untravel

that slope already slipped

2011-12-16T19:11:00.004+01:00

This post is regarding the recent passage of Levin-McCain detention bill as part of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. It's a continuation of a conversation started on Facebook. I wanted to respond in more detail than a comment on a status update would allow.

The most controversial aspect of the new legislation is that authorizes "the U.S. military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians, including American citizens, anywhere in the world" (This quote and the others used in this post are all taken from Greenwald's analysis here, unless otherwise noted.) As Greenwald notes in his first point regarding the myths surrounding this bill, this is not new:

... because first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration have aggressively argued that the original 2001 AUMF already empowers them to imprison people without charges, use force against even U.S. citizens without due process (Anwar Awlaki), and target not only members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban (as the law states) but also anyone who “substantially supports” those groups and/or “associated forces” (whatever those terms mean). That’s why this bill states that it does not intend to change the 2001 AUMF (even as it codifies far broader language defining the scope of the war) or the detention powers of the President, and it’s why they purposely made the bill vague on whether it expressly authorizes military detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil: it’s because the bill’s proponents and the White House both believe that the President already possesses these broadened powers with or without this bill

Of course, when Greenwald says that the bills proponents believe they have the powers outlined in this bill, he's speaking in a de jure sense; that is, as a matter of law, they believe they have the power (as in 'legitimate authority') to subvert or ignore due process. In a de facto sense, of course, they have the power (as in 'ability') to do this because they've already been doing it, for as long as the Guantanamo Bay detention facility (et al) has existed. This latest outrage is the same as the old outrage.

Some have suggested that this is new insofar as it allows for the indefinite detention of US citizens without due process. But this isn't new either. This is because of the nature of due process (specifically in terms of habeas corpus). Any rights an individual may have (in this context), regardless of his or her actions, affiliations or citizenship, are contingent upon his or her ability to assert and argue for those rights in court. If you are a prisoner held without due process, it doesn't matter who you are or what they do to you--you have no rights, only whatever privileges your captors deign to grant you. The right to due process is a sort of gateway right through which any other rights must pass, in order to be rights at all. Once that gate is closed, a person on the other side is in principle no different than a kidnapping victim or hostage.

Also, once the right to due process is refused to some (even 'Just the Scary People'), it's refused to all. That's because without some kind of impartial review to determine who's scary and who's not, that distinction is based not in law but merely at the discretion of those in power. In this instance, US citizens have been subject to indefinite detention without trial for many years already because, once due process was set aside for the Very Scary People, there been no way for a US citizen to challenge the legitimacy of his or her detention, to argue that he or she wasn't Scary. Without due process, the only thing that keeps any one person out of Guantanamo Bay--regardless of citizenship--is not a law or a right, but the fact that no one in power feels like putting you there.

When it comes to the Eternal War on Terrorism, the rule of law was discarded years ago. You can see this in for example the completely arbitrary way various cases have been handled over the years. John Walker Lindh (an American citizen) was tried and convicted. The Tipton Three (British citizens) were held for two years then released at the behest of the British government. The decisions on who has been released and who has been kept, who gets a trial and who gets thrown down the metaphorical hole, have been matters of diplomacy and public relations, never law.

This latest affront on civil liberties is nothing new. It's not one further slide down a slippery slope. In terms of the law, as a matter of principle, we're already at the bottom of the hill. Due process is not something you whittle away at, bit by bit, over time. As a society, you've either got it or you don't. It's not something you can take away from 'just the Bad People', because it's the way you determine who's Bad and who's not. For us to return to the rule of law, we would need to understand what the right to due process really means, not just for those in Guantanamo Bay, but for everyone. However, as long as the American right continues to be able to appeal to ignorance and fear, to squeal that supporting the rule law is tantamount to supporting terrorism, then there will be no political will, among either Republicans or Democrats, to do anything about it. The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act is not a new problem, just a reminder of an old one.

frontrunner!

2011-10-17T16:06:00.004+02:00

Herman Cain found out how tricky being in the national spotlight is on Sunday as he was pushed to admit that his signature economic plan, 9-9-9, would result in increased taxes for some people.

No, really. A national sales tax is regressive, since the poorer you are, the greater percentage of your income is spent each month. A 'wage tax' notably excludes capital gains and other 'ownership' derived incomes. And a 9% corporate tax rate is just a huge tax cut (about -75%) for the persons who need it the least. Cain's 9-9-9 is a transparent attempt to shift the tax burden onto the working and middle classes; I have no idea how anyone could be confused about this.

The Republican presidential candidate also sought to back away from fiery comments he had made just hours earlier, saying he was only joking about killing people trying to cross the border from Mexico with an electrified fence. And he said that the American people need to “get a sense of humor.”

I think a 9% corporate tax rate is pretty hysterical. But maybe that's not the joke?

Beyond that, Mr. Cain acknowledged that he was unfamiliar with the neoconservative movement, and was not exactly sure what the word “neoconservative” meant.

But I'm sure he knows what 'regressive' means, right?

All this was in the space of a 20-minute interview with David Gregory on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Of course, no amount of stupidity excludes you from being a Republican candidate for President, as long as you've got the minimum necessary levels of callousness (e.g. more taxes for poor people) and sadism (e.g. electrocuted immigrant jokes).

UPDATE: This graph outlines exactly how regressive 9-9-9 is. Basically, everyone making less than 200K+ a year would get a tax hike. And if you make more than million, you get a huge tax cut.

centrist president

2011-07-27T08:17:00.004+02:00

"We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating -- offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion."

"So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent -- because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship. The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist president -- actually a moderate conservative president."

--Paul Krugman, via Political Wire

When dealing with an unreasonable opponent, there's a certain point where continuing to act reasonably is no longer rational. The current Republican Party is an insane, knife wielding maniac holding the global economy hostage to self-contradictory demands. (They raised the debt ceiling about 6 times under Bush.) Continuing to compromise, bargain, negotiate or try empathize with such lunacy is pointless. They need to be defeated politically (e.g. a veto, 14th Amendment solution, etc.), not philosophically.

'you're all individuals, i'm not'

2011-07-09T07:25:00.003+02:00

BoingBoing

"Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era," a paper by Cornell's Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions Suzanne Mettler features this remarkable chart [here] showing that about half of American social program beneficiaries believe that they "have not used a government social program." It's the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who've been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite.

For some reason, this reminds me of Monty Python's The Life of Brian, when Brian announces to the crowd 'You're all individuals' and one guy pipes in 'I'm not'. Except backward, I guess.

I suppose it also might be the case that (slightly) less stupid people with this particular ideological bent would have an argument for why the programs they themselves benefit from are OK and why the programs other people benefit from are commie tyranny. I'm not sure what that argument would be, though, if not a post facto rationalization of their own immediate self interest (i.e., not a principle at all).

the truth is a lie?

2011-05-18T21:50:00.003+02:00

Political Wire

"So let me say on the record, any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is a falsehood."-- Newt Gingrich, in an interview on Fox News, backing away from comments that Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) budget plan was "right wing social engineering."

This line makes the philosophical part of my brain quite dizzy. The political part is laughing itself silly, though.

"still wrong, still stupid..."

2011-05-05T15:49:00.005+02:00

Here's Lithwick on whether torture lead to finding bin Laden, and what that should mean for US policy. I recommend the whole article (and it's short), but here's a representatively good passage:

And here's the genius part: In support of personal policy preferences, facts are wholly optional. Lack of facts can also be highly probative. For example: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was water-boarded 183 times in 2003, lied about knowing Bin Laden's courier, as did Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was interrogated in 2005. They offered no useful information. Yet torture advocates now say that because both men denied knowing the courier—thus tipping off the CIA that he must be someone important—torture must work. Got it? Torture works when the prisoners disclose information, but it also works when they don't. It's win-win!

The fact that we have swamped a debate about the killing of Osama Bin Laden with a distraction over torture is another national embarrassment. Why aren't we debating the efficacy of any of the other intelligence-gathering or surveillance methods that also contributed to the success of the hunt for bin Laden? We are being conned yet again, and allowing ourselves to be conned again, by a handful of people who want to justify their own crimes. Remember all those debates about the need to be allowed to torture in "ticking time bomb" scenarios? We are now having a discussion about an alleged ticking time bomb that took eight years to blow—if it blew at all.

There is just one question about America and torture: whether we should do it. The answer to that, after hundreds of years of legal thinking and moral progress, not just in America but around the world, is no. It's bad for those asked to torture, and it's bad for our soldiers who will be tortured by others. A bunch of Bush officials secretly changed that answer for a time, based on misapprehensions of its efficacy, but for serious interrogators, ethical thinkers, and lawyers, the answer has always been no.

What she said.

in the situation room

2011-05-03T14:58:00.002+02:00

osama bin laden is dead

2011-05-02T16:33:00.003+02:00

Everyone already knows this, but I wanted to make sure to have a blog post 'on the record' for such a momentous event. I missed out posting on pretty much the whole Arab Spring, but not this.

President Obama announced last night that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US forces, in a raid on a fortified compound in Pakistan. The operation was carried out by the US Naval Special Forces Development Group, commonly known as 'SEAL Team Six', in conjunction with the CIA. Seems to be an exception to the rule that an intelligence agency is known by its failures, because no one ever knows about its successes. (Sorry, I forget the exact phrase.) At the moment, there seems to be some confusion as to whether Pakistani intelligence was also involved.

The New York Times has a good summary of events. Here's links to the coverage of the story from the BBC, CNN, the Washington Post, USA Today, and even Al-Jarzeera. Fox News, predictably, has their own unique take on things.

Somewhat strangely, bin Laden was buried at sea. The reasons given for this were that US officials did not want bin Laden's grave site to become a 'terrorist shrine' and due to the unlikelihood of any country being willing to accept his body. Also, officials seem to have taken care to bury him according to Islamic tradition within 24 hours. Of course, this will probably become a key element in the fantasies of conspiracy theorists, but there's nothing one can really do about that. Even if bin Laden had been killed on live television, some nutjobs would still claim it was 'faked'.

Since bin Laden had apparently not been involved in the operational aspects of Al-Qaeda in some time, some have said that this is largely a 'symbolic' victory. But one shouldn't underestimate the impact of that symbolism. Just as terrorist victories are not simply about the innocents killed, but also the symbolic impact of those deaths (i.e. the fear inspired), victories over terrorists are not simply about the law enforcement or military successes in disrupting their operations, but also the symbolic impact of those victories (i.e. the sense of safety and justice inspired). The symbolism accompanying the death of Osama bin Laden is sure have a wide ranging impact, not only on Al-Qaeda's effectiveness in financing, planning, and carrying out terrorist attacks, but also on international relations and internal US politics--all of it for the better.

obama correspondents' dinner 2011

2011-05-01T13:31:00.001+02:00

a republican joke

2011-02-06T13:59:00.002+01:00

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above ground elevation of 2,346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
"She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be an Obama Democrat."
"I am," replied the man. "How did you know?"
"Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct. But I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."

The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican."
"I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?"
"Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you are going. You've risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow, now it's my fault."

oscar nominations 2011

2011-01-25T22:41:00.002+01:00

I didn't get out to the movies very much this year. Maybe three or four times. I saw a bit more than that on DVD, but still. In any case, any Oscar picks by me this year would be even more silly than usual.

However, it's traditional. So I figured I would write down my more random thoughts on the nominations.

Best Picture:

I've seen four of the ten: Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network and True Grit. I'd be interested to see four more: Black Swan, The Fighter, 127 Hours and Toy Story 3. My sister said Winter's Bone sucked--you heard it here first. The King's Speech looked to me, from the very first time I saw a trailer for it, to be unchallenging, middlebrow Oscarbait. By a remarkable coincidence, it's also the favorite. Although I'm not thrilled by the prospect, at least if it does well, then we are likely to get more Colin Firth in the future, which I consider a good thing. Let's just hope he does do a whole series of films about privileged characters heroically and tear-jerkingly overcoming mild adversity.

Best Director:

I'm a fan of 4 of the 5--everyone but The King's Speech's Toby Hooper. That's weird. I must be approaching the age of the average Academy voter. Gross! I'm pulling for Fincher here. I think I own DVDs of all of his movies, except Zodiac but including Alien 3. If you don't think that's dedication, you have seen Alien 3.

Best Actor:

I guess this will be either Colin Firth or Jeff Bridges. Eisenberg and Franco are too young, and Bardem's already got one.

Best Actress:

Wow, I only saw one of these. Natalie Portman would be a nice surprise. She seems like she would be a good actress, given decent material, but she surprisingly hasn't had a lot of opportunities yet. Maybe her work in Black Swan will turn things around. Also weird that Julianne Moore didn't get a nod. In The Kids Are All Right, she plays a much more of a focal (and more interesting) character than Benning. 'You're a wine drunk. We get it already. We all saw Sideways too, you know.'

Best Supporting Whatever:

Let's just skip these, shall we?

Best Screenplays:

This could be Inception's consolation prize. And I hear that The Social Network's script was interesting and complicated too, but I must confess I was decidedly meh when I first saw it.

Best Animated Feature:

Is there a reason they don't just call this particular award 'The Pixar'? The category was created to accommodate that company, so I don't see why they don't just make that clear...

Best Foreign Language:

'And the dartboard says....'

Best Documentary:

Exit Through the Gift Shop needs to win, because I want to see what Banksy does in lieu of actually accepting the award in person. Oh wait, I already know: he will send Thierry Guetta instead. How great would that be!

Best Rest of the Categories:

You are all special in your own way. And I know nothing about you.

That is all.

"don't tell me the rules"

2010-12-14T14:20:00.003+01:00

ThinkProgress

Airport security agents in Austin pulled [India's UN envoy] Singh aside into an enclosed glass holding room for questioning after he refused a request to remove his turban or allow inspectors to touch it, an Indian official who witnessed the incident told Turtle Bay. “He said no, you cannot check my turban,” according to the Indian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t allow you to touch my turban.”

The Indian official said Singh offered to touch the turban himself and to allow the security agents to run a check of his hands for traces of explosives, but he said that one security official refused. Singh insisted that the security official had no right to check his turban, citing TSA regulations for searches of foreign diplomats. “Obviously you don’t know your own rules. Please check your rules,” he told the security agent, according to the Indian official. “The person insisted that he had to do it. He said, ‘Don’t tell me the rules.’”

The Indian official said that the security officials finally checked the security regulations and issued an apology to the Indian ambassador. He said he was unaware of whether his government had filed an official complaint with the United States over the issue.

I guess when the TSA decides to ignore their own rules, it helps to have diplomatic status. And a support staff with lots of junior diplomats to witness the incident. Of course, if you're not able to travel with a team of lawyers, you're probably screwed.

And of course, Sikhs aren't Muslims. In related news, last month the Indian ambassador to the US was also subject to additional 'random' screening for wearing a sari. And of course, Hindus aren't Muslims either. Racial profiling is bad enough. But when racists can't even keep their own bigotries straight, well, that's just shoddy.

those aren't the rules today

2010-11-29T20:41:00.004+01:00

Here's another one of those commonplace TSA horror-stories, with an added twise. This one features the TSA's greatest nemesis: breast milk. Short version: a mother would prefer her child's milk not be irradiated. The TSA very rationally and considerately has rules and procedures for dealing such eventualities. And, as usual, these rules promptly break down once somebody's in line.

This particular traveler made the additional mistake of actually pointing out that the TSA didn't know its own rules. I'm a 'dirty stinking hippy-liberal', and even I know better than that.

...I then begged him to read the TSA rules I had printed out. He read the first form which stated that medical liquids can have alternate screening (no x-ray). He was quick to say “well this isn’t a medical liquid!” So I had him read the second form which says breast milk is to be treated like a medical liquid. He then says, “well, not today.”

You see how this works. The Rules are the Rules. They are Vitally Important for our Safety and to fight Terrorism. Except until the TSA guy, when confronted with the Rules, decides the Rules are not the Rules anymore. At least, not for You. Because You annoy him. His arbitrary and ill-informed authority is the only real rule.

If you make the TSA guy look stupid, then the Terrorists win.

comments on new TSA procedures

2010-11-24T20:32:00.006+01:00

As most of you are undoubtedly aware, the TSA has recently instituted new security procedures for airline travels. Travellers will now have the option of being scanned radiologically, or undergoing an extensive physical search. This post contains some of my thoughts on the matter. But rephrased politely. The short version is that I'm not a fan.

The legal justification for these searches (i.e. the reason they're Constitutional) is that you can avoid them by choosing not to fly. Since I live in Europe and my family lives the US, this is not an option for me. Nor is it a practical option for any other form of non-discretionary air travel (i.e. anything but a vacation). I'm no big-city lawyer, but this justification has always struck me as somewhat thin, a legal-theoretical fig leaf: a choice that includes no other practical alternative is de facto no choice at all. It gets even thinner when you see how far it gets extended. But let's just set all that aside for the time being.

