This is an important question: how free are you to insult someone? It depends a lot on the insult and where you are. First of all, you have to be sure that you’re not defaming; what you say has to either be true or a matter of legitimate debate. Second, you have to be sure that your speech is not going to lead to personal injury or harm. And third, it has to be in the correct forum; you can’t attend a college class and then stand up every day and declare that Bill Jones over there is a pervert.

It gets sketchier when you start talking about what a person is and what that means about their character, morality, and even their legal and civil rights. For example, if I made the claim (which I do not, so please don’t jump to conclusions) that Christians are foul, amoral hypocrites with a long history of oppression, murder, and deviance, and therefore should not be given any special privileges like tax exemptions for their churches, and perhaps should even not be allowed to practice their religion–well, I don’t think that would be tolerated for very long. Sure, I could blog on it, write books on the subject, talk to people about it in certain public venues, maybe even become a well-known advocate. But I don’t think that this freedom would extend to allowing my kids to expound on such views freely in their classrooms at my urging; I am pretty sure that such speech would be shut down, especially if it were planned and orchestrated at the national level and carried out by thousands of students in schools everywhere.

And yet, we have religious advocacy groups demanding that they be allowed to do just this type of thing–and that not being allowed to do it is a double-standard which curbs their rights. In fact, they claim that preventing them from doing this is a blow against tolerance itself. The subject is homosexuality, and the religious groups want to go into classrooms and talk about how vile, sinful, and wrong it is, and advocate that people who practice it are harmful and that laws giving these people special rights (equal rights for people conservatives don’t like are usually referred to as “special” rights) should be repealed. How they present this:

It’s sad, but many public schools have, in the name of “tolerance,” stifled free speech and true diversity by silencing students of faith, and those with conservative perspectives.

This isn’t true tolerance. True Tolerance means a free and respectful exchange of ideas.

The good news is, thanks to TrueTolerance.org, there’s something you can do about it.
Make your voice heard—and balance out the bias—by giving your school officials
helpful legal facts and social science data. Click the links below to see how easy it is.

Got that? Bashing gays is “tolerance,” the “free and respectful exchange of ideas”; it’s a matter of faith and perspective and free speech should allow gay bashing to be carried out in classrooms around the country.

Essentially, groups like this one are horrified by the idea that our young people are becoming tolerant of gays, and they want it stopped now. They want the power to spread their word that homosexuality is wrong, wrong, wrong, and don’t listen to those evil gay advocacy groups telling you that gays are just normal people who should have the same rights as everyone else. That’s the distilled message, of course, but it is accurate. And they are not satisfied to do this in their churches, on their web sites, and on the radio and television airwaves. No, they have to be allowed to go to classrooms and make their case to all young people, or else what they have is not free speech, and what we are is not tolerant.

They have a whole lot of materials on their site which do the usual creationist/pro-lifer/intelligent-designer/pro-prayer-in-schools whitewash job of cherry-picking facts out of context and making religious dogma look empirically fact-based. None of it holds up under close scrutiny, of course, but this is about “faith,” not facts, so it’s no surprise that it wasn’t thought out too carefully. What is presented is nothing more than a sheen to fulfill a visceral desire. Those who believe simply accept it from word “go,” and all too many people will climb on board because they are not equipped to see beyond the sincerity the disinformation is delivered with.

So maybe somebody should, in Flying-Spaghetti-Monster style, create an equal but opposite movement in the other direction–maybe calling it “True Faith” or something, and using similarly cherry-picked data to make the claim that Christians are dangerous and should not be tolerated–heaven knows that whoever did this would have a much richer field of information to fill in the blanks.

I doubt that the fundies behind “True Tolerance” would tolerate such “free speech” for very long at all.

Did you hear? Obama is a socialist fascist, a new Hitler, who is trying to take away your guns and tax you out of existence. If you watch Fox News, this is probably old hat by now. But here’s the thing: you have a popular news network that seems dedicated to spreading not only lies, but ridiculously transparent lies about the president of the United States, while elected Republicans call for their supporters to be “armed and dangerous” (only later specified as dangerous politically as they are armed with “facts”) and that there should be a “revolution” (again, later qualified as a political revolution). There is even a whole movement, the followers of which, in comic obliviousness, call themselves “teabaggers,” dedicated to fighting a tax rebellion despite the fact that no taxes have been hiked yet, and the only ones promised are aimed at a small percentage of wealthy people.

In true ultraconservative style, a fictional ‘reality’ has been constructed for the public to consume and react to. The thing is, it is so absurdly ludicrous that only the idiot loons on the fringe are really buying into it. Unfortunately, there are a lot of idiot loons who will accept anything Fox spoon-feeds them. Percentage-wise, very small, but you don’t need double-digits to get followers numbering in the millions.

On the one hand, it all becomes somewhat comical, as these people are, let’s face it, stupid. So they wind up doing a lot of stupid things, like ordering a million teabags to dump somewhere, but forgetting to arrange for a place to symbolically dump them. You get people following the drumbeat without the faintest idea why they are doing it, so when they are asked “Why do you say that the President of the United States is a fascist?” the answer comes back, “Because he is!” Another anti-tax protester admonishes the president for not being more like Lincoln, without the slightest clue that Lincoln grew and empowered the government and instituted the first federal income tax.

On the other hand, we know all too well what happens when you instigate the lunatic fringe: some of them fall over the edge and start killing. That’s one reason that three police officers got killed–a fringe nutjob heard the Fox Noise drumbeat that Obama is going to ban guns, and reacted accordingly. With Fox broadcasting the socialist, fascist, Hitler, tax-hiker, gun-grabber rant as much as it is, that will most likely not be the last such incident. These are fringe wingnuts, but they are aggressive and well-armed lunatic wingnuts who respond well to calls for action.

Just a few years after right-wingers claimed that even mild dissent was a form of treason, the same (or a very similar) crowd is at the gates of the White House causing a lockdown while shouting death threats at the president, based on farcical charges that fall apart under even the slightest examination. You have people who cheered as Bush incurred ten trillion dollars in debt but now want blood and talk about “enslaving our children” and seceding from the union when Obama spends only a tenth as much debt for a far more focused and reasonable purpose. Most of the nation is letting it slide past, but the lunatic fringe is only becoming more and more inflamed and ready to act.

Question: at what point does this go beyond free speech and wander into the minefield of sedition? When “news” organizations spread easily disproved lies, equate their government to a horrific dictatorship, and tell the people to revolt, leading to violent acts, is that really not going beyond the “shouting fire in a movie house” standard?

Already falling behind… here’s what we did on the third day of our honeymoon. Encouraged by our experience at the Borough Market, we tried a few other markets. Neither fully measured up, but were interesting to go to. The first was Old Spitalfields (is there a good way to pronounce that name?), close to Liverpool Street Station, and which is held in a mall.

