LongHairedWeirdo

What wonderful balance!

2011-09-25T09:59:00.000-07:00

Here, we see a wonderful case of journalistic balance, where the author is careful to avoid any partisan sniping. By reporting equally on what Republicans say and what Democrats say, we avoid any messy, partisan conclusions, like "the citizens of this country have a right to vote."

Because, honestly, who would like to have a mere journalist take on such a contentious issue? Sure, we nominally grant the right to vote to all citizens, age 18 or older, but is that non-controversial? In the past, we've only demanded registration and a reasonable cause to believe that a person lived in the proper voting district, but that, while allowing people to vote, certainly allowed the possibility of voter fraud. And, sure, one can argue that these new voting rules could disenfranchise millions - but there have been dozens - yes, dozens! - of fraud prosecutions. So, clearly, there's controversy here, and no journalist should come out and make the hideous, partisan suggestion that we should allow all citizens to vote.

Thank heavens we have fair and balanced journalists. What kind of country would it be if journalists took on basic principles, like "the citizens have a right to vote" and held politicians' feet to the fire if they dared try to restrict that right? Especially when the principal that one citizen gets one vote is so controversial!

Let's try this...

2011-09-08T20:09:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between a Ponzi scheme, and life insurance?

In both cases, sales people try to get people to put in money. And, some people - the people who "withdraw" early, get huge returns on their investment.

But with life insurance, actuaries figure out how much money must be on hand to pay promised benefits. And, they figure out how to balance the amount paid in versus the amount that will be paid out (barring unexpected calamities).

With a Ponzi scheme, there's no balance. If there was - if people could keep paying in, and taking out, indefinitely - it wouldn't be a Ponzi scheme.

So, which model fits Social Security better?

Do I really have to answer? Okay, I guess I do.

Social Security uses actuaries, and can plan for births, deaths, and the increasing average age of our population. Just as an insurance company has to use careful statistical models to plan for how many plan participants are required to support each beneficiary, Social Security uses similar models to plan how much money is required in Social Security taxes to continue to pay benefits.

So, what does this tell us about people who claim Social Security is a Ponzi scheme?

Well, they can be stupid - so stupid that they open their yaps without learning what a Ponzi scheme actually is.

Or, they can be liars.

(Or, they can be the sort of person who trusts people like Rick Perry. These people aren't exactly stupid, but they are too trusting.)

There's not much middle ground here.

More media incompetence

2011-08-18T01:08:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is opinion, but don't we deserve competence even there?

First, let's look at the title: "Why Warren Buffet is wrong".

Does the article actually show that Warren Buffet is "wrong"? No. It shows that a libertarian doesn't want rich people to pay taxes, and will repeat libertarian talking points because if something is repeated often enough, the Very Serious People will think it's a Very Serious Point and that it Deserves Consideration.

But let's not quibble; let's dig in.

The first problem with Buffett's view is that the number of super-rich is too small for higher rates to make much difference to our budget problems.

"The first problem with Buffet's view is that, while his ideas will help, they won't magically make all problems go away!" Yeah. Not very impressive. No one claimed that if the rich pay a tad bit more in taxes, the world would turn to Magical Rainbow Land with Cotton Candy Clouds and cute baby kittens and puppies that poop gold.

No, Buffet's point was that we have a political party that's whining that it's horrible and unfair to make the rich pay even a penny more in higher tax rates, and that's stupid. The rich have done quite well, and have received massive benefits from a strong government that protects their interests, and helps them do business, and therefore, it's perfectly justified to ask them to pay a bit more in taxes.

We then see the naked assertion that if we were to place, say, a 10% surcharge on the income of the very rich, "...the super-rich will avoid or evade much of the surcharge, significantly lowering its yield."

This is an interesting idea to consider. There was a time when the top marginal rate was 70%. You know what a lot of well-to-do business owners did? They started generous pension funds. These funds would tend to have more than 30% of the benefits going to the business owner, who was typically older (and hence, closer to retirement), and, obviously paid more.

Note that at a 70% tax rate, giving one's self more than 30% of the pension contributions means a net benefit to the employer, since taking the money home would mean a 70% tax hit.

Another thing business owners did was make charitable contributions - maybe they supported the local little-league team if they had a few bucks, or maybe they supported the local opera company if they had more.

Not every tax avoidance scheme is a bad thing - many are good!

Let's look at the next point:

Focusing on the super-rich also fosters a counterproductive attitude toward material success. The way to promote a hard-working, entrepreneurial and innovative society is to celebrate great wealth so long as it has been earned by legitimate means. When this is not the case, policy should target the wrongdoing directly, not demonize everyone who hits it big.

Get this: if you think a person making a million bucks a year should pay, I dunno, 5, 10, 15% more in taxes on the money over that first million, you're DEMONIZING SUCCESS!!!! You horrible, awful person!

Or, maybe you're just saying that hey, the wealthy make their money in large part because of the country we live in, so maybe they should help support that country.

Look: when Apple and Google and Microsoft and who-knows-who-else get into a big patent fight, there are possibly billions of dollars at stake. Well, we have courts just sitting there, willing to give them a clean, final judgment on who is right and who is wrong. That judgment is worth a lot more to them than it is to some working class person making $30,000 a year. So, why not let the millionaires and billionaires pay a bit more towards the government that keeps that court system up and running for them? And, of course, the courts are just one example of the many places where the wealthy get proportionally more benefit than the less-wealthy.

The fact of the matter is, a good, strong government is what makes the wealthy able to become wealthy; asking for a few extra pennies on the dollar in taxes in return for those proportionally higher benefits is only fair.

At this point, the article meanders into nonsense.

Excessive licensing requirements, permitting fees, restrictive examinations and other barriers to entry into medicine, law, plumbing, hair styling and many other professions are bad for economic productivity because they artificially restrict the supply of these services. And these barriers redistribute income perversely by raising incomes for those protected and raising prices for everyone.

When did Warren Buffet say "Oh, yeah, and licensing requirements! Permitting fees! They should all be raised, too!"? He didn't? Okay.

See, I told you - libertarian talking points. And not even very sensible ones, given the discussion topic.

Finally, we come to this:

Buffet asserts that taxing capital income has never deterred anyone from investing. Well, then he has never discussed the issue with me or many of my friends.

Folks, Buffet is an investor, and a wise one. Now, it's true that tax rates on capital income can create distortions. If inflation is 3%, and taxes on interest income is 50%, then anything less than 6% earned interest is wasting your money - interest rates will have to start at about 10% to attract investors. (50% taxes on 10% interest gives you 5% interest - 2 points above inflation, which is generally the lowest interest that will be, well, "interesting".)

So, yes, tax policy needs to be set carefully. If you tax capital income in a foolish manner, you will distort what investments are sensible.

But people with money to invest will find a way to invest it. That's the wonder of the free market. We don't need to give them a free ride; we just need to make sure the taxes aren't so high as to discourage investment.

Are they so high they discourage investment? Well, remember the big crash in 2008? That was caused by wild levels of over-investment. Can I prove that our tax policy caused companies to leverage themselves 40-to-1, and caused them to be so greedy, so dishonest, and so stupid, as to bring us to the brink of a worse collapse? No. But let's not pretend that "investment" is a purely good thing, either. Distorted investment was at the base of a financial collapse that caused a huge amount of grief, and could have caused a lot more.

No... let's not pretend that the wealthy need a free ride, or that they shouldn't support the system that makes them wealthy, or that we have to leave them free to invest wildly, possibly causing another big bubble to pop. Let's instead consider sensible tax policies, which will, of course, include sensibly higher tax rates on the wealthiest among us.

Econ and trade, Part II

2011-08-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

Earlier, I talked about how econ is not a moral science. Free trade always (or, nearly always) improves economic outcomes, but if a company has an advantage through, say, slavery or letting companies poison their citizenry, it doesn't mean that free trade is the right thing to do.

There's another side to this, as well. What is the great benefit of free trade? Well, more goods and services are now available, for everyone, for less money. (Technically, for fewer resources - but let's pretend that resources and money are exchangeable.)

And?

Well, if there's less money being paid for goods and services, that means there's less being earned for goods and services. It's great for the well-off, who get more stuff more cheaply, but it's bad for those who just lost their job because someone in another country can do the same job cheaper.

Over the long term, economic growth is likely to turn things around, of course. But in the short term, opening up new trade often means a lot of people will get hurt.

In a nation with a strong social safety net, this is not a problem. Some people lose their jobs, and have to find something else - but with a good safety net, the impact to their lives is minimized.

In the US... well, there isn't a very good safety net, is there? And it's been slowly shredding for many years. The Republicans want to throw it away. And the Democrats, well, the Democrats want to maintain it for the poorest of the poor, and throw it away for everyone else.

And its ridiculous. It's a poor economic decision, for one thing. Look, if the safety net is too good, sure, people will live off the dole without looking for work. But we are so far away from that situation that it's hard to imagine at this point! What you want - what a society needs - is a safety net.

Not, as Clinton stupidly said, "a hand up instead of a hand-out." A safety net. Something to make sure that, when you fall, you're caught; nothing horrible happens.

It's a perfectly fair trade for free trade; boost free trade, but also boost the safety net. This way, you benefit everyone. There are more goods and services for everyone, and those whose jobs are lost have a much easier time moving to the next job... and, they can keep spending a bit while looking for work, which helps the economy to grow.

But of course, in this country, fairness isn't a virtue any more, is it? Free trade, to make the rich richer, and the safety net gets cut. Because, you know, "booga booga, deficit gonna kill you in your sleep!"

"Entitlement reform"

2011-08-06T11:14:00.000-07:00

You're going to be hearing that phrase a lot - "Entitlement reform". Because, in the end, projected growth of entitlements is most certainly what is going to put the most pressure on the nation's finances.

There are two big entitlement programs: Social Security, and Medicare.

Social Security is paid for through around 2037. And, the Social Security payroll tax used to affect 90% of all salaries, now it's only affecting about 84%; before we talk about cutting benefits, we should first bump up the maximum until it's taxing closer to 90% of salaries again, and see what that gets us.

Then, there's Medicare.

Here's the problem with Medicare: we pay far too much money for health care in this country.

I've seen figures that show that the US government spends more per capita on health care than other nations do, including nations that have single-payer health care.

Let's go over that again: the US government pays more, per citizen, for Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and other health care programs, than, say, Canada pays per citizen to completely insure all of its citizens.

If this were Canada, we could provide health care for everyone, based just upon what we currently spend on Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and so forth. All of the money spent on private health insurance could be spent on other things.

If you're like me, part of you is thinking that's impossible. Well, remember: the US spends about twice, per capita, what other nations spend. If half of that spending comes from the government - and it does, near enough - then what I've just said is true. We should be able to cover just about everyone, just with our government expenditures. Throw in a boatload of extra cash, if you want; imagine cutting all private health care costs in half, so there's rivers of extra money to allow hungry capitalists to find a bit to feast on. We should still be able to cover everyone, for much less than we're spending to cover about 80%.

Every other advanced nation does this... but we don't.

Do we need to reform the "entitlement" known as Medicare? No. We need to reform how health care is paid for. Once we're paying rational amounts for health care, we can figure out what our true Medicare liabilities are going to be like.

The big question - are Republicans serious?

2011-07-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

So, Republicans decided they'd play their brinksmanship game again. "Let's hold the fate of the country hostage! Let's demand whatever we want, and count on the Democrats to cave!"

And they've been playing BOOGA BOOGA, DEFICIT'S GONNA KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP! for... well, how long has it been since they lost the White House? About that long, maybe a bit longer.

So, they say that they have this big, big, big problem, a huge, horrible serious problem, and they can't possibly raise the debt limit unless that huge, horrible, very bad, very serious problem was dealt with.

But! But but but!!!

But that problem isn't worth raising any revenue over. Not one penny. Nope. Rich people gotta get richer, and pay lower taxes, and poor people gotta stay poor, and have all of their support programs cut, and, by the way BOOGA BOOGA, DEFICIT'S GONNA KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!

Here's a bit of math for you - a bit of tax accounting. Let's say you're a sole proprietor or a partner in a business. Your salary each year is the amount your company gains or loses, revenue minus expenses.

Employee salaries are expenses. Keep that in mind.

Let's say you've had a good year, and you have an extra hundred grand in cold, hard cash you can do something with. You can take it home as a bonus to yourself - it's your company, you did good, maybe you deserve a reward. Or, you can hire another person or two, expand your business a bit.

What happens to that cost - *to you* - if your tax rate goes up?

If tax rates are, say, 30%, then hiring some new people with that hundred grand costs you a net of $70,000. If you'd taken that money home as a bonus, you'd lose 30% to taxes, and only get to keep $70,000.

If your tax rates go up - to 35 or 40% - what happens?

Now those new employees cost you a net of $65,000 or $60,000. See, if you'd taken the money home, you'd have paid 35% or 40% tax on it. The cost has come *down*. Sure, taking home $60,000 is better than a boot to the head, but lower taxes still make the cost higher.

Are you starting to see why we had such good growth under higher tax rates, when the top marginal rate was 70% or even more? People hired more - the cost was lower - and more people had good paying jobs so they had more to spend.

So, let's not pretend to buy into the Republican line that higher taxes on the so-called "job creators" would be hideously bad.

And lets get back to the main point.

Are the Republicans serious?

They had deals for two trillion, three trillion, maybe even four trillion, in spending cuts, and all they had to do was maybe - maybe! - bump up the top marginal rate back to where it was under Clinton. Just a few percentage points.

Well, if they're serious about BOOGA BOOGA, DEFICIT'S GOING TO KILL YOU IN YOUR SLEEP!, then a modest tax increase is certainly justified.

Hell, if they were serious about getting the deficit under control, they'd have let the tax rates go through, and then whined about how the Evil Obamonster forced them to raise taxes (as if they themselves hadn't ginned up the whole debt ceiling crisis!). They have a very good noise machine, trying to shame people into feeling bad if the government actually helps them out a bit, and trying to protect the rich at all costs.

But what's their latest response? To pass a bill that they know can't become law. A tantrum, in other words. "I'm going to hold my breath until the country turns blue!" they scream. And you know what they'll do, next. "We passed a bill! The Senate has to agree, and so does the President because we passed a bill!"

And maybe they'll even get some people to agree with them, and pretend like they've been negotiating in good faith.

Or maybe... maybe people will remember that they passed up trillions in cuts, because the deficit which was going to kill us all in our sleep wasn't actually dangerous enough to allow a modest tax increase on the people who've made out like bandits while the rest of the nation searches for decent jobs.

Problems with the media...

2011-07-29T21:55:00.001-07:00

One of the biggest problems we're facing in this country is the media. They're incompetent.

There's little enough real reporting, and soi disant "news" organizations are pleased to report "Democrats say this, Republicans say that, who can tell the truth?"

Any why wouldn't they? Like Rush Limbaugh, they're not trying to be honest or truthful (and I hope you realize those *are* separate issues); they're in it for the money.

Here's a prime example:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43912701/ns/business-going_green/

This is not just reporting conflicting views; it's making damnfoolish statements.

Here's one:

When first created in 1935, the earliest retirement age was 65, a year older than the average life expectancy. Today, with the average life expectancy at 79, beneficiaries can begin collecting at 62 and might well live for decades into retirement.

Anyone who doesn't understand that life expectancy has increased because more people survive to adulthood doesn't have any business discussing social security.

In 1935, there were a lot of people who died in early childhood. If you have ten people, and one dies as an infant - 1 year old - and the other 9 all live to 75, what's the life expectancy of that group?

9x75 = 675, + 1 = 676. That one person who died at the age of 1 changes the average from 75 down to 67.6.

Figuring that this is a possibility isn't hard; it's grade school math. And finding out that it's true isn't hard either... not if you care enough to learn the truth.

Let's look at the next one:

Meanwhile, the base of support from workers paying into the system has shrunk dramatically. In 1950, there were 16 active workers paying for every retiree.

Wow! That sounds like, in 1950, for everyone who was 65 or older, there were 16 other people who were working - from, say, 18 to 64. Uh... that doesn't sound right.

And it's not. There were 16 workers for each retiree because there were a lot of people who were eligible, but not nearly as many who'd reached retirement age. This is exactly what you'd expect when Social Security eligibility is expanding. The people who made estimates for social security knew this, and planned for it.

Finally, we come to the biggest bit of foolishness.

With more money flowing out and less money flowing in, and the baby boom generation hitting retirement age in force, the Social Security trust fund is expected begin shrinking by 2015. By 2037, the fund is projected to run out of cash, which means it could only pay out as much as it takes in. That would force immediate benefit cuts of about 25 percent if no changes were made before then.

Oh, noes! In 26 years - *26 years*! - the trust fund will be exhausted. Well, that's a crisis. Seriously. I mean, how much could the world change in a mere 26 years?

Let's see, 26 years ago was... 1985. The Apple Macintosh had come out a year earlier - remember that cute "one reason why 1984 won't be like 1984" commercial? I seem to recall it had 128 kilobytes of memory - *128*! That's *twice* the memory of the Commodore 64! And it had fancy new floppy disks that held *720 kilobytes* of data each!

And I think it cost about $2000. I don't know if it came with a modem, but if it did, it probably would have been a 300 bit per second modem... quite a speedy little devil for its day.

Now, that computers and computing have advanced by light years in 26 years doesn't mean that Social Security has no problems - but it does show that if we're facing a problem that's 26 years in the future, we don't have to run around like our hair is on fire! Things will change in 26 years - there will be technological advances we might not even be dreaming of yet.

So we have time to think. And so we can think about reasonable solutions.

So, for example, we can reject stupid ideas like increasing the retirement age. Sure, rich people are living longer after retirement age these days... but poorer people aren't. Increasing the retirement age would be a huge burden on the working poor, and it would force them to stay in the work force longer, increasing the labor pool, and thereby increasing unemployment. (More workers looking for the available jobs means more people unemployed.)

We should also probably reject any benefit cuts until it seems likely that we'll need them.

Finally, in the "Credit where credit is due" department, let's give a nod to Mr. Schoen for getting one right:

As recently as the 1980s, the Social Security payroll tax covered roughly 90 percent of wages, according the Simpson-Bowles commission. But as wages above that cap have grown faster than the cap, the proportion of overall wages has fallen. Today, only 86 percent of wages are collected; by 2020 that will fall to less than 83 percent.

Before we make any other changes, let's seriously consider raising the wage cap - the wages on which OASDI is collected - until it once again covers 90% of wages, the way it was planned to. Then we can figure out what our projected shortfalls are.

Econ and trade...

2011-07-23T01:33:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some Economics reading recently, and finding it surprisingly accessible. Of course, I've been reading mostly Paul Krugman who is not just a brilliant economist, but also a good writer. I've nevertheless noticed something.

Although economic arguments are frequently made, and the arguments used to try to drive policy, economics is inherently morally empty.

Economics is a study of people trading, getting goods and services in return for other goods and services, either directly or indirectly. And economics can tell you about things that will decrease overall levels of goods and services, and what will increase them. But it doesn't (and shouldn't!) include a moral component.

For example: trade. Every economist will agree that trade is good. Trade between nations is good, and, with free trade, you'll see more goods and services for less effort than you'll see without it - even if other countries aren't trading freely with you, trading freely with them will (almost surely) create some kind of advantage in production of goods and services.

Let me re-emphasize that: even if the other country is engaging in protectionist practices, engaging in free trade with them is nevertheless likely to be better - more goods and services at a better price - than not.

Krugman had a fine way of looking at it. Imagine someone said they had a magic factory that could produce certain goods or provide certain services cheaper than you could get here. You give this person money, and they provide those goods and services. Well, you don't understand how this all works, but clearly, if this person can provide nice things cheaper than others, there's no problem with rewarding that person, right?

Then, you learn that there's no factory at all - just a fleet of trucks, or boats, or planes. Hah! Gotcha! It's just international trade!

Let's all pretend that none of us saw that coming, and have a good laugh at ourselves. Of course, *something* will always be made a bit more cheaply, a bit more efficiently, somewhere else. Let's import that something, and export something that we make a bit more cheaply or efficiently.

Now, let's consider another possibility. Someone says that he can provide raw cotton more cheaply than other places can provide it. He has this "magic factory". We, thinking that, of course, it's just another fleet of trucks or boats or planes, buy the cotton and discover that, whoops - no, this time it's slave labor providing the advantage. Well, the cotton didn't actually become more expensive, did it? It might still be cheaper than one could get elsewhere, right? But that shows us the problem with this model of trade as a magic factory.

Economics is not concerned with how, or why, a country has a competitive advantage in trade. It's only concerned with noting that there will be such advantages.