The practical justification we've heard from officials is that they are 'necessary for security'. But arguing that a new security procedure is necessary for security is obviously circular and therefore invalid. The public has in essence been given no other answer to the question 'Is all this necessary?' than 'Trust us'.

There are, however, several practical reasons not to trust officials' public statements on the matter. This is not based on mindless anti-government paranoia or specialized knowledge on my part, but on the simple fact that they been repeatedly and publicly caught misrepresenting important information. For example, officials have claimed that the full-body naked images produced by the scanners cannot be saved. At the same time, US Marshals operating the same machines in Orlando, Florida have already been caught saving 35,000 of these images.

One might argue that the potential for embarrassment (either by scanner or physical search) is hardly a serious concern relative to public safety. For myself, I'm inclined to agree. When I fly to the states this Christmas, I imagine a possible search would be something akin to a hernia exam at the doctor's office: unpleasant, but not insurmountable (the dearth of professionalism between my doctor and my previous experience with TSA personnel notwithstanding). However, I'm a white male, aged 18-49. In the same way I'm capable of imagining what it would be like for me, I'm also capable of imagining what it would be like for someone else. For a rape victim, cancer survivor, or child, any extensive physical search would be considerably more than 'unpleasant' or 'embarrassing'. It could justifiably be described as 'traumatic'. Current policy makes no consideration for this whatsoever.

Even more serious than this is the public health risk imposed by the scanners. Dr. David Brenner (Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University) and Dr. Peter Rez (in a study from the journal Radiation Protection and Dosimetry) have noted that the radiation dosage is likely 10 times higher than the information currently being given to the public. While still small, it remains significant.

"I don't think anybody would argue the point that the individual risk is small. Whether it's one in 10 million or one in 100 million, it's very small," he said in an interview. "But multiply that times 700 million people – the number of people getting on planes currently – and that's the public health risk."
...
Rez agrees the individual risk is still negligible. "It's a 1-in-20-million chance of dying from radiation for each scan," he says. "Your chances of being struck by lightning in the US in any year is 1 in 500,000. But the probability of being blown up in an airplane by a terrorist is around 1 in 30 million. So the risk from the scan is about the same as the thing you're trying to prevent."
...
The result, he maintains, is "you will end up with some number of cancers coming out of each year's scanning operations." Applying it to the 125,000 commercial airline pilots and perhaps 125,000 other flight personnel, each averaging 250 scans per year, Brenner estimates "there might be five cancers, or two fatal cancers, resulting from a year's worth of X-ray screening" among airline personnel.

In response, one might argue 'Well sure, there are risks. But don't the security benefits outweigh these costs?' Determining this would require a rather gruesomely utilitarian calculation: 'How many innocents sentenced to slow, painful deaths by cancer without their knowledge or consent are the gains in security provided by these scans worth?' I'm not exactly sure how to do the math on that, nor would I want to. I see it as a little like supporting capital punishment while at the same time acknowledging that a certain number of innocent people will be executed. Ethically speaking, given such information, the acceptable number of sacrificable innocents is zero. The ethical case for this is all the more obvious when those drawing lottery tickets for the sacrifice are not criminals you've read about in the newspaper but you and your loved ones.

On a related note, officials have claimed that those travelers selected for additional screening are chosen at random. This is, once again, a misrepresentation. Deirdre Walker, a retired law enforcement official, has published a detailed and well-balanced account of her experiences with the new procedures. I urge anyone interested in this issue to read the article in full. The following passage is of particular interest:

Over the last fifteen years or so, many police agencies started capturing data on police interactions. The primary purpose was to document what had historically been undocumented: informal street contacts. By capturing specific data, we were able to ask ourselves tough questions about potentially biased-policing. Many agencies are still struggling with the answers to those questions.

Regardless, the data permitted us to detect problematic patterns, commonly referred to as passive discrimination. This is a type of discrimination that occurs when we are not aware of how our own biases affect our decisions. This kind of bias must be called to our attention, and there must be accountability to correct it.

One of the most troubling observations I made, at both Albany and BWI, was that — aside from the likely notation in a log (that no one will ever look at) — there was no information captured and I was asked no questions, aside from whether or not I wanted to change my mind.

Given that TSA interacts with tens if not hundreds of millions of travelers each year, it is incredible to me that we, the stewards of homeland security, have failed to insist that data capturing and analysis should occur in a manner similar to what local police agencies have been doing for many years.

Some might argue that the potential for intrusion is not the same between police and TSA. I believe my experience this past weekend demonstrates otherwise. Currently, there is no way to know whether a certain male screener routinely identifies predominantly women for additional screening. There is no way to identify whether a Latino screener routinely isolates African-Americans, or vice versa. To assert that the screeners are highly trained and do not engaged in this type of discrimination, whether passive or active, is unsupportable because there is no data. You simply cannot solve problems that you do not want to identify.

In other words, officials have claimed that these searches are random, but they have never bothered to check if they are random. We are asked to trust their public assertions, while at the same time a number of these assertions have already been publicly shown to be either baseless or false. If the TSA would like to improve public confidence in these new security procedures, a good first step might be to stop lying about them.

***

We regularly sacrifice liberty for safety. Benjamin Franklin notwithstanding, this is a fact of modern life. It's a form of social contract: we agree to give up certain freedoms, and in return security officials promise to protect us. In a modern democracy, this is the case with the military, our intelligence services, and now air travel. The validity of this contract, however, is contingent upon transparency. We trust security officials to protect us but these officials need to offer something in return. They need to tell us why these new procedures are necessary: not with vague platitudes and spurious arguments, but with accurate and well-supported information. In a democracy, faith cannot be blind. This is has become all the more widely obvious now that we are being asked to sacrifice not just certain freedoms, but to risk our health and dignity (and that of our children and other loved ones) as well.

***

If the TSA wants us to trust them, they need to start earning it. If real justification is not forthcoming and no steps are taken to remedy the myriad of problems with the current security procedures, passive opposition to these procedures would be justified. Possibilities include:

-Contacting one's representatives. The public outcry over these new policies is likely to come up for a vote at some point. Make sure that politicians know that any support for continuing these policies will cost them on election day, even if its only a lack of voter enthusiasm.

-Contacting airlines to complain. While they are of course not responsible for these procedures, they could be affected by them. If people were to avoid discretionary travel, this would hurt their bottom line. And even the risk of a decline in profits may be enough to spur them to action. Business groups have considerably more political leverage than individuals.

-Know your rights, and politely but rigorously insist upon them. Ensure that they actually follow the new procedures and don't stray even further beyond them. If a physical search becomes a sexual assault (as is the case, for example, if the screener fails to inform you properly), insist on speaking with a supervisor, call a cop, and file an official complaint. The legal costs involved in defending every bad search and lawsuit could easily become prohibitive. In the end, this is likely to be the most direct and effective solution. They may be indifferent to our rights, health, dignity, but those in charge certainly care about their budget. If the TSA is not willing to earn our trust, they need to pay for it.

i has led poisoning?

2010-11-22T22:42:00.003+01:00

AVClub

Following the recall of nearly 12 million Shrek glasses over the summer because of toxic levels of brain-damaging, cancer-causing lead and cadmium, the Associated Press has discovered that pretty much every decorative drinking glass ever made carries the same risk, dating back to nearly 50 years ago. A specially commissioned laboratory test of 35 separate drinking glasses made between the late 1960s and this year—including those with enamel designs of Superman, Batman, and characters from The Wizard Of Oz—found that all of them exceeded federal limits on lead in children’s products by up to 1,000 times, many of these coming from glasses given out as part of various fast-food promotions over the years. For instance, the old Return Of The Jedi drinking glasses issued by Burger King in 1983 that, if you’re a certain age, you probably drank out of nearly every day? Even 27 years after their manufacture, they still “hit the FDA lead level for 6-year-olds after just eight touches.”

We had THOSE EXACT GLASSES when I was a kid. My family only stopped using them years later, after most of that tasty, tasty paint had been scraped off. But I don't think the led has damaged me brain two much. And cadmium is like a vitamin or something, right? I drank a lot of milk out of those glasses. I mean, a lot of milk. So that's like twice the cadmium. Cadmium helps kids develop interesting bones and a healthy glow. Cadmi-yum!

Now, those 'big government' types would tell you that if there was a regulation on the safe amount of toxic material in a children's drinking glass, *someone* maybe should have actually checked sometime in the last 50 years. But they'd be wrong. The enforcement of government safety regulations would only deny the free market the chance to poison children more efficiently. And deny them vital nutrients like cadmi-yum.

I think all this brain damage is making me more conservative.

On a completely unrelated note: Palin 2012! Woo-Woo-Woo!

perhaps a poor choice of words

2010-11-19T18:08:00.003+01:00

ThinkProgress

Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party, announced this week that he’s running to replace Michael Steele as the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Anuzis — who also ran against Steele in 2009 — is widely considered to be a front-runner, and says that he plans to keep a low profile, telling Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Monday that he just wants to “make sure the trains run on time.”

In all fairness to Mr. Anuzis, he's probably not aware that 'making the trains run on time' is an accomplishment commonly attributed to Mussolini.

Although, given the company he keeps, who knows...

'what a socialist nightmare!'

2010-11-17T11:32:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine posted this elsewhere. To keep this blog anonymous, I've removed any identifying bits of information. It's a great anecdote, though, so it's otherwise reprinted verbatim.

The past few months have been interesting for me. I've never had "private" insurance before. As a kid and through college, I had it through my parents, then I had it through work until I left [my old company], then I had it through my wife until we moved.

We then spent a few months navigating the Byzantine hellscape of acquiring private insurance. It's a shocking, offensive disaster of a process that - among other things - tells you when you can and can't have children (for us, we're "disallowed" until late next year, in case you're wondering). Anywho, we spent an nervous month without coverage and finally got things worked out as of the first of this month.

A few days ago, we got a notice in the mail that - in response to the recent health care reform - our two-week old policy would be canceled as of next month and replaced. I doubt I have to tell you that I cringed as prepared to look at the new coverage and costs.

I was truly surprised, however, when I noticed that our coverage would remain unchanged and that our monthly premium would be dropping by $20 per person.

So... yeah. "Obamacare" has failed to destroy my household and family. It has managed to preserve our hard-won coverage and put an extra $480 a year in our pockets. What a socialist nightmare!

All in all, great news. Although maybe 'corporate approval for pregnancy' might be a good thing to legislate away, given the opportunity (i.e. after the next Republican electoral loss).

"we do not torture...except when I order it"

2010-11-11T18:51:00.006+01:00

Remember way back when torture was only the work of 'a few bad apples'. Turns out that--shockingly--this wasn't true at all.

You might have been able to pick that up from the contradiction in the fact that the Bush Administration both arguing that they had the authority to torture if they felt like it and (simultaneously) claiming that they didn't use torture.

Except now, you don't even need logic anymore. George W. Bush has confessed, both in his new book and during his promotional interviews, that he ordered torture. (In the future, if we want a villain to confess to a horrific crime, maybe we could just offer them a book deal instead?)

'Yeah, that's right. I committed a war crime, in violation of both domestic and international law. Damn right. Whadda ya gonna do about it?'

Still nothing, of course. Maybe someday, he might have a little trouble travelling to Europe or something, but that's about it.

Lithwick has the rundown here. Well worth the read, if only for the phrase "'my lawyer ate it' defense".

happy election day, 2010

2010-11-02T12:23:00.003+01:00

It's Mid-Term Election Day. Hooray. I hope you voted already.

For a breakdown of all the hulabaloo, check out today's Electoral-Vote.com. It lacks the hysterical exaggeration and mind-boggling ignorance of most television news coverage. There's some math involved, but he shows his work.

A few fun things to remember if the Tea Party Republicans win big:

-They can propose all the crazy legislation they want (e.g. no more background checks *at all* for gun purchases, the so-called 'Firearms Freedom Acts'), but they can't *pass* anything, anymore than the Democrats could. On top of the now-routine Senate filibuster, they also have a presidential veto to contend with. They need a two-thirds majority to overcome this, and they won't get it. And every crazy thing Obama gets to veto is another feather-in-his-cap for 2012.

-The Tea-Party's inability to deliver anything but late-night comedy fodder will mean that all that tea-party anger will still be there in two more years. The question is whether swing voters who side with T-P candidates will blame the incompetent representatives they supported during the mid-terms or 'the black guy'. Won't that be fun?

-Crystal Ball Prediction: House Republicans will try to impeach Obama at the earliest opportunity. Remember, 1) in the American system of government, impeachment is like an indictment, not the actual removal from office and 2)the 'indictment' part only requires a simple majority in the House, which Republicans are very likely to get. So, the first Obama scandal their fever-dreams can come up with, there will be calls for impeachment. Of course, they won't actually be able to remove him from office (that requires 67 votes in the Senate), but the Tea Party haven't shown themselves to be all that familiar with our democratic institutions and procedures (e.g. the state-level Firearms Freedom Acts are clearly unconstitutional, etc.) Spurious impeachment did not work out so well for the Republicans against Clinton, because moderates really didn't like that kind of thing. In short, having Tea-Party representatives holding a lot of sway in the House and/or media attention is going to cost Republicans a lot more than they gain by 2012.

And all it will cost America is two more years of doing nothing...

these are actual quotes

2010-10-19T20:02:00.005+02:00

The following exchange is courtesy of a debate between Chris Coons (D) and Christine O'Donnell (R), this year's Senatorial candidates from the great state of Delaware:

O'DONNELL: "Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?"
[COONS mentions the whole First Amendment thing.]
O'DONNELL: "The First Amendment does?...Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
COONS: "'...Government shall make no establishment of religion...'"
O'DONNELL: "That's in the First Amendment...?"

As an added bonus, this debate took place at a law school, and apparently the audience laughed out loud.

Thankfully--for America, poor Delaware, and my residual sanity--O'Donnell is polling about 17% percent behind Coons in the latest polls.

UPDATE: One of my reader's was kind enough to send me a link to the YouTube video of the full exchange. It's even worse, if that's possible. Don't watch it if you've got high blood pressure.

terribly scary imaginary things

2010-10-17T12:44:00.004+02:00

Reza Aslan is pretty funny. Here's him making fun of Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Nevada, who claimed that Sharia law had been instituted in Dearborn, Michigan and 'Frankford', Texas. (The first part of the joke is that there is no such town as 'Frankford'.):

“It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States,” Angle said about the real Dearborn and the imaginary Frankford.

Angle is right. There is something fundamentally wrong with this idea—it’s not true. There is no city or municipality in this country where Islamic law has taken hold. And yet, Angle is not the only one sounding the alarm over an imminent Muslim takeover of America. Indeed, now that the screeching over the building of the Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan seems to have died down, a new battle cry is arising from the radical anti-Muslim fringe: American Muslims, they say, are trying to replace the Constitution with Sharia!

Now I admit that we Muslims are a pretty powerful bunch. But in all the secret Muslim gatherings I have attended to discuss our plans for destroying democracy and taking over the White House (we meet every Friday night directly atop Ground Zero), we have come to the conclusion that we will need to raise our numbers from the 1% of the US population we currently represent, to at least 2% before we can begin stoning people at random.

Aslan's whole article is worth reading. I'm sure there are dozens of Tea Party websites out there who will take Aslan's sarcasm as evidence for the Secret Conspiracies that are Everywhere. But of course, they don't really need that whole evidence thing, since they are perfectly happy just making up their Terribly Scary Imaginary Things.

It must be kind of sad being able to be frightened by your own imagination. The poor Tea Party; I feel bad for them.

tea party on parade: nazi weekend

2010-10-11T11:41:00.004+02:00

Pictured (third from the right): Rich Iott, the Republican candidate for Congress in Ohio's 9th district, dressed as a Nazi. More details can be found at The Atlantic here.

Basically, it's not simply bad taste in Halloween costumes. Iott and his friends were a group of 'World War II re-enactors' (like Civil War re-enactors). They'd dress like this, march around, shoot guns, etc. Except in their game, the Nazis were supposed to be the heroes, in the epic struggle against Communism.

A quote 'from the brochure':

Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a "New and Free Europe", free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other eastern European and Balkan countries as the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life, despite the true underlying totalitarian (and quite twisted, in most cases) nature of the movement. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of valiant men died defending their respective countries in the name of a better tomorrow. We salute these idealists; no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was, the front-line soldiers of the Waffen-SS (in particular the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.

The 'Nazis as freedom fighters' thing is pretty funny. Their recruitment video (which you can find at the original Atlantic article) is less funny. No mention of that whole 'extermination' thing--which tells you everything else you need to know.

It would unfair and unreasonable to call the entire Tea Party movement a bunch of psychotic fascists based on this one candidate's...um...hobbies. They just don't mind voting them into Congress....

