Bartlet Meets Obama

I like the idea expressed below of the fictional meeting the real. I do think Obama has to be careful about how he gets angry - if he over does it he'll look like Jesse Jackson, and John McCain will be president.

But enjoy...

September 21, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet

By MAUREEN DOWD

Now that he’s finally fired up on the soup-line economy, Barack Obama knows he can’t fade out again. He was eager to talk privately to a Democratic ex-president who could offer more fatherly wisdom — not to mention a surreptitious smoke — and less fraternal rivalry. I called the “West Wing” creator Aaron Sorkin (yes, truly) to get a read-out of the meeting. This is what he wrote:

BARACK OBAMA knocks on the front door of a 300-year-old New Hampshire farmhouse while his Secret Service detail waits in the driveway. The door opens and OBAMA is standing face to face with former President JED BARTLET.

BARTLET Senator.

OBAMA Mr. President.

BARTLET You seem startled.

OBAMA I didn’t expect you to answer the door yourself.

BARTLET I didn’t expect you to be getting beat by John McCain and a Lancôme rep who thinks “The Flintstones” was based on a true story, so let’s call it even.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET Come on in.

BARTLET leads OBAMA into his study.

BARTLET That was a hell of a convention.

OBAMA Thank you, I was proud of it.

BARTLET I meant the Republicans. The Us versus Them-a-thon. As a Democrat I was surprised to learn that I don’t like small towns, God, people with jobs or America. I’ve been a little out of touch but is there a mandate that the vice president be skilled at field dressing a moose —

OBAMA Look —

BARTLET — and selling Air Force Two on eBay?

OBAMA Joke all you want, Mr. President, but it worked.

BARTLET Imagine my surprise. What can I do for you, kid?

OBAMA I’m interested in your advice.

BARTLET I can’t give it to you.

OBAMA Why not?

BARTLET I’m supporting McCain.

OBAMA Why?

BARTLET He’s promised to eradicate evil and that was always on my “to do” list.

OBAMA O.K. —

BARTLET And he’s surrounded himself, I think, with the best possible team to get us out of an economic crisis. Why, Sarah Palin just said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had “gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers.” Can you spot the error in that statement?

OBAMA Yes, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren’t funded by taxpayers.

BARTLET Well, at least they are now. Kind of reminds you of the time Bush said that Social Security wasn’t a government program. He was only off by a little — Social Security is the largest government program.

OBAMA I appreciate your sense of humor, sir, but I really could use your advice.

BARTLET Well, it seems to me your problem is a lot like the problem I had twice.

OBAMA Which was?

BARTLET A huge number of Americans thought I thought I was superior to them.

OBAMA And?

BARTLET I was.

OBAMA I mean, how did you overcome that?

BARTLET I won’t lie to you, being fictional was a big advantage.

OBAMA What do you mean?

BARTLET I’m a fictional president. You’re dreaming right now, Senator.

OBAMA I’m asleep?

BARTLET Yes, and you’re losing a ton of white women.

OBAMA Yes, sir.

BARTLET I mean tons.

OBAMA I understand.

BARTLET I didn’t even think there were that many white women.

OBAMA I see the numbers, sir. What do they want from me?

BARTLET I’ve been married to a white woman for 40 years and I still don’t know what she wants from me.

OBAMA How did you do it?

BARTLET Well, I say I’m sorry a lot.

OBAMA I don’t mean your marriage, sir. I mean how did you get America on your side?

BARTLET There again, I didn’t have to be president of America, I just had to be president of the people who watched “The West Wing.”

OBAMA That would make it easier.

BARTLET You’d do very well on NBC. Thursday nights in the old “ER” time slot with “30 Rock” as your lead-in, you’d get seven, seven-five in the demo with a 20, 22 share — you’d be selling $450,000 minutes.

OBAMA What the hell does that mean?

BARTLET TV talk. I thought you’d be interested.

OBAMA I’m not. They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

OBAMA You’re saying race doesn’t have anything to do with it?

BARTLET I wouldn’t go that far. Brains made me look arrogant but they make you look uppity. Plus, if you had a black daughter —

OBAMA I have two.

BARTLET — who was 17 and pregnant and unmarried and the father was a teenager hoping to launch a rap career with “Thug Life” inked across his chest, you’d come in fifth behind Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and a ficus.

OBAMA You’re not cheering me up.

BARTLET Is that what you came here for?

OBAMA No, but it wouldn’t kill you.

BARTLET Have you tried doing a two-hour special or a really good Christmas show?