The advantage might be workers who are slaves, or the next best thing to being slaves. The advantage might be a lack of workplace safety that results in the deaths of many workers. It could be lax environmental controls that poison people near the factory.

Economics won't consider these things. That's not its job.

What does scare me is that there are economists who won't consider those things either. Nations gotta grow, after all... if Country_A wants to let polluters pollute and treat its citizens likes slaves to get GNP higher, so be it.

But economic growth is not everything. Money isn't a moral principle. And a nation that has a competitive advantage at manufacturing widgets will either still have that when there are good worker and environmental protections - or, they won't, and they'll find something else to export.

The debt ceiling debate

2011-07-14T21:13:00.001-07:00

I'd like to talk to some of my liberal friends out there about what's really bugging me about the debt ceiling debate.

I've seen a lot of anger at Obama for not taking a stronger stand against the right-wing. Why is he giving in to their demands for steep cuts in spending?

Well, I don't know what the deal might entail at this time, but... the hard and fast truth is, the US does have an ungodly amount of debt, and it does need a plan to reduce it. Even if we could eliminate the deficit tomorrow, we'd be carrying a very heavy debt load compared to GNP.

Yes, the right-wing has lied about us being in dire financial straits before, and they're lying now about the effects (the deficit has nothing to do with our immediate problems with slow economic growth an unemployment), but we are in a serious bind, financially.

Now, either a moderate can try to formulate a good plan to try to fix that problem, and try to get the Republicans to buy into it, or, we can just let the Republicans scream about it, and kick up a fuss, and keep grabbing headlines, and keep driving the debate.

Now, there were two ways that this could have happened. There could have been a strong, politically active, energized left-wing to push some good ideas and get them a lot of press, and show that there was good political cover for pushing those ideas.

That didn't happen.

Or, someone like Obama could notice that the Republicans had telegraphed that they were going to take the country hostage over the debt ceiling, and see that there was an opportunity. If he offered a good plan, the country could see that he was offering a good plan, and the Republicans could either take the deal, or look like hostage takers.

He could, as Laurence O'Donnell put it, let them realize they were playing the hostage game with a President whose last reaction to hostage takers was to shoot them in the head.

Now, me, I don't like some of what I've heard about possible deals. I've heard of chained CPI for Social Security; I don't like that a bit. Right now, the payroll tax covers a smaller percentage of total salaries than it has historically; we ought to at least change that before considering reductions in benefits.

I've heard of cuts in Medicare, and... well. Folks, we pay more for medical care than any other nation; I've seen charts that suggest that the US government pays more per capita for medical care just in Medicare and Medicaid than other countries pay total, for all health care.

Think about that: just Medicare and Medicaid, alone, should have enough dollars being spent to cover everyone... not just Medicare and Medicaid recipients, but everyone in this country!If that's the case, we sure as heck have find cost savings in Medicare! We just need an intelligent plan to do so. We can't cut it by loading the cost on senior citizens (as the Ryan plan, passed by House Republicans, would do), and we can't cut it by reducing benefits; what we need is to find out how those other countries manage to provide benefits for so much less money than we do.

I've heard about a lot of cuts in other programs, and, yeah, I hate it. I really hate it.

But we do need to get indebtedness under control. And we know the Republicans aren't going to discuss a good idea in good faith with the President. Remember health care reform? He took a plan the Republicans used to propose, and they called it horrible, socialist, unconstitutional, and spread lies about death panels. (Yes, I know, not all Republicans spread death-panel lies - but they all let the lies be spread, favoring party loyalty over honesty.)

So what choice did Obama have? He had to let them spring their trap, to take their hostage, and make their demands... and find a way to turn their demands around to something sensible.

That was the only way. Why? Because, face it - for all the passion and concern on the left, the left is far too passive in trying to drive the news cycle. The Republicans can whip up front page headlines out of a couple of peace-loving Muslims who've helped the US fight terrorism, because those folks want to buy an old Burlington Coat Factory. Could the left-leaning folks do that?

Why would they want to? Okay, good question. But the fact is, they couldn't whip up that level headline-grabbing over something important either.

And that's the secret weapon of the Republicans these days. They do grab the news cycle, and keep it moving. And I don't mean their elected officials.

Liberal folks in the US just don't do this. And that's partly why we're in a situation in which the GOP can take hostages, and then we blame our potential allies for doing the best hostage negotiating they can.

Not like anyone'll notice, but...

2011-01-10T21:47:00.001-08:00

I think it's time for me to pack in this blog.

On Saturday, someone tried to murder Gabrielle Giffords.

And, a lot of people remembered that Sarah Palin had targeted her with a gun sight, and cheerfully tweeted crap like "don't retreat, reload!" and it upset them.

In any sane world, everyone would be upset, and Sarah Palin's future could be determined based upon one thing, and one thing only - was her apology for having made such a hideous picture sufficiently sincere and tearful that people really, truly believed she felt horrible about this awful coincidence.

Instead, she pulled down the poster, and had her aides claiming that, no, they weren't gunsights, they were surveyors symbols!

I'm betting she'll get by just fine. Lots of supporters will stand by her against the evil liberals.

But it's not just her. In any sane world, everyone who spoke angrily or hatefully would be thinking "what if someone else ends up dead?"

And they wouldn't be thinking of political futures or financial success. They'd be thinking about families and friends of the deceased. And they'd realize that, by all they hold holy and good, they do not want *anyone* to remember *anything* hateful they said about the next victim, if this happens again.

It would have become real. People would stop and realize these are real people, with real lives, that are being hurt - and sometimes killed.

Do you see any signs of anything becoming real? I don't.

I realized a long time ago that I wouldn't make a big difference in the blogging world. Much though I wish otherwise, I don't have the voice for it. But after a day like today, I realize I don't even have grounds for hope.

Oh, I will, again, someday. And maybe then, I'll try writing more in the political spectrum. But not now.

Let's call it what it really is...

2010-10-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

"Robo-signing" is what some people are calling it.

Banks would claim that they had a valid reason to foreclose on a house. But they didn't have the proper documentation.

"Robo-signing".

A "foreclosure-document mess".

How about theft? How about fraud?

How on earth is in a bad process (robo-signing) or a mere "mess" when someone goes to court, swears that they have a right to someone else's property, and walks away with the title?

Of course, we've been headed in this direction for a long time. For many years, people have warned about the perils of identity theft, where you can become liable for charges made, and loans taken out in, your name.

In a just world, the onus would be on the lenders to be sure that you had taken out the loan or made the charges. But it's not.

Of course, having easy access to credit is a big economic boost to the country; a lot more goods can be bought and sold, and a bigger economy is often a good thing. I don't want to pretend that the possibility of identity theft should shut down all extensions of credit. But that is where it started.

We started letting people take out loans and credit cards and make charges without full assurance that they were real people, or that they were the people they claimed to be.

And then, so that the banks didn't get stuck with fraudulent charges, we let the banks go after the victims of identity theft.

And now, well, now we're letting banks take houses from people, without even being completely sure those banks hold the primary mortgage.

It's a scary thing, but we could see it from the beginning, when we first decided it was better to let the banks demand payment of debts from people who'd never made charges, who'd never taken out loans, than to demand that the banks provide proof that the specific person in question actually requested the credit, or loan. When does it end?

Well, maybe it'll end now.

Because, you see, the banks foreclosed on houses they didn't have a right to foreclose on. And that means that they're going to hurt other banks who might actually hold the primary liens, or might want to make a mortgage loan on the house, but can't because the title can't be insured.

Maybe now... maybe now that it might affect the rich and powerful, maybe we'll start taking notice of how the banks have demanded unjust power over the legal system.

But in a nation that's supposedly founded "of, by, and for the people" it should have happened a long time ago.

So, about the Cordoba House community center...

2010-08-17T19:09:00.001-07:00

Here's a question for you about the Cordoba House, which the Right Wing insists on calling "the ground zero mosque".

Why are we talking about it?

It's not because Imam Feisal is talking about it.

It's not because it violates laws, or ethics, or other constraints.

It's not because you can even *see* the durn thing from "ground zero".

We're talking about it for one reason, and one reason only: the Right Wingers in this country want to talk about it.

And rather than asking whether they "should" build the community center or whether they have "the right" to build the community center, we should instead be asking the Newt Gingriches and Sarah Palins whether they "should" be making a big fuss and a loud stink about a group of peaceful Muslims building a community center... even though it's clear that they have "the right" to do so.

There was no controversy; there was nothing to fight about. Not until the Right Wing invented a reason to attack out of whole cloth. And sure, they have the right to do that; the First Amendment protects speech as well as religion. But should they?

Should they attack peaceful Muslims who hate Al Qaeda, and who Al Qaeda hates? Should they act as if Muslims must be second class citizens, in Manhattan at least? Should they be acting as if this community center is some terrible affront to families of those who died on 9/11/2001? Should they be infantilizing the survivors by acting as if they can't handle a community center that's completely hidden from the site where the attacks occurred?

All this crap about religious freedom and stabbing in the heart is beside the point. That it's the rankest discrimination to attack the community center is obvious... at least, it is to anyone with half a brain.

The point is, why are we letting people who are trying to raise a big fuss raise that fuss? Why are we discussing this at all, rather than granting it the contempt it so clearly deserves?

A great idea!

2010-08-11T20:33:00.001-07:00

Have you seen this?

I think it's a great idea. Mr. Gutfeld, go ahead. Open your gay bar.

Really. It's your money. Do what you want with it. I admit, I don't like the idea of anyone spending their money for the sole purpose of being a twit, but, hey, if that's what floats your boat, cool.

But I do hope you've considered your situation.

See, everyone knows why you're doing this. And not everyone's going to appreciate the idea behind it. And, so... well....

Have you toured gay bars in New York? I mean, *lots* of gay bars? Yes, even *those* gay bars?

Here's how I figure it. You open that gay bar, and one of two things are going to happen. Either lots of folks will go there to game you, to make that bar the kind of place that... well, let's just say you won't want to show the place off to your mom any time soon. Or no one will show up at all. You'll go out of business.

But hey - play your cards right, and you might just make a killing, with the hottest, nastiest, dirtiest gay bar ever.

You might want to explain these possibilities to your investors before opening night.

Yeah, Douthat's a twit...

2010-08-09T20:46:00.000-07:00

A lot of people have pointed out that this is a lame column. And, they're right. "A bunch of people have this ideal, and if we don't fight for it by discriminating against gay folks, Bad Things Might Happen. Better the known damage happening right now than hurting some people's ideals, with unknown but scary damage in the future!

But I'm going to disregard the lame pathos inspired by Douthat's column, and instead point to the despicable lie he uses to end his column:

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

Judge Walker did not say anything about bigotry or being un-American.

Nothing.

But he made a decision that some people didn't like. And it's not enough to say that they disagree with his logic - they have to paint him as a bad person as well. "He's calling people bigots and un-American!"

See, that's the real bigotry, right? If people want to hurt gay folks, that doesn't make them bigots! And yet, here's this guy saying people can't keep hurting gay folks, and that means he's calling them bigots. He is the hateful one! He is the bigot!

Except it's all based on a lie. A lie intended to spread hatred of people who are different.

I'm sure there's a term for the hatred of those who are different. But I'm damned if I can remember it right now.

On profiling

2010-08-08T08:35:00.000-07:00

This is a perfect example of an idiotic meme about profiling.

Walter E. Williams starts off talking about how doctors use race and sex in determining health questions to ask and tests to order. Then he discusses how that's not "profiling" and the pulls this "gem" out of ... uh, the air.

There is no sense of justice or decency that a law-abiding black person should suffer the indignity being passed up. At the same time, a taxicab driver has a right to earn a living without being robbed, assaulted and possibly murdered. One of the methods to avoid victimization is to refuse to pick up certain passengers in certain neighborhoods or passengers thought to be destined for certain neighborhoods. Again, a black person is justifiably angered when refused service but that anger should be directed toward the criminals who prey on cabbies.

There's a lot that's wrong with this article. But let's look at the first thing first. What is "profiling"?

Profiling is the idea that criminals often follow set patterns. And when it is attacked, it is attacked when people who follow those patterns are targeted for attention by the police, not because they've done something wrong, but because they fit the profile.

Profiling was used as an excuse to make a stop, and then search for evidence of unlawful activity. It's a violation of the Fourth Amendment - we have the right to be left-the-hell-alone by the police unless there's a valid reason to bother us.

A lot of people (like Mr. Williams) whine about profiling as if it refers to never using patterns, and never thinking about statistics, because they haven't bothered to educate themselves about it. (Or, possibly, because they know what it is, but feel that it's useful to do some liberal bashing by pretending it's something it's not. And if Mr. Williams dislikes being thought of as potentially dishonest, he should only be angry at the Limbaughs, Becks, Coulters, and Breitbarts of the world, not at the cabbies - er, bloggers - who feel they've been burned too often to be trusting.)

But there's more to it than that. People who choose to engage in prejudicial behavior (refusing to stop for black people when driving a cab) *are* engaging in racist behavior.

Those who refuse to stop for a particular subset of black people - people who look like troublemakers, for whatever reason - aren't being racist. They are possibly prejudiced - it depends on how well-tuned their "looks like a troublemaker" sense is. I'm sure there are cab drivers who've been driving for years, who'll pick up someone who looks to most folks like a dangerous gang member, making a stop at the candy store so our "dangerous gang member" can distribute some sweets while visiting the local orphanage. And similarly, perhaps our hypothetical veteran driver will pass up a gentleman by the name of Macheath wearing such nice, white gloves without a trace of red....

The point is, there's nothing wrong with a cabbie getting scared of a fare, and deciding to take a pass, but there is something wrong with a cabbie making that decision based upon something innocuous, like skin color. To place that blame solely upon criminals is to ignore the cabbie's agency. We all get to make choices, including the choice to face our fears and determine how realistic they are, and modify them.

News about a mosque

2010-07-25T09:21:00.001-07:00

Maha speaks for me, here.

Apparently, some Muslims want to build a mosque in New York, kinda-sorta-not-too-far from where the World Trade Center stood. And there are some people upset with it.

Why?

Because they think a mosque that close to "ground zero" will be painful to New York, a city with a lot more maturity than many members of the GOP?

Of course not.

No, the reason they're kicking up a fuss is simple.

The kinds of people who will be angry about them trying to attack the construction of a mosque are not the kinds of people who are likely to vote Republican. And they get to invoke xenophobia, and point to how "the left has forgotten the lessons of 9/11!"

Which tells you a lot about the mindset of the people who do this kind of thing.

ETA: Sorry, it's *not* a mosque, it's a community center. Making it even more ridiculous to be upset about it.

Continued frustration

2010-07-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

Slate gets into the false equivalence game, too.

This is really screwed up.

Shirley Sherrod helped Mr. Spooner (the farmer she referenced in her talk). She got him to a lawyer who should have been fully qualified to help him keep his farm. She did good, right from the beginning.

What she didn't do, right from the beginning, was love Mr. Spooner. What she didn't do, right from the beginning, was take his plight personally, and do everything she could to make things easy for him. But, she got him help. She got him all the help that should have been necessary to save his farm. That was her job, and it was a good thing to do.

But she learned - she learned that it's not enough to just do what should be necessary. You should love people, and you should take their problems personally. And she did - let's keep that in mind. This is not a tale of redemption, where an irresponsible, or unpleasant Shirley Sherrod learned to be helpful - it's where she learned to be more than just helpful, to do more than just "her job".

It's where she learned to love.

That word, love, I guess it's confusing to some. When I use it in this context, I mean to be willing to take on hardship for another. If you're willing to help when it's no skin off your nose, that's not love - it's just basic human decency. But when you're willing to help, even when it's painful or awkward or just plain hard work, that's love.

That's what she learned.

Let's not forget this. This is a woman whose father was murdered, and to whom the white community said "we don't care about that murder; we're not even going to make the murderer go to court over it." And she still chose to help Mr. Spooner, to find him a lawyer who could have filed the right papers to save the farm. She was still doing the right thing; she was still doing her job. But she also followed up - and learned that she would have been better off to do more than her job, to love Mr. Spooner enough to go to the wall for him.

I can't believe how few people seem to understand this narrative, and keep trying to turn Ms. Sherrod's tale of learning greater love for her fellow human beings into some tale of redemption, as if her crime - "only" getting the correct legal help to prevent foreclosure! - was anywhere near the equivalent of the crimes against her.

You know what's really frustrating?

2010-07-23T08:07:00.000-07:00

I'm sure anyone reading this (by which I mean "me" :-) ) has heard about Shirley Sherrod's situation.

Andrew Breitbart was furious that the NAACP said that the Tea Party movement should repudiate racism in their ranks (please note the spelling, Ms. Palin; poor spelling is not Shakespearean, it's just sloppy).

Well, when a group representing black people engages in dialogue, you can't just let that pass. No, you have to go on the attack. I mean, "please, we've all seen some ugly crap at the tea parties; please stand up and say that's not what you stand for"? That's practically *uppity*. Gotta go on the attack.

So he posted a video trying to smear Shirley Sherrod. Now, of course, he claims that he was actually attacking the NAACP. But face it; anyone who posts dishonestly edited videos can't be trusted to be speaking the truth in the first place. So, let's skip explaining *why* he posted it - let's just say that he posted it for his own reasons, but he's willing to point to the NAACP asking for a group of people to take a stand against racism as his reason.

And that's frustrating, but that's not what's really frustrating. From Newsweek, this is what's really frustrating:

It turns out the farmer thought Sherrod had been a terrific help, and a full review of Sherrod's speech suggests that, far from being a racist, she had honestly (and successfully) worked through the complex racial preconceptions we all carry around in our heads.

Why is this so frustrating? Didn't Ms. Sherrod work through "the complex racial preconceptions we all carry around in our heads"? No.

See, here's the history - referenced in the video.

One day, her dad was murdered. Why? Well, there was a dispute over some cows. Does it matter? Only insofar as it was a pretty pathetic reason to kill a man.

And what happened? What did she, and every other black person in that area, know was going to happen?

A white grand jury refused to indict. They weren't going to make a white man go to court and maybe to jail for killing a black man.

Now, there's an important part of this, and I'm sure some people have missed it. This isn't something that happened, oh my goodness, what a surprising tragedy. And this wasn't a white *jury* deciding not to convict.

This was the grand jury saying that, in spite of there being two witnesses to the murder, there was not enough evidence to say that the murderer should have to face charges. Just facing charges is pretty awful; that's why we have grand juries. And they decided that facing charges was too much punishment for the murderer.

And young Shirley Sherrod didn't have reason to be surprised. Grief-stricken, yes... but not surprised. That's just how it was. If a white man decided to kill a black person, the law wouldn't care.

Now, I mean no disrespect to Mr. Alter here, but I am suggesting that he didn't quite comprehend what this is like, that he didn't think it though. Maybe he knew the history, but didn't dig deeply into the meaning to get the full comprehension. I don't know if he pondered what it would be like to know his father was gunned down in cold blood for a stupid property dispute, and know that no one was going to care, because, hey, see that skin color? That skin color you've got makes you worthless in the eyes of the law.

This isn't complex. This isn't like me, or Mr. Alter, realizing that we have stupid ideas about race, or unconscious prejudices, in spite of trying to be good people. This isn't anything like that.

This is a black woman who grew up knowing (and having it proven!) that a black person's life wasn't worth anything to the greater society in which she grew up. Not because of a horribly surprising incident, in which a criminal was not prosecuted... as she says in that very talk, no white man was going to be charged for killing any black man. Her father didn't have to be a rabblerouser or especially disliked; he just had to be her father, and his life was forfeit, any time someone decided they'd rather kill him instead of resolving a property dispute.

Ms. Sherrod's story is not a story of someone working through complex racial preconceptions. She didn't have preconceptions; she had actual experience. And there's nothing complex about "your daddy's life wasn't worth putting a white man on trial for, even if there were witnesses to the crime, and even if it was a stupid dispute over a few cows."

And that's what's really frustrating. That it's so easy to forget that so very many people living today have seen, and lived with, this hideous type of injustice.

I'm not singling Mr. Alter out - there's a bunch of people who could, and, clearly, who have, not considered the full situation here. And yet, any time a black person shows any emotional feeling about these injustices, they're going to be called racist.

And that is really frustrating.

Freaky...

2010-05-25T21:40:00.001-07:00

There are times when I hate my inability to research certain issues.

See, there's lots of talk about immigration reform, and that lead to me hearing some interesting things that made my ears perk up.

What I heard was that there wasn't much support for draconian measures against people who employ illegal immigrants.