And once again, the Tea Party has defeats my every attempt at hyperbole, irony or metaphor by being more over-the-top crazy than I could have imagined.

NOTE TO INTERNET: Does Godwin's law apply if your opponents are literally Nazis?

teaparty on parade: let's privatize the fire department

2010-10-04T12:11:00.006+02:00

OBION COUNTY, Tenn. - Imagine your home catches fire but the local fire department won't respond, then watches it burn. That's exactly what happened to a local family tonight.

A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.

The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.

Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.

The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.

Hm. It's almost as if there's such a thing 'small government' being too small... I don't know, but I think TAXING to pay for the fire department might make a little more sense. Especially if you live in an area where houses are built next to each other. (The firefighters stepped in once-surprise-the fire spread to a neighbor's property, who had paid the fee.)

This kind of brilliant public policy would make a great Tea Party slogan, though. "The Republican Right: We Will Watch Your House Burn". Only 95% metaphor!
*

UPDATE 1: The National Review fully endorses 'We Will Watch Your House Burn' policy (ThinkProgress). For those of you keeping track, The National Review used to be known as representing the 'intellectual' wing of the Republican party.

UPDATE 2: Glenn Beck also endorses a 'Watching Things Burn' policy (ThinkProgress). Beck is of course not representative of the intellectual wing of anything.

teaparty on parade: girlscout-o-phobia

2010-09-18T12:50:00.005+02:00

Tea Party Republican Hans Zeiger has some interesting theories on the Girl Scouts of America.

When Hans Zeiger -- a Republican candidate for the state of Washington's House of Representatives -- isn't condemning the public school system in his state for being "polluted with the filth of moral relativism that the typical public high school graduate moves into the world devoid of character, conscience or courage," he's busy pointing out the moral decay in the Girl Scouts.

According to Zeiger, the Girl Scouts promote tolerance of homosexuals and atheists and are a "pro-abortion feminist training corps."

All of which is news to me, the mother of a brand new Brownie. I was expecting craft projects, sing alongs and hiking. Or at least that's what the troop leader led me to believe the girls would be doing. Perhaps she waits until the parents have left before firing up the "how to burn the bra you're not quite old enough to wear" power point.

For more of blogger Ann Bibbly's account of Zeiger's hysterically funny views on the dreaded menace of the "Girl Scout Agenda", follow the link.

If you're laughing, you must be one of them public high school graduates...
*

racists are idiots: 'it's a mosque, oh noes!'

2010-08-23T12:52:00.006+02:00

Apparently, some people are trying to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan. In the right-wing echo chamber, this project has warped into a 'Ground Zero Mosque'. And they're really upset about it. In addition to the abject stupidity, hypocrisy, and bigotry of this transparent violation of the political principle of freedom of religious expression and its legal protection under the First Amendment, this reaction is also hysterical.

-The site is not at Ground Zero, but two blocks away. It formerly housed an electrical substation and a Burlington Coat Factory. 'How dare they dishonor the memory of all of those brave Burlington Coat Factory employees!'

-Religious services have already been held at the proposed site since last year. The proposed community center would add things like meeting rooms, an auditorium, a library, a restaurant, and a swimming pool. 'Worship Allah all you want:. It's just the swimming that's got us so cranky!'

-There are already two mosques in the area: one four blocks away and another at 12 blocks. 'Two blocks away is Terrible Offensive! Four blocks is totally fine.'

Republican politicians are fanning the flames on this to generate some electoral returns in November. Sure, the bigots were going to vote for them anyway, but they've got to keep their base motivated. And if you don't think the reaction is obviously bigoted, just imagine the same sort of protests over, say, a synagogue or Catholic Church. Or an attempt to ban the construction of a Christian community center in Oklahoma City after the McVeigh bombing. I know, right. Racists are idiots.

Now of course, the usual suspects on the right arguing for something stupid is hardly newsworthy. But what surprised me this time was how the media was willing to play the standard 'he said, she said' game with this 'controversy'. Of course, that's nothing new either. My point is: how irrational or depraved do you think one side of an argument would have to be before a major network would have some compunction about giving each equal time and treatment? I mean, I understand how the coded, Lee Atwater style racism gets past them (e.g. 'welfare moms', 'illegal immigrants'). It's coded for a reason: the whole point is to be able to say something racist on television, that will appeal to racists, but without being accountable for it. But apparently the media also don't have a problem non-coded, overt racism either. Where would they draw the line? Muslim-only drinking fountains? Lynching? At what point does 'What is your position on this controversial issue?' cross over into 'What the hell is wrong with these people?' Is there even a line at all?

a real prince

2010-08-19T10:14:00.002+02:00

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents.

Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations singled out Blackwater or its former executives and other personnel. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government since 2001.
...
“He needs a break from America,” said one colleague, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about Mr. Prince’s long-rumored move.

I guess he just feels more comfortable in an authoritarian monarchy. Good riddance.
*

prop 8 overturned

2010-08-05T16:41:00.005+02:00

Good news: Proposition 8, the referendum banning gay marriage in California, was overturned. Dahlia Lithwick (Slate) has a nice summary of the legal basis of the decision.

Apparently, Prop 8 supporters were a little better at public relations than legal reasoning. I imagine (in abstract) in went something like this:

JUDGE: "All right, both parties state your case."
ANTI-PROP 8 LAWYERS: "In its discrimination against homosexuals, this law clearly violates the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution."
PRO-PROP 8 LAWYERS: "Homosexuals are yucky!"
JUDGE: "Uh, I see. But what is the legal basis for your claim?"
PRO-PROP 8 LAWYERS: "Yuckiness is...yucky?"

As is usually the case when that pesky 'rule of law' stuff gets in the way of their mindless bigotry, the far-right is now crying 'activist judge'. The federal judge in question, Vaughn R. Walker, was nominated by both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Clearly, with a pedigree like that, he must be quite the liberal firebrand.

Judge Walker, anticipating his decision might move up the legal food chain to the Supreme Court, carefully defended his decision. Lithwick's article gives a more detailed account. The part I thought was funny was his extensive citation of Justice Kennedy's(legal) opinions. Since Kennedy is the likely 5-4 swing vote when this decision comes before the Supreme Court, Kennedy would seem likely to have to perform a bit of legal contortion to justify overruling himself. A broad enough Supreme Court ruling, in turn, could even have the effect not only of overturning California gay marriage ban, but other states as well. In this is what winds up happening, then it would make the bigots and their legal ineptitude most directly responsible for the downfall of their own (currently) favorite prejudice.

Apparently, all that is necessary for good to triumph is for evil to be kinda dumb.
*

arizona's immigration law violates international law

2010-05-25T14:29:00.004+02:00

ThinkProgress

After reviewing the law, UN experts based in Geneva, Switzerland stated that SB-1070 could violate international standards that are binding in the United States. “A disturbing pattern of legislative activity hostile to ethnic minorities and immigrants has been established with the adoption of an immigration law that may allow for police action targeting individuals on the basis of their perceived ethnic origin,” the experts said. Amnesty International, whose headquarters is based in London, agreed, calling the law “cruel and misguided” and in violation of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

Amesty's point that it violates that particular treaty is a little off, legally speaking. Apparently, when it came time to ratify that particular part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the US squirmed out of it. (See here for an explanation. Short version: we basically ratified the treaty except for Articles 1-27, which is where, among other things, the rights were actually listed. Cute....)

Of course, this point doesn't refer to the Arizona law's lack of Constitutionality, morality, or decency, etc. But it does suggest a question: how much Apartheid-level international embarrassment will the current Republican coalition be able to generate before it ultimately collapses?

who can argue with that?

2010-05-23T13:24:00.003+02:00

"I really don't care what it is. I mean, it doesn't matter. I don't care."

-- Vaugh Ward (R), a congressional candidate in Idaho's first congressional district, quoted by KTVB-TV, when challenged on his debate assertion that Puerto Rico was a country.

Whoa. Just noticed it's been while since my last post. I guess it's because I don't see much of a point of arguing with the kind of people who say stuff like this. And the far-right's ongoing purge of the moderate wing of the Republican Party means there's vanishingly few people left who need convincing that these views are deeply...um...'flawed' is probably the most polite way to say it.

Over the next few weeks, I will try to put up some more philosophical posts. I've had a few ideas over the last couple of months, but pressing academic deadlines always seem to pop up.

Reader survey: Which topic would you like to hear more about: 1)'The Limits of Negative Freedom', 2)'(Video) Games as Art', 3)'Jokes About Comedy', or 4) 'Some Conservative Said Something Stupid...Again'?

I'm guessing The Daily Show has the market on that last one pretty well locked down, though.
*

teabonics

2010-03-31T23:36:00.003+02:00

Follow the title bar link for a whole bunch of other *hysterical* 'teabagger English' protest signs.

Bewhere teh dangrs of Socilism! (via BoingBoing)

Sereiusly tho, while it is right and just that there is no literacy prerequisite on political participation, bed speling does limit one's capacity to convince.....

not a team player

2010-03-26T15:27:00.003+01:00

Last post, I mentioned that conservative pundit David Frum wrote a 'funny thing' about the Republicans failed strategy in attempted to stonewall healthcare reform. Rather than compromise and trying to have some policy input, they opted for an all-or-nothing strategy and got, well, nothing. David Frum mentioned that this might have been a bad strategy.

Even more amusingly, he got fired for it. Or, you know, 'asked to resign'.

Matthew Yglesias writes (same link as above) that this sort of ideologically mandated conformity, not just on policy issues but all issues whatsoever, is "baffling". After all, if conservatives are not only not allowed to disagree among themselves on their policy goals, but also not allowed to disagree on the means to achieve those goals--even when those means prove ineffective--then how are they supposed to learn from their mistakes?

I have recently acquired a somewhat different attitude/insight to this sort of critique.

The broad trend toward offering a 'postgame analysis' of the failures of one's political opponents isn't very coherent. If one's analysis is honest, then you wind up trying to help your opponents, which is counterproductive. Or if one's analysis is dishonest (i.e., an attempt to mislead one's opponents into pursuing a bad strategy), then there's no reason they will (or should) heed your advice. There is in effect no real audience for such a critique--your side isn't helped by it and your opponent's side isn't going to listen. It's less 'preaching to the choir' than preaching to nobody.

For my part, I heartily encourage and fully support conservatives in their hidebound unwillingness to learn from their mistakes. My advice would be directed not toward conservatives, but to progressives--stop giving them advice. Since their goals are terrible, the worse they are at achieving those goals, the better. If they want to fire their own people for trying to improve their chances, shout racist garbage on TV, behave like children throwing a tantrum when they lose, nominate Sarah Palin for 2012 or pull any of the other crap that has driven independent and moderate support away from them, then that's fine by me. It's just their small way of contributing to a good cause--ours.

healthcare reform passes: roundup

2010-03-22T12:31:00.002+01:00

Here is a roundup of reactions from the papers and the pundits. There's also this funny thing David Frum wrote, about the political implications of the Republican's failed obstruction-strategy--and he's on their team.

My own two-bits is that the bill itself has bigger political implications that policy impact. The lobbyists and corrupt middle managed to gut any of the really big changes (e.g. public option) and this could have a serious impact on the bills ultimate effectiveness. For example, while the mandate is good for insurance companies (especially since there's no pubic option) and the ban on denying people coverage with pre-existing conditions is good for sick people, I'm not sure how that's going to effect rates. That is, without the public option, I'm not entirely clear on what will keep insurance companies from raising rates to unworkable levels. And whatever mechanisms are in place with surely bear the weight of massive legal action for years to come. So it could be a long time before this bill results in substantive public benefits.

However, the political implications seem huge. Thanks to the right's over-the-top hysteria, the minor policy changes the Democrats did manage to get through look like a paradigm-shattering triumph. In effect, the crazy-wing of the Republican party has been arguing the Democrats' political case for them--as in "Why yes, this is a great accomplishment." Since swing voters aren't big on details, the storyline becomes simply "Democrats Accomplish Big Thing" with of course absolutely no help at all from any Republican.

Of course, since the current crop of Republican politicians are ridiculous hypocrites without any principles and the media are goldfish with no memories, that storyline could change between now and November. My two best guesses would be either A) "We never objected to the (popular part of the bill), we just objected to the (unpopular part)." or B) "Although our own health care reform proposals included (x,y,z), we will now argue that (x,y,z) mean the End of the Freedom." (x,y,z=elements of Romneycare and McCain's 2008 platform, such as the mandate and the tax on premium plans). Or maybe they will just continue with argument C) "This bill does Terribly Horrible Things!!!! (that it doesn't actually do)." That last one, it turns out, hasn't worked so well--but it should a great fundraiser for them.

These predictions, however, should be taken with a grain of salt, insofar as I am constantly underestimating the degree of hypocrisy and ignorance the Republicans are able to muster in support of their cause (e.g., the protesters shouting 'n*gger, f*ggot, and sp*c' at Represenatives yesterday.) To those people, there's really only one rational response: 'Suck incremental reform, you jerks!'

everything you ever wanted to know about the healthcare bill but were too exhausted to ask

2010-03-21T14:59:00.004+01:00

This post at Electoral-Vote.com pretty much covers all the bases. If you're curious, I recommend it.

I would also recommend it if you happen to be misinformed about key aspects of the bill. That is, I *would*, if it weren't for the fact that misinformed people obviously don't know they misinformed. Indeed, they can't know--by definition. Stupid logic.

Which is too bad, because there are apparently a lot of you out there. For example:

"Only 15% of Americans, for instance, know that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the legislation will decrease the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years. And 55% believe the CBO has said the legislation will increase the deficit over that period."

And don't even get me started on the Great Abortion Mythology that's grown up around this thing--so much bullshit that even different groups within the Catholic Church can't even agree on whether or not it federally funds abortions. Of course, it doesn't. (Another logic tip: "pro-abortion" and "any American political entity with the word 'Catholic' in their name" are mutually exclusive predicates.)

I wonder what the debate would be like if all the lies and misinformation were magically resolved. I don't know, perhaps by some fantastical entity or entities responsible for distributing information. We could call it 'the Media', and it would be a wonderful creature with a unicorn horn and pixie wings and its smile would shoot out rainbows and....

Yeah, that would be nice.

healthcare reform in an alternate universe

2010-03-21T13:06:00.004+01:00

A friend of my wife's asked if I was "going to vote on the big healthcare thing this weekend." I thought this comment was pretty funny, and it made me think of two things:

1) A lot of people who are not American citizens have a much higher degree of familiarity with American politics than they really need.
2) The details occasionally get lost in translation.

I suppose I could starting telling people that I am a US Congressman representing 'Belgium's Fourth District' and count how many people believe me.

The misunderstanding also made me think of something slightly more serious. My wife's friend may have misunderstood American politics, but in the process she had over-estimated our level of democracy. The vast majority of American people support healthcare reform. The reason for all the current procedural conflicts and maneuvers is that they are (apparently) necessary to overcome all of the barriers we have between us and enacting the popular will. Republican objections to these procedures would be absurd even if they were not spectacularly hypocritical.

In an alternate universe, where healthcare reform in the US could be enacted by referendum, we would have had it a *long* time ago. The vote today has acquired implications well beyond the policies it contains. It is a de facto conflict between 'the people' and 'the money'--we want it, the money doesn't. The vote today will be a sign** of our real form of government. Are we a democracy or a plutocracy? The vote todays tells us, and the rest of the world, who's in charge.

* A synecdoche, if you want to get technical. Which I don't.

take that, sad children!

2010-03-19T15:32:00.002+01:00

McClatchy

WASHINGTON — Conservative talk show hosts and columnists have ridiculed an 11-year-old Washington state boy's account of his mother's death as a "sob story" exploited by the White House and congressional Democrats like a "kiddie shield" to defend their health care legislation.

Marcelas Owens , whose mother got sick, lost her job, lost her health insurance and died, said Thursday he's taking the attacks from Rush Limbaugh , Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin in stride.

"My mother always taught me they can have their own opinion but that doesn't mean they are right," Owens, who lives in Seattle , said in an interview.

Owens' grandmother, Gina, who watched her daughter die, isn't quite so generous.

"These are adults, and he is an 11-year-old boy who lost his mother," Gina Owens said. "They should be ashamed."

Aside from illustrating the utter sociopathy inherent in the current health care debate, this news story is worth reading because its the first time in a long time I've seen a journalist not just play 'he-said/she-said' but actually call one side on its lies.

In this case, scroll down toward the end of the story, where the disease that killed Ms. Owens is described. It explains quite succinctly why 'they can just go the emergency room' is an absurd claim against broader insurance coverage.

onion: nation shudders

2010-03-10T12:31:00.002+01:00

Nation Shudders At Large Block of Uninterrupted Text

WASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text.

Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words.

"Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words."
...
As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working to randomly italicize different sections of the text, hoping the italics will land on the important parts and allow everyone to go on with their day. For now, though, millions of panicked and exhausted Americans continue to repetitively search the single column of print from top to bottom and right to left, looking for even the slightest semblance of meaning or perhaps a blurb.

a note or two on the oscars

2010-03-08T12:14:00.004+01:00

A few Oscar comments:

-Wow, The Hurt Locker won Best Picture. I guess this time James Cameron will have to be content with his hundreds of millions of dollars.

-I got a chance to see Hurt Locker, and it was interesting. I think the key to understanding it is trying to figure out the protagonist's motives--which are much more complicated than they look. I'd like to watch it again to catch all the details. It's one of those movies.

-The complexity of the protagonist's motives make him a sort of cypher, where people with different political perspectives can each project their own values onto the story.

Liberal: "War is bad. Look how it drove this poor man crazy."

Conservative. "War is awesome. Look at what a badass this guy is for going back."

But just because everyone can project their own beliefs onto him, doesn't mean there no right or wrong interpretations of the film. It just means they're difficult to sort out, not impossible. What it does mean though is that The Hurt Locker could easier have garnered votes from both ends.

-If anyone were ever to tell me that the Oscars are a measure of quality, I will henceforth response with these 4 words "Oscar Winner Sandra Bullock". The Oscars are interesting not as a measure of quality, but as an indication of what Hollywood thinks about itself. And apparently they think that Sandra Bullock is super nice.

-Lastly, to clarify. I think it's good that The Hurt Locker won because its an interesting movie that more people will see now because of the awards. But the award itself doesn't make it a good movie, or verify that its a good movie, or indicate anything about the quality of any of the others. In aesthetic terms, awards shows, contests, prizes and 'best of' list are all fundamentally silly in that they attempt to quantify quality. Logically speaking, that's a category mistake--but one that I think is quite common for at least one good reason. Arguing about which movie is 'better' than another is a great way to start up a conversation. But, really, that's it.

Anyway, end random thoughts. Gotta run.

paranoid style

2010-03-06T15:37:00.005+01:00

I stumbled on this great article: "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", by Richard Hofstadter. One (of many) great lines:

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

First published in 1964, it seems like it could have been written yesterday--about that strand of sheer craziness among conservatives, both past and present. Just replace 'communist' with 'socialist', 'Jesuits' with 'Muslims', and 'Masons' with 'homosexuals', etc.--and it's like you've traveled back in time..

One thing it doesn't mention, which I would be interested in hearing the history of, is the absence of memory/'goldfish' phenomenon. To cite one of many examples:

2010--"Using budget reconciliation (to pass healthcare reform) is a diabolical evil."
2003--"Using budget reconciliation (to pass tax cuts) is perfectly all right."

I wonder if there is some sort of (historical) association between extreme political views and the ability to effortlessly disregard such blatant hypocrisy.

The article is a bit on the long side (for an internet-read, that is) but well worth it. Highly recommended.

on the assassination in dubai

2010-02-24T12:44:00.003+01:00

Apparently, a senior member of Hamas's military wing was assassinated in Dubai last month. Surrealistically, the whole thing was caught on CCTV. The actual video and a condensed discussion of all the opinions and possibilities can be found here. (Thanks to AG for the link.)

For me, the weirdest part is that I didn't hear about until after it had been in the news for quite some time. It seems like I've been (uncharacteristically) out of touch with current events lately.

Oh, and on a philosophical note: assassination can be justified within the scope of certain just-war theories. In a war, it is fairly easy to comprehend why in some circumstances a sniper shooting an officer might be preferable to killing an entire group of ordinary soldiers, if it is a means to defeat the enemy with proportionally less loss of life.

However, that's not what's going on here. Outside of a military theatre of operations (like, say, in a hotel room in Dubai) the options aren't between 'assassination and military assault' but between 'assassination and arrest'. In this case, assassination means more death, not less--and therefore cannot be justified on a just-war theory basis. The notion that a state of war justifies any and all actions (regardless of loss of life) is self-contradictory, (basically) because if there are no grounds of justification for any particular military action, there's also no justification for the state of war itself. The contradiction is between the ideas "Our war is morally justified" and "Our actions require no moral justification because we're at war."

Also, any kind of pragmatic argument is irrelevant here--that arresting this man would have been more difficult than killing him is not a moral argument. 'We had to kill him, because capturing him would have been inconvenient' doesn't fly because it conflates the descriptive claims about the circumstances with the normative claims about the action itself. This descriptive/normative conflation is quite common, but isn't coherent. It's like justifying shoplifting by saying 'I had to steal that iPod because I wanted it and didn't have enough money to pay for it.' Try that one in court.

*For my philosophically-minded readers: I realize this argument is a weird hybrid of utilitarian and Kantian claims. But it's a blog entry, not a monograph, and I wanted to make an internal critique of the sort of arguments I have heard in the media. So consider this just a summary of an argument, not the whole of my position.*

new feature: fact or onion?

2010-02-08T17:14:00.002+01:00

I know I just said I was going to lay off the politics a bit. But it this case, I can't help myself.

So, new blog feature: Fact or Onion?

It's a game. I post a link and a description, then you try to guess whether it's a real Thing That Happened or an 'Onion article'-style satire of reality. Here it goes.

Sarah Palin mocks Obama for using a Teleprompter, Prefers Writing Notes on Hand

What fun!

(Via JD's Facebook feed, the sundry internet hordes, et al.)

i'm back, sorta

2010-02-04T14:20:00.003+01:00

Hey everybody. I'm back. The plan is to shift from a semi-daily schedule to more of a weekly schedule. Also, I'll try not to write as exclusively about politics anymore. The current crop of Republicans is so far gone that it doesn't really take a lot of nuanced philosophical analysis to figure out they might be full of crap.

To wit:

Joe Republican, circa 2004: "OMG! Saying mean things about the President is TOTALLY TREASON!"
Joe Republican, current day: "OMG! The President is an ISLAMO-NAZI-COMMIE!"

It doesn't take a ranty blog post to point out the problem. One just needs a goldfish+ memory. And the smallest possible sense of proportionality. Imagine the 'crimes' committed by Bush and Obama, each according to their opposition.

BUSH'S CRIMES: Torture, Kidnapping, Assassination, Mass Murder, Abuse of Power...
OBAMA'S CRIMES: Attempt to Provide Health Care, Conspiracy to Conceal Birth Certificate...

On the field of debate where those two sets are taken as equivalent, the rational exchange of ideas is no longer possible. There's no point in making philosophical arguments in this situation. There's no one who knows how to use a phone on the other end of the line. Now, it's an exclusively political/PR problem, and rationality has nothing to do with it.

And you don't just have to take my word for it.

So, therefore, less politics.

Traditionally, this would be the perfect occasion to post my list of Oscar favorites. But I didn't get to the movies much this year--I've only seen 2 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, absolutely zero of any of the Acting nominees, and so on. That combined with my growing reluctance to pretend I can tell the difference between good Sound Editing and bad Sound Editing means that I've decided to skip the Nominations post too.

So, what's left you might ask. 'A Blog About Nothing'? My plan is to have no plan, to play it by ear, and try to write fewer more substantial posts and less reblogging/linking to other people's stuff. Stay tuned.

temporary hiatus from hiatus: obama wins nobel peace prize!

2009-10-09T12:31:00.003+02:00

I'm busting out of semi-hiatus to bring you this BREAKING NEWS:

U.S. President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for giving the world "hope for a better future" and striving for nuclear disarmament.

The decision to award one of the world's top accolades to a president less than nine months into his first term, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, came as a big surprise and provoked strong international criticism as well as praise.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples."

The first African-American to hold his country's highest office, Obama has called for disarmament and worked to restart the stalled Middle East peace process since taking office in January.

"Very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said in a citation.

I realize that the Nobel committee often awards the Peace prize just as much to *encourage* future efforts as it does to *acknowledge* past accomplishments. The problem is that most people don't know that, and so in PR terms this looks a little silly. (And yet, still not as ridiculous as giving it to Henry Kissinger....)

Maybe there's something strategic in their decision as well. If the Obama Administration winds up, for example, bombing Iran, it will be extra embarrassing for all concerned--including the Nobel Committee. But somehow I doubt that it would be a relevant part of Obama's decision making process. 'Gee, I really ought to bomb Iran from all these complicated geo-politco-strategicky reasons, but I'm gonna look really stupid doing the 'My fellow Americans' speech with that Nobel sitting on my mantle...' Maybe, also, the Nobel people have a somewhat exaggerated view of their impact.

The fact that American conservative crackpots will have a good freakout over this is probably a mark in the Committee's favor. ("Psst. Crackpots. Yeah you. I heard a totally unsubstantiated rumor that since Obama won the Peace Prize in part for his environmental policies, he's like gonna abolish NASCAR or something. Pass it on. Really, go nuts.") If the Guys Who Hate Peace hate you, then you're probably doing *something* right.

Anyway, congratulations President Obama, on your Nobel Peace Prize. I hope you earn it.
*

semi-hiatus

2009-09-01T14:20:00.005+02:00

Hey everybody. Just wanted to let you know that this blog will be going on hiatus for a while. I've just been too busy to write proper posts. It's strange, but having finished my degree, I seem to be somehow busier than I was when I was rushing toward completion--which shouldn't even be possible. The One Big Deadline has been replaced by the Hundred Little Deadlines. And while the Little Deadlines are a lot less stressful, there's a lot more of them and they take up too much time.

Anyway, if you are interested in knowing when this blog is back up, please sign up for the email list (right sidebar). When I post again, it will send you an email, and you can just unsubscribe from the list after that if you don't want the regular updates cluttering your inbox. The re-posting function on Facebook will stay active as well, so you can also get the 'end of hiatus' announcement through the news feed there too.

During this 'semi-hiatus', I might also drop a post here from time to time, if A) something really extraordinary happens and B) I have something to add that is not just a cut-and-paste of someone else's stuff. And/Or C) it's really funny. But it won't be on any kind of schedule.

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting over the years, and I'll talk to you later.

***

the bottom twenty one percent

2009-08-22T10:22:00.006+02:00

(In case it's too small to read, their signs say "Race Mixing is Communism". I guess 'miscegenation' was too many syllables for them.)

On the one hand, you got these folks...

Political Wire

A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that "only 62% of respondents reported believing that President Obama was born in the United States. 10% thought he was born in Indonesia, 7% thought he was born in Kenya, 1% thought he was born in the Philippines, and 20% weren't sure. Among Republicans 44% think he was not born here while just 36% believe that he was."

The numbers are confusing because of "people who correctly believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but who don't consider Hawaii to be part of the United States. You read that right -- 6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure..."

Yglesias

Twenty-one percent have confidence in congressional Republicans! [“to make the right decisions for the country’s future"] Relatedly, twenty-one percent of Americans believe in witches. Twenty-one percent believe they can communicate with the dead.

...and, on the other hand...

ThinkProgress

More than three out of every four Americans feel it is important to have a “choice” between a government-run health care insurance option and private coverage, according to a public opinion poll released on Thursday.

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

With the public option, the poll finds that 22% were opposed to it and 1% were unsure. Combined with the 18% who are 'sure' Obama wasn't born in the US and the 21% who have confidence in the Republicans 'to make the right decisions', (not to mention the witch thing) one might notice a certain trend in these numbers.... Either they are all just a coinicidence or one of our most important policy issues is being shaped by the stupidest 21% of the country. I'm amazed they can even find their town halls.

Well, if a public option can't pass with 77% popular support, at least we know who to thank.

***

oh, really?: terror alert levels determined by politics

2009-08-21T11:00:00.002+02:00

WASHINGTON — Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge claims in a new book that he was pressured by other members of President George W. Bush's Cabinet to raise the nation's terror alert level just before the 2004 presidential election.

Ridge says he objected to raising the security level despite the urgings of former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, according to a publicity release from Ridge's publisher. He said the episode convinced him to follow through with his plans to leave the administration; he resigned on Nov. 30, 2004.

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

contract killers

2009-08-20T12:45:00.002+02:00

NYT

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not successfully capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A.’s director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting in June to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to actually capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance in the program. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

If this kind of crap was in a movie or TV show, no one would buy it. 'Oh, sure. The US goverment's no different than the Mafia? Yeah right.'

frank rules

2009-08-19T17:04:00.000+02:00

DARTMOUTH, Mass. – Rep. Barney Frank lashed out at protester who held a poster depicting President Barack Obama with a Hitler-style mustache during a heated town hall meeting on federal health care reform.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" Frank asked the woman, who had stepped up to the podium at a southeastern Massachusetts senior center to ask why Frank supports what she called a Nazi policy.

"Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it," Frank replied.

He continued by saying her ability to deface an image of the president and express her views "is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated."

onion: congress deadlocked over how not to provide health care

2009-08-19T14:04:00.001+02:00

WASHINGTON—After months of committee meetings and hundreds of hours of heated debate, the United States Congress remained deadlocked this week over the best possible way to deny Americans health care.

"Both parties understand that the current system is broken," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday. "But what we can't seem to agree upon is how to best keep it broken, while still ensuring that no elected official takes any political risk whatsoever. It’s a very complicated issue."

"Ultimately, though, it's our responsibility as lawmakers to put these differences aside and focus on refusing Americans the health care they deserve," Pelosi added.

The legislative stalemate largely stems from competing ideologies deeply rooted along party lines. Democrats want to create a government-run system for not providing health care, while Republicans say coverage is best denied by allowing private insurers to make it unaffordable for as many citizens as possible.

onion: obama is bipolar

2009-08-18T11:56:00.001+02:00

White House Reveals Obama Is Bipolar, Has Entered Depressive Phase

great legal minds

2009-08-18T10:53:00.000+02:00

The Supreme Court recently ruled to allow a Georgia man wrongly convicted of murder a chance to challenge his conviction. The vote was 7-2, with Thomas and Scalia dissenting. Scalia's written opinion is amazing--in the 'oh my God I can't believe it even from him' sense of the term:

This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that question unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt that any claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitutionally cognizable.

Short version: since the Constitution doesn't say anything about not executing the innocent, Scalia and Thomas are all for it.

Most humans (with, you know, souls) might consider that an argument ad absurdum against a strict or narrow interpretation of Constitutional law....

perlstein: "in america, crazy is a pre-existing condition"

2009-08-16T13:42:00.002+02:00

Rick Perlstein (WP) has a nice short article on the history of what I called yesterday 'Conservative Derrangment Syndrome' (CDS, for short). There's also some funny material on prior efforts to organize/herd all those poor CDS sufferers in opposition to reform. Some highlights:

*"The Civil Rights Movement is a Soviet plot!" (A classic.)

*The Nixon White House writing fake 'letters to the editor' (that is, letters that purported to be from ordinary citizens but were in fact written by White House staffers, i.e. The Invention of Astroturf.)

*Kennedy era improvements in mental health services was actually a plot to inter conservative dissidents. (As Perlstein says, "sound familiar?")

*Adlai Stevenson being smacked with a picket sign by a crazy lady, provoking the following exchange:

Stevenson: "What's the matter, madam?...What can I do for you?"
Crazy Lady: "Well, if you don't know I can't help you."

conservative derangement syndrome

2009-08-14T13:40:00.004+02:00

What's up with the conservative freak-out on health care? A pair of op-eds published today shed some historical light on the subject. Paul Krugman (NYT) reminds us that Clinton endured a similiar hysterics from the right. Nancy Altman (LAT) goes way back a digs up nearly identical over-the-top rhetoric from Republicans objecting to Social Security in the 1930s. She also has a choice quote from FDR in response:

"A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing... Sometimes they will call it 'fascism,' sometimes 'communism,' sometimes 'regimentation,' sometimes 'socialism.' But, in so doing, they are trying to make very complex and theoretical something that is really very simple and very practical. ... I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing -- a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals. ... We remain, as John Marshall said a century ago, 'emphatically and truly, a government of the people.'"

Instead of a rational (or even semi-rational) response to policy proposals they disagree with, American conservatives seem historically inclined to hyperbole and falsehood--a hyperkinetic blend of bald-faced lies and intensely gullible delusion. Whether a particular conservative individual knows what he's saying is false or has been duped into believing it, the surreal nature of their objections as a whole makes them seem more like a group of escaped mental patients than an opposition party in a modern democracy. Instead of stating policy objections or even ethical objections on some grounds or other, conservative arguments seem dominated by obsessive fixation on imaginary problems completely divorced from reality (the president's birth certificate, death panels, and so on).

So I was wondering why that is, and I came up with a theory.

In (very) abstract terms, progressives object to the way things are. We see a problem with 'the way the world works' and we want it fixed. Conservatives, on the other hand, object to the way things might be. They do not tend to see the current situation as a problem; instead, what they object to is the proposed solution.*--for them, the problem isn't in the present but the future.

