Ixian Heresy

Trade imbalances

2012-01-27T14:16:00.001-06:00

A couple of assumptions before I start. 1) Humans are humans, despite any differences in color, eye shape, size, affluence, or geography. 2) Manufacturing is the basis of real wealth in the current quasi-capitalistic global economic system.

So the question is, what allows Americans to think they can do business with countries that we’ve assaulted? I call your attention to Pearl Harbor. We exacted our revenge (and so much more) on Japan, and there are still people who won’t buy Japanese goods on the basis of what happened on Dec 7, 1941.

I also want to point out the other, more recent attack on American soil. This was so traumatic that we are still surrendering ever more civil liberties as our fearless leaders continue shouting “Terrorists!” We wouldn’t buy anything Afghani except perhaps opiate derivatives. We probably won’t for decades.

And yet, we think nothing of doing business with people we have victimized. In the 2^nd Opium War, the Sino-Japanese War, and the Boxer Rebellion, we landed troops and killed Chinese citizens (estimates vary, but possibly hundreds each time). In the process, the government and the culture was humiliated by the loss of prestige and power. In Vietnam, we were indiscriminate and killed South and North Vietnamese alike by the tens of thousands (if not more). We destroyed whole villages and decimated large swaths of jungle with defoliants.

Have we ever stopped to consider why people who, given assumption (1) above, have every reason to hate us, and want vengeance on us, would do business with us? Even if one makes the (rash) assumption that our economy is too robust and large to be destroyed by reducing the manufacturing sector to less than 10%, one could point out that the appetite for conflict would be seriously reduced if it meant the population would lose the luxuries to which it is accustomed.

A republic can wage war only for a limited time without popular support. Despite the admittedly skilled and immense propaganda machine the virtual oligarchy has created, there are limits – and the loss of luxuries would significantly reduce the effectiveness of that machine. I posit these calculations might enter into a “formerly” hostile government’s decision to trade with us. They get our money and reduce our industrial capacity (wealth creation). Seems reminiscent of some birds and a stone…

2011-10-20T16:52:00.004-05:00

This is for OWS and any "Occupy" activists to use as they wish.

Terrorism and Climate Change

2010-04-14T15:06:00.001-05:00

We live in the home of the brave - so it says in our national anthem.
Personally, I believe it. Or, perhaps, it should say "the home of the
foolhardy." We are facing a true existential threat. We are facing a
danger not only to our way of life, but our very lives. Yet we are
calm, almost complacent. We care so little for this threat, that we
instead are spending blood and treasure at fantastic rates trying to
eliminate a nuisance.

This nuisance is asymmetrical warfare. Be it by hardware or software,
this nuisance has only a remote possibility of affecting our lives. The
chance of actually being killed by a terrorist is miniscule. It is
about on par with winning a multi-million-dollar lottery. Which I
suppose means if you have ever won the Big Lottery, you should probably
spend it all on security, as unlikely things seem to happen to you.

By contrast, the chance that climate change will affect our way of life
is nearing certainty, "ClimateGate" notwithstanding. We will have to
find new sources of energy. We will have to suffer through droughts,
unfamiliar weather, and flooding. If we don't act now, and
precipitously, there is a high probability we will have significant
social upheaval as these weather phenomena become truly catastrophic.
The droughts will become desertification of large swaths of the US.
Late frosts and early winters will kill crops. Warm winters will let
voracious insects thrive. Flooding will drown our shores. And that's
the short term. The longest-range models indicate that we'll bring an
early and brutal ice age upon ourselves.

USA - home of the brave, the foolhardy, and the stupid. We are busy
bashing ourselves with a hammer to kill a few ants crawling on us, while
the grizzly bear is tying a napkin around his neck.

Momentary occasion

2010-04-14T12:33:00.001-05:00

Today I sheltered
under a tree and its wizened regard.
The white blossomed dome
sweetly scented of the early springtime.
I was again blessed
When a soft petal caressed my face.
It paused on my arm
a tentative touch, intimate moment,
then it fell to earth.

Economy April 2010

2010-04-01T06:51:00.001-05:00

The three decades of off-shoring has crippled our economy. I suspect
the "green shoots" in the economy everyone seems to be talking about is
really mold. Some things grow on a corpse, after all. I just wonder
when people will realize it.

I'm in an industry that is kept afloat by thinly veiled subsidies. I
don't know how long that will last, but the greybeards around here say
we'll be fine for the next 3-4 years. I'm doing OK right now, so I'll
take it for now. I hope that some of the green industries get rolling
so I can get a more moral and more sustainable job someday. I hate that
a lot this company's income is defense-related. It makes me feel like a
hypocrite. It wouldn't be so bad if they had a space-related business.

Obama in April 2010

2010-04-01T06:50:00.001-05:00

I knew as soon as he voted for FISA changes in summer '08 that he was
just another corporatist stooge and not really the "change" guy we need.
He's a damn sight better than the alternatives (Bush, McCain) but that
isn't a high bar.

I'm exceedingly disappointed with his civil liberties approach, which is
part-and-parcel of the war policy in these days where "terrorism" is the
only thing people pay attention to. I think the whole bailout strategy
really wasn't his, but I've noticed he doesn't change things any more
than he has to. It kept the economy from continuing its free fall, and
that is "good enough" for him, I guess. I've commented on Salon's How
the World Works column that I wish they'd have let the economy crash.
Then we could have pulled out of the wars and fixed the banks for good -
because we couldn't have afforded to do anything else. But I suspect
that is why they didn't let that happen.

Marry a geek, ladies

2010-04-01T06:45:00.001-05:00

I have it on several good authorities that you should settle down with a
geek.

These authorities are women who've dated the "bad boys" and eventually
fell in love with a geek.

Geeks are loving and dependable mates, like a good dog. You could do
worse.

Like the guy who unFriended his girlfriend on Facebook, while still
married to his wife - from whom he was supposed to get a divorce, having
gotten money from the selfsame girlfriend for that purpose. Or the one
who beat his girlfriend. Or the one who blamed his wife for everything,
even (especially) if it was his fault. (All true stories, by the way.)

Just sayin'.

I contributed to a Tea Partier

2010-03-31T19:03:00.000-05:00

Is that crazy? I contributed to Rand Paul's Senate campaign. Why would I do this?

Because at least Paul (unlike his primary opponent) will be a
vocal, national critic of the "war on terra(tm)" (which has been such a stupidly done and Orwellian venture) and possibly against the
surveillance state being built as well.

I think terrorists need police to fight them, not armies. If we'd given the FBI and NSA half the money spent on the two wars, and refused to let the NSA eavesdrop on US citizens*, those agencies would have reduced terrorism to below nuisance level by now.

*(making sure they spent their resources on monitoring foreigners, like they are supposed to)

I know that Wailin’ Palin among other wingnut “luminaries” have supported him too.

My idea is that the more we can drive a wedge between the isolationist and war-mongering factions of the Republican party, the better.

You know how politics makes strange bedfellows? Never were truer words spoken. If we can get Republicans to disagree with each other on foreign policy, then maybe there is some hope of destroying the Cold War/War on Terror Republican consensus.

Besides, a Democrat is a snowball in hell (KY). I figure I’m funding a referendum on imperialist ambitions. I am gambling that one Tea Party candidate is enough to shake things up. I doubt he could do much damage, even if elected. Cf. Ron Paul. :-D

The Real ENEMY

2010-03-10T05:14:00.000-06:00

Liberals, conservatives, Tea Party, libertarians, progressives, and moderates should all unite against the common enemy – corporatists.

Senator Dick Durbin (a Democrat!) admitted that the banks own the Democratic Congress. That is why, even though the Big Banks caused the most devastating meltdown of the economy in 80 years, they still haven’t been decisively regulated. If it hadn’t been for us (the taxpayers) bailing them out, the economy would have ground to a halt. No reputable economist disagrees with that. (Personally, I was ready to let them fail anyway.)

Corporations have been evading taxes - by incorporating in Bermuda and every other place, by writing a tax code that gives them loopholes and takes armies of lawyers to sort through.

Corporations have been sending jobs out of the US since the early 80’s (or before). This sped up with NAFTA, and went even faster by granting China “Most Favored Nation” (MFN) status. NAFTA was written by and negotiated by the Bush (Sr.) administration and pushed through the Senate by Clinton (both corporatists). MFN was granted to China by a Republican Congress and Clinton.

Corporations have been raking in money hand over fist from the war in Iraq (the Iraq war is not associated with Terrorism. George W. Bush himself admitted that -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spXMfBud0lQ) for nearly 7 years. They’ve been doing this at the expense of our youth in uniform and our ever-expanding national debt.

Congress is full of corporatists. There are only a handful of exceptions – including Ron Paul and Alan Grayson. It will only get worse now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same rights as people to have free speech, and that money equals free speech.

It is time to take our country back from the corporations. It is time we unelected everyone in Congress. Because right now, every Democrat and every Republican is guilty of being a corporatist until proven innocent. Including the “socialist” Democrats and every “it’s bad for business” filibustering Republican.

We have to make a pact with each other. Don’t vote for anyone who’s taken one red cent from a corporation, or their PACs.

I’m ready to do that.

NHS Wargamers

2010-02-18T20:40:00.002-06:00

Guys - unless you find the Bryan Hayward married to an Ellen, you have the wrong one.

Corporations - don't pay taxes

2010-01-07T04:27:00.003-06:00

Instead, the Federal government should own 15% of whatever type of stock a company uses to pay dividends and whatever type of stock it uses to apportion voting power. This is part and parcel of the incorporation process or even private ownership.

The state government gets 10% of both.

Corporations from foreign nations must incorporate in the US and provide the US government 1% per state financial and voting stake (i.e. 50%) to do business here.

End of story. No taxes, no loophole games. If a company makes money, so do the American people. If not, then it is an automatic tax break. Fair and simple.

Atheism and "mainstream" theology

2009-04-29T05:47:00.002-05:00

In his review, Andrew O'Hehir writes (emphasis mine):

Still, [Terry Eagleton] is incontestably correct about two things: There is a long Judeo-Christian theological tradition that bears no resemblance to the caricature of religious faith found in [Dawkins and Hitchens], and atheists tend to take the most degraded and superstitious forms of religion as representative. It's a little like judging the entire institution of heterosexual marriage on the basis of Eliot Spitzer's conduct as a husband.

Many secular intellectuals, for instance, have claimed as Christian doctrine "the idea that God is some kind of superentity outside the universe, that he created the world rather as a carpenter might create a stool; that faith in this God means above all subscribing to the proposition that he exists; that there is a real me inside me called the soul, which a wrathful God may consign to hell if I am not egregiously well-behaved; that our utter dependency on this deity is what stops us thinking and acting for ourselves; that this God cares deeply about whether we are sinful or not, because if we are then he demands to be placated."

As Eagleton knows, some Christian believers, especially in the various strains of fundamentalism, would subscribe to most if not all of those propositions. But he's right that from the perspective of the past several centuries' worth of mainline Protestant and Catholic theology, none of those statements is true.

If so, many people who call themselves Christians seem to be woefully ignorant of what their theologians think - and apparently do not believe them. Whose fault is that? I would blame the clergy, since it is their job to translate to the flock what "The Faith" is supposed to be.

If you look at our popular culture, what do people believe?

"God is a concept of love that makes the world possible and allows it to make sense to us"
OR
"God is a really powerful person who loves us, but he'll send bad people to Hell and good people to Heaven."

I think you'll find a rather large proportion who don't even know what the first one means, and the second one rather popular.

So to say that people like Dawkins are arguing against straw men is itself a straw man. Dawkins et al are arguing against the popular conception of religion, for good reason. The popular conception of religion is what people act on, and it is how they are manipulated. Ivory tower theologians don't burn people at the stake, or try to insert creationism into school textbooks. That is the province of howling mobs whipped into a frenzy by an expert on popular sentiment with regard to religion (or politics, or whatever). Dawkins et al are arguing that people reject the dangerous but ubiquitous memes.

IMHO, that is a worthy goal.

FIgures...

2009-04-24T16:21:00.002-05:00

Plenty of money for banks. None for the average person. (snark) Why fix the cause of the meltdown? Let's just keep treating the symptoms. (/snark)

I am trying hard to understand how people haven't exploded with rage. I'm personally angry enough to march on Washington at a moment's notice. Carrying a sign that says "Government for the People, not for the banks"

Trade Deficit and liquidity crisis

2009-04-10T23:08:00.002-05:00

A further fall in imports and the trade deficit will have several salutary effects. [] it will make it easier to fix the financial system, since banks and other financial institutions will not be funneling so much foreign money into the U.S. economy.

I'm confused. How will reducing the influx of money help a liquidity crisis? I don't get where Mandel is going with this.

As for the manufacturing base, I agree with Fred.

I'll go a step further. The stimulus package will not work, since it doesn't have a US content proviso.

The way government procurement works, the lowest bidder (e.g. those using Chinese steel and Mexican asphalt) will get the work. When the work is done, the US manufacturing sector will not have gained a thing, so there will be little residual economic activity.

There will be an extremely expensive temporary bump while the work is being done. Then we will be back where we started.

If this sounds like protectionism, it is not. However, it is very clear that US manufacturing is not (and hasn't for a long while) competing on level ground. It isn't protectionism to point out that other countries have been subsidizing their industry for a long time, and that the US has been giving tax credits for doing the opposite.

No Free Lunch for McMansion Owners

2009-02-16T16:42:00.002-06:00

Andrew Leonard at How the World Works wrote:

But I'm also intrigued by a theme...that it is somehow unfair to the rest of us to bail out homeowners who are in houses that they can't afford. I really think we are far beyond the point where worrying about what is fair or unfair is relevant to the challenges we face.

Why is fairness irrelevant? The unfair treatment of the middle-class by the rich is very much part of this issue. If we don’t fix it, it will just happen again.

If we can’t afford to send the McMansion owners to the bread/soup lines, then how about they help with the mess? We loan them the money to pay off their mortgages, in the same way we loan people money to go to school. The interest is capitalized, and they don’t make payments until they can afford to (i.e. when they are no longer unemployed – and payment is scaled to income). But they *still owe the money* and the taxpayers can get paid back at least a portion of the loan. If they die before the loan is paid off, enough assets are confiscated to pay the loan.

Why not make the home they couldn't afford (by all reasonable measures) an albatross around their neck? In our rush to fix things, we should not fail to consider strategies to penalize greed and stupidity. Why penalize the people who did their level best to stay within their budget? I personally had plenty of mortgage brokers willing to fund loans that would have far exceeded the proper 33% one should budget for loan, taxes, insurance, etc. I resisted that temptation.

If someone lost their job, that is different. People whose total house payment was less than 33% of their income (the number our financial advisor recommended) do not fall in this category.

I understand we can't cut off our nose to spite our face. But I bitterly and deeply resent the idea that I have to help someone else pay for their McMansion. They should not be allowed to avoid the consequences for getting bogus loans and buying way more house than they needed or could afford. We need to cut off *their* nose.

Executive Compensation Caps

2009-02-05T04:32:00.004-06:00

On NPR, some "compensation consultant" was saying how no one with these "rather rare skills" (running a global financial company) would want to work for so little money.

What NPR didn't ask was "Do these rare skills include running your company into the ground?"

By their own admission, "none of them saw it coming." However, I predicted a market crash on 12/13/06 (I have the chat with a friend archived for proof). So, I (an engineer making less than 6 figures) predicted what all these 8-figure brain trusts couldn't see coming.

So tell me again - why do they deserve these outrageous salaries?

The consultant was also saying how these people are living a lifestyle based on an expected income, and it would be a hardship to take such a drastic pay cut. Well, no kidding.

But if you don't save for a rainy day, why should we believe you know what the weather will do? Obviously, you think the rest of your life will be sunshine. Such people go to sanitariums (snark) for tender care by well-paid, empathic people in a top-notch, lightly burdened medical system. (/snark)

The rest of us are waiting with bated breath for our income to go to zero as companies are slashing and burning their "human resources." So to have one's income go "down to" $500K isn't going to garner any sympathy.