As usual, there was an abundance of very unhealthy snacks.

Somehow pork looks a little more harrowing when you can make out the full form of the animal. Not that this discourages people from eating it, else, they wouldn’t display it like this:

Sachi and I lunched at a restaurant called “Giraffe,” in part due to an inside joke. You know how sometimes when you are with another person and you see a shop or sign, you read the name aloud to make note of it. Sachi and I quickly noted how redundant and needless this often was, something that peaked with our seeing a giraffe in an ad and jokingly naming it. After that, whenever one of us spoke aloud such an obvious and easily-spotted name, the other would say, “giraffe!”

This was on the way back from Spitalfields. I presume it refers to unwashed detectives.

The answer to the mystery: what did he do after he split up with Simon?

The above we spotted while shopping down Oxford Street in Soho. The street is largely a tourist drag–tons of kitschy tourist bauble shops and currency exchange counters. But the backstreets held some nice shops, and one avenue perpendicular held a stumbled-upon gem:

Alas, it was closed, like many shops in London on the weekend.

After that, we went north to Camden Town for their market. What we found was an incredibly crowded street scene. Mostly, the market was clothing shops, and didn’t seem worth the hassle.

However, I did see one tee-shirt I almost bought. A lot of clever gag tees in London.

On the way back, we too the bus to Tottingham Court Road. Mostly because I did not want to leave London without be able to say that we rode in a double-decker bus. We were in London, for crying out loud.

As we approached our destination, I kept an eye out and say a sign for the Underground. When I saw it, we got off the bus… and soon found no station. Sachi was somewhat miffed, especially when I was unable to find the sign I had spotted. It felt like we could have been a mile from where we needed to be. But after walking a bit, I felt something was familiar, those threes along the street… and looked where I thought it would be–and yes, there was Frevds! This was a pub pointed out to us by a coworker who got his degree in London. I had staked out the pub using Google Street View, otherwise we not only would not have found the pub, we probably would have walked right past the Underground station and gotten lost. So we stepped down into the pub and had a few mulled wines.

In my opinion, more countries should serve mulled wine. Yum!

As we got back home, we noted a procession passing by St. Paul’s. After all, it was Easter Sunday.

That was our second to last full day in London.

After Sachi and I left the Globe Theater, we headed a bit south, knowing there was something called the “Borough Market” that we wanted to check out. And while it was not what we expected, it was better: a food-laden, farmer’s market-slash-tasty goodies bazaar. Though full of people, it was an excellent experience, maybe one of the highlights of our trip so far.

One of the first places we found sold mulled wine, something we later discovered was not so uncommon here. The charming lady selling the wine was pleased to hear that we were on our honeymoon, and offered us a free refill (usually 2.5 Pounds).

But there were lots of produce sellers…

And tons of food stands, of all sorts.

Sachi and I had lots of small stuff, and did not neglect the chorizo. I love chorizo, and they had lots of it here–the real stuff, not the weird stuff they sell in Japan and call “chorizo,” but the actual chorizo, red and spicy and delicious.

We got some of that, of course. But I passed on the pimenton (the spice used to give chorizo its taste, a lovely smoked pepper, “bacon in a tin” taste), knowing that I’d get the best chances in Spain next week.

But nearby, they had a chorizo sandwich stall, and they were fantastic.

Loaded with “rocket,” a popular vegetable condiment here. Found out that it’s called “arugula” in America–yep, the same veggie that got Obama tagged as an elitist by right-wingers during the campaign. Don’t know what the hell they were talking about, it’s quite pedestrian–but then, I’m pretty sure those wingnuts had no idea what arugula was, either.

Another thing we noticed at the market was the sweets. I loved their golden-colored yet distinctly licorice gelato:

And some of it was cute, like the owl cookies:

But most was simply decadant:

And these “triple chocolate brownies” you see everywhere. My opinion: “triple chocolate” should have one of the three chocolates be in hard chip form; these were just plain brownies.

These fatty foods were all over the place, in large quantities. Along with sausages, pizza, fish & chips, potatoes and more potatoes, meat pies and lots more wrapped in heavy-doughed breading, and in the shops there is tons of junk food–and let’s not forget the beer.

So the question is, how the bloody hell are the British not as fat as Americans? Seriously, you don’t see nearly as many overweight people.

Anyway, we ended the market experience with a nice lamb burger with cream cheese and more arugula, eaten in a cathedral courtyard (seriously, cathedrals are all over the place here). Then we walked on to London Bridge (with the prerequisite childhood-song-singing), which, disappointingly, is not the one with the towers. Actually, London Bridge seemed pretty pedestrian to me, kind of an anti-climax.

The we made it around to The Tower, the central London castle fortress built almost a thousand years ago by William the Conquerer (played by Michael Gambon). Sachi and I wanted to go inside until we saw the lines. That’s one thing they don’t do well in London. Fish and chips, well, incredible. Beer, excellent. Manners, first-rate. Queues, not so good. Now, Japan knows queues. Zip-zip, and you’re through. But here, it’s like people manning the lines are constantly confused and distracted. Polite, but distracted.

Really, for me, the highlight would have been the funny hats, anyway, and we could see them from the outside.

So we made it on to the Tower Bridge (which, for some reason, I had always thought was the thing that had the crown jewels and the prison, which confused me as it’s awfully small and let’s face it not the most logical place for that kind of stuff–I must have confused “Tower” and “Tower Bridge”). Along the way, we saw about several guys selling candy-coated nuts (which, for some reason, we only saw sold on bridges. And why are they always from some area between the middle east and central Asia?).

What is there to say about the Tower Bridge? Complimentary photos:

After that, we were beat, and wanted to get back to the hotel. So we walked to the closest underground station, to find it closed. Yep, London, city of the partially-operating subways. Maybe it’s that the underground is really old and is falling apart, or maybe that they’re renovating seriously for the 2012 Olympics. Or maybe they just don’t do quick repairs. The Circle Line has been out our whole stay here along with one or two other lines, and half the other lines are partially closed.

So we tried to catch a bus. Ha! Way too crowded with people who couldn’t take the subway. So we caught a cab, it wasn’t too far.

Some miscellany here from walking about London, stuff that won’t fit so neatly into a regular post.

Because you never know…

London Spaceport, I believe.

Actually, the Swiss Re Building, a.k.a. 30 St Mary Axe a.k.a. the Gherkin. Cool skyscraper near Liverpool Street Station.

Turns out that on escalators, at least, Londoners are just following the rules as opposed to being naturally polite. In Tokyo, the change happened without prompting. In London, not only are there signs like these, but sometimes even announcements over the PA telling people to stand to the side if they’re not walking up and down the escalator.