OBAMA Sir —

BARTLET Hang on. Home run. Right here. Is there any chance you could get Michelle pregnant before the fall sweeps?

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well ... let me think. ...We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know ... I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

OBAMA Good to get that off your chest?

BARTLET Am I keeping you from something?

OBAMA Well, it’s not as if I didn’t know all of that and it took you like 20 minutes to say.

BARTLET I know, I have a problem, but admitting it is the first step.

OBAMA What’s the second step?

BARTLET I don’t care.

OBAMA So what about hope? Chuck it for outrage and put-downs?

BARTLET No. You’re elite, you can do both. Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.

OBAMA Wait, what is it you always used to say? When you hit a bump on the show and your people were down and frustrated? You’d give them a pep talk and then you’d always end it with something. What was it ...?

BARTLET “Break’s over.”

Sam Harris on Sarah Palin

Worth reading:

It is easy to see what many people, women especially, admire about Sarah Palin. Here is a mother of five who can see the bright side of having a child with Down syndrome and still find the time and energy to govern the state of Alaska. But we cannot ignore the fact that Palin's impressive family further testifies to her dogmatic religious beliefs. Many writers have noted the many shades of conservative hypocrisy on view here: when Jamie Lynn Spears gets pregnant, it is considered a symptom of liberal decadence and the breakdown of family values; in the case of one of Palin's daughters, however, teen pregnancy gets reinterpreted as a sign of immaculate, small-town fecundity. And just imagine if, instead of the Palins, the Obama family had a pregnant, underage daughter on display at their convention, flanked by her black boyfriend who "intends" to marry her. Who among conservatives would have resisted the temptation to speak of "the dysfunction in the black community"?

CBC Columnist Trashes Palin

This is pretty fun.

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

The Word

Thomas Friedman:

If I were to draw a picture of America today, it would be of the space shuttle taking off. There is all this thrust coming from below. But the booster rocket — Washington — is cracked and leaking energy, and the pilots in the cockpit are fighting over the flight plan. So we can’t achieve escape velocity to enter the next orbit — the next great industrial revolution, which is going to be E.T., energy technology.

Fees in Canadian Public Schools

I like this comment:

1. Public education should be free for kids, I don't know if this should include food for free, but surreptitiously sliding in fees for other things is not right.

2. Complementing the point above, people have to be encouraged, and I think some social stigma is appropriate here, to think about their ability to care for a child before they bring them into the world. Yes there are circumstances out of the control of many who end up being single parents, or who end up having their children in foster care. But too often there is a lack of consideration given to the future and what basic level of support - financial and emotional - can be afforded to a child. Maybe I'm on a bit of a high horse here, but to argue the opposite, the kind of moral absolutist view that people have to be able to have kids in all circumstances no matter what, is to lose our minds.

I'm also not indifferent to the fact that the most ill equipped, educationally, emotionally, financially are the least well positioned to have this foresight. It is like the dystopian vision from the movie Idoicracy realized. Notwithstanding that, it is incumbent on everyone to encourage foresight and responsibility in undertaking the decision to have a child.

Artistic Ads

There are 15 solid ones here.

Two of my favourites:



(incidentally the Heartbeats the Knife song is the same lyrically as this song)

Conservation Voters of BC's Help Gary Lunn

Good job "Conservation Voters of BC". Last election the NDP finished second in the riding of Sannich Gulf Islands. The riding is one of the worst in Canada for vote splitting. What would make sense, support the candidate with the strongest chance at defeating Lunn? No. That would obviously make too much sense. The paradox is that this choice will encourage vote splitting, likely ultimately electing Lunn who supports offshore drilling and thus presumably the Conservation Voters are indirectly supporting a policy they should oppose. Moreover this endorsement wreaks of the worst cronyism of George Bush - support your friends (I believe the candidate they just endorsed was a founding member of some conservation group) whether they are best qualified or not.

Also for the record, I'm sure all of the opposition candidates in the riding are well intentioned and good people. The NDP candidate has credentials from Cal Tech and MIT. The one the Conservation Voters endorsed has training from some second tier school in the UK. Though these things aren't as simple as who has better credentials, my bet is that the NDP candidate is smarter than the others and that should factor into who people choose to support.

Quote of the Day

Scandal is gossip made tedious by morality.
- Oscar Wilde

Servers at Sea

Google filed a patent recently to put servers on ships at sea. Pretty neat idea. Not sure if it will come to anything but it is fun to think fantasize about copyright not being absolutely incapable of being enforced.

