Truth=Freedom - A meditation on whatever pops in my head

This is some sick shit.

2011-09-23T19:40:00.000-06:00

Some confessions:

I was once a registered Republican (didn't just vote that way, I identified that way).
I was once a staunch and abiding supporter of the death penalty (as in, I was willing to say so loudly and in public).

Which is to say, I was stupid.

If I was successfully taught anything as a child, it was that being selfish is wrong. Wanting more for yourself than for others similarly disposed is just unfair, hence wrong. Doubly so when someone's life is on the line. These days, I call that evil.

I have been accused of being a tad judgmental on occasion, though.

The death of Troy Davis at the hands of the Georgia Supreme Court has finally left me bereft of defenses for the death penalty, and so against it, as loudly and publicly as I was once for it.

Understand, this has nothing to do with the logic of the death penalty. I fervently believe, still, that guilt beyond a reasonable doubt of certain crimes-- murder in all its glorious forms first among them-- is cause for the State, acting as the agent of the people, to kill the perpetrator of said crimes.

I just don't think we're up to deciding beyond a reasonable doubt.

It is a demonstrated fact that people recall very poorly the events that traumatize them (Note: this is one among many sources). Despite this, eyewitnesses are treated as being reliable purveyors of information while on the stand. The defense cannot even legally argue this fact in some states.

Thus, our judicial system is perverted. Horribly. 214 people have been convicted and sentenced to death all over the country, and DNA evidence has shown to the satisfaction of the courts in these cases that the conviction meets the legal standards to have it over-turned. This is not a trivial standard.

The idea that these people were even in jail-- never mind on death row-- is frightening. I can't imagine the Kafkaesque horror of being sentenced to death when I knew I was innocent. I believe enough in the Golden Rule to not wish it on anyone else.

Seriously. Put down the needles, or take your hand off the switch, or whatever, and walk away. And start demanding justice for your fellow human beings. Otherwise you'd best stop expecting it for yourself.

Of False Dichotomies

2011-08-29T19:19:00.003-06:00

Frank Bruni, if you do not know, is a columnist for the New York Times, among other duties there. He used to be a restaurant critic. This information will be important later.

Lately, he published a column in which he, in a transparent attempt to appear "balanced" (as best as I can tell), by setting against each other the chef-turned-monster-celebrity Anthony Bourdain and the "deep-fried doyenne of a fatty, buttery subgenre of putatively Southern cooking," one Paula Deen.

Bourdain, in his less-than-charitable way, said some apparently unprintable and mean things about Deen whilst calling her out for, "telling an already obese nation that it's O.K. to eat food that's killing us." Bruni then quotes Deen's response to the effect that she and her friends "cook for regular people who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills" and further defends her thus:

She’s otherwise 100 percent justified in assailing the culinary aristocracy, to which even a self-styled bad boy like Bourdain belongs, for an often selective, judgmental and unforgiving worldview.
And her retort exposes class tensions in the food world that sadly mirror those in society at large. You can almost imagine Bourdain and Deen as political candidates, a blue-state paternalist squaring off against a red-state populist over correct living versus liberty in all its artery-clogging, self-destructive glory.

Well, yeah, you can. But that completely misses both Bourdain's point and the actual issue at hand: eating like a "traditional" Southerner (minus the ridiculous volume of greens, and plus the many, many calories provided by all of the biscuits, gravy, pork, and the endless desserts-- cf. Deen's appearance on NPR's "Wait, Wait! Don't Tell Me") will probably kill you. And it will kill you by giving diabetes and the many other afflictions that derive from profound obesity, which are bad enough by themselves. The people who invented the food Deen celebrates worked like animals (in the case of the slaves and tenant farmers nearly literally), and generally died from things that killed them long before heart disease could set in. Unless you're out walking in a field all day every day, you don't get to eat like them with impunity.

So, Bruni's point is also that Bourdain is an ass. But if you've read "Kitchen Confidential" you knew that. What else is new? News Flash: Celebrity chef has gargantuan ego!

Tell something new.

