting ready for my MTV Choose or Lose ‘08 Street Team orientation, just in time to turn the page. (Expect some more videos this week.) I think with the testing and dissertation writing on the up-slope at school, and MTV reporting probably taking the rest of the time, it’s time to close the Huffington Post chapter. The Bev Davis fiasco was probably all the excuse I needed, anyway.
I’m probably also done with politics for a while. People have already been asking whom I’m for now, while the body was still warm even. Right now, I don’t feel like I’m “for” anyone. I’ll go into a little more detail on my thought processes here when I wrap up this MTV trip, but frankly, the rest of you haven’t got much to wow me with. You never gave the smartest, most qualified guy in the room a chance, so I’m disinclined to give a hoot about your celebrity right now — and I’m definitely not inclined to waste any more graduate school time getting them nominated. Talk to me when we’ve got one polished show horse standing, and I’ll see what I can do.
Now, time to go hemorrhage some cash in Manhattan!
One thing I haven’t seen much discussion about (nary a mention on DailyKos) regarding Sen. Larry Craig is just how pathetic the reaction from the Log Cabin Republicans (”People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones, so we made ours out of wood! Try to blow our wood down, we dare ya! Go on, blow our wood!”) has been. You would think, in a moment where one man’s career has been destroyed and their beloved party’s moral superiority on family values continues to take the beating, flogging, spanking that it royally deserves, they might take this opportunity to appeal for some reason, tolerance, and open-mindedness for the good of their other, non-social political endeavors. They might put a stake in the ground and say that this is why we, the Log Cabin Republicans, stand for gay equality in the GOP, not just as a matter of civil rights, but for political expedience: let us not lose any more hard-working, otherwise conservative Republican lawmakers to scandal just because their psyche can’t handle the kind of self-loathing, dissociative disorder-inducing, ultimately destructive pressure to stay in the closet that would make the Catholic Church and Jewish mothers file a class-action lawsuit against the GOP for monopolizing all the guilt-tripping left in the world.
Log Cabin strongly opposes outing. It’s unproductive and distracts people from the real work of convincing more Americans to support equality for gay and lesbian people. It’s not for me to speculate about Senator Craig’s sexual orientation. However it’s clear that whether it’s Jim McGreevey, Ted Haggard, or someone else, life in the closet often leads to destructive, harmful, and reckless behavior.
That was, of course, after questioning his ability to continue serving in the Senate. But now it’s all “Don’t let the stall door hit ya where who knows split ya,” as they don’t touch his dirty, naughty lifestyle choice with a 40-foot pole and focus only on his law-breakin’ ways:
Senator Craig made the right decision in resigning from the U.S. Senate. He lost his credibility to serve the people of Idaho and his actions damaged the credibility of the Republican Party. Senator Craig had no other choice but to resign—for the good of his State, the good of his Party, and the good of his family.
His actions in Minnesota and the way he handled this situation showed terrible judgment. Senator Craig obviously failed to live up to the principles he espoused as a lawmaker. His explanation for pleading guilty was absurd and his denial was not believable. Senator Craig had hoped a guilty plea would sweep this matter under the rug, but it clearly backfired on him. Hopefully his resignation signals his willingness to take responsibility for his illegal actions and terrible judgment.
The LCR blog maintains that “Craig’s criminal conviction is the biggest reason for the differences in Republican reaction to” Craig versus Vitter, who at least had the decency to consort with lady prostitutes; nevermind that Craig’s criminal conviction, on the record as “disorderly conduct,” is about as exciting as jaywalking. Hell, I was ticketed for disorderly conduct once for saying I thought Savannah sucked in front of a Savannah cop. Am I barred for life from running for office? Or just from tapping my foot in men’s rooms?
Oh, Log Cabin kids, the things you will subject yourselves to in order to save a little money on your taxes. Sad, so sad.
A bunch of geeks involved with this political vlogging thing (who does that, anyway?) compiled a little advert exhorting the Republican presidential candidates not to chicken out of confronting average American voters via YouTube, whether at a CNN-co-sponsored debate that might conflict with unspecified fundraisers, or any convenient asynchronous time they prefer. One of the key points: instead of letting Anderson Cooper pick which questions to ask, candidates can go to CommunityCounts.us and find out what questions the geeks really want to see answered.
If you don’t blink or sneeze, you might see me in there.
Almost all of us involved with this project uploaded the same video to our respective channels. In the first few hours that it was on my channel, it garnered something like 250 views — and this is on my new channel with a whopping 16 subscribers, without even mentioning (yet) that Ron Paul is one of the few Repubs committed to this debate! Conversely, it took me closer to 30 hours to rack (I said rack) up that many views on my Rudy Giuliani spoof, which dealt with the same fundamental problem (dare I say in a more entertaining approach?), and that was even with it getting picked up by PrezVid right out of the gate. What could it be that made the difference?