Now, this is an interesting thought. The one thing that brings immigrants over is a desire to work. If you really, really care about "securing our borders" it would seem that one of your top priorities ought to be removing the big incentive to cross the border. And that would mean serious penalties against people who hire illegal immigrants.

There's another reason that this was interesting to me. Molly Ivins used to talk about this solution a lot. She always said that there wasn't any fence or wall you could build that people wouldn't find a way over. And she was right. But she always seemed so firmly attached to this solution that it bugged me a bit. I mean, sure, it's common sense, but it also seemed like her only solution - and Molly wasn't a one-trick pony. It was strange for her to think of only one part of a problem like this.

Tonight, though... tonight I had a sudden sick realization.

All those people talking about securing our borders - they don't really want to do that, do they?

It's just like the war on drugs. No one actually wants to resolve the problems.

They want the war. They want the money and glory and political advantages they can wring from it.

The powers that be don't want a secure border - they want cheap laborers who are in trouble with the law from the getgo, so that they will accept any working conditions whatsoever without whining - the next best thing to slaves. And they want enforcement programs, with money for border patrol and security and so forth. And they want a lovely hot button issue that they can keep punching over and over again.

Or so it seems.

Like I said, this isn't based upon deep research. But then, why don't you hear about stronger enforcement against employers? Why is it always based upon how you can punish the immigrants, not the people who draw them?

Just like they punish people for possession of drugs - people who are as much the victims of drugs - rather than only going after those who sell them?

It'd be a pretty sick thing, if true - building up a war to cause untold grief to huge numbers of people, all because it's a great way to get stir up emotions and come up with some dollars to spread to constituents.

I'm probably way too optimistic for being able to hope it's not true.

Whenever pointing out another person's error...

2010-05-14T08:59:00.001-07:00

...it's almost a given that you'll make one of your own.

Case in point:
If you know Latin, you'll spot it.

Q.E.D.: quod erat demonstrandum, which roughly translates to "that which was to be shown".

It's often used at the end of proofs and such to show that you've arrived at your destination - i.e., "and I've just shown you what I was supposed to show you. I'm done."

And I have to admit, if I hadn't been a mathematician in a previous life, I wouldn't have known this.

And I'd better end this post befour the iron-cladded law make sme start to srcew things up own my on.

Because I'm an adult...

2010-05-10T20:54:00.001-07:00

...I really don't care about Elena Kagan's sex life.

Andrew Sullivan, grow up. It's none of your fucking business..

Why is it none of your business? Because she hasn't chosen to speak about it. Voila! It's none of your fucking business.

Look! Elections!

2010-03-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

I've seen people point to Iraqi elections, with only a few bombs going off, killing only a few dozen people, as a reason to decide that, gosh darn it, George W. Bush might have been right.

There's part of me that imagines - purely as a thought experiment! - one of those war mongers[1] having problems with gallstones, getting conked over the head, dragged to the hospital, given gall bladder surgery against their will, and maybe end up with a finger and a few toes amputated, and then suffer through endless, painful, but not ultimately harmful, medical procedures - maybe exploratory chest surgery! Slice open that chest, crack that ribcage! before being given intense physical therapy and fed a nutritious diet, and have their eventual basic healthiness (except for possible PTSD) trumpeted as proof that the kidnapping, aggravated assault, and assorted pains and indignities were the right thing to do.

I hope it's clear that would be a hideously evil thing for people to do. You don't hurt other people, not even if, someday, you'll be able to point to some basic healthiness that may or may not have happened without your intervention, as an excuse for your behavior.

This isn't really difficult reasoning when applied to a person. Why does it change when applied to a lot of people?

[1] a monger is a seller - war monger is, in fact, an accurate term in this instance

This might damage the "prospects for bipartisanship"

2010-03-02T19:45:00.000-08:00

Orrin Hatch is a goddamned liar.

I know that's not a very popular position to take, but sometimes a person has to take a principled stand and say what every person of good sense is thinking.

See, a bill has passed the Senate. And he's worried that the House of Representatives might pass it as well. And then, using an entirely non-controversial, and straightforward process, the Senate might use the budget reconciliation process to make changes to things that affect the budget, and let the house pass those as well.

And then - oh my god, the Democrats might get health care reform passed! And that would be terrible because, because, well, the Constitution didn't intend for the Senate to pass a bill, and the House pass a bill, and then have the President sign it! Well... okay, maybe that's exactly what the Constitution says.

Except, the Constitution didn't say that the Senate could use its own rules for debate to pass changes to that bill... um. No, the Constitution says that, too. Hm.

Oh, I get it,

If the health care reform bill is changed via reconciliation, then the Republicans lose. And Orrin Hatch wants to say anything at all to try to convince the American people that any Republican loss isn't really fair.

So he'll act as if the Democrats are trying to use reconciliation to pass the entire bill - that's a lie, since they're just using it to make some budgetary changes to it.

And he'll pretend that changing part of the bill using reconciliation is an abuse of the process of reconciliation because it's a necessary part of a compromise... as if the whole point of reconciliation wasn't allowing people to make compromises without requiring them to overcome a filibuster.

Heck, he even pretends that the bill itself is unpopular, when, if you poll the major components, it's exceedingly popular. It's almost as if some group of people has been telling lies about the bill for a long time, trying to whip up support for defeating it.

Oh, yeah. Heh. Do I even need to tell you there's an R after Hatch's name?

It's really a shame; people can stand up and lie and there's really no cost at all. No one really cares about being honest, and why should then, when lies have no downside?

Buddhism?

2010-01-26T21:12:00.001-08:00

Maha pointed me to this, for which I'm appreciative.

"The Buddha's teachings are deeply conservative" says Robin of Berkeley.

So who was the Buddha, anyway? Was he like Alinsky, steamrolling social justice through by any means necessary? Or was he a conservative, teaching prudence, ethical behavior, and accepting the world as it is?

This is interesting. "Prudence, ethical behavior, and accepting the world as it is" are being called defining characteristics of being conservative. That's pretty stupid.

Well, technically, it's not. It's true that if you honestly felt that those virtues defined political conservativism, you'd have to be an idiot to have failed to notice that conservatives in the US are quite imprudent and unethical - Iraq (and the lack of political consequences for Iraq) prove that. Telling (or merely accepting) untruths told so that you can start a stupid, expensive war, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths is neither prudent nor ethica.

In fact, one would have to be blind and stupid to fail to note that prudence, ethical behavior, and realism exist across all political divisions.

But that's just it - it's not blindness or stupidity. It's ugliness.

Robin doesn't really believe that ethics, prudence and realism belong only to conservatives. Robin wants to pretend that this means that non-conservatives (undoubtedly, including those horrible awful *liberals*) do not have these qualities. In short, it's a lie. And what's the purpose of the lie? Well, to spread, and reward, anomosity towards a group of people who are different.

Trust me: that's not what Buddhism's about.

But that is what we're fighting in this country - not "conservatives" but the kind of hatred that tries to define people as evil, and other, simply because of a difference in opinion.

Well, now we learn.

2010-01-21T20:28:00.001-08:00

So, the Democrats found that if you promise health care reform, and screw around and play all kinds of games for the better part of a year, and just can't get it done, you'll get people ticked off enough that they'll elect a Republican in Massachusetts.

So, now we learn something.

Do the Democrats really want health care reform?

It's still there, for the taking; they can pass the Senate bill, and fix it via reconciliation. Or, they can pass a smaller, common sense bill via reconciliation. Or, they can pass the bill piecemeal, and keep hammering the Republicans who will have to take unpopular votes against popular measures.

If they don't pass it, we'll know the truth: they don't really want it. Not if it's going to be hard. They were willing to pass it when they had all the time in the world to screw around and grandstand and demand goodies for cloture votes. But now, it's going to be hard. Now we know if they really want it, or not.

I hope they come through. Their credibility as a party is at stake. If they don't want health care reform enough to make it happen, then nothing they've said to us is worth anything.

And then, it'll be Massachusetts all over again in November... and deservedly so. Why should anyone vote for a party that they just can't trust?

2010-01-18T08:11:00.000-08:00

This made me think of something strange.

A while back, I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and there was a line in it that stuck out in my memory. At the time, I wasn't sure why it had such an impact, but I think I just figured it out.

In his hustler days, Malcolm was taught to straighten his hair with a mess of gunk including lye. And he mentioned - this was the line that stuck out - that no one ever complimented any black man on his hair for being straightened, but they all just did it anyway. This painful, aggravating process, and they just did it.

Something about Pam's article made me think of an earlier part of my life. I was a frequent victim of bullies as a child, and I also suffered from chronic depression. (Note: these two are not as closely related as you might think.)

I had my share of people point out that I acted in ways that helped invite the bullying, and, to be honest, those people were not entirely wrong. (However, let's keep in mind that bullying is entirely within the control of the bully.) But I have always been a bit rebellious in that way, and I wouldn't change how I acted on behalf of the bullies. To me, it would be letting them control me, and I wouldn't do that.

I think that was a very healthy adaption, for the most part. Imagine if I'd tried to act in a way that didn't set off the bullies. I'd be constantly monitoring myself to see if I got teased or attacked, and decide whatever I'd done that led up to being bullied was a bad thing. I'd be letting myself be controlled, not just by other people's opinion, but by other people's cruelty. I'd be doing all that work, I'd be that self-conscious, and what reward would I get out of it? I wouldn't have to deal with some crap that I'd have had to deal with otherwise.

I wouldn't get complimented for not talking about weird stuff, or bringing in an off-topic idea, or for learning a bit more about sports or the latest kid-fad in my neighborhood. I just wouldn't be hurt as badly. At least, as long as I didn't slip up, and as long as the bullies didn't decide it was more fun to make up a reason to attack me.

And that's what hit me, about Pam's post, and about Malcolm's observation, and
skin lightening, and hair straightening, and hell, let's add the eternal quest for thinness, and I'm sure we could find some other examples.

I wonder how many of those things are people who feel forced to give up, and let their actions be controlled, not even by other people's opinions, but other people's cruelty? Knowing they may never be complimented for having lighter skin or straighter hair or the eternal quest to lose enough weight, but only avoiding some of the crap they might face otherwise.

It changed my perspective a bit on the whole issue of artificial ideals. I'm not sure that these artificial ideas are bullying; I can't prove they're driven by cruelty.

But I also can't prove that they're not. And that's a bit scary.

Of all the stupid arguments...

2009-11-23T07:46:00.001-08:00

There are a lot of stupid arguments being made about why we shouldn't put criminals on trial in New York for having engaged in criminal actions.

To be fair, I should note that there are some non-stupid arguments - but I haven't seen any, and I hate to suggest the existence of something for which I have no evidence. For example, some fools think that we'd be exposing New Yorkers to terrorist threats if there was a trial. Now, these fools might have forgotten that, without a trial, New Yorkers were already attacked. And they might think that the US is unable to plan for security. And they might think that it's somehow *easy* to plan a terrorist attack, especially for a specific time, and a specific place, chosen by another person (e.g.: a trial located where Obama and the state of New York choose to place it). But that doesn't mean everyone else has.

Where was I? Oh, yeah, specific stupid arguments.

But of all the stupid arguments being made, the worst is that this will allow the terrorists to "get their message out".

Yes, the terrorists will get to talk. They will be able to talk about how proud they are to murder the innocent. And you know what? It might sway those who want to murder the innocent. But people who want to murder the innocent aren't very nice people to start with, and are vanishingly rare.

I say, let them talk. I say, let them get their message out. And let the world see that, even the most hateful, even the most evil, people on the face of the planet will get a fair trial, will get convicted when the evidence merits it, and will get a fair sentence.

And then, trust that the world will make the right decision: who do they want to be more like? The murderer of the innocent, or the dispenser of justice?

I know that there are cowards would rather keep them incommunicado for life. They think that mere words are so deathly dangerous that we dare not let them speak. But the only time you have to fear letting someone speak is when you think you can't speak a stronger message.

If we can't speak a stronger message than hatred, and murder, then we're already doomed, and keeping a few criminals locked up by the military won't change that.

I hate this kind of thing...

2009-11-07T20:12:00.000-08:00

This kind of thing drives me buggy.

The article is about how this guy wants a memorial to say that "Muslim terrorists" murdered his son. On the one hand, I understand the guy's anger. And I can't condemn him, as the father of a murder victim, for singling out Islam as part of his anger. It's not right - but it's understandable.

And the mature response is to sympathize with him, while acknowledging that government agencies can not, and should not, single out the religion of the attackers.

Unfortunately, we have people like Bill O'Reilly in this country, so maturity goes right out the window.

Look: here's the thing. Osama bin Ladin wants Muslims to think we're fighting Islam. We're not, but he'd like them to think that, so they harden in opposition against us.

So it's not just a matter of being mature, or of being honest... it's a matter of following a mature, and honest, strategy - telling the truth, that our enemy are the hateful followers of people like Osama bin Ladin, and not the billion plus peace loving Muslims in the world.

An unfair meme...

2009-08-27T07:46:00.001-07:00

...but one I might like to see propagated.

Republicans can't get put in charge of Medicare, ever. Why? Because as soon as they hear about hopes to control costs, the only thing they can think about is euthanasia and other forms of hastening death.

They can't even easily imagine people having other opinions on the matter; they're so lacking in imagination that they are unable to say "no, that's not the intent! What kind of hateful idiot would spread such a story?"

Of course, this meme is unfair for two reasons.

One, anyone reading this must know that they're just bullshitting^[1] for partisan advantage.

Two, anyone willing to allow anyone to believe such a despicable lie shouldn't be put in charge of anything... Medicare is just the beginning!

Oh, ouch, that wasn't very nice, was it? Sorry folks... but it's also true, isn't it?

[1] As always, I try to keep the language family friendly, but "BS" simply doesn't carry the same weight.

How smart is Obama?

2009-08-19T08:28:00.001-07:00

With talk of the drop of the public option, I've been wondering how smart Obama is.

If he's not very smart, then he's actually willing to drop the public option. He's willing to cave. The Republicans will never give up trying to stop him at every turn. Just like Bill Clinton, who folded on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Republicans will smell vulnerability and use it as often as they can.

On the other hand...

On the other hand, if he's been intending to push substantial health care reform, with the intention of showing that he's willing to work with the Republicans, but only if they'll work with him, he might just be smarter than many of us expected.

He's exposed the lengths to which the Republicans will go - lying about reimbursement for living wills counseling, lying about government control of health care, lying about socialization of our health care system. He's drawn out the batshit crazy - apologies for the language, but sometimes profanity is appropriate - and shown the dishonesty that the Republicans will use for partisan advantage.

He'll have given them every chance to get on board... and they'll have, quite clearly, said "no".

If he gets a good bill passed after all this, he'll look like a hero, and they'll all look like villains.

I hope that President Obama is exactly that smart. But now is not the time to trust him.

Call, write, and e-mail your Representative and Senators. Tell them you *demand* solid health care reform, with a strong public option. Tell them that if they can't lead on this, they deserve to lose their jobs, and you'll do your best to make that happen. And mean it.

If health care reform fails, it won't just be Congress, or the Blue Dogs or the Republicans... it'll be the people who wanted it, and didn't make the prospect of seeing it fail scarier than passing it.

Mammon: the Reagan Years

2009-08-10T21:08:00.000-07:00

A lot of people think that Reagan caused a lot of damage to this country, and they're right. He set expectations of military spending so ridiculously high that the US spends more than almost the entire rest of the world combined on its military. He fought to bust unions, and he fought to support the rights of the wealthy to dump on the poor, and he fought to make people believe the very government he was in charge of was completely incompetent. He didn't succeed at that last bit, of course - it took George W. to turn "the government is the problem!" into something approaching truth.

But it wasn't Reagan so much as a part of the Reagan era that caused the most damage. It was during the Reagan era that the worship of money started in this country.

The lowering of the top tax rates were a part of it, but it was more of an attitude than a set of tax brackets. The attitude was that making money was a good and noble thing, in and of itself. For example, if you could sell 100,000 widgets at $5 profit per widget or could sell 90,000 at $6 profit, you should sell them at $6 a widget; otherwise, you're giving up $40,000 in profit. That you could make 10,000 additional would-be widget owners happy is nothing compared to the nobility in taking home an extra forty thou.

"But that's not a terrible thing!" you might say. And it's not... not if widgets are luxury items, at least; if they're some basic necessity, keeping them from 10,000 folks who need them isn't anywhere near as neutral.

Still, the attitude goes beyond "let's find the price-point that hits the profitability sweet spot." It also goes to "if you can get 10 workers to make you a million dollars a year, at a salary and benefits cost of $500,000, you should see if you can get 9 workers to do the same thing. Making a worker happy is nothing compared to the nobility of taking home an extra 50 thou."

And "if you can make a million bucks a year, but have to pay $100,000 in making sure your products are safe and your workers aren't being injured, you should see if you can lobby Washington to cut regulations so you can take home more money. The safety of your workers and consumers is nothing compared to the nobility of taking home some extra cash!"

And so on. Making money is all too often seen as noble and good for its own sake. And if something is good for its own sake, well, then, if it causes a bit of harm, we have to balance the harm it does with the good it does, don't we?

Sure, higher prices, layoffs, and loss of consumer and worker protections hurt... but think about how they help! Think of the money they allow people to make!

This wouldn't be nearly as ironic if the Republicans, who champion this idea, didn't push their Jesus-credentials so heavily. One of the biggest ideas Jesus constantly pushed was that you can't worship both God and money... first and foremost, you have to care about what's right, and loving, and what serves humanity - then you can figure out how to make some cash.

But then, if Jesus showed up at a Republican convention, he'd probably be one of those troublemakers who the police proudly haul away before they can be noisy or visible.

What is the controversy?

2009-08-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people who speak about the "controversy over abortion". Well, there is one, there's no denying that, but most people don't' really recognize what it is. Oh, I don't mean what people claim it is - there are those who make false claims about all kinds of things, either because they're unable or unwilling to speak the truth.

No, I mean the actual controversy.

The controversy is this: does a single cell, without a brain, without a heart, without lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, or any other organ, have more rights than we grant to any living, breathing person?

Now, don't get me wrong. If we resolved this controversy, there would be others. There would be questions about moral and pragmatic and legal issues. But at this time, this is the controversy.

Does a single cell have the right to attach to a person, and demand the right to continue to draw sustenance from that other person, even when that other person is unwilling to provide that sustenance?

(Technically, a single cell doesn't attach. However, there are a great many pro-lifers who say that if God, fate, blind luck, or whatever you want to call it, would deem that the fertilized egg would attach, it is wrong - or even "murder" - to prevent it from doing so.)

In any rational, free society, the answer is no. Carrying a baby to term is dangerous. It's not extremely dangerous (it's happened billions and billions of times, after all), but there is a real risk, to both life and health, to being pregnant. It's also uncomfortable, and can cause a variety of other problems.

Since I'm a no-name blogger, I can make this comparison, with little fear of it being twisted by liars: if it was not pregnancy, if it was some other medical condition, say, a tumor, it would only be the most heartless (or most idiotic) people who would forbid a woman the chance to remove that risk and discomfort with a simple and safe operation.

(I say "since I'm a no-name blogger" because if I were someone of importance, you can bet that there would be liars who would insist I just equated a developing fetus to a tumor. In fact, I just used a fictional medical condition as an allegory. Unfortunately, if you follow debates on abortion, you'll see that form of dishonesty used quite frequently.)

Since we would certainly allow a woman to get this operation if there wasn't a fertilized egg, a zygote or a developing fetus inside of her, then the question comes down to whether or not that fertilized egg, zygote, or developing fetus has the right to insist that the woman continue to bear that risk, and burden, despite her unwillingness to do so.

(I hope it's clear that no one else - not even the man whose sperm fertilized the egg - has the right to insist that she continue to bear that risk and burden.)

The pro-life side has an answer to that. Their answer is "it certainly does. From the moment of conception - from the moment it's a single cell, a fertilized egg, invisible (or nearly so) to the naked eye, it has a right to demand the woman undergo the risk and burdens of a full term pregnancy. If she is unwilling to undergo those risks and burdens, too bad."

But is that rational?

If there's any rational basis for when we are people, for when we have rights, it seems to me that it must lie in our brains. Remove a brain from a person, and what's left over is no longer a person, even if it's kept alive artificially. On the other hand, if we met a non-human creature, and realized they had the same self-awareness, ability to think, and dream, and love, and communicate, that we did, we'd consider them to be "people" too (or so I hope). It's the thinking/dreaming/loving/communicating parts of us that makes us people; it's our brains.

And a fertilized egg has no brain. (Literally - unlike those who think that George W. was a great President.)

Even at 12 weeks - and most abortions occur before 12 weeks - there is simply not enough brain matter to sustain life, let alone support what we think of as personhood.