He then tempers his criticism:

To give him his due: we are too fat and must address that. But getting Deen to unplug the waffle iron doesn’t strike to the core of the problem any more than posting fast-food calorie counts or taxing soft drinks do. A great deal of American obesity is attributable to the dearth of healthy food that’s affordable and convenient in low- and even middle-income neighborhoods, and changing that requires a magnitude of public intervention and private munificence that are unlikely in such pinched times.

Which is a bunch of bullshit excuses.

Don't get me wrong. Inner cities largely are "food desserts". But the bulk of America's obesity problem isn't among the poor. It's among the middle class (even if it's the lower middle class). And if you believe it's not possible to eat healthily on low wages, I'm here to prove that you're not paying attention. Eating healthily is not easy, mind. It requires work, and time, and sacrifice. But it's not impossible. And it doesn't require intervention (except maybe to modify tax policy for processed food).

This is Bourdain's point: if Deen really cared about families struggling to feed their families good food, she would use her celebrity to promote healthy cooking and eating. Not an endless parade of cakes and brownies, tempered only by roasted beasts.

Eating healthily means you have to cook for yourself. You have to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, and cut them and chop them and steam, blanch, or saute them. I did it on what is now $7/hour. You can do it. You may have to give up watching TV in order to shop and cook (without slicing off a finger). You may have to learn a lot about how food works when it's in your pan or pot. You may have to eat a lot less meat and potatoes and a lot more rice and beans. But, if you have fresh vegetables and fruit available to you at a distance comparable to that you go to get your Mickey Ds (or whatever is your particular poison), and you are paying for anything beyond shelter, transportation, and power for your stove, you have no one to blame but yourself if you are not eating healthily.

Once you make this transition, you might even be able to afford a bottle of wine to go with it once in a while (I hear there's something called "3-buck Chuck"; I'm guessing there's competitors....).

Michelle Bachmann's profound misunderstanding of our form of government (or outrageous hypocrisy)

2011-05-08T19:58:00.002-06:00

My apologies for failing to comment on this when it happened. Michelle Bachmann: "Our founding documents, they cannot be improved upon," said Bachmann, giving an almost Biblical rendition of the work product of the nation's first generation of politicians. "They're brilliant. We believe in them. That's not divisive."

If you believe in them, you know that they contain the mechanism for changing them. And you accept the changes that have been applied through that process. You don't pine for halcyon days when they were pure (or at least not if you're as fond of freedom of speech as I am). Fer cryin' out loud, the thing was amended ten times in four years after first passage! Then there was that whole Prohibition-of-demon-alcohol nonsense. You can even propose your own. Why not? Oh, wait, I see that you are.

Wow. That's pretty disingenuous.

When Reason is overtaken by spite

2011-04-30T16:56:00.005-06:00

Of late the conversation in Washington that's been getting the most attention by the press is the question of whether to raise the debt limit. To grossly oversimplify the positions in question, the Rs want to refuse to raise the debt limit until they get some (unspecified) reductions in future spending/a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget/a unicorn that shits rainbows. Or something. It's not entirely clear. The Ds are mostly saying that, while the debt could be a problem someday, today is not the day to start paying it down, what with the economy in the toilet.

It's certainly true that, in the long run, the debt needs to shrink substantially (even dramatically). Currently it's at about 90% of the GDP, or about 14 trillion dollars, and it's rising. That's not sustainable forever, but there's substantial disagreement about how long it will be before things will reach a point where no one will lend us more money, or at least not at a sustainable interest rate. When that will be is a matter of debate itself, and isn't discernible by mere analysis. It strongly depends on whether or not people and institutions who are interested in buying US Treasury Bonds are sure they'll get their money back. Refusing to pay off the debts of the United States is a good way to engender fear in the average investor (who, so far, has viewed US T-bills as a rock-solid investment, particularly when T-bills are paying more than inflation).

The Rs, for reasons that appear to be rooted entirely in satisfying a lunatic fringe of the body politic, are holding that record, those promises, and our near-term economic future hostage to, well, to the rest of us agreeing to destroy the economy.