As for No Smoking, it’s nice that most places are like that here. Even pubs. But again, it seems to be the law, not politeness.

Taxis in London seem cheap for short distances–the meter starts at 2.2 pounds, but increases immediately, and goes up quickly from there. But the taxis also have incredible leg room, set up with fold-down chairs to accommodate 4 or 5 people. But spacious for just two.

A fun restaurant name:

Though I have to admit, I don’t get the ‘slap’ joke. Unless it’s randy, in which case I still don’t get it.

There are a lot of Japanese restaurants here, more than I would expect. But now that I mention it, there seem to be a lot more Asian people–aside from Indians, Pakistanis, and Middle Eastern immigrants–I should say, more East Asian people here than I expected. In any case, London is more a melting pot than many large American cities.

Speaking of Japan, there are also a lot of Cherry Blossom trees here.

And while I’m on things natural, we spotted some local variants of rather randy Tree Sparrows having at it, mating-season style.

And while on birds, it’s always fun to spot the nerdy pigeon:

Finally, this is something I have been seeing a lot lately:

Seeing the Apple logo in front of Sachi’s face reminds me of The Son of Man. I tried to explain it to Sachi, and she didn’t get it. Later, I showed her the painting, and she still wasn’t impressed. I chalk that more up to my own skewed sense of humor, though.

Yesterday, Sachi and I had a fun day walking about central London, rather thoroughly unplanned. One thing we quickly discovered: a lot of shops don’t do business on weekends. We didn’t know where they did do business (lots of good shopping areas), we just happened to walk around St. Paul’s around 10 am, and it was virtually a ghost town. Still, we did get to see some nice sites, street stuff, cool buildings and the like. London atmosphere.

I love these little side streets, whether they are Shanghai, London, or Tokyo.

And some of the buildings on these roads are very nice.

Something that Sachi tended to do was to spot a landmark that seemed unusual, and suddenly insist that we have to see that. “Why?” I would ask; Sachi would say, “that’s an important place!” “Really?” I would tease, “what is it?” And of course, she wouldn’t have the slightest clue. That became a running gag for us. “Hey, look! That building must be important!”

We eventually found our way down to the Thames, and crossed a pedestrian bridge just south of St. Paul’s.

Walking a bit on the other side, we stumbled across a building I recognized: the Globe Theater. It’s kind of cool to be walking along and just happening to see Shakespeare’s workplace, like “Oh, hey, look.”

More soon….

Microsoft, smelling blood in the water, continues its cost-based assault on Apple. As usual, they seem to find it difficult to simply stick to the facts, and cannot resist using a fair amount of deception. In this case, it is a “white paper” (something which people associate with objective reports) written by a Microsoft shill who gets a lot of facts wrong. For example:

First off, Apple configurations tend to be higher. Apple makes the case that it, and only it, chooses configurations, …

Part of this is specious. Every computer manufacturer “chooses configurations” to a certain degree. Many manufacturers have limited model lines–in fact, Apple once tried making a plethora of model types and it didn’t work. Every manufacturer creates the models they believe sell best for them. Apple is no different, they just target different market areas. Still, Apple sells 18 models in 7 categories, each with customizable options. Maybe not as many as other manufacturers, but not exactly sparse, either. Here, Kay is trying to sell the “liberal elite” argument: Apple thinks it knows better than you do.

…and it doesn’t want to sell down market because those systems wouldn’t deliver the best experience. Thus, Apple’s lowest-end products are built to higher specifications than average, which cost more, even though Apple could argue that the higher cost has a clear relationship to higher value.

This I don’t think any Apple user would argue with this. Here is where the primary argument comes into play: which makes more sense? And here is where the “Apple tax” being “hidden” is nonsensical–Apple charges up front, that’s one of the reasons it costs more. It is with Windows machines that you get the hidden “taxes,” in the form of malware hassles, built-in adware, OS issues, incompatible hardware issues, maintenance and repairs, and so on. The “coolness” factor is just one of those, and could include not just “wow” coolness, but also ease-of-use and convenience.

All of this is highly subjective, and depends upon who you are and what you can handle. If you are familiar with Windows, know your way around, and have a fair amount of tech experience, then the Windows tax will be less of a burden–you’ll know how to get around the adware, what free apps will save money on anti-virus, and how to deal with a lot of the maintenance and OS issues. You’ll know where to get freeware and add-ons that give you functionality that comes with the Mac OS, and you’ll know how to tinker with settings to optimize performance–and likely you won’t mind spending the time to deal with all this. In this case, you should definitely go with Windows. Most people, however, don’t know most of this stuff, and would definitely benefit from Apple.

Kay then goes on to argue that similarly-specced Windows and Mac machines have a definite price differential–that Mac machines cost more. These comparisons have been made for years. In one sense, such comparisons seem unfair but are not: effectively, you are not just comparing one manufacturer to another, you are pitting one manufacturer against all the others combined. But this is the way things are: it’s Mac versus PC, which means Apple has to be better than a dozen or so other manufacturers, each of which can leverage profits from best-sellers and volume sales to provide savings on the cheapest models. But Apple can’t complain about that.

Something less fair is the quality of parts. For example, Kay compares the HP dv3510nr to the MacBook and derides the Mac’s shortfalls. But he compares only baseline features, not the finer points where a lot more differences appear. The HP has slower RAM and less battery life, is heavier and quite a bit thicker than the Macbook, and has a less solid frame. This is before many of the taken-for-granted, built-in Mac-vs-PC differences–Apple’s lack of ad and trialware, the lack of malware (including CPU hits for AV software and the sheer constant worry involved, not to mention the hassle of dealing with the ones that get through the AV software), its excellent hardware-software compatibility, better language support and flexibility, included software, better customer service and support, features like multi-touch trackpads, the built-in advantages of the OS, etc. etc.

And yet, out of all the manufacturers, making all the hundreds of different systems, this one is perhaps the best alternative to the Macbook. I think that says something–that it takes a dozen or so manufacturers using all of their research & design, and all of the built-in advantages of the Windows platform to make a few machines that compare well to Apple’s basic laptop. One never hears about the many, many, many PC models which fare far worse–which leads to another hidden PC tax: you have to be very savvy and do your research well to find the best Windows machine, whereas with the Apple line, you know that every machine is going to be a good one. Again, not an advantage for the well-informed, but a big difference for those who are not.

The Mac blog at Fortune points out a variety of other issues with the report: the tables of “data” are riddled with errors, old Mac models are compared with current PC models, different standards between the machines in terms of including software costs, etc.