Middle Ages Indeed

September 11, 2008, 10:22 am

Italian Comedienne Faces Possible Prosecution for Insulting Pope

Posted by Dan Slater

The possible prosecution of an Italian comedienne shines a light on the Lateran Treaty, a 1929 agreement between Italy and the Vatican that says an insult to the Pope shall carry the same penalty as an insult to the Italian president. For Sabina Guzzanti (pictured), that could mean five years in jail.

Here’s what happened: At a July rally in Rome’s Piazza Navona, during which opposition leaders accused Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi of passing laws to protect his own interests and avoid prosecution for alleged corruption, Guzzanti told the crowd that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican. And then this zinger: “But then within twenty years the Pope will be where he ought to be, in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils — and very active ones, not passive ones.”

Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, said that he had asked Angelino Alfano, the Minister of Justice, for permission to proceed with a prosecution. Here’s a report from the Times of London.

Paolo Guzzanti, Guzzanti’s father, a center Right MP, said that the move was “a return to the Middle Ages. Perhaps my daughter should be be submitted to the judgment of God by being made to walk on hot coals”.

This isn’t Guzzanti’s first run-in with the authorities. A few years back she released “Viva Zapatero!,” a film about the 2003 suppression of her late-night show RAIot, in which she had satirised Berlusconi.

Club Video Controversy

I don't have much to add to this story except to say I'd be surprised if this club was disbanded by the school because they have such a huge membership. I used to run a club at the same school years ago and I can remember the CVC was a formidable force when it came to booking rooms in the student union - they along with I think the Pharmacy club would camp out over night to be first to book rooms for the term.

Probably the video is somewhere on the internet - does anybody have a link?

UBC social club video 'culturally offensive'

Darah Hansen

Vancouver Sun

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

VANCOUVER I A University of B.C. student social club is facing possible sanctions -- even disbandment -- after a series of online videos designed to attract new membership instead drew fire from dozens of Asian students who complained the content was culturally offensive.

"As a student and a Chinese [person], I felt so disrespected and offended by their video. Other than ruining their own image, they are also ruining UBC's and Canada's image as a multicultural country," UBC student Kim Ho wrote in an e-mail to The Sun.

The videos -- posted last week by the Chinese Varsity Club in a format similar to the hugely popular Mac/PC television commercials -- depict two Asian students discussing the respective merits of their social clubs.

The young woman representing the CVC speaks perfect English, with no accent, while the second character, a member of the fictional "Typical Honger Club," struggles with the language, at one point pulling out a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word "multi-cultural."

CVC president Carlos McCallister said the videos were meant to break the club's image as a Chinese-only group in an effort to expand membership.

"We don't exclude anyone," he said.

But, he admitted Monday, that message "backfired on us."

Last week, dozens of complaints poured into the Alma Mater Society, the campus body that regulates student clubs, labelling the videos as offensive.

McCallister said most of the complaints centred around the use of the term "Honger" to describe an Asian born outside of Canada.

"We didn't mean it as a derogatory term, but a lot of people took it that way," he said.

Others took exception to the accent and poor English used by one of the characters.

"They are looking down at people who are not as fortunate as them to be able to learn English in an early age. It will mislead new immigrants into thinking that they will be teased for speaking English with an accent," Ho wrote.

The club has since apologized.

"We are sorry for any trouble this has caused and hope that we can all move on from this event and work towards a more amicable future," a letter posted on the club's website states.

An apology video is also in the works, McCallister said, adding that as of Monday, the offending videos were no longer available for viewing online.

But whether that's enough to keep the club alive has yet to be seen. McCallister was set to meet with members of the AMS late Monday to learn if sanctions will be imposed. In the worst-case scenario, McCallister said the club -- which boasts a membership of 1,600 -- could be disbanded.

"That would kill us," he said.

Angela Wong, president of the Asian Canadian Cultural Organization at UBC, said she's not surprised the videos stirred up such controversy on campus, where tension between Canadian-born Asian students and more recent arrivals is nothing new.

The divide centres around the larger notion of Asian identity, which has become increasingly complex with each wave of immigration.

The Future of Copyright by Rasmus Fleischer

Check it

This change has taken place because previously distinct media are now simulated within the singular medium of the Internet, and copyright law simply seems unable to cope with it. Consider radio broadcasting and record shops, which once were inherently different. Their online counterparts are known respectively as “streaming” and “downloading,” but the distinction is ultimately artificial, since the same data transfer takes place in each. The only essential difference lies in how the software is configured at the receiving end. If the software saves the music as a file for later use, it’s called a “download.” If the software immediately sends the music to the loudspeakers, it’s called “streaming.”

