http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/think-outside-rolodex-by-digby-atrios.html

Digby:

From the silly travel office flap in 1993 until David Broder's heinous little screed yesterday, there is a long continuum of establishment petulance, confusion, triviality and error. If it isn't their proximity to those who are spinning them, I can only assume that they are either dumb, craven or Republican. It's got to be something.

Which reminds me. I have never been able to figure out what Travelgate was supposed to be about. The threat to the Constitution was supposed to be what, exactly? The criminal conspiracy was supposed to be what, exactly?

I must admit, that I never really tried that hard to figure it out. But, still. Isn't that supposed to be the whole point of a scandal? It's simple to understand, as opposed to global warming, the federal deficit, etc.

The only I could understand about Travelgate is that it touched on the lives of the White House press corps, and that upset them.

IntrovertGirl,

A Star Trek novel? You're kidding, right?

No, really, my point was about the intersection of the visions. And if you look at the pictures at the link I provided (click them to enlarge) you'll see in a flash that there's a similar social vision encoded just in how things look.

I know this isn't news to you. But anyone can click on the images and see it at a glance. This is canonical, accessible stuff.

IntrovertGirl:

:>>A Star Trek novel? You're kidding, right?<<

No, I'm not, but you brought up one of the less good TV series

Pistols at 50 paces, girl.

Best. Star Trek. Ever.

Not even close to being close.

(and the book is actually pretty good if you like sci fi),

As a writer myself, of course I respect novels. I was kidding myself, when I wrote "You're kidding, right?" Or rather, I was 3/4ths-kidding, since cannonical order clearly stands for a lot when we're talking about a cultural phenomena such as Star Trek.

which was brought along much later in the Star Trek "history." Sorry!

Which means what, exactly, in terms of the point at issue???

I realize what you're saying, but my point was that the Star Trek image is of a future that is clean, bright, well-ordered, lacking in financial strife ... utopia despite the minor conflicts. Blade Runner is grittier, and doesn't indicate a possible squeaky clean Star Trek future.

And my point is that the "Bell Riots" interpolation into the Star Trek timeline directly refutes that presumption. That's why it's relevant, and "Strangers from the Sky" is not.

[Me, re; DS9]:>>Pistols at 50 paces, girl.

Best. Star Trek. Ever.<<

You must be joking. How can Jean-Luc Picard be compared with anyone?

Well, he's a trained Shakespearean actor. He can be compared to other trained Shakespearean actors. And on that scale, he's good, but not super-top. As such, he shone especially in set piece episodes, such as the torture scenario played out in "Chain of Command, Part II." If that's your standard, he gets top marks, no question.

OTOH, he can be compared to the other actors he played opposite. And even in that episode, David Warner as Gul Madred was right there at his level. Maybe even a bit higher, what with playing the father in the same room he was torturing Picard in. But, really, the best actor in TNG for my money was Michelle Forbes as Ro Laren. No other actor pulled off so much character development in such a short, recurring role. And she easily outplayed Picard in their scenes together. Star Trek maangement knew what they were doing when they asked her to star on DS9--the one thing that didn't happen that could have made it noticeably better.

More importantly, though, you're proceeding on the presumption that a lead actor carries the show. I could simply by counter by arguing that Avery Brooks does a better job as an actor than Patrick Steward did. His character is less iconic, true. But that's what makes him better--he convincingly develops a character who goes through remarkable changes in the course of the series, something which no other lead actor in a Star Trek series does.

And this leads directly into what really makes it the best series--it's the only one that is really, actually, a story. The others after it tried to be, following in its footsteps. But they weren't sufficiently well-conceived so that the overarching story was strong enough to hold the parts together. Not only that, but the story is one of the very best to ever be told in the course of a TV series.

The reason I said the DS9 episode wasn't so relevant is because it's inserted long after the zeitgeist of Star Trek was already long-established, whereas the book was published right in the middle of that establishment.

Yes, but how the hell is that relevant to the original point???

I would say we're slightly talking at cross-purposes, but we're talking about Star Trek. How much can it matter? :-)

Data would surely disagree. And Spock would back him up, 100%.

Just the facts:

If Durbin is to be believed, we had a Senate oversight committee that knew the administration was telling lies to the American public, but they were required to sit in silence in the Senate during discussions about going to war that focused on "facts" they knew to be false. WHOA.

This isn't news. At the time it was happening, Florida Senator Bob Graham, who chaired the Committee (Dems controlled the Senate, after Jeffords went independent and started caucusing with them), publicly stated the committee was getting information that undercut what was being told to the rest of the Senate. But the rest of the Dems simply failed to make a stand on this.

Graham wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in November, 2005, "What I Knew Before the Invasion," that gives a synoptic overview of how the Senate Intelligence Committee saw a prolonged pattern of predetermination and deception:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/18/AR2005111802397.html

Graham was simply too much of an old-school genteel Southern politician to make the bare-knuckled fight he should have over this. But at least he pushed for the truth in his own way. If others had done the same, we could have avoided the war.

mr_confused:

Also, the Democratic party is owned by the same people that own the Republican party. They get swapped back and forth to simulate change so as to keep the masses from growing agitated.

Actually, two things are true: (1) Althought the primary financial interests that support the two parties have significant overlap, their core corporate support comes from different sectors, and this has been true pretty much as far back as you want to go.

(2) Although corporations have far too much say in the Democratic Party, there is still a very significant difference between the two parties, which can be seen quite clearly in the voting records in Congress. In fact, polarization between the parties has risen sharply since the 1970s. The VoteView website (voteview.com) has the background data and the analysis behind this, which is foregrounded in their book Polarized America (polarizedamerica.com).

The problem of corporate influence is indeed one of the biggest ones we face. But that's all the more reason to understand it more clearly, and in detail. For example, the TelCo's are using the TelCo union, Communications Workers of America (CWA) as their stalking horse inside the Democratic Party to fend off efforts to establish net neutrality in law. Just yesterday, MyDD was reporting that CWA managed to kill a resolution favoring net neutrality at the California Democratic Party Convention. They did this by getting it assigned to the Labor Committee, rather than going directly from the Resolutions Committee to the floor. Now, however, it's not clear if this was actually the case:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/4/28/22737/4360

The point is, if everyone who recognized the long odds we're fighting against got angry and dedicated to fighting back, and fighting back smart, rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, "They're both the same," we would have a heckuva lot better chance of turning things around.