That assessment may seem a bit harsh, but it's an assessment of the obvious consequences of pursuing a policy of immediately shrinking the government to the size of revenues (that's a high-falutin' way of saying "spend only what we take in" while also saying, "No, you may not raise taxes"). You may wonder, "how can he say such a thing?" Well, the current deficit is 13% of GDP, with total spending of 40% of GDP. It's not good. That's just what it is. If tomorrow, you stopped the government from spending more that 27% of GDP, the economy would shrink by 13%.

This may sound awesome (yay! no deficit!) but for the millions of people that would lose their jobs, it would be very unpleasant. I'm concerned that more than 13% of the currently employed would lose their jobs, since folks with money would have even less incentive to invest.

Again with David Brooks...

2010-12-02T22:06:00.004-07:00

...and apologies for being so late to the party.

David Brooks really knows how to miss the point. After psychoanalyzing Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, he decides to use the occasion to obliquely criticize his employer for not respecting "the World Order" in deciding what to publish, or not. He decrees that the pinnacle of civilization is "order" in opposition to "chaos", that the leaked documents pose a threat to said order, and uses the particular case of the cables purporting to describe the reaction of American and Arab diplomats to the problem of Iran.

Fundamentally, Brooks praises said diplomats for reactions that are neither novel nor brave: American and Arab diplomats alike wisely express concern that Iran is as powerful as it is, and seek council or seek to provide it regarding how Iran can be deflected or opposed. For reasons that are completely left unspoken, Brooks imagines that 1) Iran is not aware of this set of reactions, 2) that American (and thus in his eyes by extension world) security is threatened by this exposure, not least because the relationships on which American and Arab security depend are threatened.

This is absurd. There is nothing new here. These are opinions that have been publicly and openly expressed by many people in all of these governments for literally years. So, to pretend that the public revelation that these same opinions have been expressed by functionaries of more than a few governments is somehow going to threaten the "order" on which our civilization depends is to imagine things that are not true and that cannot be true. Worse, the idea that order is dependent on secrecy and political chicanery is disturbing and wrong.

People (in democratic societies at least) are best served by diplomacy that is open and honest about the goals of the society and about the methods used to attain those goals. To wit: in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States government, under administrations of both major stripes, used assassination and support for insurgencies to overthrow more than a few governments (Chile, Iran, and Congo come immediately to mind, but one suspects I've listed only a few out of many). The governments that we supported in the aftermath of these "successes" killed many more of their citizens in the name of "order" than the governments they replaced. In fact, with the exception of Chile, very few of these countries have recovered from the disorder we sowed.

Secrecy in diplomacy (and in diplomatic skulduggery) did not serve "order" in these cases, or their close relatives. It undermined it. Perhaps not in the US. No doubt there were a few American "interests"-- read: businesses-- that benefited, in the short term, from Iran's government being beholden to the US government for being in power. I doubt, thought, that any amount of money would make a difference to the many families who lost their loved ones to the Shah's secret police. And it's difficult not to believe that the attitudes that allowed our government to think it was OK to overthrow the democratically elected governments of Chile or Iran is the same attitude that allowed it to lie to us about the situation in Vietnam or Iraq, so we'd end up bankrupting our treasury and throwing away tens of thousands of American lives (not even counting the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese or Iraqi lives throw away).

The sooner we recognize these things, and demand openness and treaties (voted into place by the Senate) as the way to conduct diplomacy, the sooner we'll begin to live in peace with the rest of the world. No, it won't end the war in Afghanistan immediately. But it might keep us out the next "Afghanistan", or "Vietnam", or "Iraq".

Move along. Nothing to see here.

2010-04-07T15:23:00.002-06:00

@Jimcat: This doesn't necessarily diminish the value of the rest of your position, but fission was discovered only in 1938 (albeit by [Jewish in at least one case] Germans). It was only hypothesized as possible in 1934.