Now, I have to get a little philosophical. (But not much, I promise.) The present is real or actual, in the sense that it's tangible, you can observe it, collect data on it or experience it directly. The future, on the other hand, is always potential, in the sense that it is always over the horizon, not yet here, seen from a distance. The future is only ever experienced indirectly, through one's plans, hopes for or fears about the future. The future is experienced directly only after it arrives--when it becomes the present.

So the difference between progressives and conservatives (in this schema) is how they relate to the future. For progressives, the problem is in the present. The future is where the solution might be; we might be optimistic or pessimistic about its chances, but either way the problem is something known. For conservatives, the problem is in the future, something potential or proposed; it is unknown--and since it's unknown, they fear it.

This fear might explain the differences in how progressives and conservatives express their positions. Since progressives can 'know the problem', they can more easily give reasons and explanations of their position on a given issue. But for conservatives, it's much more difficult. The only grounds they could provide are indirect ones (similiar situations in other countries or other historical periods, for example). But this indirectness makes things tricky, not only because it is diffcult (if not virtually impossible) to find exact parallels relevant to a given situation, but also because a potential, indirect problem is less relevant to most people than ones they are actually experiencing.

"My child is sick and I don't have health insurance" is something people experience directly. "If your child were to get sick and we had a public option then she might have to wait in line like in England" is only an indirect, potential problem. For conservatives to convince people of their position, they have to convince them that a potential problem is worse than a real one. And since people tend to be much more concerned about the problems they actually have then the problems they might have, conservatives (either consciously or unconsciously) have to exagerrate these potential problems so that they seem worse than the real ones.

Either in their rhetoric or in their heads, the proposed solution to a progressive problem has to become The Worst, Most Terrifying Thing Imaginable. "So what if my kid had to wait to see a doctor? The whole problem is she can't see a doctor at all now!" "Yeah, but um, well you see, there will also be these bureaucratic 'death panels' that decided whether your grandmother lives or dies! And the United States will become a Communist dictatorship! And people will get rounded up into FEMA-organized concentration camps!" Since for conservatives to prevail, the potential risk has to outweigh the actual problem, this might help explain why in their rhetoric and in their heads, conservatives as a group tend toward this combination of hyberbole and fear, and why the otherwise sane people on the edges of this group tend so closely resemble raving lunatics. They spread and/or are inclined to believe these crazy stories because that is how they rationalize, when confronted with an obvious need, their desire to do nothing.

***

Anyway, that's my theory. I realize it's abstract and there would be many additions, exceptions and qualifications that could be made. Real politics is more complex than any schema. But when asking a question, a schema is a good place to start.

* In this schema, there would also be at least one more logical category--Reactionaries, who object to the present but argue the solution is in a return to the past. Since almost no public figure is currently advocated that Medicare, Social Security and the Veterans Administration be abolished, I'll leave aside discussion of this category for now.

One might also consider a fourth category--Revolutionaries, but in the United States, such positions have no base of popular support at all.

yglesias: countering health care misconceptions

2009-08-12T13:31:00.003+02:00

Yglesias

If you want to defeat a legislative proposal, the absolute best messaging tactic you can adopt is just to lie about. Mainstream media coverage of your lies will often treat them as credible simply because the lies are being offered. At worst, the occasional “fact check” item will slap you on the wrist, but inevitably will need to come up with some way to define the other side as being just as bad. Under no circumstances will you get headlines like “Senator So-and-So Lies About Health Care.” And so doubts get planted in people’s minds.

Thus far, nobody’s really quite sure how you beat back a concerted campaign of deception. But the White House is trying with with this Health Care Reality Check website.

Something I would underline, however, is that creating a better-informed citizenry is really something that people who care need to undertake as a personal responsibility. Once someone becomes convinced that Barack Obama has a secret plan to euthanize their mother, Obama saying “no I don’t” isn’t going to un-convince them. After all, that’s exactly what Obama would say if he did have a secret “death committee” plan. A personal message from a friend, relative, or coworker is likely to have more impact. Similarly, media organizations are much more likely to get their act together if they’re hearing from readers and viewers. You can’t just despair about the state of things, you need to actually try to do something about it.

The current health care messaging problem reminded me of the phenomena of 'repetition bias' that came to light a few years ago (for example, here). To recap, denying false claims in the media can have the paradoxical effect of reinforcing the associations underlying those claims. So repeatedly denying that there's no connection, say, between Saddam Hussein and 9/11 winds up reinforcing the original delusion in the public mind. Through repetition, the 'negation tag' of the factual claim gets dropped and your left with the association ("No connection between Hussein and 9/11" becomes "...connection between Hussein and 9/11...?").

I'll be very surprised if the same exact thing doesn't happen with the the "death committee" thing, and all the other health care misinformation the Republicans are spreading. I don't see how a 'Reality Check' website is going to work, because any mass media coverage of the website (especially television coverage) will, according to the 'repetion bias' problem, just reinforce the myths among those already inclined to believe them, and the people who choose to actually go read the website itself will most likely lack the delusions in the first place.

Personal confrontation might work. That is, people who know better using the 'fact check' information to refute any false claims made by friends, family, acquaintances, and so on (as Yglesias recommends). The problem with this is of course most people tend to associate a great deal with like-minded individuals (similarities in regional origins, economic status, education background, and so forth), and when encountering people they have fundamental disagreements with, most people tend to try to avoid conflict. The old adage 'no politics or religion at the dinner table' would be an example of this inclination.

Of course, I rarely trying to avoid these conflicts myself, but 'academics interested in politics' are hardly representative. And while I know lots of other people who won't just keep quite if someone around them says something crazy, I'm less than optimistic about the chances of this small faction being able to have an appreciable impact on the knowledge and opinions of the population as a whole.

ted rall: yes we can (pessimist's version)

2009-08-07T13:28:00.003+02:00

I only think like this about half the time. But when I do, then it's probably too apt to be funny....
*

blackwater owner (allegedly) had witnesses killed

2009-08-05T15:36:00.003+02:00

The Nation

A former Blackwater employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. The identities of the two individuals were sealed out of concerns for their safety.

These two paragraphs are the lede of the story; follow the link for the details.

Short version: the new allegations aren't just murder and weapons smuggling, but the fact that additional murders of witnesses were committed to thwart any investigation into the original criminal acts. So, the issue is not just the 'cowboy' murders of the civilians massacred, but also 'gangster' murders carried out to conceal an ongoing criminal enterprise.

Publically, I doubt this story will generate much uproar. The public (as a whole) didn't seem to mind the torture and other war crimes so much (until after the economy tanked), so I don't see how a little old fashioned organized crime style witness-killing is going to get people's attention.

But maybe federal prosecutors have other interests....Maybe.

earthers: the new conspiracy

2009-08-01T15:56:00.005+02:00

KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE--Recent polls suggest that less than half of all Republicans believe President Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States. Those that doubt his citizenship (sometimes referred to as 'birthers') claim that Obama has never produced a valid birth certificate and that the news media, the Supreme Court and even the opposition researchers from their own party all conspired to suppress this information during the 2008 campaign.

"These Birthers are clear all insane," says Dr. Leroy Messerschmitt, 59, a part-time dentist, real estate agent, and professional UFO-ologist. "The real question is: what proof is there that Obama was born on this planet?"

Dr. Messerschmitt, Founder, President and Vice-Treasurer of a non-profit organization called Earth For Earthlings! (E.F.E!) is part of a growing movement that claims Obama has yet to provide any evidence to disprove allegations that he is not a native-born Earthling. "There's been no DNA test to prove Obama is, in fact, a member of the species homo sapien and, furthermore, no examination of this evidence to definitively establish that he is not a clone-agent sent by the Lizardmen of Phaedon Prime." Being born and/on decanted on another planet would preclude Obama as a legitimate candidate for the Presidency, according to the US Constitution, says Messerschmitt.

Other remain skeptical. "Obama's a Lizardman? Ridiculous!" says Mainerd Fokker, 37, gas-station attendent. "Look at them ears, Leroy! The ears! No lizard's got ears like that I ever seen." Mr. Fokker added, "He's from Vulcan, sure as I'm standing here."

Some Americans remain undecided. "I'm not sure about this whole Earther business," says Knoxville resident Bernard Stuka, 56. "But Leroy sure knows lots about those Lizardmen. He's always talking about them. Down at the bar, on the streetcorner with that megaphone, here at the station. Down at the bar. Maybe he's got a point, I dunno."

"America needs to hear more about this important controversy," added television presenter Lou Dobbs, 63, while tapping off the gas tank of his Mercedes. "What was that website address again, Dr. Messerschmitt?"

The White House has yet to offer any comment on this story.

catch-22: health care edition

2009-07-30T13:25:00.003+02:00

via Political Irony
There's also of course the health care reform Catch-22: we will probably get some form of bipartisan health care reform bill, but, in order to become bipartisan, anything resembling real reform will have been surgically removed.

"Sure you can have reform! As industry lobbyists, there's nothing we love better than 'reform'. Reform is a nice word--it's got synergy and dynamism and tests well."

"Just one thing Congressmen. If you don't want us to deliver dump-trucks full of cash your opponent in the next election, could you maybe do us a teeny, tiny favor and make sure that this reform bill doesn't change anything? OK, thanks, bu-bye."

shoebox: sarah palin top ten

2009-07-29T12:19:00.000+02:00

THINGS SARAH PALIN MIGHT DO NOW THAT SHE’S NO LONGER GOVERNOR OF ALASKA.

1. Buy newspaper chain, make them only print nice things about her.
2. Guest star on “I’m a Former Governor! Get Me Out of Here!”
3. Sign copies of the book she “wrote.”
4. Finally get rid of refrigerators she was unable to sell to residents of her state.
5. Keep a constant vigil on that sneaky Russia from her porch.
6. Shoot new and different things from a helicopter.
7. Scrimshaw.
8. Head to Vegas to place some bet’cha’s.
9. Be the best darn grandma in the state of Alaska!
10. Get elected president.

henry louis gates arrest

2009-07-25T13:01:00.005+02:00

Here's a link to a complete rundown of the Henry Louis Gates arrest (the Harvard professor arrested for 'breaking into his own home'). It would seem as if some police officers are willing to arrest someone just for annoying them. Apparently, the law they use to accomplish this is (often) a 'disorderly conduct' statute. Here's the Massachusetts statute from the linked article:

The statute authorizing prosecutions for disorderly conduct, G.L. c. 272, § 53, has been saved from constitutional infirmity by incorporating the definition of "disorderly" contained in § 250.2(1)(a) and (c) of the Model Penal Code. The resulting definition of "disorderly" includes only those individuals who, "with purpose to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, or recklessly creating a risk thereof ... (a) engage in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior; or ... (c) create a hazardous or physically offensive condition by any act which serves no legitimate purpose of the actor.' "Public" is defined as affecting or likely to affect persons in a place to which the public or a substantial group has access.

For the sort of person who becomes a police officer because he enjoyed being a jerk or a bully in school and wanted to turn it into a career, then a law like this is ideally suited to his needs. It's a simple two step procedure:

1) Act like a jerk. Abuse your power and authority at will. You're a tough guy and everyone needs to know it!
2) If anyone talks back, challenges your authority, or gets angry with you for acting like a jerk, they are being "tumultuous" and you can arrest them for disorderly conduct. That'll learn 'em not to mess with you!

Sure, that's a grotesque caricature of justice, but hey, if ordinary citizens aren't frightened and cowed by their encounters with law enforcement officers, then they're not doing their job!* People need to learn to keep their mouths shut, not to speak out or question their superiors, and maybe bow their heads a little when The Powers That Be walk by. That's what being a citizen in a modern-democratic legal system is all about!**

* = Not actually their job.

** = No, not really. No.

oh, kindle...

2009-07-18T12:37:00.004+02:00

NYT

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.
...
Amazon appears to have deleted other purchased e-books from Kindles recently. Customers commenting on Web forums reported the disappearance of digital editions of the Harry Potter books and the novels of Ayn Rand over similar issues.

Amazon’s published terms of service agreement for the Kindle does not appear to give the company the right to delete purchases after they have been made. It says Amazon grants customers the right to keep a “permanent copy of the applicable digital content.”

Retailers of physical goods cannot, of course, force their way into a customer’s home to take back a purchase, no matter how bootlegged it turns out to be. Yet Amazon appears to maintain a unique tether to the digital content it sells for the Kindle.

“It illustrates how few rights you have when you buy an e-book from Amazon,” said Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer for British Telecom and an expert on computer security and commerce. “As a Kindle owner, I’m frustrated. I can’t lend people books and I can’t sell books that I’ve already read, and now it turns out that I can’t even count on still having my books tomorrow.”

Oh Amazon, how ironic. Who could have predicted such a shocking turn of events?

oh, yeah. i have a blog...

2009-07-14T15:39:00.002+02:00

I didn't forget. You might think finishing up a long term project like a doctorate would mean that you get an unexpected bounty of free time immediately afterwards. But no. If anything, things seemed to get busier afterwards, and I've no idea how that's even possible. It's as if the one big deadline laid eggs and hatched a hundred little ones-- less difficult to exterminate but far more annoying.

Anyhoo, regular bloggery will resume once I've squished them. And managed to find time for My Week of Sleep and Not-Thinking. 'Til then.

doctorated

2009-07-07T14:29:00.003+02:00

So I defended my doctoral dissertation yesterday. It went very well. I was able to respond to the questions clearly and with the appropriate level of confidence (not too nervous, not too glib). For the most part, the questions were good ones and there weren't any comments on trivial stuff. The reception afterwards was awesome.

Most importantly, it's all done. Thanks to all the people who sent me their well-wishes and congratulations.

For now, I'm going to go sleep for about a week then start looking for a job....

philosoraptor

2009-07-06T09:32:00.001+02:00

"Grrrrr!!!"

I think it probably eats footnotes....
*

onion: fat is dead

2009-07-03T21:09:00.003+02:00

NEW YORK—While dieters are accustomed to exercises of will, a new English translation of Germany's most popular diet book takes the concept to a new philosophical level. The Nietzschean diet, which commands its adherents to eat superhuman amounts of whatever they most fear, is developing a strong following in America.
...
"One must strive to eat dangerously as one comes into the Will to Power Oneself Thin," Nietzsche wrote. "What do you fear? By this are you truly Fattened. You must embrace your Fears, as well as your Fat, and learn to Laugh as you consume them, along with Generous Portions of Simple Salad. Remember, as you stare into the lettuce, the lettuce stares also into you."
...
"By conquering your Fear, by eating it in Heroic Portions, by laughing at that Fear which you have eaten, one avoids the Eternal Recurrence of cyclic 'Yo-Yo' Weight Loss and Weight Gain," Nietzsche wrote. "And in so doing, one transcends Thinness. One discovers that he need not dwell forever on the chill, Wind-swept Borderland between Thin and Superthin."
...
Fat Is Dead is selling briskly, as are the accompanying recipe pamphlets Beyond Food And Evil; Human, All Too Fat A Human; and Swiss Steak Zarathustra. Dieters report that they are reveling in the powerful Nietzschean weight-loss message of self-realization, transcendence, and the personal freedom to eat certain foods which are not allowed on the Atkins and South Beach diets.

I realize I said I was busy, but I figured: if it's a philosophy joke, then it doesn't really count as procrastination. And this is like dozens of philosophy jokes.

If you don't happen to get, that's totally cool. I promise they're hysterical!

"Hmmm...Swiss Steak Zarathustra...[drool]...."

military coup in honduras

2009-06-30T13:31:00.003+02:00

I'm a little busy this week (defense etc.), and this will probably be my last post for a week or so. I just wanted to mention the military coup in Honduras.

It's nice to see a military coup in Latin America that wasn't sponsored by the US. Not that military coups are good, but rather than US sponsorship adds an extra layer of shame on top of their basic evil.

[Note to FoxNews: If you would like to quote me out of context and thus 'prove' the liberal-fascist sympathies of bloggers everywhere, take the first 10 words of the last paragraph and drop the rest. It's just that easy!]

As far as US interventions in Latin America, Honduras dodged the brunt of it. We only sent the marines there about 5 times in the 20th century (in 1903, 1907, 1912, 1919, 1924-25). Later (1980s), we also sponsored the Nicaraguan Contras on Honduran territory, but that was so we could interfere with Nicaragua, so it totally shouldn't count. But really, that's it. Um, so far.

Other than "Democracy good. Military dictatorships bad." I can't think of anything else to add.

political irony: health care reform

2009-06-28T08:53:00.005+02:00

Political Irony has two great posts on healthcare I've been meaning to comment on. I'm a little busy at the moment (my dissertation defense is a week away), but I wanted to least mention them.