Indeed, some things Kay just gets flat-out wrong; he quotes prices for Apple products that are semi-fictional, and/or at least artificially inflated: MobileMe for $150? Try $100 ($70 with a Mac purchase)–but Kay claims the most expensive family pack price is required. He quotes iLife upgrades at $100, when they are $80, and Office for Mac “starting” at $150, when Amazon has it for $112, and he completely ignores the cheaper $80 iWork suite.

In the end, Kay uses highly specific user needs (unless everyone needs to use Blu-Ray on their machines, for example) inflated with incorrect and often unnecessary prices while ignoring extra costs required for Windows use to make the absurd conclusion that Mac users will pay an extra $3367 over five years in order to use a Mac.

There’s a lot more, but I am on vacation and don’t have the time. Read this review for more information.

In short, the report is, to say the very least, heavily biased. Kay is a paid consultant for Microsoft, which demanded changes before he published it. Not in accuracy, though–they left in the incorrect data, but demanded that Kay remove some information that they didn’t like, such as his note about Microsoft copying much of Apple’s innovations.

The bottom line: for some people, Windows is better; for some, Macs are. But Microsoft just can’t seem to be satisfied with pointing out its advantages, it has to constantly lie and distort to make it seem better than it is.

Sachi and I just flew in to London, and have at least partially decompressed after our first night’s sleep. The flight over was on British Airways, which has no better leg room than any other airline, it seems, but was not particularly bad, either. Surprisingly, it was the rowdiest flight crew I have ever seen–when we were locked down for landing, the attendants were quite loud in chatting and laughing in their area, and during the flight seemed a cross between casual and frantic.

One nice thing about the seats on the plane was that the headrests had “wings” that folded down to brace your head–a brilliant idea which should be executed on every airplane. That helped me actually get to sleep–maybe the first time I have ever done that on a plane. At least, the kind of sleep that feels like it could be for several hours. I was therefore greatly annoyed when our attendant, for some reason, felt the need to access the overhead bins right above me, but was far too short to do so–so she leaned in and pushed heavily against me for a minute or so, ending it with her cardigan wiping across my face. Hard to sleep through that, and I was incredibly annoyed, having been woken up and unable to get back to sleep again. Sleeping on an airplane is quite an accomplishment for me, and this person completely destroyed that experience. Yargh.

Still, we got to the airport intact and not too wiped out, took the Piccadilly Line to Holborn and transferred to the Central Line. At Heathrow, the Underground station was less than impressive–there were only two ticket machines and neither worked properly (the first had a broken touchscreen, the second refused to accept paper money), and the single manned ticket window took literally two minutes or more to sell each ticket to each customer–no exaggeration. We missed one train while waiting on line and just caught the second before it left.

The trains are smaller than Tokyo train cars; in Tokyo, there is enough room between seats so that two or even three rows of people can stand between seated passengers; in London train cars, there’s room enough only for one person between seat rows.

It was at the stations that Sachi and I noted a few things about Londoners, though: first, there is no shortage of gentlemen. Twice, when we had to lug our suitcases up or down stairs, men easily volunteered to help Sachi with her suitcase, carrying it for her. Second, London escalator protocols are similar to Tokyo, in that people who do not walk up or down the escalators move to one side to allow passage for those who do walk. Interestingly, Londoners line up opposite Tokyoites–Tokyo lines up on the left to allow passage on the right, London lines up on the right.

From St. Paul’s Station, it was an easy walk to the hotel. What helped was being able to use Google Street View in advance–I was able to familiarize myself with the area, which helped a lot. We noted three Starbucks along the way–and it was a short way. Yikes.

We are staying at a hotel literally a few steps away from St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London Borough and the heart of the city. Not a long walk from here to most of the stuff we will want to see in the city. Here is the view right outside our hotel room:

They say that this St. Paul’s is the fifth. I suppose the first on sank in to the swamp. But the fifth one stood up! (Sorry, Python & the Holy Grail joke.)

The room is right over street traffic, and it’s certainly noticeable, but not terrible–and we’re fairly sensitive to that. The cathedral’s clock tolls every fifteen minutes, we can tell you. But the noise is charming in a way. And there’s no doubt we’re in London–these things pass by outside all the time:

The hotel is nice–cheap at about 75 pounds a night for a hotel this central, and the room, if not spacious, is not small either. Free high-speed WiFi, too!

So we plan to just go out and walk around today, with more structured stuff later on. Alas, we’ve hit rain–maybe our last full day here will be partly sunny, but otherwise we’re in for wet and grey–which, perhaps, is authentic London I suppose.

The counting is not fully completed yet, but 350 of the 400 or so rejected ballots have been reviewed, and Al Franken, who was previously ahead by 225 votes, is now ahead by 312–a gain of 87 votes. Which means that even if the all of the remaining 50 or so ballots go to Coleman (unlikely as 60% have gone to Franken on average), Franken still comes out with more votes.

This hurts Coleman more than just because Franken widens his lead; it also demonstrates something that Nate Silver points out, which is that the votes Coleman claims were not counted to his detriment actually break for Franken more. In short, if a higher court, at Coleman’s request, judges that even more absentee ballot be counted, it will almost certainly just result in Franken getting even more votes.

Coleman says he plans to press ahead anyway with an equal-protection appeal, but as Kevin Drum points out, such an appeal is unlikely to win–Coleman would have to show not just that there were differences in how ballots are counted from county to county–such differences exist everywhere–but that the differences showed bias or worked against an entire class of legitimate voters, something that can’t be demonstrated in Minnesota. Unless Coleman seriously wants to challenge based upon ideas such as that unregistered voters–whose votes Coleman wanted counted–are being discriminated against because they couldn’t vote.

Coleman cannot effectively claim that the court acted inappropriately–the process was about as fair and painfully even-handed as could possibly be asked for. The only out I can really think of is for Coleman to claim his legal team was incompetent bordering on malpractice–so much of their case was very badly handled. But then, there was nothing of substance for them to work with, so the lawyers can hardly be blamed–they had to go to court with a legal argument that amounted to little more than “because our guy didn’t win.”

The general sense is that Coleman has simply lost, and even some conservatives are saying that he should give up. Not Congressional Republicans, of course–they want Coleman to hang on until the very last appeal possible so that Franken will not be seated. The Republican Party sense of Democracy at work: we didn’t win, so we want to deny the voters representation as long as possible.

The incessant, frenzied, paranoid, schizophrenic, and often downright vile right-wing campaign to make Obama fail and turn the nation against those nasty, communist liberals is not doing so well. According to the latest NY Times poll, Americans think we’re doing better and are headed in the right direction–and they think that the Republican Party has hit the bottom of the barrel:

…the number of people who said they thought the country was headed in the right direction jumped from 15 percent in mid-January, just before Mr. Obama took office, to 39 percent today, while the number who said it was headed in the wrong direction dropped to 53 percent from 79 percent. That is the highest percentage of Americans who said the country was headed in the right direction since 42 percent said so in February 2005, the second month of President George W. Bush’s second term.

