DEMOCRATS AND SECURITY

DEMOCRATS AND SECURITY
Two more brief notes related to the Democratic security plan. First, the Iraq material is, of course, some pretty thin gruel. The Dems' position on Iraq involves calling for 2006 to be a "significant year of transition," even though the party won't have a chance to actually affect policy until (possibly) 2007 -- this confusion is sort of inherent to an "agenda statement" that's really a campaign document. Beyond that, their failure to specify any actual mechanisms by which the United States can induce "Iraqis [to] make the political compromises necessary to unite their country" is understandable, given that such mechanisms don't exist, but substantively it points to some rather starker conclusions about the right way forward. Various Democrats disagree in good faith about this issue so the banality on display here is probably unavoidable, but on the merits it?s problematic.
Secondly (and this is only tangentially related to the Real Security plan), one tendency liberals ought to avoid is conflating "support the troops" policies like boosting veterans' benefits, health care, and mental health services -- all important and valuable positions in their own right -- with a national security posture that actually addresses public suspicions about Democratic weakness on defense and foreign policy. These positions on social services and benefits are really just straight-up, bread-and-butter liberal domestic policies, only aimed at a military constituency. I think Americans recognize that, and that's why highlighting Democratic support for such measures isn't a particularly effective rejoinder against right-wing "soft on defense" attacks. I should caution that I don't actually mean this as a criticism in any way of the Democrats' Real Security plan, which covers a lot of ground beyond social service support for troops and vets, and engages major national security issue areas (terrorism, homeland security, Iraq, etc.). But it is a tendency I've noticed among plenty of liberals and Democratic politicians before.
The real sources of Democratic political weakness on defense issues go deep, and aren't all reducible to messaging -- they have to do with things like nationalism and war-making. Without, say, Democrats actually becoming a more affirmatively pro-war party (something I wouldn't want to see happen), I tend to think that, to at least some degree, this political vulnerability is intrinsic and insoluble, though Matt has certainly written extensively on ways it could be mitigated significantly.

SPEED UP YOUR PC

Speed up slow PC - Squeeze every last drop of performance out of your XP
With faster machines cropping up almost daily, the life span of a midrange PC is a little more than two years of service. Physically, the computer you bought a few years ago is just as sound as any new piece of hardware. Ideally, it could probably last you a decade or two--as long as you didn't add any new software or surf the Net. Realistically, that's not likely to be the case. Instead of buying a new computer, optimize your present one. The following are 11 things that Chip Manufacturers and PC Retailers don't want you to know or how to perform. Following these advices will drastically increase your PC performance and help you regain your sanity while saving loads of money. And, if your PC is years old and can't afford to upgrade yet, you will be able to squeeze out some more juice out of the old thing!
1. Disable file indexing.
This is a tiny service that uses a great deal of RAM and induces much disk thrashing. Your system instantly becomes more responsive. Here's how: First, doubleclick the My Computer icon. Then, right-click on the C: Drive, then hit Properties. Uncheck "Allow Indexing Service to index this disk for fast file searching." Next, apply changes to "C: subfolders and files," and click OK.
2. Zap the Windows Prefetch folder every week.
Windows XP can "prefetch" portions of data and applications that are frequently loaded. This allows processes appear to start faster when requested the user. Over time, the prefetch folder overwhelms with references to files and applications no longer in use. Guess what happens? Windows XP wastes time and grinds to a halt by pre-loading obsolete data. It helps you gain some performance on your XP Professional to periodically empty the prefetch folder.
The prefetch folder resides on your local hard disk, under the Windows folder.%systemroot%\prefetch-or-X:\windows\prefetch
Where X is the drive letter where you have Windows installed. Either path will get you to your local system. The second path is for those who have the default installation on the most commonly used drive letter, C:\
3. Optimise Display Settings.
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. Kill unnecessary animations, and nix active desktop. Here's how to do it:1) Go to Start2) Click Settings3) Click Control Panel4) Click System5) Click Advanced tab6) In the Performance tab click Settings7) Leave only the following ticked:(1) Show shadows under menus(2) Show shadows under mouse pointer(3) Show translucent selection rectangle(4) Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop(5) Use visual styles on windows and buttonsFeel free to play around with the options offered here, as nothing you can change will alter the stability of the computer - only its responsiveness.
4. Remove the Desktop Picture
Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.1) Right click on Desktop and select Properties2) Select the Desktop tab3) In the Background window select None4) Click Ok
5. Remove Fonts for Speed
Zap extra fonts fonts installed on their computer. Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. The more fonts they have, the more lethargic the system will become. Anything over 300 fonts tax the system and slow down load times- especially graphic apps. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.1) Open Control Panel2) Open Fonts folder3) Move fonts you don't need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.
6. Speedup Folder Browsing
You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:1) Open My Computer2) Click on Tools menu3) Click on Folder Options4) Click on the View tab.5) Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box6) Click Apply7) Click Ok8) Reboot your computerTo prevent a single Windows Explorer window tanking up takes the rest of your OS down, you can launch separate folder windows in multi processes. Open My Computer, hit on Tools, then Folder Options. Click on the View tab. Scroll down to "Launch folder windows in a separate process," and enable this option.
7. Disable Performance Counters
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC's performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. To disable:1) download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List2) Then select each counter in turn in the 'Extensible performance counters' window and clear the 'performance counters enabled' checkbox at the bottom button below
8. Optimise Your Pagefile
Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.1) Right click on My Computer and select Properties2) Select the Advanced tab3) Under Performance choose the Settings button4) Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change5) Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.
9. Improve Memory Usage
PC Washer improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings.
Once Installed:1) Click the 'Tools' from the left menu2) Select 'Memory Booster' in the tools list. A new window named 'PC Turbo Memory' will popup.3) Click Defragment button in the new window.4) Exit the program. That's all.
10. Disable unnecessary services
Windows XP loads services you will never need. To determine which services you can disable for your client, visit the Black Viper site for ideal Windows XP configurations. Here are a few services I booted off to streamline my PC:
* Alerter
* Background Intelligent Transfer Service
* ClipBook
* Computer Browser
* Error Reporting Service
* Help and Support
* Indexing Service
* IPSEC Services
* Messenger
* NetMeeting Remote Desktop Sharing
* Network DDE
* Network DDE DSDM
* Performance Logs and Alerts
* Portable Media Serial Number
* QOS RSVP
* Help Session Manager
* Remote Registry
* Secondary Logon
* Server
* Smart Card
* Smart Card Helper
* SSDP Discovery Service
* System restore Service
* TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper
* Uninterruptible Power Supply
* Universal Plug and Play Device Host
* WebClient
* Windows time
* Wireless Zero Configuration
* WMI Performance Adapter
11. Disconnect USB devices you aren't using.
When Windows starts, it must load all the drivers for the devices connected to your computer. If you have many devices connected to the USB ports, such as printers, scanners, cameras and hard drives that you don't use on a regular basis, disconnect them. You can reconnect them when you use them. Disconnecting them when they are not in use will allow Windows to load the drivers only when needed.
The above steps should help increase the performance of Windows XP as well as keep it running with more stability.

OODLES OF DOODLES! A PEAK AT POODLE CROSSBREEDS

Oodles of Doodles! A peek at poodle crossbreeds
They’re called “crossbreeds”, “hybrids”, and sometimes simply “mutts”, but offspring of mixed canine heritage have the best qualities of their purebred parents–but are healthier and more robust.
Goldendoodles
A Goldendoodle (or Golden Doodle) is a product of breeding a golden retriever with a poodle. Goldendoodles were originally bred as the perfect pet for physically challenged people who needed an assistance dog that wouldn’t agitate their allergies. The Goldendoodle’s low shedding coat and high intelligence fit the bill, and has made them a family favorite since their appearance in United States in the mid 1990’s.
Smaller Goldendoodles are considered “Miniature”, and are the product of golden retriever and minature or toy poodle parents. Weights vary from 25 to 45 pounds, far smaller than the largest standard size Goldendoodles (from standard poodle lineage) which can weigh over 75 pounds.
Colors and coats vary widely, from cream to brown to black, with poodle curls or the shaggy retriever look. No matter what the look, all goldendoodles have that ever-important low shedding coat, a sharp mind and friendly temperament.
Labradoodles
Labradoodles are the product of labrador retriever and poodle parents, and have much in common with Goldendoodles. Like the Goldendoodle, Labradoodles were bred to be low-allergen guide dogs, originating in Australia in the early 1990’s.
There are three size categories for Labradoodles, depending on parentage, ranging from the 25-pound miniature to the 75+ pound standard, with medium Labradoodles at around 50 pounds. You will find Labradoodles in a wider range of colors than Goldendoodles: white, cream, tan, coffee, brown, red, grey, or black. Their coats are a little shorter at 3-4″, but the same varying texture.
Both of these poodle crossbreeds are remarkably fit, showing none of the major health concerns of their purebred parents, and a life expectancy of 13-15 years.
Other Poodle Crossbreeds
Hybrids from poodles of varying sizes include:
Schnoodle = Schnauzer + PoodleCockapoo = Cocker Spaniel + PoodleChi-Poo = Chihuahua + PoodleDoodleman Pinscher = Doberman + PoodleEnglish Boodle = English Bulldog + PoodleEskapoo = American Eskimo Dog + PoodleLhasapoo = Lhasa Apso + PoodlePekepoo = Pekingese + PoodlePomapoo = Pomeranian + PoodlePugapoo = Pug + PoodleSaint Berdoodle = Saint Bernard + PoodleSchnoodle = Schnauzer + PoodleScoodle = Scottish Terrier + PoodleWeimardoodle = Weimaraner + Poodle
Note: One crossbred pup left off this list is the popular and comical Puggle, which is often mistaken for a pug/poodle mix, but is actually the offspring of pug and beagle parents.

