You probably have heard that Iranians have found ways to bypass the censorship imposed by the government in the wake of the elections and protests. But I know at least some people only have a vague idea about it.
So… if you’re interested in seeing the messages people in Tehran are getting out, it’s easy: Here’s the Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23IranElection). Basically, anyone who wants to can send a 140-character message to Twitter, and can have that message included in the “IranElection” feed. So you have lots of people — most in Iran — giving minute-by-minute updates.
For those of you who don’t know Twitter, here’s a quick guide to what you’ll see:
In some cases there will also be links to Web pages, such as “http://bit.ly/pDXIC.”
Latest message: “they were waiting 4 us – they all have guns & riot uniforms – it was like a mouse trap – ppl being shot like animals”
What country is the world’s largest manufacturer by a huge margin? If you have a kid, you would think it must be China — I don’t know the last time I saw I toy (or anything else, really) that wasn’t made there.
Wrong.
Accounting for more than 20% of the world’s total manufacturing output is the United States.
Japan is a distant second at just over 13%. Then China (12%), and Germany (8.2%). Then, well, everyone else. (Data come from the Dept. of Labor and the United Nations.)
(Click to enlarge, as usual.)
So what do we make? Aircraft (Lockheed Martin, Boeing), missiles, space-related equipment, autos and auto parts, farming equipment (can you say “John Deere”?), gas turbines for power plants (GE), computer chips (Intel), and a heck of a lot more. We don’t make as much consumer goods, but we sure as heck make the things that make those goods possible.
I assume George Bush, on hearing about what’s going on in Iran, immediately headed for a vacation in Crawford… until someone reminded him that he’s not President anymore.
msnbc.com BREAKING NEWS: 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas wins Scripps National Spelling Bee
Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas. I just love that. Too many people forget too quickly that what makes this country great is our incredible, unprecedented mix of people — people, cultures, ideas.
Homogeny breeds mediocrity. Evolution happens when something changes — when something different is added to the mix. If it’s good, it prospers. And we have prospered.
It’s easy to get all rah-rah and wrap yourself in a flag because we’ve got a ton of money and a lot of guns, but the reason this place is so damn rich and prosperous is because we embraced changed.
300 million people who all think alike don’t get much done. But 300 million people with last names like Smith, O’Hearlihy, Mogatu, Fellini, Andreesen, Ivanovich, Rodriguez, Zaradic, Chan, Konishi, Shivashankar and a million others — we do wonderful things. We do magic.
Don’t forget it.
Argue about gun control and abortion and school prayer and taxes and health care and the wars we fight. But don’t forget that we can argue about those things because we have the money for weapons and medicine and schools and roads and clean water, and all those things because we’re all different – not because we’re all the same.
In all the talk about the causes and remedies for the recession, there seems to be one obvious thing that people fail to understand.
All the fixes that are being put into place have a similar goal: to free up credit so people can buy again. Once they start buying — homes, cars, whatever — the economy will begin to pick up. And that makes sense.
But what it doesn’t address is the fundamental, underlying issue: Our economy is apparently only able to thrive when we are an overly consumer culture. If Americans stop buying stuff, things fall apart. And that’s because we have placed so much value on the items we own — too many of us determine our self worth based on that.
We need a newer car, a bigger house, the right brand of clothes, the next iPod, a faster computer. We shell out (or shelled out) $30 for 50-cent T-shirts because they came from the right store and had the right label. Maybe that’s because we have it so good that we don’t want for anything. All we have left is getting more.
But if you want a long-term fix for the economy, we need to get away from the idea that we need more stuff. We don’t. And we certainly shouldn’t base our entire economy on the idea that people need to buy and buy and buy.
Get this: About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year, and the average American household has at least $8,000 in credit card debt. Credit card debt — so that’s not counting car loans and mortgages. That’s what happens when your culture puts too much value on owning stuff.
