kfogel's Blog

Obamadorable.

2009-01-20T20:02:22Z

Outdoors at the inaugural celebration, Columbia University:

Never forget — we must be the change we wish to see on TV (zoom in on the screen):

This poster, on a lawyer's office door in Harlem, is one of my favorites. It's been up for months, and was still up after the inauguration today:

Obligatory snarky comment: did Rick Warren not show his speech to anyone who could recognize a fencepost error? We're celebrating the peaceful transfer of power for the 43rd time, not the 44th. 44 presidents means 43 transfers.

Disturbing news over at Justice...

2009-01-07T06:09:34Z

This is somewhat disturbing news...

Barack Obama's picks for No. 2 and No. 3 over at the DOJ are two lawyers who were heavily involved in extending copyright terms beyond all sanity and (in the latter case) in suing students and others for sharing music. Details in this excellent summary article by Declan McCullagh at CNET.

For those who don't follow this stuff closely:

In 1998, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, largely at the behest of Disney and other big media companies. The extended already-long copyright terms even further: lifetime of the author plus 70 years, in the common case. It meant that many works that would have passed into the public domain now would stay locked up. There was an unsuccessful lawsuit to declare the extensions unconstitutional ("Eldred v Ashcroft"), and the lawyer who defended the Act for the government was David Ogden, who is now nominated for deputy attorney general. Maybe he was just defending what he was told to defend, like a good lawyer, and his heart wasn't in it...

Meanwhile, Tom Perrelli, the pick for No. 3 (associate attorney general) did a lot of work for the Recoridng Industry Association of America, suing people who shared music with each other without asking permission first (the industry likes to call it "filesharing", but let's call it what it is: music sharing). The RIAA lawsuits have become a cause célèbre in the copyright reform movement, partly because the copyright laws are so out of hand now and partly because the RIAA's tactics were extremely sleazy. (Google it, you'll see what I mean.)

No doubt copyright reform is not on Obama's radar screen, what with economic collapse and all, but still it's disheartening to see him give two top jobs to people who apparently have their feet firmly planted in the restrictive past regarding the potential of the Internet to enable a vibrant public domain. We can do better than this.

The Difference That Speaks Volumes.

2008-11-05T09:31:01Z

Somebody please correct me if my memory is wrong, but: in McCain's concession speech, whenever he referred to Obama the audience booed and jeered (then McCain would gesture to quiet them down). In Obama's victory speech, when he mentioned McCain, the crowd in Chicago's Grant Park clapped.

That really speaks volumes about the different tones of the campaigns and the different styles of the candidates, and most importantly about the different behaviors they inspire in people.

If four years from now our country is more like that Grant Park crowd, we've won.

There is no terrorism without terror.

2008-10-14T21:24:48Z

If Bill Ayers was a "terrorist", who was terrorized?

I'm not defending him. Bombing public buildings is wrong, and even trying to do it when no people will get hurt is risky -- you might mess up and become a murderer.

But that's not the same as terrorism. Terrorism is about sowing fear: after 9/11, people were afraid to ride in airplanes or go up in tall buildings. That's terrorism: people feeling actual terror, which is, after all, part of the point (if you're a terrorist).

Did anyone walk the streets trembling because of this stuff in the 1960s and early 1970s? I don't get the feeling they were.

Searching for Backup: McCain Doesn't Know Own Website?

2008-10-01T13:23:53Z

In an interview today, John McCain stood by his claim that Barack Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex. He also said he had documentation to back it up, and that the documentation was "on our website".

So I tried to find it.

Just clicking around in the obvious places didn't dig it up. Fortunately, McCain's site has a search box (oddly, Obama's doesn't), so I did the obvious search, and came up with... nothing. You can see the results yourself.

Senator McCain, please call your web site admins.

Now, when McCain made the claim in this interview, he weasel-worded it: he said that they have proof that Obama "strongly supported that legislation". True enough. But the issue isn't whether Obama supported the legislation, of course, it's whether the legislation is about what the McCain campaign says it's about ("comprehensive sex education for kindergarteners", in the words of the interviewer, which McCain did not reject). McCain's claim is first of all a slur on the legislation, which then indirectly becomes a slur on Obama.

But McCain isn't even providing the text of the legislation, at least not where anyone can find it, despite saying that he is.

I wish the Des Moines Register interviewer had been a bit faster on her feet, and pressed McCain on the difference between Obama supporting the legislation (yes, he did) and the legislation being what McCain claims it is (no, it's not). As an interviewer, you have to walk into a situation like that knowing that the candidate is not going to play by intellectually honest rules of rhetoric; but if you're quick enough, you can force the specificity that the candidate wants to avoid.

Eventually, I found the legislation elsewhere. It's linked to from FactCheck.org's page about this; if you want to go directly to the text itself, it's right here: Illinois Senate Bill 99 (SB99).

Sarah Palin: the Slow Rollout Strategy

2008-09-15T03:23:07Z

The McCain campaign's strategy for Sarah Palin is becoming clear: the Slow Rollout. Introduce her as gradually as possible, to hold everyone's attention as they wait for more.

Consider that the mere fact of her scheduling another interview has itself become a news item. Let that sink in: the fact that the Vice Presidential candidate has agreed to an interview on a certain date is, in itself, considered newsworthy. That's kind of amazing. Then the interview happens, and of course that's news too.

They'll keep this up for as long as they can, I suspect. They'll dole her out drop by drop, so that each new interview or piece of information keeps Sarah Palin at the top of the news cycle, deflecting attention from both McCain himself and from the Obama campaign.

It's a level of marketing skill worthy of Apple, Inc.

What can the Democrats do to break it? Any ideas? So far, they seem to be waiting for it to blow over. Maybe that's the best response, I don't know...