This is not to say that there aren't people who have legitimate moral qualms about abortion (even abortions that occur prior to 12 weeks). People can have legitimate moral qualms over anything. Hell, people have legitimate moral qualms over masturbation. But the question isn't "can (or do) people consider it wrong?" the question is "should it be illegal? Should a free society put people in jail for doing this?"

So, in the end, that's the controversy over abortion. "Should we put people in jail if they refuse to bear the risks and burdens of a pregnancy, based upon our beliefs in the rights of a single cell (or small clump of cells, or even a developing fetus smaller than a peanut)?"

Someday, this controversy will be resolved, and we'll be able to hold sensible conversations on the other issues surrounding it. But until that day, that's what pro-choice folks are fighting against.

A sample of what's wrong with this country's political climate

2009-08-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

Do a search on "health care bill euthanasia" and you'll start to see results pop up where people are claiming that the health care reform bill "promotes euthanasia"

What the health care reform bill actually does is this.

Let's say you want to make our a living will to specify your end of life treatments. Do you want them to continue treatment as long as there's any hope at all? Cool; you can put that in a living will. Do you want them to let you die in peace, rather than keep you alive through artificial means? Cool; you can put that in a living will. You want continued treatment in on circumstance, and want them to stop trying in another? Cool; you can make sure your living will is put together so your wishes are known.

The health care reform bill says that, if you want counseling to help do that, insurance has to pay for it.

Now, in a sane world, anyone who claimed this "promotes euthanasia" would be branded an idiot (for failing to check the facts), or the most despicable form of liar (for knowingly spreading such a hateful lie), and would never be taken seriously again.

In a sane world, such a person wouldn't be listened to if they later claimed that Republicans wanted to cut taxes on the rich - "hey, you were so hideously wrong, or told such a despicable lie, that we can't trust you about anything anymore!"

But in today's world, they can spread the message around, and be listened to, and believed.

A meme that drives me crazy

2009-07-31T21:49:00.000-07:00

There's this idea going around that officer Crowley, who arrested professor Gates, couldn't be racist. "He taught a class on avoiding racial profiling, so he can't be racist!" goes the idea.

Well, let me emphasize this: I don't have any reason to believe that he is a racist. However, teaching a class on avoiding profiling is not evidence that he's not.

You have to understand what racial profiling actually is, and what it isn't. Racial profiling is not a case of an officer who hates (FITB) deciding to hunt down (FITB) criminals. Profiling is trying to determine a set of criteria - a profile - for a particular criminal. So it might mean determining that a black man driving a flashy, late model car could be a drug dealer; drug dealers drive flashy, late model cars, after all. Using profiling, an officer might stop that driver, and try to find some excuse to search the car, looking for evidence of any criminal activity.

Well, if you arrest someone based upon such weak evidence, you'd expect to have the arrest thrown out as unconstitutional, and if the arrest is thrown out, the evidence gathered might also be thrown out, as the fruit from a poisoned tree.

Teaching an officer to avoid profiling might, or might not, teach the officer not to harass a black man driving a flashy, late model car. The only thing it's guaranteed to teach the officer is not to use that as the reason for the stop. So a bad officer who has learned to "avoid racial profiling" might still decide that the black man in the flashy car is a criminal... but he'll have learned to come up with a better, more defensible reason for making the stop.

So, you might ask, why does this meme drive me crazy? Well, because it's sloppy thinking. People see he taught a case on racial profiling and say "There! See! He can't be racist!"

But that doesn't follow. A racist can learn what will, and won't, be considered a lawful reason for stopping, investigating, and arresting someone, just as easily as a non-racist. Similarly, a hot-tempered officer can teach other officers about appropriate use of force just as well as an officer who is in a constant state of zen-like calm.

The only additional knowledge we have about Crowley, when we learn that he taught officers to avoid racial profiling, is that he knows police procedures, and what needs to be in an arrest report. And we already knew that, since his arrest report has already been made public.

Explaining part of the health care reform issue

2009-07-30T21:18:00.000-07:00

The lousy coverage of the health care reform debate has been bugging me, to the point that I don't know where to start criticizing. I finally decided I'd start small.

One of the reforms we need is to stop letting insurance companies find ways to drop people's coverage as soon as they get sick. If insurance companies are allowed to only provide health insurance for healthy people, then they're not really providing insurance at all.

On the other hand, if you force all insurance companies to accept any patient, you'll have people who will game the system... they'll skip buying health insurance as long as they can get their routine care cheaper than the cost of the premiums, and only buy insurance if they find themselves facing a long term illness. As little sympathy as I have for insurance companies, that's not fair for them. And further, it will mean that if the insurance companies are trying to keep premiums down, then everyone else will have to pay higher premiums to provide enough funding to cover those who buy insurance only when they need it.

Fortunately, the answer to both problems is relatively easy... universal coverage.

If everyone is covered, then no one is getting dumped for pre-existing conditions, or for forgetting to mention they had an ingrown toenail on their application form. And, if everyone is covered, no one is gaming the system by waiting to get coverage.

With universal coverage, there's plenty of money flowing into the system - someone is paying premiums (or their equivalent) for everyone, and the financial burden is spread out evenly. Sure, some people will complain that the healthy are subsidizing the health care costs of the sick, but that's kind of like saying that the long-living people are subsidizing the life insurance of folks who die young... that's the whole point of insurance! You pay to fund the unfortunate, hoping you won't be one of them.

Getting universal coverage isn't easy. Right now, it's looking like we're going to maintain private health insurance companies (hopefully, with an additional public insurance company run by the government). We'll need regulations to make sure that they cover everyone. But then we're going to have to fund coverage for everyone. That can either be through taxes - yeah, right, like that's going to happen! - or through a set of mandates.

It's not very pretty; no one likes to be told what to do. But if you don't want people gaming the system, you need to make sure they're paying into the fund (or that someone else is on their behalf), one way or another.

So it's looking like that's what we'll end up with... assuming we want effective health care reform.

If we'd rather remain the last industrialized nation that doesn't care about the health care of its citizenry, we could use the Republican plan, or just make some cosmetic tweaks.

Wait, I'm repeating myself, aren't I?

Protesting too much?

2009-07-22T09:45:00.001-07:00

I've seen a lot of Republicans claiming that the government can't provide good services. Today, for example, Bobby Jindal suggests that this is the case because the Bush administration's FEMA couldn't respond well to Katrina.

You know, I think this is exactly what Republicans fear about government involvement in health care. Just imagine if your health care was denied for spurious reasons, and you were in the public plan... you'd call up your Senator or Representative and tell them to do something about it. You'd be on all over them, right? You'd have something that focused your mind on whether or not the government worked, whether it did the job you were paying for.

For a good many years, since Reagan, that's been the Republican mantra - "Government is the problem". They want to cut regulations (remember the peanut recall? sensible regulations could have prevented the salmonella infection, and made it easy to trace if it had happened) and taxes, because that makes their interest groups (read as: the wealthy and big business) happy.

But what if people had a reason to pay attention to governance? What if they had a vested interest, a direct interest, in a branch of the government?

You'd have an awfully hard time telling people that government is the Big Bad, then. You'd have to make certain parts of the government (such as the public plan) work well. And suddenly, you couldn't claim the government was always inefficient and always a problem, and suddenly, you'd have to come up with actual ideas, and real arguments, about why any given problem should, or shouldn't, be owned by the government.

I don't blame them for being scared.

But that's not a good reason to try to scuttle health care reform.

And let's face it; in the long run, it'll be good for them as a party to have to confront new ideas and create new arguments.

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates

2009-07-21T22:07:00.001-07:00

So, the arrest of Henry Gates is causing a bit of a stir. These kinds of things are like word problems (or "story problems" as I've heard them called) in mathematics, though. The first thing you need to do is figure out what matters, and toss out the rest of the information as irrelevant.

There are always competing narratives in these cases. The police officer will have you believe that he was honestly concerned and polite and deeply respectful of Mr. Gates, and yet, for no reason, Mr. Gates became belligerent.

And Mr. Gates would undoubtedly like you to believe that he was cooperative and friendly, but the officer was rudely aggressive and harassing a man he knew was innocent.

And here's the thing: none of that matters. That's the part of the word problem where they tell you a red car leaves Los Angeles; it doesn't matter that the car is red, and it doesn't matter that the place it left was LA.

Look, I don't care how Gates or the officer acted. The officer was going in to a possibly threatening situation, and was probably hyped up, and Gates, sitting at home, having had a long, frustrating day, had reason to be pissed off at any intrusion. People have been rude with less provocation, and the rudeness shouldn't enter into it.

What matters is this: the police report tells us that, in the face of a hostile situation, the police officer specifically tried to draw Mr. Gates outside. And, surprise, surprise, once he had him outside, he could claim he was creating a disturbance, and arrest him.

This, by itself, is an abuse of power.

Now, there are a lot of people out there acting shocked - shocked! - that, if the officer is to be believed, Gates was argumentative. "You should always be calm and cooperative when dealing with the police!"

Well, in general, you should. Police are fully aware that cops have been killed in routine situations all the time. They've been killed investigating breakins, they've been killed at traffic stops, they've probably been killed helping young children get kittens out of trees.

And it doesn't matter how wrong or unfair it is if a cop makes a horrible mistake, and thinks you're going for a weapon, and tries to defend himself from a potentially deadly situation. It's still going to ruin the rest of the day for both of you.

So, yes, it's wise to be calm and cooperative. And let's throw in how you should try to be friendly, because even a bad cop can be the one who ends up taking a bullet trying to protect others.

But there's a whole bunch of folks who seem to be okay with a police officer making a pointless arrest, or even hurting someone needlessly, if the victim was rude or nasty to the cop. Those folks seem to have forgotten that we live in a free society, and the first rule of living in a free society is that the government, and its agents, must leave you alone unless you're doing something that hurts others.

When a cop can smack someone around, or use a Taser on them, or even arrest them just to waste a few hours of their time, without a compelling reason, that's a violation of civil liberties. Allowing that behavior is a violation of the very notion of freedom.

And that's all we need to know about the arrest of Mr. Gates. A police officer provoked Mr. Gates into coming to the door of his residence so that he could arrest Mr. Gates, when there was no need to do so.

Don't think I don't sympathize with the officer to some extent. I'll give the officer the benefit of the doubt and assume that Mr. Gates was quite rude to him. And when you're confronted with rudeness when you're trying to do your job, and when you're already hyped up because you're going into a potentially dangerous situation, it can be really upsetting.

But that's all the more reason that he should have kept his head, and either de-escalated the situation himself, or called in one of the other officers who were present to assist him. He could have let the pressure out of the situation, and maybe even turned it positive.

Instead, he got to make a pointless arrest, and a few headlines that he and his fellow officers will long have cause to regret.

What is racism?

2009-07-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

We've been seeing an interesting example of racially charged narrative in the news recently.

Sonia Sotomayor is being harassed for having said that she didn't quite agree that a wise man and a wise woman will necessarily come to the same decision; she cited some famous instances in which the Supreme Court upheld discrimination, and said she felt that a wise Latina would more often than not come to a better decision than a man who hadn't had the experiences of such a woman.

Many white men angrily said that this was unfair, that if *they* said that a white man was a better judge than a Latina, they'd be ridden out of town on a rail, and, oh, by the way, Sotomayor was WRONG WRONG WRONG on the Ricci case, where she obviously demonstrated prejudice due to her ethnic background.

No rail-riding so far.

MAJOR SCANDAL (Or, a bit of snark for your enjoyment)

2009-06-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

As you know, the President of the United States is suspected of engaging in horrendously egregious misconduct.

Noble Public Servant Gerald Walpin was fired - yes, *fired* - for daring to investigate one of Obama's supporters, leading to CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS ~~with no charges filed, and the return of some federal funding because there's no proof it was spent properly due to sloppy accounting~~.

This is terrible, because Walpin, ~~,just like any other competent attorney doing the same job could have,~~ found *SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS OF WASTE AND FRAUD* in the Americorps plan, including the aforementioned Obama booster, Kevin Johnson ~~whose organization was actually only asked to return a bit under half a mill; ignore that; the 75 million is more impressive and damaging sounding~~.

There is no other reason for firing Walpin. The only possible reason for firing Walpin was that he investigated an Obama supporter.

Look... some members of the so-called "reality based community" will say he made overstated claims that could not be supported by the subsequent investigation... but hey, he got some money returned, so what's the big deal that he claimed a lot more than could be proven?

And they'll harp on that tired old allegation that he withheld exculpatory evidence from the US Attorney's office. But come on; prosecuting attorneys just *love* surprises!

And, sure, he didn't bother to do an audit to determine how much money might have been mis-spent, but what's more important, a few facts, or making some loud, newsworthy accusations against a person who's running for political office?

And come on... we all know that talking to the media during the election about an investigation ~~which later found no criminal wrongdoing~~ is *not* unethical. Why should people be entitled to the presumption of innocence *during a political campaign*? What kind of pansy-ass liberal thinks that you shouldn't let an investigation run the risk of doing irreparable harm to the subject of the investigation?

And, yes, yes, Walpin pushed to have Johnson barred from receiving or dealing with federal funds - a rare sanction, invoked (per the IG's office) "If we find really egregious stuff and we want to stop the bleeding" - which could have barred him from carrying out his duties as mayor, and Walpin vociferously fought to keep that suspension in place despite the damage that could do to the city of Sacramento, CA, but after his clear objectivity and fairness in other parts of the investigation, why should this count against him?

Anyway, as you can see, this is clearly a purge, and a warning. Obama is saying to people working for the government that if you ~~royally fuck up an investigation~~ investigate one of his friends, you're out of here, if he has the power to fire you.

You know how we know that?

Because Obama had one of his people call Walpin up, ask him if he was going to resign, and told him he had *one hour* - ONE HOUR - to resign, or he'd be fired.

Clearly, this phone call was an attempt to get around a law that said that if Obama wants to fire an Inspector General, he has to send a letter to both houses of Congress, saying that he is firing the IG, and why.

Even more egregiously, although the law doesn't dictate what reasons Obama can give for firing an IG, *HE SAID HE WAS FIRING WALPIN BECAUSE HE NO LONGER HAD CONFIDENCE IN WALPIN*.

So, clearly, he was quite possibly violating that law, by sending that letter, saying Walpin was fired 30 days after the letter was sent. Oh, maybe not the *letter* of the law, since the law just says he has to send a letter, but the *spirit*. Because the law was intended to provide oversight, giving Congress 30 days to act! And, you see, Obama claiming he lost confidence in Walpin denies Congress the power to engage in oversight, because if it doesn't, *OBAMA WOULDN'T HAVE VIOLATED THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW*. And we know that's not possible.

In any case, calling Walpin up and asking him to resign must be a manner of dodging that oversight.

Because, you know, that call was a threatening one. Resign - or be *FIRED*.

*Quit your job* - or you'll lose it anyway.

I'm sorry; I know that's so threatening that some folks reading this are probably having palpitations, but I need to drive home the truth. Besides, can you imagine something more bullying?

I can't.

Oh, sure, some dirty stinking liberal who insists on giving Obama the "benefit of the doubt" will surely say that it's common courtesy to give a guy a chance to say he's decided to pursue other interests, rather than to say he's being fired. But how on earth are you supposed to believe that Barack Obama - a Chicago pol! - could have acted out of common courtesy?

Look, none of this proves anything... I'll be the first to admit that. But it bears watching. Because if we keep ignoring the atrocious acts of Walpin, and slant the story really heavily, we can make it sound like this makes Obama look really bad!

Thoughts on insurance

2009-06-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

I'm not that old, but I can tell you a story about how things used to be in the good old days.

Back in the day, here's how insurance would work.

An insurance company would expect to take in a lot of money - just to have a solid figure, let's say a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would expect to pay out a billion dollars over the course of 20 years. And it would pay out its administrative expenses and such simply from the investment income from that billion dollars over those 20 years.

It's supposed to be a pretty dull business. You make careful, prudent investments to make absolutely sure that you have the money you need to pay out claims. You spend hours pouring over actuarial tables and calculating premiums to make sure that you offer good value for the customer's insurance dollar, while still covering the possibility of a large claim coming in.

But sometime a while back, folks decided that greed is good and free enterprise can do anything better than a bunch of boring accountants and actuaries trying to provide a valuable public service. Let's run insurance like a for-profit business, and the magic of the free market will make everything better!

And, since greed is good, it's good to try to keep every dollar in premium payments you can for as long as you can. It's good to find ways to cut the costs of claims (even if this means denying a claim for an excessive period of time). It becomes a great idea to find a reason to, say, drop an expensive patient-to-be from your health insurance rolls, if you can do so legally. Remember, you're not trying to provide a valuable public service, you're trying to maximize shareholder return!

Of course, if a small group of extremely wealthy investors wanted to run an insurance company along more traditional lines, they could. It would have to be a small group of very wealthy investors, though... if such a company was publicly traded, it would likely be the target of a buyout. You see, since it wasn't maximizing its profit, its stock value would be low; other companies would realize they could make more money from that customer base. They'd buy out the company (and thus, the insurance contracts), probably using a leveraged buyout - the kind of risky investment old-time insurance companies would consider imprudent - and bye-bye traditional company.

Right now, Congress is considering health care reform. One of the possibilities on the table is a "public option", which is to say, medicaid for anyone willing to pay for it. Let the government run a health care plan; it won't be for-profit, and it won't try to be flashy. It'll just try to balance out premiums paid with benefits paid. It'll be immune to leveraged buyouts, and while it won't attract the flashiest of the flashy investment gurus, it won't need to, because it doesn't need to make a bunch of shareholders happy with maximized profits... it'll just need to make stakeholders (that's "we the people of the United States") happy.

The insurance companies hate it; they're willing to take the good (a mandate that everyone has health insurance coverage), but they're not willing to take the bad (competition demanding that they be more efficient than a government agency). Which is strange, since we've been assured that the government can never be more efficient than a private company.

But what it really comes down to is this: in order to beat the government at the insurance game, they'll have to play the insurance game the old fashioned way, making more prudent investments, finding ways to serve customers and maximize the value of their policies, and otherwise engaging actual, honest competition that is intended to benefit the consumer first and foremost.

What is "context"?

2009-06-03T12:48:00.000-07:00

Here's an example of "context".

First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable.

Note that the subject, a woman who has recently come to national attention, is talking about cases involving discrimination. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in gender discrimination cases. It certainly is not true that other folks are *incapable* of understanding the values.

But it took until 1972 for 9 white men to uphold a discrimination lawsuit involving a woman.

A wise latina would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion when discussing cases like those under consideration... those involving racism or sexism. Or, so she suggests, recognizing that a great many of those cases were decided less wisely, since sexism and racism were both upheld when the court was composed entirely of white men. But even there, she states, quite clearly, that "many are ... capable" of understanding the values and needs of other groups.

Why don't conservatives who want to attack Sotomayor bring this context up? Is it that they can't read her speech and recognize the context?

Or does the first part of the sentence say all that needs to be said? That too many conservatives just wish to attack Sotomayor, without regard for the truth?

So what?

2009-05-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of people out there trying to make a big case out of the question of what Nancy Pelosi knew, and when she knew it, when it comes to the question of the Bush administration torturing people.

Now, me, I'm glad that there are people who realize that torture is a horrible, horrible thing, and who realize that someone who knew about it, and didn't act to stop it, was a terrible person for that failure.

But before we start crucifying the moral cowards who might have known about it (if the CIA isn't being deceptive - go figure, a spy agency being deceptive!), shouldn't we start crucifying those who engaged in torture cheerleading and coverups first? Or, you know, tortured people?

Shouldn't we investigate fully, and learn everything we can, and spread the blame where it belongs, rather than singling out individuals who weren't involved in the creation or implementation of the policy?

If Nancy Pelosi is horrible for having known and done nothing, there are a lot of bigger fish we should be frying before we get to this guppy.

Does torture work?

2009-05-14T12:02:00.001-07:00

There are a lot of folks talking about this.

"Gee, Cheney, who will be shamed and maybe indicted if torture is useless, is telling us that torture is acceptable. Now, as tempting as it is to note that he's telling us self-serving bullshit, maybe we should consider whether torture works... because, after all, Cheney was so (cough) successful, and he seems so serious."

The trouble is that there were a lot of people who supported torture in the days after 9/11, who now have to try to justify their own cowardice and brutality. And there were a lot of people who turned the other way when hearing about torture, and they have to try to justify their own guilt over not caring.

Well, there's one thing that we know that torture does, one way in which we know that torture "works".

