The book industry site Publishing Perspectives wrote recently about Barry Eisler, a liberal blogger and an author of “political thriller” novels.

He’s got a new novel out called Inside Out. It’s about, among other hot topics, America’s use of torture during the previous decade.

Eisler’s plugging the book on other lefty sites and radio shows.

Publishing Perspectives‘ take on this campaign: Why haven’t the  liberal media plugged books before?

Well, they have.

Ed Schultz, Jim Hightower, and the pre-senatorial Al Franken have each put out several essay collections.

Olbermann and Maddow are always interviewing authors and recommending titles. They sometimes plug the same book on three or more consecutive cablecasts.

The Nation has had at least two book-preview issues a year for as long as I’ve been reading it.

Huffington Post and Daily Kos each have plenty of book pieces.

As for this site, we’ll get back to looks at books soon. Promise.

or,

I Survived the Bush Junta and All I Got Was This Lousy iPod

WE’LL WONDER HOW WE EVER DID WITHOUT:

The whole WWW thang, social networking, smart phones, Netflix, Adobe Flash, Netroots organizing, Jon & Stephen, Keith & Rachel, HBO-style serial drama, digital video, Pixar, the gay-marriage movement.

WE’LL LOOK BACK AND LAUGH AT:

‘Sexting,’ Twitter, Auto Tune, tea parties, Jon & Kate Plus Eight, Glenn Beck, CGI-enhanced superhero movies, Sarah Palin, American Idol, Botox, the first dot-com frenzy, the second dot-com (“Web 2.0”) frenzy, the real-estate frenzy, the stock-market frenzy, the war frenzy.

ALTERNATE-HISTORY FANTASISTS WILL DREAM ABOUT WHAT IF:

Gore won, 9/11 was prevented, the print-media and music industries got their heads out of their asses, the New Orleans levees had been properly built.

ALREADY FORGOTTEN:

Y2K, Napster, $4 gas, Enron, Octomom, Balloon Boy.

ALREADY MISSED:

The P-I, the Sonics, Washington Mutual (pre-“WaMu”), “big book” catalogs, Tower Records, the Bon Marché (and all the other Macyfied stores), New Yorker Films, The Rocket, Sunset and Leilani Lanes, the Ballard Mannings/Denny’s, the International Channel, Olds/Pontiac/Saturn/Plymouth, Chubby & Tubby, the Twin Teepees, McLeod Residence, Northwest Afternoon, inauguration morning, Ted Kennedy, Pluto.

GOOD RIDDANCE TO:

Bush/Cheney, all the corrupt cronies of Bush/Cheney, all the graft-happy funders of Bush/Cheney, all the apologists and hucksters for Bush/Cheney (even the ones currently still on air and in print).

Sixties antiwar organizer Mark Rudd insists in his essay “Beyond Magical Thinking” that…

Successful political movements do not spring fully formed. They require long-term, nuts-and-bolts organizing.

In other words, protesting, no matter how big and splashy, isn’t enough.

…“Architecture and Resistance,” but Leebus Woods offers advice suited to all. Examples:

Resist whatever seems inevitable.Resist people who seem invincible.

Resist the embrace of those who have lost.

Resist the flattery of those who have won.

Resist any idea that contains the word algorithm.

Resist the hope that you’ll get that big job.

Resist getting big jobs.

Resist the suggestion that you can only read Derrida in French.

Resist taking the path of least resistance.

Resist the growing conviction that They are right.

Resist the nagging feeling that They will win.

…the forthcoming posthumous/unfinished third novel by my main man David Foster Wallace touches upon a theme with which I’d recently been obsessed.

The novel is about people who find their mindfulness by taking on ultra-routine jobs at the Internal Revenue Service.

As D.T. Max quotes in The New Yorker, Wallace’s idea was that “Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known will wash over you and just about kill you. Ride these out, and it’s like stepping from black and white into color. Like water after days in the desert. Instant bliss in every atom.”

I haven’t been pursuing employment at the IRS. But I have had a sequence of temp gigs for the county that involved equally rote tasks, performed accurately and performed all day. I found a great peace in simply going somewhere, doing something, and doing it well.

It may well be that my current search for renumerative employment could lead me back into the stress-filled realm of hustling for individual bottom-feeder freelance gigs.

But I’d enjoyed the clerical equivalent of chopping wood and carrying water. I could really do it some more.

It’s been a few weeks now since the big Seeds of Compassion mega-conference.

What have we learned?

In terms of left-brain rational learning, not a whole lot that hasn’t been said repeatedly in three decades of new-age philosophy. You’re a child of the universe. Be honest. Be conscientious. Be empathetic. Be kind to people. Take care of one another, especially kids. Spread love and joy. People are more important than power or profits. War is horrible, but so is repression. Vengeance only begets more vengeance.

