Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

“Don’t gloat, don’t boast, don’t take any pride in victory.”
     -John F. Kennedy, 1962, regarding the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis

“Good riddance. The world is better off without you, Mr. Saddam Hussein. I find it very interesting that when the heat got on, you dug yourself a hole and you crawled in it.”
     -George W. Bush, 2003, regarding the capture of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein has been captured at long last. Hurrah! Like pretty much everybody in America, I’m thrilled that he’s finally been caught. Although I’m less optimistic about the Right’s cheers that the danger in Iraq is now “significantly reduced,” in part because I’ve never quite bought into the line that every single attack on American troops was performed by “Saddam loyalists.” But that’s neither here nor there.

Over at TalkLeft, a group of lawyers who take the unpopular stance of standing up for everybody’s rights are now being routinely accused of ties to terrorists just because they want the rules of the Geneva Convention to be observed. Which is pretty much par for the course for any Liberal or Progressive voices out there. It doesn’t matter that the majority of us are actually happy to see a butcher like Saddam put away – what matters is that we’re not automatically falling in step behind Bush just because he’s now got Saddam strapped to his fender.

So, on that note, how did Democratic front-runner Howard Dean respond?

This is a great day for the Iraqi people, the US, and the international community.

Our troops are to be congratulated on carrying out this mission with the skill and dedication we have come to know of them.

This development provides an enormous opportunity to set a new course and take the American label off the war. We must do everything possible to bring the UN, NATO, and other members of the international community back into this effort.

Now that the dictator is captured, we must also accelerate the transition from occupation to full Iraqi sovereignty.

Wow. Dean is a far better Democrat than I to come up with such a diplomatic response on such short notice. He’s right, you know. This is a fantastic opportunity to bring the rest of the world into Iraq now, get assistance in making the transition from a military occupation to a new sovereign government, and to begin rebuilding those international relations so carelessly shattered by Bush’s Devil-May-Care attitude. Now that we’re in Iraq, it’s no good to just pull up stakes and leave – but we need the world’s help to make certain things go right. Go, Dean. You da man.

Let’s see, now. How did Presidential non-candidate Joe Lieberman tackle the issue?

This man, Saddam Hussein, this evil man, has to face the death penalty.  The International Tribunal in The Hague cannot order the death penalty.  So my first question about where he’s going to be tried will be answered by whether that tribunal can execute him, which is what he surely deserves, and if it can be done by the Iraqi military tribunal, fine.  But if it cannot, he should be brought before an American military tribunal and face the death that he’s brought to hundreds of thousands of his own people and 460-plus Americans.

Wow. A strong endorsement for the death penalty, combined with a “whatever it takes” attitude toward foreign policy that doesn’t take into account any concerns for international law. Eye for an eye and all that jazz. Strong fightin’ words from Da Lieb, a man who wants mandatory labelling for video games that are too violent. But I give him props for not hatin’ on Dean while he’s talking up Saddam’s capture.

Whoops. Spoke too soon.

Howard Dean throughout this campaign has said he wasn’t sure that Saddam really represented a threat to us.  At one point he said, “I suppose the Iraqis are better off with Saddam Hussein gone.”  I would say this, and this is a choice the voters have to make in the primaries.  If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would be power today, not in prison.

Ouch. That’s nice. That’s a good way to alienate everybody in the Democratic party who was in favor of more diplomatic solutions or who wanted us to gain the support of the rest of the world before going into Iraq. Just haul off and call us all evil by association. We’re going to miss you, Lieb.

So, how about Kerry? I mean, he’s generally a level-headed kinda guy. He talks a good bit of sense – even if he is working up a salty image with motorcycles and four-letter words. And he’s got a hella creepy smile, but at least he knows how to talk. I’m sure he’ll take the time to make a reasoned statement that… hm. Sounds pretty much like Dean’s statement on the issue, too. But I’m sure that Kerry’s not going to take this moment to try for political gain over his fellow Democrats by—
Ah, screw it. Dogpile on Dean!

“Governor Dean and some other people didn’t even think it was great. They didn’t even know that it was good to get rid of Saddam Hussein. So I think it’s important for us to realize how good it is.

