Author: Glenn Hauman

All right, let’s get this straightened out once and for all.

The David Mack on the left is the guy who does Kabuki, Daredevil, Alias, and other neat things with a paintbrush.

The David Mack on the right is the fellow who does Deep Space Nine episodes, lots of Star Trek novels, the Starfleet Survival Guide, co-wrote the DS9 miniseries “Divided We Fall” for Malibu Comics, and is supposed to have a Wolverine novel out for next year.

They are two different people. They have been seen together in San Diego in the same place, at the same time. And as you can see, they do not annihilate each other when the two of them touch.

We’re happy to clear up this little misunderstanding in comic book land.

Doug Forrester for New Jersey Governor:

Forrester: Homeland Security Must Always Be a Priority

(Trenton, NJ) At a press conference at the Trenton train station today, gubernatorial nominee Doug Forrester expressed his commitment to the security of New Jersey citizens and criticized Jon Corzine and his party for their Homeland Security failures in the Garden State.

“We were reminded again today by the events in London that there is no greater priority than our security,” said Forrester. “When I’m governor there will be no more Golan Cipels and homeland security funds will be awarded on the basis of vulnerability, not partisan politics.”

Oh, really? Then please explain how just a month ago, you had a fundraiser headlined by Karl Rove. If you’re really concerned about Homeland Security, why are you having a man who leaked the identity of a CIA agent raise money for you?

I called Mr. Forrester’s office and they didn’t have a canned response, but they took my name and said they’d get back to me. Let’s see how long it takes, shall we? Since I never heard back from them about Rove’s comments about 9/11 last month, I expect to be waiting a while.

First the business news:

It’s a cram-down, Silicon Valley style. Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd announced a restructuring (read: mass firing) today.

Among the components of the bold visionary plan: simplifying H-P’s structure, cutting 14,500 jobs, and changing the company’s retirement plans “to better match industry benchmarks.”

(Via Daniel Gross.)

Then the perspective: I flew on America West the past week, and the entire company employs 14,000 people. So that’s the equivalent of a major company wiped out in a stroke. Yikes.

Just one of those oddities of scale. Don’t mind me.

Illegal Copies Of Half-Blooded Prince Already Online…:

The sixth book in the Harry Potter series, the fastest-selling book of all time, has become among the quickest to fall prey to Internet piracy, with illicit copies available online within hours of its release.

Tech-savvy fans of the boy wizard teamed up to scan the entire 607 page book into digital form, with unauthorized e-book copies appearing online less than 12 hours after “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” went on sale on Saturday.

(Via The Huffington Post.)

We say this like we’re surprised. Personally, I’m surprised it took this long.

Yes, we’ve just returned from Las Vegas, where the temperature broke all sorts of known records– 117 degrees on Tuesday, tying for hottest ever recorded there. Yipes. And 95 degrees for the low, making it the highest low ever. Second highest was 93 on Sunday. And it’s been above 115 for the past four days. And on and on and ugh.

Oh, and there’s a monsoon on the way. So soon it’ll be hot, flooded, and muggy for the weekend. Lucky them.

(Yes, I went to Vegas to recover from San Diego Comic-Con. I am truly nutso.)

Man. Not a fun voyage out to San Diego. A six hour trip turning into thirteen with delays, layovers, missed connections and… let’s just say it’s a good thing I had the Firefly DVDs with me, or some people would have been killed.

My initial post on the journey seems to have been eaten by the net traffic jams, much to my irritation, so I’ll have to give floating con reports later. Weather report: hazy and humid, but nowhere near as hot as it is inland. Time to dig out the sunscreen… and here’s hoping that this post goes through, as the net connection in the hotel is very intermittent, probably from overuse.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished:

It was that rat bastard Cooper:

“By any definition, he burned Karl Rove,” Luskin said of Cooper. “If you read what Karl said to him and read how Cooper characterizes it in the article, he really spins it in a pretty ugly fashion to make it seem like people in the White House were affirmatively reaching out to reporters to try to get them to them to report negative information about Plame.”

Oooh. That’s dangerous stuff there. It may not be the smartest thing in the world for Karl Rove’s lawyer to be disparaging Matt Cooper on the day before he testifies, do you think? They only know what one e-mail says and they have no idea what Cooper is going to say. Bizarre.

(Via Hullabaloo.)

Sure, blame the media, it’s always worked before.

A few notes on this particular spin tactic: it doesn’t matter that Cooper burned Rove legally. The CRIME was Rove telling anybody without the required security clearance that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent. Doesn’t matter if Rove told his priest, his Russian mistress, his secretary, or his mommy. If they didn’t have the security clearance, he was guilty. The fact that he told somebody with major media access was just insult to injury.

