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Monday, May 31, 2010
Remembering the price of freedom
There are a lot of good Memorial Day posts and this one quotes Reagan's 1986 "Price of Freedom" speech, and has a sad photographic reminder that not everyone "celebrates" Memorial Day. It's a day simply to remember those who gave their lives for this country. Traditionally, American presidents go to Arlington Cemetery for the Arlington Memorial Day wreath laying ceremony. Not so this year with President Obama, who decided not to attend -- a decision which upset many veterans. A CBS piece is defensively titled "Obama Not the 1st President to Miss Memorial Day at Arlington," and stresses that while he wasn't going to Arlington, he would attend a Memorial Day Ceremony at a national cemetery in Illinois. Except he didn't attend that one either. Bad weather caused him to cancel. Instead (so goes the story), he "will meet instead privately with military families." So I guess we should be glad he at least allegedly found time to allegedly observe something -- even though it seems like it's pulling teeth for him to do anything. Via Glenn Reynolds, Roger Kimball offers a decidedly bleak view: On this Memorial Day, when we pause to commemorate the sacrifices of the brave men and women who served in the American military to help keep us free and strong, it is worth thinking as well about those whose visceral reaction to the United States is arrogant and impatient loathing. It is not an edifying, though it may be an empowering, thought.I think Kimball is right. This president gives every indication that he's simply uncomfortable with any sort of patriotic event or military display, and would like to avoid them to the maximum extent possible, or get away as soon as possible. Yet, he's supposed to be the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, right? Is he uncomfortable with that too? Or is it inappropriate to pose sarcastic rhetorical questions about the president on Memorial Day? In all honesty, don't know what's appropriate anymore. But this morning I went to the Yankee Air Museum's Memorial Day Commemoration & Pancake Breakfast Fly-in Drive-in at the Willow Run airfield in Ypsilanti, where I saw aerial displays and speakers in keeping with the occasion. Far from displaying a visceral reaction to the United States of arrogant and impatient loathing, they reminded the crowd that freedom is not free, and remembered the ultimate sacrifice that others had made. I took a few pictures. posted by Eric at 03:11 PM | Comments (2)
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, May 30, 2010
What good are friends if they don't hold your feet to the fire?
Thaddeus McCotter is a congressman from a neighboring district, and I saw him speak at a Tea Party rally in Plymouth on April 15. I have a video of some of his speech somewhere, With that it mind, I was taken aback when I saw a report that McCotter supports the bailout of union pensions: Michigan Congressman Thad McCotter, R-Livonia, is one of just nine Republicans nationwide to co-sponsor legislation that seeks to bail out union pension funds and put taxpayers "on the hook for $165 billion in unfunded union pension liabilities," according to Americans for Limited Government. McCotter is also the only Michigan U.S. House member from either party to co-sponsor the bill, H.R. 3936, which was introduced by North Dakota Democrat Earl Pomeroy and has 43 total co-sponsors.Why would he do this? The answer may be simple. Money. Which of course often dictates political survival: Records from OpenSecrets.org show that McCotter has received more than $870,000 in total funding so far this election cycle, with at least $78,000 of that coming from political action committees run by labor unions. A few examples include the Teamsters ($2,000), Laborer's International Union of North America ($5,000), AFSCME ($1,000), United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners ($2,500), Longshoremen's Association ($2,500) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers ($2,000).What this shows is how much power the unions have. Standing up to them can be fatal even to an otherwise sincere economic conservative politician's career. As one of the purposes of the Tea Party movement is to hold these people's feet to the fire, I thought this was worth a blog post. I wouldn't have bothered had I thought McCotter was a political hack, except I really don't think he. I like to think that I'm a good judge of character and the man struck me as a deeply thoughtful, and as someone who sincerely believed in the Tea Party movement and opposes wasteful spending. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed worth going through my disorganized camera dump files, and as I was lucky enough to find the McCotter video I shot at the Plymouth Tea Party, I thought I'd upload it to YouTube. Here. Unless my perceptions are wrong, Thaddeus McCotter is a good guy as opposed to the usual political hacks in Congress, and I think he wants to be part of the solution. We all have our failings, and Michigan is a union state which has been in dire economic straits for a long time. Considering that even some devoutly conservative Michigan Tea Party activists have been willing to overlook their principles when it came to auto industry bailouts, I don't think a congressman who does something similar should be adjudged irredeemable. Instead, I think the Tea Party-supporting Thaddeus McCotter is a classic example of someone whose feet should be held to the fire. After all, the bad guys (and true political enemies) are generally hopeless; it's only good guys and friends whose feet can be held to the fire. posted by Eric at 12:08 PM | Comments (14)
| TrackBacks (0) Saturday, May 29, 2010
King Canute is in over his head -- a mile deep!
A lot of ink has been spilled over the fact that a lot of oil has been spilled -- and continues to be spilled -- into the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion. President Obama was here in Ann Arbor not long after the explosion, and he said this: Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them.That was reassuring to the students who were graduating, and they applauded. The problem is that it's more complicated than cleaning up the oil spill, because they haven't been able to stop it. And they might not be able to, because the oil is gushing from a blowout under 5000 feet of water. There's an old expression that you can't get blood from a stone. The government cannot command the impossible -- whether from an evil corporation or from nature itself. Charles Krauthammer sees Obama as King Canute attempting to command the impossible, while continuing to labor under the belief that a great speech can solve everything. But other than delivering another speech blaming the oil companies and Bush what can he do? Command the oil to stop gushing? Krauthammer asks, "Why are we drilling in 5,000 feet of water in the first place?" and notes the major role of environmentalists in pushing these operations further and further out -- to places so precarious than when disasters occur (which they inevitably will), they're so much harder to fix. As to the federal government, it is clueless: The federal government can fight wars, conduct a census, and hand out billions in earmarks, but it has not a clue how to cap a one-mile-deep out-of-control oil well.No wonder there's such a chorus of outrage emerging from the left. They actually believed in magic. If there's one thing more ridiculous than being King Canute, it's believing in King Canute. MORE: It seems quite obvious that if BP is able to stop the gusher, Obama will claim credit for it. If not, well, there's always the tried-and-true game of blaming Halliburton! UPDATE (May 30, 2010): Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and a warm welcome to all! Comments appreciated, agree or disagree. posted by Eric at 11:11 AM | Comments (27)
| TrackBacks (0) Friday, May 28, 2010
Why can't I own my own stuff?
Much as I have been enjoying Linux, one of the biggest hassles I have had (more in some distros, and less in others) has been in the video streaming department. I previously discussed the Flashplayer problem, and a way to work around it, but the main reason for these problems is not technology per se, but licensing. Linux is free, Open Source software and that poses quite a problem in the video department. Sure, there are plenty of codecs that can be installed and configured later, but building them into the distributions is impossible because of licensing laws. Anyway, in the course of looking at the problem I kept stumbling onto something that I find downright creepy. Glenn Reynolds had mentioned it a little while back, and the piece he linked is something I keep running into in these discussions. I keep kvetching about how things are getting to the point where your computer is not yours. Well, it turns out that your camera is not yours. ...there is something very important, that the vast majority of both consumers and video professionals don't know: ALL modern video cameras and camcorders that shoot in h.264 or mpeg2, come with a license agreement that says that you can only use that camera to shoot video for "personal use and non-commercial" purposes (go on, read your manuals). I was first made aware of such a restriction when someone mentioned that in a forum, about the Canon 7D dSLR. I thought it didn't apply to me, since I had bought the double-the-price, professional (or at least prosumer), Canon 5D Mark II. But looking at its license agreement last night (page 241), I found out that even my $3000 camera comes with such a basic license. So, I downloaded the manual for the Canon 1D Mark IV, a camera that costs $5000, and where Canon consistently used the word "professional" and "video" on the same sentence on their press release for that camera. Nope! Same restriction: you can only use your professional video dSLR camera (professional, according to Canon's press release), for non-professional reasons. And going even further, I found that even their truly professional video camcorder, the $8000 Canon XL-H1A that uses mpeg2, also comes with a similar restriction. You can only use your professional camera for non-commercial purposes. For any other purpose, you must get a license from MPEG-LA and pay them royalties for each copy sold. I personally find this utterly unacceptable.I find it unacceptable too. We now live in a digital world. Computers and cameras are basic tools for being able to function in that world. And to the extent they are not ours, we are peons. Serfs. Whether I go out and spend $500 or $5000 for a camera, that damn camera ought to be mine. And the pictures I take with it are mine. This sucks big time. But most users are not worried, because the MPEG-LA lobby is holding off on enforcement until 2015. So you can go right ahead and have your YouTube videos and you don't have to worry that they might not be yours, because the camera you made them with wasn't yours. It's as if they're deliberately leading everyone into an open corral, to be closed later. All cameras, and all video editors and players are encumbered by this restriction: And no, this is not just a Canon problem (which to me sounds like false advertising). Sony and Panasonic, and heck, even the Flip HD, have the exact same licensing restriction. Also, all video editors and official media players come with similarly restricted codec licenses! Apparently, MPEG-LA makes it difficult for camera manufacturers, or video editor software houses, to obtain a cheap-enough license that allows their users to use their codec any way they want! This way, MPEG-LA caches in not only from the manufacturers and software providers, but also artists, and even viewers (more on that later). Maximizing their profit, they are!I have been thinking about it. For two days now. And the more I think about it, the more worried I become. Worried enough to return to something I said in a previous post: ...Software is one of those gray areas between property and freedom, and the waters are further muddied by the fact that it's a form of speech. So, copyright law applies, and Microsoft and Apple are therefore fully justified in licensing and selling their software, as well as (as I must grudgingly admit), use the power of the police to thwart those who violate their property rights. This is problematic, though, especially when they want to go further, and insist on finding property rights in things which are embedded in Open Source software. Wars can result from such stuff, and it is wise for everyone to remember Hemingway's and MacArthur's warnings about "undefended wealth."Fortunately, we're not talking about the ownership of human beings here, but there is a similar philosophical disconnect, with antithetical attitudes. Some people think they own what others think is not theirs to own. The corporations which constitute MPEG-LA think you do not have the right to do what you want with your own property, because they think that part of it is theirs. This problem is not going to go away. posted by Eric at 05:59 PM | Comments (2)
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Tom Ligon At Balticon
Details here. Tom announced his presence here: I'll be giving one of the opening talks at the Balticon Science Fiction Convention this Friday, May 28, at 9 PM, near Baltimore, MD. This will be an updated version of the talk I've given before. I won't have any earth-shattering news, but I will have my recently-overhauled Farnsworth fusor and photos of the construction process. Details are available below.A little late notice I admit. I haven't been keeping up this week. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 03:00 PM | Comments (0)
| TrackBacks (0) Thursday, May 27, 2010
DISCLOSE my ass!
Congressman Tom Price has a piece about HR 5175, the so-called DISCLOSE Act. This is the Democrats' retaliation for the Citizens United case, which ruled that there is still a First Amendment right to produce political films and held McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. Apparently, though, they want to get tough on bloggers and make them register and fill out disclosure forms, pay fees, and have their speech generally restricted: Under the DISCLOSE Act, certain incorporated entities would be restricted in how they can exercise their free speech rights. There is an exemption for some in the media sphere like newspapers, TV news, and the like. However, there is one driving force in today's public debate that is NOT exempt. Bloggers will not have the same exemption provided to other media sources. Never mind that the Supreme Court's opinion in the Citizens United case stated, "Differential treatment of media corporations and other corporations cannot be squared with the First Amendment."I'll tell you how I'll deal with it if it passes. I will simply defy it. I will refuse to register with or disclose anything to any government board or entity. So, I am sure, will countless other bloggers. The massive resulting civil disobedience would cause them to either back down or look ridiculous, and if they tried actually enforcing this nonsense they'd look even more ridiculous. But in a way, I hope they keep this sort of stuff up. People tend to vote when they get pissed. Even little people. And they're not going to be in the mood to vote for a party that is acting more and more like the party of Hugo Chavez. posted by Eric at 06:19 PM | Comments (3)
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Confidential Doctor-patient relationship? Or suspect criminal conspiracy?
In the Drug War front, the situation in Mexico may have become completely uncontrollable, but not to worry! Our drug enforcement agents are continuing to launch raids on doctors in this country and charge them with overprescribing pain meds. The legal system being the way it is, a charge of overprescribing now translates into racketeering, conspiracy, money-laundering, etc. In other words (in a clear message to other dorctors), if you write a prescription that the DEA thinks you should not have written, you could go to prison for life! Currently, there's quite a ruckus over a Kansas physician who does not hesitate to treat large numbers of pain patients, some of whom allegedly resold the drugs on the street. So the doctor is being prosecuted. HAYSVILLE, Kan. -- The Schneider Medical Clinic was once open seven days a week for as many as 11 hours a day. Patients, scheduled 10 minutes apart, often waited hours for an appointment.OK, right there I see a problem. With that kind of high-volume practice (which will most likely increase under Pelosicare), it would be nearly impossible for doctors to get into the kind of detailed patient policing that the DEA seems to be pushing for by way of these high-profile prosecutions. Today, its doors are shuttered and the couple who ran the clinic are in jail, charged with allegedly operating a "pill mill" linked to 56 overdose deaths.Fortunately, there is still a jury system, so the DEA can't imprison doctors merely on their say-so. But regardless of whether Dr. Schneider is convicted, a message is clearly being sent. Even some of the chief state prosecutors are alarmed. ...experts say high-profile prosecutions of pain management specialists has since spooked medical providers from writing pain medication.Freedom to be pain free? Tell it to the judge! The prosecutor in this case, Tanya Treadway, has a long history of antagonism towards pain activists, and she actually tried to charge Siobhan Reynolds with "obstruction of justice" for putting up a billboard defending Schneider and a PRN video about the conflict between drug control and pain control -- activities which constitute free speech. So eating away at a patient's right to medicate pain and the right of a doctor to treat a patient as he sees fit may in fact be the whole idea. A patient's need for pain meds has to be balanced against what is considered in the best interests of the "Drug War." Patients who need pain meds must necessarily become suspects. If you think I am exaggerating, just read what one of the prosecution's experts says: Dr. Doug Jorgensen, a Massachusetts pain management specialist, testified that the number of patients was "beyond excessive," and the sheer volume would make it difficult to monitor patients. He also said prescription refills were given to patients whose urinary screening tests showed they were not taking their pills, a sign the drugs were being sold.I'm sorry but patients are not suspects. Testing the urine of patients to monitor whether they are taking their pills is downright Orwellian, and I would not go to a doctor who did that. Nor, I suspect, would most people. Which means that the drug war bureaucrats probably have a plan in mind to make patient urine testing mandatory. For all I know, such a provision might even be buried somewhere in the thousands of pages of the Pelosicare "law." (In any event, you can be sure that in the near future, dissenters who behave like, say, Joe The Plumber can expect to see their once-confidential prescription records leaked to the media by common bureaucrats.) posted by Eric at 11:30 AM | Comments (7)
| TrackBacks (0) Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Weird fetishism for the Constitution
In a post about the police raid in which a 7 year old girl was accidentally shot by an officer, I missed a horrifying detail which makes the incident more egregious. The SWAT team fired a flashbang grenade into the room in which the girl was sleeping. As if that wasn't bad enough, the building was a duplex, and they fired it into the wrong unit: According to the Detroit Free Press, the police say they had information that their suspect, 34-year-old Chauncey Owens, was armed. He was a suspect in a homicide. If Owens were on a killing spree, knowingly fleeing police, or holed up in the house with hostages, it may have justified using a SWAT team to apprehend him. But it doesn't appear that Owens presented that sort of imminent threat. Police had spotted him earlier in the day outside of the house. It's difficult to understand why the police didn't confront him then or the next time he left. Instead, they waited until the middle of the night to conduct a volatile raid on a duplex, putting everyone inside the property in jeopardy. Geoffrey Feiger, the attorney for the Stanley-Jones family, alleges the police weren't even aware the building was a duplex, and only obtained a warrant for the upper apartment after the raid.I agree with Radley Balko, who goes on to discuss the use of flashbang grenades: Though touted as "non-lethal," flashbang grenades have caused a number of deaths and serious injuries. The devices set off a wave of intense light and sound designed to stun everyone inside of a building long enough for police to enter and secure the premises. They're indiscriminate. Their intended effect is to cause injury to everyone near them. That means they're effectively a form of punishment on people who have yet to be convicted of any crime. And that includes innocent bystanders as well as suspects. And they are explosives, which means there is a very real risk of injury and destruction. Flashbangs have caused second- and third-degree burns, and ignited fires that have consumed houses.The fact that a grenade was fired into the wrong apartment is horrifying enough in itself (because it shows how callused police have become), and if it in fact set fire to the girl, I hope her family ends up owning what's left of the squalidly dysfunctional Detroit Police Department. But what worries me even more is the routine deployment of flashbang grenades against people who have not yet been charged but who are merely accused (of non-violent, victimless crimes), as well as innocent third-parties who are accused of nothing at all. Flashbangs detonate with a blinding flash of light and a deafening explosion. Their function is to temporarily stun people in a targeted building until police or military personnel can get inside. Though the weapons are marketed as non-lethal, there have been a number of incidents in which they've set homes on fire (some resulting in fatalities), caused severe burns, or confused police officers into thinking they were coming under gunfire, causing them to open fire themselves.Under what legal theory are police allowed to simply injure people with these devices? Simply because they have a search warrant? The Fourth Amendment allows police to conduct "reasonable searches" upon probable cause: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.Perhaps I'm taking my constitutional literalism too far, but I don't see any reference to or authorization of flashbang grenades there. I'm wondering how it is humanly possible to imagine that a constitutionally authorized "reasonable search" could countenance firing an explosive device into an occupied home with sleeping kids. Any idea what the founders might say? Balko opines that federal constitutional challenges to these devices may soon be forthcoming, and I certainly hope so, because I think it's a slam dunk that they're not contemplated by the Fourth Amendment. That is, if the Fourth Amendment still means anything, which a growing chorus says it does not. If you think that by "growing chorus" I refer only to conservatives, think again. It is very typical these days for leftists to express pure, undisguised disdain for the Constitution and for those who believe in it. A perfect example was recently provided by one of Salon's great constitutional scholars, who condemned what he called "weird fetishism for the Constitution on the right." UPDATE: If this post by Randy Barnett is any indication, I may be more a constitutional textualist than a constitutional literalist. That may well be, but I still don't see how firing grenades into a window of an occupied residence falls within the definition of "search." (Reasonable or otherwise.) Via Glenn Reynolds. I studied Con Law in law school, where they did their damnedest to disabuse me of the idea that the words the founders wrote might actually mean what they say. Instead, the focus was on applying precedents that dictated when doctrines like the "strict scrutiny" and "rational basis" tests should be applied. I always liked the elegant simplicity and the plain wording of the Constitution, but quite frankly, "Constitutional Law" as it was taught put me to sleep. No really. It was as if some series of committees had spent countless years reworking the Constitution to fit the needs of bureaucrats. posted by Eric at 12:56 PM | Comments (3)
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How Many Has She Tricked?