NPR shows its Beltway

2008-11-19T19:07:00.003-06:00

The odious Mara Liasson was on again today, with what I'm sure the Beltway thought was a "balanced" piece. She was "exploring" how "the liberal blogosphere" and "centrist" Democrats are perceiving signals coming from the Obama transition team. Should he direct his administration as if it were 1932 or 1992? She said people don't trust government like they did in 1932 (yeah, right!) so he needs to spend time building trust before he does anything big.

Ignoring the fact that trust in government couldn't be very great in the middle of a severe economic crisis, now or then, anyone with half a brain could find a dozen writers who have nailed why the government is so distrusted - especially by grass-roots Democrats. The 8% approval rate of Congress is directly due to the Democrats caving to Bush on every important issue (h/t Glenn Greenwald).

Let us assume the Republican media machine was successful in painting Obama as liberal. It has been successful in doing that to every "centrist" (corporatist) Democrat in the last 20 years. How is it that Obama won by a large margin of the popular vote? It must mean people want liberal.

How that fact escaped Liasson I can't imagine, unless she doesn't do any analysis, just spews Beltway conventional wisdom.

My Response to "What's Wrong with Science as Religion"

2008-07-31T18:30:00.000-05:00

Is Salon inviting these essays to boost its page views? I can see no purpose to these "let's make science and religion into peacefully co-existing entities" essays. At their core, science and religion are *different.* Science is the presumption we can find the truth. Religion is the presumption we know the truth. That is rather difficult dichotomy to reconcile. I'd almost say impossible, except for the ability of the human mind to hold two completely contradictory beliefs simultaneously without crashing the system. ;-) In his attempt to bring science down to the religious level, where it merely is another myth, Giberson is apparently unaware of science's true power to awe and inpire - the hard-won discovery of truth. My science classes gave me more sense of wonder than any temple, save that of the snow-covered woods where I grew up. The quiet and peace, with the grace of snowflakes falling about me, is the only cathedral worth the name. Artificial places of worship are crass, vulgar, pale imitations. There's *my* religious statement, if you were wondering.

If religion insists that science be a polite guest in its house, then the reverse must also be true. Honestly, I don't care if someone is religious or has "faith" in something. The deeper question is, am I required to alter my beliefs, my wisdom, and my behavior because someone else makes faith claims? If so, why don't they have to give equal weight to my scientific claims? Let me be clear - people routinely dismiss scientific claims because they hold beliefs contrary to the evidence. They also routinely require I change my behavior based on their beliefs. Until they are required by custom to do the same, or to keep their beliefs as private thoughts and feelings to be shared only with the like-minded, then faith and religion gets no pass from me.

Giberson finally asks about his beliefs being dangerous. Beliefs aren't dangerous - it is imposing them on others that is. As long as he doesn't try to create a Christian nation out of his beliefs, he isn't dangerous. As long as he doesn't encourage others to stop thinking because they reach a point of ignorance, then he's not dangerous. As long as he doesn't let people throw up their hands and give up the search for knowledge because "God" as an answer is easier, he isn't dangerous. As long as he doesn't claim to know the Truth, he isn't dangerous.

Religion (ideally) requires faith, by definition. Science (ideally) attempts to reduce the need for faith as much as possible, by making hypotheses that are falsifiable. If someone makes falsifiable claims, then it becomes subject to science. If they make claims that are not falsifiable, they they are making a faith claim, and it is not subject to science.

What difference does it make to say there is a god "at the beginning"? This god is unknowable, unprovable, and super- (or supra-)natural. You have done nothing valid. You have simply pushed the argument back one step. Intellectual honesty requires you ask "what was before the Prime Mover?" and you get an answer not a quantum different than the one you get when you ask a scientist what was "before" the universe. To wit: "That question has no meaning." The question of "origin" itself may be indeed meaningless, for all we know. Or it may require much deeper knowledge of our universe than we can imagine right now.

Watch those trendy atheists...

2008-07-20T21:09:00.002-05:00

Response to this article on religion.

...They're getting elected to office, sitting on the Supreme Court, getting their own television shows, and marginalizing religion everywhere.

Oh, wait a minute...NO THEY ARE NOT.

Being an atheist is an instant death sentence to any political, entertainment, or public service ambitions.

So - STFU. Atheists are still the one group it is politically correct to persecute into silence.

Until *that* injustice is taken care of, religion isn't the one that needs rescuing.

If you don't like what "true believers" are doing to your religion, start your own, and leave them to their own devices.

No compromises needed, thanks.

Benefits of Food Charity

2008-04-24T19:06:00.001-05:00

A drastic shortage of butter in Japan is providing the hook for some gloomy stories about the future of food in one of the richest nations of the world. Forget about Haiti or Kazakhstan -- Japan, too, is experiencing a food crisis...Just two years ago, a vast milk surplus in Japan forced local dairy farmers to literally pour raw milk down the drain and kill off excess dairy cows.

How to fix this? Maybe the Japanese government should have bought the excess (not at retail!!) and sent it to starving third-world nations. They might now still have a dairy herd.

The US has been doing this (sort of) for years. Subsidized food has been sent to food banks for poor Americans. It isn't a huge step to send it to nations enduring a famine.

One Cost of Privacy Loss

2008-03-27T15:17:00.001-05:00

In the movie "Sleeping with the Enemy" Julia Roberts' character "Laura" escapes her abusive husband "Martin" (played by Patrick Bergin) by faking her death, moving far away, and changing her name. She lives a relatively peaceful life and begins dating a nice guy until her husband realizes she isn't dead. Some time later, a private detective finds her, and a tense cat-and-mouse game ensues.

In our modern world of privacy loss, pioneered by massive information-sharing by private interests and little-to-no restraint on information-gathering by the government (passport file snooping, anyone?), "Laura" wouldn't have had the chance to meet her nice guy. "Martin" would have found her in less than a day after hiring the PI. If "Martin" had an insurance policy on "Laura," he would have found out she was still alive the day he filed a claim.

This fictional scenario clearly illustrates the problem with the loss of privacy, even in cases much less extreme than someone faking death to escape an abusive relationship. Every day, people file restraining orders against their abusers, only to have them ignored. In some cases, violence ensues and, in the more notorious cases, leads to death. Can these people run from their abusers? They might or might not be safe outside national borders, but a few hundred dollars to a PI will find them quickly and easily anywhere inside the US.

Anonymity in the modern era seems impossible, but is privacy too much to ask? I would think privacy issues would be front-and-center for advocacy groups trying to help the abused. If any private dick can point the abuser at a shelter where a victim has taken refuge, it seems as though the current law is hindering the wrong sort of terrorist.

Counter-Wurlitzer tactics

2008-03-05T15:59:00.001-06:00

Steven Rockford on Glenn Greenwald's comment section said…"[Bush's] campaign strategists had so successfully painted him as being a generally nice guy who would get us away from the media circus. More importantly, the strategists had managed to hide his many shortcomings (or at least had reduced them to unfair tabloid gossip)."

I wonder if that is a clue for how to deal with the RWNM. Manufacture a bunch of ludicrous "scandals" that get the Limbaugh-Drudge-Politico treatment. Make them mutually exclusive if possible, and load them up simultaneously to different RWNM outlets. For good measure, spoof them so they appear to be from the GOP talking points generators.

They are so fast in spreading the nonsense, they'll wind up contradicting each other and effectively negating the whole machine. Or, at least, they won't know which story to spread, so the whole damn Wurlitzer isn't saying the same thing. This will seriously degrade its effectiveness.

“It’s the trade deficit, dummy”…

2008-02-25T14:09:00.001-06:00

… to paraphrase the 1992 campaign. If the promise of free trade actually was fulfilled, why would I give a damn if we make a megaton of one dollar widgets or a ton of million-dollar widgets? There would still be jobs available, and we wouldn't be attempting to sustain a trade deficit with credit cards.

Anyone with a normal intelligence and a modicum of ambition will be able to cross-train into a different job. Sure they'll gripe, but everyone does, about everything. No biggie.

What I'm exercised about is that we have a very small (and shrinking) manufacturing base, one that is most definitely not exporting anywhere near as much as we're importing (even leaving out oil).

We're supposed to be happy with a "service economy."

A) I don't think there is such a thing. Services seem parasitic to me, not productive. There may be another way of creating (releasing? liquidating?) wealth other than the classic capitalist system (i.e. making widgets), but I don't see any evidence of such a system. The service sector obeys the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics. There are always losses in any system, and I'm not aware of any wealth creation in the service sector to offset those losses. As a result, even a highly efficient service sector will eventually bleed wealth until the economy dies.

B) Even if there is some sort of magic formula that creates wealth in a service economy, look at the wage disparities between worker and CEO. As bad as they are in the manufacturing sector, they are even worse in the service sector. A service economy is a fast track to a third-world economy of the superrich and the very poor, with very little in between.

So how long can we send our wealth outside the country? Especially when accelerated by the losses inherent in a service economy?

That is what I think will happen, and that is the scenario that paints a future picture of the once-great USA. This future HUSE (Holy United States Empire) is a large but meaningless backwater nation.

Republicans soft on Terra.

2008-01-16T16:47:00.001-06:00

Because we just know Republicans are better on the eeeevul terra-ists than those wishy-washy Democrats. (/snark)

The former Republican congressman from Michigan, Mark Deli Siljander, was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and obstructing justice for allegedly lying about lobbying senators on behalf of an Islamic charity that authorities said was secretly sending funds to terrorists.

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2008/01/16/D8U767QO0_ex_congressman_indicted/index.html

Telecommuting

2008-01-13T10:34:00.000-06:00

I know someone who is telecommuting. I think in a way, she'd rather be in the office. She gets all of the disadvantages of working (some less-than-attentive colleagues, having to be available for them at particular times, frustrations of software and hardware not working correctly) without any of the advantages (leaving home for a while, social interaction). An odd sort of thing - most people think telecommuting is 100% good news. I guess the 'grass is always greener' etc. Maybe some combination of telecommuting and actual office time is ideal.

Who knows.

COBRA

2008-01-13T10:33:00.000-06:00

I looked into COBRA insurance between my employments. I was stunned at the prices. It is a rip-off. It is a way for people to say there is health insurance available, without actually having to provide meaningful help to the unemployed. Not everyone (and I include myself in this category) is prepared for sudden unemployment. I only survived those few months because of a rather generous severance package. If I'd gotten COBRA I would have had a lot less leeway during that time. I'd have been under immense pressure to get a job *immediately* - somewhere where I didn't want to go, someplace I didn't want to work. It makes one wonder if that is the whole point. Corporations don't want people to have the breathing room to wait for better circumstances of employment.

The economy, stupid

2008-01-13T10:30:00.001-06:00

I've said to others that the current economic trends aren't sustainable. I've discussed with people on infidels.org why they thought the trade deficit wasn't a problem. Their answers ranged from "how small it is compared to the overall trade numbers" to how Americans "sell business model systems" and so all will be OK. None of these eased my mind. The trade deficit bothers me because it seems like we're shipping wealth out of the country. I think these people think there is an unlimited amount of wealth in our nation, and we just have to liberate it or produce it or whatever if we need to pay off a debt. My argument has always been that a service economy (which we are) is, at best, redistributing wealth, not creating it. As our manufacturing dies by leaps and bounds (and shipped elsewhere, i.e. China) we are in fact destroying our ability to create wealth (in the traditional capitalist system).

I'm not saying there aren't other ways of defining and producing/distributing wealth, but it requires a whole new system, one we haven't implemented to my knowledge.

Combine this with the massive government debt, this seems like burning the candle at both ends. Even if the service economy is generating wealth (I don't think so, but just for argument's sake) then the government must be skimming it off, since that money is going to buy a lot of (military) hardware - much of which is made elsewhere because we have so little manufacturing left.

I've said that if we don't do something about the trade and government deficits, we are in for a hard time. I am loathe to offer advice regarding your parents' inheritance. If what we're experiencing now has any relation to early 1929, then I'd say hold off investing until the market crashes. Then you'd be in good shape 10 years after the crash. If this economic situation is indeed unique, then I don't know how to advise you. The market is relatively immune to "normal" inflation (under 25%) as far as I know. But what if there is a depression? The market would suffer greatly under deflation. What if the US is really on the precipice of a real fall, like what happened to the Roman empire? I don't know if there is a financial strategy for that. My best guess is a diversified international set of investments. I personally am not too jazzed about American prospects right now. But that is today. My optimism/pessimism is rather mercurial. ;-)

And, I am not an economist.

Why conservatives and liberals should agree

2007-11-13T14:28:00.000-06:00

For argument’s sake alone, let’s assume we the People accept the idea that Shrubby is an honest person who would never, ever use tyrannical powers on purpose against an innocent person. Let’s say he specifically only wanted to use things like denial of travel, warrantless wiretapping, suspension of habeas corpus, or torture on terrorists.

The fact is, several people have had such tactics used against them, by the USA, and they were innocent. So, in Alberto Gonzales’ famous words, “mistakes were made.”

Conservatives admit their man isn’t perfect. I’ve heard hard-core Chimperor supporters admit there are a few decisions they don’t like. So, with an imperfect person, imperfect decisions are going to happen. Given more power, this will lead to more bad outcomes. Conservatives will also gleefully point out that a liberal isn’t going to be perfect either (something liberals will admit readily and without rancor). I can’t imagine conservatives want a liberal with the kind of power they are willing to give to the Chimperator.

Thus, for a man to deserve absolute power (such as what Congress seems bent on providing the office of the President) he must have absolute wisdom (or be directed by someone who has such wisdom). Only the prophets/avatars of the major religions are credited with such guidance (Muhammed, Jesus, Buddha). Unless Dumbya supporters plan on crediting him with being the New Messiah, it should be a simple thing – no one deserves to be absolute ruler.

Let’s follow that a moment. If the Boy King isn’t the Messiah, maybe he’s the Beast. That would fit. Those who died in his wars are “raptured.” The rest of us will suffer the Hell on Earth he’s brought upon us for quite some time to come. I certainly don’t see a Messiah on the horizon.

Silly human

2007-11-02T08:43:00.000-05:00

I feel really self-contemptuous. I have so much, but want more.

I have a good, new job, and a measure of financial security. I have a wife that loves and needs me so desperately it is annoying at times. I have great kids. I have fabulous friends. My parents and sister are loving and I enjoy spending time with them.

Yet I find myself wondering why it isn't enough. Pains from the past (rejection by my first true love, etc.) shout to make themselves heard. I want more free time.

I live in the most secure nation on earth - no barbarian hordes or rogue states threaten us (despite the hysteria of the neocons and the press). Yet, the freedoms being lost at an astounding rate induce near despair when I think of the loss of our Republic.

The worst part, is I know that humans are never happy with what they have, and always want more. But it doesn't help to know that.

I feel like an ungrateful, greedy schmuck. But one who wants more.

What that wireless commercial should have said.

2007-11-01T07:59:00.000-05:00

“Victor Zulu Whiskey Telecommunications, how may I help you?”

“Hi, I need help. I need to figure out how to get from soccer, to basketball, to ballet, to piano lessons! Sometimes, I need to go from ballet to soccer, and from piano to basketball.”

“No worries, ma’am. For most people, we’d recommend a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system. But in your case, we’ll send someone right over.”

“Really? Isn’t a personal guide expensive?”

“Not a guide – a repo man. At no charge. Our reward will be knowing someone as stupid as you will not in be control of a two-ton death machine.”

On CIA agents

2007-10-15T15:32:00.000-05:00

What about the people who carry out the abductions? I refer, of course, to the CIA agents who take people overseas for torture.

If they are former military, they took the same oath I did. Nothing in that oath excuses thuggish behavior, *especially* against citizens of the US. And yes, I believe they are still bound by that oath, precisely since they still work for the government (i.e. are theoretically working for the people).

If they did not take that oath, did they take any pledge regarding their overall behavior? Does the CIA require its operatives to obey the law? If not, why not?