The above, by the way, was brought to you by Fox News Sunday as part of the continuing coverage on how Democrats cause cancer. Remember, “Fox News: Not just evil, damn evil.”

But despite the Dean-baiting and Howie-bashing, most of the Democrats seem to have the same message – this is Bush’s chance to right some wrongs and get us back in good with the world community. All he has to do is play his cards right and… tell them that not only can they not bid on reconstruction contracts, but they should forgive Iraq’s debts.

George, I’m about to ask you to do something that you might find distasteful. And that’s to identify with the French. I’m sure that you find it nauseating, but take comfort – it’s probably no harder for you than it is for them to try to identify with the rude conquer-monkeys coming out of North America, these days. And all you have to do is think back.

Remember Arbusto, George? The oil company you used to run? Or, at least, collect checks from? Well, for just a second, let’s say you’re back at Arbusto before it had to be bought out and foreign investors saved your booty from bankruptcy. Now, let’s say that Arbusto gets a contract to provide oil exploration services for another company. And let’s just toss out an arbitrary figure of 4.5 million dollars for the services you’ll provide. So you send your folks out there, and they help this company find oil.

Now, this company comes back to you and asks for an extension on their debt, because they’ve sunk all their money into the business and they need to turn a profit before they can pay you. Let’s say that you’re feeling magnanimous, so you tell them they can have a couple of months.

Next month, the company gets bought out by a conglomerate of three big-money companies. Now, this is great for you, because these companies have pledged to spend whatever it takes to build this little energy company into the biggest in the world. That means they’re going to generate contracts like crazy. And, in fact, they do – the smallest being for about ten mil, and ranging on up into hundreds of millions of dollars. All told, there’s about 18 billion floating around, just waiting to be snapped up. So, worst case scenario, you’re definitely getting your 4.5 million, now, because these companies have deep pockets and they can afford to pay you the money. Plus, if you play your cards right, you might walk out a few million richer.

And that’s when Guido shows up with his pet crowbar.

Guido comes from the conglomerate with their sympathy for the damage that anonymous vandals have caused to your new Corvette. That would be the one you drove to work today. Guido has come to ask a favor. See, the conglomerate would be very appreciative if you would just take the account book that has the 4.5 mil they owe you in it and just… misplace that page. No, you don’t need any fancy announcement – just get rid of the debt, and everything would be fine.

Now, here’s where you can make your play. See, it’s time to ask for one of those contracts. Let’s face it. You could definitely forgive a measly 4.5 million if you could just get in a couple of the big-money contracts, right?

So, Guido smiles patiently at you, and then he says, “Our branch corporation executives risk their professional reputations. And therefore, the contracting is going to reflect that. And that’s what the conglomerate stockholders expect.” Then he reminds you that there are other ways in which you will be rewarded for forgiving the debt – like, say, the feeling of knowing that you helped a small company grow. Or, say, the feeling of knowing that you still have two fully-functional legs.

Now, I’m sure you wouldn’t have stood for that kind of bullying, Mister President. At the very least, you would have made a call to your daddy and he would have brought his pimp hand down on ‘em and shown ‘em how a real O.G. does business. If there’s one thing George “Pimp Daddy” Herbert Walker is, it’s old school gangsta.

By now you should see where this is going, but let me spell it out for you loud and clear. In the above situation, Arbusto is really France and Germany and the other countries that had the gall to demand real reasons for military intervention before going into Iraq. And the business conglomerate that’s sending Guido over to tell you to bugger off? That’s you, buddy.

And I, for one, do not want to see France, Germany, and Russia callin’ yo momma.

On the one hand, Shinichiro Watanabe is involved in it – even if he is just directing the opening sequence. For those of you who don’t know, Watanabe is the director of one of the most stylish, original, and engaging anime shows ever, Cowboy Bebop.

On the other hand.

It’s t.A.T.u.

t.A.T.u? They’re making an anime movie out of t.A.T.u?

This could either be wonderfully loopy or horribly disturbing. And, given that it’s t.A.T.u., I’m leaning toward horribly disturbing.

Link above goes to a simple English-language blog entry. If your Japanese is good enough, you can take a look at the official website for t.A.T.u.: Paragate. Me? Just for laughs, I’m going to go read this again, and try to figure out how the movie’s going to be marketed in America.