Why do beautiful women get cheated on so much? "Beautiful women are prey to men who want to use their beauty to elevate their own status. Because of their beauty they're used to being adored, and they are flattered by guys who go completely goo goo for them," explains relationship expert, Dr. Gilda Carle, who has treated many celebrities.Let me see if I get this. Beauty is no insulation from dysfunction. Giving or receiving. Assuming you want to keep up with all this on a more mundane level you might like Cheater's Confessions. About 3 or 4 new ones every hour during waking hours. About 6AM to 1 AM EST. Their confessions run 51% male and 49% female. And you can vote and comment on them without registering. Sentiment mostly runs against the cheaters, but it is devastating to out and out scum. After reading a few you can see a pattern. The pattern of what is probably the most destructive behavior in any relationship. Dishonesty. And out of that we get juicy anonymous public confessions. Yum. Below are some books on the subject to get you started or finished as the case may be. Which reminds me of some sage old advice. "A man is not complete until he is married and after that he is finished." OTOH if you are very lucky..... Is It Still Cheating If I Don't Get Caught? The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims With more here. H/T Instapundit and Extra Good - whose home page is Not Safe For Work. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 10:33 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Tuesday, May 25, 2010
And they can't be fired!
Here's an incident epitomizing the stubborn bureaucratic recalcitrance which has the most of the country in a deathlock and which fuels the Tea Party Movement. A notorious (and famously incompetent) Philadelphia principal who presided over the racist attacks on Chinese students -- and who was found not even to be properly credentialed to be a principal -- had resigned her job in seeming disgrace. But -- it turns out she's still working for the school district! Well, you know, "working" should be in quotes, for she actually is not working. But she is being paid $124,000 a year by the taxpayers. Former principal LaGreta Brown is gone from troubled South Philadelphia High School but remains on the School District payroll at $124,000 a year, officials confirmed.Yeah, well big deal! Even the worst government bureaucrats cannot be fired, because they belong to powerful government employee unions with ironclad contracts, and armies of lawyers at their disposal to march into court end enforce their damned "legal entitlements." Of course, I don't live in the Philly area anymore. Not that that changes anything. The same ruling class runs things here. Actually, the Inquirer story reminded me of a report in the Mackinac Center's Michigan Capitol Confidential about the sweetheart union deals that educrats have even in this impoverished state. Naturally, the taxpayers know little or nothing about the details. Their only role is supposed to be to work in order to pay whatever the unions demand. In the Port Huron Area School District, about 70 percent of the $106 million operating budget goes towards paying employees covered by current collective bargaining agreements for teachers and a few other employee groups. Yet few people know what is in these or other school labor contracts.It goes on and on, for people who enjoy reading about things like the generous pension plans (similar to the ones that have bankrupted California). I think it's high time that government employee unions be made illegal. Maybe something like that should be placed on the ballot, for no legislature would ever dare pass it. That's because unlike the unelected union employees who really run things, elected legislators are timid creatures who actually can lose their jobs and therefore live in mortal fear that they will be fired. But suppose for the sake of argument that such a thing did make it onto the ballot and passed. Wouldn't the government unions simply pressure their lackeys in the court system to declare the measure "unconstitutional"? Yeah, yeah, I know. Another rhetorical question. (Next I'll be asking whether we 're living in Greece...) posted by Eric at 06:16 PM | Comments (4)
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"This incident will be reported."
Nothing like getting a good morning scolding -- especially from an operating system. All I did was enter a very simple command sudo fdisk -l Which is only supposed to read the fdisk output (showing the layout of the hard drive). Anyway, because poor little Eric wasn't logged in as root (even though I am root and Eric), the system got very snappy with me. And not just snappy, but snappy in a tendentiously philosophical manner: Chagrined at the possibility of being reported to myself, I wondered just who the "we" are. Some code writer in some fantasy world somewhere who thought this up, I guess. It's actually funny. What I can't decide is whether the overall intent is broad enough to encompass satire. I certainly hope the author is not serious, but even if he is, I guess things could be worse. He could be working for the government! posted by Eric at 11:56 AM | Comments (5)
| TrackBacks (0) Monday, May 24, 2010
Outraged over outrage itself!
Back from a well-deserved vacation, Glenn Reynolds said this: It's amazing, though, how much more relaxed I am when I'm not being exposed to the latest outrage on the Internet . . . .That made me feel less crazy. Sometimes it feels like being online means round-the-clock exposure to constant "latest outrages." And there is always a latest outrage, for outrages never cease. They never have and they never will. While it seems that there is a lot more to be outraged over now than in the past, if I look back over my seven years of blogging, I can see that there were constant outrages -- every one of which was the latest outrage at the time. Unfortunately, in blogging these outrages tend to be called "content." Sometimes, I worry that the cumulative effect might not be good for one's mental or physical health. But OTOH, if there were no "latest outrages," what would that do to the quality of life? Not that I should worry about that. People being what they are (and, if you write about politics, this administration being what it is) there will always be plenty to be outraged about. There will never be a shortage of outrage. Pessimists don't have to worry about "peak outrage" or anything like that. Knowing this helps provide perspective, and allows me to not feel obligated to write posts about each and every outrage to come along. What I still have trouble with, though, is what I'll call "competitive outrage," which in turn fuels what I'll call "the outrage cycle." An incident will happen (because incidents always do happen), and it gets picked up by one outraged person or another, and then, depending on how many people become outraged (and the degree of influence possessed by those who are outraged) the incident goes from being an underreported incident to the "latest outrage," Outrage Of The Day, or even Outrage Of The Week. If you're blogging, no matter how sane you might think you are, this creates pressure to say something about it. The pressure is compounded by the fact that there are some people (self-appointed outrage-meisters, if you will) who believe it is their job in life to tell other people that they should be outraged. It's one thing to be outraged about something, but if there's one thing I cannot stand, it is the feeling that I have to become outraged on someone else's say-so. The problem for me is that I really, really detest that pressure, and after all of these years I find myself much less tolerant of it than I was when I started blogging, so I end up reacting not to whatever the original incident was, but to other people's outrage over it. My reaction often takes the form of not blogging about something, and instead getting really pissed off. I become, well, outraged -- over outrage. Outrage being the direction outward of anger, I worry that being outraged over outrage but remaining silent about it might constitute the direction inward of anger. Is there such a thing as inrage? I hope not. Because if I were to be judged by busybodies in the outrage industry, it might appear that I don't get outraged enough. As if there's such a thing as being outraged enough! Why, I couldn't possibly be outraged enough! I should probably try harder. posted by Eric at 10:15 AM | Comments (6)
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Free Book
Ed Driscoll notes that J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night is available for free download. "Just look at TV news or read a newspaper," Schulman said. "Plot point after plot point is identical. In my 1979 novel I have General Motors go bankrupt -- General Motors then files for bankruptcy. I have Europe issue a common currency in my novel called the 'eurofranc' -- the European Union then goes and issues the 'euro.' In my novel I have a European Chancellor, based in France, accuse the U.S. President of having the monetary policies of a banana republic -- then the President of the European Union -- also based in France -- slams U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as 'a road to hell' and says President Barack Obama's massive stimulus package and banking bailout 'will undermine the liquidity of the global financial market.' The copycat nature of all these plot points and dialogue" -- says Schulman -- "could not be more obvious!"You can read the Amazon reviews at: J. Neil Schulman's Alongside Night Note: there are only about 12,000 more copies available for download. Don't wait if you want a free copy. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 04:17 AM | Comments (2)
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Family Feud
There is a Drug War going on in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. As you might expect, it is not going well. CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico-- Authorities battling drug traffickers in this violent border city have begun to suspect that their efforts to impede the flow of drugs into the U.S. has fostered demand--and turf wars--on their own territory.Dang. Fighting drugs only spreads them. Which reminds me of a personal anecdote. About 15 or 25 years ago when the police in America decided they were going to drive drugs and drug gangs out of the big cities I said the result would be an infestation of drugs and gangs in our towns and villages. I told this to a police officer back then (on FIDO Net). He said I was nuts. Unfortunately, I had the last laugh. ... authorities also see an unintended result of the crackdown: Traffickers, unable to get some drugs to Americans, began to sell them in Ciudad Juarez. That has left the city of 1.3 million people--once mainly a transit center for drugs--with a pattern of mounting crime similar to that of the U.S. cities where drugs are headed, namely killings at street corners between gangs vying to be the town's principal drug dealers. Even in cases when drugs begin flowing back across the border into the U.S. again, some amount remains destined for local consumers.Isn't that comforting. The DEA knows exactly how this works. And they support the drug war why? Green energy. i.e. it is a jobs program and heaven knows they will not work against their own interests. And what is that interest? It certainly isn't either ending the Drug War or stopping the flow of drugs. In response to rising violence between drug cartels over cross-border trade in Ciudad Juarez, President Calderón sent 5,000 more soldiers into the city in early 2009. Seizures of marijuana continued to fall, as did homicide rates, which dropped from about nine a day earlier in the year to two per day, according to estimates by the city. City leaders were cautiously optimistic; for a short time, violence in Ciudad Juarez appeared to have been calmed.Mr. Reyes should have consulted with the experts at the DEA. They witnessed roughly the same thing in the USA about 15 to 25 years ago. The one thing the drug warriors seem really good at is redeploying policies that are known, tested, and guaranteed not to work. As opposed to redeploying policies that are known, tested and guaranteed to work. A man has got to protect his phony baloney job. Mexican federal officials say there are signs the violence in Ciudad Juarez, which has claimed 996 lives so far this year, has peaked.Our experience with alcohol prohibition in America is that it takes 15 to 25 years for the internecine warfare inspired by prohibition to die out. The clock starts as soon as we stop being stupid. The beginning of the end of stupidity could begin as soon as Nov. 2, 2010 in California. Here is a catalog of some of the stupidity as reported in 1997! - Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure It is not like we didn't know. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 03:46 AM | Comments (3)
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, May 23, 2010
when tales become narratives, look out!
In a comment to an earlier post, commenter Gringo said, I like hearing your computer tales.Talk about asking for it. If it's tales you want, it's tales you'll get! So onto the latest tales. I have now installed and tried out innumerable Linux distributions in various old computers, and thanks to the tricky but invaluable GRUB loader, I can choose from among them at bootup. When I began with these experiments I only had two Compact Flash memory cards (a 128Meg and a 256Meg), which would only allow one very small Puppy or Slax distro on each. I truly love Puppy, as it is brutally simple, easy to configure, and does the job without no muss nor mess. The three variations I've tried are your basic Puppy, the slightly more elegant Lupu Puppy (an Ubuntu-hybrid mongrel), and a charming new distro called Quirky, which I absolutely love. It's basic, user-friendly, and does what you tell it to do. As anyone who has installed Linux into a computer with another OS knows, double or triple or quadruple booting requires the installation of a pre-boot loader, and the most common one is the GRUB. On bootup, it gives you a list of available operating systems, and you select the one you want with the arrow keys, hit Enter and it will boot. At least, so you hope. The problem with GRUB is that the latest version (GRUB2 -- which is what you'll get with Ubuntu) is not designed to be user-edited with ease the way the older one is, but instead has to be updated with commands, which is fine except when it fails to detect new installations or displays them incorrectly. When I added new systems after having installed GRUB2 along with Ubuntu, this failure to detect them forced me to go to a lot of trouble. Not so with Quirky. It lets you take total charge of GRUB from start to finish, and it shows you the GRUB display entries when you install it, as well as any time afterwards. Now, if you're installing "competing" versions of Linux, none of this is a huge problem, but if you are trying to keep Windows, watch out! Windows is extremely fussy about the GRUB loader, and adding other operating systems is a great way to make Windows crap out. That's not because Windows self-destructs, but typically because the GRUB loader orders it to boot from wherever it is, whereas Windows only knows to boot from wherever it was. The result -- no Windows! -- can be a huge deterrent to the casual Linux user who thinks he can just install Ubuntu and keep Windows. Judging from some of the threads I've read, many a wannabe Linux user has been reduced to a sobbing "Mommy I want my Windows back!" status (something I suspect may perfectly well be intended by the Windows closed source narrative community). To illustrate the nature of the problem (and this is assuming there are still any readers with me), if we return to my ten dollar salvage yard computer, once I was armed with a new 8 Gigabyte Compact Flash card I decided to do two things: Perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment, but I managed to do both, and I feel duty-bound to report that adding Linux distros to the Windows hard drive was far more difficult than dealing with what should probably be called the flash-card-in-hard-drive-drag. The only difficulty I had with the flash card resulted from the Ubuntu GRUB2's failure to recognize Puppy as an operating system (something that would not have happened the other way around, btw) and insistence on booting Ubuntu without even showing the GRUB2 loader. I was able to fix this by booting into Puppy from a CD, then editing the GRUB2 "TIMEOUT" comment. Following that I installed Vector Linux on another partition, and thus I have a triple bootable "hard drive" made from flash memory. All three (Puppy, Ubuntu, and Vector) make the salvage yard computer run like a champ. (I had to add RAM for a few dollars, though, as the existing sticks were insufficient as well as error prone.) Here's an inside view of the Compact Flash card impersonating a hard drive inside my computer: The hard drive was much more complicated, because I wanted to make a full installation of Slackware (never an easy task -- especially when the machine has an NVDIA video card, as this one does), and I not only had to fight with the bad RAM, but I had to make room on the hard drive, which was complicated by the fact that this particular tyrannical and unconventional Windows installation dominated the entire drive in a most infuriating manner. It was divided into two logical drives, the first of which ("C") had Windows on it, and while the second ("D") at first appeared only to be a backup system, it actually was also the Windows boot drive, and could not be deleted, because it had NTDLR and boot.ini -- which XP has to have to start up. So, those two "drives" had to be left intact, with space created between them for new Linux partitions. Doing that and installing Linux OSes on them did not create Linux boot problems, as Quirky's easily configurable GRUB loader saw them with no problem, just as it saw Windows with no problem. However, just because the GRUB loader knows where Windows is does not mean that Windows knows where it is, and when I added new partitions between newly shrunken Windows partitions, the partitions' numbers changed. So, at bootup, the GRUB loader tells Windows to go find itself with this command: find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldrThat orders Windows to fire up its boot.ini file, but it does not change the information in the boot.ini file, which orders the Windows XP system (once in Partition 2, but now in Partition 4) to simply start itself up. So you have to edit the boot.ini, assuming you can figure out which partition Windows is now actually in. It gets crazy because the numbers are not what they might appear to be. In my case, the Windows system was now on Partition 4, but the boot.ini file ordered Windows to boot on Partition 2 -- where it no longer was. Worse yet, it appears to be on Partition 5 even though it is not! That is because when new partitions are added, they are assigned numbers in the order they are added regardless of their actual order on the drive. For those who have to have a picture, how the partitioned drive "looks": What had been Windows drive C now says it's 5, looks like 2 and is actually 2, and what had been Windows drive D now looks like 5, says it's 2 but is actually 4. (The boot.ini is supposed to reflect what Windows "should" see under the newly reordered system, and had to be edited accordingly.) And of course, when dealing with hard drives with GRUB, you also have to remember that zero is one! Maddening. Had I wiped the hard drive completely and started over, the whole thing would have been far less painful, but I just wanted to be able to keep an unwanted XP system alive. Not just so I could say I did, but to prove to my ultimate satisfaction that Windows is not in charge and does not "rule." There is clear tension between Windows and Linux, and this touches on a political and philosophical issue that fascinates me, which is the tension between freedom and property.