But from there, the lessons got more subtle.

I’ll just mention one lesson invoked several speakers in the cablecast events—the lesson that empathy is deeper and more personal than mere sympathy.

Tim Harris’s blog, Apesa’s Lament (apesmaslament.blogspot.com), has been an outspoken critic of the city’s current homelessness policy. Harris believes Mayor Nickels is doing too little to find homes for people, while doing too much to harass the homeless into invisibility.

Harris recently noted that, earlier this year, official city documents called Nickels’s policy “consistent and compassionate.” But more recent documents, issued after the Seeds of Compassion conference, bill the city’s homeless policy as “consistent and humane.”

As Harris comments, “The word ‘compassion’ implies a certain amount of connectedness and having something at stake.” Conversely, he describes the adjective “humane” as “more associated with children, animals, and other somewhat helpless creatures.”

This distinction goes beyond the homeless and beyond our own town.

Do we treat other people (even the others we want to help or love) as The capital-O Other, as some exotic-but-lesser life form? Or do we acknowledge that we ARE they, they ARE we?

Taking this approach further, we belong to the same human family with all the group-types we Seattle liberals love to bash. Wal-Mart shoppers. Red-staters. Suburbanites. Churchgoers. Condo owners. People who eat meat. People who watch television. People who don’t smoke pot.

Yes, even white straight males.

• Two suburban high school teachers took part in an antiwar protest. The administration wants to punish ’em. Students are rallying around ’em in support.
• It’s the first, probably exaggerated, snow scare of the season.
• How not to hide pot in your car: Package it as a Christmas present.
• The tragedy surrounding the failed UW-devised AIDS vaccine moves further from “noble failed experiment” toward “real scandal.” A UW researcher allegedly faked test data and altered lab images. (The researcher in question was conducting AIDS-related research not directly related to the vaccine trials.)
• Reverse-sprawl dept.: Ski maker K2’s moving its head offices from Vashon Island to south Seattle. The products will still all be made in China.
• The SeaTimes posits two Eastside transportation solutions: Add passenger rail, cancel plans to widen I-405.

• Protestors almost stopped an Army cargo shipment from the Olympia waterfront to Fort Lewis. You’d think the officials in charge would know better than to sneak anything even peripherally associated with the Iraq war past the turf of Evergreeners….
• An Eastern Washington political scandal that doesn’t involve closeted gays: A newly-elected Republican member of the Yakima city council has admitted his wife posted a bunch of anonymous blog posts bashing the guy’s Democratic opponent.
• Just a week after the Roads n’ Transit referendum’s crash n’ burn, King County’s getting into the foot-ferry business. It’s taking over the Vashon-Seattle passenger-only route from the state, and looking into adding cross-Lake Washington service.
• Meanwhile, the county also planned to raise bus fares a quarter. It’s the first such rise in six years, and it comes just as County Exec Ron Sims is trying harder to push folks onto buses.
• And Gov. Gregoire says she’s taking over responsibility for planning and funding a replacement for the 520 bridge. R n’ T would’ve only funded a piece of the megaproject’s cost anyway.
• In a stunning blow to pundits who’d claimed last week’s local votes showed an anti-tax fervor, the measure to allow future school-funding votes to pass by a simple majority seems to be passing.
• In biz nooze, Redhook Ale Brewery (Seattle’s first microbrewer, dating back to 1982) is fully merging with Portland’s WIdmer Brothers. The combined firm will be based in Portland and maintain both companies’ brands…. Starbucks prepares to issue its latest financial results Thursday, amid questions whether the chain’s lost its way while supermarkets and fast-food chains add better cups o’ Joe…. Amazon.com’s launching an exclusive line of gay and lesbian themed jewelry items; visual motifs weren’t mentioned, but let’s hope they don’t include those ugly saturated-color rainbows.

…to Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. I believe the standard lefty-blog-O-sphere response is to ponder that, had the ’00 election not been nakedly stolen, we’d have a “peace president” instead of what we got.

…the fanatics revert to old patterns. Today’s lesson: the “experts” who’ve dusted off the ol’ Vietnam-era “domino theory” and applied it to Iraq.

…the highly appropriate question, whether anything Bush has ever done I/R/T Iraq has ever not been a total disaster.

…Turns out the whole Iraq misadventure may have really been about the oil. At least, that’s a conclusion one might be tempted to make after reading about the proposed sweetheart deal that would allocate windfall profits to the big oil companies while giving ’em vast control over the future of that country’s oil industry.

…with probably the best Christmas cartoon from the Golden Age of the movies, Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth. (This is the one where the last battle that destroys the human race is the war between the vegetarians and the meat eaters.)

…quite a passionate pro-impeachment speech.

…to be reading this who doesn’t know what to do on Tuesday, here’s a handy checklist of Republican scandals and failures.