Yet, with all the discussions about legal challenges to "extraordinary rendition" etc., I think something important has been lost.

Laws notwithstanding, who are we hiring as operatives?

What kind of person can abduct others, treat them so harshly, all while knowing full well what awaits them at the destination? (Or, it must be said, possibly do the torture themselves.) The answer is obvious - there are plenty of such people who worked for the Soviet KGB and the Nazi Gestapo. What business does our government have hiring such people? They should be in jail or in a mental ward for treatment, not profiting from their utter imperviousness to others' suffering.

I suppose this is the ultimate consequence of hiring not for competence and character, but for loyalty. Since that currency is the only one recognized by the Chimperator, I suppose it just flows down naturally from there.

Apparently, the Constitution means as little to these CIA agents as it does to Shrubby.

Rome burns...

2007-10-15T15:30:00.000-05:00

The Roman Empire may have had lead pipes contributing to its downfall, and it took a few hundred years for it to teeter and then collapse.

So what accounts for the US crashing and burning so quickly? It has only been 15 years since the US pulled away from its last real competition for hegemony.

I guess that is what happens when you let right-wingers dictate the debate. (Are you listening, M$M? I thought not.)

Tommy - Updated for today

2007-09-27T08:13:00.000-05:00

With sincerest apologies to Rudyard Kipling.

-------------------------------------------------
I went to see a clinic doc, a sympathetic ear,
The doc says “your insurance is good, for only a year.”
The girls at the billing desk, shook heads and heaved a sigh,
“We’ve seen this before,” and to myself say I:

O it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and "Tommy, hip hooray";
But it's “Screw you, Mister Atkins,'' when it comes time to pay,
It has come time to pay, my boys, it has come time to pay,
O it's ”Screw you, Mr. Atkins,'' when it comes time to pay.

I went to register at the state university,
They gave a rich kid a free ride, but hadn't one for me;
They sent me to community, or college technical,
But when it comes to fighting, it’s I who answers the call!

For it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and "Tommy, you’re so fine";
But it's "Nothing here for Atkins" when the money's on the line,
The money's on the line, my boys, the money's on the line,
O it's " Nothing here for Atkins" when the money's on the line.

Yes, talking proud of uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than the uniforms, and they're starvation cheap;
And hiding damaged soldiers, when they're making noise a bit
Is five times better business than parading in full kit.

Then it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and "Tommy how's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin green line of heroes" when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it's "Thin green line of heroes" when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t a thin green line, and we aren't blackhearted fools,
But poor men in barracks,while you count your ill-got jewels;
And if sometimes our conduct isn't all your fancy paints:
Why, poor men in barracks don't grow into plaster saints;

While you shout for war, call peace “treason”, with lies you’ve tightly spinned,
But it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when real war is in the wind,
Real war is in the wind, my boys, real war is in the wind,
O it's "Please to walk in front, sir," when real war is in the wind.

You talk of armor plate for us, tools, and a phone card call:
We'll wait for that, and the rest of what you owe us all.
Don’t mess around with bullshit talk, put money in its place
That Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and "No cash for the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of his country," when the guns begin to shoot;
And it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloody fool - you bet that Tommy sees!
----------------------------------------------------------------

Please, please – go here http://www.web-books.com/classics/poetry/anthology/Kipling/Tommy.htm and consider how little has changed. Though lots of people now talk about supporting the troops, a little research will tell you they don’t get the medical and educational benefits they did, even out of Vietnam. They get better treatment verbally from the citizens. That is the only thing that has changed for the good.

Random gripes

2007-09-27T08:12:00.000-05:00

I got cut off by someone with a specialty “In God We Trust” license plate. How appropriate. - 9/27/07

Fitness over Forty

2007-09-25T08:20:00.000-05:00

It’s not easy for a 40-year-old to start a fitness regimen. I have made some progress.

Aerobic rider(1) – went from 100 to 250 reps
On the “machine” (“Nautilus”):
“Pull downs” (behind head) on setting 5 – went from 40 to 60 reps
“Presses” (outer horizontal handles) on setting 10 – went from 10 to 25 reps
“Pull downs” (triceps) on setting 5 – went from 15 to 30 (Only made it to 20 last night)

On an actual bicycle, I’ve been going 1.4 miles. No progress there. I’m just as tired afterward as I was the first ride (taken 7 rides so far). Damn, I miss the pool.

My triceps are telling me I worked them. I should figure out how to work my biceps more to give them a break. No free weights at the apartment’s fitness center, though.

I’d rather be playing a sport for exercise, but

(1) pull with hands, push with feet – the “sex” bicycle from “Look Who’s Talking” - when Olympia Dukakis (Rosie) and Kirstie Alley (Mollie) are talking, and Rosie talks about sex with her husband and starts going faster, in an abstract mime of the sex act. Mollie grosses out when her mother starts talking about sex with her father.

The Beltway Way - TELCO Edition

2007-09-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

It looks like the telcos (telecommunications companies) are putting the heat on Congress, allying themselves with Bushco to pardon everyone for post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping and other illegal spying on US citizens. It also looks like the Democrats have cheerfully sold whatever is left of their ethics to accommodate them. The funny part is that Congress could do the right thing: satisfy the telcos, get their campaign money, and hang Bushco for good. All they have to do is offer the telcos immunity in return for testimony as to exactly what has been going on. But they’d rather do things the corrupt, Belt-way.

Why beer is better than Jesus

2007-09-12T15:35:00.001-05:00

Originally by Steve Berry, according to the 12-year-old printout I have. Hat tip to Adam T. Jewell (at the time, of Univ. of Louisville).

10. No one will kill you for not drinking beer.

9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.

8. Beer has never caused a major war.

7. They don't force beer on minors who can't think for themselves.

6. When you have a beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.

5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured to death over his/her brand of beer.

4. You don't have to wait 2,000+ years for a second beer.

3. There are laws saying that beer labels can't lie to you.

2. You can prove you have a beer.

1. If you have devoted your life to beer, there are groups to help you stop.

Well, it looks like a flop.

2007-09-12T11:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't seen any evidence the general strike did much.

Other than allow me to do some creative writing. ;-)

Rome, Versailles, and Washington, D.C. – Corruption in Capitols

2007-09-10T09:23:00.000-05:00

These cities are not alone in being the rotten, black hearts of their empires. There are/were others.

It seems to me corruption and authoritarianism, walking hand in hand, flourish first in capitol cities. The concentration of courtiers and the powerful seems to create a bubble of perception, only susceptible to the barbarian hordes at the gate.

In pre-technological times, this was a necessary evil. For the government to be able to work at all, the maximum distance between government institutions was a fast morning carriage ride away.

In our modern day of the Internet, faxes, air travel, and (when we get off our lazy duffs and do this) bullet trains, the necessity for this proximity disappears. The benefits of not having government institutions in the same place become paramount.

I propose we split our capitol into approximately 3 parts. Congress should move to Chicago, St. Louis, or New Orleans (N.O seems like a good choice. Chances are they’d get the funding to rebuild their city faster). The Supreme Court should move to L.A. or San Francisco.

There are several advantages to this. 1) No single terrorist attack could cripple all three branches of government. 2) The civil servants and political reporters/pundits would be more likely to run into people NOT a member of the Beltway class. 3) The people would have easier access to the government. 4) The entire government wouldn’t have to shut down in the case of bad weather in one place. 5) The traffic in the D.C. area would be significantly eased.

Of course, this will not be taken Seriously (at least, not until the barbarian hordes have overrun the Emerald City) precisely because 2 and 3 would happen. The Beltway/Versailles class certainly doesn’t want to mix with the unwashed masses.

Some random links.

2007-09-06T09:12:00.000-05:00

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/09/06/bush_wmd/
Not that we didn't already know, but it is nice to have the confirmation: Shrubby lied about Iraq.

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/05/hemingway/permalink/7681cff39c36ad5c0ec42eea6d81a03d.html
A nice list on Clinton vs. Shrubby on terrorism.

Forgiveness is Powerful

2007-09-06T07:52:00.000-05:00

I have a deal for Democrats. I will give you the benefit of the doubt.

I will assume you are NOT spineless collaborators with authoritarian neoconservatives. I will assume you are NOT complete idiots, and will assume you are NOT screwing over your constituents on purpose.

I will assume that the Terrorist Surveillance Program and all its related programs are doing/have done what Hoover did – developing dossiers on you.

I will assume that, being flawed human beings as we all are, the MalAdministration has blackmailed you into cooperation, using all kinds of things you’d rather not make public.

We, the voters, offer unconditional amnesty for past misdeeds, including (but not limited to) murder, child rape, assault, drug ab/use, rape, incest, lying, cheating, stealing, adultery, any of the 7 deadly sins, or parking tickets.

If the entire Democratic Congress committed 10 acts of each of the above list of crimes/misbehavior, the human cost would still not be anywhere close to the toll in Iraq.

And Iraq would pale in comparison to the damage to the US an attack on Iran would cause.

Our Constitution can handle all of the above cases of human failings.

What our Constitution cannot abide is every single fucking Democratic “Leader” and a large minority of Democrats FAILING to defend it with every fiber of their being.

What the Constitution cannot abide are enablers allowing this MalAdministration and their Republican toadies to run amok.

We, the voters, hereby swear and promise to forgive all past transgressions (including the original AUMF) if you:

1.) Stop an attack on Iran
2.) Set an Iraq withdrawal timeline (a)
3.) Restore the Constitution to its rightful place
4.) Ensure the US meets its treaty obligations (b)

(a) preferably ensuring George Walker Bush takes credit for that war
(b) particularly the Geneva Conventions

Yes, you can do all these things. You can attach these requirements to every single bill until Bush caves. You can all get on the air on every damn TV news show in existence and frame the debate. You have the support of 65% of the country on all these issues, if you’ll pay attention to the damn polls.

It will be obvious that the Busheviks have been playing a Nixon if they start publishing stuff they couldn’t know about unless they were spying on Americans.

We will forgive you and support you, if you act NOW, and DECISIVELY.

If not, you will be considered traitors and collaborators when change finally does come.

That's the deal. Any takers?

That new ultracapacitor

2007-09-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

By EEStor. Sounds like a Shipstone (hat tip - Heinlein), doesn't it?

The following is strictly my opinion - I am not an electrical engineer, nor a patent lawyer; nor do I have any financial or familial interest in EEStor. I am a degreed materials engineer (University of IL 1997).

The one phrase that struck me was "classical ceramic fabrication techniques" where describing how the components are made. Current ultracapacitors are about 400x less efficient than the one claimed here. Far be it from me to be a "nattering nabob of negativity" but I would have thought that a 400x increase would require a corresponding jump in fabrication technology - unless there is some trick here I'm not getting (possible, as I didn't focus on ceramics in college). I was expecting something like aerogel technology, since capacitance is heavily dependent on the surface area. The fabrication may take advantage of some (so-called) nanomaterials technology. So-called nanotechnology is usually a hyperbole as particle sizes are usually only tenths of micrometers (10^-7) rather than truly in the nanoscale (10^-9) range.

One thing I did notice was that they said "For this product to be successful it is mandatory that all voids be removed to assist in ensuring that the high voltage breakdown can be obtained." (I think they meant "high breakdown voltage" here.) Getting rid of "all" voids in a sintered product is almost impossible - I assume they mean "all" in the sense of "below a threshold level" - which may or may not be feasible in scaled-up processes. They did talk about the glass filling in voids, which I suppose is possible - that is one of the tricks I know that can do this (have a low-melting-point material coating your powder to be sintered).

The speed of charge also has the "with proper equipment and line cooling" caveat. This probably means you have to have some serious stuff (including refrigeration and/or liquid nitrogen) to get that kind of speed (4-6 minute charge). (Still, even if it took an hour, it wouldn't be unreasonable for most households.)

The Yahoo article linked above talked about the high voltage the thing runs on, but that doesn't seem like a problem to me - though it changes the equation a bit. Since most house "line" voltage isn't that high, you'd have to "step up" the voltage again or have a line that bypassed the step-down transformers. Most people shouldn't be allowed to mess with 3500V lines. Yes, it is the amps that kill you, but at 3500V it doesn't take that many amps to do the job.

I'd say it is plausible. I'd have to ask some pointed questions if I were to invest money in this, but as the article points out, the people who discovered Google and Amazon are buying into it. (No mention about the ones they invested in that did not do well, however - and unlike the internet, this is "old economy" stuff.) If they actually made a device already and tested it - I'd put the money in blind. Even for static applications (like solar/wind power averaging) that would be a huge boon to the renewable power industry. Even a more robust, half-power version would be worthwhile for cars, I'd think. However, considering their watt-hours (Wh) numbers are calculated and not measured, I'd say they don't have a working prototype at that scale yet. They probably have a small unit they tested, but scaling up laboratory work is quite difficult sometimes. (Ask any plating chemist.)

My Hogwarts House

2007-09-04T16:31:00.000-05:00

Hufflepuff by a hair! (kind of figured - I'm not academically motivated enough to be a Ravenclaw).

Gryffindor 64
Ravenclaw 86
Hufflepuff 88
Slytherin 40

Peace Vigil

2007-08-29T07:34:00.000-05:00

I saved my big Post 200 for something important.

Last night, I went to a peace vigil at 125 Monument Circle in Indianapolis, IN. It was sponsored by MoveOn.org. It was a relatively scripted affair, which I understand because they wanted a relatively uniform message for any press coverage.

I read portions of the script, including the total war toll and the mid- to late-January casualty list. They had no names, which I thought was odd. Others in the audience did too, and someone shouted “Names!” while I was reading. I looked up and told the truth as I saw it. “We were not given names, but every single one is important, no matter who it is.” I then continued reading to the end of January’s list.

I had brought yellow (of course) glow sticks as they had asked us not to bring regular candles. I wore it as I spoke, and carried it around. I gave a little girl in her father’s arms my spare a little way through, as I figured I didn’t need it at that point, and she would have fun with it. Not to mention, it is powerful to see a little girl with a symbol of protest. A bit later, the organizer (“hostess” in MoveOn parlance) asked me if she could have the one I was holding, as she’d had to tell another protester to douse his candle, and he was upset. I thought that was a bold request, but I acquiesced. It didn’t upset me not to carry it as much as the other fellow, I assumed. The hostess was grateful for my participation.

At the time she asked my for my glow stick, I was speaking with another fellow who approached me, asking if I was a preacher. I certainly got a chuckle out of that. I explained that I’d done some amateur theater, though. He acknowledged that by saying we could use more theater at the vigil. He was an older fellow, late 60’s I imagine. He mentioned the rallies in the 60’s were more fun, with folk singers and rabble-rousers. I agreed that we could use some chanting, music, and fiery speeches. While low-key ensures the authorities won’t interfere, it also ensures they won’t listen, either.

I think a general strike is in order. There is a website, strike911.org, and I am going to participate (or not participate, as the case may be). It is something really anti-corporate but peaceful. Not that I expect it to work as well as it does in France and the UK, but I think if a significant number of people don’t go to work and don’t buy anything, it will make a statement.

I feel like a small child.

2007-08-20T08:30:00.000-05:00

But, I don't wantAmerica to be an imperium.

The Foriegn Policy Community: "Shush, child. It will be all right. Just don't look behind that curtain."

At least one adult agrees with me.

Truly sad - not only is the Constitution being used as toilet paper, but now we are trying to decide whether to be a Republic (if you can keep it) or an Imperium.

Life in Connecticut

2007-08-20T06:40:00.000-05:00

My sister Adriane works at the Fairfield Hunt Club in Westport, and her husband works in Milford. As such, they would have to get a house in southern CT just to have a reasonable commute to work. Now, a shack in that area goes for nothing less than $100,000. They'd like to have a house to have kids. That is looking less than feasible at this point.

Not that prices in northwestern CT are much better, but at least there is a chance of getting something reasonable. Now my other sister Amanda and her husband have no plans of having children, ever. But they are in the process of buying a house, 4 bedrooms, 2900 sq. ft.

Welcome to life in CT.

Are we attacking Iran?