PAPER CHASE

The Paper Chase
Dozens of progressive institutions are clamoring to put their agendas on Obama's desk. Will the incoming president actually read them?

The last time Democrats took the White House, they managed, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, a "heckuva job." During the Clinton administration's famously rocky transition, one White House alumna saw signs of trouble early. "The day after the election, we were getting calls from leaders all over the world," she says, but apparently Clinton's team hadn't realized the State Department now worked for them. Martha Kumar, founder of the bipartisan White House Transition Project, recalls the story of one Clinton flack who "walked into his office and saw there were six phone lines and all of the phones were ringing." Tellingly, only one question came to his mind: "If I answer them, what do I say?"
Now that Barack Obama has won the White House, the rapture of those who put him there will be eclipsed only by the countrywide yawp for justice deferred. The stakes today are even higher than in 1992 -- Obama faces two wars, a financial meltdown, mounting inequality, restless enemies, and a simmering planet -- and progressives have been sweating ink to ensure that they aren't caught flat-footed again. No fewer than 20 progressive think tanks, issue groups, media outlets, and ad-hoc coalitions have already or will soon release presidential transition plans. These open letters to the next president boast sweeping and ambitious titles: "Investing in America's Future"; Mandate for Change; "Opportunity '08"; Rebooting America; "Making Sense"; "Transitions in Governance" -- as do their sponsors: the Campaign for America's Future, the Institute for Policy Studies, the Progressive Policy Institute, the New America Foundation, USAction, the journal Democracy, the Brookings Institution. Even the Heritage Foundation has a "to-do list." (Don't try to mix and match.) "There will be dozens and dozens of these things," says Peter Wallison, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute once rumored to be on the shortlist for a McCain Cabinet.
Many of these transition agendas take their cues from the conservative movement, which, following Barry Goldwater's 1964 defeat, felled thousands of trees in the name of Republican institution-building. Likewise, the exile of the Bush years has produced an architecture of progressive ideas that did not exist for the Democratic presidents of the 20th century, including Clinton. "Every group worth their salt has a plan for transition," says Mark Green, president of Air America radio and collaborator on the Center for American Progress Action Fund's Change for America, perhaps the largest and most influential of the transitional care packages. "Let's say you care about soil erosion. Well, you sort of have to say, ‘Here's our plan to reduce soil erosion in the United States.'"
The left, preening for its close-up, has recognized that there is virtue in being prepared. So this year, that which can be tabbed, spiral-bound, or indexed has been. The ancient tradition of presidential advice-giving, once analog, is now industrial. The brief taste of change that Democrats enjoyed after reclaiming Congress in 2006 has only fueled this rush to paper Obama's desk. As Green says, in his best announcer voice, "To the winner goes the policy spoils."
***
Today's Democratic Party tends to look to two periods in history when we took major steps toward a more liberal society: from 1933 to 1938, when the New Deal reforms were enacted (Social Security, a minimum wage, health and safety standards on the job) and from 1965 to 1966, when the Great Society (the Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts) was passed into law. For many liberals, 2009 portends the Next Deal (which is, naturally, the name of the USAction coalition's transition agenda). Robert Borosage, president of Campaign for America's Future (CAF), knows we've experienced "a sea change election, and [Obama is] going to have a big mandate, and he's going to have a country in deep trouble." To CAF, USAction, and the other K Street groups waving binders at the new administration, such nagging is more than ideological inclination -- it's a historic duty.
Add to this compulsion the fact that Obama ran an entire campaign premised on change; the very vagueness of the term has made the race to define it for him all the more urgent. Naturally, "change" means "everything" to those Washington liberals who have spent the Bush years in despair. Most progressive groups I spoke with cited health care, a new energy policy, and a drawdown in Iraq as the big three priorities for the new Democratic administration. The diverse literature of transition, however, suggests a wealth of approaches to these priorities and others. "There's no question that the marketplace of Washington think tanks is much more crowded today than it was in the early 1990s," says Will Marshall, head of the centrist Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) and author of the original Mandate for Change, the group's precocious but less effectual 1992 transition offering.
And there aren't just a lot of plans. There are a lot of pages in each plan. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is releasing a 40-chapter book this month pulling together essays from top progressive thinkers and leaders advising the president-elect. CAF has already published a 10-section "guide to kitchen table issues," pushing for such major reforms as universal health care and quality education. USAction's book on the "Next New Deal" was published this July, and PPI's serial "Memos to the Next President" will be bound and duly distributed come January. Some incarnations of the genre are entirely pop: Brookings has partnered with ABC News on a set of videographic transition memos. Wired magazine and the New America Foundation have put out a glossy spread of profiles and essays directed toward "President X" from avant-garde scientists and specialists, while In These Times recently made provocative, though improbable, recommendations for positions in the Obama Cabinet. (Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington state for secretary of state?)
Then there is the cadre of single-issue advocacy groups who've thrown their white papers into the ring -- enviros, health-care reformers, Social Security defenders, government transparency zealots. Some are looking for easy, small-bore wins. "There is some low-hanging fruit," says IPS Director John Cavanagh, who cites reducing defense spending and revising Latin American trade policy as attainable goals of his group's transition agenda. Richard Kirsch, national campaign manager of Health Care for America Now, a sprawling, CAF-affiliated project, says the network wants, well, health care now -- "with a focus on doing it very early in the next administration. Our entire campaign is structured with that purpose in mind." A tome released by Van Jones, the founder and president of the environmental-justice group Green For All, proposes "elegant solutions for our economic and environmental crises," emphasizing investment rather than the regulatory fixes that cause gridlock on the Hill. And the National Security Network wants an early statement on climate change or human rights, says executive director Heather Hurlburt, "something that doesn't necessarily get at the thorniest long-term problems but immediately says, ‘We think there are different approaches to this problem.'"
But the heaviest-hitting transition rubric isn't a laundry list of policy priorities. It's a procedural blueprint. Change for America, released in mid-November by the CAP Action Fund, advises the next administration not simply what to say when the phone rings but who should answer it. CAP's playbook method is heavily informed by concerns about personnel and process -- which distinguishes it from some other publications that privilege general policy, with nods to good governance throughout.
Not to mention the fact that one of CAP's own, its president, John Podesta, is actually running Obama's transition team. Green describes the volume as "a 600-page, soup-to-nuts, agency-by-agency progressive transition report." His co-editor, CAP senior fellow Michele Jolin, claims it answers the question "What are the things that the new heads of these agencies are going to need to do on day one, in the first 100 days, the first year, and in the long term?"
***
No matter how forward-looking the liberal agenda, the idea that incoming presidents need a bible of governing minutiae has a long history on both sides of the aisle, from the playmaking of FDR's now-mythic first 100 days to the right-wing idea mill that birthed the Reagan revolution.
Of course, the New Deal set the standard for early progressive victories -- and Democratic presidents have been looking to imitate it ever since. The earliest attempt to recreate the magic of 1933 was a decidedly low-tech affair. Richard Neustadt, a former staffer of Roosevelt's White House, prepared a series of typed memoranda for John F. Kennedy prior to Inauguration Day, 1961. Neustadt's retrograde views on secretaries aside ("You will want to find an appropriate title for her"), he offers a barrage of helpful tips, provocative questions, and shrewd directives to the president-elect. Beware of "promissory notes" to friends and enemies both. Shall the first meetings with congressional leadership be "intimate sessions à la FDR, or ambassadorial encounters, à la Eisenhower?" And if and when the hordes begin to gather at the gates on Pennsylvania Avenue, "you need somebody else to take the heat, pass the word, fend off the importunate, and soothe the disappointed."
Such gentility somehow escaped the conservative makers of the next authoritative voice on transition. The sprawling, 1,100-page volume titled Mandate for Leadership -- conceived of and placed on Ronald Reagan's desk by the then-adolescent Heritage Foundation in 1980 -- was described as "a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels." Reportedly, Reagan handed a copy to each of his Cabinet officers, and Mandate became a veritable bible for the Gipper's first term. Conservative columnist William F. Buckley Jr. wrote that "the foundation had a great hour when Ronald Reagan was elected president and found waiting for him three volumes of Heritage material."
Heritage now trumpets Mandate -- updated in 1989 as "a guide for Bushmen" -- as "well established in Washington, well accepted by American voters, and well understood everywhere." It was certainly well accepted and understood by the progressive establishment, which saw the tome as the primary reason for the runaway success (by conservative standards) of Reagan's early years. Kumar saw the Heritage's disciplinary model pay dividends for George W. Bush as well: "He didn't have to talk about the murky outcome of the election. If he hadn't had a clear agenda, he would have had a vacuum there that could easily have been filled by the critics." But Mike Lux, an alumnus of the Clinton White House communications team who was recently named the progressive liaison for the Obama transition, emphasizes the comparative discipline of the Reagan moment rather than the specifics of the Heritage proposals as a reason for conservative success. "It wasn't so much that the Heritage strategy worked [than] that the Reagan transition worked," he says. "They were more focused; they understood what they were doing going into it."