As for me, I do blame the media. Cooper’s been sitting on this information for two years. He’s let the crime go unreported for two years, and he knew who and what was involved. In the meantime, Rove has had access to even more secure information, and Bush trusted him enough to promote him. Don’t you think it would have been nice for Cooper to use his soapbox and let the American people know before the election? Heck, don’t you think Bush should have known as soon as possible?

Of course, that presupposes the idea that Bush didn’t already know, doesn’t it?

I got this bad idea from Pandemic of Brainlessness:

July 11, 2005
The glamorous Maria Bartiromo was just on CNBC talking globalism (and China in particular) with two Wall Street cretins. China is a great play said Cretin No. 1 because they have 300 million potential middle class customers for America’s manufacturers. Excuse me, what do we still make that the Chinese either can’t make themselves or can’t copy five minutes from now?

As Cretin No. 2 waxed effulgent over China’s fabulous prospects for growth, CNBC flashed a bunch of American brand logos across the screen, including Pepsi Cola and Exxon-Mobil. These companies are going to so clean up over there, Cretin No. 1 chimed in, or the shareholders are going to want to know the reason why.

Yeah, soda pop is really hard to make. They’ll have to buy it from us. You thought computers were hard? There are four ingredients in soda pop (water, sugar, favoring, coloring ) and you have to get the proportions just right or it don’t come out good!…

The public discussion over the global economy is symptomatic of America’s new pandemic of brainlessness, the mainstream media especially. The head cheerleader, of course, has been Tom Friedman of the New York Times, author of The World Is Flat. Friedman and the rest of the cheerleading squad believe that that the global economy is a permanent institution. Now that it is established, we can only expect more of it. More and better. Forever.

What all these cretins seem to miss is the cold hard fact that today’s transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely, relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalism evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs.

Also, it must be obvious that relative world peace depends on equitable distribution of cheap energy. If the industrial nations don’t get the oil and gas they need at a tolerable price, they are going to get very cranky, and when nations get cranky, peace itself is in short supply.

Three quarters of the world’s oil is in the eastern hemisphere — two-thirds of the total is in the Middle east alone. Guess what? All of it is a lot closer to China than it is to us. Some of it they can walk to. Do you have any idea how desperate for oil both China and America are going to be in five years? Do you have a clue how tapped out America’s WalMart shoppers are going to be as jobs vanish and the value of a dollar craters in the face of runaway energy prices?

Globalism is yesterday’s tomorrow. The future is about living locally on a much smaller scale. Pepsi Cola and Exxon-Mobil are exactly the kind of gigantic enterprises that are going to wither and die over the next decade. China is not tomorrow’s geopolitical colossus, it’s a geopolitical super train wreck waiting to collide with the reality of its environmental devastation, population overshoot, and energy starvation. Americans will be lucky if they can do each other’s laundry ten years from now, let alone sell massive amounts of soda pop to people twelve thousand miles away.

Is it an accident that there is so much Realty TV in America when, in fact, there is so little reality?

(Via Clusterfuck Nation by Jim Kunstler.)

Somehow, it put me in line of the great exchange of dialogue from Get Shorty, between John Travolta and Delroy Lindo about coming up with a screenplay:

EClark asks why I haven’t commented on the Kelo vs. New London decision. Probably was just busy.

I happen to think it’s a pretty bad decision, but that’s because it’s a particularly bad case. But, as the Shinecock Indians say, So what else is new?

My big complaint is that there’s no obvious way to judge “the best interests” here. I think a case like this screams for Heinlein’s tax solution from The Number Of The Beast…

Taxation is low, simple– and contains a surprise. The Federal government is supported by a head tax paid by the States , and is mostly for military and foreign affairs. This state derives most of it’s revenue from real estate taxes. It is a uniform rate set annually, with no property exempted, not even churches, hospitals, or schools– or roads; the best roads are toll roads.

The surprise lies in this: The owner appraises his own property.

There is a sting in the tail: Anyone can buy property against the owner’s wishes at the appraisal the owner placed on it. The owner can hang on only by raising his appraisal at once to a figure so high that no buyer wants it– and pay three years back taxes at his new appraisal.

In this vein, I’m quite happy to hear about the folks who are trying to use eminent domain to grab Justice Souter’s home to build a hotel.

And now, off to San Diego. See you all there– I’ll be at the IDW panel and Comics Weblogs panel, in the audience at least, and I wrote a few questions for the fan/pro trivia contest. Feel free to say hi if you see me.

Just why hasn’t anyone gotten around to telling me about Brewster Rockit? Hmm?