2007-08-16T06:29:00.000-05:00

It seems like the drumbeat is getting louder. Now that the Iranian Guards have been labeled "terrorist" - which somewhat akin to the US calling NVA "terrorists" in Vietnam - it seems like they are preparing a pretext for attacking Iran. A really weak, really transparent pretext.

The problem is, short of the military simply saying "no" I don't know if there is a mechanism left for stopping Bushco if they decide to do it. There used to be Congress, but they have rolled over for the MalAdministration too often to be trusted.

The Supreme Court is likewise untrustworthy, having given Shrubby the Presidency in 2000.

Who is left? Only the people, and they are in a drugged stupor, thanks to the impotent or indolent or malignant (all three?) M$M.

Warnings for others - renting apartments

2007-08-14T15:17:00.001-05:00

A few lessons learned about renting an apartment. These are strictly personal opinions.

Do a web search on prospective landlords.
No matter what the owner or manager says, always do a final walkthrough with them there, a day or two before the lease ends. If they refuse, insist they sign a paper that waives their right to keep any part of your deposit.
Obtain a schedule of charges for damage.
Make a written report any deficiencies with an apartment immediately, no matter how trivial, and copy yourself. (Depending on the seriousness of the deficiency, you may want to copy your local housing authority/county health department.)
Beware of apartment managers who have no apparent computer skills, and complete transactions with highly degraded copies of forms, especially if they look like they were done on a typewriter 40 years ago.
Don't rent from Layson Rental Properties (South Meridian Court and Woodruff Place) in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Memo for the Record August 14, 2007

2007-08-14T09:32:00.000-05:00

I hereby list my grievances against the following business:

Layson Rental Properties
8195 North Michigan Road
Indianapolis, Indiana 46268

with regard to:

"South Meridian Court"
3920 South Meridian Street
Apartment #24
Indianapolis, Indiana 46217

and I believe in good faith that these are just grievances.

When I moved into the property, I specifically asked if there was any problem with hanging things on the walls with nails, screws, etc. I was told this was allowed.

Upon moving in, the place needed significant cleaning, including all drawers, cabinets, medicine cabinet, and all closet shelves. There were three (3) decorative ceiling hooks designed to hold chandeliers and other such decoration.

During the time I lived there, there was a smoker in the apartment next door. I know this because the smell of cigarettes was much stronger at various times, and I am not a smoker, and never have been. My wife also noticed the smell permeating my clothing and my effects when I traveled from there to my home in Illinois on weekends. This required special washing in odor removal liquid for laundry, as well as placement of odor masking devices and use of liquid odor removal liquid in the apartment. The smell was tracked to an area of the wall underneath the kitchen sink, which was damaged and allowed smells to migrate between apartments.

There were four (4) separate matters.

The caulk lining the tub/wall interface near the faucet was improperly done, and there was a large area for water to seep into that space.
There was a strong smell of urine in the building entrance hall for a few weeks.
I nearly injured my foot on a rusty nail that was sticking out of the floor, which I removed myself and discarded.
The air conditioner froze up on a number of occasions, though it was in its "cycle" mode and not "continuous cool" mode.

There were no towel racks or hooks of any kind in the bathroom. (There was no shower curtain rod either.) I put up a towel ring and a towel rack. This was to obviate the need to hang the towel on the door, preventing water damage to the door. This required six (6) screw holes. I removed these items when I left.

I gave proper thirty(30)-day written notice for leaving the apartment. I also called in advance of the move dates to ensure I understood the requirements for moving out. At this time, I requested an appointment for a walk-through to ensure the apartment's condition met the manager and/or owner's satisfaction. This request was politely declined by the manager, who claimed there was no need for this. I also did not receive any move-out checklist or form to compare against the apartment's condition. I was told simply that it needed to be clean.

Toward that end, my wife, my son, and I spent considerable time and effort in the cleaning, leaving the apartment in much better condition than we found it. We even cleaned underneath the refrigerator, leaving it slightly away from the wall to demonstrate this.

Per instructions, I left my forwarding address and the keys on the kitchen counter.

Only a portion of the deposit, twenty-two US dollars (US$22), was returned. I expected the full one hundred fifty US dollars (US$150). I had been charged for sixteen (16) holes at eight US dollars (US$8) each, for a total of one hundred twenty-eight US dollars (US$128).

I feel I was misled about the consequences of hanging items on the wall, and both opportunities (a checklist and a walk-through appointment) for ensuring repair before the end of the lease were denied by Layson Rental Properties. Further, I did not hang any pictures or other paraphernalia on the walls, other than the aforementioned towel holders. Thus, there was no way I was responsible for sixteen (16) holes.

I was told on the phone by the manager that the unit had been fully refurbished and so all holes must be my fault. The owner was not willing to speak with me. I interpreted this as a rude refusal to discuss my grievances.

(edited to add: "sixteen" in the third to last paragraph before the numeral; correct date in title, add label.)

The FISA evisceration act

2007-08-09T06:17:00.000-05:00

Or, as thoreau at the Poor Man Institute calls it, the East Germany Restoration Act.

Perfect.

And Shrill.

CZRPB (000)

2007-08-07T11:07:00.001-05:00

I've answered your comment below.

David Smith is shrill.

2007-08-07T10:59:00.000-05:00

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/06/rove/permalink/fb02c0812a76f4219179015558c0f29f.html

And 110% right.

Books I've read lately

2007-08-02T07:29:00.000-05:00

Ratings on a 1-10 scale

Very Bad Deaths - Spider Robinson - 7

I'll get back to you. I'm at the cliffhanger right now, but I didn't want to forget it. So far, so good. Robinson has a talent for villains and quirky characters.
Update: finished - very good. A quibble - the villain is described as pressing a finger into a spot near the protagonist's collarbone, causing severe pain. I've prodded around there and it is uncomfortable, yes, but not debilitatingly so; especially at the pressure described. (I wonder if Robinson put that in there to see how many people would attempt to find the spot.) That made the villain a lot less plausible, in my opinion.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling - 8

Of course. A great finish to a legendary series.

Between Planets and Sixth Column - Robert Heinlein - 2 (6 for RAH devotees)

Only for die-hard Heinlein fans. They felt like skeletons of later (better) works. If I'd read it when I was 20, I'd probably be over the moon about them. Though properly set up, the technology was definitely of the serious handwaving variety. The speed and effectiveness of implementing barely discovered theories into multiple, useful applications were truly transhuman. Every person on the team of people working the engineering issues had to be Hermann Hesse-like supermen. Both books felt like he piled on the difficulties too fast and too harshly, then the magic tech fixed everything. As I said, the tech was properly set up so wasn't a classic deus ex machina , but that is the feeling likely to be experienced, especially for people who actually work in the science/engineering disciplines.

Earth - David Brin - 9

Deep, real characters. Relatively hard science with minimal hand-waving. A deep look at our society and some of its ills and benefits, taken to (what Brin calls) an optimistic extrapolation. A gripping story.

Glory Season - David Brin - 7

Deep, real characters, with the caveat that the characters are quasi-human (extensive genetic modification). An optimistic extrapolation of the possible uses of biological science. Women rule a distant world (much different than ours). Not as good as Earth, but still worthwhile.

Eldest - Christopher Paolini - 6

A good read, though for me I see some plot holes (possibly filled in with the third book). Not as good as Eragon (7), the story feels like Paolini is trying too hard to make it gritty, interesting, and mature. Maybe once the third book is out I'll re-read all of them and change my mind.

Though "recently" is stretching it, I re-read Lord of the Rings within the last year.

Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, The Return of the King) - J.R.R. Tolkien - 9

There are two reasons this isn't a 10. The descriptions, while well-written, get in the way of the story once in a while. Also, there is one (and only one) interesting female character (Eowyn). The only place where the Peter Jackson movie is better than the book is where Arwen rescues Frodo on the way to Rivendell rather than the useless character Glorfindel. The only major criticism I have of the book is that Arwen and not Legolas should have been the representative of the elves. This would have made Aragorn's encounters with Eowyn much more interesting. :-) Likewise, it would have made Gimli's friendship to an elf far more complicated when he was smitten by Galadriel. I'm sure that Tolkien didn't want so many complications male/female-wise. I guess Arwen could have been sent as an ambassador to Minas Tirith. An embassy of elves there might have split the attention of Saruman and Sauron, which would have been all to the good. Ah, well. Such was the culture Tolkien was raised and lived in.

Need a better way to say this

2007-07-26T09:18:00.001-05:00

Just because I am not afraid, does not make me not a patriot.

And here it is: Fear does not make one a patriot. But bravery does.

Better yet:

Live Free or Die.
Give me Liberty, or give me Death.

Just a list of beliefs

2007-07-25T15:31:00.000-05:00

I'm sure I'll do more some other time.

It seems strange to have to do this, but I guess it helps me to pin down what I believe and communicate that to others. Some of the issues in our society are pretty simple (are you for or against it?) and some are pretty complicated.

Marriage – should not be helped or hindered by the federal, state, or local governments. If participants wish to register a marriage contract with the county clerk’s office, they can pay the fee and do that. Note this includes any gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered (GLBT), group, term, limited, unlimited, etc. contracts.

Abortion – personally, I don’t like it. I prefer prevention. I prefer the Plan B. If I got a woman pregnant, I would offer to raise the child if she didn’t want it. But I absolutely reject the idea of legislating abortion. 1) Abortion is the right of a fully-formed, conscious human being to make a choice. This absolutely outweighs the rights of a “potential” human whose status is unclear at any given stage of development. 2) Restricting abortion merely ensures that the less fortunate do not have access to safe procedures. The well-off will always be able to get safe abortions. So restricting abortion is a direct attack on the poor. 3) I absolutely reject the idea of desperate women subjecting themselves to untrained individuals in poorly-equipped facilities because the proper personnel and facilities are restricted from assisting them.

Age/race/religion/sex/sexual orientation/wealth/national discrimination – It is wrong. If people want to have private clubs, that is fine, but they must not get any special consideration (money, tax breaks, social) to maintain this “private” status.

Guns – While some gun control is good (i.e. not letting convicted felons or diagnosed mental patients have them) is good, more isn't necessarily better. The 2nd Amendment reference to "militia" doesn't mean only those who were part of some State-sponsored organization were allowed to carry. "Militia" was a duty of all able-bodied, male, white landowners. Now, we don't (ideally) discriminate against the handicapped, women, non-whites, or the poor. The concept of "Militia" now means any person able to use a gun, provided they haven't proven themselves unworthy (cf. felons/mental patients). Whether someone answers that call of duty is a personal choice. But to eliminate one of the founders' guarantees for liberty because we're afraid of criminals is no more tenable than eliminating other liberties because we're afraid of terrorists. Both position are based on fear, one of the least noble of the human emotions.

Privacy – individuals should have privacy, public entities (government, corporations) should be utterly transparent. IMHO, this is currently the reverse of our society, and one of the things that needs to be fixed ASAP.

Corporations – should not have the rights of individuals, unless they also have the limitations of individuals. The legal fiction of a “corporation” as a “person” has wrought havoc in our society.

War – should only be for defensive purposes. Anyone who authorizes an offensive war without being able to show imminent danger to their nation should be considered a war criminal.

Education – We need a breakthrough. Children are naturally curious. We need to find some way of encouraging that curiosity, feed it, teach the ability to think critically, to make school fun. We need to spend a lot more on education now so that we need to spend less on other social engineering later. To short-change our children is to sabotage our own future.

Energy – we need to really have a breakthrough on renewable energy. Fossil fuels are rapidly becoming an extinct option. I personally think we need to understand how to tap deep geo-thermal (i.e. magma) heat. It is one way not to add heat to the system known as Earth that wasn’t already there. A real breakthrough in solar energy might work too (e.g. artificial photosynthesis).

Space – we need to go. We need to have colonies among other planets (and eventually the stars), so all our eggs aren’t in one basket (lovely a basket though it is). Space has virtually unlimited resources, including living volume, mineral wealth, and energy.

Environment – protect it. Don’t shit in your own bed.

Religion – people need to learn how to tolerate atheism. Once they learn that, tolerating other religions should be easy.

An interesting post...

2007-07-23T13:00:00.000-05:00

...if the numbers are correct. (Emphasis on last sentence mine.)

By the numbers

I dug up a few numbers:
* ~300 million Americans
* ~2.6 million U.S. service members (~1/2 active, ~1/2 reserves)
* 87% of service members (2.3 million) are ages 18-24
* 28 million Americans ages 18-24

So, ~8% of Americans ages 18-24 are in the active military or reserves. I was frankly stunned by this number; I would've guessed 1%. Also, note that hardly any of them [(100%-87%)/87% = 15%] stay past age 24. Not sure whether that's historically typical, but it tells you something.

Now some more numbers:
* ~20% of Americans (~60 million) are in the 25-38 age range
* ~30% of those (~18 million) support Bush's war strategy

I picked the 25-38 age range because they're old enough to make an informed decision, and young enough to enlist. Just guessing, but it probably also represents the prime age range for Weekly Standard reporters and right-wing bloggers.

If just 1% of this "chickenhawk demographic" enlisted, it'd be 180,000, and we could double our footprint in Iraq. If they enlisted at the same rate as 18-24-year-olds in general (8%), it'd be 1.4 million, which would double the size of the active military.

I'm a peacenik, but even I can see that the war in Iraq would be winnable with those numbers.

The chickenhawks just don't want to win in Iraq.

-- Al Lewis

“Just say no” just doesn’t work.

2007-07-19T12:32:00.000-05:00

Via Broadsheet on Salon.com

Abstinence-only programs have no effect on teen behaviour.

The drop in the sexual activity (from 54% to 46%) happened in the 1990’s. In the 2000’s the rate has remained flat.

My conclusion: Let’s give the kids what they really need – sex education, not preaching.

Republicans want a rout to destroy the military

2007-07-19T07:20:00.000-05:00

So, the Levin-Reed amendment was to bring most US troops back from Iraq in April of next year. This was successfully filibustered by Repiglicans.

I have a question, aside from the really obvious one about why Reid simply didn’t let the debate on that bill continue until the Rethuglicans had no other choice but end the filibuster (like being accused of obstructing the entire Defense bill).

On NPR this morning, April of next year was given as the time when the military starts running out of troops to man Bush’s folly. Hmmmm….April….

So, instead of a phased, careful withdrawal, does that mean we’re going to have a hasty, disorganized, and thereby dangerous retreat? Or worse, a disasterous rout? Is that what Repuglicans want?

Great way to “support our troops” guys.

Heckuva job, Mitch (Bush’s Bitch) McConnell and Lindsay (get a man’s name, for fuck’s sake) Graham.

Edited to add: Funny how I don't see Lugar or Voinovich voting to end the filibuster, even though they say they want a course change in Iraq.

Full Year School

2007-07-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

H/T to Broadsheet.

I have objected to the school curriculum and parents' attitudes toward public school for exactly that reason - school is supposed to educate kids, not be "free" childcare.

If we're going to do full-year school, let's make it for the right reasons.

1) As the original post says, kids don't have to relearn everything they forgot over the summer, wasting most of September.

2) Teachers won't be painted with the "You only work part-time" brush, so then their salaries would be appropriate to college graduate professionals, rather than be looked on as the old "schoolmarm" concept.

3) Accelerating learning so that kids can graduate high school with some decent skills so they can compete without being forced to pay for college.

4) Kids will learn to handle jobs better, since they won't be in the mode that they get 1/4 of the year off for no apparent reason.

5) Perhaps shorten the school days (provide more recess time) for younger children so they don't have to sit idle for so long. This can address faux-ADHD issues (some kids are just normally energetic but get medicated anyway for the teachers' convenience) as well as obesity issues.

The idea of full-year school so someone can save money on child care is ridiculous. It is called making a decision. If the job doesn't pay enough to afford child care, then maybe the job isn't economically feasible.

Maybe (just maybe) the family has to live in a (gasp!!) 1500 square foot house near the city. The kids might have to sleep in (shudder!!) bunk beds in the same room (faint!!) and play in a local park, rather than a 2500 sq ft McMansion on a lawn so big you need a tractor to mow it, in some exurb.