We know that torture can force people to say whatever needs to be said to get the torture to stop. In SERE, for example, our military folks are forced to sign confessions saying they have committed war crimes. These are tough people, who know they will become legends if they hold out against the worst that SERE can dish out to them... and they, in almost all cases, sign false confessions.

(I've heard it claimed that no one holds up under torture, but that groups have managed to escape or overpower the interrogators. Obviously, I can't speak authoritatively on this subject.)

So we know torture can easily produce false information. We also know that false information can be a lot more damaging than a lack of factual information. It can be very hard to prove a negative! On the other hand, truthful statements are easier to collaborate... hey, they're true, after all. So standard interrogation, which produces more true statements, is going to be better.

Ah, but if there's a ticking time bomb...

Yes, indeed. If we know there's a ticking time bomb, and we know who knows the location of the time bomb, we can torture that person... and maybe get false information out of them. And then we waste precious time chasing down a false lead.

And if it is a false lead, does it mean the torture-victim lied? Or didn't know the bomb's location after all?

The only thing torture does is get people to say something. Proving that it's true is another thing entirely, and figuring out if it's false can be flat out impossible. Standard interrogation methods produce better intelligence; that should be all anyone needs to know.

Universal coverage and Medicare

2009-05-14T08:17:00.000-07:00

I saw an interesting argument posted by someone, somewhere, and I thought I'd point out the flaw to it.

This person said that, if Medicare is going broke, universal coverage isn't going to help... that we awful liberals are just making stuff up when we point to universal coverage as a method to protect Medicare. After all, Medicare is already big enough to gain economies of scale, and to set rules and negotiate. So how can universal coverage help?

And on the face of it, it sounds almost reasonable. Doesn't it?

Well, here's the thing. No one is saying "let's start covering everyone without figuring out how to fund this coverage." There'll be some combination of contributions and taxes or fees, or who-knows-what, intended to pay for medical care. And if we figure out how we can fund medical coverage for everyone, we've also figured out how to fund medical coverage for those now covered by Medicare.

Too bad for the "universal coverage can't fix Medicare!" meme. It could have been such a lovely little soundbite if it wasn't so tragically and obviously false.

More thoughts about hopes for failure

2009-05-13T22:36:00.000-07:00

So, for the past while now, Dick Cheney's been going around being, well, Dick Cheney... do we need a nastier insult? Barack Obama, he says, is making the country less safe, and Cheney's championship of torture helped protect us.

For a while, I was just disgusted by this, but then I thought about two people.

First, I thought about Rush Limbaugh and his now infamous "I hope he fails" bit. Isn't this really the same kind of thing? Cheney's going around, hoping desperately that a failure on the part of Obama might redeem his own legacy.

But then I thought about Jack Goldsmith. Jack Goldsmith pointed out that the horrible legal opinions rendered by the OLC before he joined were the result of people who were afraid that there might be another terror attack... and that they might be blamed for letting it happen. It's kind of interesting that he, a lawyer, mentioned this specifically. It wasn't just the fear of another attack; if that was all it was, why bring up the prospect of blame at all? No... I trust Mr. Goldsmith on this. The Bushies were not just afraid of another attack; they were afraid of the blame and fingerpointing that would follow.

And isn't that all you need to know about Cheney, and Limbaugh, and the rest of the Bushies right now?

They had six years to run the country, and they failed miserably. They used every trick they had available to them, and they still flopped. And now, they have a smart, competent, strong leader who doesn't need to play their games, and what can they do? They can hope he fails.

Because what if he succeeded? What if he showed that fair tax rates and smart spending could help put the country back on its feet? What if he showed that America was stronger when it wasn't waging pointless wars? What if he does better at keeping America safe by using good intel, and living up to American values?

I think the Bushies can deal with being proven incompetent... they've had enough practice. But now, they'd also be proven wrong. And I don't think they're emotionally capable of dealing with that.

This is troublesome?

2009-05-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

So, I hear-tell that Wanda Sykes took some shots at Rush Limbaugh at the White House Correspondents Dinner, and this is supposed to bother us... over the line, and all that.

Well, let's remember who Rush Limbaugh is.

First, he's an entertainer, which is to say, a bullshit artist. If you're a bullshit artist, you can't expect to be treated with respect. That's the nature of being a bullshit artist. If you're not real, you don't get the respect due real people.

But, let's just pretend that he's not. Let's pretend he's being serious, and deserves the respect due his ideas. What's the most famous recent idea he's put forth?

Well, that he hopes Obama fails, of course. And we're supposed to accept this. Why? Well, because he disagrees with Obama's ideas. And so it's okay to hope they fail.

That is: he, and his supporters, say that it's okay to hope that the country goes through pain and trouble, rather than have that pain and trouble be avoided by ideas they disagree with.

In short, they'd rather hope that the country suffers, if the other option is that they'll be proven wrong.

Does Limbaugh deserve to be protected from scorn, when he'd rather hope the country suffers, rather than see his bloviation exposed for the utter bullshit that it is?

No.

Shorter Charles Winecoff

2009-05-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

Kids today - by which I mean 20 somethings - are evil, nasty, hateful, and short sighted. You know how I know this? They make broad over-generalizations and only consider one kind of thinking to be proper. They're all wrong, because they don't think the way I do!

Oh, yeah - and if you disagree with someone, and say so in a mildly nasty manner, you should be thinking about how it looks like cross burning!

(I only wish I was kidding.)

Idiotic talk about torture and the Obama administration

2009-04-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ed Rollins is being an idiot here.

First, he accuses Obama of "waffling" for first promising not to prosecute those who, acting on the legal advice given them, committed crimes, and then saying it was up to his Attorney General to determine criminality.

This is not waffling, though his initial statement was certainly less precise than it should have been. The President can't made determinations of what is or isn't criminal behavior, and must give his AG a light rein in making these determinations. This is simple separation of responsibilities, and good leadership.

What's crazy, of course, is that Rollins can't even figure out that there are sound reasons for Obama letting Attorney General Holder being, well, an attorney general. No, Obama is doing this because he wants to be loved!

Rollins, here's a hint: if you need to build up a pathetic strawman to be the foundation of your argument, you need another argument.

Rollins continues with his short sightedness in other areas as well:

Fortunately, because of the enormous talents of many federal agencies comprised of extraordinary Americans who work very hard at their jobs, the United States has not been struck in 2,781 days.

It's true, there has not been another major terrorist attack inside US borders. Maybe that's because we've been dangling a lot of valuable soldiers and expensive military equipment out in a war zone, where it's a much easier target... maybe they're just picking the low hanging fruit.

We don't know. The assumption that the foolish flailing of the Bush administration protected us is unsupported by facts.

On the other hand, Rollins has knowledge - knowledge he is quite calm about speaking on a national stage - that should set his heart at ease.

Releasing the Justice memos opened a door and the contents repulsed many people. But these were not evil men who drafted the memos. These were not evil people who carried out the methods authorized by them. They were our fellow citizens who were trying to protect us from the real evildoers.

Good. Then a full, fair investigation will show that there were no evil men involved, right? And since it'll all be in the open, the more evidence comes out, the better these "not evil" people will look, right?

So, let's investigate. Let's have a full, open, fair investigation, and see the clean, beautiful lack of evil that Rollins is so confident that we'll see.

I, of course, disagree that we'll find a lack of evil. But I'm more than willing to be shown to be wrong, if that's what the investigation reveals.

Blogging the Bush torture memos

2009-04-18T20:57:00.000-07:00

You could define blogging as "trying to prove you're clever by writing about something nifty that you had no part in." I'm not sure it's a perfect definition (and it's certainly not comprehensive!) but today, I'm going to try to commit blogging by that definition.

As you probably know, President Obama ordered the release of legal memos that were written to try to provide a veneer of legality to the CIA's torture of prisoners. And there's a debate going on in the blogosphere. Obama pledged not to prosecute the CIA agents who followed those memos. Should he keep to that pledge, in the face of clear evidence that torture was performed? After all, as many, many, many people have pointed out, the Nuremberg trials did not accept "we were following orders!" as a defense.

But, these memos did not say "it is lawful to perform torture". This is a key issue: the memos said that certain actions did not rise to the level of torture.

If the memos had said "these actions, despite being torture, are lawful" that should have been a bright line in the sand. I'd say "prosecute away". But they didn't say that. They said "these actions are not torture."

Now, there's a huge problem here. This is all legal theorizing, ignoring the circumstances. Theorizing that a certain set of actions wouldn't be torture is simply absurd, especially when the basis of many of those decisions came from a totally different situation (people being willing to undergo SERE training, when they knew that they were not in real danger, and knew that it would all be over in a set time frame - a situation that doesn't apply to captives).

But the theories were given to the CIA as legal opinions. And they avoided the bright line in the sand... they said that these things would not be torture, and therefore, not illegal.

So, if we prosecuted the CIA personnel who performed in accordance with these opinions, we are betraying their confidence in the assurances they'd already been given. It would be, at best, extremely dangerous.

I also agree with Anonymous Liberal that it would probably be pointless. Juries would probably refuse to convict.

That's not the clever bit. Here's the clever bit.

I think that we should consider prosecuting any way.

Why?

Because I think if a lawyer gives such pathetically horrible advice that it gets his clients prosecuted, it should be enough to do some real damage to their reputation. It might even push some folks to consider malpractice actions against them. But I think if that advice doesn't lead to so much as an investigation, people will regard it as moot.

Now, someone's probably going to point out some ugly truth or another, like "there's no penalty for being a really stupid lawyer", and it'll ruin my cleverness. And, hell, someone might point out that it still is a betrayal of the agents who asked for legal opinions, and received them, and followed their advice.

And, of course, it would be. And it probably still would be pointless. If those memos didn't at least hang the jury, I'd be incredibly surprised.

So, yes, agreed. It's not really all that clever after all. But it does point to the competing villains of this story.

First, that there were lawyers who would write such evil things and claim they were legal, and second, that there was an idea that lawyers could pre-judge what was, or wasn't, torture.

Those people, and those ideas, are what should be in our metaphorical gunsights now.

State secrets privilege

2009-02-10T20:06:00.001-08:00

This really pisses me off.

Barack Obama's administration is pulling the same kind of crap that Bush used to do. He's saying that a valid lawsuit must be dismissed from the outset, based upon the state secrets privilege.

Now, if Glenn Greenwald is not to your taste, I can understand that, so let me explain what's at stake here.

Sure, there are times when the government has a valid interest in demanding the protection of state secrets during civil and criminal cases. No one disputes that. If we didn't allow this, enemies would find ways to involve our covert agencies in lawsuits and force them to reveal, well, anything.

But the way the privilege is supposed to work is this: someone demands evidence from the government, or tries to compel a certain bit of testimony, and the government says "no, we can't do this," and explains why this would reveal state secrets to the judge. The judge may negotiate terms, to see if there's a way to allow the evidence in an altered form - with sections blacked out, or a summary given, or assertions of pertinent facts.

There are certainly situations in which state secrets might cover so much evidence that there's no longer a provable claim made by the plaintiff, and the case must be dismissed. In the referenced case, dealing with kidnapping, the government might well be willing to assert that the identities of the kidnappers is a state secret, and that there is no way to prove that they were agents of the US government, and thus, there's no valid case against the US government.

That is a nasty, but possibly necessary, use of the privilege.

But this is different. This is the Obama administration saying "you can't try this case at all; you can't request information, and have us refuse every request by claiming state secrets; merely trying the case would be an unacceptable danger to state secrets."

This kind of thing is the executive branch using secrecy to avoid paying any penalty for violations of the law. It's exactly what disgusted me so deeply about the Bush administration... they broke the law, and then hid behind secrecy at every turn.

I have one single hope that I'm holding out for this. I'm hoping that Obama is insisting on doing this because he feels the courts must rule that this is an invalid use of privilege. If Obama is daring the courts to say that this is invalid, so that future administrations will not be able to engage in this behavior, then I can forgive him.

But right now, I'm thoroughly disgusted by his actions.

2009-02-07T21:09:00.000-08:00

Okay, lemme 'splain something. And I want to 'splain something to Republican obstructionists, so I'll use small words.

These obstructionists are complaining that the economic stimulus bill is this horrible, horrible "spending bill", not a stimulus bill.

Okay, now I know this is hard to understand, but the economy is made up of people making money by selling goods or making money providing services.

Right now, a lot of people and businesses aren't buying. So, the government is going to purchase goods and services, so people can make money providing those goods and services.

Now, I suppose there's a way to do this without a spending bill. You could just try to force people to produce goods and services without fair compensation, but that's somewhere between slavery and socialism. So actually spending money to acquire goods and services is considered a good thing.

Oh, but what about the magical magic of tax cuts, which are good when the economy is booming, and good when it's down, and good when there's a war on, and good when it's a time of peace?

Well, two problems here. First, by actually obtaining goods and services, you pay people money, and they then go out and purchase goods and services themselves, and then, the people who sell them goods and services take their money, and spend it themselves, etc.. Second, you reduce taxes, it might put more money in some people's pockets (remember, a lot of lower income people aren't paying taxes, and businesses get taxed only on profits) but that money might be saved, or used to pay down old bils, rather than directly purchase goods and services. You don't get as much stimulus, dollar for dollar, from tax cuts.

Okay, but, what about the "pork" in the bill? Well, first, "pork" has a specific definition. Pork barrel spending refers to earmarks. There's no pork in this bill. Period. The obstructionists complaining about pork are misusing the term because they don't like the particular spending in question.

Okay, then, what about the specific targeted spending, like the much mocked funds for family planning? Isn't that wasteful?

I'm sure there's some universe out there where family planning isn't important to women trying to manage a career or an education, or even stay at home and be a housewife or mom. But, since family planning helps women manage their jobs and their education, and since it prevents unwanted pregnancies which can lead to additional burdens on state resources, I don't see why anyone is complaining, unless they're just looking for something to complain about. What was the funding? A couple hundred million, in a bill spending four thousand times that much?

I'll grant, there's some spending in the bill that maybe isn't as likely to stimulate the economy as other stuff. Funding for Head Start, for example... that's only going to help young children with pre-school; they won't be earning money for over another dozen years. But it's money that will get paid to people for goods and services, and help working class parents provide for their children.

Sure, the Republicans don't like it. They want everyone to have to pay for everything on their own. They don't think we're a community that should be helping each other; they don't think that helping our most vulnerable accomplishes anything important.

But, let's face it. People chose to have the Democrats in power. They should get a chance to run things their way for a bit, so we can see how things go.

Frankly, I think the Republicans know all this. But I think they're afraid of this, just like they're afraid of health care reform. I think they're afraid it'll work too well, and show that their wailing and handwringing was wrong, and push them even further into the minority.

If so, that's a shame. Barack Obama is reaching out; he's more than willing to make sure there's plenty of glory for both parties. The Republicans can end up looking good, too... all they have to do is come up with some workable, positive ideas, and everyone will look better in the end.

It's called post hoc ergo propter hoc...

2009-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

"Whatever else he did or didn't do, at least George W. Bush kept us safe from terrorists. (Except on 9/11/2001 when he was ignoring the strident warnings that bin Ladin was determined to attack inside the US and who doesn't make teensy mistakes from time to time?)"

And folks know this because he's said he was working to keep us safe from terrorists. Cool.

And I'm keeping the Pacific Northwest safe from hurricanes. I mean, I'm here, right? And there hasn't been a hurricane affecting the Pacific Northwest for a long, long time, right? I see one from 1975, but while I was alive then, I was living in Philadelphia. (And note: during my time of living in Philadelphia, there weren't any hurricanes there, either. We got hit by the side arm of Belle one year, but that was just a nasty thunderstorm with high winds; the actual hurricane struck New Jersey.)

Of course, there are hateful partisans suffering from Weirdo Derangement Syndrome, who will insist I had nothing to do with this. They'll say that, even if I hadn't been here (or in Philadelphia), it's stuff that's beyond my control that causes hurricanes. Which is ridiculous. A great deal of what I do to prevent hurricanes is classified. They aren't privy to this knowledge.

What's that?

Oh, great. Now I have to put on my hurt-feelings look. You don't believe me either!

It's not fair. Just saying something is true works for an incompetent oaf like George W. Bush, but it doesn't work for me.

Well... maybe the unfairness is that people shouldn't believe that Bush kept us safe. Maybe they should grant that, sure, Al Qaeda didn't attack us on the US mainland again, but we have no idea if that was because of anything that George W. Bush did or didn't do.

He may have been lucky. Or, Al Qaeda might have thought it was better to go after US soldiers and try to damage expensive military equipment rather than attack the US again. Or, he might have thought that the US was doing plenty of damage to itself in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, so he had nothing else to worry about.

So let's modify that first sentence: "whatever else he did or didn't do, at least George W. Bush wasn't so blindingly incompetent that al Qaeda could hit us again on the US mainland, along with any other attacks they may have made against US targets."

It's not very catchy, but it does have the benefit of greater accuracy.

A too-obvious connection

2009-01-29T21:35:00.000-08:00

So, there's been this set of complaints about the original version of the stimulus plan. It included money to allow states to cover family planning under Medicaid.

And what kind of complaints have been voiced? "It sounds like China" with their one-child policy, and it's an attempt to reduce the number of children. Nancy Pelosi can't have any more children, so now she doesn't want anyone else to have them. And, of course, it's an attempt to keep "those people" from reproducing.

Folks... they can't be that stupid.

No, no, you don't understand. I mean, they can't be that stupid.

They can't. And they're not.

They're lying. Saying whatever hateful thing they can to create a controversy to try to slam the Obama administration and the new Democratic controlled Congress.

And I can kinda deal with that. It's the nature of the beast. People will lie if that's what they need to do to make their opponents look bad. But there's no need to do that with the Republicans today.

In order to score political points, they were willing to axe funds that would let lower income folks have sex without fear of pregnancy. The one accessible pleasure that is available to all lovers, and they're willing to throw a wrench into the works, making it harder for them to avoid pregnancy (assuming they want to, of course).

And they're doing it at a time when lower income folks are already hurting because the Republicans weren't up to the task of governing.

I suppose that's a bit of a cheap shot, but the connection is pretty obvious. They're willing to throw away help that could be given to people who could really use it, just so they can make up hateful lies and score political points. You think that maybe there's a connection between that, and their appalling inability to govern well?

Maybe if they were the kind of party that would not allow their spokespeople to tell such hateful lies about such obviously beneficial programs, maybe they'd be up to the task of good governance.

Brownback embraces his inner coward

2009-01-23T20:07:00.001-08:00

What else can you call this, other than an embrace of cowardice?

To say that any wrong can be committed, that any violation of human rights can be allowed, to protect the safety and security of the American people is to say that it's acceptable to let fear drive you into doing something evil and wrong. And it's not.

It's a very human failing, mind you... lots of people do stupid or evil things out of fear. But the answer to that is not to say "well, I was afraid so that makes it all right". The answer to that is to assess the fear in a rational manner, and do better next time.

Is that what Brownback is doing? No, he thinks the Bushies didn't do enough!

The president must convince the American people that releasing detainees or placing them in other facilities will improve the level of security they enjoyed under pre-existing policies

He wants even greater security; he's scared of a bunch of people (most of whom are innocent of wrongdoing) who are kept in a lockup (a great many in solitary) and he wants Obama to convince him that he'll be even safer in the future.

It's idiotic, as well as cowardly.

Or, maybe it's not. Maybe he's just feigning these concerns to try to hamstring the Obama administration. It's possible.

I guess, if so, it would make him better than a cowardly idiot; we could violate standard English noun formation, and grant him the title of "Cowardly Lyin'".

Stupid or lying?

2009-01-16T07:03:00.001-08:00

So, the latest, and hopefully last, rendition of "Is he stupid, or is he lying?" by George W. Bush happened last night.

I found his one claim to be a particularly delicious example of something that proves he's either an idiot or a liar. There's good and evil, he said. And between them, there can be no compromise.

This from a President who has authorized torture and kidnapping. He clearly has compromised between good and evil, and either is too stupid to realize that he's capable of evil, or lying to himself and us about it.

But which is it?

I'm more inclined to think it's stupidity, keeping in mind that people can be painfully stupid in some ways, while being intelligent in others. And it's the kind of stupidity that he's being supported in by his pals and fellow Republicans.

I mean, look around. You'll see Republicans insisting that Bush "kept us safe".

How would they know? Are they members of Al Qaeda, and know that all attacks that had been planned were thwarted? Because the other option is that Al Qaeda chose to attack us in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of in the US.

You'll see Republicans insisting that there were only three instances of water-boarding, because that's all the CIA would admit to... as if the CIA is incapable of lying.

(A spy agency? Lying? Say it isn't so!)