I'll call it the Property Narrative versus the Open Source Narrative. And yes, there are many features about it that evoke that thing that I hate most of all, the Narrative Of All Narratives which we call the "Culture War." I don't think it's much of a stretch to observe that the "war" between closed and open source exhibits classic Culture War features. Yet fortunately, it does not divide itself neatly between "left" and "right," because when there is tension between property and freedom, it's tough to analyze that way. Moreover, some of my favorite right wing bloggers are Linux users (Clayton Cramer, for example). What appeals to me about Linux is the idea that what is inside (and runs) your computer is not owned by someone else. Software is one of those gray areas between property and freedom, and the waters are further muddied by the fact that it's a form of speech. So, copyright law applies, and Microsoft and Apple are therefore fully justified in licensing and selling their software, as well as (as I must grudgingly admit), use the power of the police to thwart those who violate their property rights. This is problematic, though, especially when they want to go further, and insist on finding property rights in things which are embedded in Open Source software. Wars can result from such stuff, and it is wise for everyone to remember Hemingway's and MacArthur's warnings about "undefended wealth." Moreover, when property rights are found in something, and those rights yield great profits, they can become expansionist and hegemonic, and greed can set in. When that happens, it is not always clear whether the hegemony was caused by a need for greater profits or by the philosophy that wealth has to be defended. Which is why a leading cause of the Civil War was not so much slavery per se, but its expansion into new territory. (As well as the obnoxious idea that free blacks were not free, but should be liable to become property.) Geez, I'm getting off topic, as I only wanted to talk about installing Linux, which is completely harmless, right? And free! We all like freedom, right? No one wants to be a slave to some big company, right? Or is that sentiment akin to Communism? I hate to sound like a Commie just because I'm a Linux/Open Source lover, and I don't see why freedom has to come off sounding like Communism. All I want is the right to use this software without encroachment from the people who would argue that my right to use this software constitutes an encroachment. It's not as if I'm saying that private property is theft, but it's as if the closed source people want to say that free open source property is theft. Hey, installing freedom* is a challenge. * "Freedom to install" might sound more palatable. Even Friedmanesque. UPDATE: Odd that I would be mentioning the Culture War in the context of Linux crossing the left/right divide, because a funny thing happened on my way to downloading Fedora. The Fedora download site was absolutely jammed solid, and after a half an hour I only had a measly 2% of a 654 Megabyte download, so I thought to check the Fedora mirror sites. I couldn't help seeing Liberty University (founded by Jerry "Blame The Homos" Falwell and home to leading anti-gay crusader Matt Barber) listed right there, with exactly what I wanted (the latest Fedora Live CD). It's not every day that Liberty University has exactly what I want, but this being Sunday, it occurred to me that Liberty U might not be one of the nation's leading Linux geek download sites and that I might get lucky. So I started the download and it just streamed right through -- at a screamingly fast rate of 20 minutes for the whole thing. I must give credit where credit is due. (Fortunately, it is not my responsibility to worry over whether Liberty and its servers violated the Sabbath -- or worse yet, helped enable a cultural degenerate like me who thinks Linux is cool because of some disgusting freedom fetish). I'm telling you, it's creeping Cultural Marxism! posted by Eric at 01:20 PM | Comments (7)
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Revisionist History
More video: Books mentioned: George Washington's Sacred Fire New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 12:40 AM | Comments (0)
| TrackBacks (0) Saturday, May 22, 2010
The Narrative People
Last night I watched a movie about Rwandan genocide that made me sick. Especially the scene showing hapless UN soldiers who had been ordered to withdraw being confronted by the doomed Tutsis they refused to protect. The Tutsis were already surrounded by gleeful Hutus waving machetes while gloating in anticipation. One Tutsi leader begged a UN officer to shoot his people first so that they would not have to endure the slower and more painful death by hacking. When the officer refused to do that, the man begged him to at least take pity on the children and shoot them. Obviously, the officer refused, and he said, "I am sorry, I cannot help you." (Interesting play on the word "help.") A more savage and disturbing irony was that the UN troops did at least help the white people escape. It's as if that's what they were there to do. Along the lines of "We might not be able to stop black-on-black genocide, but we can save the white people." Of course, the Clinton administration was in power, and doing nothing about Rwanda while saying they were doing everything they could was the official position. It was also the official position that what was happening was not genocide. Oh, no. Genocide meant Nazi Germany, which we cannot allow to ever happen again. And the best way to make sure genocide never happened again was to not call genocide genocide. So, even though the Clinton administration knew -- and I mean specifically knew -- about the "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis," orders were given to ignore it, and above all to not use narrative-spoiling words like "genocide." This made it easier not only to ignore the genocide, but to do things which actually helped enable it: the United States did much more than fail to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the genocide. And even as, on average, 8,000 Rwandans were being butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term "genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United States in fact did virtually nothing "to try to limit what occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit U.S. policy objective.The trouble with the word "genocide" is that it automatically triggers the "NEVER AGAIN" narrative (as well as the additional "Something Must Be Done" narrative). Hence the word could not be used. The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen. But whatever their convictions about "never again," many of them did sit around, and they most certainly did allow genocide to happen. In examining how and why the United States failed Rwanda, we see that without strong leadership the system will incline toward risk-averse policy choices. We also see that with the possibility of deploying U.S. troops to Rwanda taken off the table early on--and with crises elsewhere in the world unfolding--the slaughter never received the top-level attention it deserved. Domestic political forces that might have pressed for action were absent. And most U.S. officials opposed to American involvement in Rwanda were firmly convinced that they were doing all they could--and, most important, all they should--in light of competing American interests and a highly circumscribed understanding of what was "possible" for the United States to do.It's bad enough that genocide did in fact happen again, and while this is to the eternal shame of the Clinton administration, it shows how easily these things are enabled, and turned off and on, by the simple Narrative mechanism. The Narrative controls everything. So in order to justify doing or not doing something the Narrative People have only to make the right adjustments in the Narrative. Even the Nazis had to do this, because killing people becomes much easier when people are not people. Jews were subhuman like rats, and when someone is less than human, then killing is not murder of a human being. Obviously, Clinton's Narrative People could not say that Tutsis were less than human as a justification for ignoring genocide or saving only the white people (because that would have been racism), so they had to make the adjustment by simple editing out the G-word. In what I think is a true classic of rhetorical gobbledygook, here's Clinton's spokesperson Christine Shelley, explaining why she is unable to use the word genocide to describe the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis:
So now that the Narrative People have admitted it was genocide, what are the implication to "NEVER AGAIN"? That narratives just come and go? And who precisely are the Narrative People? I worry that most of us either are narrative people, or have a tendency to become narrative people, because in the broad sense Narrative is simply an agreed upon story. That Which We Want To Be True. Or more specifically: Words Which We Want To Believe Are True. All of us want certain things to be true, so there is enormous temptation to believe in what we want. At the risk of what is. I don't mean to imply that all Narratives suck, though, because some Narratives are actually true. The problem with them is that if you're a real Narrative Person, they don't have to be true. It's just that for a Narrative Person, truth is not pursued for its own sake, but as a helpful factor in assisting the Narrative. Narratives tend to become bandwagons, and once that happens, those who take issue with them are considered "enemies" by those who believe. If you're uneasy with Narratives and don't like Narrative People, what do you do where it comes to politics? If you pick one side or the other, is it fair to say that you should be duty-bound to honor that side's Narratives? I don't think it is fair, but I have learned that questioning people's narratives is no way to get ahead in politics or in life. (I probably should shut up now and go back to the comfort of configuring operating systems. No Narrative there; things either work or they don't. There's something addictive about that. OTOH, Narratives are the operating systems of politics, and I guess they're at least as addictive... Um, until they crash.) posted by Eric at 02:03 PM | Comments (3)
| TrackBacks (0) Friday, May 21, 2010 posted by Simon at 10:23 PM | Comments (0)
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Rand Paul on the CRA
Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths? Rand is 100% correct- while the public provisions of the CRA are laudable, the government has no right to tell anyone what they can't do with regards to their own private property when they aren't directly injuring someone. Segregation is ugly, but even uglier is putting a gun to people's heads and telling them they can't discriminate on this basis or that. That has led directly to our current awful race-based spoils system. The proper response to offensive behavior is boycotts. If someone opens a restaurant with a sign saying "Whites Only" you should refuse to eat there. You should not bring a gov't truncheon to beat him into submission to your views, any more than if someone says "That Obama sure is an idiot." Why does our democratic republic prosper? The answer lies mostly in the fact we are a marketplace of ideas, moving closer and closer to essential truths through constant free debate and accumulation of knowledge. For a very long time it was widely believed the races and sexes and sexual orientations had radically different capabilities. As late as the 1950s racialist theories held wide sway, and as late as the 1970s homosexuality was still officially considered a mental disorder. We have moved past all that, not by government fiat against crimethink but through the exercise of free speech. Some claim this is an issue of rights, but your rights don't extend to forcing other people to do things they don't want to. You have the right to pursue happiness; that says nothing about forcing me to pass you the baton on your way. Racists get to pursue happiness too, in their flawed and hateful way. And again, economics comes into play here. If I don't serve, rent to, or hire qualified minorities and you do, I have inflicted an economic penalty on myself and you will prosper while I falter as a result of my ignorance. By saying various behaviors that do not injure people are illegal, you are essentially saying people are only allowed to do what the government says they can do (as opposed to being able to do anything that does not injure someone else, with government as the enforcer of your rights against injury). That is inconsistent with liberty, and a slippery slope to the kind of majoritarian tyranny that has led to mass graves in the lifetimes of many alive today. The most pernicious effect of all this is on the minority communities themselves. Economies grow and quality of life improves because a free market economy creates incentives to better serve your fellows, thus creating efficiencies. To the extent we remove or reduce those incentives, we also reduce the resultant improvement in our lives. Because of quotas, a typical scenario in many cities involves a company bringing in a minority figurehead who literally does nothing but prove the company is "minority-owned." How much qualification do you think that job requires? What incentives does that create? What lesson does it teach minority communities? Much the same can be said of "affirmative action" programs in college admissions to "promote diversity." What they are actually promoting is incompetence. When you tell a group of people "Hey, it's not your fault you don't achieve as well, here let us even that out with some extra points" you are also reducing incentives for the group as a whole to improve relative to other groups - their lack of achievement is no longer being penalized, but instead subsidized. As with all subsidies, that will change the decisions individuals make -- when you subsidize failure, you get more failure. And at the same time, you are telling others "Sorry, it doesn't matter that you achieved success, we are taking Person X who achieved less because his skin is a different color" which is not just anti-meritocratic but makes that innocent person a victim of racial discrimination. The most ironic thing in all this is that today, we have as much racial discrimination as in the 1960s -- as blessed by statute as Jim Crow, in the name of equality, and widely supported. We are no more a meritocracy than we were before the CRA. These programs only replace "bad" racism by individual choice with "good" racism enabled by gov't, a path fraught with danger as government programs never seem to end, and "good" is always in the ever-shifting eye of the beholder. posted by Dave at 04:48 PM | Comments (2)
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Matt Barber and Andrew Sullvan care deeply about your sexual desires!
Looks like it's "I TOLD YOU SO" time. In a post not long ago, I noted that gay activist busybodies and anti-gay busybodies both share a similar mindset where it comes to privacy in matters of human sexual freedom. They don't like it: There are gay activist busybodies who don't believe in leaving people alone, and they are assisted by anti-gay busybodies on the other "side."I mentioned the American Family Association, and Americans for Truth About Homosexuality as among the strange allies of gay activists, and to that list I would now add Matt Barber (who was once again kind enough to email me and let me know how strongly he feels). Writing in (where else?) WorldNetDaily, he argues that lesbianism is a relevant factor in considering someone "for any public service," because it's a character issue, and homosexuality is immoral: Media, here's your question: "Solicitor Kagan, do you identify as a lesbian?" Ms. Kagan, your answer is simpler still: "Yes" or "no."Notice that by conflating lesbianism with immorality and bad character, he creates the impression that a majority of Americans consider lesbians unfit for public service. Barber, of course, thinks they are, and he considers lesbians (and all homosexuals) to be inherently immoral people who should therefore not be allowed to hold office. He has a right to his beliefs, but his attempt to impute them to the majority of Americans is simply delusional. But as to caring deeply about the sexuality of others, he finds common ground with Andrew Sullivan, whom he cites with approval: Although the mainstream media refuse to do their job, some in the homosexual-activist press are stepping-up to fill the vacuum.Andrew Sullivan and those who think like him care deeply about whether people are gay, and so do those in the Matt Barber brigade. It seems to me that as fewer ordinary Americans care deeply about these things, the people who do care deeply will become ever louder. What I can't decide is whether I should keep deeply ignoring them in the hope they'll go away. posted by Eric at 02:54 PM | Comments (3)
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Examining The Drug War
House Bill H.R. 5143 is touted as a review of Criminal Justice in America. According to the summary its purpose is: National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2010 - Establishes the National Criminal Justice Commission. Directs the Commission to: (1) review all areas of the criminal justice system, including federal, state, local, and tribal governments' criminal justice costs, practices, and policies; (2) make findings regarding such review and recommendations for changes to prevent, deter, and reduce crime and violence, reduce recidivism, improve cost-effectiveness, and ensure the interests of justice at every step of the criminal justice system; (3) consult with government and nongovernment leaders, including the United States Sentencing Commission; and (4) submit a final report on its findings, conclusions, and recommendations to Congress, the President, and state, local, and tribal governments and make such report available to the public. Expresses the sense of Congress that the Commission should work toward unanimously supported findings and recommendations.The Senate Bill, S-714, mirrors the House version word for word. Which means that the likelihood of passage is strong. No fiddling with reconciliation. So what is the bill really about? Here is a clue. When Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, proposed creating such a commission, his idea quickly attracted wide support. It is a rare cause in Washington that has the backing of the Fraternal Order of Police, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the A.C.L.U. and the Marijuana Policy Project.This is really a chance for our Federal Government to take a look at the Drug War. So how about a look at our government. Specifically the anti-marijuana caucus in Congress. The members of this new anti-cannabis caucus in the Congress are: Dan Burton (R-IN), Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Jim Jordan (R-OH), John Mica (R-FL), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Mark Souder (R-IN) and Michael Turner (R-OH).That was from the summer of 2009. Where are they now? Souder is on his way out of Congress. And Rep. Issa seems to have at least opened his mind if not changed it altogether. Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) introduced the original legislation last year which passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in January and awaits action by the entire Senate. The bipartisan House companion, introduced by Reps. William Delahunt (D-MA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Marcia Fudge (D-OH), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and Bobby Scott (D-VA), was introduced in April.Why a change of heart for Issa? I have no way of knowing. My guess? They want to spend the $50 bn a year or so that the Drug War costs the country on something else. Maybe reducing the deficit? We can only hope. H/T Retired police detective Howard Wooldridge at Citizens Opposing Prohibition Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 01:17 PM | Comments (1)
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Spain's Green Jobs Program A Disaster
There's always been a fundamental error in the notion of "growing" a "green economy" -- you don't create efficiencies by purposely introducing inefficiencies, you destroy them, reducing productivity and by extension GDP. Contra Friedman's longstanding premise that "green technology" is some sort of burgeoning new growth sector, these programs are virtually guaranteed to harm economic growth, not spur it. The payoff for environmental inefficiencies is of course only in externalities -- things that are explicitly non-economic benefits. That's why properly understanding AGW is so important: unless there are truly massive external benefits to carbon mitigation (and there are not; even proponents admit the bulk of the unreliably predicted effects would happen no matter what we do in the future) there's no point to these massively destructive subsidies. posted by Dave at 07:46 AM | Comments (3)
| TrackBacks (0) Thursday, May 20, 2010
More minimalist Puppy Love
Remember the computer I bought at the salvage yard for ten bucks? I'm on it right now, running Puppy Linux on the 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card, which I plugged into one of these:
Once again, the simplicity of all of this is breathtaking, and there is no noise except the CPU fan. The flash adapter cost 99 cents, and the flash card was just something I had lying around, leftover from an old digital camera I no longer use. The bottom line is that for almost nothing, I have a super fast, solid state PC. AFTERTHOUGHT: I hope the geekier readers will forgive my amazement, but I have long been accustomed to thinking of computers as expensive propositions involving machines with hard drives and operating systems that actually cost money, that have to be maintained with anti-virus, and worried over. This instant, on-the-fly, almost disposable computing is forcing me to go through a mental readjustment, and it is changing the way I think about computers. posted by Eric at 01:53 PM | Comments (4)
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A Scientist In Congress?
Watts Up With That reports on a primary race in Oregon. Art Robinson ran in the GOP Primary to represent the Oregon in 4th Congressional District. Wise Republican voters selected Dr. Art Robinson to represent them in the November 2010 Congressional race against Democrat Peter DeFazio.It wouldn't hurt to have more than a few engineers (those well versed in the practical applications of science) in Congress either. Another list of scientists who are not convinced about man made global warming catastrophe can be found here: The Deniers: The World Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud**And those who are too fearful to do so and for those of you not familiar with the other side (it is not warming much and there will be no catastrophe) of the controversy may I suggest: Understanding The Global Warming Hoax: Expanded And Updated If you want to help Art win the seat against DeFazio visit Art Robinson For Congress. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 07:37 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Wednesday, May 19, 2010
What About My Profits?
Retired police officer Howard Wooldridge meets up with some big time illegal pot growers (inadvertently) and finds out what they fear. Hint: it isn't the police. I spent my second week of the Oregon speaking tour like the first... speaking to various groups, media etc. The most memorable question of the tour came from a guy in Coos Bay in SW Oregon. He asked what would happen to the price of pot, if California legalizes it this fall.Which brings up something I have been saying for years. Drug prohibition is a price support mechanism for criminals and terroristsAnd yet my anti-price support (it is socialist) anti-terrorist friends on the right are the staunchest friends of prohibition. Maybe it is just another deal like the case of Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) a staunch champion of abstinence education and traditional family values. Who recently got caught cheating on his wife with a staffer. The staffer Tracy Jackson interviews Souder on a (pulled - and possibly restored) YouTube video. In the November 2009 abstinence video, Jackson introduces Souder this way: "You've been a longtime advocate for abstinence education and in 2006 you had your staff conduct a report entitled 'Abstinence and its Critics' which discredits many claims purveyed by those who oppose abstinence education."It has been reported that their get togethers have been going on for four years. Which would mean the affair was ongoing when the video was made. Another case of a "the rules are different for me" politician. Well back to pot. How is the California initiative polling? By a 56% to 42% margin California voters favor legalizing marijuana. As Officer Wooldridge has told me in one of his weekly e-mails (roughly), "prohibition will be over five years after the first state legalizes." To get his weekly updates contact Howard. H/T Radley Balko at Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 08:06 PM | Comments (2)
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Everybody Draw Muhammed Day
This is why I subscribe to Reason. In the face of murder and violence and threats against the practice of free expression, the only acceptable answer is defiance. In unrelated news, multiple sources report hearing a clanking sound from Nick Gillespie's pants when he walks. posted by Dave at 11:15 AM | Comments (1)
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Voluntary compliance is for your own good!
To my consternation, I just learned via an email from a friend that incoming students at UC Berkeley are being asked to provide DNA samples. Voluntarily, of course: Instead of the usual required summer-reading book, this year's incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, will get something quite different: a cotton swab on which they can, if they choose, send in a DNA sample.OK, it's voluntary, right? And even though this is a government-run University, no one is being forced, which means no libertarian should care, right? That's easy enough for a 55-year old libertarian to say. But thinking back to when I was eighteen, I didn't have access to the kind of 20/20 hindsight I have now, and I might have thought "How cool! Now I get to know all about my genetic health risks!" As to invasion of privacy, banish the thought! This is all confidential, and no one will be able to find out which student's information pertains to whose. Except the stated purpose of this project is to soften the students up for what's coming: The testing will be voluntary and confidential, with no one at Berkeley knowing which sample comes from which student.To which I would add that the whole idea of sharing medical results outside a medical setting is troubling. Once your DNA is in your medical records -- and especially once the medical records can be accessed by government bureaucrats at will under PelosiCare -- the busybody mischief by Berkeley professors will look like child's play. All of our DNA will become subject to investigation via computerized database search engines, whether at the behest of law enforcement looking for suspects, government-run healthcare providers who want to butt into our lives in order to "help" us, or of course our friends at the IRS. The implications are Orwellian, and I worry that the kids are being softened up when they're too young to fully understand and think things through. Moreover, this fits into a disturbing pattern of policy implementation I have noticed over the years. First, people are asked to do something "voluntarily" (like, for example, cutting off your dog's nuts or switching over to the "right" lightbulbs). Once people become accustomed to doing such things voluntarily, they quite naturally become unsympathetic to those recalcitrant few who don't. And the good citizens will then be quite willing to support new laws, with criminal penalties for not doing what every good citizen should. posted by Eric at 10:51 AM | Comments (4)
| TrackBacks (0) Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Some accidental shootings are just the breaks!