After a few minutes of typing, I copy out what I’ve already written and close the comment box without posting – it’s obviously getting too crowded in the comments box to qualify as a “comment,” any more – so I might as well just go post an entry on my own site. My e-mail box pings and I check to find out that I’ve just had fifty-four messages come in in the last ten minutes. Fifty of them have been caught by my filter and automatically shuttled over to a special “SPAM” e-mail box. Two of the messages are DNC newsletters. The other two are spam, as well – but the filter didn’t catch them.

While I work on my voodoo curse wishing all spammers and their families to lead a barren, hopeless existence of pain and misery, Thud is busy pointing out that a new California law could classify me as one of them.

Which, of course, leads me to the subject of anti-spam laws – which I support the theory of, although the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

As Thud points out, I occasionally (when the mood strikes me and the moon is in the seventh house – or some such) will send out a brief e-mail newsletter urging people to buy my music (or a poster, or a t-shirt, or a book – just something from the Dry Goods Floor, really). While the e-mail prominently features a graphic of the product in question, I like to think that my e-mail newsletters keep the sales pitch fairly tongue-in-cheek and low key. I also try to keep the sales pitch relegated to the last article of the newsletter and devote the remaining space to fun and entertainment without a sales pitch.

And I also try to avoid sending the newsletter to anybody who doesn’t want it.

That’s the point of the little red box featured in the sidebar all over the ArtMachine. It’s a subscription box for “The [insert adjective] C. Glen Williams Newsletter O’ [insert noun]!” – the (ir)regular e-mail updates direct from the ArtMachine featuring sites worthy of note, links to articles recently posted on the ArtMachine, news releases from Productions Kallixti, and a final sales pitch to top it all off. The newsletter is provided by CafePress, and actually looks kinda cool. But you’re only supposed to get the letter if you sign up using that little red box. I don’t buy e-mail addresses and don’t add other peope to the list. Nor do I sell e-mail addresses – the CafePress system doesn’t let me see the addresses that have subscribed. All I know is that my current circulation is a grand total of 16 readers.

The problem here, however, is that the list doesn’t require that a new subscriber verify their intent to subscribe. Which makes it easy for somebody with a lot of time on their hands to sign up one of their friends as a joke. Although who would sign somebody up to the ArtMachine as a joke, I don’t know – maybe somebody would joke a subscription up for George W. Bush. So the next time I send out a newsletter to my readers and discover that I have, say, 18 subscribers now, it just might be that somebody else did the signing up for the two new readers.

My reaction at discovering I have 18 subscribers instead of 16:
Woot! Two new readers!

My new readers’ reaction to discovering my e-mail newsletter in their mailboxes:
Who’s this Glen Williams guy? And why is he trying to sell me underwear? Die, spammer, die!

As somebody who regularly deletes well over 300 pieces of spam in a day (sometimes as much as 2,000), I’m among the many people who would love to see an anti-spam law in place. In fact, my root objection to the can-spam legislation currently being discussed is that it isn’t strong enough. It’s an “opt-out” system, meaning that you have to get the spam before you can opt out of it. I would much prefer legislation that follows an “opt-in” system, allowing users interested in commercial e-mail to sign up for it. Ideally, it would also require companies with mailing lists to put third-party affiliate mailings on their site as an option instead of letting them bury it in the fine print of their privacy agreement. It’s simple. You would sign up for, say, Amazon’s mailing list. After the fields in which you enter your e-mail address, business name, date of birth, and name of first born (just in case your credit card is rejected on a purchase, y’know), you would have a choice of two options.

YES! Fill my inbox with wondrous offers from companies who would be delighted to have my legitimate business. I will gleefully surrender my bandwidth to your crushing hordes of advertisers and sing your praises to the mountaintops!

NO, I’m not interested at this time.

Even then, however, there is still a problem with that model. Look carefully, and you’ll see it. As a matter of fact, take a look at your inbox:

• Hi, Cellphone wont work…again !! qnkbjforv
• ^Limited weightlo”ss ‘off_er        ’ hdjkxxdqa
• Watch her leave you? Never happen with alpha. frc l yx
• V.alium Directly from Here
• Order SUPER V.I,A.G,R.A now btdmfk
• Hiya, My friend said I sh0uld c0ntact you ejoytttu tfmqce aycz
• Re²: Fr e-ee e. — 1 M0nth Supp1y Weig ht L oss — slacoz nlpol vali

All of the above are actual subject lines from my spam box. And before anybody asks (believe me, somebody would ask), I will not forward you any of the above messages. You’ll get them soon enough.