You'll see them talk about American values while ignoring that American values are rooted in the notion that all people, not just Americans, have certain inalienable rights.

I'm not capable of believing that they're all lying, but I'm perfectly capable of believing that they've all gone stupid in the face of their own inane repetitions of pro-Bush talking points.

There's even a term for it... cognitive dissonance. It's the kind of thing you get when you talk about good and turn around and ignore what you've just said, and do evil things. The brain strains to reconcile the two, and it makes you stupid.

Which hearkens back to Bush's speech, doesn't it? You can't compromise between good and evil.

If you try, it makes you stupid. Case in point.

Looking forward...

2009-01-11T16:19:00.001-08:00

I've seen yet another mention of the Obama administration-to-be talking about "looking forward, not backward" on issues like illegal detentions, illegal interrogation techniques, and otherwise using American values like toilet paper.

I agree, we should look forward. It's more important to consider the future than the past.

And if those who ordered this atrocities are not, at the very least, publicly shamed and punished, then, in the future, the next time we have an incompetent President, there will be cheerleaders who push us back into doing such things.

Look: I sympathize greatly with those who followed unlawful orders, and if there are any folks who can be shown to have followed lawful-seeming orders in good faith, I'm more than willing to see them walk away with a slap on the wrist and the derailing of their careers. (What? Ruin a person's career? Well, yes, keeping in mind that people change careers all the time. I'm sorry, but but you don't earn rewards by doing the wrong thing.)

But as for those who formulated the policies, who gave the illegal orders? Hey, they chose to go "dark side", and they should have considered the consequences. Goldsmith reported that they were afraid of future legal prosecutions, so it's not like the possibility didn't occur to them. Sometimes, when told to do something that's both stupid and illegal, the proper response is to refuse.

I know... this is what most people mean when they talk about "looking backwards," but this isn't a matter of petty revenge seeking. This is a matter of protecting the next guys who come up with such terrible ideas from trying to implement them. This is looking forward.

Talking about sex (and partners)

2009-01-06T22:25:00.000-08:00

Dennis Prager isn't too bright, but sometimes, dimness inspires the shining of a bit of light. So, let's do that.

Recently, Prager decided to talk about how women should "give up the goods" - whoops,I mean, "not deny sex to their husbands" based upon their mood. You know, unless their husbands are real jerks, or if they're suffering badly enough that only a real jerk would try to push sex on them. He even pulls out the whole "what if your husband didn't go to work just because he didn't feel like it?" as if providing sex was the job description of a wife. But "provide sex on demand" is more in line with the job description of "prostitute", which is why, as I said before, Prager isn't too bright.

But that's an idea that comes up a lot. Does a person in a sexual relationship owe their partner sex?

It's a complicated question. On the one hand, if you're in a sexual relationship with someone, and you keep refusing to have sex with them, you're not living up to your side of the bargain. On the other hand, what that means is, they may want to modify, or end, the relationship. So, yes, there's a reasonable expectation, and you could even say a responsibility, to have sex with your partner on a regular basis, insofar as you value that relationship.

But there's a huge difference between trying to keep your partner happy and sexually fulfilled, and having a responsibility to have sex on demand.

The way I think of it is, if there's a problem with one partner requesting sex, and the other making repeated refusals, then it's an issue that must be confronted. It should not be ignored. This is a point that Prager touches on, but misses. He says that if a man meets repeated refusals for sex, he might end up feeling unloved, or even loathing his own sexuality. That's true... but it's not the lack of sex that makes a person feel unloved, or leads them to despise their sexuality. If you can't give your partner sex, you have to find some way to fill the gap, and give them hope that it's a temporary situation, that you're aware of it, and trying to fix it, insofar as you can. You need to express your love, and your regrets at the lack of sex, and find ways to show that you still find them desirable (even if there's no current desire). Because that is what will keep a partner from feeling rejected and awful.

It might not be enough to save a relationship where there's enough imbalance in desire. But it does tend to make for a much more amicable breakup, if and when.

I'll grant that, sometimes, being a good partner or spouse means having sex when you'd really rather not, because you want your partner to feel desired and loved. Relationships take work and sacrifice, and sometimes that means having sex when you'd really rather not. But sex should always be a gift, even if given a bit grudgingly. If it can't be that much, then I tend to think it's better not done at all.

Providing a word

2008-12-17T11:20:00.000-08:00

People have been commenting on Ross Douthat's essay today. I haven't seen anyone provide a particular word that is emphatically important in this discussion.

But with great power comes a lot of pressures as well, starting with great fear: The fear that through inaction you'll be responsible for the deaths of thousands or even millions of the Americans whose lived you were personally charged to protect. This fear ran wild the post-9/11 Bush Administration, with often-appalling consequences, but it wasn't an irrational fear - not then, and now. It doesn't excuse what was done by our government, and in our name, in prisons and detention cells around the world. But anyone who felt the way I felt after 9/11 has to reckon with the fact that what was done in our name was, in some sense, done for us - not with our knowledge, exactly, but arguably with our blessing. I didn't get what I wanted from this administration, but I think you could say with some justification that I got what I asked for.

Okay. People were scared. And they did something bad, something that they shouldn't have done, but god, people were scared, and they had reason to be scared, right?

There's a word for that. It's a really common word, and it's one that gets misused a lot, so a lot of people might not recognize that it fits, perfectly and properly here.

That word is "cowardice". And the noun form, "coward", is the proper word to apply to those who chose this course... or even who approved of it.

When you let fear drive you, when you let it lead you to do something wrong, based upon that fear, you are showing cowardice. If you continue to let fear drive you, week after week, month after month, year after year, you are being a coward.

While I have some sympathy for people who are driven by fear, that sympathy dries up for those who choose to lead our nation. They have a simple choice: either to consider our most precious values to be more important than their fear, or quit, and let someone with courage take over.

A couple of toxic memes

2008-12-13T13:01:00.001-08:00

There are two toxic memes spreading, and a great many people have already shot them down, but that doesn't mean they don't bear being shot down again, just in case.

First: there's a meme going around that UAW workers in GM plants get $70 an hour.

This is completely false. However, if you take all of GM's labor costs, and divide them by the hours worked by UAW workers, you do get $70. What's up with that?

It's simple. GM promised pensions and medical care to their retirees. Of that $70, $30 are legacy costs... payments to medical and pension benefits for retirees. The remaining $40 is how much UAW workers actually get paid.

You can argue whether this means the UAW used to be too greedy, or GM used to be stone stupid, but it's irrelevant to what the UAW is doing right now. Right now, the UAW is bargaining in good faith, trying to protect their members, those folks who want to go to work, do their jobs, and take home a paycheck.

I know it's politically correct for Republicans to hate unions in general, but even the most hard hearted Republican should be able to recognize basic fairness; the UAW is getting paid on a par with other, non-union shops. Even if unions were pure evil in most cases (and, obviously, they're not), in this case, the UAW is being accommodating.

Toxic meme number two: Obama is not being forthcoming enough on Blagojevich, because he's saying there's no "there" there, and he won't comment further on an ongoing investigation.

Folks, come on. That's the equivalent of the old joke about "have you stopped beating your wife?" It assumes that there's something nasty already there. Obama can only be "more forthcoming" if there's more than he could say! If he has no connection to Blagojevich's corruption, he has literally said all he can say; that there is no connection, and he's not going to speculate about the case until all the facts are in.

Thoughts on sexism

2008-12-06T12:54:00.001-08:00

This article is a pretty good opening to a discussion of sexism.

Campbell Brown is scolding Jon Favreau, Obama's chief speechwriter for having been photographed (at a private party) pretending to cup the breast of a cardboard Hillary Clinton cutout, and also scolding Hillary Clinton for not calling out this awful sexism.

This is a good discussion topic because it shows just how complicated everything is.

First, while this incident could be a demonstration of sexism on Favreau's part, it could also be innocent clowning around with friends. People sometimes act the clown, and say or do things that they know won't be taken seriously, without any malicious (or sexist) intent. Doing this kind of thing with the expectation of being photographed (and the photograph placed on the internet) would be sexist (or stone-cold-stupid)... but doing it because it'll draw laughs from a small group of friends is a different matter.

It can certainly be indicative of sexism, even misogyny. And it's certainly the kind of thing that should make even a generally-non-sexist person think "what was I thinking?" in retrospect. Favreau should be thinking "what if someone saw that, and thought I viewed Clinton as some stupid bimbo, rather than the strong, intelligent woman that she is?" Perhaps more importantly, he should be wondering if he's just given someone else license to think of Hillary Clinton as some stupid bimbo, if he's let someone shield themselves from criticism by being able to point to Favreau's example.

But let's also remember that this was not a public party. And let's remember that most people do stupid things sometimes, and say or do things just becuase they seem like fun, and "nobodies here but us chickens".

The way people act in private matters, but I remember how Molly Ivins spoke admirably of a Texas gentleman who always called women "honey" and "sweetiepie" but always, at every opportunity, argued strongly, and voted, in favor of women's rights. While the private stuff matters, the public stuff has to be included in the equation.

At the same time, that doesn't mean one should disgregard obvious and blatant sexism, either. Ivins didn't say she liked him calling women "honey" and "sweetiepie", just that she liked him, as a whole person, including his flaws.

So, yes, Favreau was stupid and acted in a sexist manner, and that shouldn't be disregarded, but we should also keep in mind the context as well, and we should always look at the whole person.

But that brings us to Hillary Clinton.

This is one of the really interesting parts to this situation. Clinton hasn't had any problem with this. Brown seems to have a problem with that. And that bothers me on two levels.

On the one hand, maybe she is using the same reasoning I used above... sometimes people clown around, and say things they really, honestly don't mean, and is perfectly willing to forgive because she's bighearted in that way. Or, maybe she, herself, said or did something stupid or embarrassing one drunken night, and she knows just how it goes, and is more than willing to be forgiving, because she'd hope she'd receive the same forgiveness in return.

On the other hand, if Clinton were to get upset about this, a lot of people would come down on her like a ton of bricks, calling her a humorless ball-breaker, or worse. And the scary thing is, it wouldn't just be the pro-sexism crowd. There are a lot of people who'd honestly think they're not sexist, but that she just needs to lighten up. "It was just a joke, just innocent clowning around, how dare you get angry over it!"

She can't really make a free choice; no woman in her position can. She still needs to show she can be "one of the guys". If she's angry, she must let it go. If she feels hurt, or humiliated, well, that's too bad, and if she wants to fit in, she won't show it.

And here's the fun part of all of this. On the one hand, there are women who've been hurt by similar displays of sexism. Some of them are waiting for the day when they're allowed to be upset by this, when they don't need to be "one of the guys", when a complaint over such oafish behavior will be taken seriously without anyone crying "Feminazi!" It's people like Senator Clinton who can help move us closer to that day.

On the other hand, we do need to be forgiving of innocent clowning around, and realize that sometimes it really is better to just laugh it off.

President-elect Obama

2008-11-19T20:13:00.000-08:00

Dear President-elect Obama:

There are three phrases that I expect that you're already polishing up. If you want to keep my support, we'll hear them (or hear about them).

First:

"You have your orders; follow them."

In other words, don't let anyone in the military, no matter how high ranking, or how well respected, push you around. Clinton made that mistake. Yes, some people in the military didn't respect him too much. But even if they don't respect you at first, they'll respect you even less if you let a lower ranking officer - and that's all of them! - push you around. Listen to them, respect their point of view, and then give them their orders, and make those orders stick.

Second:

"We intended to do nothing more than make a cursory investigation. Unfortunately, the seriousness of the lawbreaking involved required us to investigate more deeply."

President Bush has engaged in, or covered up, a great deal of law breaking. You can't let the law become a victim of "post partisanship".

Even if you don't (or can't) prosecute criminals from the Bush administration, you must reveal their lawbreaking, and you must insist that, if this happens again, the perpetrators will be punished.

Make the investigations fair, but investigate.

Third:

"Senator Lieberman, I don't think you understood me. I didn't ask you how you intended to vote. I told you I expected your support, and I'm going to get it."

Choices

2008-11-04T08:07:00.000-08:00

This election day presents a choice that is really pretty clear.

The United States started a war against a nation that presented no meaningful threat, based upon flawed intelligence.

Do you want to vote for the man who insists it's a great idea, and insists that we need to keep a troop presence there for as long as we can, hell, for a hundred years, if we can manage it?

Or do you want the man who was against the war from the start, saying it was a bad idea, and wants to bring out troops home?

Bill Ayers, a former terrorist, is now an activist for educational reform.

If you think you have to avoid any educational reform attempt that is tainted by the presence of Bill Ayers, you would probably count that as a strike against Obama.

On the other hand, if you think that it's okay to work for educational reform, even if you end up rubbing shoulders with some people who used to do nasty things, then you'll probably consider the accusations in that previous paragraph pretty lame... and that'll be a strike against McCain.

Do you think this economy will be fixed with a few tax cuts for the rich, and a bit more deregulation? Then vote for McCain. Don't worry; he's a maverick, and he's sure to knock heads together and *fix* things, because he said so, and don't forget, he suspended his campaign to... well, not really accomplish anything. But he did suspend that campaign, and it wasn't a stunt, just ask him!

On the other hand, if you want a man who'll bring his prodigious intelligence to bear on the issue, and find sensible regulations to try to put things right, you probably want Obama.

But on a par with the issues, think about the styles of campaigning, and thus, the style of governance.

The Democrats have bent over backwards to call John McCain a good man, with whom they have some strong disagreements.

The Republicans have called Barack Obama a socialist, a marxist, a baby-killer, and scorned the idea of helping folks in the community (because Obama was a community organizer for a while).

What do you think our country needs right now? Inclusion and principled disagreement? Or divisiveness and anger?

Go out there. Vote. Help other folks vote. Remind other people that it matters.

Questions for CRA accusers

2008-11-02T19:52:00.001-08:00

A lot of people have come up with a lot of theories about the economic meltdown and one of the nastier ones is that it's all the fault of the Democrats for trying to encourage mortages to non-traditional borrowers.

Now, there's no need to come up with additional theories to account for the problems. Greed and stupidity, coupled with a lack of regulation, is sufficient to explain the problem. But, that's not enough... these people need the Democrats to take the fall. After all, Republican ideals - deregulation, and letting the market take care of itself - are what caused the mess. Without a way to tie it to Democrats, it could make people call into question the wisdom of letting greed run rampant.

But is it a fair accusation? Is it reasonable to try to tie efforts like the CRA to the meltdown?

Well, it can be hard to say. Government regulations are complicated, and it's entirely possible that some regulation or another ended up having unintended consequences.

But here's the question... what regulation is supposed to have caused this massive problem? And why wasn't anyone complaining about it when it happened?

I don't mean "why didn't anyone complain about the CRA?" because lots of folks did. I mean, what regulation caused mortgage lenders to have to make loans that they couldn't sohw were good loans? Because, in the end, that's the real question, right?

Either one of two things happened. Either people made a lot of stupid loans because they were stupid and greedy, or they made a lot of stupid loans because there was something that forced them to do so, against their better judgment.

So, which was it?

This is the question you should put to people who try to blame the CRA for this meltdown.

What specific regulation said "make stupid loans"?

Make them bring up the regulations in question, and then we can actually have a reasonable discussion about this.

Or, tell them to admit they don't have anything, and tell them to stop whining about the CRA and its effects on the meltdown.

So, there's this joke going around

2008-10-31T20:01:00.001-07:00

This joke is going around, about how this man sees a homeless person with an Obama sign, then sees a waiter with an Obama tie, and decides to stiff the waiter and give the $10 tip for the meal to the homeless guy instead. Hey, the waiter doesn't like the "share the wealth" concept after all! Hahahahaha!

Yep, that's humor in certain circles. But, see, it's funny because it's true.

Because a ten dollar tip for a waiter is exactly the same as the extra $10 tax paid on $250 earned after a person has already earned over a quarter million dollars that year.

And, of course, the waiter - most waiters are living paycheck to paycheck - gets just as much benefit from the ten bucks to the homeless guy as the guy earning a quarter million a year gets from an extra ten bucks given to the US government, which helps create a stable, safe environment in which to make a quarter million bucks a year.

And, of course, the waiter undoubtedly cares just as much for the homeless guy as we should care about the country we're living in, right?

Damn. That joke doesn't seem as funny any more. Maybe if someone explains it... nah, explaining things ruins a lot of jokes.

I think Mr. Levin is correct...

2008-10-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality....

Hmm. Later in the article:

So in the tank are the media for Obama that for months we've read news stories and opinion pieces insisting that if Obama is not elected president it will be due to white racism.

Ah. So if there are stories and opinion pieces that say something, that proves that "the media" are in the tank for Obama.

Because if any member of the media writes a story or an opinion piece, it says something about "the media" as a whole, right? That's "rationality", isn't it?

It is a populist appeal that disguises government mandated wealth redistribution as tax cuts for the middle class, falsely blames capitalism for the social policies and government corruption (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) that led to the current turmoil in our financial markets,

And it's rational to ignore how the biggest parts of the financial collapse didn't involve Fannie and Freddie... the credit default swaps remain one of the biggest pieces of the problem. (Also, Fannie and Freddie grabbed into the sub-prime loans very late in the game, in an attempt to shore up their market share.)

And, of course...

Rather than pursue the American Dream, he insists that the American Dream has arbitrary limits, limits Obama would set for the rest of us — today it's $250,000 for businesses and even less for individuals. If the individual dares to succeed beyond the limits set by Obama, he is punished for he's now officially "rich."

It's "punishment" to see your tax rate go up from 35% to 39%, once you're making over a quarter million a year. Not "a higher tax bracket", because heavens no, that wouldn't give you reason to be angry. Nope, it's punishment, that's the only "rational" point of view, I suppose... to a person like Mark Levin.

It's too much to expect rational discussion sometimes, but please... when folks are going to complain that other people are making irrational complaints, can't they at least *try*?

(If you really want to depress me, you can tell me that he did try, and this was his best.)

Sorry, guys, it's too late to cry "socialism".

2008-10-21T21:06:00.001-07:00

I've been seeing some really pathetic claims of "socialism" regarding Obama's tax plan. And, honestly, some people can make the honest claim that they believe his plan to be socialism... but the majority can't.

See, his plan is based upon the same idea as the Earned Income Tax Credit, a hugely popular tax credit for people who earn low wages and have children. The EITC is a refundable tax credit - meaning, even if you pay no income tax, you can get money back from the IRS if you can claim the EITC.

And Obama's plan is based upon similar principles. Yes, it includes refundable tax credits, just like the EITC, which means that some people who pay no income tax will get money back from the IRS.

Now, anyone who cried "socialism!" for the popular EITC has a right to cry "socialism!" now. Anyone else? Well, sorry, it's too late. You kept quiet when it was politically convenient to keep quiet, so you lost your chance to make a noise when noisemaking became convenient. Hey, don't blame me; I'm just the messenger.

If you have to say it...

2008-10-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

There are certain things you have to be careful saying. If you have to keep reminding people that you're cool, or popular, or, say, "a maverick", it suggests that you aren't. 'Nuff said.

But today, I saw a McCain Palin banner ad, showing Palin and bearing the words "A proven maverick". And I think about her lies about the bridge to nowhere, and her lies about the Troopergate report, her lockstep with Republican talking points, and now, all I can think of is a quote from the Princess Bride.

"You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means."

It's not so much that Barack Obama won...

2008-10-15T22:31:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama won this debate; I think that was pretty clear.

But I was a bit surprised at how badly John McCain lost.

He seems to have bought into his own myth. "I can balance the budget; I can provide leadership; I can save the world, because I'm John McCain!"

I think he's stuck back in 2000. I think he thinks that nothing has changed. Repeat the talking points; "cut taxes to stimulate the economy, so it will create new jobs! Cut the deficit. Vouchers. Abortion sucks. So vote for me!"

I didn't think I'd have to say this...

2008-10-10T22:09:00.001-07:00

But I'm glad to be wrong.

Thank you, Senator McCain.
(for one of many good quotes at the link:

McCain replies, "Well, I don't want him to be president, either. I wouldn't be running if I did. But," and he pauses for emphasis, "you don't have to be scared to have him be President of the United States."

I know everyone's saying "go more negative, land some real hits on Obama!" and I know that you know that the only way you're going to pull this out is for people to start hating Senator Obama (or for you to suddenly multiply loaves and fishes, or somesuch), and I know you're not the kind of man who is willing to take defeat easily, so I know that this couldn't have been easy. But you did it anyway.

You might lose, and there'll be people who point to this decision, and say that this is why you lost. And while that might hurt, at least you'll know you did the right thing.

And I appreciate it.