Recently I wrote about the tragic accidental shooting of an innocent grandmother by a carjacking victim who happened to be a concealed carry permit holder, and who fired at the carjacker. At the time I said this: Imagine if the same criminal had robbed a police officer who was inside the same house, and managed to carjack his police car. If the officer gave chase and opened fire, would he be facing charges? I doubt it. And if he did, the news media would not be blaming "the bullet."It appears that they are planning to charge the carjacking victim (who is in jail) with homicide and the family wants him charged with murder. A few days ago, Detroit police accidentally shot and killed a seven year old girl during a raid. A civil lawsuit has been filed, and while the attorney claims it wasn't accidental, no one is calling for criminal prosecution of the police officer whose bullet killed Aiyana Jones. In either of these cases, the legal standard ought to be the same, right? So why are they so quick to jail and charge a civilian who shoots at a carjacker and hits someone else, but when a police officer mistakenly shoots an innocent person during a raid, that's just unfortunate? I think there is a double standard here. My question is, should there be? posted by Eric at 12:08 PM | Comments (12)
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Running better, on next to nothing!
This is my first post written on a solid state computer. I am running the elegantly minimalist Puppy Linux from a 128 Megabyte Compact Flash card inserted into the IDE adapter I bought (described and pictured here) which fools the laptop's BIOS into thinking that there's a real hard drive there. It's shockingly quiet, and frankly, I didn't think it would work. (As Sigivald warned, "many of the very cheap flash-to-IDE adapters are at best flaky and persnickety at booting - even when they swear they're bootable.") This thing just booted right up with no need to do anything to the BIOS. Even more amazingly, I have a ridiculous old clunker Gateway (Solo 1150) landfill laptop which I was ready to throw away because it was completely useless. The hard drive had failed, and it would not boot with nor recognize any hard drive, and I tried five. Plus, the cd-rom was broken, and it was too old to boot from the first generation USB ports. No way to get anything in there. Almost as one those deliberately futile afterthoughts, though, I tried the CF drive, and that hopelessly dead computer suddenly booted right up! I was dumbfounded, for it will not recognize any hard drive. As to what could be going on, I'm clueless. All I know is that I am very impressed with this solid state business. I realize that flash memory deteriorates over time, but then, so do regular hard drives. This seems almost like revolutionary technology. So clean, so quiet. No moving parts. Downright spooky. By the way, I tried the 128 Megabyte CF card only because I had it lying around and wished to experiment. Puppy is a small scale, highly efficient OS, and 128 Megs is the absolute minimum size drive required. This whole thing is so pared down as to be almost, um, survivalist in nature. Yet it not only works, it is faster. And the battery is discharging more slowly. It actually seems better. If someone had told me about this, I would have been skeptical. But seeing is believing. MORE: Yet another advantage of running Linux generally, and Puppy particularly: Detective Inspector Bruce van der Graaf from the Computer Crime Investigation Unit told the hearing that he uses two rules to protect himself from cybercriminals when banking online. The first rule, he said, was to never click on hyperlinks to the banking site and the second was to avoid Microsoft Windows.I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense. posted by Eric at 12:06 AM | Comments (7)
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The Conservative Position
Commenter Forgotten Man at The Belmont Club had this to say about how to win the battle in Afghanistan: ...things like opium growing and Heroin production need to be stopped.Yes. Of course. We have been working on stopping it for 96 years so far and real soon now we will have success. Or we can do the Conservative thing and return to the Status of drugs that obtained before the Progressives tried to "improve" the situation with their anti-drug laws. It is always amusing to see "Conservatives" spouting the rhetoric of Progressives. Funny thing is that Progressives see the stupidity of their former policies. Which I suppose makes Conservatives reactionaries ("if Progressives are for it I'm against it") when it comes to the drug laws. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 12:00 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Monday, May 17, 2010
We still have the Constitution, right?
From time to time, my attention is drawn to an American political philosophy I consider downright scary, and that is "Declarationism." What scares me is idea is that the Constitution is not actually the supreme law of the land (even though it plainly states that it is), but that it is actually subordinated to the Declaration of Independence. Never mind the fact that the Declaration was never intended to be the law of the land, much less having authority over the Constitution; the "Declarationists" believe, simply, that the Declaration of Independence is the ultimate trump card, to which everything else is subordinated. The problem with that is what the Declaration did was to set out the philosophical justifications of the founders for the right of a people to overthrow tyranny and establish self government. Beyond that, it doesn't get into the specifics. But never mind that! The Declarationists fill in the blanks, with a rather far-fetched (IMO) claim that the Declaration does more than it did, and that it actually establishes what they call "Natural Law" and subordinates everything (including the Constitution) to it. Defining and spelling out "Natural Law" is beyond the scope of this blog post, but suffice it to say that they have defined it and spelled it out. I see it as a dangerous potential power grab, and I worry that these people are well organized, and that (if we assume some of their their political endorsements reflect that they are not mere fringe), they might be actively seeking power. While I believe in working with political coalitions, I also don't want to help give political power to people whose philosophical belief is that are possessed of some divine right (and that is what we're talking about here) to make an end-run around the Constitution by invoking "Natural Law." I will never forget a debate I witnessed between some of the leading proponents of Natural Law in which they dismissed the well-established constitutional doctrine of states rights and federalism out of hand. There were, in their view, some things the states had no right to do, and legalizing abortion was one of them. (Ditto same sex marriage; neither the states nor the federal government have the right to legalize it.) Natural Law via their view of the Declaration nullifies the actions of the state legislature, or even of the federal government, and of course, "it" would also overrule even legally adopted amendments to the Constitution. Getting rid of Roe v. Wade would (in their view) not solve the problem, because of the pesky "states rights" doctrine. But never mind! Federalism is overruled by Natural Law! As they and only they understand Natural Law. A lot of people are talking about what will happen "when the shit hits the fan," but many of the comments to this post that Glenn Reynolds linked yesterday reminded me that there are some people on the right who very much want the shit to hit the fan. What sort of person actually wants the shit to hit the fan? Who would want national bankruptcy, insurrection in the streets, civil war? Are they serious? Or are they just guilty of political hyperbole and sounding off? I certainly hope it is only the latter, but my worry is that because power abhors a vacuum, there might be power seekers with extreme views who realize they'd never be voted into office by any American majority, and whose best hope lies with a seizure of power. Ah, but the Constitution does not allow that, right? That depends. If the Constitution is subordinated to the Declaration, and the Declaration means Natural Law, and if Natural Law means whatever the Natural Law activists want it to mean, then a Natural Law dictatorship (run by a select few who can divine the true meaning of Natural Law) wouldn't be theoretically unimaginable. I'm sure this is all paranoia on my part, but I wanted to get it off my chest. MORE: I emailed a close friend with my concerns, and he replied, I think there are very few people who really want to see America hurt so it can theoretically rebound in a purer state again, in the sense that they plan to vote or maneuver politically that way. I think they're mostly blowing off steam. The sense of urgency and distress is real, but I doubt the big talk is. Just my opinion, but maybe I'm a Pollyanna.My usual fallback position is that "well, we still have the Constitution to protect us," but what about the people who think the Constitution is "undeclarational"? posted by Eric at 10:16 AM | Comments (15)
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, May 16, 2010
Seven years! (And they said it wouldn't last!)
This blog is now seven years old. And lo and behold, the "Culture War" has not only not ended, it's become virtually impossible to define. Which makes my "work" easier and harder at the same time. That silly thing at the top still says "End the Culture War by Restoring Classical Values." It was meant as tongue-in-cheek, as gentle satire, but sometimes my tongue gets stuck in my cheek, and I take myself and others too seriously. What I have learned in these seven years is that "End the Culture War by Restoring Classical Values" only means that this blog is in constant need of Restoration. Indefinitely a work in progress. Many thanks to everyone who has visited these pages over the years. (I include readers, friends, enemies, critics, commenters, lurkers, jokers, voyeurs, and anyone else I might have left out -- which is about as inclusive as I can get!) posted by Eric at 01:21 PM | Comments (11)
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Is It His Katrina? Nyet!
When I saw Glenn Reynolds' link to a post titled "Is it His Katrina Yet?," I assumed that it would be about the disastrous flooding in Nashville. Instead, it was about the oil spill. William A. Jacobson documents a horror story of "bungled permitting, delays in response, and understating the impact" and asks, What will it take for it to be His Katrina? Waddaya think, Brownie?Once I realized that Nashville flood was not the Katrina Professor Jacobson was talking about, I thought "How many Katrinas do we need?" The answer, obviously, is that Obama will never have a real Katrina, no matter what happens or how incompetent his administration's response. That's because Katrina -- and all disasters -- can be blamed only on the right wing. If it's a natural disaster, it's from Global Warming, which is a result of uncontrolled corporate greed (or, as in the case of Katrina, right wing racist genocide.) If OTOH, it's a man-made disaster, it's also a result of uncontrolled corporate greed. (By definition, uncontrolled denotes right of center, and evil.) As to government-created disasters, by definition they are impossible under liberal governments, because liberalism by definition is about helping people, not harming the environment or enabling corporate greed. Anything that goes wrong is because the right wing either set in motion the events that created it, or thwarted the liberal attempts to intervene. From this analysis, it also follows that any disaster that might happen under this liberal administration had its roots in the failures of the previous administration, and was thus "inherited." Thus, it is not Obama's Katrina. By definition such a thing is impossible. posted by Eric at 01:00 PM | Comments (2)
| TrackBacks (0) Saturday, May 15, 2010
I bought more than I bargained for. Or did I?
I'm wondering about the ethics surrounding hard drives. I don't mean legal ethics so much as personal ethics. I have bought a variety of computer parts on ebay and in a local building material salvage yard, and I seem to have this uncanny knack for winding up with hard drives just loaded with personal information which simply should never have been mine to see. Like compromising photographs, resumes, school, personnel files, even social security numbers, home addresses, bank account information. It is shocking, and it makes me feel "dirty" just seeing it. I'm an honest person and I would never use any of it to harm anyone, but still.... People don't realized how careless they are. And some of them ought to know better. A few weeks ago I bought a laptop hard drive said to have been pulled from a "working laptop." Yes it was, and it was a complete system, loaded with files, correspondence, chat dialogues and intimate photos of the former user, a teenage girl. I wiped and reformatted it, then cloned an older smaller drive onto it. The girl can consider herself lucky I'm not a stalker. So much for drive one. Next, yesterday I bought a nice Pentium 3 machine at a local salvage yard for ten bucks. Which is next to nothing considering it turned out to be a very usable machine. I thought I was buying it for parts, as it looked dirty and funky, and stuff was rattling around inside, so when I got it home I opened up the case to take an inventory. Nice 30 Gig removable hard drive, good sound card, NVIDIA PCI video card, network card, and one of those kickass ASUS motherboards which are great for overclocking. The rattling around was caused by loose RAM which had been taken out, so I figured it probably wouldn't work, but what the hell. I put it back together, plugged in a monitor, speakers, keyboard, mouse, and network cables, plugged in the power cord and turned it on. Windows XP started right up. Everything worked. I would never name names, but it's just crammed with years of a lawyer's professional and personal files, confidential information about clients, cases, and loan applications, even including his wife's social security number and credit information. I don't know what to do. I would contact the guy, but he might get mad. At me! I didn't do a damned thing except gamble ten bucks and push a button. Then there's the computer I'm working from right now. It's an old clunker laptop sold on ebay for parts because it was inoperable and gave RAM and "hard drive not found" errors. The reason for the RAM error was that one of the sticks of RAM was bad (or incompatible) and the reason the hard drive was not found was because someone had forgotten to stick the adaptor onto the pins, so it wasn't hooked up. The "parts" computer turned out to be completely usable, so now I feel guilty about unwittingly invading the privacy of a chemical engineer from India whose entire recent life is on that drive (photographs, resumes, immigration documents, and complex stuff I don't understand). Obviously, I should wipe or reformat the drives and/or delete the personal stuff, and my goal is to continue my Linux comparisons. But I'm grappling over basic ownership theories here. Who owns this stuff? I bought it, so in theory I would be the "owner." Of what? The drives? What's on them? Do I own the operating systems? Do I now "own" the photos? Someone else's work product? Am I invading people's privacy? And suppose there was illegal stuff in there? Would I own that too? Or would I merely "possess" it without "owning" it? I like to think Ownership is fuzzy. So are the moral issues: Sales between individuals pretty much always include the software, whether or not it's actually legal, and it would be naive to ignore the value. If you build a new PC and you go out and buy Windows XP and Microsoft Office (OEM versions), you've just spent a few hundred dollars on software. If you purchase a used computer or receive a hand-me-down which has this software installed, even if it's Windows 98 and Office 97, you can get right to work. Again, I'm not preaching about morality here and I don't really understand the legal issues involved in using software that's licensed to the original owner, I'm just reporting how things are. I would say the cheapest you can legally obtain a copy of Windows XP and Microsoft Word for (not the full office) is still over $200 if you build your own PC.Anyway, if my experience had been limited to one compromised hard drive, I might not have thought it worth a post. But this is three in a row now -- each one containing a lot of personal information which should never have been seen by a stranger, and which I am sure the respective owners would never have wanted to be seen. It really seems like such a no brainer. I thought everyone knew that you don't make available the contents of your hard drive. In fact, it's so basic that I doubt there's a single reader of this blog who does not know that. So what's with three in a row? A teenage girl I can understand, but an attorney? An engineer? If only I enjoyed being a voyeur! posted by Eric at 02:57 PM | Comments (7)
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Blackout
I was reading the comments at this Victor Davis Hanson piece and came across an interesting set of observations on the state of the economy. 14. FoobaristaWhich explains the title of this post. When the government hand becomes too heavy people no longer use it. And it is not just the people who sell labor. It is also the people who buy it. 15. tryingtodorightthingThat is how you make a third world country. You regulate everything with a heavy hand. If you want to be profitable in such an environment you have some choices. Bribery is one. Ignoring the rules is another. The next comment makes that point. SuzannSo who is bypassing the state? Some very nice people. 20. Les HardieThe next commenter is not so optimistic about the situation in terms of people believing in the regulatory state on the one hand and avoiding it at all costs on the other. TAnd of course every one who has watched Star Wars knows the final outcome: Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.Conventional wisdom at its finest. There are over 170 comments to that post so I'm sure there is more information along the above lines. Not to mention thread drift and thread jacking. I leave it to the reader to ferret out more useful stuff. Now about the Drug War Black Market..... Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 05:37 AM | Comments (8)
| TrackBacks (0) Friday, May 14, 2010
erased from the national debate?
