"people tend to misbehave"

Bush speaks! On Thanksgiving! With a message of America's universal compassion and general awseomness. NYT:

this year, the White House hoped to show a more contemplative side of Mr. Bush, who, his aides say, has been struck by the goodness of the many ordinary Americans he meets during his travels

Of course, only to a closed group of prescreened supporters.

Menwhile, USA Today writes about an initiative designed to keep all such events off of college campuses. The Soapbox Alliance wants to preserve the traditions of the founders and encourage presidential connection with the all the people. Some responses:

"[L]etting in radicals that just want to make a mess of their event — what good would that do?" [David Horowitz... guess you know how radicals behave, right you old hack?]

"Do you want to cut off that revenue stream?" [Democratic operative]

...and the classic statement of Bushian fascism:
"It's a nice concept, but people tend to misbehave," says Trent Duffy, former deputy press secretary for President Bush.

Talk to the stormtroopers, buddy.

Carpetbagger Report here.

steampunk

Interesting video from WSJ Online about a custom-maker of steampunk style computers. He calls himself Datamancer and his site is here (scanner example). So sweet!!

Assassins!

Kevin Drum asks whether assassins really succeed in their goals, or whether they set them back. I had always assumed the latter... my historical studies have shown that violence begets violence.

But Henry Farrell chimes in with a link to a new study "Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War" (pdf here) that says "on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy". Interesting.

HF also links to another study (Zaryab Iqbal and Christopher Zorn, "The Political Consequences of Assassination,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming) whose findings

support the existence of an interactive relationship among assassination, leadership succession, and political turmoil: in particular, we find that assassinations’ effects on political instability are greatest in systems in which the process of leadership succession is informal and unregulated

Interesting pair of articles.

why we hate... or think we do

Article online (In-Mind.org) by social psychologist Alex Gunz summarizing some useful research into authoritarian politics. Interesting critique of the Frankfurt School:

Psychologists have long noted people's over-fondness (at least in the western world) for explaining actions in terms of the personalities of the actors involved. We tend to neglect the possibility that a person who falls, for example, might have been tripped, and that they aren't just clumsy. This bias is so commonplace that psychologists have named it the fundamental attribution error. Perhaps it isn't surprising, then, that the first attempt to explain prejudice chalked it up to an authoritarian personality.

Goes on to talk about Altemeyer, recent takes on this issue. Pretty good intro usable for students.

and then there were five...

BBC reports on five remaining British veterans of WWI. Includes video interviews with Harry Patch, Claude Choules, William Stone, Syd Lucas, and Henry Allingham -- the last one 111 years old!! Tough old bastards, all of em.

BBC One will air a special program this Sunday (Remembrance Sunday, the 11th).

telecom complicity confirmed

Mark Klein's story hits the NYT today. Story isn't that great compared to his Countdown performance an hour ago.

The difference in coverage is telling: NYT focuses on the congressional implications at the expense of the details. They don't even mention the specifics: that he knew the setup and all the equipment, had to maintain it and had a schematic. And on that are splitters copying all internet and phone traffic. Keith kept repeating "Room 614A" as it it were Room 101. (Go Keith!) NYT didn't even name it.

But hopefully this will shake things up.

wingnut welfare wars!

FDL chuckles at how Regency's authors are suing them for not sharing enough of the "profits". I never knew the bloggers were in on the welfare. From an earlier FDL post on it:

When the wingnuts chant their talking points like a bunch of tambourine-beaters at the airport, they want to be paid for their efforts. And Pajamas Media was set up to do just that. They received by some accounts $7 million dollars to subsidize 70 right wing bloggers, and if you look at their sites there are no ads, many don’t even identify their affiliation with a logo. Look at some full-on loon like the Confederate Yankee who earns his/her 800 hits a day by having seizures over Google’s attempts to mock Christmas with Jesus butt plugs. The General will easily draw twenty times the traffic with his rapier-witted takedown, but the Confederate Yankee probably earns a lot more money than the General. These illiterate zeros are being paid out of principal, not out of any ad revenues. They are all Armstrong Williams.

Ha. But it's an interesting point on how successful they've been spreading their message. I guess they have more money than we do :(

EDIT: Regnery. All this time and I just read it right for the first time. Not Regency, Regnery. Lol.