The percentage of people who said the economy was getting worse has declined from 54 percent just before Mr. Obama took office to 34 percent today. And 20 percent now think the economy is getting better, compared with 7 percent in mid-January. …

By contrast, just 31 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest in the 25 years the question has been asked in New York Times/CBS News polls.

Of course, this is perception–but the nation’s economy is largely fueled by perception, as are election results. How this will translate into actual economic improvement over the next year is a different matter, as many elements of the economy are out of the control of mere perception, and could scuttle confidence.

Still, what we see is a measure of faith and trust: Obama and the Democrats are instilling more confidence and approval in the people, while Republicans are driving them away.

So, keep at it, Rush. You’re doing just fine.

Maybe it comes from working in a culture where almost literally ‘anything goes.’ Where you can say and do the most outrageous crap and if it gets ratings, you’re a star. (I mean, really, look at half the loons they have working for them. Seriously, Glenn Beck?)

What am I talking about? A Fox News writer named Roger Friedman wrote a review of a movie not yet released. But he did not see “X-Men Origins,” due out in theaters in four weeks, on a DVD screener that the studio sent him. No, he downloaded the movie from the Internet. Someone apparently made off with an early edit of the incomplete film and posted it on file-sharing sites. Friedman got that copy and wrote a review based on it.

But that’s not the strangest thing. Friedman not only downloaded and reviewed the pirate version–he wrote that he did so right there in the article:

Yes, I’ve seen “X Men Origins: Wolverine.” It wasn’t at a screening, either. I found a work in progress print of it, 95 percent completed, on the internet last night. Let’s hope by now it’s gone.

But the cat’s out of the bag, as they say, and the genie is out of the bottle. There is no turning back. But no, I will not tell you the big twist/surprise toward the end. Not now, a whole month away from release. That wouldn’t be nice.

Right now, my “cousins” at 20th Century Fox are probably having apoplexy.I doubt anyone else has seen this film. But everyone can relax. I am, in fact, amazed about how great Wolverine turned out. It exceeds expectations at every turn. I was completely riveted to my desk chair in front of my computer.“

He was no doubt slightly underestimating that level of apoplexy, and somewhat oblivious himself as to how they would react to someone within the corporate family bragging aloud about how they had downloaded the movie and reporting on a news web site how cool it was.

Maybe this is in part because reporters do have some First Amendment leeway when it comes to reporting on illicitly gained material. Maybe he thought that he was covered by the same protections they had with the Pentagon Papers or something. But, and I am not completely certain of this, I do not think that a reporter can just simply out and out break the law and get away with it by reporting on it. Even if there are protections, there are also limits.

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that downloading content from file-sharing sites is so ubiquitous nowadays that Friedman simply didn’t think it was such a big deal. After all, if you report that you were driving 45 miles per hour in a 35 zone on an article about traffic, it’s doubtful that the police will come to your door and write you a ticket. Downloading is seen by many as being the equivalent–technically illegal, but almost everybody does it.

Or maybe Friedman was simply clueless. Wouldn’t be a first with a Fox News ”journalist.“

But here’s the strangest–or the most predictable–part of the whole affair. Friedman was fired and the story pulled–but only after 20th Century Fox caught wind of the article. Not when he handed the article to his editor.

The question should be, of course, how did the story get posted in the first place? I mean, really, what the heck is wrong with the editor who was given that story and thought, ”hey, this guy is announcing that he did something illegal and is writing a review based on it–let’s run with it!“

But that’s the thing: it is as if Fox News doesn’t have editors. In fact, Friedman may not have had one–I would not be surprised if many, or even all, of Fox’s writers simply post directly to web. After all, what comes out of Fox is like the journalistic version of Tourette Syndrome. Again, just look at Glenn Beck. This is hardly the first time that crazy crap comes out in a Fox News article, and despite Fox firing Friedman, it most likely will not be the last.

Nor is it the first time there would be implications beyond the simple ‘reporting’–there have been many which are far more serious. The most recent: three police officers dead because some loon had watched Fox or its equivalent rant on about how Obama is gonna take away all our guns. It’s equivalent to TV preachers going on about how abortion doctors are evil baby-killers and something must be done about it; that kind of talk will usually prompt some unstable person to ‘take action.’ Not that Fox will ratchet it down at all. I doubt that they care about the lives of police officers enough to admit a connection between what they do and effects like this in the real world.

A popular conservative smear tactic is to send false rumors out as email messages, knowing that the faithful will spread them across the nation; this harkens back to the days when Nixon-era dirty-tricks specialists rode elevators up and down all day chatting about fake rumors smearing the opposition candidates. During the last election, there were several rather nasty and racist emails spread to try to smear Barack Obama. One in particular showed an Obama extended-family portrait, with the warning “The Clintons and Rodhams were bad, but wait until this bunch starts running around the White House.” The caption then gave the people in the photo fake names and designations, including “dead,” “jail,” “crack addict,” “fugitive,” and “gay porn star.”

Well, irony has its compensations. Just recently, yet another Palin family member was caught in a rather embarrassing incident (burglarizing a house twice in one week), adding to the long list of rather tawdry soap-opera misadventures which seem endemic to the Palin clan. Let’s see what we have:

• Todd Palin: Sarah’s husband; member of secessionist party, illicitly pressured Public Safety Commissioner to fire Sarah’s sister’s ex-husband, has DUI charge on his criminal record.
• Diana Palin: Todd’s half-sister; arrested on felony charges of first-degree burglary and misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass and theft.
• Track Palin: Sarah’s son; rumors of drug addiction and joining the military to avoid legal implications.
• Bristol Palin: Sarah’s daughter; raised on Sarah Palin’s abstinence-only education, she gets knocked up out of wedlock at the age of 17. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, she later told Greta Van Susteren that abstinence-only education is “not realistic.” Ya don’t say.) Planned marriage to Levi, father of her baby, fell through and Bristol is now an unwed teenage mother.
• Levi Johnston: the high school football player who knocked up Bristol; declared on his MySpace page that he’s a “f***in’ redneck,” that if “Ya f*** with me I’ll kick ass,” and “I don’t want kids.”
• Sherry Johnston: mother of Levi; arrested for drug possession, charged with six felony counts of misconduct involving a controlled substance.
• Mercede Johnston: Levi’s sister; claimed that the Palins considered the Johnstons “white trash” and won’t let them near the baby. (Levi says that he is “allowed” to see his son but can’t “take him anywhere.”)

By the way, Sarah Palin has now denounced the Johnstons for being on a “quest for fame, attention, and fortune.” And we know that that is simply not the Palin Way. I guess that this means that if Palin runs for and wins the presidency in 2012, the Johnstons, at least, wouldn’t be “running around the White House.” Alas, the Palins would be.