Nevertheless, fission was an extremely new fact, and the fact that enormous (possibly historically incomparable) resources were necessary to proceed to building a weapon in the time available based on that technology probably made it likely than only a few nations had the resources to contemplate the effort, never mind bring it to fruition in the midst of a war.

FWIW, if the rest of the political developments post-war had proceeded apace without the US having developed and used a nuclear weapon in WWII, I feel confident we would have had a nuclear war circa the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why? Curtis LeMay wouldn't have seemed so insane— no one would have known just how bad it would be, and some one would have pushed the button, which would likely have meant everyone pushing all their buttons.

All of which is to say: @Misterben: I think you're mistaken regarding deterrence. It is exactly because deterrence works through mutually assured destruction that you are correct to say that, "[i]t's like we're the world's biggest suicide bomber." Only "we" is anyone who starts a nuclear war with another nuclear power, and we aren't "like" the world's biggest suicide bomber— we are the worlds biggest suicide bomber.

The real question you have to ask yourself is, "would I submit to nuclear blackmail if I couldn't respond in kind?" If the answer is yes, then you may find yourself never understanding those of us who prefer the tension of possible conflagration to the reality of submission.

I'm not suggesting this is a perfect result. It isn't. It's just the least bad result given the cards in play. Someday, probably after my atoms have dispersed permanently, maybe we'll find a way to resolve this problem. Maybe it'll be through that dreaded one-world government (Oooh! Scary!). Maybe not.

Which brings me back to Ed's actual point: the Rs are just sure that if they look like their shitting their pants thoroughly enough, people will be scared of a change that will, 1) cost their political contributors a few bucks, 2) have no other meaningful result. Because, honestly, all this really says is we won't obliterate Venezuela, or Cuba, Somalia, or some other country full of brown-skinned folks no matter how much fun their juvenile troglodyte supporters might think it'd be when they get uppity. Iran and North Korea? Well, you just never know, now do you?

A letter to David Brooks

2010-04-06T13:27:00.002-06:00

Dear Mr. Brooks—

In your columns (like today's— 6 April) you often express unbridled optimism about the future of the United States. All too often, in thinking about what you've written as compared to the universe of data available on the subject, I find myself wondering why you dismiss the view that we have serious problems that we are ignoring because we can't imagine the answers.

I can't help but think that this blog post ("The Collapse of Complex Business Models") and more importantly the work that it references (Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies") hint at the challenge the present state of Western society faces. We've built an edifice that works very well for the top 10-40% of Americans and Western Europeans. It even works OK for another 20-30%-- their lives are vastly better than their ancestors just three or four generations removed (with all but a few exceptions born of squandered gains).

As any investor knows, though, past performance is no guarantee of future gains. We are at a point where we must change so much about our society-- not least how we use and create the energy we need to support our (historically) lavish lifestyles-- but the systems we've put in place to support our societies have ossified. De-constructing them (and re-constructing their more flexible replacements) will require real sacrifice from the elites. Yet still the elites pretend otherwise.

I can't help but see works such as the one you wrote today as being a shining beacon of foolishness in a world filled with dark and murky truths-- it looks good and gives everyone a warm fuzzy, but it's a false lead and presages doom.

2010-03-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

"i want to call requests through heating-vents,/and hear them answered with a whispered, 'no.'/to crack the code of muscle, slacken, tense./let every second step in boots on snow/complete your name with accents i can't place,/that stumble where the syllables combine./take depositions from a stranger's face./paint every insignificance a sign./so tell me nothing matters, less or more./say, 'whatever we think actions are,/we'll never know what anything was for.'/if 'near is just as far away as far,'/and i'm permitted one act i can save,/i choose to sit here next to you and wave." -- "(Manifest)", the Weakerthans

6 years. Seems like forever. Seems like minutes. And still totally awesome.

Predicting wetter than average fall for Boulder

2009-07-12T17:02:00.002-06:00

On admittedly thin evidence, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the incipient El Niño will bring slightly greater (say more than .6" above average for the 4 months from August through October)

See this presentation from NOAA on El Ni ñ o/La Ni ña.