KillerK30 (3 hours ago)
I know you would rather get five stars because you produced a great video, but I am going to give you five stars because you are gorgeous. Your glasses are also hot!!!
(Reply) (Remove) (Block User) (Spam)
Oh. Right. I forgot: I normally lack the naughty-librarian hotties in my videos & thumbnails.
But that’s okay, YouTube is still Totally Serious Politics Presidential Candidates Should Bow Down Before the other 0.2% of the time.
God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God!
Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait
to find out for certain what my wampeter was,
and who was in my karass,
and all the good things our karass did for you.
Amen.
–Bokononist Last Rites
Cat’s Cradle was the first Vonnegut book I ever read. I was thirteen. My crazy best friend, with whom I skateboarded and listened to the Sex Pistols and threw chocolate donuts at office buildings in the middle of the night before we ended up fighting and never speaking again, lent it to me. It was red, it was old, it reeked of old book. I think it’s still on a shelf in Miami in my old room; it is vastly superior to the gaudy new Delta paperback I have. But it’s all still Cat’s Cradle.
I don’t know if it’s the stress and fatigue of this final phase of dissertating, or the angst and uncertainty of figuring out WTF I do with my life next, or just a really crappy week I’ve been having, but a little piece of news that ultimately has little impact on my life made me weep a little bit, sitting here in a crappy apartment full of aborted and fossilized potential. What the hell?
Or maybe it’s just that I feel like some piece of that youthful vitality and belief in all the promise of life and all the possibilities of the future that I felt as a blithely carefree 13-year-old just died with the author. Real suicides smoke Pell Mells.
As a flakey researcher in a particularly lackluster laboratory, I often find myself walking forehead first smack into the brick wall of reality, as what I believed to be true is suddenly and harshly refuted by plain and painful facts. Now it’s happening in my softer studies.
The bulk of my classroom endeavors over the last year (having completed my engineering courses and now just fleshing out my International Affairs minor) has focused on studying Iranian history, politics, military forces, culture, and language for professional and personal reasons. Professionally, I figure by the time I graduate the current administration will have turned much of the Arabic world into a FUBAR morass of bloodshed and denial, and will have its sights set squarely on the next brownest [sic] member of the Axis of Evil, so that’ll be a hot job market for the arms control oriented. Personally, I just can’t help but notice that Iran is chock-full of ridiculously hot women, and any diplomatic efforts that will enable greater fraternization with the locals, so to speak, should be at the top of the policy list.
Throughout the course of these studies, I’ve come to understand Iran as a nation with a beautiful history, a proud heritage, some rather colorful but not entirely insane political structures, and surprisingly enough a rather conservative strategic perspective, in spite of their rhetoric and regional support of terrorist activities. (For instance, for all their talk in the past about annihilating Israel, they haven’t had the kind of go at it that they really could have, unlike some of their dumber Arabic neighbors. They could, at the drop of a hat, equip Hizballah with enough nerve gas to empty Tel Aviv, but it hasn’t come to pass.) A good part of the last decade saw some promising social and political developments, and in so many ways, this most hated of our adversaries, with whom we have hardly spoken in a quarter of a century, looked a lot more amicable than some of the Islamic nations we call allies in the War on Terror. Surely there’s a way to buy them out of their nuclear program if we just play nice, isn’t there? At the same time, it seemed pretty clear that nationalism was a stronger ethos than reform among the growing youth majority, and while all things American are quite popular among their “baby boomers,” many of those currently singing our praises might take up arms to fight back if we were to try to “democratize” them George W’s way, and a wonderful opportunity would just blow up in our face.
But then I see crap like this. And I have to wonder, When did I drink the Kool-Aid? What the flock was I thinking? Send in the gunships.
Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran. Prior to their execution, the teenagers were held in prison for 14 months and severely beaten with 228 lashes. Their length of detention suggests that they committed the so-called offences more than a year earlier, when they were possibly around the age of 16. Under the Iranian penal code, girls as young as nine and boys as young as 15 can be hanged.
I’m starting not even to feel sorry for those who want better. Twenty-five years ago, they threw the most powerful nation on earth out, deposing the United States’ puppet and gutting the Shah’s army. They held us by the short hairs for 444 days. This is a country that knows a thing or two about revolution. So what happened to your damn balls, Iran? Pull them out of your purse, if you have such a problem with your clerical dictators, and drag the bastards out of power by their beards. No? Rather just boycott an election because you don’t like your choice in candidates? Fine. Be that way.
But then again, I’m quite convinced my Constitution is being stolen out from under me and that I’m being lied to, and I’m not grabbin’ anyone’s beard, either, so who am I to throw stones?
Sometimes the world just makes me so sad. And by sometimes, I mean all the time.