While the "What is being gay?" poll I created in an earlier post did not mention bisexuality specifically, it was hardly my goal to erase the concept from discussion. Especially when I saw Eugene Volokh's discussion of "bisexual erasure" (in the related context of Elena Kagan -- whose sexuality seems undetermined): ....the great majority of women who are not purely heterosexual are actually to some degree bisexual. For instance, Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality 311 (1994), reports that 3.7% of all women report having had both male and female partners since age 18 and only 0.4% report having had only female partners since age 18. Even looking at just the last five years, 1.4% of women report both male and female partners, and only 0.8% report only female partners.Via Glenn Reynolds, who opines that the Kagan nomination seems to have inspired a "national conversations" on sexuality. Which it has. As to what sexuality, that remains to be seen. What I want to know is, will the b-word be a part of this national conversation? Although many of bisexual women cited in the study above would call themselves lesbian or gay, are they really? Or are they just going along with social mores that require them to say they are something other than bisexual? Are people getting tired of this yet? I can't help wondering how many people really don't care about Elena Kagan's sexuality, and I mean really don't care. Not just in the tolerant "it's OK if she's gay," "not that there's anything wrong with that" sense, but not caring in the sense of genuine disinterest. Volokh cites a brilliant (IMO) Stanford Law Review article titled "The epistemic contract of bisexual erasure" by Kenji Yoshino. (PDF file.) Because determining the merit of this position requires a more precise definition of "bisexuality," I generate and defend a provisional definition of bisexuality as the ability to feel more than incidental sexual desire for both sexes. Using this definition, I look at what the major sexuality studies say about the incidence of bisexuality and homosexuality in the population. Two things are surprising about such an investigation. First, to my knowledge, no one has previously made such a systematic comparison. Second, when such an investigation is actually made, it reveals that each of the major sexuality studies demonstrates that the number of bisexuals is greater than or comparable to the number of homosexuals. This suggests that bisexual invisibility is not a reflection of the fact that there are fewer bisexuals than there are homosexuals in the population, but is rather a product of social erasure.I think he's absolutely right. If you think about it, the rule becomes a self reinforcing sort of invisibility. As bisexuals are capable of sexual attraction to either sex, most of them tend to settle into heterosexual relationships, because of social norms. Once this happens, society tends to assume heterosexuality, and the inquiry ends. As to bisexuals who fall in love with members of their own sex, well, they're simply considered gay, and the inquiry ends. As most people are into monogamy or at least serial monogamy, this means that as a practical matter, a bisexual tends to be in either a gay or straight relationship -- which makes him either heterosexual or homosexual. A claim of bisexuality falls on deaf ears. The vast majority of bisexual men I have known have been in heterosexual relationships, and they would never admit to being bisexual, because if they did, they would be considered "gay but in the closet" and their claim to heterosexuality would be forfeited. In most areas of this country, the cultural consequences are not what anyone would visit on a beloved partner, or on a stable relationship -- especially one with children. So bisexuals are straight, and unless they make public damning admissions or are caught dabbling with their homosexual side, they remain straight. Thus, a bisexual cannot "come out of the closet" in the ordinary sense of the term -- not, at least, as a bisexual. A claim to being bisexual is simply not heard or taken seriously. In the event of any outright declaration of bisexuality society conspires to favor a gay default position, as fewer penalties attach to an admission of bisexuality by an ostensibly gay person than the same admission by an ostensibly straight person. Thus an "open" bisexual is tolerated by both sides as being gay -- if "closeted" (meaning "dishonest") -- but never tolerated as straight. Bisexual means gay. To many people, that ends the inquiry. But once you posit the existence of bisexuality, it is profoundly illogical, and becomes tyrannical. I think this tyranny is reflected in the emerging trend toward sexual inquisitions by bi-intolerant gay activists, as in the case of bisexual baseball players: The alliance's rules say that each World Series team can have no more than two heterosexual players. According to the lawsuit, a competing team accused D2 of violating that rule.But had these same men been discovered to be bisexual in the world of professional (as opposed to "gay") baseball, gay activists would not be calling them bisexual. They would be gay. And no doubt oppressed because of it! I think it's a racket. As I remarked, Sexual freedom never quite got off the ground.But whether you think it's a racket or not, as Kenji Yoshino notes, it is steadily being undermined by the undeniable existence of bisexuals. Hence the collusion by all "monosexuals" to erase them: The first investment monosexuals have in bisexual erasure is an interest in stabilizing sexual orientation. The component of that interest shared by both straights and gays is an interest in knowing one's place in the social order: both straights and gays value this knowledge because it relieves them of the anxiety of identity interrogation. Straights have a more specific interest in ensuring the stability of heterosexuality because that identity is privileged. Less intuitively, gays also have a specific interest in guarding the stability of homosexuality, insofar as they view that stability as the predicate for the "immutability defense" or for effective political mobilization. Bisexuality threatens all of these interests because it precludes both straights and gays from "proving" that they are either straight or gay. This is because straights (for example) can only prove that they are straight by adducing evidence of cross-sex desire. (They cannot adduce evidence of the absence of same-sex desire, as it is impossible to prove a negative.) But this means that straights can never definitively prove that they are straight in a world in which bisexuals exist, as the individual who adduces cross-sex desire could be either straight or bisexual, and there is no definitive way to arbitrate between those two possibilities. Bisexuality is thus threatening to all monosexuals because it makes it impossible to prove a monosexual identity.Damn that's good. I think that the problem will grow in direct proportion to society's tolerance of (and destigmatization of) homosexuality, because bisexuals will eventually learn that while they might not be able to win the label war, the label war can be defeated by their increasing ability to not care about the labels. Call me gay, call me straight, threaten to not let me be gay, threaten to not let me be straight, sticks and stones, nyaah nyaah. etc. The more these things don't matter to some, though, the more they matter to others. Especially activists. I don't mean to oversimplify or skip over such a brilliant article (which I highly recommend reading in its entirety), but I loved the author's conclusion: The logical approach of the article may be read as compensation for the often parlously imprecise terms in which debates about sexuality in general and bisexuality in particular are conducted. Yet the fact that it may also be read as overcompensation is important. Sexual identity has always struck me as a kind of illogic, given that sexuality is such a powerful solvent of identity, a modality that expands the consciousness through shock and surprise. If this is right, then bisexuality may be the sexual identity that best reflects the oxymoronic nature of all sexual identity, insofar as bisexuality, too, is a contradiction, a class and its own dissolution. This may explain why explanations of bisexuality that seek to tame bisexuality within the bounds of Cartesian reason will always feel anxiously incomplete.While I have long thought this was common sense, it renews my faith to see it put in such articulate and academic terms. If I had more time, I might ponder the implications to the gay marriage debate. I mean, what if it's another example of monosexual collusion with an ultimate goal of monosexual triumphalism? While bisexuals are already allowed to marry if they do so in a heterosexual manner, it has never been demanded that they actually be heterosexual, even if is assumed. But would same sex marriage have the consequence of increasing the pressure on everyone to publicly declare one form sexuality or the other, and choose "sides" -- the way mixed race people feel pressured to decide on a race? It might work in the short run, but in the long run more and more people won't care, so there won't be any need for the "erasure" discussed by Kenji Yoshino, any more than there'd be any point in reactions (grounded in identity politics) by the people claiming to have been wrongly erased. Might it be that there's a cyclical struggle between good and bad invisibility, in which the old, "bad" invisibility (grounded in people wanting threatening things to be suppressed) spawns temporary reactions like identity politics? If the result is that more and more people cease to care, ultimately might that lead to a good form of invisibility? Akin to true color blindness? I realize that to many people, race still matters greatly, although many people become indignant when sexuality is compared to race (because it's supposed to matters in a different way), but I think it would be nice if these things did not matter. Attempting to make bisexuality invisible is a paradox, because unlike the suppression of homosexuality in the past, bisexuality is being erased under the auspices of tolerance for homosexuality. Yet tolerating total homosexuality while suppressing partial homosexuality is not only contradictory, but it implicitly promotes a brand-new form of intolerance of non-conformity. In the name of tolerating non-conformity, we will stamp out all non-conformists? While I couldn't make such nonsense up if I tried, I think efforts to erase bisexuality are ultimately doomed. posted by Eric at 01:54 PM | Comments (6)
| TrackBacks (0) Thursday, May 13, 2010
Best protection against sinister invaders
One of the fringe benefits of having a dog like Coco is never having to worry about terrifying incidents like this: STRONGSVILLENo way would Coco ever allow a squirrel to terrorize me in my own house. She patrols the yard relentlessly, always on the lookout for the slightest hint of squirrel trouble. She thinks these animals are deliberately taunting her by their very presence, and is highly sensitive to the defiant, tail-flicking behavior in which they engage. She is certain that the latter is intended as a blatant display of bigoted anti-dog triumphalism (this is not just Coco's conspiracy theory, btw), and she takes it very personally. She is so anti-squirrel that I have refrained from telling her about this news incident. Look at what happened not long ago -- just outside the window! After all, Ohio is not that far away. posted by Eric at 10:59 PM | Comments (3)
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To the left of Obama on gay marriage. (The list grows...)
Roger L. Simon has a very thoughtful piece about Laura Bush's support for gay marriage. Yes, that Laura Bush. The former first lady. Barack Obama is now to the right of her on this issue. She proclaimed that support in her characteristic well-mannered, low-keyed fashion on Larry King Live. (Okay, nobody's perfect.) I even had the suspicion that her husband agreed with her, but for political considerations didn't say so.This of course begs the question of what is conservative and what is liberal. One of the things I always liked about Roger is that he doesn't get hung up on such words: So what are we to think? Who is the "progressive" and who is the "conservative"? And what do these words mean? Well, not much to me, as I have said.I have long had reservations about gay marriage (mainly because of privacy concerns -- which also extend to government jurisdiction over marriage generally), but I cannot understand how it is that this issue became such a huge threat to activists on one side, and the be-all and end-all it is to the activists on the other. What delights me about Laura Bush's remarks is the damage it will do to the ridiculous and ongoing culture war narrative. MORE: The anti-gay commenters at FreeRepublic are trying to get me to change my mind about gay marriage. (Well, so did Matt Barber, but I'm stubborn.) posted by Eric at 08:29 PM | Comments (3)
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Jewish Anti-Semitism. Is such a thing possible?
That's what I wondered when I read about a disgusting children's event in Berkeley, in an article titled "Middle School Brainwashing: Would MLK Approve of Holocaust Denial and Anti-Semitism?" The event features a notoriously anti-Semitic rapper named Lowkey, and one of the most viciously anti-Israel activists in the world -- a man named Norman Finkelstein who condemns what he calls "the Holocaust Industry" as propaganda by powerful Jewish groups to somehow "immunize Israel from criticism." My worry is that the reason he gets away with promoting such hatred is simply because he happens to be Jewish. At the very least, this makes his complaint that the Holocaust Industry seeks to immunize Israel from criticism disingenuous. Then there's the Israel hating "Middle East Children's Alliance": The event sponsor, MECA, has a twenty-year history of supporting anti-Israel activities. A lowlight on its long list of unsavory behavior: last year MECA was among several humanitarian organizations that participated in a Viva Palestina convoy bound for the Gaza Strip. The convoy handed over one million dollars in cash and other supplies to ... Hamas.I lived in Berkeley for years, and I have long been familiar with Barbara Lubin, who is the architect of that treacherous organization and its latest poisonous masquerade. She has repeatedly been to Baghdad and visited Saddam Hussein at various times during the Iraq War, and I think she hates Jews. But because she is Jewish, that's impossible, right? And of course, because I am not Jewish, according to the Rules of Identity Politics, I have no right to discuss this concern! Of course, in Lubin's case it might just come down to basic psychology. Something perhaps as simple as hating her parents: In October, Lubin flew through the no-fly zone from the Baghdad airport, which had just been bombed by American fighters, to the Basra airport, which was bombed shortly after she landed. "There was no problem with air traffic control," Lubin says with a laugh. "We were the only civilians flying in the no-fly zone."The woman is a real piece of work. Here she is at a pro-terror rally, with some friends: Anyway, I don't like to get into arguments with shrill activists, so I wasn't going to write a post about this at all. But when I emailed M. Simon and mentioned my concerns about identity politics, he replied, Discuss it. The hell with PC.Simon happens to be one of those Jews who doesn't hate himself. (I guess that's considered Satanic in some quarters.) I think it's especially disgusting that this "anti-Zionist" hate-fest would be held at Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, especially because of what Martin Luther King said shortly before his assassination: When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.But if they're Jews, are they immune from that criticism? I don't see why. Any more than Barbara Lubin or Jane Fonda should be immune from being criticized as traitors to the United States because they happen to be Americans. posted by Eric at 12:14 PM | Comments (9)
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The bullet did it. End of narrative?
A horrible carjacking in Detroit resulted in the tragic death of an innocent grandmother, but the headline and the focus of the front page story in today's Detroit Free Press is on a bullet. They really make it stand out too. Geraldine Jackson was happy her granddaughter was back from the South. To welcome her back to Detroit, the 69-year-old was cooking a celebratory soul-food feast on Wednesday in her home on the city's northwe --If you relied solely on that story, you would tend to think that the victim was way out of line in the way he used his gun. Was he? According to The Detroit News, there may have been an exchange of gunfire between the carjacker and the victim: The 65-year-old then shot at the thief. The bullets traveled a block away, police believe, and struck Jackson under the right arm and the stomach.I hate it when I can't get the facts from a front page story and have to resort to Google, but that's what happens in cases involving the "let's blame the bullet" narrative. Anyway, a local Fox News account says the suspect has been arrested: This all started when police say a man was checking on a vacant house on Evergreen in Detroit. Another man barged into the home and robbed him at gunpoint. That armed suspect then hopped into the robbery victim's truck and took off, but he did not get very far. He was clipped by a car, struck a tree and then took off running.Not all of the accounts use the word "carjacking" but this one does: Sgt. Eren Stephens tells The Detroit News the woman was hit in the chest Wednesday afternoon by a bullet from the gun of a 65-year-old man, who minutes earlier had been robbed then carjacked.And this story confirms that the robber/carjacker was arrested, and also reports a crucial detail -- that shots were exchanged between him and his victim: the victim, Geraldine Jackson, was hit by a stray bullet after two men began shooting at each other outside her home.OK, this would make a great law school exam question, but for one thing: it is impossible to know the facts. Based on what I have read, I cannot say what happened. (Actually, not being able to ascertain the facts might make it even better as a law school exam question.) If it turns out that the victim was using lethal force after the crime had already taken place, then he might not have been within his rights. But I stress might -- because in some instances lethal force may be used to recover property, and if this carjacking is ongoing in nature, it's not quite the same thing as retaliation. Moreover, the guy was driving like a madman (one account says he already struck another car), and the victim may have acted both in fear of his own life and in order to protect others. So it's not quite the same thing as if someone breaks into my house and then runs out the door with my stuff, and I run down the street and shoot him a block away. In any case, if I were to go running after him and he started shooting at me, I would be allowed to return fire. What is being completely missed, though, in any of these discussions, is something everyone who goes to law school learns in basic criminal law. The felony-murder doctrine provides that if a homicide occurs during the commission or attempted commission of a felony, the homicide is a form of murder.While Michigan has abolished the felony murder rule, it has retained it in the case of carjackings. However, to prove first degree murder, intent to kill is required, so whether this would be first degree murder would depend on whether or not the armed carjacker in fact exchanged fire with his victim. If he didn't, then it would still be second degree murder: intending to kill or do great bodily harm or knowingly creating a very high risk of death or great bodily harm knowing that death or such harm would be the likely result of his/her actions.But for whatever reason, the focus here is not on the carjacker (who by any standard is the primary, if not the only wrongdoer) but on his law-abiding victim who was found himself in a very dangerous position through no fault of his own. The focus ought to be on the criminal, but they're acting as if he's irrelevant. Why? Imagine if the same criminal had robbed a police officer who was inside the same house, and managed to carjack his police car. If the officer gave chase and opened fire, would he be facing charges? I doubt it. And if he did, the news media would not be blaming "the bullet." Of course, I'm so cynical that I suspect that if it turns out that the carjacker did in fact fire shots at the victim, it won't be widely reported. And even if it turned out that the grandmother was killed by one of his bullets fired from a gun he feloniously possessed, the blame would still be on The Bullet. But let's suppose for a moment that there had been no bullets involved, but that instead the grandmother had been struck and killed by the vehicle as it was being driven at breakneck speeds by the same carjacker. Would "The Bumper" that crushed through her chest be blamed? (I guess that was another cynical rhetorical question. Narratives seem to invite them.) posted by Eric at 09:58 AM | Comments (10)
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Reality Check
Dr. Housing Bubble is looking at the state of the real estate market. It is not good. Not good at all. Let me start with a quote that explains the above chart. The ultimate sign of housing distress is foreclosure. This should be obvious. So for all the talk of a housing recovery I point to the above chart. Today, as in right now, we are in record territory for the number of homes in foreclosure. 14 percent of all U.S. mortgages are in some form of foreclosure.So are things actually improving? Would the government lie to you? No and yes. ...foreclosure filings are still at record levels. In fact we are heading to a 3.5 to 4 million foreclosure year in 2010! This is somehow a positive thing for the market? People forget that foreclosures happen because of underlying economic issues. If everyone was making big bucks and homes were going up in value then we wouldn't have this problem. Just look at the number of foreclosure filings back in 2005. Roughly 60,000 to 70,000 per month. Last month we hit 367,000+ which was an all time record. When foreclosure filings get back down to more normal levels, then we can say the housing market is improving.If the numbers are still rising then things are not improving. No matter what the government says. So who is making the housing market these days (providing loans)? I'm sure you can guess. But no need for guessing. There are answers. 96.5% of all originated loans are now government backed. Remember Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their epic continuing losses?The housing market has been nationalized. As in bought by the government. I suppose it is better than outright theft. That comes later when taxes have to rise to pay for the "fun". Banks are moving on current REOs (the small batch that they have) and pumping this up as good news but the 90 days plus foreclosure number is still trending up. How is this magic done? We've talked about it above. You simply don't move on delinquent homeowners. You ignore actual losses. You mark your assets to fantasy valuations.So that may explain why the economy seems to be trending up. A LOT of home owners are living rent free. Why does that make any sense at all? Two reasons come to mind. One is that if the banks had to acknowledge their losses they would be failing. Which is to say the banking system is kaput. Another reason is that a property with people living in it will be better maintained than one that is vacant. Now about the nationalization of the mortgage industry. The bailouts have been one large transfer of wealth to the banking sector. Remember that the bailouts were brought about under the guise of helping the housing market and keeping people in their homes. None of that has happened. Ironically the only thing that seems to keep people in their home is when they stop paying their mortgage! If that is the strategy we have arrived at after $13 trillion in bailouts and backstops to Wall Street we are in for a world of problems.Yes we are. May I also suggest reading Foreclosures, Auctions, and Banks Obscuring Financial Data by Dr. Bubble. My guess is that Europe is in no better shape. And that does not even take into account the coming collapse of the Chinese real estate bubble. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 01:26 AM | Comments (0)
| TrackBacks (0) Wednesday, May 12, 2010
La Raza
La Raza means The Race. And some people call Tea Partiers racist. The gentleman in the video wants to take back the lands stolen from Mexico. In 1848. The war that started in 1846 was over whether Texas could join the Union ( Mexico was against it) and what the boundary with Mexico would be. I have a word of advice to La Raza in Greek. Molon labe. You can read what Presidet US Grant had to say about the war in: Ulysses S. Grant : Memoirs. Short version: he thought it was wrong for the US to go to war with Mexico and called the US Civil War punishment for our transgressions against Mexico. I note that President Grant did not offer the territory back to Mexico. Wrong it may have been but it was a fait accompli. The speaker in the video is a piece of work. He doesn't like Jews. He does like underage girls. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 05:17 PM | Comments (4)
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Moconology for those who want to moconomize
Zombie has a great PJM post about the fatwa head-butting attack on Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, and I share his indignation, not only over the attack, but over the fact that people in the room cheered. People who believe in killing people for expressing ideas of which they disapprove are enemies of civilization itself. The only way to fight them is by defying them. Zombie concludes by issuing an appeal for defiance, and he mentions "mocons" as one of the most efficient forms of cyber blasphemy ever devised: If you're as outraged by this ever-escalating terror campaign against artists as you ought to be, remember to disseminate and repost any and all images of your choosing from the Mohammed Image Archive, which (as noted in my earlier post) contains just about every picture of Mohammed ever created.So go ahead! Be a moconologist! Or would that be a moconomist? Promoting free speech in the face of those who would kill to stop it is in the best interests of civilization. UPDATE: If you like mocons, do not miss the ultimate emoticon experience from Trifecta (with Bill Whittle, Scott Ott, and Stephen Green). Especially if you have an "asterisk" (or even an ass not to risk), Via Glenn Reynolds, who explains: It's simple: Bill Whittle asks a question about US politics and the Trifecta crew responds by drawing a simple emoticon. Easy, right? Check it out and comment....It's one of the funniest things I've seen. Seriously (!) posted by Eric at 02:12 PM | Comments (0)
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What is gay? Mind if I ask?