I know someone who lives with her husband but has no kids. He makes a ton of money. They keep adding on to their house — adding rooms and features that they absolutely do not need. Why? Because, she told me, they have to impress the other executives at her husband’s company.
That’s madness. That’s stupidity. The executives don’t care how good an engineer he is, only how many square feet his house has? That’s the grown-up version of crying for mommy and daddy to buy you the same toys the other kids have. But that’s the life she’s chosen: Her worth is based on what and how much she owns.
It’s not just her. It’s the American culture. We have to buy crap, and lots of it, simply because we’ve convinced ourselves that whomever has the most toys, wins.
Well, the whole “I need a bigger house” thing came and but us on the ass. Desperate to own bigger and better stuff, too many people over extended themselves. And the bubble burst. And now begins the desperate attempt to get Americans to buy again — to start the whole cycle over.
What happens, though, when people realize that their five-year-old car is in great shape and they don’t need a new one to impress the neighbors? Or that they can live without yet more designer clothes, or bigger hard drives, or newer cell phones? Because if people realize that, they’re not going to buy. And this whole thing will start over again.
I am certainly far from blameless. I buy (well, bought) a lot of stuff I don’t need. I own too many keyboards and too many backpacks, for starters. (I can say, though, that I bought these things not to impress anyone, but because I wanted them for myself.) On the other hand, my 2001 car — and my wife’s 2000 — are in [knock wood] great shape and certainly don’t need replacing.
Bottom line: If you want to fix our economy, you need to fix our culture first. You need people to understand that having more, bigger, newer, or branded stuff doesn’t make them better than their neighbors. Then we can build an economy based on something a bit more realistic than on how long the line is for the newest iPhone or Xbox.
So the CIA and others are defending the use of torture (sorry “enhanced interrogation techniques”) with the tried-and-true excuse of “We were told it was OK.”
And that has some Republicans, amazingly, saying it’s a Bad Idea to prosecute the people who did the torturing, because it would — get this — make CIA officers today feel like they have people looking over their shoulders, and fearful that a subsequent administration might find what they’re doing to be criminal.
And how, they ask, can they do their job if they’re worried about being second guessed?
How about this, guys: Many of us know when something we’re doing is wrong. Really. Like, say, torturing someone. If it’s not clear in your mind whether something like torture is good or bad, maybe you need someone looking over your shoulder.
And as for the incredibly inane argument that we shouldn’t prosecute people who thought they were acting legally — well, isn’t that just a 2009 version of “I was just following orders”?
In fact, it’s worse.
The Nazi footsoldiers claimed at Nuremburg that they perpetrated their evil because they were ordered to. We we didn’t accept that. But our guys are only claiming they were given permission to torture — not ordered, permitted. Unlike the Nazis, they had the option to torture and found nothing wrong with it.
If they think that torture represents an acceptable practice for a representative of the United States of America, they damn well ought to be prosecuted. And anyone who’s worried about having someone look over his shoulder? Good.
Here’s something I’ve been thinking about: Too many news sources is bad for America. Bloggers as news sources are bad for America.
Here’s why, oversimplified:
Most people still get their overall news from mainstream news sites: CNN, USA Today, their local paper, etc. But more and more are turning to partisan sources — Fox News is the mainstream example, but also from the thousands of news and political bloggers out on teh Internets. And most of the latter have a strong bent one way or the other.
People being people, they turn, naturally, to news sources that support their political leanings. They go to Talking Points Memo or Michelle Malkin or any of the other blogs spouting rhetoric. Or they tune to Fox News or Air America, listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch the Daily Show.
To appeal to their core audiences, those shows and blogs then lean more and more to one ‘wing’ or another. Moderate views, after all, don’t generate readers. Getting people riled up — even if you have to invent controversy — is what drives traffic.
The end result: We’ve become more polarized. You have blue news and red news, and a feedback loop among viewers and readers. Opinions are reinforced instead of examined. Compromise is replaced by confrontation.