And, perhaps, the parent would then pay the taxes needed to actually fund the school, and be involved in the school to make it better, rather than throwing up their hands and running for the hills.

I know, utterly shocking and appalling.

Well, tough shit. That is what I had to do. If you don't want to raise kids, don't have them. It's quite simple, really. (And yes, I'm talking to potential stay-at-home Dads, not just Moms - esp if Mom makes more money.)

Indianapolis atheist group

2007-07-17T06:40:00.000-05:00

Check out http://www.centerforinquiry.net/indy/. I met a group last night. There was another Bryan (spelled correctly), Matt, Craig, and Jim. Guests from outside Ft. Wayne were there, Joe and Amy. They were polite but quiet. The rest of us were gabby, as atheists often are.

I told my "first fundamentalist encounter" story where I saw a woman having a seizure (that is what I thought "speaking in tongues" was when I first saw it). I also talked about having a fundamentalist wife (earlier in our marriage) and a pagan daughter. The rest of the group was suitably amazed that we are still married. ;-)

The Ixian Heretic’s Religious History

2007-07-12T13:36:00.000-05:00

For those who wonder. (For definitions, especially the specific meaning of the word “weak” as applied to atheism and agnosticism, please see www.iidb.org FAQ.)

My mother is a passionate weak atheist. My father is a weak agnostic, raised as a Presbyterian. He typically doesn't like to talk about religion. My parents never took me to a church or temple of any kind.

I went to church only 3 times before I entered the military (that I recall).

The first was the day after my sister was born. I was about 3.5 years old. I stayed with my 1st cousin, once removed, who was an Episcopal priest. The colors and decorations were amazing. I recall boredom being a big factor.

I went with my father’s mother (my favorite grandparent) one Sunday when I was staying with her. I was about 9 or 10, and I was bored again.

When I was 11, I stayed with a childhood friend who was Catholic. I recall being bored, and also getting in line for Communion (I had no idea what it was, or what it was called, at the time). I recall the guy holding out a cracker. I thought it was a pretty skimpy snack, but it wasn’t polite to complain, so I didn’t. I took it from him with my hand, and crunched on it on the way back to my seat. Afterward, my friend explained what I was supposed to do. I recall being quite puzzled.

When I was in Boy Scouts, at about 12, I recall there was a church right next to the “cabin” where we held meetings. I also recall being really annoyed Sunday mornings after campouts, because the stupid bell kept going “come to church, come-to-church, coommme to churrch” (I knew that was what it was for, and my imagination filled in the words to coincide with the tones). Interestingly, when I said I was an atheist, the immediate response from my fellow Scouts was “so you’re a Devil worshipper?” I said, “if I don’t believe in God, why would I believe in the Devil?” That was far, far too deep for them. They didn’t think that was possible, not to believe in either.

I recall arguing with my second cousins (on my mother’s side) about the non-existence of gods. This was around the same time, I think (not really sure). They used the Prime Mover argument, and I asked who created the creator. My cousins and I got along well, it wasn’t a heated argument. Just a debate. No one ever wins such things, but my cousins don’t go to church, as far as I know. :-)

In basic training, it was part of the activities to go to church (at least for the first few weeks). I didn’t balk, knowing I would be accused of being a devil worshipper, or a Commie, or both. When we got to the stage where we could take ourselves, I didn’t go. I wasn’t the only one. But those of us who didn’t pretended we didn’t notice, and didn’t group together and call attention to the fact that we didn’t go. No one else seemed to notice.

One day, I went to church with one guy (he was the “house mouse” or “fellow trainee administrative assistant” to the training instructor) in an attempt to minimize GI party participation. There was a lot of shouting and moaning, and then I saw a woman have a seizure, or so I thought. The house mouse assured me this was not a seizure, denying the need for a doctor. This was the first time I’d ever seen religious ecstasy. It was scary. The house mouse explained to me about speaking in tongues, which made almost no sense but reassured me this was common in that church. I never went back.

I met a friend who considered himself agnostic when I got to my first technical school. He and I are still friends, 21+ years later. His influence and help has been instrumental in my sanity and my kids’ attitudes. He now considers himself a weak atheist.

I married a woman (and adopted her two children) who became a fundamentalist shortly after we were married (or was already one, I’m not sure which). I suddenly had to learn quite a bit about religion. Fortunately, I also found the internet and the alt.atheism, alt.atheism.moderated, and alt.atheism.satire newsgroups (of whom Internet Infidels and other atheist websites are follow-ons). This was a good place to vent frustrations and learn coping tactics, as well as understand my own attitudes better.

Today, my wife is mainstream Christian, and not very involved as near as I can tell. My daughter claims to be pagan/Wiccan, but I don’t know how much she practices, as she doesn’t typically discuss it with me. (I think it is because it doesn’t shock or interest me much.) I strongly suspect she’ll re-convert to Christianity in the next 2-4 years. She plays the victim too much, and re-conversion will get her more attention (at least from her mother), in which she enjoys basking far too much. I will do what I usually do when faced with religion. I roll my eyes and ignore it, if at all possible.

My older son is at least agnostic, probably strong, as is his wife. He used to be much more firm in his belief in Christianity than the daughter, but changed his mind in his mid-teens.

My youngest son is developing his beliefs (he’s only 15). He seems to be losing the early indoctrination, but we’ll see how that goes. He doesn’t like discussing it.

I met another friend in the service who used to be “I believe there is something, I just don’t know what, so for convenience I’ll call it God” (Deist). 19 years later, he is now a weak agnostic (and we are still friends). I’m convinced I had a hand in that.

The foregoing is the religious history of this “cradle atheist.” It is as true and accurate as human memory allows. There are few cradle atheists, and I always wonder what my religious history would have been like if I’d been indoctrinated early. Would I be religious? Would I be agnostic? Would I have had the emotional and intellectual makings of a deconverted atheist? I’ll never know for sure.

I’m fond of the new Rush album, Snakes and Arrows. This is the chorus from a song called “Faithless.” It describes me pretty well.

I don’t have faith in faith,
I don’t believe in belief.

You can call me “faithless.”

But I cling to hope,
And I believe in love.

And that’s faith enough for me.

- written by Neil Peart

So much for Republicans...

2007-07-12T12:17:00.000-05:00

...being good on defense. H/T sysprog

http://breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QALM9G2

al-Qaida Has Rebuilt, U.S. Intel Warns
Jul 11 06:33 PM US/Eastern
By KATHERINE SHRADER and MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

So, the Bush administration has failed to combat terrorism, despite unprecedented limitations of civil liberties and a war started under false pretenses.

Heckuva job, Shrubby.

Where are the Big Talkers?

2007-07-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

In today's cloture vote on the Webb Amendment, only Hagel voted to end debate.

Where were Voinovich and Lugar and Domineci? They both shot their mouth off about changing course in Iraq, but when it came time for a vote, "stayed the course."

Hypocrites.

I agree with other commenters at the War Room on Salon.com. Reid should let the Rethugs filibuster. Sometimes it is necessary to call your opponents' hand, even if you know you're going to lose. Sometimes it makes for better long-term strategy.

bold - later edit

For Jill - too long for comments

2007-07-11T14:44:00.000-05:00

This got too long for the comment section.

I followed you home from Salon.

Welcome to my most humble abode.

You seem like a fairly intelligent person who could explain the concept of "born again"ism and "Jesus forgives" to this nice Jewish girl.

I will certainly do my best (flattery is always welcome) ;-). You should know the questions you ask are quite out of my personal experience. I will post something about my lack of religious education soon – I thought I had already done so.

Suffice it to say that I didn’t know what the term “speaking in tongues” meant until I was 18 years old, and I didn’t know what “trans-substantiation” meant to Catholics until I was at least 25. (I’ll be 40 this year.) Most of what I know came from arguing with theists on newsgroups back in the mid-1990’s.

What I want to know is, if some guy like Vitter "sins" and he's "forgiven" by Jesus, or God, or whoever, does that mean he can sin again?

As I understand it, Christian theology acknowledges that humans will sin repeatedly. Catholic doctrine says that as long as you are truly sorry, confess, and do your penance, each sin is wiped away.

I might add that the chance of being “sinless” upon death is small. Catholicism therefore has “purgatory” where “mostly good” people go to work off the burdens accumulated between the last confessions and their death (babies who die before being baptized go here too). Of course, contributions to the Catholic Church speed the process of ascension to Heaven considerably. No, I’m not joking. (At least, that is how it was for most of its history. This may still be policy.)

Protestant sects tend to minimize the formal confession bit – you can confess directly during prayer. My understanding is that once the soul leaves the body, it is too late to “clean” it. This leads to an interesting (to Protestants) discussion about whether a person who hasn’t actually kneeled down has time to pray for forgiveness.

In popular culture, the Dean Koontz novel “The Face” has a man literally in the elevator to Hell, going down, who truly repents his sins and is given a pass to Heaven. In the movie “Constantine” the protagonist (John) trades his soul for one in Hell, damning himself to save another who most of us would not consider to be deserving of the fate. (She committed suicide to prevent the son of Satan from ruling Earth.) As a result of this unselfish sacrifice, John is also given a pass to Heaven. In a twist, Satan heals John of his wounds so that he has more chances to sin, and thereby giving Satan another chance at torturing him for being an effective force of good.

These anecdotes imply that most Christians in the US believe there are more chances for forgiveness than damnation, if you have the wit and will to take them.

Does one "forgiveness" or "born again" session cover you for future sins? Or, do you have to be "born again" or "forgiven" every time you do it?

That depends.

The Catholic Church used to provide “indulgences” so that a particular sin could be “pre-forgiven.” It was to cover things like the killing that would happen in war, young people marrying without consent of their parents, or the necessity of telling a lie. Usually, contributions were involved, and indulgences were a large source of income. Priests who weren’t too concerned with morality started handing them out for anything, and didn’t really care if there were good reasons. The credibility of the Catholic Church suffered, and indulgences are rare now (but I believe still done on occasion).

In Protestantism, a given prayer session apparently covers the past, but not the future. The key is being sincere. As I understand it, anyone and any act (or multiple acts) are forgiven by pleading with Jesus to intercede. Jesus is the very same thing as the one and only divine to the typical Christian, but is a different aspect. For some Christians, Jesus was but a man, but a really special one. (See sources like Wikipedia discussing Trinitarianism vs. Unitarianism – I’m not an expert). This does not mean that all congregations welcome all types of sinners. I recently heard an NPR piece on a congregation trying to decide if they would welcome a convicted child molester into their midst. One woman was quoted as saying something like “God can forgive anything, but I’m only human. I don’t want that guy anywhere near our church.”

Being “born again” is a different sort of thing than praying for forgiveness. One can still be “born again” and do something that requires praying and forgiveness, etc. But as long as the adherent maintains that “I have accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior” s/he is considered “born again.” It is an official declaration that one has forsaken all other paths to Heaven, enlightenment, forgiveness, or communication with the divine.

This is often done in public (church) but it happens (I can’t say how often, I don’t know) that the emotional state of religious fervor and commitment to the faith in Jesus precedes this declaration. I have met a few people for whom this epiphany happened after experiencing the consequences of drug use (legal or otherwise), or in the depths of grief or despair.

I have been told by some Christians that once “born again” you can never be an apostate. Of course, they conveniently define “born again” as someone who never relinquishes faith or changes their mind. If someone does, their conversion was automatically “not sincere.” Others say that it is possible to “backslide” as they call it, and that someone may be “born again” multiple times. I don’t know (or care) about the theology of these positions.

I want to reiterate that my perceptions of these issues are informed mostly by atheist newsgroups and websites, a friend who is an atheist but went to a seminary high school, and by my wife who was a fundamentalist for a while. None of this has any emotional appeal to me, so my interest was strictly defensive. I picked up just enough to not be confused when people speak, and to understand why theists in general hate atheists. As it stands, I don’t discuss religion unless I’m quite sure of my relationship with that person (automatically excluding colleagues and strangers) or they declare themselves atheist or agnostic first.

I’ll talk about it on the internet because the chances of meeting in person are slim. I’ll be glad to share my perceptions with you, just bring your salt shaker. :-)

Fundamentalists Christians will not tire of hypocrisy

2007-07-11T06:13:00.000-05:00

A lot of people over at Salon wondered when fundies are going to tire of the hypocrisy (such as that of Senator David Vitter). I posted this in response (some edits here).

It is comforting to fundies that this [Vitter's hypocrisy] happens. They have such poor self-image (“I’m a wretched, evil sinner, fallen short of the Glory of God™) that they identify with these loathsome hypocrites. And to see these same hypocrites forgiven by God and Dear-Leader(s)-in-Washington makes them tearfully grateful and relieved, showing they too will be forgiven.

Fundamentalist Christianity thrives in people living at the intersection of unresisted temptation, self-hatred, and fear (e.g. of death, of hell, of life, of everything). Their desperate hope is the coming of Apocalypse during a time right after they’ve re(re-re-re-re-)dedicated their lives to Jeeezus and before they sin again. Dying and going to heaven in this state of grace is a distant, but still devoutly-to-be-wished-for, backup option.

I personally find this whole mindset pathetic, despicable, repulsive, mysterious, sick, self-destructive, and dangerous. But consider the 25% core that still hangs in there for Shrubby in all the polls. Or the 18% that still supports Cheney. There are lots and lots of people living at this dread intersection of despair, and Fundamentalist Christianity is the one thing that gives them hope.

Thus, it is not going away, either as a meme or as a political force. Especially since, as much as they hate themselves and each other, they hate us – those of us who can live with ourselves, forgive each other, and face each day without a constant agony of fear and desperation. O! how they hate us, and band together in a solid, indivisible mass in a concerted attempt to make us as miserable as they are.

They will not tire of the hypocrisy, and will not tire in their efforts to stop others from worshipping according to their conscience.

An excellent analogy for society

2007-07-10T06:26:00.000-05:00

In support of the attempts (especially by Glenn Greenwald) to get the mainstream media to do its damn job, this quote illustrates why data (notice I didn't say "information" which includes mis- and disinformation) exchange is so important. It also explains (in my mind) why "pure socialism" and "pure capitalism" (aka "pure" libertarianism) cannot succeed as models for a successful society.

Although a body’s cells all carry the same inheritance, they aren’t identical. Specialists do their separate jobs, each crucial to the whole. If this weren’t so, if all cells were the same, you would have just an undifferentiated blob.

On the other hand, whenever a small group of cells strives, unrestricted, for its own supremacy, you get another familiar catastrophe, known as cancer.

What does any of this have to do with social theory?

Nations are often likened to living bodies. And so, … state socialism may be said to have turned many a body politic into lazy, unproductive blobs. Likewise, inherited wealth and aristocracy were egoistic cancers that ate the hearts out of countless other great nations.

To carry the analogy further – what these two pervasive and ruinous social diseases had in common was that each could flourish only when a commonwealth’s immune system was weakened. [This refers] to the free flow of information. Light is the scourge of error, and so both aristocracy and blob-socialism [thrive] on secrecy. Each [fights] to maintain it at all costs.

But the ideal living structure, whether creature or ecosystem, is self-regulating. It must breathe. Blood and accurate data must course through all corners, or it can never thrive.

So it is, especially, in the complex interactions among human beings.

- David Brin, Earth, pp. 345-6 of the Bantam Spectra softcover edition (Hardback speculative fiction novel published in 1990)

Since this is a work of speculative fiction, the words in brackets were substituted, and words left out in ellipses, to eliminate references to the fictional characters writing the quote, as well as bring the quote fully into the present.

First comment reject in a long while

2007-06-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

I received this from “Rodrigo”

Oi, achei teu blog pelo google tá bem interessante... Oi, achei teu blog pelo
google tá bem interessante gostei desse post. Quando der dá uma passada pelo meu
blog, é sobre camisetas personalizadas, mostra passo a passo como criar uma
camiseta personalizada bem maneira. Até mais.

