American Madness

Right now Kim Jong Il is fueling a missile for a test to see if he could hit the United States in a nuclear confrontation. In an effort to stop him, the Bush Administration is leaking that they may shoot down the missile if the North Korean’s do in fact test it. They have readied the anti-ballistic missile sites in Alaska and Hawaii for just such a purpose. The problem is, everybody knows our interceptors don’t stand one chance in a million (literally) of hitting the North Korean missile. It would be very embarassing for the Bush Administration if we tried to shoot the missile down and fail.

This would beg the question, why isn’t Ted Kennedy demanding that we shootdown the missile? Why aren’t the democrats in the House and Senate drafting resolutions in support of the President? There’s a pretty obvious two-fer here. The Democrats get to look tougher on security than the Republicans and then make the Administration look weak and ineffectual at the same time. All the Democrats have to do is come up with a clever answer to the challenge that they have never supported missile defense in the first place. I’ve always wanted to hear a politician say that something was “apples and oranges” like my 7th grade algebra teacher. Previous Democratic opposition to missile defense has nothing to do with whether or not we use the system. Democrats opposed it because it was a huge waste of money.

We have spent about $100 billion on missile defense since President Reagan made his famous Star Wars speech in 1983. But what is the point of having a $100 billion anti-missile system if you are not going to use it. And when the interceptor fails, the Dems would have another opportunity to accuse the Bush Administration of wasting billions of dollars on their cronies. They could even come out sounding rational by contrasting the shootdown with the direct strike on the missile site Ash Carter is proposing. All we need is a mouthpiece. I’d suggest Bob kerrey. He is always looking for ways to antagonize his students at the New School and he has just enough gravitas and cross-party appeal to get away with it.

I’ve experienced a significant shift in my thinking over the past 5 Years. I realized this when I saw the news that the U.S. government is looking at international banking transactions to find money moving between international and U.S. based Al-Queda operatives.

I used to care when heard about secret government surveillance programs. I got livid when I learned of the unwarranted government wiretaps. But, now I don’t really care that the government is doing this. I’ve decided that it is probably a good thing. I just want to ensure that the appropriate checks and balances are put in place to prevent abuse. Hopefully the abuse of these surveillance systems, which is going to happen, will be minor compared to what could happen without the proper surveillance.

Living a few blocks from the new World Trade Center and in very close proximity to all my neighbors, I tend to value security over privacy. Possibly my languid sensibilities on this subject also stem from the fact that I have not made many million dollar wire transfers to my secret bank account in the Caiman Islands lately. I’m saving up for a wedding.

With Howard Dean in charge of the DNC, 2006 was supposed to be the election year the Democratic party took the fight to all 50 states, not just the handful of swing states we think we need to win a presidential election. While the rest of the blogosphere is obsessing over how we lost Ohio in 2004, I am a little more concerned with why we aren’t even trying to win Maine in 2006.

Once considered the bell-weather of American politics (as goes Maine, so goes the nation…) the Democratic Party has barely noticed that one of two GOP senators in an increasingly blue state is up for re-election this fall. No one at party headquarters seems to have thought it would be a good idea to hunt around a bit for a viable candidate to take on Olympia Snowe. Neither writer Jeane Hay Bright or lawyer Eric Mehnert, both awaiting the outcome of a low-turnout primary vote yesterday, fall into that category. Neither has ever held statewide office. Neither has shown any ability at fund raising. Neither has an inspiring life story and both come from the far left fringe of the party.So much for taking back the Senate.

What is most troubling about the lack of attention this race has gotten is that any strategy to take back the Senate should have included a plan to win this seat. The Democrats need to pick up six seats. We will probably unseat Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania. That’s one. We have a decent shot at Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island. That’s two. We have a shot at Conrad Burns in Montana, at Mike Dewine in Ohio and at Jim Talent in Missouri. Do a clean sweep, and we are up to five. To get the sixth seat, it is looking like our best shot is to pickup the seat opened up by Bill Frist’s retirement. Representative Carl Ford is fighting a strong but uphill battle to do this.

For the Democrats to take control of the Senate all these races need to break the right way and some of them have a lot of breaking to do. Of the two we are most likely to win, against Santorum and Chafee, they are both in states that traditionally vote democrat in presidential elections. It stands to reason states like these might be where the Democrats should focus. The state of Maine comes to mind.

Beating Olympia Snowe would be an uphill race, no doubt. She won her last race with 69% of the vote in 2000, despite Al Gore taking the state. Not trying in Maine is tantamount to throwing up your hands in panic and despair. I guess that is where the Democratic party is. We could take a lesson from the Republicans on this one. In 1994, an obscure businessman named Mitt Romney ran an uphill race against someone with even more name recognition and an even wider cross-party following than Olympia Snowe: Ted Kennedy. Romney lost but knocked Kennedy’s support down to 58%, the lowest in any race he has ever run. Eight years later, he easily slid into office as Governor of Massachusetts. In 2008, he may take the weight house. Only Democrats believe in the damaged goods theory of political candidacy.