By contrast, the Clinton years were lean indeed. Will Marshall, whose Democratic Leadership Council bred Clinton and tried to guide those first 100 days in office, says of that transition: "The best word to describe it begins with ‘cluster.'" In addition to various political embarrassments surrounding early Cabinet nominations, adds Cavanagh, Clinton "walked into a Republican fight" on issues like gays in the military, and by spending political capital on the North American Free Trade Agreement, "divided his base completely and set a lot of his natural allies against him." By the time a Hillary Clinton-led task force emerged with a plan for health-care reform, the single-payer activists of the moment felt thoroughly alienated, and a fickle Congress abandoned ship. Of course, when the 1994 midterms arrived, Clinton's momentum -- and the Democratic majority -- were lost.
Though Clinton went on to have a successful presidency, responsibility for some of the early bobbles can be traced back to the transition moment. For one, a rusty party apparatus wasn't prepared for change. "We hadn't had a Democratic transition in 16 years," says Lux. And Clinton's Arkansan posse proved, practically and stylistically, ill-equipped to take over Washington. Lux describes a call he got from Clinton aide Mark Gearan just days before inauguration, telling him to head for Little Rock: After flying south with a half-dozen other bewildered D.C. operatives, "we basically learned what our actual job and title would be about a half hour before the announcement," he says. "That was the way the White House staff was chosen." Terry McAuliffe, a 1990s chairman of the Democratic National Committee who is still close with both Clintons, says, "If you asked Bill Clinton he would say, of course he'd do things differently."
Today, of course, the Obama people have studied the Clinton order of operations -- and have proceeded to enlist many of those who possess, for better or worse, hard-won hindsight. The conscription of Podesta to manage Obama's transition was just the first hint that old hands would occupy key spots around the crowded kitchen table. Podesta's people have been relentless about cataloging best practices on personnel, protocol, and agency operations. (In addition to the CAP Action Fund text, Podesta has penned his own book, complete with a draft inaugural address.) Clearly, the insiders aim to avoid the rookie mistakes that have plagued previous Democratic presidents. Another Clinton White House alum now heavily involved in 2009 planning says of the Clinton transition, "We were very young and very enthusiastic and we got buffeted by events."
***
Somewhat ironically, the missteps of every Democratic transition since Neustadt's era have left today's progressives with Reaganauts for forebears. Borosage, whose reference copy of Mandate for Leadership anchors his office bookcase, freely admits that his transition strategy borrows from the conservative movement. "It's a best practice," he says. "Heritage in these cases was extremely influential." Green, who also keeps an edition close at hand, calls Mandate the "godfather." Cavanagh is also hagiographic about Republican brilliance on this front: The conservative-ideas industry is "big, it's well organized, it's top-down, it has foot soldiers. … It works well," he notes almost wistfully. "If you look at the progressive map, it's about 10,000 organizations, many of whom don't interact."
Although that, too, has changed -- and the white papers prove it. "Just five years ago the Center for American Progress, the Huffington Post, Air America didn't exist, and MoveOn was at half its strength," says Green. "The grass-roots and intellectual energy is far greater on the left now than it was in 2004." Borosage, in addition to his role at CAF, is a creator and convener of the Tuesday Group, a confederation of principals from large unions, progressive citizen groups, and think tanks, as well as certain Hill staffers. The coalition meets biweekly with the goal of giving the left "priorities and a common language" -- which they believe will help an Obama administration. At an October meeting, informal and more direct strategies for transition were tossed about, including advice from individuals working directly with Obama's team. Numerous individuals in attendance praised this focused, collegial dynamic, which deflates somewhat the presumption that the left is a messy band of believers unable to effect change. The fate of health-care reform in 1993 may have been quite different for Hillary Clinton if such a base had been at the disposal of her husband's White House.
And if the Tuesday Group recalls anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist's infamous Wednesday morning breakfasts between elite members of the conservative establishment, participants are unashamed. "It's very similar to the Norquist group," says CAF co-director Roger Hickey after leaving the gathering at the AFL-CIO headquarters. "We're now much more sophisticated about organizing to have an impact."
The left has brought this same spirit of rehabilitated pugilism to the present moment. Appropriately, the Roosevelt Institution, a progressive student think tank with its own transition pamphlet, believes that the transition is "about setting the tone of the debate," says executive director Nathaniel Loewentheil. "There are lots of people who are coming in with centrist ideas and lowered expectations, and I think we have a right to say we expect a government can do all of these things." As Cavanagh of IPS puts it, "There's a lot that we can achieve by just getting good ideas to the right people."
But when it comes to ideas, team Obama hasn't exactly been rattling the cup. In fact, McAuliffe said in October, "This campaign has gone on for so long, clearly the Obama campaign knows exactly where he wants to take the country. That's the benefit of having a two-year campaign." Between The Audacity of Hope, Obama's own ink-as-ideology biography, and the "300-person foreign-policy campaign bureaucracy" for which he was briefly mocked this summer, it seems that redundancy should be a major concern of well-meaning entities on the left.
Other modern presidencies offer mixed counsel. Peter Wallison explains that "[Reagan] did actually look at and read things that he thought would actually be helpful to him in governing. But I don't think in general presidents pay very much attention." Clay Johnson, the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget who was tasked with managing one of the more absurd transitions in history -- the recount-delayed turnover between Clinton and Bush in 2000 -- began his planning in the spring of 1999. He is helping to facilitate this year's transition as well and says of the various progressive agendas for Obama: "Let's be candid -- a lot of this will be ignored." Bob Shrum, senior strategist for John Kerry's 2004 run, says that unless an idea is "the sort that really stands out," campaigns tend to keep their own counsel. This is especially true of Obama, who has his own political base and made a point of disengaging with much of the current Washington apparatus during his bid. "There aren't going to be people parachuted in," says Hurlburt. "The Obama universe is so large that there could be people to say ‘we need you to just go off and think about the transition.'"
Reading further into the dense literature of transition, it becomes clear that the new paper-pushers are largely the old ones. Lawrence Korb, a veteran of the George H.W. Bush Defense Department, has contributed to the IPS and CAP platforms on defense. Michael Waldman, chief White House speechwriter for Clinton's second term, has worked on an essay for the Democracy offering. Kenneth Duberstein, a Reagan Cabinet official who endorsed Obama for president, has managed the publication of the Brookings transition project. Other Clinton alumni like Laura Tyson, Sandy Berger, Henry Cisneros, and Podesta have penned chapters in the CAP volume. Greg Craig, Clinton's impeachment lawyer and a key foreign-policy adviser for the Obama campaign, wrote CAP's State Department offering. It's not just that Obama learned from the transition mistakes of the Clinton team; the team learned from its own mistakes, and Obama is letting it take the lead in his administration. These fixtures of Democratic government in exile have made a career of finessing policy and advising presidents; though it cuts somewhat against the presumption that Obama will offer true change, their resurrection is good evidence that the left has finally created its own seamless cycle between think tanks and government -- a characteristic of the right it has long envied.
But will Obama actually read -- let alone implement -- the suggestions of the army of wonks on the left? One organizer maintained that his group would magically woo "the progressive part of Obama," suggesting they could push benchmarks for climate action from 60 percent emissions reductions by 2050 to 80 percent reductions -- which would be dandy, were the latter not already Obama's stated position. Other non-profiteers are more measured in their expectations: "We're not going to solve the Iraq conundrum with a 2,000-word memo to the president, and we're not going to try," says Marshall.
Borosage, for his part, sees the agenda-writers as just as important as the agendas themselves. "There's a situation where the people you've assigned to write chapters are logical secretaries or undersecretaries," he explains.
To be fair, just about everyone -- including the former Clinton official with ties to the current transition -- acknowledges that Obama will need eyes to peer around corners, and fresh ideas on demand. The think-tankers can't really be blamed for clamoring to whisper in his ear. Most groups are hoping for one of two outcomes: getting their people in the door of the executive branch or getting their ideas into the new political bloodstream. But to be more effective, the official encourages interest groups to band together -- which, on the new left, is a fait accompli. "Having a lot of different books in the Bible to read from is not necessarily bad," Kirsch concludes, "if they're all teaching the same lessons."
Perhaps the most important truth of this political moment remains the near-tantric cool with which Obama won the election. Consider the reams of newsprint that littered Obama's path to the White House. The Washington Post wrote, "Mr. Obama will not ride into town determined to reinvent every policy wheel." The Chicago Tribune opined, "Obama would govern as much more of a pragmatic centrist than many people expect." Every wonk in town marvels at his famed temperament without thinking that the "new kind of politics" he's promised could mean that their hard work goes into the shredder.
Hurlburt believes that progressives should expect "more awe and less shock" from their leader. And Obama himself is circumspect about the benefits of the liberal shock doctrine. "I do think the next president's going to have to come quickly out of the box," he told a reporter in Boulder, Colorado, in the days before the election. "The first 100 days are going to be important, but it's probably going to be more like the first 1,000 days that makes a difference."