Puedo leer el espanol. Mogu ponimat’ Rysskij yazyk. Ich verstehe ein bischen deutsche. I am fluent in English.

But I don’t understand the above, except that my Spanish gives me enough to suspect spam. I rejected the comment on that basis, because I’m not interested in buying (Portuguese? Romanian? Random South American Latino?) personalized shirts.

Liberal and Conservative Accomplishments

2007-06-26T09:16:00.000-05:00

Actor 212 on The Poor Man quoted The West Wing to good effect, listing some of the positives liberals have accomplished over the years. I’d like to go a step further.

Liberal/progressive accomplishments:

Anti-trust legislation (Teddy Roosevelt)
WWI (Wilson got us involved)
The nuclear age (FDR/Truman)
The Apollo missions (Yes, they did – It was Kennedy, not Nixon or Eisenhower)
Bay of Pigs (yep – Kennedy again)
Women’s suffrage
Social Security
Medicare
Ended segregation.
Civil Rights Act
Voting Rights Act.
Clean Air Act
Clean Water Act

Conservative accomplishments:

The Internet (Yes, they did. Be fair – it was a DARPA funded project)
The 1929 stock market bubble
Iran-Contra
The Savings and Loan collapse
The Tech Stock Bubble
Enron
WorldCom
WWII (fascists started it)
Korean War
Vietnam War
Grenada War
Panama War
Gulf War
Bush’s War

Of course, this is highly oversimplified, but I think it is illustrative.

Embryonic Stem Cells

2007-06-26T09:14:00.000-05:00

A Rasmussen Reports survey conducted earlier this year found that 66% of Americans believe that "embryonic stem cell research" is at least somewhat likely to lead to cures to previously incurable diseases. This figure includes 72% of Democrats, 59% of Republicans, and 69% of those not affiliated with either major political party.
Americans under 30 were a bit more optimistic than their elders about the
potential of such research.

However, 30% of Americans believe that embryonic stem cell research is morally wrong. That view is held by 46% of Republicans, 18% of Democrats and 28% of unaffiliateds. Overall, 47% of all adults take the opposite view and say it is not morally wrong.

As usual, Bush is pandering to the wingnut right, and the majority of Americans are being ignored.

Supreme Court, Jun 26 2007

2007-06-26T07:25:00.000-05:00

I’m pretty sure it was said, over and over and over. “If GWB wins in 2004, the SCOTUS of the United States (SCOTUS) will be packed with people who will change things big-time.”

So, not one but two previous SCOTUS decisions were overturned in the “new and improved, Chief Justice John Roberts SCOTUS.”

Let us first consider this: a ruling 40 years old (Vietnam Era, by the way) was overturned, limiting students’ freedom of speech. The Court said that students didn’t have the right to advocate drug usage. Since the speech didn’t offend the “crying fire in a crowded public place” test, this seems wholly indefensible to me, regardless of the legal gymnastics used by the majority. I’m sure that the argument about advocating something illegal came up. In that case, advocating an “illegal” demonstration in protest of war could be silenced as well. So where does the ability of school authorities to silence students stop?

In the “not for me, but for thee” category as well as our second ruling that overturns a previous SCOTUS ruling, corporations (and yes, the dying Unions too) get to say anything they want in “issue ads” that were banned by McCain-Feingold. I think I wrote about this before, but if not, I meant to. This ruling treats a corporation like a person, saying they have as much right to free speech as a citizen. Considering corporations have more money than individuals (except for the very richest) this means they have the ability to generate a lot more volume and shout with much greater frequency in the public square. Unions may have this ability too, but they are dying, and don’t have as much money as the corporations do. But exactly how fair is it that Wal-mart gets to shout at the top of its lungs about their pet issues, and hence influence elections, while people in general get to whisper to each other? How fair is it that groups of people, and abstract constructs like corporations, get to be treated like one person, a real person?

I want to be a corporation. I get all the benefits of being a person, without the disadvantages. I can pay fewer taxes, have more free speech, have less liability financially, and have more political power.

In a serious blow to holding the government accountable to the people, as well as church and state separation, SCOTUS held that there is no recourse for taxpayers if the Executive Branch wants to fund religion, even a specific one over others. Technically, this doesn’t seem to override other SCOTUS rulings prohibiting church/state entanglement. It simply says taxpayers can’t challenge how the Executive uses taxes allotted to it by Congress. It leaves open the possibility of a challenge to the law allowing “faith-based charitable spending” by the government. (In a Roberts/Alito/Scalia Court, I don’t see that happening successfully.) But to say the taxpayers have no standing to take the Executive to task is heinous. It seems the only way, other than impeachment, to limit the Executive’s power. The majority on the Court seems to have forgotten the whole “government for the people, by the people” basis of the Constitution.

Finally, endangered species get the shaft. It allows states to issue water permits instead of the feds. In a situation like the American West, water is a serious, highly contentious issue. When you throw endangered species into the mix, you get a ridiculously difficult situation. Developers now don’t have to worry – they can get states to issue permits without dealing with habitat destruction.

America, let me congratulate you. What terrorists, a superpower Soviet Union, and the Great Depression could not accomplish, you have attained with a punch of the card or mark in a bubble. You have elected someone who is utterly hostile to the Constitution, and allowed him and his cronies to install people to the SCOTUS who favor corporations over people, developers over land, and Christianists and Jewists over Christians, Jews, Muslims, agnostics, and atheists (as well as all non-Abrahamic religions).

This is what you get for not paying attention to politics, and instead gleefully devoting yourself to watching Paris Hilton and American Idol. Oh, and for being utter and complete cowards, letting some draft-dodging alcoholic and a Nixon zombie scare you into giving up your liberty. Well done, assholes.

Shooter 242 visits my blog

2007-06-18T17:27:00.000-05:00

Shooter 242 spews forth:

Ah, so you point to an opinion column by a noted left-winger as your grand "proof" that Chambliss attacked Cleland's patriotism. That is your big retort?
Here's some education: the left-wing mantra (that you're too ignorant to know,
even though you're nothing more than a parrot, which is untypical) was that
Chambliss ran a commercial questioning his patriotism (which was flatly false,
but you didn't even know about it so no sense informing you of that). THAT is
where the genesis of the talking points that you cut n' pasted (as if you could
formulate an orignal thought) derived.There is no “left-wing mantra.”

Liberals are notoriously too disorganized to have the rigid hierarchy and lockstep obedience pseudocons are famous for.

Ah, so every noted left-winger is a liar? I don’t have an original thought? Sounds like projection to me.

From USA Today: “Chambliss even ran a TV ad picturing Cleland with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.” http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2002-11-06-chambliss_x.htm

That noted left-wing paper, USAToday. Yeah, right. Just because you right-wing authoritarians are scared to death of any ideas that aren’t your own, doesn’t mean that every newspaper in the country is “liberal.” Because they are definitely not.

“Balance” is a red herring in journalism. Sometimes, truth favors conservatives, sometimes liberals. Truth has a definite bias. It has a vested interest in making you (and the rest of your fantasy-world war-mongering idealogues) look like a fool.

As for original thoughts – I have plenty of them on this blog. Great pseudocon research, as usual.

If I simply said things, you’d accuse me of not having any data to back me up. Nice try, but your idiot smear tactics won’t work here.

Gee, I thought Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998 because of WMDs.

Indeed. It convinced Saddam to stop trying. Glad you can see Clinton did something right. Note well, O spewer of pseudocon talking points – we did not invade at that time.

Hurry, go find a source for info as a retort since you're too ignorant to know
anything on your own....start searching!

I have plenty of retorts to the likes of you without going for “talking points.” What I presented were “sources” – you know about those. They are where you get your ideas from. The differences are, I identified where I got some information, you don’t tell us where you get your talking points – and if mine aren’t harmonious with something called reality, I don’t repeat them. Not to mention that, unlike you, I don't "know" things out of thin air, just because I want to believe them. I have to go looking for information to support my beliefs, or I am required to change those beliefs.

But you don’t have to tell where you get your talking points from. They all come from the same places: Drudge, Kristol, Krauthammer, Hewitt, Goldberg, Hannity, Rove, etc.

Proclaiming my ignorance is not an insult, doofus. It is merely a statement that can be proven or disproven. Once I come up with information on the topic, I'm no longer ignorant. Unlike you, who are "invincibly ignorant" because you refuse to acknowledge facts. You will never contradict your talking point vendors.

Heh.

Wow! I’m important enough for Shooter242 to come to my blog! There's the proof.

Don’t I feel privileged. (Well…no, not yet.)

Edit: Oh yeah - forgot to mention - nowhere has Chambliss himself denied attacking Cleland's patriotism. What a maroon you are.

For "Anonymous @ 12:49"

2007-06-18T07:52:00.000-05:00

Washington Post, Mary McGrory, Thursday, June 20, 2002

Cleland, a decorated veteran and triple amputee, was attacked by his Republican
opponent, Rep. Saxby Chambliss, "for breaking his oath to protect and defend the
Constitution."

Whoever you are, “Anonymous @12:49” you are a liar and a fool (i.e. neocon). Note I didn’t have to publish this comment, but I did anyway (freedom of speech, etc.). And, you’d showed just how much of a liar and fool you are. All I had to do was a quick Google search and I disproved you. It took about 10 seconds.

It is true that those people you listed – that is, the Democratic presidential candidates – did not serve. None of them lied to Congress, or attempted character assassinations, to support invasion a country that had not and could not effectively attack us.

That is the whole damn point, Liar and Fool. Many people are unfit for service, and I don’t want them in. But those who did not serve have no moral authority to lie and smear true patriots in service of warmongering.

There are times when it may be debated by anyone whether to go to war. But those who did not serve and then lie and perform character assassinations aren’t merely reprehensible, they are fecal stains on the landscape.

Let's really support the troops

2007-06-18T07:27:00.001-05:00

This article shows we desperately need to shift funding away from making war in Iraq to providing real, useful support (not candygrams and fingerpaintings) to the troops who have already made the sacrifice for our country.

List of neocons

2007-06-15T11:03:00.000-05:00

H/T to mrtshw on Salon.com comments section

Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.

* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.

* Tom Delay: did not serve.

* Roy Blunt: did not serve.

* Bill Frist: did not serve.

* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.

* Rick Santorum: did not serve.

* Trent Lott: did not serve.

* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.

* Jeb Bush: did not serve.

* Karl Rove: did not serve.

* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who attacked Max Cleland's patriotism.

* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.

* Vin Weber: did not serve.

* Richard Perle: did not serve.

* Douglas Feith: did not serve.

* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.

* Richard Shelby: did not serve.

* Jon Kyl: did not serve.

* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.

* Christopher Cox: did not serve.

* Newt Gingrich: did not serve.

* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.

* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty.

* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.

* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.

* Phil Gramm: did not serve.

* John McCain: Vietnam POW, Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.

* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.

* John M. McHugh: did not serve.

* JC Watts: did not serve.

* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem, " although continued in NFL for 8 years.

* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.

* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.

* George Pataki: did not serve.

* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.

* John Engler: did not serve.

* Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.

* Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

* Sean Hannity: did not serve.

* Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')

* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.

* Michael Savage: did not serve.

* George Will: did not serve.

* Chris Matthews: did not serve.

* Paul Gigot: did not serve.

* Bill Bennett: did not serve.

* Pat Buchanan: did not serve.

* John Wayne: did not serve.

* Bill Kristol: did not serve.

* Kenneth Starr: did not serve.

* Antonin Scalia: did not serve.

* Clarence Thomas: did not serve.

* Ralph Reed: did not serve.

An excellent point

2007-06-14T11:45:00.000-05:00

But it has taken six years to get the country so far off on the wrong track
and it's not going to change overnight. It's like using a Microsoft program.
When you want to do something a certain way and the program won't let you, you
have to back off and find a way to work around the program. As I see it, that is
what the Democrats are doing. They are chipping away and eroding the support of
the administration. They are forcing Bush to veto popular legislation. Bush's
approval ratings are at or near all-time lows in all major polls, either in the
high 20's or the low 30's. As more and more calculated misdeeds are revealed
through congressional investigations, popular support for the president and his
policies will continue to erode and then there will be legislative support for
the programs and policies the people want. It is mostly a matter of whether the
congressional Democrats can wear down the administration before the
congressional Democrats can be worn down by the administration, the MSM, and
people who voted for change and are not satisfied by less than instant
gratification.But it has taken six years to get the country so far off on the
wrong track and it's not going to change overnight. It's like using a Microsoft
program. When you want to do something a certain way and the program won't let
you, you have to back off and find a way to work around the program. As I see
it, that is what the Democrats are doing. They are chipping away and eroding the
support of the administration. They are forcing Bush to veto popular
legislation. Bush's approval ratings are at or near all-time lows in all major
polls, either in the high 20's or the low 30's. As more and more calculated
misdeeds are revealed through congressional investigations, popular support for
the president and his policies will continue to erode and then there will be
legislative support for the programs and policies the people want. It is mostly
a matter of whether the congressional Democrats can wear down the administration
before the congressional Democrats can be worn down by the administration, the
MSM, and people who voted for change and are not satisfied by less than instant
gratification. By "Frankly, my dear..." on Salon.com

I would add that the Democrats also have to battle DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) and other triangulators in their own party.

What is the Constitution?

2007-06-13T14:01:00.000-05:00

More people die from cars every month than died from the 9/11 attacks.

We don’t give up cars.

Cars are less important than basic freedoms like those found in the Constitution.

So are we going to give up basic freedoms for something less dangerous than cars?

The Constitution is neither a living document nor a suicide pact. It is the basis of the United States. Why do neocons hate the United States so much they want to get rid of freedom?

The Do-nothing Congress by Trent Lott

2007-06-12T06:42:00.000-05:00

So, according to Trent Lott, the Senate has done nothing for the past three years. Considering the current Congress has only been in Democratic control for the last 6 months, that means the Republicans did nothing for 2.5 years.

That sounds about right...

...If you add "good" as in: ...the Republicans did nothing good for 2.5 years.

Let's not forget the Military Commissions Act (revoking habeas corpus) and the Wireless Surveillance act (trying to retroactively make spying on US citizens legal).

Godwin's Law no longer applies

2007-06-11T10:30:00.001-05:00

Godwin's law is awfully convenient for neo-Nazis and RWA's of all stripes. Fascism is the modern, industrial version of Royalism. If we eliminate the ability to compare someone's actions to fascists, we eliminate [deleted: the] an easily understood historical context to frame those actions and interpret them correctly. This makes it easier to use fascist tactics and strategies again, and again. Most well-educated people will understand analogies to Royalist methods, but the average person doesn't get it.

Hayward's Law - when an authoritarian uses Godwin's Law to silence critics, it proves the authoritarian is attempting to re-install fascism.

Clan-ist ?

2007-06-07T13:31:00.000-05:00

Maybe there is already a term for “clan-ist.” But that is the term I’m considering for myself.

I don't mean a clan should be the one and only unit of government. I will agree, in the broadest and most general of terms, that the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, or the one. This is accomplished with larger societies and their governments. But I feel that too often, the good of the few is tossed aside too lightly. Either it is inconvenient, embarrassing, annoying, or shocking to let other people do as they please, even if they aren’t actually harming anyone else.

Here is a somewhat amusing, but illustrative example. Why do we have laws against nudity? I’ll certainly stipulate that it is mostly inconvenient for the person who is nude, and foolish. But who is hurt, exactly? Children and adults alike have seen naked bodies. The likely result is children will notice variations in different people. Isn’t that a good thing? The only reason it is against the law is some people are embarrassed by it. Same thing for being “drunk in public.” If the person isn’t violent or getting ill on the sidewalk, there is no harm, just annoyance. Yet we criminalize these people as if they had pickpocketed someone (I believe both are misdemeanors).

I think that, generally, what is good for various groups of the few is also good for the whole. Tolerance of variation leads to understanding, or at least reduced misunderstanding. As an analogy, consider fashions. I personally don’t see a lot of people being harangued for wearing white after Labor Day, or for wearing long skirts when short skirts are in style, or jeans, or long shorts, or short shorts, etc. There are holdouts (like fashion shows, and TV series like “what not to wear”). I’d like to see people’s attitudes toward differences to go the way of fashion – If you wear shorts and tank top in Alaska in winter (analog – be a fascist) you deserve to freeze (not get into power). Otherwise, to each his/her own.