To win Maine in 2006, a viable candidate should have gotten Tom Daschle on the phone at his office at Georgetown and asked for his advice. In 1986, Daschle defeated incumbent GOP senator James Abnor with a simple message. He did not challenge Abnor’s honesty, or his patriotism, or attack him personally. He went out of his way to show he held Abnor in nothing but the highest regard. Then he leveled a simple charge against him that no voter in the state could deny. Abnor was never going to do anything to help the state’s distressed farmers receive help from the federal government. He was ideologically opposed to that form of government intervention. He had said so himself.

A decent candidate in the state of Maine could have won with a similar message. He or she could have said that Olympia Snowe is a smart, dedicated public servant that cares about the issues important to Mainers. He then could have said that her party doesn’t. He would have had plenty of evidence. We might have had a Democratic Senate.

Sergey Brin admitted that Google may have taken the wrong course in choosing to censor search results in China. He also suggested that Google may eventually shutdown its China-based censored service, if they choose to take a “principled approach”, but acknowledge that the “principled approach” is not the course Google is currently taking.

It’s an interesting mea culpa. Brin is straight forward in saying that Google is doing the wrong thing, but he also states that the company will not change its current practices. Brin merely suggests that Google may stop its censorship practice in the future and end its operations in China, a bit of a veiled threat.

Brin’s attempt at diplomacy acknowledges the other point of view without making any substantive changes, while at the same time sending a message to the Chinese government that if it wants Google, then it will need to give some concessions on its censorship practices.

I’m actually beginning to feel a bit of a warm spot in my heart again for the old Sergeymiester. Time will tell as to whether Google will take a more principled approach, and engage the Chinese government to push for positive change.

Here’s what Sergey said:

We felt that perhaps we could compromise our principles but provide ultimately more information for the Chinese and be a more effective service and perhaps make more of a difference.

Perhaps now the principled approach makes more sense.

It’s perfectly reasonable to do something different, to say: ‘Look, we’re going to stand by the principle against censorship, and we won’t actually operate there.’ That’s an alternate path.

It’s not where we chose to go right now, but I can sort of see how people came to different conclusions about doing the right thing.

By Jason Ihle

A few weeks ago Warner Bros. became the first major film company to strike a deal to make its films available to purchase and download on the Internet. Movies would be available online when they are released on DVD. Their deal was with MovieLink. Just last Wednesday Disney announced it had struck a deal with CinemaNow to do the same thing. It was followed one day later by Warners’ announcement of another deal, also with CinemaNow. Clearly the major studios will follow suit in the coming weeks and months.

Of course this is a smart move and I hail it as a step in the right direction. The music industry acted far too late in their attempts to curb piracy. The movie industry took a long time to learn from their counterparts’ mistakes, but they’ve caught on at least. Or so it seems on the surface.

The downloaded movies can not be burned to DVD or uploaded to your iPod. This makes reasonable sense to me. Why would the studios give you a clear outlet to make multiple copies of the thing they don’t want you to copy? The colossal mistake both Disney and Warners have made is in what they will charge for these films. The prices for most films will fall in the $10 - $20 range. What? You serious, Clark? That’s what you can expect to pay for a new DVD that is devoid of special features. Essentially what you get with a downloaded film is a DVD without special features, but you can only watch it on your computer (or your television if your laptop has an S-Video output like mine does). But the majority of people would most likely be watching these films on their computers. Even if you do watch them on your television, the high quality sound mix that exists on DVD will be absent.

Who is going to pay premium prices for material that is quite obviously not premium, especially when you can buy the DVD for the same price (or a few dollars more plus cool features)? If the movie industry wants to try to curb illegal downloads by making their films available for online purchase then they need to price them accordingly. I would be more than willing, especially given my current living situation in Spain with no TV or DVD player, to pay for movies online. I would not pay more than $5, however. I think I’m a fairly average person and there must be many more people out there like me who also would not pay more than $5 for such a service. So the movie industry is putting itself back into the position of encouraging people to find alternative (and illegal) means to see the movies they want to see.

Overhead can not be an issue. The cost of putting a film online for downloading is so much cheaper than mass producing millions of copies of a DVD complete with packaging, photos, features, notes, etc. Okay, they have to pay for the server space and they have to pay some techies to keep the sites working and actually post the products, but this is close to no overhead as a company can get with a new product.

It amazes me that the studios can be so bull-headed in this arena. They have made a smart move by allowing an easy, legal alternative for downloading films, but have priced themselves right out of the market. I hope their plan backfires miserably. I hope nobody buys movies online and they continue to download illegally and make bootleg copies of DVDs.