Amidst the hubbub over Elena Kagan's sexuality (or lack thereof), there's a question which isn't being asked by anyone, which I would call the question about the question. What is gay? Think it's easy to define? I'd be willing to bet that if you polled most people, their answers would vary. Even the readers here might give different answers to the following questions: The point here is not to grind an axe or start an argument, but to point out the difficulty posed by asking whether someone is gay. There's a long Wiki post about the term, and the closest thing to an actual definition seems to come from the American Psychological Association: "Sexual attraction, behavior and identity may be incongruent. For example, sexual attraction and/or behavior may not necessarily be consistent with identity. Some individuals may identify themselves as homosexual or bisexual without having had any sexual experience. Others have had homosexual experiences but do not consider themselves to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Further, sexual orientation falls along a continuum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of both. Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime-different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual."[20]So what does that mean? Is whether someone is "gay" to be determined by the individual, or by others? Who gets to decide these things? Isn't that relevant? At some point, a certain number of people make the decision to call themselves gay, or acknowledge to themselves that they are. So in that respect, it's like deciding that you're a member of a certain church, or an atheist. Or is it more like being Jewish, where you're born with the "Jewish-ness" whether you believe in the religion or not? I'm one of those people who believes in maximum individual freedom, and I come down against the strictly determinist view of these things, and while I do think some people are "born that way," it is wrong as well as tyrannical to insist that all are. Allowing self definition to be the only definition, though, is problematic, because just as people can say they are straight and be lying, people can also say they're gay and be lying (as was alleged in the case of a Philadelphia politician who said he was gay). But even there, what and where is the lie? While we would normally think of it it as a lie for someone to not do what he says he does do, or to do what he says he does not do, in cases involving inner thoughts, how is this to be determined? Is a bisexual person gay? If so, if gay includes bisexual while straight does not, is that not both illogical and hegemonic? Could a celibate person legitimately claim to be gay? Or bi? Or straight? Or have such people by being celibate forfeited all claims to having a sexuality? Again, who gets to decide what these people are, and what it is that constitutes honesty or dishonesty? And how? Are we to literally invade their minds? So "Are you gay?" is a very easy question to ask. But what is being asked is not so easy. Damned if I know. What I do know that simple logic -- and simple fairness (if that matters in politics) -- dictate that the question "What is gay?" ought to be settled before the "Are you gay?" question is asked. MORE: Please note that in light of complaints, the poll was revised to include an additional choice: Being exclusively homosexualThat would probably not describe many of those who consider themselves gay. My apologies to those six people who already answered! Please feel free to answer again. (I think this illustrates the difficulty of the question, though.) posted by Eric at 10:24 AM | Comments (9)
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madly not caring
Anyone remember the rumors about Condoleezza Rice? While I thought they were silly at the time, I can't stop my thoughts from wandering back to not that long ago: The Enquirer described its article as "the ultimate guessing game among Hollywood fans - trying to figure out which big-name stars are gay". The report went on: "According to the buzz among political insiders, it's an open secret that . . . Rice is gay."Etc. I didn't have to scour the Internet to find the above as it came directly from a footnote in Rice's Wiki biography which says this: in a Gallup poll from March 24 to 27, 2008, Rice was mentioned by eight percent of Republican respondents to be their first choice to be Senator John McCain's Republican Vice-Presidential running mate, slightly behind Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.[74] There was speculation that she was not chosen as a Vice-Presidential candidate because of rumors that she was a lesbian, which could have soured evangelicals to the ticket.[75]OK, just as I don't care about Elena Kagan's sexuality, I also didn't and don't care about Rice's. It isn't my business -- any more than their personal religious views are my business. Just as one's view of the unknown is between the person and his intimate associates (and between him and whatever higher powers he may or not believe in), one's sexuality is no one's business other than whomever he might or might not want to have sex with. Or not. I realize that sexual and religious activists on both "sides" would disagree with me (as they insist that these things are their business), but what I want to know is this: Is there still an unwritten rule that being gay -- or even being rumored to be gay -- should be a bar to high office? Otherwise, what is this debate about? If so, how does the "rule" work? How is it to be enforced? How high of an office is high office? And considering that there are rumors about everyone (including George W. Bush), should rumors count too? This whole Kagan thing should be fascinating to watch. So far, the debate seems to involve not so much whether she is gay, but who will "out" her if she is. Unless I am mistaken and she is outed in a positive way by gay activists, the push seems to be to force the Republicans to try to out her in a negative way. That way, the left can claim she's a victim of right-wing bigotry, whether she's gay or not. The irony is that there are a lot of people who don't care either way, but for obvious reasons their voices will not be heard in this, um, "debate." That's because people who don't care tend not to be loud about what they don't care about, and if you think about it, it would sound contradictory (even a little insane) to yell, "I'M MAD AS HELL BECAUSE I DON'T CARE!" Count me among the insane. posted by Eric at 08:48 AM | Comments (0)
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Doing The Conservative Thing
I'm still waiting to see a Conservative stance on the drug war: "We should do the conservative thing and go back to the way things were before Progressives screwed it up with their ideas of prohibiting plants and plant extracts in order to gain moral uplift."Conservatism these days is not a thought out ideology. It is just a series of conditioned reflexes. The idea that government can provide moral uplift either directly or by contracting out the job is non-sense on stilts. The incentives are wrong. Of course the other conceit is that by either macro or micro policies including a series of punishments and rewards the government can produce a producing economy. But real economies are different. The real economy is really a series of blind amoebas searching out higher concentrations of useful nutrients. i.e. What job needs to be done. Can I do it at a profit? Are there higher profit opportunities available? Are the rewards commensurate with the risks? What is the opportunity cost? What to do about low profit potential but vital support functions? You know. The kinds of things government doesn't like to think about. Any way, with government there is no incentive to solve a problem. The incentive is to get more money to solve a problem. Every year. As it is with economics. So it is with morality and culture. This rant inspired by something from The Other McCain. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 03:59 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Happy Birthday, Salvador Dalí!
I can't make the celebration at the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, but Salvador Dalí would be 106 today. In his honor, I thought I'd scan in a couple of images which don't seem to be on the Internet anywhere. This one is from 1974 and is titled "Transformation." Unfortunately, the entire image is a bit too large for the scanner screen, but this is pretty close. From the caption: The "coherent" argument against what appears as "logical reality" is surrealism, a reality just as logical to the point where just for this it was declared "in the service of the revolution." The consequence of this was that many mistakenly embraced communism with the deep disagreements and delusions that characterized the whole group. The liberty of surrealism was the antithesis of an imposition of socialist realism and anathemas from all sides condemned the "transformations" of so many of them.Dalí was anti-communist, of course, which got him officially kicked out of the Surrealist movement. Quite an achievement for one of the greatest surrealists of all time, and Dalí thought it proved he was more of a surrealist than his antagonists. The second scan relates to a painting lavishly titled "Galacidalacidesoxiribunucleicacid (Homage to Crick and Watson) (1963)." It is of the cover of 1963 brochure prepared by M. Knoedler & Co. for the exhibition of the painting: Inside, the brochure contains Dalí's explanation: At a time when the titles of pictures are rather short (i.e. "Picture No. 1" or "White on White"), I call my Hommage to Crick and Watson: GALACIDALACIDESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID. It is my longest title in one word. But the theme is even longer: long as the genetical persistence of human memory. As announced by the prophet Isaiah -- the Saviour contained in God's head from which ones sees for the first time in the iconographic history his arms repeating the molecular structures of Crick and Watson and lifting Christ's dead body so as to resuscitate him in heaven.Hope they saved some Dalinian DNA somewhere. Celebrate transformational DNA surrealism! posted by Eric at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
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You Can Already Count The Cost
The recently passed Health Care initiative is already raising medical insurance costs. Letting young adults stay on their parents' health insurance until they turn 26 will nudge premiums nearly 1 percent higher for employer plans, the government said in an estimate released Monday.Raising costs for people is a benefit? George Orwell would be proud. And about the promise of the health care bill according to Obama? After decades of struggle and a year of debate, health reform is now law in America.I guess affordable means higher priced. See what I mean about Orwell? Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 04:13 AM | Comments (0)
| TrackBacks (0) Monday, May 10, 2010
The Andrew Sullivan/American Family Association Identity Politics Alliance Against Privacy!
Not that the world was wondering, but I don't give a damn about Supreme Court pick Elena Kagan's sexuality. And while I don't like her liberal, anti-military philosophy, that would typify anyone of her background, many of whom would be worse. So I haven't felt especially compelled to write about her. Until today, that is. The culture war has reared its ugly head, and activated all sorts of busybodies who care deeply about things like the sexuality of their fellow citizens. I would like to think that we are moving past such concerns, and I think most people have. Most, but not all. There are gay activist busybodies who don't believe in leaving people alone, and they are assisted by anti-gay busybodies on the other "side." It is no more of an empirical question than whether she is Jewish. We know she is Jewish, and it is a fact simply and rightly put in the public square. If she were to hide her Jewishness, it would seem rightly odd, bizarre, anachronistic, even arguably self-critical or self-loathing. And yet we have been told by many that she is gay ... and no one will ask directly if this is true and no one in the administration will tell us definitively.Actually, the American Family Association is delighted to do Andrew's bidding. In a blog post for the far-right American Family Association (AFA) today, Bryan Fischer comes right out and says that the media should pointedly ask Kagan, "Are you a lesbian?" And if she is, according to AFA, she shouldn't serve on the court:So there you go. From opposite "sides" in this blasted culture war comes the same, equally bigoted question.It's time we got over the myth that what a public servant does in his private life is of no consequence. We cannot afford to have another sexually abnormal individual in a position of important civic responsibility, especially when that individual could become one of nine votes in an out of control oligarchy that constantly usurps constitutional prerogatives to unethically and illegally legislate for 300 million Americans. ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, A HOMOSEXUAL? Such concerns are what drive identity politics. Your sexuality is their business. Ugh. If this is what passes for politics, I wish I could opt out. MORE: Glenn Reynolds takes a close look at Kagan, and finds her to be a surprisingly good pick -- especially considering the alternatives. Well worth reading. As to the argument over whether she is gay, and whether she has the right to any privacy, Glenn linked this discussion in Mother Jones which raised some good questions about the motives behind this inquisition. (Basically, she's an unmarried woman who looks like a stereotypical lesbian -- and it appears that if she didn't invoke the stereotype, no one would be asking.) I realize that Andrew Sullivan is not alone in suggesting that inquiries about the sexuality of public office seekers should now be a legitimate focus, but I don't like it. Such questions easily lend themselves to being petty and tyrannical in nature, and are irrelevant to public service. It's not as if we were in the 1950s when questions like "ARE YOU NOW, OR HAVE YOU EVER BEEN, A HOMOSEXUAL?" were asked, and I don't recall Justices Alito or Roberts being quizzed about what might have ever turned them on. Should they have been? If so, where do we draw the line? Should all candidates for all public offices have their sexuality vetted? And how far should such vetting go? Should we be asking about what age virginity was lost? Whether there has been loyalty to partners? Whether pornography was used? About specific sexual tastes? ("Are you or have you ever been bisexual?" Have you any fetishes?" "Have you ever taken part in any sexual activities which might be termed bondage or sadomasochism?" "Have you ever participated in anal sex?" "Please state whether you were on the top or the bottom.") I realize the above is far from inclusive (doubtless the government screeners could come up with something more comprehensive), but is this the way we want to live? Is privacy over? posted by Eric at 07:07 PM | Comments (9)
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Your home is your castle, and your computer is in your home. Right?
Last night I stumbled onto a problem which provided a perfect illustration of how computers are challenging traditional notions of property -- of what is and what is not yours. What happened was that I tried to pay a simple YouTube video in Slackware, and the Firefox web browser would not play it unless I installed the Adobe Flash Player plugin. Yes, there is one available for Linux, but installing it is hellish (it gave me some trouble in Ubuntu, too), and many users complain that it either does not work well, or does not work at all. This complaint is typical: At some of the Linux user forums, the comments are even more irate. They deeply, deeply hate Adobe. I have to say that I have never been much of an Adobe fan, even in Windows, as I can't count the number of times the Adobe reader has crashed my system simply because I tried to open a blasted PDF file. (Ever wonder why so many bloggers thoughtfully warn readers that a link is a PDF file?) Constant updating, and the updates often involve aggressive marketing ploys with pitfalls for the unwary. Anyway, getting into the Adobe Flash Player stuff annoyed me, because Linux is based on Open Source. Adobe is not only open source, in many ways it is at war with Open Source, and at war with Linux. Mike Slinn, an independent software contractor, puts it kindly: The Linux cadre of developers is large, and encompasses many experienced Java developers. They tend to be senior, and are quite influential in the developer community. The lack of solid Linux support from Adobe has been a key reason that most of those key technologists have not adopted the technology. Flex and Flash simply don't work effectively in their primary development environment.Reading between the lines, I see tension between the for-profit Adobe, and the Open Source environment of Linux. I especially enjoyed the accompanying photo: If this earlier piece in the Electronic Freedom Foundation is any indication, Linux users are right to be fearful of the Adobe Flash Player. What worries me is that our computers are being systematically taken over by entities over which we have absolutely no control. Like the entertainment industry, and the hated RIAA. Philosophically, I don't consent to them getting their mitts into my stuff. Yet the irony is that I probably have given them all sorts of power over my computer, simply by clicking "Agree" in order to make things work. I don't like it, nor do a lot of other people and it's one of the reasons I think it is very important to be up and running on Linux. It's one of those WTSHTF ("when the shit hits the fan") things that's worth having. Like having a gun. For now, I solved the irritating Adobe Flash Player issue in Slackware by installing the Greasemonkey add-on, and then simply running a wonderful script I found here. It plays beautifully. For now, at least. (Until the corporate copyright cops decide to force YouTube to submit totally to Big Hollywood dumb-down dhimmitude, or whatever it's supposed to be called.) All I wanted to do was play this: It wasn't my fault that it turned into such a big deal, but sometimes even little annoyances touch on matters of principle. posted by Eric at 12:30 PM | Comments (6)
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, May 9, 2010
Hey man, cut me some SLACK!
I realize that this is not the forum for bragging about silly accomplishments, but after spending nearly two insanely difficult days of trying this and trying that, I was finally able to get my Broadcom 4318 wireless card (the BCM43xx chipset is notoriously difficult, and that's in the "easy" Linux distros) to work in Slackware Linux version 13.1. Big deal, you say? Consider these words from a real geek (not a dilettante like yours truly): Slackware is becoming a real favorite for me. It's fast, nimble and rock solid. However, I have a HP Mini 100 with a Broadcom 4312 (rev.01) wireless card. If you know anything about this card you know this is bad news....real bad news. But I decided to write this article to create some encouragement to those of you who are ready to leave Linux because you cannot get wireless going. It is possible, but it may not be easy. One thing for sure ...it is worth it.To say it isn't supposed to work is an understatement. It's fiendish, and the number of different opinions and approaches are daunting to say the least. Every Slacker has a different tale to tell about how he did it, and none of them are the same. Basically (this is in the new, "post-ndiswrapper era"), you have to download the following: - the Linux BCM 43xx driver from Broadcom (which comes with misleading instructions);All of the above have to be installed and configured by hand with command lines, as Slackware is not a GUI-based world. But knowing the command lines and figuring out where to install the files, where to copy them, experimenting to see which modules and dependencies have to be associated and de-associated, over and over until you get it right -- none of that can start unless the drivers are installed and compiled. Following all of the instructions as carefully as I could, I kept getting a very annoying error message. I know you just can't wait to see it, so here it is: make -C /lib/modules/2.6.33.3-smp/build M=`pwd`That makes about as much sense as a lot of the MSM nonsense I have ridiculed in this blog, but the difference is that at least in the geek world, errors can be corrected, and it turns out it was a coding error emanating from Broadcom. To get rid of it, you have to open the modules and alter the code, and only then will it compile. A guy in Liverpool was nice enough to explain: In your source directory in the file hybrid_wl/src/include/linuxver.h change line 23 from "#includeWas I ever delighted to see it install. But then the real work began, of painstakingly configuring the rest. Making the firmware and the damnably difficult BCM43xx-fwcutter work, which took forever, and had to be accomplished largely by trial and error, and by imitating what other people said had worked for them. But what works for others does not work for everyone else, and part of the reason is that there are so many BCM43xx chipset versions. It's a horror story. I was just about ready to call it quits when I tried again something that had been tried and failed before, when I suddenly saw an alert flashing on the WICD, and to my utter amazement, instead of the "no networks found" that it had been displaying for a day and a half, my neighborhood networks were listed! I cautiously tried my own router, it asked for the password, and I'm on! I decided to write post about this in case people are wondering whether I died and went to Hell, and in case anyone else wants to try this. Back to what this guy said: One thing for sure ...it is worth it.Escaping from such self-inflicted torture is an accomplishment of sorts. A bit like getting out of Hell. So you could say it is worth it in that way. Plus, I'm sure it's an invaluable learning experience. And when you're done, you feel as if you really own your OS and your computer. I'm writing this running Slackware, logged into my router on my front porch. As the following links were all very helpful, I thought I would share them: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/trouble-installing-fwcutter-783876/ http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=192412 http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/devices MORE: A screenshot:
posted by Eric at 04:56 PM | Comments (2)
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The Shape of Things to Come?