My understanding is that the faint of heart aren't willing to say that there's a signal yet amongst the noise for Boulder. And that is strictly true.

Health Insurance isn't

2009-06-30T12:51:00.003-06:00

From the New York Times Editorials:

Congressional committees heard a lot this month about the devious schemes used by health insurance companies to drop or shortchange sick patients. It was a damning portrait — and one Americans know from painful personal experience — of an industry that all too often puts profits ahead of patients.
As health care reform moves forward, Congress must impose tighter regulation of companies that clearly are not doing enough to regulate themselves. Creating a public plan could also help restrain the worst practices, by providing competition and an alternative.
A House oversight subcommittee took a close look at a particularly shameful practice known as “rescission,” in which insurance companies cancel coverage for some sick policyholders rather than pay an expensive claim. The companies contend that rescissions are rare. But Congressional investigators found that three big insurers canceled about 20,000 individual policies over a five-year period — allowing them to avoid paying more than $300 million in medical claims.
The companies typically argue that the policyholders withheld information about pre-existing conditions that would have disqualified them from coverage. But the subcommittee unearthed cases where the pre-existing conditions were trivial, or unrelated to the claim, or not known to the patient. When executives for the three companies were asked if they would be willing to limit rescissions to cases where the policyholder deliberately lied on an application form, all said they would not. This tactic will not be ended voluntarily.

If only I could believe it is not true. But of course it isn't. The insurance companies, doctors, pharmaceutical companies all have no financial interest in you being healthy. The insurance company wants only to take your premium, not to pay a claim on it. The doctor is rewarded financially only if you are one of the many people shuttled through his office (and only if your insurance— or you!— will pay). Pharma only makes money if you take the high-margin pill.

If we are to solve the problem of health care costs in the context of a market-based system, we have to change the profit incentive to one where your care-giver makes money when you don't need care.

Otherwise, we're probably better off with single-payer. Yeah, there will be rationing. We already have that today. We just have a different name for it. We call it poverty.

Just chew on that for a while.

Padilla & Lebron v. Yoo

2009-06-14T18:53:00.002-06:00

In a very short item, Glenn Greenwald notes that John Yoo (he of the infamous torture memos) lost in district court a ruling on a motion to dismiss the case filed against him by Jose Padilla and Estela Lebron. Greenwald seemed particularly amused that Judge White (a Bush the Younger appointee) quoted the Federalist No. 8 (as penned by Alexander Hamilton) thusly:"[War] will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose and

security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political

rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being

less free."

Now, I'm not completely sure, since I haven't memorized that one yet, but my experience with Hamilton's contributions is that Hamilton wanted a more powerful executive. (Goes and skims) It is ironic then that of the Federalist papers or other citations from the Founders, Judge White quoted Hamilton in denying this motion. Hamilton is about as sympathetic a voice for a strong central authority as it was possible to be in those times. Yet here he is, telling us that we may think it a good idea to sacrifice our freedom to ensure our safety, when faced with external threats. You can't be sure, because he doesn't say, if he thinks this is a good thing, a bad thing, or simply an inevitable thing. But I think most of us today realize what a Faustian bargain it is— doomed from the start.

It is unfortunate, then, that the authoritarians of today appear to take Hamilton's words as prescription rather than proscription. You'd think they'd grasp the difference.

Health care for all, please.

2009-06-07T11:15:00.002-06:00

What confuses me most about our system is the notion that the profit motive can be an effective motivator for someone to treat people that are sick, when the long-term goal of health care ought to be to prevent people from being ill in the first place. There's no incentive in our current system to do this (save general good will).

If you could structure the profit motive so that care-givers are rewarded for keeping people healthy (which is not the same as keeping them from seeking treatment, as many insurance companies seem to think), then a private system makes sense. Otherwise, single-payer seems the only sensible approach to the goal that I, at least, appear to share w/Scott: treat everyone regardless of ability to pay and don't bankrupt them while doing so.

If the insurance industry goes out of business in the process, that's too bad. At least while *they* are looking for work they won't get sick without being treated!