One of the above messages has a sender line that is completely blank. A couple of them come from msn.com addresses. One of them comes from an aol.com addresses. In other words, legitimate companies that have abuse rules.

A few years back, I suffered through the hell of using AOL as my sole access point to the internet. One day I tried to log in to my account only to be told that I had been blocked. For violating the ToS agreement (“Terms of Service” for the non-savvy). I called the customer support line and spoke to Roger – a very friendly guy who sounded like a surfer dude they had just dragged in from the beach to man the phones.

Roger: Hello, thanks fer callin’ Ay Oh Ell. This is Roger. How kin I help you?
Me: Hey, Roger. This is Carl Williams, and I’ve just been told that I’ve been blocked from my account.
Roger: Dude, that sucks. Just fer verification, so I know it’s really you and all, can you tell me your billing address and the last four digits of yer credit card?
Me: [answer withheld for security purposes]
Roger: All right, dude. From what I’m seein’, it looks like your address has been sendin’ out some messages it shouldn’t have.
Me: Stuff like what?
Roger: Looks like sex spam. And pretty hardcore, too, from some of these complaints.
Me: You’re kidding.
Roger: Nope. Wish I were, dude. Did you really send out that stuff?
Me: No, sir. Not even once.
Roger: Well, we kinda figgered that. Don’t worry, man – happens all the time. Some dipsh- I mean, you get these folks who don’t care whose lives they ruin, and they’ll hack these accounts and send out as much spam as they can. We just blocked your account until we could get your permission to fix it up.
Me: And this is nothing special?
Roger: Naw, man. Like I said, happens all the time. But what are you gonna do, huh? Okay. Now, your new password is “temporary” with all lower case. And it’s “temporary” because that’s what it’s supposed to be, dig? I mean, I’m, like, the only other dude who knows your password now, but you don’t know me. I could be the last guy in the world you want poking around in your account. So go ahead and change it the first thing after you sign on.

As a sidenote: Thanks to the hacking spammer who stole my AOL account for his own nefarious purposes, I was unable to touch my e-mail for two months without flames leaping off of the monitor.

There are legal spammers and there are jerkweeds. Technically, one could say that almost all spammers are jerks, but the jerkweeds are the ones that hack people’s e-mail accounts to send their spam, route their spam through anonymous servers, modify their subject lines to slip through spam filters (“V.alium,” anyone?), and otherwise game and cheat their way into your inbox and leave no trace of who they really are. And these are the people who will take your clickthrough from “Click here to remove your address” and just sign you up for twenty more mailing lists – unlike legitimate e-mail marketing companies, which will actually unsubscribe you.

The problem, then, with anti-spam legislation is that it’s kind of like taking a Band-Aid^TM and putting it across the bleeding stump left after somebody’s arm has been ripped off. It may have a convenient “flesh” color (unless you happen to be African American, Asian, Native American, or anything other than sun-tanned caucasian), but it doesn’t do a lot to help the wound.

We may not like getting mail even from the legitimate e-mail marketers, but an opt-in model would help to decrease the volume of that mail. The problem is that it won’t get the “V.I.A,g-rrrR—A” salesmen and the pretenders to the Nigerian throne. The people who make up the bulk of the spam society, and the people who truly make the internet a cruddy place to communicate. Legislation is all well and good, but how do we enforce it? How do we track these people down and get the villains without engaging in a “shoot ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” policy?

And how, exactly, did this entry get so long?

Link via Creativity Machine:

You are Julia Kristeva! You were a student of
Roland Barthes, and came up with such important
notions as intertextuality and abjection. You
are a semiotician, psychoanalyst, scholar of
literature, and dozens more things. You are not
dead.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Oh, good. I’m not dead.

Over at Open Source Politics, John has taken up the cause of showing potential problems in the digital voting system that’s been pushed so hard since a few fateful butterfly ballots in Florida caught the world’s attention.