I'm glad that the McCain campaign never pulls stupid stunts

2008-10-09T21:58:00.001-07:00

So this must be my imagination

I can't even understand what makes anyone think that this kind of thing is a good idea. Either the report comes out, and claims she's guilty "but, oh, no, our campaign says otherwise, and you can trust us more than the Alaska legislature!" or it says she's innocent, and this "report" says the exact same thing, meaning it was a bunch of dramatics over nothing.

Every time I think the McCain campaign can't get any more screwed up... sigh.

Thoughts after watching Tuesday's Presidential debate

2008-10-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, but...

"Gee, whiz, Senator McCain, when you lower your voice, and put that tone into it, everything that I've rejected from you just makes perfect sense, now!"

People were warning Obama not to sound professorial, but geez, McCain spent about half the debate sounding like someone trying to talk to children. You know, that false eagerness, that false "oh boy!" quality?

I can see why he's going for Ayers, now, because he really doesn't have much left. Obama is looking more and more like a President, and he's looking more and more like the guy going through the motions, trying his best. He looks like Bob Dole, holding on hoping for some horrible event to upset the man who is clearly going to win.

There's one difference.

I kinda felt sorry for Dole. He struck me as a decent man, a man I had to oppose because he was beholden to the Republican special interests.

Bob Dole didn't call the Falwell-ish types "agents of intolerance" and then turn around and plant big sloppy kisses on them. Bob Dole didn't try to broker a deal on torture, and claim he got torture outlawed, but leave a huge opening where only the executive - the very branch doing the torture - gets to decide what's torture. Bob Dole didn't pull a cynical switcheroo on offshore drilling.

Dole soldiered on, knowing he was going to lose. But though his campaign was negative - aren't almost all of them negative? - I could only imagine his response if someone had called his opponent - Bill Clinton, no less! - a "terrorist" or if he saw some of the recent venom being seen at McCain and Palin rallies over the past few days. When the election was over, I'd have wanted to clasp his hand and say "you done good."

I'll have no such urge when McCain finally goes down to defeat.

John McCain: American hero

2008-10-04T12:59:00.000-07:00

America needs a hero like John McCain. Just ask him.

He's a maverick bucking his party on ~~the war in Iraq~~, uh, ~~torture~~, um, ~~agents of intolerance~~, er, ~~the economy~~ well, lots of issues.

And he showed that he cares about this nation because he suspended his campaign, repeat, he suspended his campaign, and tried to put politics aside, to deal with the financial crisis. Indeed, we need a man who suspended his campaign, and, you know, put the country first, putting politics aside, and didn't do this for his Presidential campaign, in order to deal with the financial mess.

And if it hadn't been for those horrible, partisan Democrats (66% voting in favor), America would have had that bill passed last Monday by the heroic Republicans (66% voting opposed), who are led by a man who, though he hates to talk about it, used to be a POW, and suspended his campaign to try to deal with the issue.

It's not his fault that the main stream media is pretending his gracious and heroic suspension of his campaign was just a cheap and tawdry political stunt. It just shows that they're in the tank for that horrible Barack Obama who wants to raise taxes and kill jobs and hasn't ever been a POW and who wouldn't ever suspend his campaign to deal with a financial crisis.

Don't forget: John McCain, without any political consideration of the issue at all, suspended his campaign, to deal with the crisis because he cares more about this country, than he does about politics.

Oh, and before you even think about noticing how often he mentions his non-partisan, non-political campaign suspension, don't you dare insinuate that a former POW who was tortured brutally would ever do such a thing!

Final (?) entry on the VP debate

2008-10-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

So, thinking about the VP debate overnight, here's what sticks.

Palin is a cheerleader. Now, there's nothing emphatically wrong with that; sometimes you need a perky booster to go out and spread your message. But, even as vice-president, she thinks she should get more than just a supporting (cheerleading) role. And, as President - let's face it, 72 year old cancer survivors aren't a good actuarial bet for long term survival - she'd be in over her head. Presidents are cheerleaders, to some extent, but they need to be more than that.

Biden is a partner, and ready to take over. But he doesn't feel entitled to take a leadership role. He's a supporter. And, if he is needed to step in, he can do it.

So, the one who is least able to lead wants the most power, and the one who is most able to lead is most willing to play a supporting role.

If I were undecided - if I could vote for McCain after he gave the green-light to the Bushies on torture - that would be the clincher for me. The Obama-Biden team is experienced, rock solid, and both have an understanding of their roles. Biden might play Obama's attack dog, saying things that Obama shouldn't say, but he won't play the Cheney game of doing things to deflect blame from the President.

We have to suspect that Palin will.

And, face it... she just isn't qualified.

She's not stupid; much though her answers are beauty queen answers, beauty queens aren't stupid. It takes a great deal of skill to answer questions on the fly. But there's a difference between being able to rattle off some really good sounding talking points really quickly, and having real depth of ideas and character.

Putin isn't going to care that McCain and Palin are "a couple of mavericks, you betcha!" Nor will the Iranian religious leaders (who, note, control foreign policy - Ahmadinejad's power is domestic). Hell, life isn't going to care that they have some good talking points and at least one pretty face to repeat them (no offense, Senator McCain; my own face is nothing to write home about either).

So, she's not qualified, but she isn't willing to be just a partner. And Biden is extremely qualified, and shows the temperament to be a hell of a good VP.

As far as I'm concerned that would have settled it, if McCain's flop on torture hadn't done it already.

Tolerance and governance

2008-10-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

So, Sarah Palin says that she's tolerant.

It's not enough.

Look, when you're a private citizen, with the power only of a private citizen, tolerance is a virtue.

When you're taking control over the executive, you are taking more power, and at that point, personal tolerance is not enough. You need to assure folks that the power of the state will protect the people, because it is the people from whom the power of the government comes.

Although it sucks that Biden and Obama don't support gay marriage, they have stated more than "we are tolerant". They have promised to use the power of government to secure people's civil rights. That is what we need.

Tolerance is what you yearn for in your friends, not in your leaders.

Just a note about economic theory

2008-10-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

I'm watching the VP debate through now, and Governor Palin chirps that lowering taxes on small business will increase the number of jobs they create, you betcha.

The Republicans like to talk about how, if you lower taxes on small businesses, they'll create more jobs.

Is that an accurate assessment?

Well, here's a question. Looking at economics, if you increase the price of something, do you get more of it, or less of it?

Less.

Hey, don't blame me, I'm just the messenger.

If you decrease taxes on small businesses, you increase the cost of hiring a worker. Salaries are a deductible business expense. If the tax rate is 50%, a job that costs $40k a year only costs $20k; if the tax rate is lowered to 40%, it now costs $24k.

Now, I am not saying that higher taxes are better; make taxes too high, and no one feels like producing much past a certain point. If tax rates are 90% above a certain amount, no one is going to expend the effort to earn more than that amount... unless the effort is minimal[1].

But let's not pretend that lowering taxes means increasing jobs. Lower taxes means that every job an employer can eliminate means that much more money for the employer to take home.

Yes, it's true: if that employer takes home more money, s/he'll spend more money. But if it's taxed by the government, the government will spend more money, and also borrow less, leaving more money available for investment, which will also improve the economy.

Don't let anyone - not even a perky VP candidate - feed you a line that's so oversimplified it doesn't even make sense on its face.

[1] e.g. if the lower bracket rate is 30% and the higher is 90%, people will only expend one seventh the effort. In the 30% bracket, they take home 70 cents on each dollar earned; in the 90% bracket, they take home only 10 cents on each dollar. This, of course, assumes people follow economic principles, which they don't. But the principle holds.

It's on the record...

2008-09-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Boehner and Blunt say that you can't trust Republicans to do what's right if you hurt their feelings.

Republicans blamed Pelosi's scathing speech near the close of the debate — which assailed Bush's economic policies and a "right-wing ideology of anything goes, no supervision, no discipline, no regulation" of financial markets — for the defeat. It was not much different from her usual tough words against the president and his party.

"We could have gotten there today had it not been for the partisan speech that the speaker gave on the floor of the House," Boehner said.

Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., the whip, estimated that Pelosi's speech changed the minds of a dozen Republicans who might otherwise have supported the plan.

That amounted to an appalling accusation by Republicans against Republicans, said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the Financial Services Committee: "Because somebody hurt their feelings, they decide to punish the country."

Look: I'm not sure that this bailout bill is a good idea. I think it might be necessary, but I just don't know.

But if sixty percent of one party votes aye, and sixty percent of the other party votes nay, you can't blame the aye-voters for causing the bill to fail.

What really happened on Wall Street

2008-09-28T15:33:00.000-07:00

There's a toxic meme going around that the Democratic-supported proposals to help encourage home ownership are the reason for the huge financial troubles we're facing.

The Democrats encouraged the creation of creative methods of financing a home purchase, the accusation goes. And, presumably, once those methods existed, Democrats went into major banks and said "and if you don't make thousands and thousands of bad mortgage loans, we're going to kill this puppy!"

Well, no, nothing like that happened. What happened was greed.

There was a time when, if a bank loaned you money for a house, the bank would own that loan until the day it was paid off, so they were super-careful about who they lent money to. If you defaulted, they'd have to go into foreclosure, which was a time consuming and expensive process, and they ended up not getting their money back until they re-sold the house.

But then, people started buying and selling mortgages a lot more often. Suddenly, originating a mortgage wasn't as big a deal. Sure, you had to do some pesky paperwork, but you'd make the loan, then sell the loan, and get the money back, so you could originate another loan. The lender was now, in large part, shielded from the consequences of a bad loan. It was now in the lender's best interest to make as many loans as possible. The loans have to be good, of course, because no one wants to buy a bad loan. But more loans = more profit.

So greed says, let's see if there's a way to get more applications and get rid of some of the initial paperwork. Enter the mortgage broker... a person who makes money connecting lenders and borrowers.

Greed gets to play a double role here. First, the desire to get more loan applications, and cut back on the expense of screening leads to the use of the brokers. Second, the brokers themselves want to get as many commissions as possible, and while many will act ethically and properly, some will cheat, or let the borrower cheat, because who is going to notice? The bank? Probably not; they probably sold the loan. If the person who owns the loan tracks it back to a particular broker, well, every broker will make a mistake once a while, right?

That's the baseline root cause of this. Banks, who were partially immune to the risk of default, wanted to make a lot of loans. And, brokers who were almost entirely immune to the risk of default, wanted to get a lot of loans made.

It's true, this couldn't have happened with an old fashioned set of loans, where anything less than a 20% downpayment is considered extremely risky, and all loans are for fixed terms with fixed payments.

At the same time, there's nothing to say that a "no money down" loan has to be bad either. If a bank looked at the person's circumstances, and could determine that the risk of default was low, such a loan could be good for lender and borrower both.

The biggest problem was not the loan type; it was greed, coupled with a lack of consequences for a bad loan.

There's more, of course... there's the whole set of reasons the bad mortgages spread so that they infected such huge portions of the economy, but that's a story for another day.

The root cause had little to do with the specific loan types; it had everything to do with what happens when you let people make lots of money while protecting them from the consequences of bad decisions, and let them act without any oversight or standards.

Does it even need to be said?

2008-09-24T21:06:00.001-07:00

Real leaders don't forsake their responsibilities unless there's an actual, honest-to-goodness crisis, not an artificial deadline.

Folks, the financial markets are in a tizzy, I'll grant you that, but we're not looking at a meltdown by Friday. What we're looking at is a bad situation that might get steadily worse, especially if we listen to a moron like Bush saying "you have to give me more power or terrible things will happen!"

(Seriously, did you see the proposal? Let the government buy whatever junk debt the Bushies want, without any oversight or control. Translation: Let Bush give away presents to all of his supporters.)

But there's no need to suspend one's campaign, or duck out on a debate, just because there's a bunch of whining and handwringing going on in the financial markets.

If this is how John McCain reacts in a crisis, maybe he should just give up and admit he can't hack it as President. Because Presidents are busy, and have to show they can carry through with their plans, even when Congress might adjourn without passing a particular bill that is of questionable value.

More on the 'wisdom' of offshore drilling

2008-09-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

So, let's just pretend that offshore drilling will bring up huge amounts of oil for America. Let's just pretend that, and forget about whether the oil companies will reduce their profits by increasing supply so that there's additional excess capacity.

Let's now focus on one of the ridiculous arguments being raised in favor of drilling.

Right now (the argument goes), we are giving money to people who dislike us. Why shouldn't we give it to American oil companies, instead?

That would be a good question, if oil existed in limitless supply. But it's not limitless, and someday, probably soon, we'll hit the production peak. And at that point, every single barrel still in the ground will become much, much more valuable. We'll have pulled up every easy barrel of oil, and have to start drilling for the harder-to-get stuff.

So, what the Republicans are actually arguing is that we should use up our oil reserves now, in favor of saving more oil for people who don't like us... so when peak oil hits, they have that much more oil still in the ground. This would vastly increase the value of those remaining reserves.

Of course, this problem is easy to notice, if you think about the problem as a problem, and not as a wedge issue to use to influence an election.

That this problem hasn't been discussed shows you which way the Republicans are looking at this, doesn't it?

Rush Limbaugh: Hypocrite

2008-09-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

Now, I want you to understand something. I get Rush Limbaugh. He's an entertainer, right? I mean, he's putting on a show, he's saying whatever bullshit occurs to him that he thinks his audience will eat up. He doesn't try to report news, and have journalistic standards, and he doesn't worry about inconsistency, as long as he keeps sucking in the advertiser bucks.

But here's the thing. If you're going to play that game, you have to play it fairly. Since Rush Limbaugh makes a game out of distortion and anger, he has no right to pretend it's anything other than a game.

Case in point: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178554189155003.html.

Obama is taking him out of context, he claims - wow, and Limbaugh's never done that as part of his schtick! - and letting his racist statements sound like they were, well, racist. But it was all a joke! Really!

What I especially like is that he claims psychic powers. He claims one racist statement was "a parody ... and nobody took it otherwise."

I thought his radio show had millions of listeners. Yet he can tell that, among those millions of listeners, none of them took it as anything other than a parody! Isn't that amazing? I'd say it's pretty amazing... to the point that if anyone made that claim, I'd feel forced to call bullshit. So, "bullshit!"

Limbaugh's a curious character. He'll say whatever he thinks will bring in the listeners, without any concern for truth. I don't like that. I think it's evil to try to sow divisiveness for the sole purpose of making money. But I grant that he has a right to do what he does.

But in return for the right to sow divisiveness to line his pockets, I could at least ask that he recognizes that there's a boundary where the game ends. He can't ethically go onto editorial pages of major news papers and keep playing the game, pretending to be offended because it suits his on-air persona. On his show? Sure, that's his forum. But in other forums, where people expect some level of honesty? No, he should graciously bow out.

To do otherwise suggests that he wishes to cast off the mantle of "entertainer" and take on the mantle of "reporter". And that would require him to adopt standards that he has neither the maturity nor honor to uphold.

Journalistic hindquarter covering

2008-09-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

Richard Cohen, journalists should do their jobs.

Yes, I know. Obama didn't go all nasty on people on interviews. He - gasp! - said that if you want to ask tough questions about Palin's readiness, you should ask Palin or McCain.

And you should.

There seems to be some kind of idiotic meme going around journalism that journalists can't ask tough questions or raise sticky issues unless someone else does it for them. Like, you can't report that Sarah Palin doesn't have the chops to be a good President (and thus, shouldn't be VP), and heaven knows you can't pressure the McCain campaign on something so obvious, but you can ask Obama to make the claim, and take the heat off of you.

And I'm sorry, but that's the job of journalists... to seek out and report news, not to try to play a game of "let's you and him fight, 'cause it's good for ratings".

Look: Obama understands something that not a whole bunch of people in this country get.

What's killing us is partisan hatred. The constant battering of one party against another, constantly vying for power and advantage. There's never a thought about doing what's right for the country, because both parties are constantly struggling to maintain influence.

And here's the thing: as they both spend all of their time struggling to maintain their influence, is there ever a time when it's going to end? Unless one party overwhelmingly defeats the other, to the point that the other party has no influence whatsoever - not even with the news media - it won't end, unless people stop it.

Obama wants to stop it.

Not the bitter campaign battles; they've always been with us, and they always will be. No, he wants to stop the senseless, constant battling that keeps anything from being done. He wants to show there's a better way to run our country, where we can accomplish great things, because we won't have the two major parties constantly trying to stab each other in the back.

So, Mr. Cohen, if you want to expose something truly nasty, like Sarah Palin's lack of readiness, maybe you should do your job and expose it on your own, rather than egging folks on, hoping for a good, bloody fight.

Democrats being mean to Palin! (News at at 11...)

2008-09-08T22:51:00.000-07:00

Oh no! The dirty filthy Democrats are hammering Palin for having supported the "Bridge to Nowhere"! How mean! How unfair! They've supported pork barrel spending themselves, so how dare they talk about her?

The Republicans are really playing the victim card hard on this one, and I don't blame them, because folks can see the problem here.

It's not that Palin supported some pork. I think that the job of government is to help us do the things that we can't do alone. Why have a government if it's not to help us build a functioning society? And a bridge to an island with an airport might well be a good use of tax payer dollars. I don't know the facts, so I can't say the bridge was a good idea, but it's in line with what I'd like to see the government doing. The fifty folks on the island can't build the bridge on their own, but maybe, depending on a variety of factors, it might be worthwhile enough to have Uncle Sam kick in some funding.

So, you see, it's not the bridge. It's the lies.

She said she told Congress "thanks, but no thanks". And that was a flat out lie. She didn't give up on the project until Congress had already nixed it.

She said "I'm a reformer! I hate pork!" and she lied to us.

Now, politicians lie all the time, so let's not be too hard on her. (If you do, it makes baby Republicans - a surprisingly large number of whom are well over the age of majority - cry.) But it does impeach her claims of being some kind of "maverick reformer".

Of course, when I say "impeach", I mean "totally disprove". Hey, don't blame me; I'm only the messenger.

The free market

2008-09-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

So, here's the thing.

Republicans love to praise the free market. The free market makes everything better, right?

I remember a few years back, I saw a roadside stand with a large sign proclaiming they were selling "tomatoes that taste like tomatoes!"

Now, if the free market is such a great problem solver, why on earth would someone need a big sign saying they have a food that tastes like itself?

Because the free market doesn't solve problems. The free market makes money.

So, if grocery stores just want to sell "tomatoes", the free market will find a way to maximize the money folks can make, even if it means growing and selling tomatoes that taste like... well, that taste like a reminder that the last four letters of "tomatoes" are "t-o-e-s". Good tomatoes don't have a high enough profit margin, there's too much loss to spoilage, so they're out.

Harnessed correctly, a lively marketplace can solve a lot of problems, when creative people figure out how to accomplish things to make money. But once you harness a marketplace, you'll see people complaining bitterly that it's no longer free.

Well, when that happens, compare their bitterness to the bitterness of a low quality tomato from a major chain, and think about how the free market is not the cure for all ills.

Why are they scared?

2008-09-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

So, the Republicans have decided to attack Barack Obama over his community activism. Right out of college, he decided to do some good helping other people, and they want to mock that.

And I wondered about that. Why are they afraid of this? You don't attack something if it's neutral or if it's a liability. If being a community organizer was actually worthy of mockery, they wouldn't bother to mention it (unless Obama was trying to hide it - at which point it would be a character issue, no doubt).

And then it struck me.

Where is the compassion in their campaign?

George W. pretended to be a new conservative, a "compassionate conservative". Now, me, I knew that was BS. It was just a feel-good line to use, and he's since proven it was meaningless.

But what about McCain? He's not even paying lip service.

Joe Biden put it well... they're not even trying to mention helping the middle class.

They're scared. And who can blame them?

Look, McCain is an angry old man. Don't hate me, I'm just the messenger, okay?

And Palin? Well... the Republicans have been whining so much about Palin, that I'll try to be kind, but come on, folks... do the Republicans really have grounds to be aghast that people are saying mean things about her, some of which aren't even true? I didn't hear them defending Obama against false rumors... did you?

So, Palin... folks, have you, at any time in the past 8 years, thought "if only Bush or Cheney knew how to field dress a moose..."? Have you ever thought "Damn it all, if only someone with the experience of being a small town mayor was in the White House..."?

She sounds like an interesting person to know, I'll grant you that (assuming she's not as mean-spirited as she looked at the convention - mean people suck)... but she doesn't exactly make me think "that's who I want running this country!"

And neither she nor McCain can pretend to bring compassion to this country. You can't make attack dog speeches and pretend that compassion is your stock in trade, especially not while mocking a man for trying to help folks out.