Glenn Reynolds spots something intriguing: "RASMUSSEN: 55% of Colorado Voters Favor Immigration Law Like Arizona's. Once again, I think this is a sign of media-narrative weakness, given the overwhelmingly negative coverage given to Arizona's law." That's a very good point. I can't remember seeing an issue like this where media was so against and public was still for it. Over the past 20 years, there have been two conflicting trends - while legacy media circulation/viewing was declining, their influence was actually growing because (much like the telephony market) while the Internet didn't generate as much revenue-per-bit it did vastly increase the number of bits reaching end users. I would bet the average proportion of the population who is likely to see a given NYT op-ed is considerably higher today than in 1970 - but somewhat lower than in 2005, because recently the legacy media losses have started to become as much a function of readers selecting viewpoints as choosing electronic media over print. Notice the WSJ was the only print media to add subscribers last cycle and is actively moving to compete with the NYT, PJM seems to be doing well, and Fox's domination of cable news has become so ridiculous they now vie with USA for the top ratings in all of cable. Have we now reached a point where the power of legacy media left-liberals is beginning to collapse to the point they no longer affect public opinion much? This could be a watershed moment. I suspect viewpoint selection in news consumption is self-reinforcing, i.e. as people right of center begin to realize the MSM leans left they increasingly stop utilizing it. Since developing political opinions (there is, apparently, no cure for this condition, only palliative care), I rarely ever watch local Chicago TV news anymore, because it's always like it was the 5 minutes I watched after last night's Lakers game: glowing coverage of gun control efforts, a new nanny-state initiative, vague cluck-clucking about how the economy is forcing people to turn to crime, the identity politics crisis du jour, and all with subpar production values, even in a major metro area. posted by Dave at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)
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GOP Ousts Senator
It looks like the impotent, racist, violent, Tea Party folks have ousted Senator Bob Bennett in Utah. Republican Senator Bob Bennett was thrown out of office yesterday by delegates at the Utah GOP convention in what represents a stunning defeat for a once-popular three-term incumbent who fell victim to a growing conservative movement nationwide.Ah, yes. The growing conservative movement. No mention of the Tea Parties which is not strictly Conservative in the current political sense. It could more accurately be described as a Fiscal conservative movement. Bennett's failure to make it into Utah's GOP primary -- let alone win his party's nomination -- makes him the first congressional incumbent to be ousted this year and demonstrates the difficult challenges candidates are facing from the right in 2010.I especially liked Bennett's "Don't take a chance on a newcomer" statement. I am looking forward to the wailing and gnashing of teeth come this November. Fox News has this rather juicy bit on the prospects for the less than fiscally conservative politicians in Washington. Bennett isn't the only Republican lawmaker in trouble as other moderate candidates across the country find themselves being abandoned by GOP voters in favor of those backed by Tea Party activists, such as with Senate races in Arizona, Kentucky and New Hampshire.As you can see Fox is not afraid to mention Who Done It. And yeah Democrats. The Tea Party is destroying the Old Republican Party. It is changing it from a mainly socially conservative party to a mainly fiscally conservative party. Which is to say a more libertarian party. So what is happening in other states? Real Clear Politics has a few words. In Arizona, Sen. John McCain is in a tough primary fight against former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, a conservative talk-radio host. In Kentucky, Rand Paul, the son of libertarian Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, is gaining momentum in his challenge against the GOP establishment's pick of Secretary of State Trey Grayson to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning.So how about some words from noted leftist site Fire Dog Lake? ...while in the short term, the now lame-duck Bennett might be freed up for a vote with Democrats here or there, over the long haul Republicans will now be even more frightened that, if they don't move hard to the right, they will suffer the same fate. Illogical as that may sound, the Bennett ejection holds a powerful message that the far right of the GOP has taken over.So fiscal conservatism is now a far right concern? Haven't they heard about what is happening in Greece? Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 06:19 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Saturday, May 8, 2010
Are we losing our freedom? (And other rhetorical questions....)
From Scott Ott comes a good rhetorical question about a New York Times editorial: Does the New York Times really crave a society in which the federal government can restrict the constitutional rights of citizens who have committed no crimes?To which I would add another rhetorical question: "Is the Pope Catholic?" For some time, the Times has been pushing for people placed on the no-fly list to forfeit their Second Amendment rights, and this editorial is only the latest manifestation. In June of last year, the Times argued that citizens' rights under the Second Amendment were not rights at all, but merely "an odd divergence in federal law": The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government's terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, but they cannot be stopped from buying a gun.And I asked what now appears to be a rhetorical question: Has a fundamental constitutional right now become an odd divergence?I guess that's a rhetorical question too. By the way, according to the ACLU, the Terror Watch List is million names long. And growing. Up 32% since 2007, according to USA Today. And that's despite the fact that the war on terror is being downgraded. As there's no such thing as Islamic terrorist anymore, I wonder about something... Who qualifies under the new rules? (I should probably stop asking rhetorical questions.) posted by Eric at 11:58 AM | Comments (14)
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Elitist roots oppose change
After some seemingly intractable hard drive partitioning problem (occasioned by the stubborn refusal of the GRUB-2 loader to accept partition changes), I finally managed to install and configure Slackware linux on this older Dell laptop. That's in addition to Ubuntu -- so now that I have straightened out the GRUB loader (with which Slackware has "issues," as it uses the LILO bootloader) I am now capable of triple booting Windows XP, Ubuntu 10.04, and the all-spanking new Slackware 13.1. And the times they are a changin! These days (in no small part because of Ubuntu), Linux is just about ready for prime time. It is so easily configurable now that anyone who can use Windows can install and use Ubuntu. It is Linux for the masses. Predictably, this has resulted in longtime Linux geeks getting snarky, and no group more epitomizes the longtime Linux culture than the Slackware geeks (aka Slackers). They're not even nice to newcomers to Slackware, as evidenced by this reply to a perfectly innocent question about a software packet manager application: I wonder if anybody has ever tried it on SlackwarePuhleeeze! Such racist elitism is so shocking that I'm feeling guilty about returning to my "roots" and wondering whether I should ever have installed the time-consuming (but for some strange reason emotionally satisfying) Slackware. As someone who resolutely opposes culture wars in their various manifestations, I would hate to be seen as an elitist Slacker! DISCLOSURE: This is my first blog post from Slackware. posted by Eric at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)
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Hammering Small Business
An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.So what happens in reality? Fewer items get expensed so tax collections go up. Not counting business that goes underground. Sons of bitches. This new Health Care Law needs serious fixing. I propose repeal. The first step in that process is to Repeal Congress. H/T Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 12:50 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Friday, May 7, 2010
It's Always About Greed
I was reading a report on the market meltdown and came across this comment: it' always about greed.The funny thing is that there don't seem to be significant numbers of people asking their employers for lower pay. Nor does there seem to be a voluntary movement of any size of people willing to pay higher taxes. Well excepting Public Employee Unions who hope to benefit from higher taxes. Haven't they heard that greed is bad? I have never seen the government exception to the greed "rule" propounded. Maybe it is just one of those things that everybody knows. I guess the main political division in the country is between those who think government greed is good and those who are of the opposite opinion. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 05:40 PM | Comments (3)
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People who want to be left alone are racists! And Jacobins!
As I have pointed out in a number of posts, what I most like about the Tea Party movement is that it consists of largely of people who want the government to leave them alone. That's a new phenomenon in American politics, because traditionally, political activists tend to be people who want to tell others what to do. That is why they enter politics. But the American people have finally wised up to the fact that the only way to defeat activists is by becoming anti-activist activists. In a long intellectual criticism of the Tea Party Movement in The New York Review of Books (titled The Tea Party Jacobins"), University of Chicago professor Mark Lilla explains that wanting to be left alone is the driving force behind what he calls the "libertarian mob": Many Americans, a vocal and varied segment of the public at large, have now convinced themselves that educated elites--politicians, bureaucrats, reporters, but also doctors, scientists, even schoolteachers--are controlling our lives. And they want them to stop. They say they are tired of being told what counts as news or what they should think about global warming; tired of being told what their children should be taught, how much of their paychecks they get to keep, whether to insure themselves, which medicines they can have, where they can build their homes, which guns they can buy, when they have to wear seatbelts and helmets, whether they can talk on the phone while driving, which foods they can eat, how much soda they can drink...the list is long. But it is not a list of political grievances in the conventional sense.Obviously, Lilla does not believe in the right to be left alone, and thinks that someone simply has to be telling us how to wipe our asses. To his way of thinking, you'd have to be estranged, aimless, and juvenile not to want help with such things. What he misses about the Tea Partiers is that they're sophisticated enough to understand why ordinary activism has failed, and why they are not being left alone. Simply electing the right people to political office cannot fix the problem of entrenched bureaucracies which were designed to be politically bulletproof, and which basically dictate terms to the legislators whose job is to pass legislation endlessly expanding their power, while increasing the size and scope of their irreversible demands on taxpayers' money. And I do mean irreversible. Just get elected to even the lowest city council and try cutting staff positions or wages. They're unionized and they will simply take the city to court, where enforcing the terms of their union contracts is a legal slam-dunk. As to government pensions (which drain huge amounts of money), they are more of a legal entitlement than Medicare or Social Security, because the latter are not "entitlements" but acts of Congress which can in theory be revised or repealed. Government pensions are legally enforceable obligations. People who are legally owed money will demand and get it, regardless of whether the people who have to pay it ever consented to pay it, and regardless of whether they want to be left alone. The Tea Partiers have seen past the game of pretending the legislature really runs things when in reality they are obsequious scriveners for unelected elites. Unlike conventional politicians, this "libertarian mob" is actually willing to say "no more" to the bureaucratic ruling classes and mean it. This scares the crap out of them. posted by Eric at 03:33 PM | Comments (4)
| TrackBacks (0) Thursday, May 6, 2010
"Some people ain't made for small-town life"
Last night I attended a remarkable production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town". Written at the peak of the 1930s (before World War II had started to seep in and draw that period to a close), it's a classic portrayal of small town life which poses profound questions about life, death and eternity. The minimalist scenery (two ladders, a couple of movable tables and chairs) provide a perfect backdrop, for they leave the audience's imagination free to wander. It's been called a Norman Rockwell-like portrayal, but that's a bit misleading, because it is and it isn't. (Of course, depending on whom you ask, even Norman Rockwell is and isn't.) The town has its secrets, such as the dark side of the alcoholic choir director who committed suicide. It doesn't take a Ph.D. in Subtextual Analysis from PostModernist U to spot it, either. The one outsider we meet is Simon Stimson, the church choir director, whose nameless "troubles" drive him to drink. (Some critics have speculated that Simon Stimson's "trouble" was his repressed homosexuality.) All through the first two acts, he remains a silent, accusatory presence. His neighbors gossip about him; some worry about him. But most avoid him. "I guess I know more about Simon Stimson's affairs than anybody in this town," says the town doctor. "Some people ain't made for small-town life. I don't know how that'll end; but there's nothing we can do but just leave it alone." How it ends, we later learn, is in Stimson's suicide.Whether he is gay or not isn't the point so much as the fact that the town has its secrets, and not everyone is happy there. The audience really doesn't need to know what unbearable secret drove the man to drink, or to take his life. What I do find fascinating about the unstated subtext is the way the poor man has evolved over time -- from a character whose dark secret could not have been mentioned to a 1930s audience, to being acknowledged by many as a "gay character," and finally, in a modern, gay Orwellian twist, to being relegated back into the closet where he belongs in the interest of avoiding negative gay stereotypes! Imagine what the author would think were he alive today. As it was, he "suffered from severe writer's block while writing the final act." During that time, he was having an affair in Zurich with another man: Although Wilder never discussed being gay publicly or in his writings, his close friend Samuel Steward is generally acknowledged to have been a lover. Wilder was introduced to Steward by Gertrude Stein, who at the time regularly corresponded with the both of them. The third act of Our Town was famously drafted during a brief affair with Steward in Zurich on their first meeting.Steward was an interesting character (a professor, a writer, and a tattoo artist) who died at age 85 in 1993 in Berkeley. From an interview with Steward not long before his death: Keehnen: You were also lovers with Thornton Wilder at one point.Well, considering that the guy was a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright, "coming out" in the modern sense would have had disastrous consequences, and had he done so, it is highly unlikely that he would have gotten a second Pulitzer Prize for "Our Town," and thus it would most likely not have become the enduring American classic that it did. It might never have been written, and had the author outed himself, the play would probably have been regarded with suspicion, and not performed much if at all. As it is, the only instance of it ever being censored was by Soviet occupation forces in Germany in 1946: In 1946, the Soviet Union prevented a production of Our Town in the Russian sector of occupied Berlin "on the grounds that the drama is too depressing and could inspire a German suicide wave."I'm not sure why the Russian occupiers -- hardened Stalinists at the time -- would have been concerned with German suicides or German mental health at all, unless they feared suicidal attacks. And it's tough to imagine how anyone could watch the play and decide on suicide, much less suicide of the kamikaze or Jihadist variety. (At any rate, I didn't see any obvious al Qaeda recruiters standing outside the theater when I left.) I often criticize the pro-censorship 1930s, but another remark by the playwright's lover reminded me that it's a mistake to see the censorship that thrived during that period as being unique or singular as so many modern people are prone to do. People on the "left" side of the Culture War tend to see the 1930s as an awful thing that has been defeated and overcome by the wonderful forces of modern liberation, while people on the "right" see the period as epitomizing what they champion as "traditional values." As Steward makes clear, censorship is not merely a "traditional" 1930s value, but it is always with us! Censorship, he says, is "one of those things ingrained in the American spirit": Keehnen: In 1936 you were fired as a teacher for writing Angels on the Bough, a book deemed "questionable." Are you shocked by the slackening of censorship over the past 57 years?Damn that's good. And things are worse today than they were in 1993 when he said that. (Today you can't even call an Islamic terrorist an Islamic terrorist, although you can call the Hutaree militia "Christian terrorists.") And if you think that's startling, Steward also says we had more freedom during the repressive 1930s than during the liberated 1990s! Keehnen: Was there more behavioral freedom in the 1930s with social restrictions or in the 1990s with community limitations, assimilation, political correctness, etc.?To say something like "ignorance is freedom" sounds positively.... Orwellian. Except it isn't. (Especially when "freedom" is used as sleight of hand to take freedom away.) In the right context, almost everything is offensive to someone. The truth sucks. (But some truths suck more than others, etc.) posted by Eric at 11:32 AM | Comments (1)
| TrackBacks (0) Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Graphic Content
From Reason Online which excerpted this quote from Radley Balko. SWAT team breaks into home, fires seven rounds at family's pit bull and corgi (?!) as a seven-year-old looks on.The video is quite graphic so sensitive dog lovers should avoid it. You sensitive human lovers should be outraged. Now about that war on some plants. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Shit happens. But you have to ask yourself - "Is this the kind of shit I want happening over small quantities of pot?" And if not, how do you justify the rest of our National Pot Prohibition Policies? And then once you have the National argument sorted what about your State and Local Governments? Because you get to pay for it. Final question: "Is The Game Worth The Candle?" H/T Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 05:24 PM | Comments (7)
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A contagious form of mental illness
Roger L. Simon looks at the "mystery" (yes, they're actually calling it that) of the man (Faisal Shahzad) who traveled to Pakistan and "learned bomb making at a terrorist training camp." Once there, according to investigators, he traveled to the lawless Waziristan region and learned bomb making at a terrorist training camp.So what's the mystery? It looks like a pretty straightforward case of radical Islamic terrorism. No mystery at all. But for reasons that I cannot fathom, it has now become politically incorrect to mention the radical Islamic motivation of terrorists in any way. Carried to extremes, this causes clowns like New York's Mayor Bloomberg to go through ridiculous song-and-dance.routines in which anything except radical Islam is blamed; Bloomberg actually speculated that Shahzad might have been "somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something." Yeah, we all know the Tea Partiers can't wait to blow up Times Square and head back to Pakistan. Roger speculates sarcastically about what religious motivation might be behind the Pakistan training camp, What were they teaching there? Zen Buddhism?No, it's perfectly rational to suggest that al Qaeda-trained terrorists might as well be Tea Partiers. After all, Bill Clinton recently compared the latter to Timothy McVeigh, and it isn't much of a step to substitute Osama bin Laden -- whose training camps might as well be run by the Tea Parties. Unlike most of the mental illnesses listed in the DSM IV, this one is contagious. And it spreads to the highest levels. posted by Eric at 04:01 PM | Comments (3)
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Give Us The Money
With shouts of "Give Us The Money" and "We Need The Cash", public employees demonstrate in Springfield, Illinois. Nothing could make it more obvious after a demonstration like this that there is a war going on in America between government and the people over who is going to be the Master and who is going to be the Servant. Who will be on the leash and who will be on top. The American Thinker has more. H/T Jccarlton at Talk Polywell Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 02:55 PM | Comments (2)
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Free to argue or not
Much as I love thoughtful comments (even by those who disagree with me), one of the problems that plagues me is when commenters jump on me by playing GOTCHA games, misreading what I said, putting words in my mouth, or even attributing to me positions I never took or beliefs I do not hold. This happened over the past couple of days, and I was so disgusted that I just didn't feel like blogging. Too much work. Writing is that way. If you start worrying that anything and everything you say might be misinterpreted, jumped on, or used as an invitation to start an argument (which is not why I write), it becomes a distraction, and makes writing feel more like a nuisance instead of the creative, introspective process I want it to be. I write to find out what I think and as a release, and I am often engaged in a dialogue with myself. If someone comes along with a goal of starting an argument, then it makes me feel that the post I wrote was not a release, but only created more work for myself in the form of an argument. Arguments remind me of litigation, and I hate litigation. It is the worst sort of drudgery imaginable, and if a post I wrote creates that sort of work for me, then I end up wishing I hadn't written it. I can ignore people's attempts to start arguments, and I have every right to do that, but that does not prevent the distraction phenomenon from setting in and influencing what should be a totally spontaneous process. But let no one think I am talking only about the reactions of conservative commenters to the post I wrote about Barack Obama's commencement address. Far from it. I can't even compare and contrast male and female genital cutting without activists weighing in and telling me that I need to "do more research about FGM and MGM before making statements about how supposedly different they are." Must I really? Can't I just say what I think? (But at least the "conservative" versus "liberal" positions are less clear on genital cutting issues, so I'm relatively "safe" there.) Another, more egregious example took the form of leftist comments to a post I wrote about the raid on the Hutaree militia, in which I said the following: Assuming they are crackpots, they still have the same constitutional rights as everyone else, and I hope for the sake of the rest of us that they are being respected.That seemed pretty moderate and reasonable at the time. But it drew howls of outrage. "...they still have the same constitutional rights as everyone else"Right. Like I said that. Or this: Look at what lengths you'll go to defend these homegrown terrorists.And from the same commenter: And oh yeah...way to defend potential cop killers. They're terrorists and should be treated that way.I defended them? All I said was that I hoped their constitutional rights were being respected. And left-wing ideologues saw that as an opportunity to start an argument. Arguments are of course a complete waste of time with ideologues, because they come there to attack, to score points, and above all to win, not to exchange ideas with a goal of mutual discovery of the truth. Anyway, I would have forgotten all about my Hutaree post, except it's now looking as if the concerns I expressed about their constitutional rights hit pretty close to the mark. And that's what the judge thinks: The United States is correct that it need not wait until people are killed before it arrests conspirators. But, the Defendants are also correct: their right to engage in hate-filled, venomous speech is a right that deserves First Amendment protection...From Archy Cary (after quoting the judge): So, the nine members of group profiled by the Department of Justice and the MSM as representing an imminent right-wing extremist danger have been released on bond by a judge who surveyed the evidence and concluded that the government hadn't made the case that the Hutarees represented a clear and present danger to "the safety of the community." Instead, they appear to be most guilty of shooting off their mouths - a practice still protected, in most cases, by the First Amendment.Via Glenn Reynolds. I don't know what considerations drove this raid, but the government will have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they actually did something beyond shooting off rambling paranoid conspiracy theories, or spouting the sort of anti-police rhetoric which was considered trendy in the Black Panther Party's heyday. So once again, they still have the same constitutional rights as everyone else, and I hope for the sake of the rest of us that they are being respected. Glad I can still say that. posted by Eric at 12:27 PM | Comments (4)
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"we can't expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down" (part II -- the teardown)
In an earlier post which I wrote after seeing Barack Obama's commencement address (in which he advocated civility), I worried about the president's failure to condemn the relentless campaign to falsely smear dissenters as racist, and concluded with a rhetorical question: ...while I am glad the president said that "we can't expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down," and "you can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it," in light of his failure to condemn the relentless false charges of racism -- which are making it impossible to "maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate" -- I am stuck having to wonder about something.Well, in light of a news item I found via Ann Althouse, it appears the president has given his answer. By insulting the Tea Partiers with a derogatory term: Three days after he decried the lack of civility in American politics, President Obama is quoted in a new book about his presidency referring to the Tea Party movement using a derogatory term with sexual connotations.Whatever happened to "we can't expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down"? Perhaps the president has concluded that since we can't expect to solve our problems, we might as well just tear each other down! Or maybe (as I suspected) he just thought it was a nice line for a speech. posted by Eric at 11:09 AM | Comments (1)
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Coalition Building
Politics 101: The politics of a coalition is dominated by the least committed member of the coalition. In response to the comments at Eric's And if you're against socialism but not a conservative, then what? Edited for clarity. posted by Simon at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)
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Looking
Eric at Classical Values repeats the old saw: "the Right is looking for converts and the Left is looking for heretics."I always thought the left was looking for lunatics. Preferably well educated lunatics: George Orwell: "Some things are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them" Looking for converts implies that Republicanism is faith based. There is in fact a big belief problem in the US. So is belief in a Supreme Being the problem? No. How about hatred of abortion and gay marriage? Nope. It ain't even the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Nope. It is the belief that Cultural Conservatives are reliably in favor of limiting government spending and thus favor smaller government. Cultural Conservatives make Cultural Issues the litmus test of Conservatism (if you are OK on abortion your spending record doesn't matter). And thus we get politicians like Mike Huckabee. Huckabee is proof positive that blind support for cultural conservatives is no panacea. In fact it is probably counterproductive. And yet in comments around the 'net the idea that only cultural conservatives are reliable fiscal conservatives (you can find an example at the Classical Values link above) is widespread. Nice idea. If only it was true then all Republicans would need is a Jesus Test. Or a "Sincerely Held Religious Belief Test" if you prefer. The Republicans have two problems in this area. Too many Cultural Socialists in the Party and too many Economic Socialists. My (often repeated) stance on this issue is simple (Clever for a Simon. No?) - Just Say No to Socialism. Government is no more capable of creating a moral people than it is of creating a wealthy people. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 09:05 AM | Comments (2)
| TrackBacks (0) Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Does making an alliance with Stalin make allies Stalinists?