It was recently reported that more than 60% of bankruptcies are due to the debtors medical bills. As far as I can tell from what was written about the study, this may not include those whose bankruptcies are caused more or less by failing to be treated adequately for addiction, which is in my experience a strong contributor to the bankruptcies I'm familiar with.

The simple truth is that until we solve the problem of people losing their credit worthiness, their livelihoods, and their homes because they cannot afford the illness they have contracted, we are wasting the talents and skills those people can contribute.

If you agree, please let your members of Congress hear from you. Single-payer health care is being demonized as "socialized" medicine, and is thus being ignored. But it is the only system that has a chance to prevent the kinds of tragedies that health-care related bankruptcies bring. And it is the only system that has a chance of ending the absurdity of our system today: that there is a profit motive to have more sick people rather than fewer.

Depressing turn of events

2009-02-10T20:16:00.002-07:00

I don't know about you, but I was pretty sure that an Obama administration would not defend as a state secret the fact that the Bush administration engaged in extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists. I would have thought that, if the rendition were defensible, it would be defended without resorting to asserting that it is not even possible to discuss it in a court of law. It must be possible to defend it by defending the companies we hired to help us do the rendering (I'll pause here to let you ponder the fact that the verb "to render" has a more common usage meaning "to liquefy the fat" — how pleasant).

Apparently, despite assurances that an Obama administration would be more judicious in its assertion of the state secrets privilege than it's Darth Cheney-driven predecessor, that is not the case.

I'm pissed. I'm writing my representatives. I respectfully ask you to do the same.

If my country can't defend its behavior in court, I believe it doesn't matter what it is we claim to defend. We've become corrupt beyond repair.

War crimes trials would be a good start

2008-12-18T20:26:00.003-07:00

The New York Times has finally said what so many others have said for so long about the Bush Administration and Guantanamo (and Abu Ghraib, and Bagram, and the we-don't-really-know-how-many "black sites"): investigate and punish. Frankly, I'd like to see us just hand over Bush, Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Feith, and any of the rest of them that are implicated to the International Criminal Court and be done with it. That's the most reasonable approach, as far as I am concerned.

Really— plainly and simply, any American official or officer above the rank of Colonel who approved of torture (in the sense of "agreed that it was an acceptable policy or helped to implement it") should be handed over to the ICC for trial on crimes against humanity. Bush, for those not sure of his culpability on simple grounds of mental capacity, deserves attention because he agreed that the United States would unilaterally abrogate its responsibility under the Geneva Convention.

I've argued elsewhere that Scalia ought to be impeached for ignoring the plain language of the 4th Amendment, but this is arguably worse. My own father, who is very much a partisan Republican most of the time, said at the time of Abu Ghraib that it was a horrible stain on our country. If we can publicly acknowledge that these horrible things were done in our name, and still not feel compelled to punish them, then we are weak, and deserve the horrible things that will be done to us. If by-then-President Obama wants to be a true leader for all people, one thing he will have to lead us to do is to see that torturers are punished fittingly.

Music to stay at home and drink to

2008-12-18T19:57:00.002-07:00

I am a fan of much music, but I make an effort to expose myself to the music being made around me that is even remotely of interest, because it is more fun to me to watch someone trying earnestly to build an audience than it is to see someone preen, having succeeded. That being the case, I often feel like there are people who make music that is grossly under-appreciated. Today, among those people I would list the Denver band Everything Absent or Distorted (A Love Story).

Their most recent release (and first "full length"), The Great Collapse, is beautifully heart-wrenching. It's lush pop music, made by the modern equivalent of a big band (a friend who shares my addiction to music you can see up close counted 15 players on stage at one point at the CD release party they threw at Denver's Bluebird). And the title is a none-too-subtle reminder that these are perilous times. Other commenters have noted that EAOD (as they are called for short) sound like Arcade Fire at times, and resemble Broken Social Scene in ways, but I'd say that's not a bad thing. Their harmonies on their first effort, A Soft Civil War, were certainly less like Arcade Fire, and they have a way with horns that Broken Social Scene completely lacks, so maybe these comparisons are more the result of Arcade Fire and BSS being a bit too ubiquitous. I don't care. I know what I like, and this is on that list.