I see a problem with trying to get too broad an umbrella, in that it forces people to compromise too much of their principles to get something useful done. As a “clan-ist” I agree few “individuals” can survive completely on their own, in any environment. OTOH – if you get more than 25 people in an organization, you have a real issue with trying to keep everyone on the same page. I think groups about “clan-size” are relatively stable. When it comes to political parties, several smaller ones might be preferable to two large ones.

Even if you are successful getting people to understand that plan X is needed for the good of everyone, the few who it harms will be resentful. And thinking people always wonder – am I (or my group) next? When will the Big Group decide I’m inconvenient and need to be brushed aside?

Unless we figure out how to allow smaller groups/individuals their freedom without harming the whole, I fear there will be two choices – constant conflict, or lockstep uniformity. The Bill of Rights was a good step. Maybe for the next step, 10th amendment should read:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the people, or delegated to the states by the people.

Can the RWNM crank it up enough?

2007-06-07T08:07:00.000-05:00

I wonder if the Right Wing Noise Machine can get loud enough to drown out the following:

1) Cheney was at the meeting where Comey and Philbin told him that their Spying on Citizens program was illegal.

2) Cheney blocked the promotion of Philbin in retaliation for his participation in the Ashcroft hospital room confrontation.

At a 9% popularity rating, maybe he can be safely impeached and removed from office.

Too good to be buried

2007-06-06T13:34:00.000-05:00

This whole thing is just too good to remain in the comments section. This is from today's Unclaimed Territory (Glenn Greenwald) blog entry - comment from "El Cid."

Emphasis or editing is mine where you see {IH}.

I Will Now Praise Bush Jr.

I think one tremendously positive thing Bush Jr. may have done is to have finally ended America's romantic involvement with the putrid rotting legacy of the right wing, pseudo-revolutionary "Reagan revolution."

They can't get away from it.

The Reaganites and the post-Reaganites promised that their ideas, their plans, their schemes would work if only given a chance.

Well, They Got Their Chance.

They had absolute, unchallenged power{IH}. The ultra-right wing nut squad finally got their hands on the Presidency, the Supreme Court, the Congress, a majority of State Governorships, I believe a majority of State Legislatures.They had untrammeled worship directed at them from the major news media. {IH} The so-called mainstream news media sat on stories of law-breaking by the President and endlessly promoted reporters, pundits, and editorials which fawned over the President and his insane squad's looniest ideas.

They had their hands on everything which they had promised [they needed] {IH} to set everything 'right'..

And after having possessed maximal, boundless, unchallenged power, they failed.

They threw their agenda hard against the American public, and the public bought it, by a hair, for a moment. But then the globby mass started to unstick itself from the public, and as it slowly gooped its way to the ground, it left a fetid slime trail which the public recognized as dead and offensive matter.

Even their idiotic grassroots followers know that they were betrayed -- the IRS still exists, the Bible isn't back in school, hip hop music still sounds on the airwaves, the Mexicans are still here...

...and worst of all, these bold and beautiful Neo-Fascist Warriors led a majestic war of nobility and tanned and bronzed chests which broke out in the pathetic stink-fest it now is, and the one, the only, the last remaining justification for their claims to Warrior Leadership School washed down the drain.

The Republicans revealed themselves to be failures in the arena of war and martial values. And one good thing we know about popular fascist movements is when they are revealed for their military weakness, their vaunted authoritarian majesty vanishes.

Ha. Ha. Ha. Suffer in your shame and humiliation, O Ye Warriors Who Would Not Serve.

WORST OF ALL: THEY CAN'T BLAME A-N-Y-O-N-E ELSE.

They had absolute, total, unquestioned power. And they were rejected. They were Reagan II, same ideas, twice the steroids, none of the tranquilizers.

And they just hate it. They can't conceive of it. Why aren't people loving them? They had it all!! They were supposed to be loved, to be strong forever!! Everyone hates liberals!! Everyone loves conservatives!! How can they not like us anymore?

Oh, don't get me wrong. There will be a right wing in this country. There may be even the beginnings of a new popular fascist movement among the most-betrayed feeling grassroots right wingers who are obsessed with "illegal immigrants" when it means "brown" and who are actually working class people deeply betrayed by their elites who outsourced their bright futures.

But no longer can they play this game that, "Well, our ideas and bright and brilliant and beautiful and will make America that happy land of the 1920s or 1950s again, if only we had power."

They had power. They had ultimate power. They had complete power. And they tried every one of their crazy ideas and failed openly, publicly, embarassingly. {IH}

Enjoy it. It couldn't happen to a worse group of cruel, heartless pseudo-patriots.

-- El Cid; Wednesday, June 6, 2007 11:23 AM

James Carville signs mercy plea re: Libby

2007-06-05T12:33:00.001-05:00

I can understand why his wife Mary Matalin would write one - she's a neocon from the word go.

But Carville co-signed the letter praying for leniency. And the letter wasn't merely sympathetic or full of pity. It was a sanctification piece.

It must all just be a game to most of them. This isn't like simply allying oneself with an opponent for a single bill odious to both. Why would someone sign a letter like this, to plead for mercy for a criminal of this magnitude? Only because he apparently doesn't think it was a crime. Just "part of the game."

I have been suddenly shoved, quite violently, in the direction of those who believe the system is not just broken, but irretrievable at this point.

Bush admits to no WMD's.

2007-06-04T17:20:00.000-05:00

Just for future reference.

GEORGE BUSH: Charles Duelfer has now issued a comprehensive report that
confirms the earlier conclusion of David Kay that Iraq did not have the weapons
that our intelligence believed were there.

Of course, the Downing Street memo and later CIA press releases proved he was lying about "our intelligence believed was there."

The asshole can hardly speak one sentence without lying.

American History - lost?

2007-05-30T13:37:00.000-05:00

The right-wing noise machine (RWNM) is working its will on our youth. A young man who just graduated high school said this to a group of people I was with: "if it came down to a choice between a totalitarian government and being dead, obviously a dictatorship is better." (phrasing approximate - I didn't have a tape recorder)

Are they not teaching Patrick Henry in American History anymore?

I told him I vociferously disagreed, and quoted Henry. He seemed taken aback that I believe the exact opposite of what he said, and was even more surprised that Henry was actually addressing his very statement.

(I could be reading into the exchange, because he didn’t verbalize any of that. But he was obviously surprised, and did a double-take when I made the quote.)

The timeline was the only non-negotiable.

2007-05-23T13:15:00.000-05:00

And the Democrats just gave it away. The better answer: If you don’t succeed, try, try again.

I can think of attachments to a timeline bill that would have made it very, very hot for Rethuglicans to block a veto override.

1) Tax breaks for the rich
2) Renewable Energy
3) Deficit reduction
4) Immigration reform
5) Space funding
6) Aid to Israel
7) A nice fat pork barrel for every Rethug vote needed for override

Granted, provisions that would make a veto override possible would be heinous (like 1 and 7) but it is a political cost I’d be willing to pay. Maybe the veto wouldn’t be overridden, but think of the chaos it would cause them.

If Bush vetoes 7 Iraq bills to fund the troops (and that is how the Dems should frame it), only the 30% hardcore Koolaid addicts would not be screaming for impeachment. Imagine what would happen to even “safe” seats if a Rethug vetoed a big fat pork barrel project in their state/district.

Such chaos in the Rethug party would be well worth it. I think even the soporific MSM would be hard pressed not to make mention that “the Democrats seem willing to deal, but Republicans are being obstructionist.”

Why we're still in Iraq

2007-05-22T07:33:00.000-05:00

If Bush were to withdraw the troops from Iraq, and the full dimensions of
America's defeat were to become apparent, all of his war-president potency would
backfire and he would be in much greater danger of being impeached.

From the article by Gary Kamiya on impeachment, this jumped out at me.

Aside from all the usual and completely valid arguments (saving lives, recovery of world standing, promoting Iraqi soveriegnty), the need to ensure Bush is the one and only person held responsible for Iraq is paramount. It is necessary so history can't blame the next president, and so that we can impeach the bastard.

That is why Bush refuses to even discuss pulling out troops. His "patriotic force field" is weakened, but not yet down. Troop withdrawal and the consequences would begin a spiral leading straight to jail.

Elections and political awareness

2007-05-08T15:44:00.000-05:00

National holiday for elections? I like it. It might encourage more to vote. It will certainly open up the pool of election judges.

Here's another idea. Why not have a lottery based on answers to political questions? You vote, then you take a quiz if you want. It is not a “test” to vote, just a voluntary activity. Let’s say there is a separate prize for each level of government (federal, state, local). You take the quiz and automatically are entered once, regardless of the number of answers you get right.

However, the number of answers you get right increases your number of entries. So, if you know who the current Secretary of State is, you get an additional entry into the federal lottery. If you know who the lieutenant governor for your state is, you get an additional entry into the state lottery. If you know who the current alderman for the 5th district is, you get an entry into the local lottery etc. “What right does the First Amendment not guarantee: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom from self-incrimination?” You get the idea.

All the questions are strictly objective facts, no policy questions.

Wouldn’t this motivate people to minimally be aware of politics? When money is involved, people will spend serious cash gambling. So what if they could “play the lottery for free?” Only the most brain dead would *not* want to play.

Any downside to this? (not a rhetorical question)

Sun power infrastructure

2007-04-25T12:18:00.000-05:00

According to Thomas L. Friedman's show on what to do about global warming, he had a segment where a fuel cell car was running on hydrogen split from water using photovoltaic (solar) energy. Two things of interest. He said it would take 216 billion square feet of solar panels to drive our cars if they all ran on hydrogen from solar. Woohooooo! 216 billion square feet.
Impressive. 2.16 x 10^11 square feet, if you savvy scientific notation.

But hold the phone. What do we measure in square feet anyway? Residential houses. Maybe small-to-medium size factories. Really large factories - say, like auto assembly plants that can be 4.5 million square feet or larger.

Unless you're trying to make it easy to compare two very different things, why measure in such small units? We went from bits to bytes to kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes. We don't measure computer storage by saying "I have a 200 billion byte hard drive" do we? We say we have a 200 gigabyte drive.

So, what about this auto assembly plant that is 4.5 million square feet? Directly translated, it is 0.16 square miles. According to the web site, it is ~1 mile long by ~0.5 mile wide. (That means the plant's actual area is ~0.5 square miles once you include all the "non-usable" space.)

Let's look at an energy production facility. A new oil refinery in Saudi Arabia is being built and will be 53.8 million square feet or 1.9 square miles.

So how much is 216 billion square feet of solar panels? 7,748 square miles of solar. Or, if you divvy it up between 50 states you get 155 square miles per state, or the equivalent 4078 oil refineries. The US has 144 (it used to have 315) refineries.

Let's look at this in a different way. The libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute’s “Biofuels, Food, or Wildlife? The Massive Land Costs of U.S. Ethanol” says it will take 50 million acres to create economically competitive biofuels for the US economy. (I don't know what the credentials of this "institute" are, but it was the easiest number to find. If wrong, please let me know!) If that number is right, it is about 7800 square miles. Sound familiar? That is only 52 square miles more than the solar. Sounds about right, considering that 1) plants are better at converting sunlight to energy than we are and 2) you can't have the same density of plants as you can photovoltaics. These opposing factors may cancel.

So the question becomes, is 216 billion square feet too much land to devote to energy production? How about 155 square miles (a parcel of land about 12.5 x 12.5 miles) per state? How about 100 parcels of land 1.2 x 1.2 miles per state?* Is that too heavy a price to pay for cars that don't pollute at all? Is it too heavy a price to pay for no reliance on oil from unstable parts of the world, and to increase our security from terrorists without trashing the Constitution?

Maybe it is. I don't have any idea what a parcel of land underneath a 1.2 x 1.2 mile roof would look like after a while. Maybe there are enough landfills of sufficient size that we could cover them with solar panels and it would be no big deal. I did the calculations and the area of residential housing is only ~100 square miles for the whole nation. (I could be off by a factor of 10 - the website I looked at seemed to say 5 million as the number of houses in the US and I assumed about 500 square feet of roof space each. I may have misinterpreted the number of houses.) Note this leaves out commercial and industrial properties (and the parking lots) who might actually benefit from being in the shade.

But also consider this - if the quantum dot solar panel provides 3x the efficiency of current cells then you'd need only ~2583 square miles - about 51 square miles per state, or a parcel 7.2 x 7.2 miles or 100 parcels 0.71 x 0.71 miles.

That said, let's discuss a different kind of solar catalyst. The Hawaii Natural Energy Institute has demonstrated extraction of hydrogen from water directly from sunlight with a 7.8% solar-to-hydrogen efficiency. Consider this - the very best crystalline triple-junction photovoltaics right now have a solar-to-electric efficiency of 32%. When you consider the losses inherent in using that electricity in a device to separate hydrogen from water (the electrical-to-hydrogen efficiency) and the cost of such solar cells, this is a big breakthrough. And the efficiency will only get better with more research.

Other catalysts made of Raney-NiSn can get hydrogen directly from biomass (it doesn't have to be high quality corn, sugar cane, or sugar beets). Since there is plenty of hydrogen in the cellulose of all plants, any waste bio material (including paper pulp) might be a source of hydrogen. Furthermore, just about any substance containing carbon/hydrogen can be used to make crude oil, which can be used as feedstock.

I guess that the key here is we need $$$ for funding, not excuses about how it isn't feasible right now. Hell's bells, if we'd spent the money on renewable energy rather than Iraq, we'd have the problem almost solved by now. It only took 6 years and $20 billion (2004 dollars) for the Manhattan Project to go from a small research program to the Trinity test.

What could we have done with the $420 billion we've spent on Iraq so far? Forget energy independence - we'd be selling energy cheaply to our allies. Anyone who was friends with the US would be living in (energy) luxury. The comparison between might-have-been and what-is could make the strongest and toughest man weep and rage in grief and fury.
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*some states have more space than others and would likely have more, while some have less - but that doesn't really change the numbers.

Dilution is the solution to dissolution

2007-04-25T07:53:00.000-05:00

Response to a letter by Paul Rosenberg Tuesday, April 24, 2007 07:23 PM

I would have said "poverty" but it would not have been alliterative. ;-) What Newman says about the working poor traveling to work makes sense to me, and I'd like to expand on it.

It has been my thought for a long time that concentrating poverty was the worst of all possible ideas for dealing with it. The failure of "the projects" or "the slums" (pick your city) is evidence of that.

On a small scale (small towns) poverty exists, but isn't much of a problem provided the whole town is approximately prosperous. The residents don't allow things to get too far out of hand. Poor kids tend to get stuff for Christmas, families tend to get Thanksgiving baskets, and everyone knows where the money in the church's poor box goes (hence the appeal of "faith-based" charities to small-town America, but I digress).

It may be now that there is too much poverty and too little affluence to make this idea work, but I think new subdivisions/apartment building should be required to make 20% of the houses for low-income people - and of course not concentrated in one area/floor.

Part of the problem according to reports I've heard is that people in large, highly concentrated, poor areas ("ghettos" or "projects") don't see "how others live" except as a place they can't stay, merely to pass by. Conversely, many people don't think about the poor because they are "there" and not right here.

If the more affluent had to consider poor people more often because they are neighbors, they might be more sympathetic and less likely to hide behind ideology. Likewise, if the poor saw that their life wasn't the only choice, they might not suffer the hopelessness I hear about. And they would have access to the jobs other affluent people scorn.

It would also make sense to attract the more affluent to the areas of concentrated poverty. There are various ways of doing that (tax incentives come to mind). Granted, it isn't likely a middle-class family wants to move into the middle Watts or Hell's Kitchen, but I'm thinking of creating salients from the border and moving inward gradually.