GREEN OR DIE

Green or Die
TAP Online talks with the Rev. Lennox Yearwood about the cost of environmental degradation on communities of color, how to change the consumerist culture of hip-hop, and what Obama owes the hip-hop generation.

Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., addresses survivors of Hurricane Katrina and their supporters as they demonstrate outside the White House, Tuesday, March 14, 2006, in Washington. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson)
The Rev. Lennox Yearwood, executive director of the Hip Hop Caucus, recently wrapped up the "Respect My Vote" campaign to get the "hip-hop vote" out for Election Day. Yearwood -- who in 2004 coined the slogan "Vote or Die" -- claims that the hip-hop vote, more than any other constituency, was responsible for getting Obama into office and that therefore, Obama has a mandate from hip-hop. Looking forward, Yearwood says his new challenge will be mobilizing the hip-hop generation for environmental-justice issues.
The hip-hop generation has suffered disproportionately from poor environmental stewardship. What does the greater environmental movement owe to the hip-hop generation? What is their mandate from hip hop?
They have a tremendous mandate. It is critical that these organizations come to communities of color not just in charity, but in solidarity. That has to happen. And they must realize that they are not the end-all, be-all. There must be new Sierra Clubs that come out of the hood, and they must have the finances and resources to push forth.
[Mainstream environmental groups] can't be the only voice for the community. If all the funding is going only to certain groups, and young people are trying to get green environmental groups started and they don't have enough, we need to put resources into those organizations. I'd rather have [Sustainable South Bronx's] Majora Carter reaching people in the Bronx, who she's around every day. I'd rather have Van Jones reaching his people. Give them the resources.
You presented at this year's Green Festivals. Did you expect many from the hip-hop generation to be there?
I expected to see some people from the hip-hop generation. I don't think it's going to be the majority of the crowd. What's been disheartening is over the past four years, I would go to the immigration rallies, and there'd be all brown people there. I'd go to police-brutality rallies, and it'd be all black people. I'd go to green or environmental or climate rallies, and it'd be all white.
Hip-hop won't be able to sustain our movement if we have a segregated movement. That has to end. That's why you see us working on issues like how the climate affects us. People should understand that the climate and the endangerment of the environment -- that is nothing new to people of color. We have been dealing with that since Cancer Alley in Louisiana, asthma problems in the Bronx, [the historically black universities] North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University and Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University dealing with agriculture and with the farms and how to raise food in a way that will be sustainable for our communities. So this is nothing new for us. We've been dealing with the environment for quite some time.
How would you assess the challenge of getting the hip-hop generation committed to and mobilized around environmental justice?
I do think that obviously when you're dealing with economics, the green-collar-job approach can help. Keeping it real, people want jobs. People of color in urban communities want to work. You can say all you want about the environment, but if you ain't eating, you can't worry about that. So the green-collar-job focus forges an opportunity. I think obviously that goes to living sustainably. We'll be hard-pressed to tell someone to buy these light bulbs that are fluorescent, and they're $24, when they can go buy these cheap bulbs for $2. It's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to tell someone to buy a hybrid, when it's $10,000 more than the other car.
Let's be real -- a lot of commercial hip-hop is about excess and buying what's bigger. Can we really convince someone like Baby from Cash Money Records to turn in his fleet of Hummers for a fleet of Priuses?
That's where the Hip Hop Caucus comes in. Nobody said this was going to be easy. Sometimes hip-hop can take on the commercial side, and the commercial side puts forth a conspicuous consumer. The conspicuous consumer wants to have the Hummer limousine or whatever else is there. So it's our job.
I will say this: The same way we were able to get hip-hop engaged with the vote, I think our job is to now do the same thing with climate change. We can make it hot. We can make it sexy. We can make it exciting. We can discuss it in a way where people can hear it. We took "Vote or Die" to "Respect my Vote," and now the hip-hop community is down to vote. People are talking about politics. Obviously, you have a person of color running for president and wins, and that helps tremendously, but even before he was winning, people were getting engaged [in] the process. I think we have to do the same thing now with the climate.
I hope I have some more slogans in me (laughs). We have to come up with something that's hot. We have to market it the same way. We have to have our street teams out there. Put out mixtapes.
You have to admit that the dynamic is a bit different. Telling people to get out and vote is one thing. Voting is a relatively small investment of time and minor inconvenience compared to telling someone that now on a regular basis you're going to have to scale back dramatically on what you eat, on how you travel, on how you live in general in order to impact the climate. It seems like a much deeper dimension of buy-in.
You gotta build up. Look, there are artists today who are still not down with voting. But we go to other artists – like Diddy, Missy, Immortal Technique, T.I. -- and keep building. I know Common is interested. It's our job to foster that. That's why the Hip Hop Caucus is so important. You have to have an institution.
One of the problems has been that artists have only been their own individuals. And so they haven't had an institution to push and shape the positive. We need that so badly. Harry Belafonte came up through a process. Belafonte wasn't just an actor. He was working around Dr. King, and SCLC, and SNCC, and so that's shaping him. Eartha Kitt made a statement. I don't think she wanted to tell Lady Bird Johnson, “Let's close the war.” Like Kanye West -- I don't think he really wanted to say, “Bush don't like black people,” but whatever. Once it's done, it's done. It's out there, so we have to be able to protect them once it happens. So it's important to have that process. We have no choice. The environment is critical; our future generations depend on it.
So explain the Revolutionary to Solutionary concept you've been presenting before audiences.
Revolutionary means someone who is almost totally on the outside of the system. They have to create enough disruption so that their issues will be heard. Our community might see the Black Panthers as revolutionary -- we saw them as freedom fighters; others saw them as terrorists. They felt they couldn't change the system from the inside. There was very limited access to the inside back then.
There is a sense now that there is access to the inside. We have people who know Barack Obama. We have people who know Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff. There's a sense now that we can somewhat be at the table to affect change. Because of that we have to have solutions, because we're not on the outside throwing rocks anymore. We need to fix our climate and our economy. So let's combine it and [create] green-collar jobs, which is a solution for both of those.
You say Obama has a mandate from the hip-hop generation. What's included in that?
Overall, the message of hope -- if that is not manifested ... if people don't see hope, people will become discouraged very quickly. So, I think that it's very serious that he understands that his message of hope and change is realized, and if that isn't seen quickly in the communities that we're dealing with -- if they don't see visible changes, and they don't have the hope, people can become discouraged very quickly.

LET THE CONSERVATIVE WHINING BEGIN

Let the Conservative Whining Begin
During eight years of Republican rule, conservative talkers had to work hard to find people to blame for the nation's troubles. That won't be a problem anymore.