2008-12-03T09:19:00.002-07:00

Wow.

Via Political Animal:

It may not top the list of Obama administration priorities, but Hawaii Democratic Congressman Neil Abercrombie is urging the president-elect to take on one more controversial issue -- creating a new playoff system for college football. [...]

Oh, fer crying out loud!

Please, there is so much more to do than this for the DOJ. No time need be wasted on it by anyone except the NCAA.

And they need to pull their heads out of their asses and make it work. FWIW, the BCS doesn't work.

Excuse me?

2008-10-05T22:03:00.002-06:00

Thanks to Political Animal, I was pointed to something that goes like this:

I am listing for your consideration the platform of Barack Hussein Obama as best as I can figure it out....
TERRORIST THREAT TO AMERICA: Learn to speak Arabic....
REPARATIONS TO THE BLACK COMMUNITY: Opposes before Election Day and supports after Election Day...
FREEDOM OF RELIGION: Mandatory Black Liberation Theology courses taught in all churches--- raise taxes to pay for this mandate....

There's more, but I think you get the picture.

What I want to know is how is the author of this considered an acceptable occupant of a post in the Republican Party if the party is not racist? If it were my party, I'd want him tossed. Now. If it's your party, what are you waiting for?

Unrelenting deception

2008-09-24T08:23:00.005-06:00

I'm more than a little disgusted by the fact that the McCain campaign has so few scruples (none, possibly) that it will think nothing of literally making up letters to the editor that they then mass-mail to newspapers in the hopes that one or two will stick. When you can't even count on your actual supporters to work on your behalf honestly, you are morally bankrupt, and you deserve NO votes.

Wrong on Energy. Wrong for America.

2008-09-16T13:36:00.002-06:00

So I follow Factcheck.org, just because I'm too lazy to do the hard work on my own.

I noticed that Sarah Palin (and the McCain campaign generally) claimed Alaska produces 20% of America's domestic energy supply (Palin) or simply America's energy supply (McCain campaign).

As Factcheck.org points out, this is plainly, simply, egregiously wrong.

But, hey, figures lie, and liars figure, so who cares? Right?

McCain is a crafty old SOB

2008-09-09T14:55:00.002-06:00

From Gary Kamiya at Salon:

Palin is the pinup queen in that war. She's feisty, she's a mom, she's from a frontier state, she guns down wolves from the air, she's a devout Evangelical, she poses as a reformer, and she insults the Washington elites.
And large numbers of Americans think she's hot.

This latter point cannot be underestimated. Iraq may be a quagmire, a new cold war may be looming, the economy may be tanking and the world may be heading toward environmental doom, but the presidential race may be decided by the perceived doability of the governor of Alaska.

This is regrettably, astoundingly, almost certainly true.

It make me very, very sad that we're so far down the road to Bread and Circuses that this is true, but I'm convinced that McCain recognized the many ways Sarah Palin appeals to the people that voted in large numbers for George W Bush and have expressed reservations about Johnny Mac. And I'm absolutely sure that one or more of the younger staffers expressed the, "Dude, she's hot!" meme in a meeting or two....

For so long I thought we'd manage to avoid letting W play the role of Nero to completion, but now I see that half of the country is almost certainly going to be persuaded, especially given that the MSM is going to give her a pass. You almost wonder if she could have plugged her sister's ex with a few dozen pellets and still have gotten nominated...

When to fight

2008-08-12T14:39:00.002-06:00

There's been an exciting set of developments in the world of beating up on the weak these past few days. As you may have heard (if you weren't too distracted by the puffery in Beijing), Georgia (not the US state, but a country that borders Russia) tried to see if the US had any time or resources to back it up while it beat up the little brother of the biggest, baddest muthafucka on the block (BBMFOTB)-- which is to say it attacked the South Ossetians to bring them back in the fold while they are under the watchful eye of the Russian Federation's "peacekeepers."