Places like Greenwich Village in New York became "renewed" because it became "cool" to live there. There are ways of doing that, too. Creating a cultural center, technical campus, government building, or other "middle class" environment might work.

I think that it might be useful for city-poor to move to middle-class rural towns, and rural-poor to live in a middle-class apartment building. Not permanently, necessarily - but long enough to destroy the ignorance of "what's out there" and so (I hope) jolt them out of a rut they've fallen into. And, of course, all this would be voluntary. I suggest to encourage this "internal" exchange program that an incentive (2-3 times the normal assistance for a limited time) be instituted. Lots of incentives here, I know. But I think the concentrated poverty is costing us more in the long run.

It won't work for everyone, of course. I have no illusions that some people don't wish to be helped, or simply can't take advantage of the opportunities offered (or change their mode of thinking). (I have a different idea for that, but that is for another time.)

I can't resist commenting on Virginia Tech

2007-04-21T08:32:00.000-05:00

I am forced to comment. Anyone who has read this blog probably knows that I think people should be responsible for their own self-defense. I consider gun control to be unconstitutional, at least, and possibly immoral.

That said, many people who have been right about a lot of things (examples include Glenn Greenwald, a good and smart man named Larry Hughes, and my wife) insist the Heinleinian "Beyond This Horizon" ideal of an armed and peaceful society is not possible. They keep saying it is unrealistic. After a lot of thought, I agree.

Despite it being legal, many refuse to carry a gun. (I do not, but only because - like many people - I work in a place where I can't bring in a Swiss Army knife, never mind a gun. Where would I put it while I spend 10 hours at work?) And most people, even when they have "weapon parity" will simply submit to someone who has "the look." I'm sure everyone who reads this knows what I'm talking about. It is the look that says "I have this weapon, and I'm willing to use it." It is the look of the trained professional, or the hardened criminal, or (in rare cases) the average person who has life experiences that has hardened them sufficiently to enable them to pull the trigger. The gun control people have long quoted statistics saying the majority of gun owners shot are victims of their own guns. I don't know how true that is, because so many of those who say it have an agenda (cops and other gun control advocates). To borrow a phrase, though, it has an air of "truthiness" to it.

The last straw is the fact that so many people who are wrong about so many, many things agree with me on a "culture of self-defense." Now, if the heinous and abhorrent Michelle Malkin and her ilk say the sky is blue, I take a quick look out the window, just in case I have fallen into some alternate universe without knowing it. Because the nuttiest of the right-wingnuts agrees with me, it causes me to seriously reconsider my position.

Let's consider western culture (and indeed, most cultures around the world). For the longest time, weapons and self-defense were the sole province of the privileged. It was death for a peasant to have a weapon, without leave from his lord/master. Even today, we are constantly barraged with advice to call the authorities (police) when you're in danger. Don't try to apprehend a criminal yourself - in fact, you're likely to be arrested for vigilantism if you do. Theoretically we have a citizen's arrest in our laws, but in practice you are under immediate suspicion and the police consider themselves to have probable cause if you act as a citizen cop. Most of us have bought into this. Most of us are sheep, and are unwilling and unable to protect ourselves, even if the means drops in our laps.

I am not going to blame the victims in the VT incident. (I will call it "incident" because more people die in one day in Iraq from suicide bombers than died at VT. I don't hear anyone calling those "massacres" except a few so-called "left-wing moonbats" per the right-wingnuts. The MSM certainly isn't calling the Iraq attacks "massacres" are they?) They are victims not only of the maniac, but also of the society and mindset they were born into.

So I formally renounce, barring some really extreme event, the idea of all citizens being armed as a means to prevent tragedies like VT. Note this is a very, very narrow admission.

I still think that the 2nd Amendment means anyone who desires to be armed has the right to carry. I still think that the *possibility* of an armed citizenry is the last, best defense against tyranny. I still think that those who have the mental toughness to use a weapon in others' defense when necessary should be allowed to do so. I think it is a good idea to attempt a shift to a culture of self-defense. Even if it is mostly unsuccessful, maybe the few who do go from sheep to shepherds will help reduce crime and increase security for everyone.

Oh, by the way, I still take the attitude that they can come take the guns I do own when they pry them from my cold, dead hands.

Give me Liberty, or give me death. I mean it, assholes.

My take on gun control

2007-04-19T14:11:00.000-05:00

There is lots of crap about gun control now. There are a lot of variations on "so, are you all for guns now that the Cho killings are national news?" Maybe I'm getting "gun control" fatigue or oversensitivity but I have to respond.

The short answer is yes, I still am.

More people were killed on Monday in car accidents than at Virginia Tech. True, cars aren't meant to kill people. But then again, I can't really see how a car qualifies as the last, best defense against government tyranny, either. That was the intent of the 2nd Amendment.

Though I am sympathetic to the parents of the slain students, I am also sympathetic to the loved ones of car accident victims. But that doesn't mean I want to change our approach to cars, or guns.

Yet another double standard - Imus

2007-04-16T17:03:00.000-05:00

If a white person calls someone a "bitch" or "nigger" or "nappy-headed ho" then he's racist.

If a black person does it, he's hip (hop).

I'm not excusing racists. I think it would be valuable for people to use terms of respect with each other. I don't call my wife "bitch" or "ho" and I don't call my friends "cracker" or whatever. I don't see any benefit to black people calling each other bad names.

Yes, Carlos Mencia is funny. But if you look carefully, he shows how destructive it is to make fun of people. IMHO.

Clarifying Global Warming/Climate Change

2007-04-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

I’d like to correct a possible misconception both sides in the gw/cc debate may have.

Climate is not a linear system. A linear system is like a car, where the harder you push on the gas, the faster you go. The harder you brake (until you lock the wheels) the slower you go.

Climate is like putting little grains of sand on a sand pile. It may not do anything but get taller for a while, then suddenly the whole thing shifts and you get a pile that looks quite different.

Climate is like a series of out-of-sync radio waves. Sometimes, they interfere almost perfectly and you hear nothing. Most of the time they interfere and you hear static. Sometimes they interfere almost perfectly and you hear a loud monotone.

Climate is like people. Individually, people are relatively unpredictable. When you get a large enough group of people together, the chances of one of two outcomes becomes much greater. If threatened, they will either fight, or flee.

Climate is like a combination of sand piles, radio waves, and people. It is a damped, driven oscillator. When the rhythm is disturbed, either by sun spots, asteroid hits, volcanoes erupting, cars spewing CO2, or cows farting, it will swing wildly before settling into a new rhythm. Sometimes more than one thing happens, but whether it will cancel (radio silence) or reinforce (loud tone) we cannot say.

But what we can say is that we are driving (disturbing) the system. You may argue how it will ultimately react, or whether the disturbance is minor compared to the driving forces already at work. The very unpredictability should be enough to soberly contemplate the consequences. By insisting that nothing is wrong, and that it is OK to push it harder, you are gambling that nothing will happen. Or you imply you simply don’t like things as they are now and want them to change.

In any case, whether it is car farts or cow farts, it is still human activity (cows wouldn’t be nearly as plentiful without human intervention). Meddle at your peril.

Another double standard

2007-04-05T12:46:00.000-05:00

Another double standard in our society - as if there weren't enough.

People who use their minds all day (engineers, managers, writers, accountants, and other office/"white collar" types) are harangued to "take care of their bodies" and use their free time to exercise. If they have a less than svelte appearance, they are ridiculed for being "soft" or "doughy" or simply "fat."

And yet, people who work on a physical level are not pressured to read more, or go to classes in order to stimulate their minds. If they are less than clever or informed, they aren't called "ignorant" or "clueless" or simply "stupid." They are simply classified as "honest workers" or "simple, hard-working Americans."

Let's make a trade. I'll gladly go do some aerobic sport (like soccer) for an hour 5 days a week, if some "simple, hard-working American" will study critical thinking (Philosophy 101) for an hour 3 days a week. Seems fair to me.

Bush Messes with Congress Again.

2007-04-05T08:13:00.000-05:00

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-04-04-bush-sam-fox_N.htm?csp=1

A "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" big donor gets recess appointment as ambassador.

Sam Fox (appropriate last name) says his lack of endorsement by the Senate won't cause him to lose credibility on the job, insisting his performance will be the main factor.

I don't know about you, but if I were a foreign diplomat, I would have no respect for Fox. I would be unwilling to deal with a person who financed character assassination.

I hope the Dutch ignore this guy as much as possible.

If Bush says it, it is 99% probable it is untrue.

2007-04-04T06:44:00.000-05:00

It is a simple recipe. I wonder why it is so hard for the MSM to understand it?

Edit 4/4/07 9:50 am - it may look like I'm commenting on the previous post. I am not. I promised I wouldn't.

I am actually just commenting about some people I overheard this morning - though I didn't want to intrude on their conversation.

People wonder what the "truth" is about Iraq, Iran, FBI-gate, DOJ-gate, Plame-gate, and all the other scandals plaguing our Executive Branch.

I'm telling you a good recipe for separating fact from fiction.

E-mail*** Exchange: WaPo's Jonathan Weisman

2007-04-03T11:00:00.000-05:00

In a letter to Jonathan Weisman of the Washington Post on 04/02/2007 1:55 p.m. (all times in EDT) I wrote:

Glenn Greenwald said (http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/?last_story=/opinion/greenwald/2007/04/02/iraq_polling):

This is what the Washington Post poll asked:
7. Do you think the United States should keep its military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there, even if that means continued U.S.military casualties; OR, do you think the United States should withdraw itsmilitary forces from Iraq in order to avoid further U.S. militarycasualties, even if that means civil order is not restored
there?

Keep forces - 42%

Withdraw forces - 56%

In that article, Mr. Greenwald links to many polls showing that theAmerican people are not going to punish Congress for their stance on Iraq.Your own (WaPo) poll shows Americans support removal of troops, even if we don't "win."

Please correct the factual misstatements in your article.

Thank you,
Bryan Hayward

On 4/3/07 9:49 a.m. Jonathan Weisman wrote:

Republicans have their attack line ready: Democrats want to import terrorists to the United States. That said, I didn't write that the moves would be politically treacherous, politically suicidal, politically idiotic or even politically dangerous. I wrote "politically risky" because for Democrats, there is a risk to giving Republicans an opening to revive their soft-on-terrorism charge. Whether that charge will stick, I don't know and am not passing any judgment on. I'm merely saying there is a risk, whichreally is undeniable.

On 4/3/07 10:29 a.m. I replied:

I appreciate your response. It occurs to me, however, that such a line of attack would go exactly nowhere if reporters and pundits actually stayed neutral - which does not mean "do nothing" or "pass on their words without comment." After all, the White House itself said Iraq had nothing to do with terrorism. This statement seems to be lost in the annals of history, rather than be brought to the fore when Iraq and terrorism are mentioned in the same breath.

The only way Republicans could succeed in painting a withdrawal from Iraq as "soft on terrorism" is if reporters and pundits relayed those talking points without juxtaposing those words with the contradictory facts (or, as often is the case, placing them cozily into factless cheerleading for this war).

So, I think the risk is hardly "undeniable." Rove engineered the warrantless surveillance and Military Commissions Act votes before 2006 to paint Democrats as weak, and it backfired spectacularly. As long as reporters and pundits are doing their job by holding government (executive) accountable and not publishing Bush lies as facts, the Democrats will be at little or no risk of such attacks succeeding.

Are you saying, as a fully accredited member of the mainstream media (tm), that the vast majority of reporters and pundits are willingly, even enthusiastically, reporting falsehoods? Will they continue to do so, even though it is weakening the Constitution, the US (militarily), and the reputations of the 56% who say "Iraq is a disaster and we need to leave?"

(P.S. May I post this exchange on my blog? I will not editorialize further as I think the responses speak for themselves.)

On 4/3/07 11:18 a.m. Mr. Weisman responds:

Even House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there is always a risk of going too far too fast. Politics is a risky business. After all, who knew that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth would be able to raise real doubts with some voters about John Kerry's Vietnam war record? You never know what will stick, and we as journalists cannot ignore those possibilities.

***Yes, you can post this exchange. I appreciate you asking.

Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post congressional writer
weismanj@washpost.com

On 4/3/07 12:22 p.m. I wrote my most recent question, to which I have not yet received a response:

Politics is a risky business.

Unquestionably. So what about the Iraq bill warrants special comment?

You never know what will stick, and we as journalists cannot ignore those
possibilities.

What I learned in my psychology class was that a perceived authority (or authorities) saying something loudly enough, often enough, and with sufficient sincerity can convince many people that the red box was blue.

What I've seen stick is that which is said often, loudly, and passionately, then repeated with no contradictory factual context by many others.

Cheers,
Bryan

Congressional Authority to End War

2007-03-28T15:52:00.000-05:00

My response to a USA Today editorial - the usual "The Decider decides when to end the war, not the people's representatives...blah blah"

Well, everyone's entitled to their own opinion. However, not everyone is entitled to their own facts.

Wars are always run by committee. No one person can handle all the facets of a conflict mentioned in this article. Hence, a committee for carrying on war known as "The Joint Chiefs of Staff." The President delegates most of this work to them, who in turn delegate to other commanders in the field.

As for "how long they may participate in combat" - that was never up to the office of the President. The Congress delegates the authority to make war (see below). The body that delegates authority may rescind it at any time. Any other logic borders on the absurd. It would mean that a CEO, once he has delegated duties of preparing a merger, may not re-take that authority if s/he feels the situation is being handled poorly.

And let's be very clear - the President has, in fact, been able to run things exactly the way he wants since 9/11. He has the sole responsibility for the mess we are in now. It is madness to allow the man who has completely failed to continue to have complete authority over the situation. (emphasis added here)

According to the Constitution, "Congress shall have the power...to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water..." Iraq is a "captured land" (since we declared war on it, and our troops defeated theirs, and we now occupy it). Therefore, it is up to Congress alone, and not the President, to determine the disposition of Iraq. Remember, "Executive" doesn't mean "King" it means "having authority to execute" - either the will of the people or the will of Congress.

The will of the people and of Congress are absolutely in sync right now, according to USA Today's own polling. "Of the 1,007 people polled over the weekend, 60 percent support withdrawing from Iraq in 2008, but 61 percent oppose cutting funding for the troops in the country." The bill passed by the House and the one by the Senate have both of those provisions.

Let me add one small thing here - Congress has been using pork to pass bills since the founding of the Republic. There is nothing new here. Regrettable, annoying, expensive - yes to all. But not new. Republicans are just as guilty as Democrats. Pointing out the use of pork here is tantamount to saying "It is raining today." Some places, it rains a lot. Like in Washington. Hardly a damning accusation.
Congress realizes now, like it did in the 70's, that we're stuck in a situation that is unwinnable. In Vietnam, we were propping up a corrupt regime. In Iraq, we're trying to establish a regime. The thing about Vietnam is, we didn't start it. We started Iraq. It is up to us to end it.

How many died from the Iraq War?

2007-03-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

Lancet Study
Another example of beltway media either giving short shrift to a subject or giving it constant derision was the Lancet Study. Today the British have finally decided to recognize the studies voracity. They are, after all this time later, saying that Lancet Study had it right.

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday. -snip- The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as "robust" and "close to best practice". Another official said it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".

By Jill Lawless

Published: 27 March 2007

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2396031.ece

-- kittf

Comment on Glenn Greenwald's column on salon.com.

My take: Indeed - it isn't just the US troops that have suffered in Iraq. The amount of deaths this represents rises to the UNEQUIVOCAL and UNDENIABLE level of war crime. Committed by "King Shrubya" and his courtiers - including the MSM.

James Madison on impeachment

2007-03-28T07:20:00.000-05:00

I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject [the president] to impeachment and removal from his own high trust. - James Madison

Via Digby http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/wanton-removal-by-digby-via-avedon.html

Hat tip to The Poor Man Institute http://www.thepoorman.net/2007/03/27/the-fall/

So, Prosecutorgate just partisanship, huh? As Digby and the Editors said, I guess the Rethugs were successful in making everything political, and nothing is about policy anymore.