Over the last eight years, many conservatives, particularly the radio and television hosts who enjoy such loud and lucrative megaphones, have been forced to navigate some difficult rhetorical waters. When your side controls the White House, the Congress (as it did until two years ago), the judiciary, and the business world, how do you argue that you're part of an oppressed group being held down by The Man? It isn't easy, but they did it nonetheless. The "elite" they bellowed at day after day is not those who actually hold power. It's obscure college professors, Hollywood actors, the city council of a town you don't live in, and nonprofit organizations who advocate for things like poor people or the environment or civil liberties. That's the source of your problems, they would say, and that's who you should be mad at.
So the coming transfer of power must make them feel light as air. Now when they begin their daily pity party, they'll actually be able to complain about the people in charge.
And complain they will -- oh, will they ever. There was a time when conservatives saw themselves as the masters of the universe, remaking the world as they would have it. But by now, claims of victimization have woven themselves so tightly into their identity that they barely know how to engage the political world without claiming to be oppressed.
Take this head-scratcher:
In the last couple of weeks, conservatives have become positively obsessed with a supposed Democratic plot to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine in order to silence right-wing talk radio (eliminated in 1987, the doctrine mandated ideological balance on radio and television).
The conservative magazine Human Events, for instance, sent out a solicitation last week from conservative radio talker Michael Reagan, with the following soft-sell message: "The radical liberals will do everything in their power to SHUT US DOWN, along with every other conservative voice in America. And they're already telling the world exactly how they're going to do it:THE "FAIRNESS DOCTRINE." We MUST take action to STOP them NOW, before they are able to mobilize support for this insidious attempt to SILENCE CONSERVATIVES!" Rest assured, the underlining, bolding, and all caps are in the original. The e-mail also featured a picture of Rush Limbaugh with a Soviet flag photoshopped over his mouth, with the caption, "Stalin Style Socialist Doctrine to Silence Rush Limbaugh and Conservatives."
So brave, this Limbaugh and his lieutenants. Warning of the impending crackdown from the brutal hand of the state makes you seem like a daring rebel, broadcasting your missives from an encampment deep in the forest while the terrified populace huddles around their forbidden radios to hear your message of truth. Si, Subcomandante Rush, don't give up your fight for freedom and justice! Across the land, lonely villagers sing folk songs of your courage!
The only problem is that the plot is completely imaginary -- Barack Obama has gone on record opposing a reinstatement of the doctrine, and the congressional leadership has zero interest in the idea. As Matthew Yglesias wrote last week, "Political movements mischaracterize the other side's general goals all the time. But I've never heard of anything like the current conservative mania for blocking a particular legislative provision that nobody is trying to enact."
Meanwhile, gun stores can't keep enough arms on the shelves, as desperate Second Amendment heroes build their stockpiles in anticipation of the disarming of America. They are egged on by the likes of G. Gordon Liddy, who despite being a convicted felon and unrepentant terrorist (among his unconsummated plots were the murder of columnist Jack Anderson and the firebombing of the Brookings Institution) is blessed with a nationally syndicated radio show. Liddy, who during the Clinton years told his listeners, "If the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms comes to disarm you, and they are bearing arms, resist them with arms. Go for a head shot; they're going to be wearing bulletproof vests," Today, he advises his faithful flock to break whatever laws on gun registration that might apply to them. "The first thing you do is, no matter what law they pass, do not -- repeat, not -- ever register any of your firearms," Liddy recently said. "Because that's where they get the list of where to go first to confiscate. So, you don't ever register a firearm, anywhere." Be vigilant, bunker-dwellers, and make sure you have an ample supply of canned goods and ammunition.
It's no coincidence that the uptick in bitching and moaning comes as Republicans have become isolated ideologically, demographically, and geographically. The last factor -- that the GOP is now largely a Southern party -- gives the complaints endless fuel. As the center of gravity within the Republican Party has moved south, it has embraced that variant of Southern culture built on nurturing your sense of grievance and perseverating on your defeats. This is an old story -- even before the Civil War, Southerners couldn't talk enough about how those elitist Northerners were looking down their noses at the South. And is there a group of people anywhere in the world so obsessed with glorifying and celebrating a war they lost? A century and a half ago, my people were suffering through the Czar's pogroms, but I don't spend my weekends re-enacting them. Not that it's just conservative Southerners who have a hefty chip stapled to their shoulders. Grievance and complaint has become the lingua franca of the right all over the country. Politicians' desire to nurture these feelings gives us such spectacles as the one we saw on the penultimate night of the Republican convention, where the cross-dressing, opera-loving New Yorker Rudy Giuliani berated Barack Obama for being "cosmopolitan," while the multimillionaire, Harvard-trained industrial scion Mitt Romney bawled about the snootiness of the "Eastern elite." By the time Sarah Palin (now the de facto leader of the party's resentment wing) took the stage, the assembled crowd was mad as hell, and they weren't going to take it anymore.
This kabuki of complaint is built on a running series of imaginary slights. Democrats said that being the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, isn't really an adequate preparation for the presidency? They're attacking small towns, and the people who live in them! Democrats want to get out of Iraq? They're attacking our troops! Democrats point out that the immortal Joe the Plumber would actually fare better under Barack Obama's tax plan than John McCain's? They're attacking guys with blue collars everywhere!
Not that progressives haven't spent the better part of the last eight years complaining. But most of those complaints have been about things the Bush administration actually did, not some imagined offense to progressives' honor. When the left has complained about what "they" are doing, the word has usually referred to the Bush administration. When the right uses it, it refers to a more amorphous group, defined not by their actions but by their attitude. It's the brie-eaters, the bureaucrats, the secularists, the immigrants, and pretty much anyone that you think might be looking down on you. Now the right will actually have a government to rail against, but I'm guessing the nefarious group keeping them down will remain pretty expansive.
And we haven't even started the annual braying about the "war on Christmas."

THE FUNDAMENTALIST THANKSGIVING SPECIAL

The FundamentaList Thanksgiving Special
A look back at the most important developments in the religious right over the past year.
Sarah Posner November 26, 2008 web only
1. In The Beginning ...
The FundamentaList launched in September 2007 with a question that would recur throughout the presidential campaign: Out of the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, whom would James Dobson endorse?
Dobson had just been reassured by the Internal Revenue Service that his personal endorsement of candidates did not jeopardize Focus on the Family's tax-exempt status. Throughout the GOP primary, the press hung on every possible signal emanating from Colorado Springs, convinced that the eventual nominee's emergence would hinge on Dobson's blessing. As it turned out, Dobson withheld judgment, finally endorsing Mike Huckabee when it was too late to make a difference. Some, including Huckabee himself, blamed Dobson and his allies in the religious right for failing to give Huckabee a boost when he needed it most to win the nomination.
Although Dobson remains the most recognizable name in the religious-right leadership, many other figures, less well known outside the movement, and a "Huck's Army" at the grass roots drove Huckabee's candidacy in 2008 and could drive religious-right support for another run in 2012. The fixation on Dobson's endorsement was a creation of the press, not real voters. Many grass-roots activists told me that his endorsement would be meaningful but not essential for their own decision. But Dobson wasn't the only religious-right figure withholding approval of a candidate, and because of the numerous fractures in the GOP base, including a serious split over Mitt Romney's and Mike Huckabee's conservative credentials, John McCain -- whose campaign looked like it had imploded in September of 2007 -- rose to the top of the pack.
As a result of his dithering, though, Dobson sabotaged his own relevance. Religious-right activists rallied around McCain before Dobson endorsed him, and propped up Sarah Palin's vice-presidential candidacy before Dobson offered his seal of approval. In his new book laying out a blueprint for the future of the conservative movement that includes a crucial place for religious conservatism, Huckabee doesn't even mention Dobson's name.
2. The Emergence of Huckabee.
Although Huckabee lost the GOP primary, his run earned him the support of many prominent evangelicals, and many observers saw him as a possible running mate for McCain, or a future leader of a reconstituted religious right.
While Huckabee was passed over as McCain's running mate (in retrospect, perhaps an ill-conceived decision by McCain), he took numerous steps to position himself as a possible movement leader and/or presidential candidate for 2012 or 2016. He formed a political action committee, HuckPAC, in April, to fundraise for fellow Republicans, and he campaigned for McCain and congressional candidates. He scored a weekly television show on Fox News, later signed a deal for a radio show on ABC Radio Networks that will air next year, and published his post-election tell-all/roadmap for his political future, Do the Right Thing.
In the book, Huckabee lashes out against the "Faux-Cons" who opposed his candidacy and the writers at National Review, who found his worship of conservative economic orthodoxy lacking. He claims his grass-roots conservatives are the future of the movement and that "the uprising among non-Beltway conservatives is real."
To harness all that energy, he launched his Vertical Politics Institute, which is "dedicated to finding solutions to the many challenges our nation faces today," through the mobilization and involvement of the grass roots. It's not clear how, exactly, he's going to deploy his new populist foot soldiers, or how big his army is, but he is giving a big fat poke in the eye to the religious-right establishment and conservative elites.
3. The Pastor Problems.
One of the biggest stories about the intersection of the religious right and McCain's campaign was his endorsement by televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley, and his later rejection of them.
Longtime readers of the Prospect and The FundamentaList knew all about Parsley and Hagee before they were thrust into the campaign spotlight for their endorsements of McCain. Both the Prospect and God's Profits featured examinations of the men's careers, including the preaching of the highly controversial prosperity gospel, secret fundraising and finances, faith-healings, self-enrichment, lawsuits, authoritarianism, secrecy, calls for war and Armageddon, and, of course, hobnobbing with the Republican power elite. McCain's quest for their endorsement was straight out of the Republican playbook -- but the fact that Parsley had essentially campaigned for Bush in 2004 and Hagee had written a book endorsing Bush in 2000 was largely ignored amid the fascination with Hagee's description of the Catholic Church as a "great whore" and Parsley's claim that "Islam is a false religion."
In the YouTube age, though, clips from sermons rule the day, and McCain ultimately rejected Hagee because of one in which he lauded the Holocaust as part of God's plan, and Parsley for another showing him saying that destroying Islam was part of God's plan for America. The whole episode did more damage to McCain's career than Parsley's or Hagee's; as they soldiered on in their battle against Satan, McCain was denounced by the religious right for toying with their feelings and by the rest of the world for pandering to such people in the first place.
4. The Rise and Fall of Sarah Palin.
During her honeymoon with the Republican Party, Palin looked like she -- not Dobson -- would save McCain with the base.
Her conservative credentials were sealed by her decision to continue with a pregnancy when she knew the baby would have Down syndrome, and when she was picked as McCain's VP, Palin became the overnight darling of the religious-right base, which didn't even flinch at the mounting evidence of her utter lack of preparation or qualifications for high office. The religious right's greatest fascination with Palin remains not her political accomplishments (or lack thereof) but her motherhood, good looks, and her destruction of the mold of the submissive evangelical woman, even as wifely submission is, for many fundamentalists, biblically required.
More than any electoral event since Pat Robertson's failed 1988 presidential run, Palin's candidacy laid bare the deep divide between the religious right and the rest of America. That divide is, more than ever, an existential dilemma for the Republican Party.
5. Televangelist Investigations.
In November 2007, Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, launched an investigation into the financial practices of six prominent televangelists, questioning whether they had used tax-exempt donor funds for their own enrichment.
The targeted televangelists preach the prosperity gospel, or Word of Faith doctrine (as do Parsley and Hagee), through which the televangelists ask their followers to "sow a seed" (give them money) in order to "reap a harvest" (get a supernatural financial return on their investment). Grassley was interested not in the doctrine but in whether all those seeds were going to mansions, luxury cars, and private jets for the televangelists.
Although McCain got a lot of heat for seeking Parsley's and Hagee's endorsement, Huckabee got very little for appearing on Grassley target Kenneth Copeland's television program, letting Copeland raise campaign cash for him, and defending him against the Senate investigation. Huckabee, a Southern Baptist who calls himself a "Bapti-costal," positioned himself as a bridge between two sometimes conflicting forces within religious conservatism as Copeland blamed Grassley (a Baptist) for scapegoating Pentecostals over religious doctrine, not tax policy.
The Grassley investigation isn't over, but the Senate Finance Committee probably has other pressing matters to attend to before it goes toe to toe with Kenneth Copeland.