I’ve spoken, myself, about how much of a bad idea it is to go to a voting system that doesn’t leave even the merest hint of a paper trail. But in a recent conversation I had with a friend, I brought up the subject, and her response was:

“That’ll never happen. People would notice if the vote was wrong.”

Well, recent elections have seen exit polls call a close race, only to have the candidate who polled with the slim minority come out with a landslide victory. Others have seen over ten times as many votes get counted as there were registered voters.

And now, Thud points out just how simple it is to game the system in such a way that nobody will ever know the difference. It’s not a matter of just making all of the votes register for the wrong candidate – it’s a matter of making enough votes register. And John shows how it can be done without anybody ever getting suspicious.

Well, anybody who doesn’t still have blind faith in computers and the people who program them. Which would be anybody who has yet to read the Diebold memos.

Note: Comments are closed on this entry to encourage discussion over at Thud’s Open Source Politics entry.

Much as I love the little, family-friendly blue bunny that servs as a link to the UnReasonable Women Baring Witness video in its original entry, I got awfully sick of seeing it on the new ArtMachine Videos Index. Especially since I uploaded new code that properly formatted the page and removed the bunny no fewer than nine times.

Oh. Wait. I forgot about setting it up in my Movable Type templates. Whoops.

It’s fixed, now. The bunny’s got one page to call his own, and the videos index looks the way it should.

The Nation carries a translation of an article by Juan Stam that makes for some interesting reading as he details the heresies of Bush – self-proclaimed Man Of God. Lessee, we’ve got Manicheism, Messianism, and Manipulation of Prayer.

Oh, boy.

It’s hard to take ol’ Georgie seriously when he keeps screwing up his campaign to look sincere.

I once had a professor tell me that the only way to act sincere is to be sincere. If you’re not sincere when you say, “Thank you,” then no amount of acting is going to convince people that you’re sincere.

All of which adds up to Georgie and his latest attempt at sincerity – the pictures of him servin’ up Thanksgiving dinner to the troops in Iraq with a big ol’ smile on his face. Showing up and rubbing elbows with the troops, giving the impression that he actually cares about them.

Then it all collapsed.

Which is a shame. It would have been nice to have one sincere Bush moment to look back on in his term in office. As we stood around, looking at our decimated health, welfare, and educational systems, observing the oil fields in Alaska and the clearcut national parks, drinking our polluted water and wiping the tears out of our eyes put there by stinging smog from the unregulated factories, realizing that America had been put in debt up to its eyeballs and we now had to put the entire country in hock to get out of this mess, it would have been nice to be able to say, “Well, at least Bush did one thing right in his term in office.

But then there are the stories of secret service agents kept away from their families on false pretenses – told that they needed to be there to protect a President who was actually across the ocean in a war zone. There are the stories of reporters who were heading home to Thanksgiving dinner with their families when they received a cryptic message to report to a nearby parking lot. The holiday lives disrupted by the President’s bid to… do something right?

Well, we can forgive that, right?

Except that as more details come out about the story, we learn that – no. This wasn’t a bid to do something right. This was another swagger across the deck of an aircraft carrier in a flight suit, complete with the military insignia.

Note how “brave” the President is – plus all the precautions they took in getting the President to Iraq safely. They even lied to another plane about the identity of Air Force One – that’s how important it was and how serious this mission was.

Except that it didn’t happen. British Airways says that nobody participated in that particular exchange. So the Bush administration revised its story. It was no longer quick thinking on the part of the Air Force One crew, but rather a reassurance offered by an air traffic controller who was looking at a false flight schedule for Gulfstream Five. Which doesn’t change the fact that British Airways still insists none of their pilots ever asked, “Did I just see Air Force One?”

Why lie about such a thing?

But, hey. Remember the picture of Bush serving Thanksgiving dinner to the troops? Now, there’s an image you love to see in a President. Getting down and rolling up his sleeves and dishing out grub to the troops. Fantastic, right?

Except that it didn’t happen. Bush picked up a prop. It looked like it came out of a Norman Rockwell painting because it did – it was a phony bird that was never intended for consumption. Bush posed for the cameras (from the White House’s own pool of photographers) and got himself on every front page in America as a benevolent father figure, ready to serve dinner to the troops.