Copyright law in the 21st century tends to be less concerned about concrete cases of infringement, and more about criminalizing entire technologies because of their potential uses. ... It will also have seriously chilling effects on innovation, as the legal status of new technologies will always be uncertain under ever more invasive rules.

What does Milkshake refer to in this song?

My milk shake brings all the boys to the yard,
and they're like,
its better than yours,
damn right its better than yours,
I can teach you,
but I have to charge

Once you get involved,
everyone will look this way-so,
you must maintain your charm,
same time maintain your halo,
just get the perfect blend,
plus what you have within,
then next his eyes are squint,
then he's picked up your scent,

Whoa - Glad we vetoed this in Canada

From The Sunday Times
September 14, 2008
Revealed: UK’s first official sharia courts
Abul Taher

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

It has now emerged that sharia courts with these powers have been set up in London, Birmingham, Bradford and Manchester with the network’s headquarters in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. Two more courts are being planned for Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Sheikh Faiz-ul-Aqtab Siddiqi, whose Muslim Arbitration Tribunal runs the courts, said he had taken advantage of a clause in the Arbitration Act 1996.

Under the act, the sharia courts are classified as arbitration tribunals. The rulings of arbitration tribunals are binding in law, provided that both parties in the dispute agree to give it the power to rule on their case.

Siddiqi said: “We realised that under the Arbitration Act we can make rulings which can be enforced by county and high courts. The act allows disputes to be resolved using alternatives like tribunals. This method is called alternative dispute resolution, which for Muslims is what the sharia courts are.”

The disclosure that Muslim courts have legal powers in Britain comes seven months after Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was pilloried for suggesting that the establishment of sharia in the future “seems unavoidable” in Britain.

In July, the head of the judiciary, the lord chief justice, Lord Phillips, further stoked controversy when he said that sharia could be used to settle marital and financial disputes.

In fact, Muslim tribunal courts started passing sharia judgments in August 2007. They have dealt with more than 100 cases that range from Muslim divorce and inheritance to nuisance neighbours.

It has also emerged that tribunal courts have settled six cases of domestic violence between married couples, working in tandem with the police investigations.

Siddiqi said he expected the courts to handle a greater number of “smaller” criminal cases in coming years as more Muslim clients approach them. “All we are doing is regulating community affairs in these cases,” said Siddiqi, chairman of the governing council of the tribunal.

Jewish Beth Din courts operate under the same provision in the Arbitration Act and resolve civil cases, ranging from divorce to business disputes. They have existed in Britain for more than 100 years, and previously operated under a precursor to the act.

Politicians and church leaders expressed concerns that this could mark the beginnings of a “parallel legal system” based on sharia for some British Muslims.

Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: “If it is true that these tribunals are passing binding decisions in the areas of family and criminal law, I would like to know which courts are enforcing them because I would consider such action unlawful. British law is absolute and must remain so.”

Douglas Murray, the director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, said: “I think it’s appalling. I don’t think arbitration that is done by sharia should ever be endorsed or enforced by the British state.”

There are concerns that women who agree to go to tribunal courts are getting worse deals because Islamic law favours men.

Siddiqi said that in a recent inheritance dispute handled by the court in Nuneaton, the estate of a Midlands man was divided between three daughters and two sons.

The judges on the panel gave the sons twice as much as the daughters, in accordance with sharia. Had the family gone to a normal British court, the daughters would have got equal amounts.

In the six cases of domestic violence, Siddiqi said the judges ordered the husbands to take anger management classes and mentoring from community elders. There was no further punishment.

In each case, the women subsequently withdrew the complaints they had lodged with the police and the police stopped their investigations.

Siddiqi said that in the domestic violence cases, the advantage was that marriages were saved and couples given a second chance.

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: “The MCB supports these tribunals. If the Jewish courts are allowed to flourish, so must the sharia ones.”

Additional reporting: Helen Brooks

Piracy a Handy Guide

The King of Kong

This I'd like to see:

The word on patents

I heard a talk from the Swedish Pirate Party on how overall patents aren't a good idea. I probably would need to look into it more to be sure, but this opinion is further evidence that they may be more harmful than helpful:

Patent system seen stifling medical breakthroughs

A more collaborative approach is needed to bring research to market, McGill professor says in report

I like the Gates Sienfeld Ad

absurd and fun

Headline of the Week "Harper apologizes for 'tasteless' bird-excrement attack ad on Dion"

I'm sure there are good headlines around the world, but Canada can hold its own with ones like this.

Who Owns Ideas

I plan on listening to this when I get a chance.