FUTURE OF INTERNET AND HOW TO STOP IT?

Freedom's Future Online
The delirium and delusions that surrounded computing and the Internet in the 1990s have given way to a sentiment just as dangerous--complacency. It's not just that yesterday's wonders have so quickly become routine; most of us also take for granted the basic workings of the digital environment, including the freedom for experimentation that it affords. Countries like China may control the Internet, but in our society don't the free market and the open, untamed wilds of cyberspace make it nearly impossible to clamp down on innovation?
If that's what you think, you need to read Jonathan Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. A professor of law and Internet governance and regulation at Oxford, Zittrain is one of a group of technically literate legal scholars who have clarified what's at stake politically, economically, and culturally in choices about the architecture of the new media. The role of this group--others include Stanford's Lawrence Lessig and Harvard's Yochai Benkler--is itself noteworthy. They have become an important source of intellectual renewal in contemporary liberalism, showing how to translate constitutional principles and democratic values into the emerging digital world.
Zittrain's work neatly complements Lessig's and Benkler's. In his 1999 book, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig warned that the Internet might evolve from a technology of freedom into a technology of control, and in a recent second edition, Code Version 2.0, he points to Zittrain's work as spelling out how that could happen. Benkler's 2006 magnum opus, The Wealth of Networks, argues that the networked information economy and public sphere offer improved possibilities for realizing such liberal values as personal autonomy, democratic participation, and a critical culture. The tenor of Zittrain's work is more pessimistic, but like Benkler, Zittrain favors approaches that "go light on law" and rely instead on the new technology's capacity for facilitating voluntary social coordination on an unprecedented scale.
For Zittrain, the very qualities that make the personal computer and the Internet so valuable are the source of their vulnerability and possible undoing. At the core of his thinking is a distinction between what he calls "generative" and "sterile" technologies. Generative technologies allow anyone to build upon them without permission, whereas sterile technologies are controlled by their manufacturer or owner. The generative/sterile distinction isn't exactly the same as the one between open-source and proprietary software. Microsoft's operating systems are proprietary, but in Zittrain's terms they're nonetheless generative because they can be built upon without Microsoft's approval.
"The PC revolution was launched with PCs that invited innovation by others. So too with the Internet," he writes. "Both were designed to accept any contribution that followed a basic set of rules (either coded for a particular operating system, or respecting the protocols of the Internet). Both overwhelmed their respective proprietary, non-generative competitors, such as the makers of stand-alone word processors and proprietary online services like CompuServe and AOL."
Zittrain's analysis illuminates why the triumph of the Internet over its well-financed proprietary rivals was so significant for creativity and innovation in the world. As he explains, the proprietary networks were not "user-programmable"; a computer connecting to CompuServe, for example, was configured as a dumb terminal and could exchange only data, not programs. That made the proprietary networks more secure but also slow to evolve--they had only the features that their owners decided would be profitable.
In contrast, the Internet has been open to innovation at every level, from its physical infrastructure to its logical layer (software), to its higher levels of content and social organization. Many contributions have come seemingly out of nowhere, from people without credentials or investors. For example, Trumpet Winsock, the original program that allowed PCs running Microsoft Windows to connect to the dial-up servers of Internet service providers, came from a hobbyist in Tasmania, Peter Tattam, who distributed the program as shareware. When the computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee created the html markup language that generated the Web, no network authority had chosen him to do it or gave its approval. These and other innovations were not planned; they were made independently and just spread. From its beginnings, the Internet was designed to permit computers to send and receive programs and to be run by other computers from a distance. This has been one source of both its versatility and its vulnerability. "On the Internet," Zittrain points out, "the channels of communication are also the channels of control."
The result has been, in Zittrain's phrase, a "generative trade-off." On the one hand, the combination of generative PCs linked together in a generative network has unleashed innovation and enabled the Internet to evolve new capacities and resources at an astonishing rate. The explosion of social media--blogs, wikis, social news sites like Digg, Facebook and other social-networking sites, Flickr, YouTube, and so on--is just the latest wave in this process. On the other hand, a generative network of generative PCs has also been a fertile environment for new pathologies such as spam, viruses, and "malware."
Zittrain warns that this downside now threatens the entire generative system. Internet security incidents have been growing at a geometric rate, millions of poorly protected computers are connected by broadband in an always-on state, and computers can be infected merely by surfing a compromised Web site. Moreover, the early days of relatively innocent hacking are over; today there is "a business model" for malware. The creators of bots--software robots that spread virally over the Net--can seize control of PCs and, unbeknownst to their owners, turn them into "zombies" awaiting further instructions. Millions of PCs, perhaps yours, are already acting as e-mail spammers, and the same techniques can be put to more serious purposes, such as coordinated attacks on commercial Web sites to extort money. As a result, skillfully designed viruses have become "valuable properties."
Zittrain writes that these proliferating troubles could well lead more people "to prefer security to generativity." The shift in sentiment could come through a gradual deterioration of confidence in the Internet (for example, through increased incidents of identity theft) or as a result of a catastrophic breakdown. To protect themselves, instead of buying devices with open platforms for unpremeditated uses, many people would increasingly opt for safe "information appliances," that is, devices like the iPhone whose software is centrally controlled and therefore more effectively guarded. And computers themselves may increasingly get locked down, as they already are in many companies, universities, and other organizations where network administrators control the programs that can be loaded on individual machines.
This shift could occur even if people don't make a conscious choice for greater security. The more people rely on cell phones rather than PCs as the platform for online communication, the more they will likely move from a generative to a sterile technological environment. And "cloud computing"--that is, using the PC essentially as a dumb terminal and relying on programs residing on giant servers run by companies such as Google--would also be a big step in this direction.
Besides inhibiting innovation, a sterile technological environment creates another risk for freedom. Even if the control remains in private hands, the more individual activity depends on programs controlled from a central point, the more amenable that system becomes to government surveillance and regulation.
The thrust of Zittrain's book is that the shift back toward sterile technology cannot be entirely avoided, though the dangers can be mitigated. Instead of relying wholly on formal governance institutions or commercial security vendors to make the Net secure, Zittrain has specific proposals and initiatives already under way to use generativity to solve the problems of generativity--"to empower rank-and-file users to contribute, rather than to impose security models that count on a handful of trusted people for control." For example, StopBadware.org, a project based at Harvard and Oxford, aggregates information about Web sites and programs that violate privacy and security guidelines (Google's search engine now throws up an alert about sites identified by StopBadware before someone clicks through). What's needed, Zittrain contends, is the equivalent of a Manhattan Project, but this time on a decentralized basis that engages people as participants, in the way that Wikipedia does.
Whether that's a practical cure, I don't know--and if there's a truly catastrophic event that spreads online, all bets are off. Richard Clarke, the anti-terrorism expert, refers to the potential for a "digital Pearl Harbor." Zittrain conjures up visions of malware changing the numbers around in spreadsheets, turning text files to gibberish, erasing hard drives, and producing major breakdowns in transportation, finance, and other realms. If such things happen on a massive scale, we will all prefer information appliances.
In the digital environment as in other areas, a framework of security is a prerequisite for freedom, but we also have to avoid getting stampeded by fear and alarmism into compromising freedoms that needn't be in danger. Zittrain wants us to understand that the freedom the Internet affords is far more precarious than we may have realized and that if we want to keep that freedom, we're going to need to evolve new social capacities. It's a wake-up call (the bots are coming!) for a kind of civilian defense--part community watch, part high-tech volunteer militia. Ignore Zittrain's warnings, and we may prove his forecast right.

THE CASE FOR KEEPING THE BIG THREE OUT OF BANKRUPTCY

The Case for Keeping the Big Three Out of Bankruptcy
Whatever the moral claim of UAW members and retirees to their paychecks and pensions, it's their sheer number that requires the government to keep the Big Three, for now, out of bankruptcy court.