Now, the administration claims that it wasn’t intentional. They claim they had no knowledge that the fake bird was going to be there (despite the fact that the decoration is a traditional part of a military Thanksgiving meal), and that they had no idea that Bush was going to pick it up.

Yeah, right. And they didn’t tell the Navy to hang that “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner. They just approved it, printed it, took it out to the ship, and pointed out the exact spot where they wanted it to be hung – directly behind the President’s podium.

Bush can’t convince the world that he’s sincere. He can’t convince the world, because he doesn’t have a sincere bone in his body. But what he does have is a killer sense of a good photo op. He knows where to be seen and how to be seen.

Too bad there’s no substance underneath that form.

Some say life is a blessing –
Some say life is a curse.
Some say life is a play,
And you get no time to rehearse.
And you got to believe in something,
Cause it’s lonely universe.
You got to believe in something…

– Spin Doctors, “You’ve Got To Believe in Something”

The Mahablog points us toward this little penny dreadful about dimes:

A move is afoot on Capitol Hill to replace President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s image on the dime with Ronald Reagan’s.

A group of 80 members of Congress have co-sponsored a bill to put The Gipper’s face on the coin.

Of course, the Republicans supporting the bill have plenty of good cause to spend anywhere from $30,000 – $80,000 on changing the portrait on a dime (that’s just to redesign the coin).

Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., introduced the bill.

“It is particularly fitting to honor the Freedom President on this particular piece of coinage because, as has been pointed out, President Reagan was wounded under the left arm by a bullet that had ricocheted and flattened to the size of a dime,” Souder wrote to colleagues in the House of Representatives.

“FDR believed the federal government should spend your dimes. Ronald Reagan believed the people should spend their own dimes. I think it’s clear that the dimes in your pocket should bear Ronald Reagan’s image,” co-sponsor Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., said, according to the Los Angeles Daily News.

Excuse me, I think I just slipped in a puddle of brain matter.

What’s even better about this move is that the Congress doesn’t have any say in whether the change gets made or not. The decision can only be made by the United States Mint – the bill going through the legislature now would just show their support for the decision.

A lot of people speculate that this is at least partially about CBS and The Reagans. The Republicans have seen their grand hero wounded, and now it’s time to rally around him and show the world that ‘Merica believes in the same man who brought us Iran/Contra, trickle-down economics, and a devestatingly apathetic response to the AIDS crisis. So, let’s put him on a coin!

But what a coin to choose. Dig – here’s a quick breakdown of the options.

• The Penny – Granted, in this modern era it’s practically worthless – and it happens every couple of years that somebody campaigns to have the penny discontinued. But as long as there’s such a thing as sales tax, there’ll be such a thing as the penny. And as long as there’s a sales tax, the penny will be ubiquitous. Everybody winds up with pennies in their pocket. Why not put Reagan on it? Because that doesn’t jive with the Republican party line. Even though Abraham Lincoln politically resembles a modern Democrat, the Republicans have spent a fortune establishing themselves as “the party of Lincoln” based on name alone. You have to add to that the possible outcry over taking away the coin dedicated to the President who signed the Emancipation Proclamation. So, Lincoln is safe as houses on the one-cent piece.
• The Nickel – It’s big, it’s unwieldy, it’s probably the thickest coin commonly found exchanging hands. It’s not as ubiquitous as the penny, and it’s not as easy to spend as the dime or the quarter. But those aren’t the real reasons nobody would ever suggest putting Reagan on it. The fact is that the nickel is currently occupied by Thomas Jefferson. By now, Jefferson’s politics don’t matter to the American people. He’s a founding father, and as such is automatically eliminated from the running. He’s not going to lose the nickel because dumping a founding father is just bad press.
• The Quarter – The quarter is the coin everybody wants. It’s the largest diameter coin to commonly exchange hands, but isn’t nearly as unwieldy as the nickel. It’s incredibly easy to spend, and is perfect for soda and snack machines. Reagan’s not going to end up on the Quarter, however, for the same reason that Jefferson’s staying on the nickel. Washington is the first President. His politics no longer matter to the common man – all that’s cared about is the fact that he ran the country before anybody else did. He gets a “Get out of jail free” card when it comes to the currency shuffle.
• The Kennedy Half-Dollar – Hardly any machine accepts it. It’s about the thickness of a quarter, but has a larger diameter which makes it less easy to carry. Plus, there’s the fact that people are almost unnaturally attached to their Kennedy half-dollars. People don’t tend to spend this coin so much as hoard it and treat it as a good-luck piece. Kennedy’s safe on the coin for a multitude of reasons. For one thing, he’s not just a President – he’s the martyred President. He’s popular and well-remembered. Even people born in the years after Kennedy’s assassination (like yours truly) look up to him and consider him one of greatest Presidents of the 20th century (if not the greatest), which means that to remove him from the half dollar would be about as popular as going on live television and clubbing a baby seal to death with a kitten. Besides – as has been pointed out, these coins don’t circulate the way other coins do. There’s not even a slot in most change drawers for them. So if you’re going to “honor” a President, the half-dollar is not the place to start. That’s Kennedy’s coin, and it’s going to stay that way.
• The Sacagawea Dollar – Honestly, don’t make me laugh. This one’s wrapped up in so much baggage, it doesn’t even come close to being in the running. It’s the newest of the coins, it doesn’t circulate (again, because it winds up collections instead of being spent), it’s too high profile, it’s the only coin to feature somebody who was not a politician, and it’s the only common coin to feature a woman – and a Native American woman, at that, and it’s the first common coin to feature a woman since the ill-fated Susan B. Anthony dollar. You’d have a better chance of getting Barbara Streisand to tattoo a picture of Richard Nixon on her breast than you would have of pushing Sacagawea off of this coin, especially if you were trying to make room for Reagan.