Suffice it to say that were even half this stuff true about Obama’s family, right-wingers would claim that he would be totally unfit for office. Just the fact that one of Obama’s aunts whom he has barely met over the years overstayed her visa in the U.S. and lives in public housing has Republicans on a tear. But as for who is “running around the White House,” what we have are two beautiful little girls and their school-kid friends. The closest we have to criminal scandals is that Obama may have violated copyright law when giving the Queen of England an iPod, and Michelle may have violated protocol by touching the Queen uninvited.

Irony bonus: despite all of the Palin family drama–and the fifty or so scandals around the former VP candidate herself–Sarah Palin is still a popular choice among Republicans as the party’s presidential candidate for 2012. Yay for consistency!

A Christian is depressed about the possible fallout after the Iowa Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage is protected under the state’s constitution:

This morning, I had breakfast with some guys, including a lawyer. We weren’t aware of this decision, but we talked about this issue. The lawyer said that as soon as homosexuality receives constitutionally protected status equivalent to race, then “it will be very hard to be a public Christian.” By which he meant to voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage. To do so would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views.

That world got a little bit closer this morning.

Poor guy. It’s getting harder and harder to be a publicly forward bigot.

Oh, I’m sorry. I mean Christian. Poor taste of me to equate Christians to bigots. This is about following the Bible and its teachings. Can’t blame the guy for simply following the Good Word, right?

Except, the same book teaches that it’s OK to own slaves. It says so, in several places. Even the high and mighty Ten Commandments, the source of all morality, clearly implies that owning slaves is OK. So shouldn’t he be bemoaning the long-standing lack of his ability to be publicly Christian and voice support for slavery?

But somehow good Christians know that that’s just wrong. The question is, how?

What it comes down to is a fundamental problem: the Bible includes a godly stamp of approval or at least tolerance for all manner of horrific stuff–killing pregnant women, children, people who break arcane religious laws; making slaves of people and so on. It also proclaims as horrific–abominations, crimes, even capital offenses–lots of stuff that today is seen as relatively pedestrian, such as homosexuality, eating shellfish, wearing clothes made from different materials, planting two different crops in the same field, working on the Sabbath, etc. etc.

And as for “traditional Christian teaching on marriage,” did he mean the traditional teachings about women being chattel? Or polygamy? One-man-one-woman as equals in love to cherish and so forth is very recent; “traditional” marriage, including Christian marriage, is no longer what the church teaches today.

So, many of these things Christians now accept as inapplicable and they disregard them when they appear in the Bible, acknowledging them as rules for a different time that don’t apply any more–or, as with marriage customs, pretend that they have always been the way they are now. But the Bible does not lay down which rules can be judged arcane and which cannot. Which means that some Christians are simply fully dependent on church authorities: if the authorities tell them that slavery is bad, then they don’t accept that any more, but if they tell them that homosexuality is still a sin, they do believe that.

Several problems here. For one, these things change slowly over time, which means that yesterday’s Good Christian is today’s Immoral Bastard. Temporal inconsistency. But that doesn’t seem to bother a lot of people–what is supposedly the unshakable, absolute truth can reverse course over time and still be absolute. Funny how that works.

The biggest problem is, however, that surrender to authority. The author quoted above is depending on authorities to tell him what ancient bigotry he should hold on to. Just because the elders of his church still cling that long-held bugaboo, he thinks that in order to be a good Christian, he must publicly excoriate homosexuality, and now feels oppressed because he cannot.

His Christian friend tipped his hand when he compared homosexuality to race; he was saying, in muted terms of course, that they lost the ability to discriminate against race, and now they’re losing their gay-bashing privileges as well.

How awful for them.

But at least they can take comfort in the fact that when they are no longer allowed to outwardly preach in the workplace that homosexuality is a sin, they can still openly bash atheists. With atheists being by far the most hated non-criminal group in society today, that one should still be around for quite a while.

You know that when Republicans start talking about class warfare, it’s because they plan on waging it even more than before.

You know that Republicans in D.C. have lost their moral compass, that happened quite a while back. You know they they will lie and obfuscate to ridiculous extremes, depending on the the media to back them up, enough to sound credible and get it presented raw to the American people and be believed by many.

But this is pretty amazing. I mean, there is lying, and there is lying. I know I keep on acting surprised at the lengths they go to, but they keep on getting more and more outrageous. Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican Budget Committee member, said this when presenting the Republican budget that actually had some numbers, however ridiculous, in it:

“You’re gonna hear a lot of echoes of class warfare. You’re gonna hear allegations of draconian spending cuts. You’re gonna be told that there is no viable choice for America other than to embrace the president’s radical fiscal agenda. Let me respond to that right now.

”Using class-warfare to take advantage of peoples’ legitimate anger and anxiety, it may make good policy but it’s not leadership. Preying on people’s emotions of fear and envy, it doesn’t create jobs. It demoralizes the small businesspeople who are trying to become successful, and it demonizes the small businesses that are successful that create most of our jobs.“

Some things he got right: using class warfare is wrong and it’s not leadership. The error: he ignores the fact that class warfare is a two-sided battle, and conservatives have been waging that warfare more vociferously and have been winning it outright for quite some time now. Think not? Then when rich and poor both needed bailouts, who got no-strings-attached billions and who got short-changed? Who got handsome bonuses and who got told to take a wage cut?

Republicans have been playing at class warfare for a long time now, and what Ryan said is, in a way, nothing new–when Republicans want to open up a whole new front in the class warfare battle, they always start by accusing the other side of it first. But who’s waging war here? Obama, who wants to take the best tax environment for the wealthy in a long time and scale it back just a smidge in the direction it had been for decades?

Or is it the GOP, which launches massive tax cut after massive tax cut for the wealthy, then turns around for some more union busting, followed by slashing of services and benefits for the middle and lower class? Almost their whole agenda is class warfare. When the poor needed cheaper drugs and the taxpayer needed a break with Medicare spending, who instead gave all the power, leverage, and profit to big pharma? When the people in dire straits were pitted against the loan industry, who pushed through legislation to put all the advantages in the hands of the big banks? And in this latest crisis, when regular people overstepped their means but banks lured them to do so for predatory reasons, who got the bailout and who got their homes taken away?

The Republicans want to dish out more of the same all over again–even more tax cuts for the rich. Because the economy will collapse if Paris Hilton doesn’t get all the billions her daddy’s gonna leave her. Because the wealthy need their inheritances more than the people need their homes. Because if we don’t give millionaires and billionaires those Bush tax cuts permanently, who’ll have enough money to save us all?