The United Auto Workers’ pamphlet is nothing if not explicit in criticizing the direction of the American automobile industry. New cars cost too much relative to the buying power of the American public, it says. They are oversized. Their fuel efficiency is appallingly low.
This indictment of the Big Three appears in "A Small Car Named Desire," published by the UAW in 1949 (when the Tennessee Williams play which its title invokes was new). It was written by the social democratic labor intellectuals with whom the UAW's new president, Walter Reuther, staffed what was then the world's largest and most vibrant union. During World War II, the union, along with the Steelworkers, had won the first contracts that committed its employers to paying for its members' health care. In the first years of Reuther's presidency, it won the first contracts ensuring that productivity gains would be shared with the workers and devised the first annual cost-of-living adjustments so that paychecks would keep up with inflation. The union also won decent pensions for retirees and coverage of those retirees' medical expenses.
In other words, the UAW did more to build the era of postwar American prosperity, when workers' paychecks kept up with productivity gains, than any single institution save the federal government itself. That's one reason why it's such a target for conservative attacks as the Big Three beg the government to bail them out: In an era when no productivity gains are shared with workers, when workers’ incomes have been stagnating for decades, the UAW still preserves some of the gains that were broadly shared among American workers three and four decades ago. Once the trendsetter for the unprecedentedly prosperous working class of the postwar decades (in 1947, Reuther called the union "the architects of America's future"), today's UAW is a lagging indicator of the slow (and now, not so slow) decline of America's workers. The union won so many gains in decades past that it has not yet given them all back. What could be more outrageous?
Unfortunately, that's not the only reason the UAW has come under attack. It's hard to imagine the union of the past 20 years authoring anything as critical of the industry as "A Small Car Named Desire." The union stood shoulder to shoulder with management in opposing decades of bills that would have raised fuel-efficiency standards. It's not that the members or leaders of the UAW were convinced that Big Three management exhibited sound judgment; far from it. But battered by foreign competition and foreign-owned plants in the U.S., by companies whose health-insurance costs were picked up by foreign governments or which (in the case of newer foreign-owned plants in the U.S.) didn't have hundreds of thousands of retirees to whom they paid pensions, the union became fearful of changes that could entail short-term job losses and more insular in its concerns generally.
But the factories are no longer the Tayloristic assembly lines that conservative critics cite as a reason why autoworkers are "overpaid." Over the past couple of decades, the UAW has worked with management to produce factories that are far more efficient and to demand of workers considerably higher levels of skills than their predecessors. The problems with new American cars today are problems of design (the one part of the production process in which UAW members play no role) and of cost, in which the "legacy" share of the bill -- the companies' obligations to their retirees, an obligation that in Japan and other auto-producing countries is assumed by the government -- is the great unequalizer.
But whatever the moral claim of UAW members and retirees to their paychecks and pensions, it's their sheer number that requires the government to keep the Big Three, for now, out of bankruptcy court. According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing, the total number of Big Three employees, parts-supplier employees and car-dealer employees comes to 1.59 million. Add the multiplier effect of other jobs dependent on these jobs for their own existence -- in construction, retail, restaurants, and so on -- and you've easily exceeded 3 million jobs, perhaps 4 million. That's a big chunk to take down at a time when the economy is already headed into the steepest recession we've seen in decades. Nor does that include the 2 million people reliant on the industry for health care, and the 775,000 retirees who collect auto-industry pensions. (It's not just Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin that would be devastated, it would be Florida, too.)
This is why bankruptcy would be a catastrophe for the country and not just the companies. Consumers would cease to buy cars from companies they couldn't count on to provide long-term maintenance. And under bankruptcy, union contracts could be abrogated, pensions abolished, health care dropped. A recession could well turn into a depression.
And yet, at the same time, the industry needs to be restructured, and it is ludicrous to believe that the executives who have helped run these companies into the ground are the executives who can make the necessary changes. The task cannot be given either to them or to a bankruptcy judge. It must be undertaken by the federal government -- by the Obama administration and the next Democratic Congress. The money that the government extends to keep the industry afloat must be conditioned on new management in all three companies, on a retooling of both factories and cars that greatly reduces their carbon footprint. It may not be prudent for the government to take an equity interest in such beleaguered companies, but mandating that these companies' boards of directors include environmental, consumer, and worker representatives seems a less risky way to ensure compliance with the government's goals. It would also give the industry a governing structure akin to that for which Reuther was calling in the 1940s, when the industry bestrode the world and the union fought to ensure it did so benignly.

THE AMERICAN COLLISION

The American Collision
A presidential race between Obama and McCain was supposed to bring a less-polarized politics, so why hasn't it worked out that way? Because the candidates are proxies for two versions of America.

Earlier in this election cycle, many observers suggested that if Barack Obama and John McCain became their parties' nominees, they would each moderate the polarizing tendencies in American politics. In the wake of the two parties' national conventions, that notion seems like a frail hope. Something is driving polarization, and it isn't the personalities.
It also isn't trends in public opinion. As Morris P. Fiorina argues in his book, Culture War?, public opinion surveys show that on most issues Americans are still bunched in the middle, contrary to the widespread belief that they are more deeply divided than they were a generation ago.
Of course, party differences have sharpened as a result of the ideological sorting out that's come with the defection of white Southerners from the Democrats and the conservative revolution within the GOP. At first glance, it looks like two opposite and equal shifts. The Democrats have become more liberal with the loss of Southern conservatives as the Republicans have become more conservative with the disappearance of liberals and moderates from their party.
But that nicely balanced picture doesn't fully reflect what's happened. Compare an older generation of Republican leaders to their successors--for example, George H.W. Bush to George W., George Romney to Mitt--and the younger ones are distinctly more right-wing. Democrats haven't seen a comparable generational shift. To borrow a term from Paul Pierson and Jacob Hacker, what we've had is "asymmetrical polarization": Republicans have moved further right than Democrats have moved left.
This year, McCain was expected to bring the GOP back toward the center, not just because of who he is (or is supposed to be) but because of the dismal condition of the Republican brand. Instead, after locking up the nomination, he veered to the right, turning away, for example, from his earlier positions on the environment that gave him a reputation for independence (he had already changed his stance on immigration, Bush's tax cuts, and other matters). The base demanded concessions, and he made them. And nowhere was that pattern more evident than in McCain's choice of Sarah Palin after he backed down from picking Joe Lieberman.
Was all this inevitable? No, the McCain of Bush's first term might have resurfaced to wage a more centrist campaign, but the pressures to conform--the imperative to rouse the party--were formidable. And those pressures ultimately reflect social realities--the social make-up of the Republican Party, which was on full display at the party's national convention.
What is really at the root of party polarization is social tensions. Sociologically as well as ideologically, the two parties have become a stark contrast. The delegates to the Republican Convention were nearly all white (only 1.5 percent black and 5 percent Hispanic). Their hearts would not have been in a centrist campaign. What got them excited were the old denunciations of the liberal media and "Eastern elites" by speakers who tried to reignite the culture wars. With a more socially and culturally diverse base, the Democrats seek to downplay polarization, while the more homogeneous Republicans cannot resist trying to inflame it.
Despite the changes in its regional support, the GOP occupies the same sociological space today as in the 1920s, when it was a party predominantly of small-town Protestants fighting off a rising urban, immigrant America. At that time, the dominant conception of white Americans excluded recent immigrants, such as Jews and Italians, whereas now it includes them. But structurally the situation was the same: a white, self-consciously Christian party against a more diverse, urban one, with the former inclined to see the election as a contest between the virtues of honor, patriotism, and moral uprightness that its members identify with their own group (and their candidates) and the vices that they project onto the other.
McCain and Obama stand in as proxies for two versions of America. When voters hear Obama, they are responding not just to him but to a new multicultural America that they find attractive or frightening. And when they hear McCain, they are responding to a traditional America--or rather, an idea of that America--that they are determined to preserve or willing to see change.
McCain's America has historically dominated Obama's. White has dominated black, old has dominated young, the appeal of soldierly virtues has dominated those of the peacemaker. If Obama wins the presidency, it will turn the traditional order of things on its head.
But that has happened before. After the 1920s, FDR assembled a new majority, and in the 1960s LBJ helped to build another one. BHO has a fighting chance to do the same.

THE REALIGNMENT OPPORTUNITY

The Realignment Opportunity
Conservatives say that America remains a center-right country and Obama won only because of special circumstances, while some liberals claim that the election marks a historic realignment. Neither is the right way to read the returns.