So, I think that's it. There's a compassion gap, and it's looming large, so the Republicans have to go on the attack.

I don't think it's going to work. Compassion - the real thing, the kind of thing you see from Obama and Biden - is hard to beat.

Wow... didn't think Romney would top ol' 911!

2008-09-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Romney's transcript... this can't be right! Is he really that stupid?

Last week, the Democratic convention talked about change. But what do you think? Is Washington now, liberal or conservative? Let me ask you some questions.

Is a Supreme Court decision liberal or conservative that awards Guantanamo terrorists with constitutional rights? It's liberal.

Is a government liberal or conservative that puts the interests of the teachers union ahead of the needs of our children? It's liberal.

Is a Congress liberal or conservative that stops nuclear power plants and off-shore drilling, making us more and more dependent on Middle Eastern tyrants? It's liberal.

Is government spending, putting aside inflation, liberal or conservative if it doubles since 1980? It's liberal.

Let's see: the Supreme Court said that the Constitution declares that, yes, we must grant prisoners some basic levels of rights, e.g., a hearing to determine if there's cause to hold them (Habeas Corpus). But that's "liberal". Why? Because Romney doesn't like it!

I'll skip the whine about the teacher's union; I think that the GOP just hates teachers to have job protection and collective bargaining rights, and I've never seen any sensible arguments about that talking point.

Stopping nuclear power plants and offshore drilling is liberal. Why? Well, it was upheld through how many Republican and Democratic administrations, and congressional sessions? But it's liberal... because Mitt Romney doesn't like it.

Government spending has risen through the 80 to today, and that's "liberal"... even though it was Reagan who started piling up deficits, George Bush I who kept 'em going, Bill Clinton who brought about a surplus, and George Bush II who brought back deficits. But it's all liberal because Mitt Romney doesn't like it.

I can imagine him as a kid, his parents have just smacked his bottom, and he screams "WAAAAAH! You gave me a liberal!" Because liberal means "something Mitt Romney hates".

Well, we know that's the case. That's why he doesn't pay attention to what liberal folks actually *do*, and has to make up lies about them when giving speeches, right?

This is the best ol' noun-verb-911 can do?

2008-09-03T19:46:00.001-07:00

I just saw some bits of the transcript of Giuliani's speech here.

This is not a personal attack....it's a statement of fact -- Barack Obama has never led anything.

Nothing. Nada.

Yeah! He's never led a campaign against one of the most successful politicians on the planet, and won, by finding a good plan, sticking to it, and pounding out a victory state after state.

Oops.

But, hey, at least he voted "present" to help defeat bad legislation; that's a good jab to take at him, isn't it, ol' 911? Because strategic votes are a hell of a lot worse than being unable to get your cops and firefighters decent radios, isn't it Mr. "I know how to handle a crisis"?

Oh, and I love this bit:

And (McCain) will keep us on offense against terrorism at home and abroad. For four days in Denver and for the past 18 months Democrats have been afraid to use the words "Islamic terrorism." During their convention, the Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11, 2001.

They are in a state of denial about the biggest threat that faces us now and in the future.

You need to face your enemy in order to defeat them. John McCain will face this threat and lead us on to victory.

Yeah, because after an initial victory of Afghanistan, McCain said "next stop, Baghdad!" And he was right. How's that "leading to victory" been working for you? It's... taken an awfully long time, hasn't it? Cost a lot of money, right? Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, and thousands of US soldiers, too. And all for a ramshackle government that, well, may or may not stand up for the long term, and one that certainly has a great deal of allegiance to Iran. But at least you don't have those horrible nasty time frames for withdrawal... oops.

Gee, it sounds like Obama, who said we should have faced the terrorists in Afghanistan was right... just like he was right in talking about withdrawing from Iraq. Go figure.

OH! And this:

And as a former U.S. Attorney, I am impressed by her success in combating corruption -- when she found unethical and illegal behavior among the power-brokers of her own party, she did not hesitate -- she acted courageously and independently. That's the kind of reformer we need -- she shook up Alaska. She'll shake up Washington.

Yeah! Just the kind of reformer you need, someone who lies to the public and lawyers up when dealing with an investigation into a potential abuse of power! That's what impresses Giuliani!

Bristol Palin is pregnant... so what?

2008-09-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

So, Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant. What does this show us?

It shows us that abstinence only "education" is about as flawed as we'd expect, I'd say.

(I'm assuming that when a 17 year old, unwed woman, whose mother is the governor, becomes pregnant, it was not a planned pregnancy. If that assumption is wrong, of course, my criticism is unwarranted.)

And that's about all I have to say about that, except that my heart goes out to her and her family - I'm sure this must have been a scary time, given the circumstances - and I wish many blessings on her baby.

Gustav and the Republican National Convention

2008-08-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed how wary the Republicans are being about Gustav?

Isn't that kind of puzzling?

I mean, they've had *three years* to make the changes that needed to be made after Katrina, right?

Are they still unable to mount an emergency response in a competent manner without having making major changes to their schedules?

Both Bush and Cheney are skipping the convention... why? Wouldn't it be enough to make sure there were open lines of communication? That they could be contacted at a moment's notice, that there'd be a helicopter to take them to the airport, if need be?

They might turn the convention into a telethon to raise money for the storm victims. Why? Is the government still not able to help out? Haven't they already made plans for the next Katrina, or were they just counting on there never being another nasty hurricane (at least, not during an election year)?

Face it; a competent President doesn't need to be sitting by the phones, maintaining an appearance of alertness and concern. A competent President has plans in place to make sure that his people can handle any normal situation in an emergency, and he'll only need to be contacted if things go horribly wrong.

So Bush and Cheney skipping the convention is not exactly a point in their favor, you know? Especially not when McCain is going to be there... and he's ready to lead (or so they all say). So, what, even with Bush, Cheney, and McCain in the same place, they can't put together a competent response long distance? They still need the chief executives sitting by the phones, looking concerned?

McCain picks Palin...

2008-08-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

I think this pick really shows off McCain's strength, and it's something that Barack Obama can't match.

McCain is showing that he has the experience, the character, and the wisdom... to collapse in the face of his party's demands.

His "social conservative" bona fides were in question, after all. He claims to be in favor of overturning Roe vs. Wade, but you have to remember he was in favor of Roe vs. Wade before he was against it. He'd called Jerry Falwell and his ilk "agents of intolerance" and now he's playing kissyface with some of the most intolerant evangelicals out there. He was opposed to the Bush tax cuts, and now he's in favor of them.

He had to pick someone who represented what his party likes, so he did. Pro-gun, anti-choice, creationist - oops, I'm sorry "teach the controversy". And she's just like McCain; she was in favor of the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it. she can flap with the wind with the best of them.

Yes, this was, in fact, a perfect pick for John McCain. It exemplifies what his campaign is all about.

John McCain: a born panderer.

John McCain: the courage to collapse.

John McCain: An experienced follower.

But don't worry, I'm sure that the Republicans will find many cases where John McCain can "demonstrate leadership". They like to have their candidates do that, because it's a hell of a lot easier than, you know, leading.

Houses and elitism

2008-08-26T22:15:00.000-07:00

So, I'm sure you've heard. John McCain was asked how many houses he owned, and couldn't answer... he has enough houses that is't hard to keep track. The Obama campaign has taken several shots at him, and there has been a reaction to it. "Class warfare" they call it, but that's just a weak attempt to lie their way out the trouble they're in.

It's not class warfare. The McCain campaign - including McCain himself - have pushed to paint Obama as "not one of us", as an "elitist" as "out of touch". But did McCain ever have grounds to make such accusations?

Obama is a self-made man, a man who used his extraordinary abilities to make a good life for himself and his family. Not an elitist, but an elite. John McCain married into money, and no one begrudges him that. But he has no call, and certainly no right, to point to a man who's earned his place in the world by dint of hard work and extraordinary abilities.

But he did. He claimed that a man who isn't like us is a man who should be scorned and denied the Presidency of this nation. I say that we should take him at his word.

Are we winning again?

2008-08-12T22:18:00.001-07:00

I finally thought of an analogy for the war in Iraq that expresses one of my points of view about it.

Let's say you headed a corporation and you wanted to make a new line of trucks. And you said it would cost 20 million to launch the new line, and you fired someone who was a real gloomy Gus for saying it might cost as much as 80 million.

And let's say that, after screwing it up over and over, and taking much, much longer than even your worst case estimates, and spending over 800 million dollars - that's right, ten times the amount you said was unthinkably gloomy - you finally had some trucks that seemed to be working okay, for now, at least.

Would you say you had "succeeded"?

There's a bit of a trick here, because you certainly "succeeded" in the sense of "successfully getting some trucks that work to market".

But you wouldn't call it a success! You wouldn't chalk one up in the "win" column for yourself! You'd consider it an extraordinary failure.

Of course, this isn't about trucks, and making money, and stuff like that. This is about war. You know, killing people, and destroying property and making other people's lives hell.

"The surge succeeded" and "we're winning in Iraq!" and all that crap that's being said? You wouldn't buy it if it was a new line of trucks that didn't look that hot. Why would you buy it when it's literally a matter of life and death?

Tire pressure guages and character

2008-08-11T20:38:00.000-07:00

So, we've had an interesting incident. Barack Obama was asked what people could do to reduce energy use, and he pointed out that if everyone kept their tires inflated to the proper pressure and kept their engines tuned, we'd save more oil than Bush and McCain are talking about being able to get via offshore drilling.

And it's true, of course. But what was the McCain campaign's reaction? To insist that "inflating tires" was Obama's energy plan.

Now, the Republicans like to talk about "character". Well, what kind of a person creates a caricature of his opponent's energy plan, just so he can mock it?

Well, maybe someone who's afraid of a healthy debate on the issues. Creating a caricature is great for avoiding honest debate. Or someone who think he sees a vulnerability, regardless of the truth of the matter, and wants to attack.

But... wasn't John McCain some sort of "straight talker" or something? Someone who didn't play the standard Washington games? Didn't he stand by the Democrats when they had good ideas?

Well, maybe this is the same John McCain who wasn't afraid of calling the most rabid, intolerant evangelicals "agents of intolerance"... er, until he wanted their endorsement this year. Maybe when he says "straight" talk he means he talks straight out of one side of his mouth, and then straight out of the other.

More importantly, wasn't he going to be different from the other Republicans? Wasn't he going to be able to reach across the aisle, rather than engage in pettiness, like the Bushies have done? But what do you call the entire tire-pressure gauge thing, if not petty? Isn't it the kind of petty gamesmanship done by cliqueish groups in elementary school? Is that what we want in our political process?

Now, before any brings it up, sure, I know that Obama has taken shots at McCain. But has he ever stooped to this level of pettiness?

Who is showing respect, not just to his opponent, but to the American poeple?

Character does matter.

A test

2008-08-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

We are facing a grave test in this nation today, and soon we will know if we have passed it, and are worthy of nobler things, or if we have failed it, and are doomed to mediocrity.

Just a short time ago, the Republicans decided they weren't going to take defeat this year lying down. No, they were going to try to turn this election year around by creating a Big Issue. And, praise the lord, there was an issue: gas prices.

And so, George W. Bush challenged the Congress to allow offshore drilling. He wasn't going to rescind the executive order banning offshore drilling, no, he wasn't sure that it would be popular yet. But he was going to challenge them to revoke the Congressional ban, so he could complain when they didn't.

But not even Bush could handle the doublespeak required to maintain his ban while challenging the Congress to revoke their own, so now he's revoked his ban, and McCain and other Republicans have decided it's a potentially winning strategy. Some even have the audacity to blame the Democrats for not allowing drilling in the past, as if there hasn't been widespread opposition in both parties to offshore drilling.

"See, we care about gas prices," they're saying, even though they're pulling an election year stunt over an issue they hadn't given a damn about in years past.

It's gotten to the point that the House Republicans are staying trying to kick up a fuss in the House chambers during the recess, hoping that it will become sufficiently newsworthy if they throw a long enough tantrum.

It'd be impressive, if they were actually trying to accomplish something for the American people, rather than pulling a transparent stunt, which, if it works, will do nothing but increase oil company profits.Because we know that the oil companies have no plans to supply enough oil to lower prices enough to hurt their profit margins, and the Republicans know it too.

So it's not just a stunt, it's a dishonest bit of gamesmanship.

And that's our challenge, our test... are we wise enough and cynical enough to see through such bullshit?

Is John McCain ready to lead?

2008-08-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

So, back in 2000, John McCain called people who belonged to the crazed wing of the Evangelicals "agents of intolerance". That was a strong, principled stand to take, given the Republican embrace of all things Envangelical.

But today, why, he just loves him some Evangelical folks, and nary a word will be spoken about intolerance.

For his entire political career, McCain has refused to budge on offshore oil drilling. But recently, after a cynical move by President Bush, he's all for it.

McCain opposes torture, but he backed a bill that would let the President decide if any particular method of torture is really torture... in short, to allow torture, as long as the President keeps it secret enough.

It's something folks should think about. A leader has to lead, not pander. Has McCain shown he can do so?

Exhaustion...

2008-08-05T21:15:00.000-07:00

This deserves a full and fair investigation. Ron Suskind is claiming that the Bush administration was involved in a forged letter claiming an Iraq/Al Qaeda link; the people involved are denying it, which they'd do if they were innocent or guilty.

We should be confident that this will be dug into, and the truth would be revealed.

Who is betting that's going to happen?

Show of hands?

Oh, you'd already figured it was a show of hands, it's just no one was raising theirs.

Yeah, about what I figured.

This... this really makes me sick.

This shouldn't be a partisan matter. This should be something the Republicans want to dig into ruthlessly to expose Suskind as a liar and/or incompetent. This should be something the Democrats would be excruciatingly fair about, but absolutely unwilling to compromise on, or accept excuses for.

But it being an election year, I reckon it'll all be swept under the rug for fear of appearing too partisan. Sure wouldn't want criminal behavior to be investigated if it would lead to charges of partisanship!

Glenn Greenwald smells a rat...

2008-08-04T21:29:00.000-07:00

And I don't blame him.

The story going around is that they think they have closed the case of the anthrax attacks that occurred after 9/11. Bruce Ivins was the big bad guy behind it all.

Now, Glenn's not positing any great conspiracy theory, nor am I. But he's pointing out that there are a lot of unanswered questions, and I agree.

There are two things that stick out about this story that bother me especially.

The first thing is, the claim is that he was about to be indicted, and knew about it. Sometimes, this is good legal work. Let the small fish know that they're about to be hooked, and they'll decide to help you catch the big fish.

But is this normal procedure when there are five murders being investigated? Especially if he's the big bad guy? I think if they have solid evidence that he's even peripherally involved, they don't say "you're about to be indicted, it's time to sing." I think then it's time to say "you're under arrest, and you're facing the death penalty; it's time to sing."

Hey, I'm no lawyer, and I honestly don't know. Maybe they figured Ivins didn't have the means to run away. I mean, gas is expensive, so surely he wouldn't get in his car and just start driving away, hitting every ATM he can before his accounts are frozen.

All kidding aside, really, I don't know. Maybe there was a good reason for this. It just strikes me as funny.

But there's something else that really sticks out. The word is, he killed himself with Tylenol with codeine.

Now, I've known a fair number of biologists. None of them would ever contemplate killing themselves with Tylenol. See, Tylenol is hepatoxic - it damages the liver. When your liver fails, you are going to be incredibly sick, and it's not like being in pain, where they can give you morphine. Hell, they can't give you much of any drug, when your liver is toast. It's a slow, horrible way to die.

If they'd said he hanged himself, I'd believe that; it's quick, if you do it right. But Tylenol?

It makes more sense if it turns out he took so much codeine (maybe mixed with alcohol) that he was all-but guaranteed to die. There's just one problem with that scenario. Where did he get that much codeine?

He'd just been hospitalized for depression.

No competent doctor would give him a prescription for that much codeine. You don't give people fresh out of mental hospitals lethal doses of drugs.

Okay, but maybe he lied to a doctor, and didn't mention his recent hospitalization. Hey, it's possible. I'm not saying it's impossible.

I'm just saying there are a fair number of questions that need to be answered. There are inconsistencies with this story that stick out like a sore thumb. And I hope people are going to stay on top of this, and not let it slip off the radar.

A smashing new victory!

2008-07-24T08:46:00.001-07:00

Well, from listening to Republicans across the country, I see that they've ret-conned a new reason we went to war!

As you know, we went to war with Iraq to ~~find active WMD programs~~, er, ~~defeat an ally of al Qaeda~~, I mean, ~~bring peace and prosperity to the Iraqis~~ , uh, oh, yes! reduce violence, at least in Baghdad, and allow the Iraqi government to make progress towards creating a unified Iraq! Anyway, due to our troops and their leaders, including the brilliant and courageous John McCain and George Bush, we've achieved victory!

It must be great to be a high ranking Republican! You get all the great victories and effusive praise given to a toddler, while still being old enough to drink (and, alas, hold elective office).

Torture in the news again

2008-07-18T21:59:00.001-07:00

I'm getting really tired of this crap. So, another round of congressional hearings, run by people who don't really seem to understand the right questions to ask.

The Bush administration tells a good story. "We wanted to do everything we could to protect the American people". Let's take them at their word, then, and look at what they did. What they did was to look for ways to apply ever greater amounts of cruelty.

They didn't look into what works. They didn't create a special task force of the best experts in intelligence operations to come up with a plan. They immediately went for cruelty. "How can we hurt people, to make them do what we want? How much can we hurt them, and still pretend this is legal?"

That was their big idea. They assumed that the only thing standing in the way of successful interrogations was an inability to be nasty enough, to hurt people enough. Even though all of the best interrogators will tell you that you get better information without torture.

Even if you weren't horrified by the evil of an administration that approves of torture, you should be horrified by the sheer stupidity of an administration that doesn't bother looking for the best way to do things. You should be horrified by those whose knee jerk reaction is "hurt someone until they do what we want".

Can we drill our way to lower oil prices?

2008-07-15T21:17:00.000-07:00

Can we drill our way to lower oil prices?

Let's see.

a) If the oil companies drill enough to significantly lower prices, it'll cause their profits to fall - remember, supply *is* still ahead of demand!

b) The oil companies like their profits.

Therefore:

No.

So why the bullshit push to open new drilling areas?

The more places the oil companies *can* drill, the greater the likelihood they have of finding oil that's cheaper to bring up. Cheaper oil means higher profits (reference b), above). Plus, every lease they hold is an asset on their balance sheets.

So, yes, Bush is lying, and simply pushing hard to pander to his buddies in the oil business. Is this a surprise?

I remember Colbert...

2008-07-03T21:26:00.000-07:00

A couple years back, at the White House Press Correspondent's dinner, Colbert announced that Bush was the decider; he decides. Tony Snow recites what he's decided. Then, the reporters transcribe what Tony Snow recites. Okay, that's the job, got it? Decides, recite, transcribe. Then reporters can get back to writing that story about the brave journalist standing up to the government... you know, *FICTION*.

Zing, I say... zing.

But pretty sad too.

Today we have the same thing going on... only with Dana Perino rather than Tony Snow.

Bush decided to whine about the Supreme Court decision granting detainees habeas corpus rights. Dana dictated his whine; the reporters transcribed it.

Look, I don't want to be mean... oh, hell, who am I kidding? Of course I want to be mean!

But I don't want to be unjustifiably mean.

Okay, but this is justifiable. President Bush made an unsupported claim... that he, as President, could grab anyone, under any circumstances, and claim that they were an illegal combatant, and ship them to Guantanemo naval base to be held indefinitely.

Any first year law student should have been able to point out that the courts might rule that people snatched by the US government have rights. I mean, it's not like these people were all known to be enemy soldiers. That's the point, isn't it? If they were enemy soldiers, they'd be POWs. The point is, Bush is claiming that these people were enemies who disguised themselves as ordinary people.

And, he claimed that he was the only person who had to be satisfied by that designation. No namby-pamby judge gets to decide whether or not the government has acted illegally, nuh-uh! Who do those judges think they are, making legal decisions?

It was always a weak claim, and a pretty stupid one, and every time it was tested in court, it was ultimately rejected. And it's been on extremely shaky ground since at least 2006. So, he's had two years to figure out what to do.

And now, he's complaining that he doesn't know what to do, and he's scared that things might happen that he doesn't like. Well, boo-friggin'-hoo, a competent executive would have been planning for this and working on the assumption that this might come up.

For the record, judges aren't stupid. They are not going to order the release of anyone that the government can show is a true, honest-to-goodness risk.

But they're not going to put up with the whining of a President who can't deal with a situation he's seen coming for two years.