Note, of course, that Ryan dragged out the perpetual poster boy for the right wing and their rich patrons: the small businessperson. Obama’s budget, Ryan claims, both demoralizes and demonizes the small businessman. Um… how? When? What small businessman–the CEOs of the big banks? Those small businessmen?

Oh no, Ryan must be talking about people like Joe the Plumber. Small businessmen like him who own… um, who want to own, uh… well… who brazenly lied about being a small businessman so he could score a political ”gotcha.“ That’s pretty much all they have–because the small businesspeople they are talking about don’t exist, at least not in any form that will get wiped out by Obama’s plans. Despite Obama’s goal of raising the tax bracket on income over $250,000 a year, that’s not gonna take down a single small businessperson. You’d have to make well over that before you started paying significantly more in taxes, and let’s face it, that ain’t being poor, nor is it going to ruin any business. It might sting a little, but then taxes sting people making less than that a lot more.

I mean, really, is someone gonna say, ”I’m only making $300,000 a year in profit off my small business, but the new few thousand bucks in taxes I gotta pay makes it all totally not worth it–I’m shutting my shop down and going back to being a shop clerk at some other sucker’s store!“ Yeah, that happens all the time, I betcha.

The Republicans, on the other hand, want to make permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and even add some more, and they they want to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They want to stop the stimulus cold, choking civilian job growth, and then heavily expand military spending, benefitting defense firms but also forcing poorer Americans to instead sign up for military service because there would be no other jobs out there. That’s not class warfare, right?

But the real whopper comes with their projections. Though tax cuts and more tax cuts for the rich have drowned us in deficits and a stagnant economy, despite the fact that Democrats have historically achieved better job growth and lower deficits, this is what the Republicans are claiming will happen if we follow Democratic or Republican budgets:

This is so out of proportion, so ridiculously, ludicrously fictional, it’s actually hilarious. And this economy is a tough room. Republicans might as well say that Democrats will lead us all to the gates of hell while Republicans will have rainbows and magic ponies for all! Just give up the rest of your social programs and translate it into a few more billions in tax cuts for billionaires, and we’ll be there!

And we can trust the Republicans when they tell us this, right? Because they have been so trustworthy and effective in regards to economics up until now, right?

When a thief, mugger, rapist, or murderer gets off on a technicality, right-wingers rail against the weak-kneed, pansy-ass liberal justice system that lets criminals back on the street just because police or prosecutors made mistakes. They loathe that particular adherence to principle, and cannot understand why it has to lead to the release of the criminal instead of just a slap on the wrist of the police or prosecutors, and they blame bleeding-heart liberals for allowing dangerous, hard-core criminals to roam free.

Except when the criminal is a Republican. In which case, the technicality, no matter how unrelated to the actual crime committed, completely and utterly clears them of even the barest hint of wrongdoing, and makes them into victims of what surely must have been a politically-motivated left-wing witch hunt. Just like Oliver North, or now Ted Stevens, who Republicans now claim is a victim. They even want Mark Begich, who beat Stevens in the election, to step down so Stevens can return.

I wonder, if prosecutors in the Blagojevich case turn out to have withheld any evidence, no matter how incriminating the whole case against him may be, will the GOP suddenly hail Blago as a patriotic victim and demand his return to office? Somehow I don’t think so.

It has been pointed out in local commentary as well as many of the lefty blogs that Norm Coleman is getting a rather notoriously inexplicable free pass in the press, along with Republicans backing him up. True, this is not exactly the same stakes as Bush v. Gore, but it is not just an ordinary Senate election, either–this seat is the tipping point for a significant amount of vital legislation that is being blocked by the GOP with their continued extravagant abuse of the filibuster.

While Al Gore was commonly called out in the national media for being a “sore loser” because he challenged the highly questionable outcome in Florida, Norm Coleman and his GOP backers are being left alone despite rather blatant evidence that they are doing this for no other reason than to block Franken from being seated–not because the election was unfair or the vote count was wrong, but simply because they have political reasons for keeping the Democrats from getting a 59th seat in the Senate.

Even in the Minnesota press, we see signs of the false equivalency caused by a weak-kneed press fearful of being labeled as “liberal,” so it looks for fault on both sides even when it clearly belongs only on the conservative side:

To be sure, the danger of seeming to be a sore loser has dogged both candidates in the topsy-turvy race: first Franken, when he pressed for a recount of Coleman’s narrow election-night lead; and then Coleman, when he challenged the recount that left him 225 votes behind.

Franken didn’t “press” for anything–the recount was legally mandated, and Franken couldn’t have stopped it even if he had wanted to. Saying that Franken had a “sore loser” stigma because he somehow pushed for a recount is a clear indication of either a right-wing tinge or the mindless acceptance of right-wing talking points. The snippet above not only creates a false fault in Franken, it ignores the greater fault from Coleman–not that he challenged the outcome, but that he clearly intends to challenge it to the most absurd levels possible.

The media has been, to put it lightly, a tad reluctant to call out the GOP for lots of stuff which it would have a filed day with had it come from the left–like the GOP openly rallying for unprecedented partisan rancor while the media still gives them equal credit for “bipartisanship.”

But that’s just what we get for having such a Liberal Media™. We can only blame ourselves.

Recently, the Texas State Board of Education voted on new state standards for science education. This would not be a big deal except that this is one of the arenas where creationists are trying to get their religious dogma implanted as “science” in the classroom. While the board rejected language which would have required science teachers to discuss “strengths and weaknesses” of scientific theories–the latest code-wordplay creationists are using in their campaign to dismiss evolution and give credence to creationism–they did approve some of the creationist language.

One example was a requirement to “analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations” based in part on “examining all sides of scientific evidence of those scientific experiments.” Again, sounds reasonable, but this language is not intended to actually analyze scientific findings honestly, but is instead language to open the door for creationists to allow their science teacher brethren to introduce faulty creationist critiques of standard scientific theories, or to force non-creationist teachers to cover such topics against their will. It is not surprising that, just coincidentally, topics that were at the forefront of this “analysis” were evolution and the age of the universe–the two areas most important to creationists.

One reason all of this has been happening in Texas is that the board’s chairman, Don McLeroy, is an unabashed creationist who can’t understand why those darned scientists are fighting all of this. “Somebody has to stand up to these experts,” he stated on a video; “I don’t know why they’re doing it.”

One of the issues McLeroy wants discussed is the “complexity of the cell,” a standard creationist argument against evolution. In barely veiled language, new standards bring up the idea that cells are too complex to have evolved by mere natural selection. The problem with this is that there has never been any scientific research which supports this idea. There is no evidence that in any way proves that natural selection is too “unlikely” to have built DNA and life itself. It is nothing more than intuition, a feeling–creationists look at the structure of a cell and simply conclude that it’s too complex to have arisen naturally. No statistical analysis of chemical reactions, no calculation of the mass of organic material over time considering certain chemical reactions, etc. Just, “that doesn’t look right,” and presto!–it’s science.