We’re not even going to get into the subject of Buffalos and Eagles, because those coins aren’t even intended for circulation – they exist more for the benefit of collectors than anything else.

So, that leaves the dime. Who cares about FDR, right? I mean, so the guy got us through World War II and started us on the road to recovery from the Great Depression. He’s old hat and not nearly as sexy as Kennedy. Most people don’t even realize that he’s on the dime, anyway, right?

But it’s more than just removing one portrait and putting another up. Reagan represents the beginning of the New Conservatism that has brought us people like George W. Bush. It’s the Reagan administration that provides us with some of the earliest examples of modern D.C. corporate cronyism. Reagan’s economic policy took money out of the pockets of the poor and middle class and put it in the vaults of the rich and powerful – all while analysts kept telling people that the economy was lookin’ fine. Sorry you don’t have a job and the factory just moved to Mexico.

FDR, on the other hand, represents everything that the New Conservatism hates. It represents a compassionate government that cares for the worker, that believes everybody has a right to have food on the table and a roof overhead, and a government that believes in co-operation with the international community.

• FDR endorsed a “good neighbor policy” and was instrumental in the creation of the U.N.
• FDR brought the country out of the Great Depression.
• FDR established the Tennessee Valley Authority, bringing electricity to a vast rural area that had never had it before.
• FDR popularized the “Fireside chat” that is now so common with politicians.
• FDR’s Works Progress Administration created jobs for Americans that allowed them to bring home food and provide shelter for their families while fulfilling the needs of the nation. Chances are good that your city has at least one structure built with WPA labor and funds.
• As part of the WPA, Roosevelt came closer than anybody else ever has to establishing a national theatre, and would have been successful if not for the bullying of conservatives in government.

And it’s that bullying that stopped a lot of things. FDR promoted national health care. He supported ideas that put control of companies into the hands of the workers. He supported unions. And lest we get caught up in patriotic zeal and September Eleventh-ism, let us not forget that Roosevelt occupied the White House on December 7, 1941 – “a date which will live in infamy.”

To replace Roosevelt with Reagan – not only a member of the party that hounded Roosevelt, but a man who stands as Roosevelt’s opposite number in every way – is an obscenity and an insult. One that would be perfectly in line with the party that named an airport after the man who walloped the air traffic controllers’ union in favor of big business, but nevertheless an obscenity and an insult.

Do you want an appropriate coin for Reagan’s face? Fine. Have the mint make you up a $1,000 coin. Then Reagan can be exchanged as pocket change solely by the wealthy and privileged – the only people he ever cared for.