The US, distracted by two other wars in which it isn't exactly wiping the field with the opposition, pretty much has had to say, "You're on your own," without actually saying anything. Oh, sure, we've said, "Bad Russia! Don't do that!" You may have noticed how well this works with a teenager when the parent has never been able to impose discipline in the past. It works about as well when the US says it to another nuclear power.

So, many American commetators have called for the US to "do something." I'm especially amused by Mr. Kristol:

The United States, of course, is not without resources and allies to deal with these problems and threats. But at times we seem oddly timid and uncertain.

Yeah. Because we have so much leeway for action, here. I mean, what's a nuclear war?

One day maybe we'll start to realize that being the BBMFOTB isn't much fun if we can actually get beaten up once in a while because we don't have enough sense to keep fights from starting in the first place.

Until then, we'll get to watch the Georgians, Iranians, Iraqis, Palestinians, North Koreans, and a few more suffer.

Please can we prosecute President Bush for war crimes?

2008-08-09T22:58:00.002-06:00

I realize that it would be fraught with political danger. I accept that a lot of Americans don't get that a President (and a host of his lawyers-- yes, I'm looking at you John Yoo and David Addington) is capable of violating the law of war, never mind the Constitution, and appearing to get away with it. I have met actual people who think that if the President does it, it's OK (even before this line of argument was being pursued in court).

I just think that allowing that kind of behavior is certain to lead all of us (those who are still alive, anyway) to a place we don't want to be. So proceeding with an investigation, and a trial, is the only way to prevent ending up in a very bad place.

Prosecute all war criminals, not just the ones from other countries....

On the Trail With Barack Obama

2008-08-09T12:15:00.000-06:00

On the Trail With Barack Obama

Yes. There are many ways in which this poll is misleading. Unfortunately, ochairball is also misinterpreting the results. Ochairball assumes that none of the respondents noticed that the question seemed misleading, based on the yes/no answer they were expected to give.

Reflect that this may not be the case.

There are more than enough people in this world, who, when faced with a situation presenting a false choice, will give the perverse answer. I, for example, would be sorely tempted to answer this by saying "no", even if it were true that it would significantly lower fuel prices.

"How could this be?" you may ask. Well, I'm pretty comfortable with the notion that humans are causing a shift in climate that may either destroy the ability of the Earth to support human life or will compromise the habitats of most of the other species on the planet. "No more humans" is an unlikely prospect, given our technological capability, but making life inhospitable for 90% of the species that were alive at the start of human civilization is certainly within reach, particularly if we panic in the face of the only tool our political economy will tolerate (if only barely)-- economic pressure on the users of fossil fuels.

It seems we can't bring ourselves to accept that taxes on the emission of carbon are the best and only way government can actively reduce carbon emissions without also choosing a winner among the remaining technologies. Virtually everyone uses it in the US (to pick a random example), so by taxing, we'd force the burden of paying the price of getting us out of the mess on the people least willing to change their ways. Yes, it would be a pretty good idea to use some of the taxes taken this way to fund mass transit, since this would ease the transition for people who would otherwise be unable to feed or shelter themselves. In the end, though, those funds have to dry up and people have to make choices they can afford. This would only happen, though, if the course of the taxes were properly arranged, as those taxes would have long before risen to a level that chokes off all carbon-consuming industry.

So (and I'll bet you were wondering what any of this had to do with the poll), suppose a group of similarly perverse people with an inclination to demand more drilling everywhere are contacted in a poll, and asked exactly the question referenced by ochairball. They, too, know that gas prices won't fall immediately as a result of drilling oil in 5-10 years that would be a tiny fraction of our current needs. Maybe they're also interested in testing the idea gas prices will fall in the face of more drilling in ten years (McCain's argument on psychology). Maybe they just don't care what effect it will have on gas prices. Whatever the motivation, my bet is that more than a few (say 20%) would answer, "Hell yeah! Drill Here! Drill Now!"

I'm just sayin'.