McLeroy also tipped his hand when he made a statement about why he felt genetics trumped evolution: “Genetics goes back to a Christian monk who did precise data.” This should not be too surprising to those who understand the views of some of the more extremist conservative Christians, who believe that nothing is of value unless Jesus figures into it somehow. To paraphrase the Mike Myers SNL sketch, “If it’s not Christian, it’s crap!” Like this “expert” on morality, two completely indistinguishable acts can be as different as saintly good and Hitler-level evil depending only upon whether or not they were done by someone with Christ in their hearts.

Then there was discussion on “sudden appearance” of new species in the fossil record, another standard creationist argument which essentially says, “if we haven’t found it yet, it doesn’t exist.” It is equivalent to waking up and looking outside to see the ground is wet, but because you didn’t witness the rain last night, then that calls into question the whole “rain” theory and so we should instead give serious consideration to the theory that god magically makes the ground wet overnight without precipitation.

This is one of the major problems with school boards: they are a political organization that can be populated with, well, anyone who can win a school board election. If you’re a conservative and see no problem with that, remember that Michael Moore’s first serious job was on a school board–to which he was elected at age 18. School boards can be populated and run by people who are not only not educators, but wish to use the education system to promote their personal, political and religious agendas. You hear talk about how you don’t want politicians to make decisions about your health care, but apparently with education, there’s no problem.

Seriously, school boards should be done away with, and serious educators–with the required qualifications you would expect in any profession–given the authority to decide curricula. The whole creationists-running-school-boards thing, from Dover to Kansas to Texas and beyond, is simply a running example of why this should be.

Republicans in Congress have gone so far beyond the bend that it defies comprehension. Not that I ever doubted that Republicans would stoop to anything to win an election–but this goes way further than I thought they were capably of doing publicly:

In his latest comment, Texas Sen. John Cornyn said the trial and appeals could take years to complete and Republicans might wage a WWIII if the Senate Democrats attempt to seat Franken before the appeals are complete.

Think for a second about how the Republicans would react if the Democrats tried this. They would go insane with rage, no question.

And now they are set to drag this out for years and threaten all-out war if the Democrats dare to try to seat Franken, even after he won the official election and even if the Minnesota State Supreme Court backs him up on it.

The “WWIII” aspect harkens back to the GOP’s “nuclear option” when Democrats dared to use the filibuster far less often than Republicans now do–the GOP sure loves those apocalyptic ultimatums, don’t they? In fact, this whole thing is over the fact that Franken would maybe weaken the Republicans ability to flagrantly abuse the same filibuster they once threatened nuclear war to prevent from ever being used. Their rank hypocrisy would be hilariously comical if it were not so gallingly undemocratic and ultimately harmful.

In one way it almost seems just to have a make-up election–now that the GOP has spat in the face of Minnesotans, denying them their full voice in the Senate so the GOP can cheat Democrats out of a fairly won seat, I would be amazed if they backed up the GOP by re-electing Coleman. But even if it were certain that Franken would win, it would still be a bad idea–because it would be caving in on the principle, and setting a dangerous precedent that Republicans could trash any close election they didn’t win.

It’s just hard to come up with commentary to thoroughly enough express the sheer corrupt, sleazy, unprincipled swine they are being over this.

Of course, not a peep of this on the mainstream media web sites. That damned Liberal Media™ must be blocking the news of the valiant attempts by the GOP to free Minnesotans from the threat of having elected officials.

Okay, BG is now over. Some thoughts about it–below the fold so those who haven’t seen the finale yet won’t accidentally see something. Read more…

9to5 Mac points out (TechFlash and others caught this too) that the Microsoft ad didn’t even try very hard for authenticity when it came to “real person” Lauren’s “visit” to the “Mac store” (it’s an Apple store). Below are two screen grabs from the commercial, one each of Lauren “going in” to the store and “coming out” of the store. Note the pedestrians around her:

As she walks “into” the store, there’s a guy with a dark jacket, horizontal-stripe shirt, blue jeans, and a camera on a strap walking past the store from right to left, and you can see a reflection of a guy in blue denim with a white shirt hanging out from under his jacket reflected in the window, walking toward the store. And then, after supposedly checking out those Macs in great detail, she comes out:

This is shot from a different angle to give the impression that time has passed. But the guy in the dark jacket is only a twenty or thirty feet forward from where he was, and the guy with the white shirt sticking out of his blue denim jacket is now at the store, going in.

Clearly, they just had two cameras, shot Lauren walking toward the store, then had her do an about-face and walk right back out. Probably figured that the mall people would object to filming on the premises if they hung around long enough for her to actually look at stuff–which, one can assume, was not really part of the plan.

Microsoft claims that the woman, who is an “office manager and actress,” didn’t know she’d be in a commercial. Apparently the cameras following her around weren’t a big enough hint. Maybe her “real” investigation of Macs actually took her three seconds. And the fact that she’s an actress doesn’t mean that she’s not a real person, but it does add to the fact that she has been hired by Microsoft to be filmed buying a Windows computer that will be paid for by the filmers. Very “real.”

How is this important? It’s not, really, just somewhat snarky, is all. If they’re going to fake a “real person” they should at least go to a bit more trouble to make sure it’s not quite so transparent.

This also follows up on the previous “Mojave Experiment” campaign where Microsoft took XP users off the street and showed them Vista but pretended that it was their next Windows version called “Mojave.” This also depended on a certain level of fraud–the “wow” demo was under carefully controlled conditions that masked all of the shortcomings of the OS. The point is that Microsoft goes to a lot of trouble to point out how their “real people” are having a “real experience” which is so positive with PCs–but apparently don’t trust their product enough to truly be real.

If they want to do a genuine ad, then have real interviews–there are enough people out there who could make a decent argument that would look good, not to mention classy. Sit them down in a chair and interview them (remember the “switcher” ads from Apple a while back, where people did more or less that?). Have them talk about real needs for what PCs can do for them. Have a gamer or a businessman talk about how the Mac just doesn’t have what he needs, or a person on a budget who needs just the basic Internet and word processing without the frills. Have someone discuss how they’ve been hit hard and right now, money really is their number-one priority.

Not that the Lauren ad won’t work–it’s just pretty easy to take down on the “authenticity” front alone. With many real points to make in favor of PCs, why set up a fake claim that can so readily be proven false?

UPDATE: They found Lauren. Her name is Lauren De Long, who is conveniently under a non-disclosure agreement with Microsoft forbidding her to speak to anyone about the commercial–or, presumably, her subsequent experiences with the laptop she bought.