In the immediate aftermath of the election, two interpretations began circulating about its implications. The first came from conservatives who insisted that America remains a "center right" country and that the voters gave Barack Obama and the Democrats a majority only because of the financial panic and the limitations of the McCain campaign. The second interpretation came from some liberals who promptly declared this to be one of those critical elections that mark a historic political realignment. Neither is the right way to read the returns.
The conservative interpretation ignores long-term trends in demography and public opinion that favor the Democrats. Since the early 1990s, younger voters have been moving in a more liberal direction, and Democrats have solidified their support among Latinos -- the most rapidly growing group in the population. Surveys have shown a steady rise in tolerance on race and sexual orientation as well as large majorities in favor of universal health coverage and other measures requiring an active governmental role. George W. Bush's two victories -- the first only in the Electoral College, the second after September 11 -- may have just temporarily held in check a wave of increasing liberal and Democratic strength.
No doubt economic conditions were crucial to Obama's victory, just as they were to Franklin Roosevelt's in 1932. Every election turns on both immediate and long-run influences. But although the outcome this year was no sure thing, it was also no mere fluke. Democrats gained control of Congress in 2006 before the recession, and they have now won the popular vote in four out of the last five presidential elections.
The claim that America remains a center-right country is an effort to deny a plain fact about the election. Republicans denounced Obama as a liberal, accusing him -- horrors! -- of wanting to redistribute income. Yet after waging an ideological campaign, they deny that the outcome had any ideological significance. So convenient a memory is a marvelous thing.
Nonetheless, the view that 2008 marks a historic realignment in favor of the Democrats is also misleading -- or at least premature. Obama's victory offers no guarantee of a realignment. It is only an opportunity to bring one about.
Some of those who saw a realignment in this year's returns invoked the notion that American history is characterized by roughly a 30-year political cycle, each turn marked by a critical election. As the political scientist David Mayhew has shown, the historical evidence for critical elections is pretty shaky. In 1992, it seemed Bill Clinton's election came right on schedule three decades after the New Frontier and Great Society, but a Democratic realignment didn't materialize, because Clinton was unable to turn his personal victories into a lasting majority for his party.
The potential for a realignment, however, was already growing under Clinton. In 1997, in an article called "An Emerging Democratic Majority" (later the title of a book by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira), I argued that long-term social trends favored the Democrats without guaranteeing them anything and suggested that the Democratic Party itself -- not just the single-issue movements around it -- could become a "cause." Clinton didn't create that cause, but ironically, Bush has. In recent years, for the first time since the 1960s, there has been a movement on the progressive side -- and Obama has brought that movement into the Democratic Party and seems determined to keep it alive.
A genuine realignment will require several things. First, Obama has to get his program through Congress. Second, that program has to show real progress, beginning with economic recovery, in order for Democrats to at least hold their own in 2010 and for Obama to win re-election two years later. And, third, his presidency has to bring about long-term, sustainable institutional change that is understood as a Democratic achievement and serves as the formative struggle of a new political generation.
Of course, the real motive behind claims that this is a center-right country is to suggest that although Obama won a majority, he didn't win a mandate, at least not for the full program he campaigned for. Having lost the election, conservatives want to win the debate over its interpretation and convince the public that the Democrats had better not "overplay" their hand and actually try to change institutions such as health care.
To be sure, the new administration will need to reach out, where possible, to gain support from Republicans and to make strategic choices about the sequencing of reforms. Not everything need be done on day one. But there would be no surer way of wrecking the promise of change than backing off from it without a fight. On Nov. 4, America climbed a mountain, but the ultimate significance of the nation's choice will depend on what's on the other side.

OBAMA GETS INTERACTIVE WITH GOVERNANCE

Obama Gets Interactve With Governance
Here’s a promising first sign that the next administration will have a more participatory style of governing:
Change.gov, the official website of the Obama-Biden transition team, has gone interactive. In a blog announcement on Tuesday, the public was invited to join the discussion:
Today we’re trying out a new feature on our website that will allow us get instant feedback from you about our top priorities. We also hope it will allow you to form communities around these issues—with the best ideas and most interesting discussions floating to the top.
The first discussion that we’ve all been invited to participate in is about health care reform. Specifically, the transition team has put out the question, “What worries you most about the health care system in our country?” As of Wednesday night, there are 2,430 comments, running the gamut from well-researched arguments to personal stories about experiences in the U.S. health care system.
The amazing thing about this to me is that the Obama team isn’t just throwing up a standard comment board that require administrative approval before posting (like some other government sites). They are using discussion software, made by IntenseDebate, that allows commenters to build profiles, earn followers and reputation points, vote up helpful comments and vote down comments that are not helpful, and, by integrating OpenID, to take their followers and reputations to discussions elsewhere on the Web.
This is a fantastic start to a new kind of governing that is more open and representational than what we have seen before. As he hinted at on the campaign trail, this is Obama taking the community organizing style of his campaign and moving it into governance. If the success of his internet tools during the campaign are any indication, his continual use of tools like this could force lawmakers to make policies that better reflect the views of the nation.
But the Obama team should take it a step further than asking broad questions about hot-button issues. The new government should allow people to be active players in politics at the legislative level.
When people really care about an issue, they want to get into the details. A few quick examples would be N.Z. Bear posting the comprehensive immigration bill with section-by-section commenting, PublicMarkup.org posting the financial bailout bill for public review and commenting, and the community around the unemployment bill on OpenCongress, where thousand of people worked together to understand the legislation and organize for its passage in Congress.
Again, I’m thrilled about this step the Obama team has taken. Now let’s see a copy of the $600 billion economic recovery plan/stimulus, which is scheduled for a rush job in January, posted online for public discussion before any votes take place!

LIGHTNING ROUND: A LEGACY OF CORRUPTION.

LIGHTNING ROUND: A LEGACY OF CORRUPTION.
As Barack Obama is fond of saying, there can only be one president at a time. And right now, that might as well be Obama himself. While the president-elect is successfully injecting some confidence into the financial markets with a series of well-timed press conferences and leaks designed to unveil his economic team piece by piece, George W. Bush is pardoning turkeys, installing cronies in the federal bureaucracy, and making it easier for polluters to pollute and enrich themselves. Heckuvajob. I don't know why Bush hates our country, but he's certainly letting us know how he truly feels in his final days in office.
Obama and Joe Biden are heading to Philly next week for a National Governors Association-sponsored event where the president-elect and vice president-elect will meet with governors from both parties and address the effect the economic crisis is having on state budgets. The Wall Street Journal notes that Sarah Palin and Obama will meet for the first time at the event.
The Minnesota state Canvassing Board has denied a request by the Franken campaign that rejected absentee ballots be included in the recount, even as Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has expressed concern over the sheer volume of challenged ballots by both candidates.
Sam takes a look at the internal politics of filling Barack Obama's Senate seat in Illinois and navigating the Daley machine.
This weird op-ed in The Washington Post that argues Bill Clinton should take Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. John Quincy Adams went to Congress with lasting effect after losing his presidential reelection bid, the authors insist, so, ipso facto, Clinton could have the same success! It's airtight!
I hope Newt Gingrich isn't just jerking me around about a 2012 presidential run.
This conservative obsession with the supposed dominance of "The Historic Victimhood Narrative" in public schools (and rewriting history) is both bizarre and morbidly compelling. Yglesias is similarly fascinated, but puts our chosen national heroes in the proper historical context: "Similarly, the much-bemoaned-by-rightwingers greater attention given in recent decades to the contributions of women and ethnic minority groups is about trying to expand the circle of people who feel invested in the national narrative."

CLEANING PET STAINS OUT OF CARPET

Cleaning Pet Stains Out of Carpet

Pet odor and stain removal from carpet does not require the help of a professional.As a carpet cleaning company, we receive calls every day in regards to how to get a stain out. One of the more “popular” problems we see is how to remove dog or cat urine from carpet.

When your special family member does have his little (or not so little) accidents, the most important thing is getting it up immediately. Of course, this is not always possible, often we do not find our gifts until after work or even the next day.

When this happens, the urine has soaked not only into the carpet face and backing but also into the pad that lies underneath and sometimes even into the slab. At this point, we have two options.

The first method is to pour a gallon of 50% water and 50% vinegar (white) onto the carpet and let it set for a couple of minutes. The vinegar helps to break up the urine salts and basically liquefy the dried urine. After, you let it set, you need to get it out. This is where a wet-vac comes in handy.

Using a good wet-vac, you need to extract all the liquid in the carpet and the pad, this can be accomplished by applying lots of pressure with the wand or hose and do a small spot at a time. After you feel you have the majority of it up, you need to repeat the above steps using another gallon of 100% water to act as a rinse.

A second method is one of the more successful ways of dealing with the problem but also the most difficult. Using this method, you will need to pull the carpet back (carpet is bound on the edges using a tact strip of nails) then cut out the soiled pad.

After the pad is removed, clean the soiled spot of the carpet with a good carpet shampooer, front and back. Also, you will need to treat the slab or wood sub floor with bleach then put in new carpet pad (can be purchased at most big boxes). Replace the soiled pad and use regular masking tape to tape the top of the new pad with the existing undamaged pad.

Last you need to put the carpet back on the tact by stretching it to the edges and pressing it back down onto the strips. This last method is best if only used when the stain is near the edges of a room. If the stain is in the middle or near a doorway, you are going to have a tough time getting the carpet back in tight which will result in it possibly wrinkling later on.

POLICE TRAP PEACEFUL PROTESTERS IN DENVER

Police Trap Peaceful Protesters in Denver

A calm political protest quickly turned chaotic as anxious Denver police surrounded protestors peacefully marching toward the Democratic National Convention Center. After trapping the crowd between two buildings, hundreds of officers used pepper spray, batons and unwarranted aggression. After being surrounded for 20 minutes, two ANP producers managed to escape after recording the whole affair.