The first Measuring Political Corruption takes a quantitative approach to the issue of institutionalized political corruption in Congress. Basically, a public option has overwhelming popular support (in the 70s I think), presidential backing, and the Democrats (who included a public option in their party platform) have a strong majority in both houses--what's the problem? The post cites a statistical analysis correlating political donations from the health-insurance industry and opposition to the public option. By controlling for ideology (e.g. not letting Republican opposition skew the count), the study gets a very strong result (95%). The more money a politician has received from the health-insurance industry, the more likely he or she is to oppose a public option.

For Democrats, since this policy position is opposed to their professed ideology, a very popular president, and the opinion of a strong majority of their constituents, it's a good bet which direction the causation is working here. The primary 'political difficulty' in passing a public option is the corruption of our representatives. Everybody wants it, but no one can get it, because in a fight between public will and corporate money, the money wins.

The second post Like a jealous lover... goes through the industry & Republican misinformation and incoherence about the public option. There are a couple of good examples, like this one:

Now the insurance industry is trying to kill the idea of even giving you a choice of a public option. Who could be against the idea of giving you a choice of either keeping your existing health insurance, or having the option of a government-run insurance plan (especially to people who have been turned down for insurance)? We are talking about something like Medicare, but which would be available to all those people that private insurance companies refuse to cover. If we can’t have the single-payer system we want, could this be a reasonable compromise?

But like a jealous lover, the insurance industry doesn’t want you to be able to get health insurance from anyone, even if they turn you down! Take the recent argument from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley argues that a public insurance option would be so popular — that people would prefer it so much over private insurance — that it cannot be permitted. The private insurance industry is so important (at least to his campaign contributions) that he would prefer that people die rather than give them the choice of a public plan!

So basically, we can't have a public option because A) a public option would be ineffficient-socialism-fascism (etc.) and B) a public option would be too popular. If it's so tyrannical and inefficient, why would it be popular?

Note to Republicans (and corrupt Democrats): there's such a thing as too many arguments. If the arguments supporting your claim are mutually contradictory, then that's a good indication that they are all rubbish. If you keep changing them, it's a sign of desperation. You guys tried the same thing with the Iraq War.

"Why are we invading Iraq?"
"Um, Weapons of Mass Destruction! No, wait...uh...Overthrow Evil Dictator! Um...the terrorists will win! ... Support the troops?!... Iran will invade? ... Anyone still there?"

"So why can't we have real health care reform?"
"Socialism! Communism! Fascism! Communo-fascism or something! It's not popular! It's too popular! Uh...Obama-ism!"

Yeah, right.

transformers: the irony

2009-06-28T08:10:00.003+02:00

Charlie Jane Anders (io9) seems to have invented a new genre of cultural criticism: the ironic movie review. His take on Transformers 2 is hysterical.

The Highlights:

Critical consensus on Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is overwhelmingly negative. But the critics are wrong. Michael Bay used a squillion dollars and a hundred supercomputers' worth of CG for a brilliant art movie about the illusory nature of plot.
...
Since the days of Un Chien Andalou and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, filmmakers have reached beyond meaning. But with this summer's biggest, loudest movie, Michael Bay takes us all the way inside Caligari's cabinet. And once you enter, you can never emerge again. I saw this movie two days ago, and I'm still living inside it. Things are exploding wherever I look, household appliances are trying to kill me, and bizarre racial stereotypes are shouting at me.
...
So, to sum up: Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen is one of the greatest achievements in the history of cinema, if not the greatest. You could easily argue that cinema, as an artform, has all been leading up to this. It will destabilize your limbic system, probably forever, and make you doubt the solidity of your surroundings. Generations of auteurs have struggled, in vain, to create a cinematic experience as overwhelming, and as liberating, as ROTF.

Women as well as men, everyone watching this film will feel the dissolution of all their certainties, all their illusory grasp on the world... but after you fall into a brazen despair that the walls of reality have become toxic ice cream of a million flavors, you will gasp with a greater realization: that once the world is reduced, forever, to a kaleidoscope of whirling shapes, you are totally free...

some guy died!

2009-06-26T23:29:00.005+02:00

So, some guy named 'Michael Jackson' died. Personally, I had never heard of him, but apparently he was very important. Probably some sort of world-historical political figure or religious leader. Maybe a scientist who made some important discovery. King of something, maybe.

In any case, important enough to pre-empt all television programming today. Across the entire planet. The internets have twittered and googled themselves to utter collapse in a fury of Jacksonomania. If he rose from the dead a few days from now, I think it would get about the same amount of coverage.

As usual, The Onion has the truthiest story.

onion: twitter creator on iran

2009-06-25T11:09:00.001+02:00

Onion

SAN FRANCISCO—Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran. "Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them," said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation. "When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means—such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime—I couldn't believe they'd ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless." Dorsey said he is already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it.

aslan: iran's supreme revolutionary

2009-06-24T11:41:00.004+02:00

Another great piece by Reza Aslan here. I recommend it if you're curious about the details of Iran's political structure, relative to the current crisis.

nixon the lovable

2009-06-24T11:32:00.003+02:00

via Political Wire

"There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."

-- President Nixon, in newly-released tapes of Oval Office conversations

I think it's pretty funny how vanishingly few Americans would agree with the entirety of this sentiment. And Nixon wasn't so well-liked to begin with.

This sort of idiosyncratic political view might also explain Dick Cheney's degree of popularity. "Gay marriage is ok and there's no policy problem that can't be solved by a tyrannical executive authority and/or endless war against everybody."

tsa: problem solved

2009-06-21T13:24:00.002+02:00

The problem: An airline passenger is detained by the TSA for carrying a large but not illegal ammount of cash. The money is from the sale of merchandise in support of a political candidate.

The other problem: The passenger records the ensuing conversation on his cell phone.

Officer: Why do you have this money? That's the question, that's the major question.

Passenger: Yes, sir, and I'm asking whether I'm legally required to answer that question.

Officer: Answer that question first, why do you have this money.

Passenger: Am I legally required to answer that question?

Officer: So you refuse to answer that question?

Passenger: No, sir, I am not refusing.

Officer: Well, you're not answering.

Passenger: I'm simply asking my rights under the law.

[The officers can be heard saying they will involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration, and appear to threaten arrest, saying they are going to transport (the man) to the local police station, in handcuffs if necessary.]

The solution:

Officer: So these are campaign contributions for Ron Paul?

Passenger: Yes, sir.

Officer: You're free to go.

***

Moral of the story: If you find yourself being harassed by airport security, don't mention anything about 'rights'. They hate that. From another point in the conversation:

Officer: You want to play smartass, and I'm not going to play your f**king game.

Instead, try to act as Republican as possible. Or maybe Libertarian (as long as you're not that hippy-kind of Libertarian). An 'NRA Forever!' t-shirt or similar attire might also work in a pinch.

***

john hodgman: president nerd

2009-06-20T15:21:00.003+02:00

(via Political Irony)

I liked this speech. There's the obvious appeal of the subject matter, but also the indirect criticism. Hodgman talks about the concerns 'nerds' have about Obama ('Is he really the first nerd president? etc.'), but Hodgman frames those concerns in the language of liberal disappointment with Obama's more 'moderate' policy positions.

If on one level, it's just a bunch of silly, obscure jokes. On another level, the jokes mock their own obscurity. For example, there's the moment where Hodgman refers to Obama as the "Kwisatz Haderach". The joke gets two laughs: one from people who know what the hell a Kwisatz Haderach is, another when Hodgman mocks the people who were geeky enough to know what that is. (For the record, I laughed both times.) That sort of layered humor would be clever enough on its own.

But then there's the third layer, where Hodgman's 'are you nerdy enough?' questions are couched in the same language as the 'are you liberal enough?' questions about Obama (habeus corpus, transparency, torture, etc.). At that level, Hodgman seemed to be perfectly serious. He gets a 'speaking truth to power' moment, but frames it ironically. The irony isn't directed at Obama but at liberal expectations about Obama. (Think of the contrast with Steven Colbert's 'truth to power' approach when giving the same speech, where Bush himself was the target of the jokes.) It's one of the most complicated political speeches (in terms of its layers of meaning) that I'm aware of. Certainly more complicated than your average est of White House Correspondents Dinner jokes (those featuring, for example, a rapping Karl Rove).

Hodgman starts out the speech talking about how he is the 'greatest public speaker'. Obvious irony: he's standing a few feet from Obama. Less obvious irony: he is in fact surprisingly good. For a nerd, anyway....

ted rall: iranian elections

2009-06-19T13:09:00.003+02:00

ebert: the o'reilly procedure

2009-06-18T13:29:00.003+02:00

Roger Ebert has a nice essay up at the Chicago Sun-Times. It's obstensibly about Bill O'Reilly, but has more general implications about contemporary news and media. The line worth the price of admission: "If nuclear war breaks out, the average citizen of a Western democracy will be better informed about Brittney Spears than the causes of their death."

The tone of the essay is a bit 'old man pines for the good-old-days', which was initially off-putting. But then I realized it was in fact a good rhetorical tactic. O'Reilly's audience (and ideological conservatives in general), tend to skew older, relative to the population as a whole. So his 'good old days' argument isn't directed as much at younger like-minded liberals, but rather at O'Reilly's own target audience. Very clever.

There's also a comparison between O'Reilly's rhetoric and classic propaganda techniques toward the end. The same point applies to many other pundits as well (Malkin, Goldberg, Beck, Limbaugh, et al.). Anyway, I highly recommend the essay.

notes on iranian election protests

2009-06-17T12:00:00.002+02:00

1.) A point of clarification: The Iranian judiciary (Supreme Leader, Guardian Council) controls (among other things) foreign policy, the military, and any nuclear development--basically all the policies relevant to America's strategic interests in the region. The Iranian executive (president) does have control over some domestic policies (subject to judiciary approval, etc.) So while who gets to be president of Iran is of little importance to the US government, it is important for the people of Iran. Hence, massive protests.

2.) There's a long list of evidence that suggests electoral fraud. Given the Iranian political structure, I really wonder why the powers-that-be would bother. The judiciary pre-approves all the presidential candidates and could always overrule any domestic reforms they didn't like. They would seem to have little to gain by rigging the election. As a matter of interests, it would seem that only Ahmadinejad and his supporters would have anything to gain from the fraud. This would explain why the fraud seemed so last minute and half-assed (e.g. Ahmadinejad suddenly winning in urban areas, whereas previously his base of support has been mostly rural; winnning across ethic lines, whereas previously Iranian voting has been quite divided across different ethnic groups, etc.)

Of course, there's still the possibility that there are some domestic political or symbolic factors that I'm missing. It's quite possibile that the elections maintained the illusion that Iran was an "Islamic Republic", and that by rigging the election Ahmadinejad has stripped away the "Republic" part in the eyes of the Iranian people. If I was in the judiciary, I'd be really pissed off at him right now. "You moron! You're going to blow the whole deal!" This might also explain why they were so quick to acknowledge the possibility of fraud and allow a 'partial recount' and so on.

3.) The fraud and the protests put Iran's leaders in a real pickle. Either they crack down on the protests and ignore the fraud, thus tacitly admitting Iranian democracy is an illusion, or they give in to the protestor's demands, acknowledge the fraud, and overtly admit that Iranian democracy is an illusion. The second would seem to be the best strategic move for them, because they could then claim to have 'restored' Iranian democracy. But from what I can tell, the judges seem more personally and symbolically symapthetic to Ahmadinejad's more conservative posturing (some members of the Guardian Council campaigned for him). So their practical interests would seem to be in conflict with their symbolic ones. And I don't know nearly enough about domestic Iranian politics to even guess which option they would pick.

reza aslan: king of the talking heads

2009-06-15T10:45:00.004+02:00

This exchange between Reza Aslan and Chris Matthews is pretty funny. You probably have to read the whole thing to get the right impression, but I'll try to summarize and highlight. Basically, Aslan deflates all the standard talking points on Iran, and Matthews gets amusingly confused when Aslan doesn't play along.

MATTHEWS: Well, wait a minute. I`m getting a disconnect. We`re going to have another voice on this in a couple shows from now, or pretty soon, because people who care about Israel ... Americans who watch this issue are afraid, and they`re not just Netanyahu types or Likudniks on the far right -- are afraid that the government of Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. You say it`s not?

ASLAN: Israel has been saying that Iran is a year away from nuclear weapons for 10 years. So at a certain point, we`re going to have to start questioning Israel`s intelligence and perhaps trust our own CIA, which has said that Iran is many, many, many years away from developing a nuclear weapon.

and of course

MATTHEWS: ... right now, I wouldn`t -- I would take it quite to heart that me or my kids or all of us would end up the target zone for Ahmadinejad the minute he has his finger on that button.

ASLAN: First of all, Ahmadinejad doesn`t even have the national security clearance to even look at Iran`s nuclear portfolio, let alone make any decisions about it. The president [of Iran] doesn`t have national security briefings in that regard.

MATTHEWS: Right.

Matthews's 'finger one the button' remark suggests one of two things. Either he lacks even a basic 'encyclopedia level' familiarity with Iran's political system (Supreme Leader=guy in charge) or he was pretending not to because that's what everyone else does. In either case, getting schooled on it by a sqeeky-voiced pundit half his age doesn't make him look so good.

The Neocons of course have long pretended they don't understand Iran's political system, because Ahmadinejad is such a great target. He says deeply stupid and pointlessly aggressive things all the time. (He's a lot like Iran's Dubya, actually.) But when it looked like Mousavi might win, they suddenly remembered that the real power over foreign policy in Iran lay elsewhere. After Ahmadinejad 'won' the election, it was back to talking about him as if he were a threat. They publically present a position that is obviously incoherent, and the talkshow hosts rarely if ever seem to call them on it.

It's a little game they play. Talking about Big Scary Iran is the Neocon's favorite issue, and talking about Big Scary things gets your talk show better ratings. When Aslan doesn't play along, Matthews seems befuddled. Doesn't this kid know how TV works?

***

Aslan is the author of No God But God, an excellent short introduction to Islam I highly reccommend for those who are interested. Aslan is also the name of the lion in the Chronicles of Narnia. No relation.

***

nyt: america's red ink

2009-06-13T10:55:00.004+02:00

A reader sent me this article from the New York Times. It's a well-reasoned take on the budget deficit. (Sounds thrilling I know, but bear with me.)

There are two basic truths about the enormous deficits that the federal government will run in the coming years.

The first is that President Obama’s agenda, ambitious as it may be, is responsible for only a sliver of the deficits, despite what many of his Republican critics are saying. The second is that Mr. Obama does not have a realistic plan for eliminating the deficit, despite what his advisers have suggested.

It's interesting because rather than a typical 'he said/she said', they actually look at the numbers.

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

They divide that two trillion up, assigning blame not by pointing fingers but by percentage. Four factors are mentioned:

'the business cycle'=37%
Bush’s policies=33%
Bush policies that Obama extended(e.g. tax cuts, Iraq War)=20%
Obama's new policies=10%

In the category of Obama's new policies, 7% is from the stimulus bill and only 3% is from his proposals on health care, education, energy, etc.

After that breakdown, the article quotes an expert and then runs through the policy implications (I'm not going to go through all those, but you can read them yourself if you're interested). Personally, I like the quote:

"Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it."

For me, the interesting part is what the Times is too polite to mention. If you (generously) set aside 'the business cycle', and assign Obama all the blame for the continued Bush policies, then you get approximately an even split, with Bush responsible for 33% of the deficit and Obama for 30%.

At the same time, most of Obama's 'proportional responsiblity' for the deficit are for policies that the Republicans either oppose fixing or they themselves caused. They complain about the deficit, but they oppose repealing the tax cuts and withdrawing from Iraq. They oppose the stimulus bill, but the reason the stimulus bill was necessary in the first place was the deregulation of the financial sector that they insisted upon for at least a decade. For all the conservative caterwauling about Obama's dreaded 'socialism' (on health care, the environment and so on), you'd think the money that's going to be spent on new social programs made up more than 3% of the problem.

It's not just that I think the Republican's positions are wrong; it's that they're incoherent. Even if one agreed with all of their basic values and assumptions, the positions the Republican Party are currently advocating make no sense. They complain about the deficit, but they also oppose policy changes that would goes the furthest in reducing the deficit. And the solution they do support (blocking new social programs) is literally the least of our problems. Analogy time: It's like complaining--simultaneously--that your house is on fire and that the firefighters are wasting water. After you started the fire yourself.

The further irony is that the fact that the Republican Party's current policy positions make no sense should have little-to-no impact on their political performance. Sure, they're unpopular now, but I seriously doubt that's because the majority of the electorate has noticed any contradiction. As a whole, we're not very good at that, policy-wise (e.g. the 'Bear Patrol' problem).