Think about it. Hasn’t America gotten significantly more polarized since the rise of Fox News and partisan bloggers? Polarized news begets polarized people. We’re red and blue.
It’s a shame, because both sides –
Wait. See, I fall for it too. There aren’t two sides. There are dozens. Hundreds. But today we’re artificially being divided into two camps. Us and them.
It’s a shame, because being able to rationally consider other ideas is important. If you have knee-jerk reactions to everything the other guys do, well, you never learn. You become intellectually isolated.
It’s ironic that the proliferation of news and analysis and opinion has ended up not making us more thoughtful citizens and better news consumers; it’s made us more isolated, more insulated, and more partisan. And I really can’t see how that’s a good thing.
Without a doubt, here’s your quote of the day. Not because it was said in an incredibly memorable way, but simply because of the content — and all it implies. From the Washington Post:
“And in a broad swipe at the Bush administration’s lawyers, Obama nullified every legal order and opinion on interrogations issued by any lawyer in the executive branch after Sept. 11, 2001.”
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” said President Obama today, during his inauguration speech.
Go to Pollster.com. It has a frequently updated map showing red and blue states based on any of the major networks’ calls. (If you stick with a major news site, you’ll only see when that particular network calls a state.)
For example, NBC called Pennsylvania for Obama, but none of the major sites has reported that – only Pollster.com.
My office happens to be a polling location, and I volunteered to open the doors for the poll workers at 5:00 AM — good citizen, I.
Anyway, when I got here at 4:45 and opened those doors, there were about 20 people there, waiting to set up the voting machines. As they filed in, one young woman said to me, “I’m here to work.”
“Um, for who?” I asked.
“For the election.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I’m just the building guy.” Then I realized — only about seven or eight of the people I let in were poll workers. The others were here to vote. At 5:00 AM.
How much you can read from the demographics, I dunno, but of the dozen or so people, all but three were African-American. They had been standing in the rain at 4:45 in the morning to cast their ballots. I don’t care how many flag stickers you have on your car, you don’t beat these folks for patriotism.
I was somewhat concerned, however, as I had heard an interview on NPR with a woman from West Virginia. She wasn’t going to vote for Obama because she was concerned that — I kid you not — if a black man was elected President, black people would start to feel superior and begin to push us white folks around. (Someone else pointed out that if Obama loses, those same African Americans were likely to riot.)
Now now, before you start jumping to conclusions, the woman was very clear to state that she was not a racist. So there you have it.
GOTV, folks.
Update: Here’s a 20-second video of the line at 6:26:
I was gonna make this a flowchart, but it’s too simple.
If you watch the election returns on November 4, here’s all you have to keep in mind:
Ohio Pennsylvania Virginia North Carolina Florida
If Obama wins any two of those states, it’s pretty much game over for McCain. They’re all in the eastern time zone, too, with polls closing between 7:00 and 8:00 that evening (EST), so it could be an early night. If Obama wins three or more of them, it’s definitely game over.
This is based on which states Obama has solidly (by more than 10 points and no flip-flopping). States with a smaller Obama lead I assume go to McCain, which I think is pretty generous.
Barack Obama’s site has a section to help people organize rallies and such. But they chose an awful name. How could someone not stand up and say, “Um, wait a sec….”?
I think last night’s presidential debate was going in John McCain’s favor, but clearly – based on all the polls – didn’t end up that way. And I believe there was a three-word turning point in that debate: “eight years old.”
In fact, Mr. Ayers has become the centerpiece of Sen. McCain’s campaign over the last two or three weeks. This has been their primary focus. So let’s get the record straight. Bill Ayers is a professor of education in Chicago.
Forty years ago, when I was eight years old, he engaged in despicable acts with a radical domestic group.
Obama made the perfect point that the whole line of discussion was moot. But McCain still wouldn’t drop it. At from that point on, slowly but surely, the debate swung back to Obama.
There are a lot of reasons McCain lost the debate – he was angry, bitter, condescending, and evasive. But there’s your turning point.