Anyone remember when being against Bush was the litmus test for liberalism? These days, it often seems as if being against Bush has become a litmus test for conservatism. The old rule used to be that "the Right is looking for converts and the Left is looking for heretics." Now it seems to be the other way around. This is all so screwy. Conservatives would do well to remember that it takes a coalition (including independents) to win. What I cannot understand is why conservatives were so welcoming of any and every potential ally when they had power and yet now that they are out of power (and most need to win it back) they've replaced the big tent with ideological suspicion. For years, I was quite accustomed to saying whatever I thought about whatever issue I wanted. But since the election of Obama, I find myself holding my tongue, as the fallout from that one event caused a major attitude shift on the right which has had the result of transforming people like me from useful idiots to ideological suspects. Yet I have not changed my mind on any issues. Especially the damned Culture War, which pits people against people based on their lifestyles and individual characteristics, and which posits that the values of the 1930s are more "traditional" than any that came before it. But being in a coalition means sometimes having to put up with people with whom you disagree, and with whose lifestyles you don't like. It would be nice if everyone could shut up, but I think it's a little unreasonable to expect the likes of Michael Savage, WorldNetDaily, and Alan Keyes to shut up and get along. But I guess if they won't shut up, why should I have to? I guess don't want to be in their tent any more than they want to be in mine. What the hell, though. If we want to get relativistic about these things, didn't the United States make an alliance with Stalin to beat Hitler? I have no philosophical problem with such an alliance (which of course ought to work both ways). But having to pretend Stalin was a good guy, and a force for democracy, that would have been too much. Something about the American character, though, lends itself to thinking of our allies as "good" -- even if they are not. So, if such Machiavellian alliances must be made, isn't it better to avoid such misunderstandings in advance? posted by Eric at 04:16 PM | Comments (4)
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And if you're against socialism but not a conservative, then what?
What do you do if you hate socialism but don't like conservatism? Unfortunately for me, I have found myself in that predicament ever since the election of Barack Obama. Oddly enough, no one seemed to care when Bush was president, because in those days people who disliked socialism more than they disliked conservatism were considered generally useful to the conservative cause. Now unless you're a gung-ho, blood-red-meat-dripping, WorldNetDaily-loving, capital-C conservative, you're suspected of being some sort of deviationist. As to how it is possible to deviate from a cause you never embraced, I'm not sure, but the comments to an earlier post served as a reminder that there are plenty of conservatives in search of conservative heresy. No doubt they will find plenty of it here, as I have never claimed to be a conservative. I especially abhor the WorldNetDaily/Michael Savage/Alan Keyes wing of conservatism, but sometimes I play games with myself and imagine that they aren't "real" conservatives. Which is silly, because those types are the first to come along and say that I am the one who is not a real conservative. If they are, fine. Let them have the label. I don't want it, and I never have. So where does that leave me? Politically homeless? Nothing new there. posted by Eric at 12:25 AM | Comments (19)
| TrackBacks (0) Monday, May 3, 2010
Building a better Beta world
This post by Ann Althouse reminded me of something it only touches on by implication, but which is a major reason I tend to loathe politics. From the discussion of the Alphas and the Betas (of Huxley's Brave New World): Are the Alphas superior? They have to work so hard and wear grey... I'm so glad I'm a Beta. Betas don't think they're inferior! They are less intelligent though.Sometimes I think that most of what we call "politics" consists simply of Alphas trying to convince Betas that they can actually be Alphas, if only they vote for the right Alpha leaders! It's a total con routine, played by both sides, and it relies on convincing the Betas that they are not what they are, by Alphas who know the dirty truth. And in another variation, the Betas are always encouraged by the Alphas to think that their leaders are actually Betas, just like them, while the "real" Alphas are the malevolent leaders of the poor duped Betas on the other side. Alphas on both sides pretend to be Betas, accuse each other of being Alphas, while Betas imagine that by voting for the right Alphas, they're better Betas than the other Betas, and they might even be "good" Alphas. It goes in endless circles -- much to the delight of the Alphas. Such disgusting and invasive thoughts make me want to drink in the hope they might go away. posted by Eric at 08:22 PM | Comments (1)
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Dangerous to whom?
Funny that I was just saying the Internet is all messed up, because after reading a post that Glenn Reynolds linked about the Tim Burns congressional race in Pennsylvania, I wanted to know a little more about the candidate, so I clicked on the TimBurnsforCongress.com web site. I can't see it, because it's been blocked (by my Trend Micro anti-virus) for the following reason (in big red letters): This Web page has been identified as Dangerous.Here's a screen shot: Of course, being that I'm also a Linux user, a silly thing like that won't deter me, so I merely booted up the Linux laptop and up it came. The lesson is that Linux users don't have to worry for the most part about things like viruses. Or even fake virus-mongers who go around reporting web sites as being "dangerous." (Which maybe they are, to the people reporting them.) Almost makes me want to send the guy some money without knowing anything more. LATER: Looking into Tim Burns' candidacy, I found him to be strongly in favor of economic freedom and self sufficiency. Here's his campaign statement (which has so far managed to survive the anti-virus blocking): "We need to get away from looking to the government to solve all of our problems. Instead we need to force them to solve theirs. We need to stop the bailouts and handouts, and need to balance the budget and ensure that our children will inherit a strong America, not a bankrupt one. I know how to create jobs, make a payroll, meet a budget, and stay out of debt. I am running to restore this forgotten, commonsense value to Washington."Sounds good to me, and I also learned that Scott Brown is campaigning for him. And while that alone would have been enough to justify sending him money, the idea that sneaky activists may have somehow gotten his website to be blocked as dangerous made me to decide to contribute UPDATE: I checked again at 8:58 p.m., and the site is no longer blocked by Trend Micro. posted by Eric at 03:01 PM | Comments (0)
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All messed up
While I haven't seen any news stories about it, today looks like a bad day for the Internet. Google has been down since this morning, with occasional brief periods of being up (although loading very slowly) Blogspot blogs are mostly dysfunctional, as is YouTube. Yahoo has been working though, and so do the non-Blogspot blogs. This may just be in my area, but I'm totally clueless. If anyone knows anything, feel free to share. posted by Eric at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
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Spilling Oil
Al Fin has an article on natural oil spills. He links to a Science Daily piece on oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico. ScienceDaily (Jan. 27, 2000) -- Twice an Exxon Valdez spill worth of oil seeps into the Gulf of Mexico every year, according to a new study that will be presented January 27 at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in San Antonio, Texas.So how much oil was spilled by the Exxon Valdez? About 260,000 bbls. At 5,000 bbls a day it would take about two months to equal the Exxon Valdez. And another two months to equal the natural oil seeps in the area. So how about some math? Say we have 5,000 bbls a day spread along 100 miles of coast. That is 50 bbls per mile. Every day. At 42 gallons per bbl that is 2,000 gallons per mile or about .4 gallon per foot. Not too bad for one day. If it goes on for a couple of months not good immediately. A lot of wild life will be killed. And then as time goes on bacteria will start eating the oil and the food chain will blossom. If the oil spreads more - that is good. If a lot evaporates - good. If a lot can be captured before it reaches the coast - good. Of course if more drilling and mining of oil was allowed on land the chances of an accident at sea would be reduced relatively if not absolutely (oil consumption is still rising). The desire of the ultra greens for a risk free civilization is increasing the risk that we will wind up with no civilization. Fools. Cross Posted at Power and Control posted by Simon at 01:49 AM | Comments (2)
| TrackBacks (0) Sunday, May 2, 2010
"we can't expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down"
Although I was in the audience watching Barack Obama's speech yesterday, I was too exhausted last night to write about it. But maybe that's not fully accurate, now that I've slept and I'm not exhausted, I still don't want to write about it. As I said yesterday, I thought he made some good points about civility. I just wish he had gone further, especially because he is in a position to do so. And if he means what he says about civility, then he should not be ignoring a very serious problem involving incivility. He'd be better off not bringing up the subject. In his speech, he noted that this country has always been a contentious place: ...I think it's important that we maintain some historic perspective. Since the days of our founding, American politics has never been a particularly nice business. It's always been a little less gentile during times of great change. A newspaper of the opposing party once editorialized that if Thomas Jefferson were elected, "Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced." (Laughter.) Not subtle. Opponents of Andrew Jackson often referred to his mother as a "common prostitute," which seems a little over the top. (Laughter.) Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson have been accused of promoting socialism, or worse. And we've had arguments between politicians that have been settled with actual duels. There was even a caning once on the floor of the United States Senate -- which I'm happy to say didn't happen while I was there. (Laughter.) It was a few years before. (Laughter.)No disagreement there. And I also agree with him that the debate over the proper size and role of government has been with this country from the start: The point is, politics has never been for the thin-skinned or the faint-of-heart, and if you enter the arena, you should expect to get roughed up. Moreover, democracy in a nation of more than 300 million people is inherently difficult. It's always been noisy and messy, contentious, complicated. We've been fighting about the proper size and role of government since the day the Framers gathered in Philadelphia. We've battled over the meaning of individual freedom and equality since the Bill of Rights was drafted. As our economy has shifted emphasis from agriculture to industry, to information, to technology, we have argued and struggled at each and every juncture over the best way to ensure that all of our citizens have a shot at opportunity.Fine words, eloquently and sincerely spoken. I was there, and the man couldn't have sounded more sincere. (But OTOH, maybe I shouldn't call eloquent people eloquent if they are some race other than white, lest I be accused of racism.) What followed was an explanation of his view of the proper role of government, with which I disagree. But this is a basic philosophical disagreement and readers are well aware of what I think. So I'll spare myself and everyone else another rant. I want to focus instead on what he said about the importance of being able to have a civil debate: So, yes, we can and should debate the role of government in our lives. But remember, as you are asked to meet the challenges of our time, remember that the ability for us to adapt our government to the needs of the age has helped make our democracy work since its inception.While I agree with most of that, there is a notable omission. A very painful one. It is certainly true that people use phrases like "socialists," "Soviet-style takeover," "fascist," "right-wing nut," and "left-wing nut" to characterize each other, and that name-calling does not assist (as he says) "maintain[ing] a basic level of civility in our public debate." I think it speaks highly of him that he is trying to advance civil dialogue, and I don't doubt that he meant what he said sincerely. But there was a huge omission. A tragically missed opportunity. Bad as the phrases he listed are, and much as they close the door to the possibility of compromise, undermine democratic deliberation, and prevent learning, none of them come remotely close close to a particularly malignant form of vilification that has now become a cancer in our democracy, and that is the false charge of racism. Why couldn't he have mentioned that when the opportunity was perfectly presented? There he was, talking to an audience of overwhelmingly young people about to embark on their lives, many of whom voted for him, and most of whom no doubt look up to him. Why couldn't he have suggested that maybe it isn't the greatest idea to routinely level the charge of racism in political debates? Surely he must realize that calling people racists "closes the door to the possibility of compromise" and "undermines democratic deliberation, and "prevents learning" since after all, why should we listen to a racist? The omission is so glaring that here I am a day later I am still upset about it. What upsets me is that the man gave a really good, inspiring speech, and he just sounded so sincere that...well... "tragic" is the only word that comes to mind. After all, this was a speech about the need for civility. In such a context, I simply don't know how to explain the president's failure to condemn what I think is the most malignant form of incivility in American political discourse today. And because I do write this blog (in which I have spent seven years trying to be civil, but not always succeeding) I thought I should say something rather than just forget about it and write him off as a cynical hypocrite who condemns only some forms of incivility. I was also inspired to write this because I liked what the president about listening to opposing views being essential for effective citizenship: Still, if you're somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in a while. If you're a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. (Applause.) It is essential for our democracy. (Applause.)With that in mind, I would suggest that the president might try reading what James Taranto said last week about false charges of racism: They won't give it up. "Are Tea Partiers Racist?" asks a Newsweek.com headline, apparently written under the mistaken impression that this hackneyed charge is still provocative. The subheadline reveals that the story doesn't even speak to whether the tea-party movement is racist but rather makes a more modest claim: "A new study shows that the movement's supporters are more likely to be racially resentful."I can't think of a better way. And while I am glad the president said that "we can't expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down," and "you can disagree with a certain policy without demonizing the person who espouses it," in light of his failure to condemn the relentless false charges of racism -- which are making it impossible to "maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate" -- I am stuck having to wonder about something. Does he truly believe in the lofty goals he espouses? Or is he just a good speech-maker? posted by Eric at 06:46 PM | Comments (9)
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Too Good Not To Link
Rudd has created a Department of Magnificent Uselessness in response to a crisis that never existed and against which he will take no action. This is absolutely beautiful. Hey Tim, just be thankful you aren't paying Gavin Schmidt's salary too. posted by Dave at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)
| TrackBacks (0) Saturday, May 1, 2010
The president's umbrella policy sucks!
President Obama is in town today to speak at the University of Michigan's commencement ceremony. (Something that was hard not to notice, as I live a block and a half from the stadium, and the commotion upset Coco.) I don't know what it means to true believers in the new One World Religion of Environmentalism, but I thought I should report that it is raining, and there have been thunderstorms this morning. Coco absolutely refuses to go outside. A local news report bearing the headline -- "Storms dampen graduation: 'Numerous thunderstorms' coming through Ann Arbor as Obama commencement dawns" -- was nice enough to feature this picture (which allowed me to stay inside for the time being): According to the report, the students are getting drenched, and the Weather Service was unavailable for comment: The National Weather Service issued a hazardous weather outlook early this morning for Ann Arbor, warning that "numerous thunderstorms" are headed toward the region.No umbrellas? I wonder if they'd let me in if I called mine a parasol. Anyway, I don't know how to interpret the auspices. Considering that angry Latinos were walking all the way from Detroit to demonstrate, perhaps the god Tlaloc decided to weigh in. OTOH, there are a lot of people of Scandinavian descent in this area (including yours truly), and perhaps their collective irritation started Thor rumbling. Anyway, the weather is notoriously fickle, and it the storm could lighten up or get worse. If the sun breaks out, I'm sure someone will think that's an omen of some sort, as weather has, you know, become a major religious issue. Regardless of what the gods have in store for the lightbringer, I have to feel a bit sorry for the poor students: Umbrellas ought to be a human right. MORE: I went to the stadium and watched the president's speech, which is on CSPAN. He defended the role government, and issued a call for civility. I thoroughly disagree with his view of the role of government, but I thought he made some good points about civility. The Latinos outside were making a lot of noise, while the Tea Partiers were quiet, and it was obvious who could benefit the most from his lecture. AND MORE: For the past half hour someone has been flying over my house with a plane tugging what is either an anti-abortion protest sign or else a spoof of some sort. Here's the plane: And here's the sign it was tugging (I couldn't get them both in the same picture): I'm still thinking about what it might mean. (I've probably been struggling with the meanings of things for too long.) posted by Eric at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)
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