My guess is just the opposite is the case: Republican incoherence should ultimately improve (or at least shore-up) their chances at the polls. Their mindless opposition to any coherent policy makes it difficult to get anything done. If nothing gets done, that supports their vague claim that government is not the solution. Republican policy is a self-fulfilling prophecy with a perverse incentive: 'the worse we are at our jobs, the better our chances of keeping them.'

Democrats, of course, have the opposite incentive. If you advocate government-based solutions to social problems, every once in a while those social programs have to work. And the fiscal deficit-catastrophe would make that kinda difficult. So while they might not be able to solve the problem, at least they have an incentive to....

UPDATE: Speaking of the Bear Patrol....

iranian idol

2009-06-12T12:02:00.003+02:00

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranians voted Friday on whether to keep hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in power for four more years or replace him with a reformist more open to loosening the country's Islamic restrictions and improving ties with the United States.

The rowdy election campaign, which lasted less than a month, electrified many voters here and reshaped how the world sees Iran's political process. The mass street demonstrations, polished campaign slogans and televised debates more closely resembled Western elections than the scripted campaigns in most other Middle Eastern countries.

Iran's cell phone text messaging system was down on Friday. Many Iranians, especially young voters — many of whom favor Ahmadinejad's top opponent — frequently used text messages to spread election information quickly to friends and family.

Mir Hossein Mousavi, who is in a neck-to-neck battle with Ahmadinejad, accused Iran's telecommunications provider, which is owned by the government, of shutting the system and alleged that some of his representatives were barred from entering polling stations to monitor the vote.

...

Election fever took hold of Iran, intensifying dramatically over the final week. Wild, late-night street demonstrations felt more like parties, halting traffic and giving Tehran's youth a rare chance to dance in the streets.

Stakes are high in Friday's vote, both domestically and internationally, even though the real power rests with the unelected Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He wields control over every major decision, and the president's powers are limited by the ruling clerics.

Above is part of an AP story on the Iranian elections. The paragraph where they explain the president of Iran has no real power is originally the seventh one. Way to go AP.

With this lack of real power combined with the text messages and youthful enthusiasm, I noticed that Iran's quasi-democratic system has eeire parallels with American Idol. The other title I toyed around with was "Iran's Next Top Guy Who-is-Next-to-but-not-quite-at-the-Top" was a bit too awkward, but for all I know could be quite poetic in Farsi...

Simon Cowell is like Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Paula Adbul, Randy Jackson, and that other one are like the Guardian Council. Sure the people get to vote, but only after the judges decide in advance which candidates are acceptable. In a quasi-democracy, elections keep the people entertained, but the real power lies elsewhere.

In other forms of quasi-democracy, the country has regular, free elections, but if the politicians do something they don't like, the military steps in and replaces them. I think Turkey, Pakistan, and Thailand have all fit this description, at least in the recent past. Sort of like the Miss California pagent, actually.

Some other countries wind up quasi-democracies through no fault of their own. Like say when a popularly elected Latin American leader does something the US doesn't like and we sponsor a coup. (Which of course almost never happens, wink-wink.) A little like a student government, where the Class President gets to pick things like what color decorations to have at the prom, but for anything that might actually matter, the principal runs the show.

Quasi-democracy sucks. Thank Baby Jesus I'm an American, born in the Land of the Free. No pre-approved candidates here. No, siree. In America, the Real Democracy, anyone with access to tens of millions of dollars is free to run for president.

holocaust memorial shooting roundup

2009-06-11T13:37:00.004+02:00

[Friend] De Nugent called [Holocaust Memorial Gunman] von Brunn a genius but described the shooting as the act of "a loner and a hothead."

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."

Dude, three things. 1) You guys don't need any help looking bad. 2) "Responsible"? Is that like keeping the Big Killing Spree That Will Show Them All at the fantasy and/or planning stages only? 3) If a guy who thought it was a really, super-good idea to make "a legal, non-violent citizen's arrest" of the Federal Reserve Board (while armed to the teeth) was a genius, then what are you?

WSJ

Federal law enforcement authorities Wednesday cited their previous warnings about the potential danger of a rise in violence by right-wing extremists. The museum shooting follows the murder May 31 at a Kansas church of Dr. George Tiller, who performed late-term abortions. The FBI first began trying to consolidate and gather additional intelligence on right-wing extremists late last year. But both the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were sharply criticized for such efforts.

...I hope that everyone who mau-maued the Department of Homeland Security for expressing concern about this kind of thing feels appropriately ashamed of themselves.

Somehow, I don't see those critics bringing up their earlier complaints any time soon....

UPDATE: via ThinkProgress

The Southern Poverty Law Center describes de Nugent as “a frequent contributor to virulently anti-Semitic and racist online forums,” who was banned from the racist online forum Stormfront after he apparently threatened a moderator who requested that he “tone down the implied threats of violence in his posts.”

Apparently, 'the responsible white supremacist' confines himself to threats of violence so extreme that he gets kicked off his Neo-Nazi forum for threatening other the Nazis. The guy is too extreme for fascism and he claims to think that von Brunn is even worse? What do you call the sort of evil that even the evil call evil? The mind boggles.

former vice-presidential candidate LCD

2009-06-09T22:28:00.001+02:00

via Political Wire

Palin: We are the only state with a negative tax rate where we don't have any income, sales or property tax statewide, and yes we have a share of our oil resource revenue that goes back to the people that own the resources. Imagine that.

Hannity: And it went up higher since you've been the governor and you negotiated with the oil companies. That all went up so people get a bigger check.

Palin: There was a corrupt tax system up there and we had a couple of lawmakers end up in jail because of the tax system that was adopted so we cleaned it up and said we wanted a fair and equitable share of the resources that we own, and the people will share in those resource revenues that are derived.

(A few minutes later...)

Palin: If Americans aren't paying attention, unfortunately our country could evolve into something that we do not even recognize. Certainly that is so far from what the founders of our country had in mind for us.

Hannity: Socialism?

Palin: Well... that is where we are headed.

senator LCD

2009-06-08T12:55:00.004+02:00

Even the lowest common denominator needs representation...

I give you the tweets of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA):

Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a "hammer" u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL

Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us"time to deliver" on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

The prez is meetin w Finance and Help Demo bc doesn't appear they on same page Finance working biparty HELP more partisan. Where Prez land?

My office softball team beat my Chr Baucus softball team last nite

Even accounting for the texting shorthand (e.g. 'u' for 'you'), these seem a little off. Perhaps a little TUI (Twittering Under the Influence)? Maybe this one explains it:

Met with new crop of sumer intrns today 1st of 2 6 week sessions I offer in DC office If ur interested in being an intrn ck my website.

Senator, for the sake of the dignity of your office (...), I highly recommend having one of your interns do your tweeting for you. Don't not attempt to operate any small electronic devices without an intern or one of your great grandchildern present. Please leave it to the professionals.

prison reform loop

2009-06-07T12:46:00.005+02:00

Slate

Here are the facts about America's prisons, according to [Senator Jim] Webb:

The United States, with 5 percent of the world's population, houses nearly 25 percent of the world's prisoners. As Webb has explained it, "Either we're the most evil people on earth, or we're doing something wrong." We incarcerate 756 inmates per 100,000 residents, nearly five times the world average. At this point, approximately one in every 31 adults in the United States is in prison, jail, or on supervised release. Local, state, and federal spending on corrections now amounts to about $70 billion per year and has increased 40 percent over the past 20 years.

Webb has no problem locking up the serious baddies. In fact, he wants to reform the justice system in part so that we can incapacitate the worst of the worst. But Webb wants us to recognize that warehousing the nation's mentally ill and drug addicts in crowded correctional facilities tends to create a mass of meaner, more violent, less employable people at the exits....

The Justice Department estimates that 16 percent of the adult inmates in American prisons—more than 350,000 of those incarcerated—suffer from mental illness; the percentage among juveniles is even higher. And 2007 Justice statistics showed that nearly 60 percent of the state prisoners serving time for a drug offense had no history of violence and four out of five drug arrests were for drug possession, not sales. Webb also reminds us that while drug use varies little by ethnic group in the United States, African-Americans—estimated at 14 percent of regular drug users—make up 56 percent of those in state prison for drug crimes. We know all of this. The question is how long we want to avoid dealing with it.

Senator Webb's solution to this dire problem: "the National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009—which establishes a blue-ribbon commission to review the nation's entire prison system." A committee? Really? Oh, a blue-ribbon committee! Why didn't you say so!

More seriously, it takes real political courage to address an issue like prison reform. Thanks to the general superficial understanding of the purpose and function of the criminal justice system, any politician who advocates prison reform can be virtually guaranteed to be attacked as 'soft on crime' by his opponent when he or she comes up for re-election. It's a sort of 'lowest common denominator' problem: any argument for prison reform has to be articulated not in terms of what is humane or effective, but in terms of the callous self-interest of the least informed, least engaged segment of the electorate. Webb seems to be aware of this problem, but I think he has his work cut out for him.

WEBB: "Our current prison system is inhumane and inefficient."
LCD: "No do good for Bad People! Bad People is bad!"
WEBB: "Yes, but as Dostoyevsky once said, 'The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.'"
LCD: "Dostoyevsky is Russian. Russian is Commie! Commie-commie-commie!"
WEBB: "Er...when we treat the...uh...Bad People badly...it reflects poorly on our own humanity...."
LCD: "Bad People is bad!"
WEBB: "Yes, but the mass incarceration of a significant portion of our population is also a grossly inefficient way to deal with the problem of crime."
LCD: "Bad People is bad! All go jail!"
WEBB: "Even if this inept solution makes the problem worse? Uh...makes the Bad People even worse? Even if it produces more crime, especially more violent crime, than it ultimately prevents?"
LCD: "More Bad People go jail too. All go jail!"
WEBB: "Humanity aside, the costs of such an approach are unsustainable in the long-term."
LCD: "Government fix. Government build more jail."
WEBB: "This will require a greater and greater allocation of public resources over time. Uh...taxes go up."
LCD: "TAXES BAD!!! NO LIKE TAXES!!!"
WEBB: "Yes, well, reform our prison system will reduce crime and save money in the long run."
LCD: "You mean less Bad People and less TAXES?"
WEBB: "Yes."
LCD: "OK. Me like idea now."
WEBB: "Good. We can start with some initial funding to improve basic conditions and less prison time for first time, non-violent offenders...."
WEBB'S NEXT OPPONENT: "Look out! Bad Democrat raise TAXES! Be nice to Bad People!"
LCD: "TAXES BAD! BAD PEOPLE BAD!!! NOOOOOOOO!"

So it goes.

racists are idiots: meta-racism

2009-06-06T15:43:00.005+02:00

So the National Review has this cover illustration. I'll let Yglesias explain first:

It seems that what happened was that, as conservatives are wont to do, they tried to do something that would be racist, but also arguably not racist. Hence, instead of depicting a Latina with a racist stereotyped image of a Latina, they depicted her with a racist stereotyped image of an Asian. It’s hard to know exactly what to make of that.

I've got a theory. By confusing their stereotypes, the National Review has inadvertently stumbled upon an entirely new form of stupidity: meta-racism.

Racism of course involves an overgeneralization from individuals to groups--in other words, thinking in stereotypes. The same mental impairment applies to other forms of biogtry as well.

Meta-racism, on the other hand, involves an overgeneralization from particular stereotypes to stereotypes in general. In effect, the meta-racists not only thinks of people outside his own group in stereotypical terms, they can't even keep their stereotypes straight. Instead of the average bigot's 'those people are lazy' and 'those other people are good with money' and so forth, you get a confused mismash of all the out-group stereotypes rolled into one. For example, "People who are not white, male, heterosexual, protestants are all stupid, lazy, over-emotional, bad drivers who don't speak good English and take orders from the Vatican but are good with money, interior decorating, and terrorism."

Like standard racism, they probably consider stereotyping a real time-saver. But meta-racists spare themselves even more time and confusion with one big 'not them' universal, all-puporse stereotype. That way, there's not as much to keep track of, hate-wise. However, when articulating their arguments, meta-racists tend to sound quite confused....

"Jewish people are too emotional to have positions of authority. What a crisis occurs when it's their time of the week (Saturday)?"
"Women are waging a war on Christmas. What are they complaining about? They've got their own holidays. Um, Mother's Day and whatnot."
"Hispanic marriage is an abomination unto the Lord!"
"Homosexuals are trying to sneak into our country and steal our jobs."

Meta-racism: For when regular racism just isn't stupid enough.

cranky goldfish

2009-06-05T12:37:00.004+02:00

via Political Irony

...The main course is Manuel Miranda, who is leading the effort to get Republicans to filibuster the confirmation of Sotomayor. Ironically, Miranda founded the National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters. Um, but that was back when the Republicans were in control and the Democrats were threatening to filibuster Bush’s judicial appointments. At that time, the Republicans, including Miranda, were saying that judicial filibusters were unconstitutional. I guess they changed their minds....

They change their minds so often, sometimes I wonder whether many of them even have minds at all. I mean, do they realize they're contradicting themselves and just don't care? This would just be a cynical, transparent attempt at manipulation. (Not too bright either, since THE INTERNET REMEMBERS when you said the opposite thing. And The Daily Show. )

On the other hand, they could believe their own stories, and formulate some elaborate rationalization for the contradiction that they can whisper to themselves over and over. That way, they don't have to admit to themselves the absurdity of their claims. This is less stupid than insane.

Whatever the underlying cause, the public face of American conservativism seems to change its mind often. It's like they have incredibly short memories, like a tank full of very cranky goldfish. Just look how fast they all forgot that 'Criticizing the President is Treason' stuff and switched to 'That Socialist-Liberal-Fascist stole my car dealership!'

I can't wait for all those old 90s classics to come back. The first time Obama has to engage in a military action they don't like, we'll get to hear "America can't be the policeman of the world!" again and again.

spot the terrorist

2009-06-02T12:29:00.004+02:00

Scott Roeder shoots abortion provider Dr. George Tiller. (AP)

Tiller, 67, was serving as an usher during morning services Sunday when he was shot in the foyer of Reformation Lutheran Church, police said. The gunman fired one shot at Tiller and threatened two other people who tried to stop him.

The suspect, identified by one law enforcement agency as Scott Roeder, was taken into custody some 170 miles away in a Kansas City suburb about three hours after the shooting.
...
Roeder, 51, was returned to Wichita and was being held without bail on one count of first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Formal charges were expected to be filed Monday.

Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shoots two soldiers outside a recruiting center in Arkansas. Private Quinton Ezeagwula was wounded and Private William Long was killed. (AP)

Thomas said Muhammad would be charged with capital murder, plus 16 counts of committing a terroristic act. Thomas said most of those additional counts resulted from the gunfire occurring near other people.

Both of these gunman are domestic terrorists. These acts are not simply brutal murders but brutual murders with the clear intent of public intimidation, directed against abortion providers and military recruiters respectively.

But I can't figure out why one would be charged as a murderer and the other as a murderer and a terrorist. If firing 'near other people' was the standard, then firing a gun in the middle of a church service would seem to qualify.

Well, I should say more specifically I can't figure out the legal reasoning that explains the difference in the charges. The practical reasons for the difference are obvious.

the bush fallacy

2009-05-30T12:07:00.004+02:00

Via Political Irony, I heard about the following study. Here's the abstract:

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

Now normally I would be one of the first people to point out when a conservative says something stupid. However, if there's one thing I hate more than stupid conservatives, it's bad science. I can think of several problems with this sort of study.

1.) Selection bias. According to the abstract, the analysis of individuals was conducted using college students. But this sample completely excluded older conservatives. So, for example, the study contains no information (at this level) on older people who might be conservatives out of self-interest (e.g. business owners, professionals like doctors and lawyers, etc.) One could easily hypothesize that such conservatives would actually have higher correlations with cognitive ability insofar as higher levels of education are correlated with economic success. If this hypothesis was correct, then the results of the study of only college students would get the wrong answer.

A famous example of this kind of problem is a telephone poll conducted during a presidential election during the Great Depression. That poll predicted that the Republican candidate was going to win by a landslide, but turned out to be totally incorrect because all of the poorer people who voted for Roosevelt were too poor to have phones. It's Statistics 101.

2.) Distributive Fallacy. At the national level of analysis, and as far as I can tell from the abstract, there's no mention of the nature of the distribution of cognitive ability among conservatives. As far as I can tell without access to the study itself (it's behind a paywall), the study seems to treat 'conservatives' as if they were some kind of single, uniform block. However, that is not necessarily correct. Given a conservative affection for authority, one could easily hypothesize a two-tiered distribution. That is to say, it could be that there is one large group of conservatives at one end of the scale who have below-average intelligence (those who like to submit to authority) and one smaller group of conservatives at the other end who have much higher intelligence (elites who prefer to be in authority--intellectuals, politicians, business leaders, etc.) Now, if conservative intelligence was distributed in this way, taking the average of the entire population of conservatives as a single group might produce a lower result overall, but completely miss the existence of the elite portion of the group. In this case, the stupidity of someone like George W. Bush would be an outlier, not representative of conservatives as a whole.

One could also call this "the Bush Fallacy": Just because a conservative politician is stupid, it doesn't follow that all the people who supported him are also stupid. They could have noticed the stupidity but supported him or her for other reasons. This leads me to my third point.

3.) Attribution Errors. I think that the underlying reasoning behind this sort of study is fundamentally flawed from the beginning. Just because conservative elites (politicians, intellecturals, columnists, etc.) might say stupid or obviously fallacious things, one can't infere that they actually believe these things. Just because a conservative politician pretends that climate change doesn't exist, he or she could be saying that simply because he wants to avoid environmental regulation, not because he doesn't understand the science. Furthermore, if my early 'Authoritarian hypothesis' is correct, then one would also expect conservative elites to say stupid things not because they are stupid, but because they are trying to appeal to the stupidity of their base. The relative success of this strategy over the last 40 years would suggest that it is a serious mistake to underestimate them. So it's not just the reasoning of this study that's flawed, but the hypothesis that it's based on.

4.) Correlation is Not Causation. Even if there were a substansive correlation between conservativism and low intelligence, this would not mean that conservatism is the cause of the stupidity or vice versa. Since conservative voters in the US tend to be rural voters, and rural voters tend to have lower rates of average education, any correlation found between conservatives and lower-than average results on intelligence tests could just be a secondary side-effect of that relationship. Without controlling for other relevant variables, the presence of a correlation tells us virtually nothing. It could easily be social factors, or even simple geography, that is at work here, rather than ideology.

Notably, this is the same statistical fallacy that racist statisticians have used to try to claim a correlation between certain races and lower intelligence. These statisticians ignore factors such as the relative difference in socio-economic status among different races in order produce their conclusions. These sorts of poorly controlled studies usually tell you more about the people who conduct them than about the reality of their results.

So, while there are lots of stupid conservatives (Bush, Palin, et al.) and many conservatives say stupid things, it's a mistake to make generalizations about an entire ideological group based on these individuals and instances. We might think their ideas are deeply flawed, but they should not on that account be personally underestimated.

philosophy voltron!

2009-05-29T20:18:00.005+02:00

In response to comments, I give you...philosophy Voltron.

Well, more specifically, German Idealism Voltron.

Hunk (Left Leg/Yellow Lion)= K.L. Reinhold

Sven (Right Leg/Blue Lion)=F.H. Jacobi

Pidge (Left Arm/Green Lion)=F. Schelling

Lance (Right Arm/Red Lion)=J.G. Fichte

Captain Keith (Head/Black Lion)=G.W.F. Hegel

With special guest appearences by:

Princess Alura=I. Kant

King Zarkon=F. Nietzsche

Potential Employers, please note: I assure you this is hysterically funny for people familiar with the historical period in question and more or less exactly my age. Anyone else is probably out of luck.

And it is not at all strange. Promise.

(I actually have reasons for assigning particular thinkers to particular Voltron lions, but it's funnier if I don't explain.)

BONUS STRANGENESS: Analytic Philosophy is so Vehicle Voltron it's not even funny. Really, not even a little.

onion: oh, no! it's making well-reasoned arguments!

2009-05-29T08:18:00.002+02:00

The Onion: Oh, No! It's Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run! (Opinion)

I…I think it's finally over. Our reactionary emotional response seems to have stopped it dead in its tracks. If I'm right, all we have to do now is smugly reiterate our half-formed thesis and—oh, no! For the love of God, no! It's thoughtfully mulling things over!

Run! Run! It's making reasonable, fact-based arguments!

Quickly! Hide behind self-righteousness! The ad hominem rejoinders—ready the ad hominem rejoinders! Watch out! Dodge the issue at hand! Question its character and keep moving haphazardly from one flawed point to the next!

All together now! Put every bit of secondhand conjecture into it you've got!

Goddamn it, nothing's working! It's trapped us in our own unsubstantiated claims! We need to switch fundamentally unsound tactics. Hurry, throw up the straw man! Look, I think it's going for it. C'mon…c'mon…yes, it's going for it! Now hit it with the thing that one guy told us once while it's distracted by our ludicrous rationalizations!

Gah! It's calmly and evenhandedly deflecting everything we're throwing at it. Our deductive fallacies are only making it stronger! Wait…what on earth is it doing now? Oh, no, it has sources! My God, it's defending itself with ironclad sources! Someone stop the citing! Please, please stop the citing!

Follow the link for more. It just goes on like that. Brilliant.

I also now plan to shout "Please, please stop the citing!" at my dissertation defense....

logic hurts

2009-05-27T23:36:00.001+02:00

"The last recourse of the rear-guard, the only answer they have left, is that at least the nation has not been attacked at home since 2001. This is a blatant shift in their argument that reflects their fall from power. In office, they constantly warned that another attack was inevitable; now, if it comes, the convenient implication is that Obama's policies will have caused it."--Bob Shrum (via Political Wire)

Ouch.

oprah, the super-villain

2009-05-26T13:50:00.004+02:00

Glen Beck (once again) unearths comedy-gold. Mostly, this involves him putting conservative crazy-people on television.

Breitbart: Well, this doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you? This is the Oprah Winfrey presidency. She was his biggest supporter, and I think that she’s been behind the scenes orchestrating this presidency as a media presidency, photo ops, giving billions of dollars of gifts away to people and to companies like General Electric, and until the mainstream media starts realizing --

Beck: Wait a minute. Are you suggesting that Barack Obama walks into a room and goes, "GE CEOs, look under your seat!"

Breitbart: I think that's exactly what it is.

Beck: You've got a bailout. Is that what you're suggesting?

Breitbart: That's exactly what I'm suggesting. It is the Oprah Winfrey presidency.

Yes, making fun of these escaped mental patients is too easy. But I figured I'd ease back to blogging gradually. Statements that you can simply quote in order to mock are ideally suited for this. Thanks Beck!

5772

2009-05-25T13:43:00.001+02:00

Iraq: 4618

Afghanistan: 1154

scarborough stole my bit

2009-05-24T13:16:00.005+02:00

Joe Scarborough recently compared Dick Cheney to Colonel Jessup from A Few Good Men.

Earlier, I compared Cheney to Jessup, including some dialog from the film, re-edited for Cheney.

The difference is that Scarborough seemed to think this was a favorable comparison, whereas for me....well, not so much.

The contrast is a nice illustration of the workings of the conservative brain. I imagine most people watching that movie see a brutal, callous, paternalistic tyrant and see a villain. Conservatives, apparently, see a hero.

That is really and truly messed up.

It's a minor example of a larger issue. It's one thing to have a public debate over how to express common values. But how can two groups whose minds seem to operate on completely opposed interpretations of reality ever reach a consensus? Relative to the film, one group thinks that freedom includes the ability to choose, question, and hold accoutable those in power. The other group apparently thinks that freedom means being kept comfortable by an authority beyond accountability. A key line from the final scene:

Jessup: "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it."

This is not--not even remotely--a democratic sentiment. In such a worldview, citizens of a democracy are little more than pets. Public opinion becomes merely the yapping of an irritating dog, but not something one need take seriously. (Cheney is known to hold public opinion in equal contempt.) The power of the authorities cannot be questioned. (This type of) Conservative freedom is only freedom within a limited and narrow sphere. 'Run around all you want in the backyard, but always obey to your owner.'

But of course, citizens of a democracy must be able to question and hold accountable those in power. That we are the ones that ultimately determine what may and may not be done is the very definition of democracy. Freedom is not a comfy blanket that can be provided to us as a gift from some higher authority. Freedom is self-determination. The notion that it could be a gift is a contradiction. We're the people, not pets.

The idea that a citizen of a democracy could watch A Few Good Men and think 'Jessup has a point' is utterly baffling to me. More broadly speaking, I could respectfully debate someone who has different ideas about how democratic freedom might best be expressed in public policy and so forth. But I don't see how I could reach a consensus with someone who doesn't even know what the word 'freedom' even means. One can have a productive dialogue with someone over shades of gray, but not with someone who claims black is white and white is black.

Once a difference of values becomes an different interpretation of reality, it's difficult to distinguish from insanity.

***

dissertation done

2009-05-20T19:35:00.003+02:00

The dissertation is officially done. But my internet connection went down. Posting while resume when karma realigns itself.

(typed very slowly on awful European keyboard in university computer lab)

oh no! not souter!

2009-05-01T12:33:00.004+02:00

WASHINGTON – Justice David Souter is planning to retire after nearly two decades on the Supreme Court, but his departure is unlikely to change its conservative-liberal split.

President Barack Obama's first pick for the high court is likely to be a liberal-leaning nominee, much like Souter.

The swing vote on the court will still be Justice Kennedy no matter who Obama picks. Obama will pick someone, and Republicans will either throw an embarrassing and pointless tantrum before losing or else they’ll calmly accept that it makes no sense for a small and unpopular minority to object to the replacement of one liberal by another.

I will use my vast precognitive capacities to predict Republicans go for #1, the 'pointless tantrum' option.

***

The title of this post is a Simpsons reference. It's the line Homer blurts out when Lisa informs him that Justice Souter is one of a number of 'nerds of note'. Will Obama replace Souter with another Nerd-American? Only time will tell.

the real nixon doctrine

2009-04-28T11:52:00.005+02:00

Yglesias

But a broader question here is whether it isn’t time to reconsider the idea that the “system worked” during the Watergate process. I think a good case can be made that starting with Gerald Ford’s pardon of Nixon, moving forward into George H.W. Bush’s use of the pardon power to kill off the Iran-Contra investigation, and now shifting toward the present day when it’s apparently become a fringe left position that the laws of the United States of America should be enforced that we’ve moved through a dangerous cycle of impunity. It seems to me that, in effect, Nixon’s dictum that “if the president does it, it’s not a crime” has been entrenched into American customary law. Officially, he was repudiated. But in reality I think you’d have to say that the Nixon Doctrine—that claims of national security allow the President to order whatever he wants, irrespective of statutes or treaties—has become the de facto law of the land.

The key difference now of course is that while in previous cases Executive Branch criminality went unpunished because the next administration belonged to the same party as the previous administration (Nixon-Ford, Reagan-Bush 1), now we have the same impunity (so far) being granted after a transition of power between parties (Bush 2-Obama). So while previously you had just one party (in fact, many of the same individuals) behaving corruptly, now you have something like a general principle at work: "If you're in charge and you committ a crime, you won't be punished."

Under this Nixon Doctrine, the Executive Branch has de facto absolute (i.e. unchecked) power, restricted only by term limits. Under this system, the US starts to resemble a kind of Renaissance city-state, where a prince is chosen to lead the city with absolute authority for a limited duration.

Of course, the same principle doesn't apply to Democratic Party executive criminality. If a president were to, say, committ perjury regarding his adultery (Clinton), then Republicans seem to remember all about the rule of law. So the real Nixon Doctrine is more like "if a Republican president does it, it's not a crime...."

tortured rationalization #451

2009-04-24T11:05:00.006+02:00

Yesterday, Liz Cheney floated an argument we're probably going to hear a lot: waterboarding (etc.) can't be torture because soldiers are waterboarded when they undergo SERE training.

Matthew Yglesias sums up the problems with this argument:

...That said, the larger issue here is that SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. And by “resistance” they mean resistance to torture. What we do when we train soldiers isn’t torture, because it’s training. But it’s training in torture resistance. When we look through the torture-resistance manual to find ways to do interrogations, we’re looking through the torture-resistance manual to find ways of torturing people.

It’s important to recall that the SERE people asked to provide information to interrogators about how to do torture specifically warned the would-be torturers that their techniques would be illegal to apply and unlikely to produce reliable information.

This whole argument is an insult to people’s intelligence. It’s like saying that shooting someone in the head isn’t really murder because police officers do target practice.

A slightly more apt analogy might be since firefighters set controlled fires in order to train to put them out, arson must be legal.

I'm not sure about the 'insult to people's intelligence' part, though. It could be that the people making this argument consciously know what they are saying is nonsense and they are just trying to callously manipulate public opinion. But there are two other possibilities. They could be simply stupid, and actually believe the nonsense they're spouting. But the third (and I think most likely) possibility is that this is a rationalization they've used to justify these atrocities to themselves. They wanted to torture terror suspects (because they were frustrated at not being able to establish the non-existent Iraq-Al Qaeda link or whatever) and this is one of the bedtime stories they told themselves so they could sleep at night.

This sort of rationalization is distinct from simple stupidity. It looks like stupidity from the outside, but its origins are different. For example, when the SERE experts specifically told them the techniques would be illegal and unreliable, a stupid person would have been confused and asked why, because they didn't understand the difference between training and torture. A smarter person who was looking for a rationalization would have heard the same information but ignored it, not because they didn't understand the difference, but because they didn't want to.

In this sense, it would seem that the cognitive dissonance that has plagued coverage of and public response to US torture for years was actually there at the very beginning, in the policy makers themselves. But the time for bedtime stories is passing, and people are slowly starting to wake up.

***

"a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm"

2009-04-23T13:12:00.003+02:00

LAT

Senior Bush administration officials signed off on the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures in July 2002 after a series of secret meetings that apparently excluded the State and Defense departments, according to information released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Senate report indicated that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other officials gave the CIA's interrogation plan political backing even before the methods had been approved by the Justice Department.

No substantive plots were disrupted as a result of information provided during Abu Zubaida's interrogation, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.

Brent Mickum, one of Abu Zubaida's attorneys in a habeas corpus proceeding in U.S. District Court in Washington, said he believes the Justice Department's Aug. 1, 2002, memo retroactively approved coercive tactics that had already been used.

"If torture occurred before the memo was written, it's not worth the paper it's written on, and the writing of the memo is potentially criminal," Mickum said.

NYT

In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.

The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.

ThinkProgress

Abusive Tactics Were Used To Search For A Non-Existent Al-Qaeda/Iraq Link: In 2006, former U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Charles Burney told investigators that interrogators at Gitmo were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda, even though they were ultimately unsuccesful. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

***

a few bad apples: the movie

2009-04-22T11:38:00.005+02:00

Cheney's recent call to release all of the torture memos got me thinking. Cheney apparently thinks releasing this information will vindicate him, proving torture 'works'. ('Yeah, we got the confession in waterboarding session #1. The other 182 times we did it were just for fun...') At the same time, he seems to arguing for the public release of evidence he committed war crimes. It didn't make any sense to me that Cheney would want to supply potential prosecutors with evidence that would further implicate him. But then I remembered A Few Good Men (1992)....

Holder: Good. Cheney told the OLC to justify the torture, the OLC did and the CIA followed the order. The cover-up is not our case. To win we have to get Cheney to tell the court members that he ordered the torture.
Weinberg: And you think you can just get him to say it?
Holder: I think he wants to say it. I think he's pissed off that he has to hide behind all this. I think he wants to say that he made an executive decision and that should be then end of it. He eats breakfast in an undisclosed location 3000 miles away from 4000 terrorists who are inclined to kill him. And nobody's going to tell him how to run his country, least of all the Harvard mouth in his faggoty white house....

Then there's the big climactic courtroom scene:

Cheney: You want answers?
Holder: I think I'm entitled.
Cheney: You want answers?
Holder: I want the truth!
Cheney: You can’t handle the truth!
[pauses]
Cheney: [INSERT BIG SPEECH ABOUT HOW TORTURE IS AWESOME]
Holder: Did you order the torture?
Cheney: I did the job I...
Holder: Did you order the torture?
Cheney: You’re Goddamned right I did!

And the audience-satisfying denouement:

Cheney: [Judge dismisses the jury after Cheney's revelation on the stand about the torture] What is this? What's going on? I did my job, I'd do it again! [stands up defiantly] I'm gonna get on a plane and go on back to my undisclosed location.
Judge: You're not going anywhere, Mr. Vice-President. Baliff... guard the Former Vice President! [Baliff takes post]
Cheney: What the hell is this?
Lawyer: Former Vice President Cheney, you have the right to remain silent. Any statement you make...
Cheney: I'm being charged with a crime? Is that what this is? I'm being charged with a crime? This is funny. That's what this is. This is... [turning to Holder and lunges at him]
Cheney: ...I'm gonna rip the eyeballs out of your head and piss in your dead skull! You fucked with the wrong Vice President!
Lawyer: Vice President Cheney! Do you understand these rights as I have just read them to you?
Cheney: [contemptuously] You fuckin' people... you have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Holder. That's all you did. You put people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son.

Remake anyone?

***

tom tomorrow: rightwingoverse

2009-04-21T12:04:00.002+02:00

via Political Irony

"It's been THREE WHOLE MONTHS since Obama took office, and I've been driven to the BRINK by the policies he is enacting in my imagination."