Most people I know see the color-coded terror alert system as a tool of political manipulation. Sure there's a real danger out there, but the administration isn't above hyping irrelevancies to punch it's approval numbers. Most people I know, though, aren't clever enough to check the terror alert 6 weeks post-election and notice that there haven't been any terror alerts since election day. I wonder why that would be, hmmm?
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
The FDA has approved a study to test whether Ecstasy is useful in the treatment of anxiety in terminally-ill cancer patients. This, plus the study about Ecstasy treatment for people suffering from post-traumatic-stress-disorder, is a good sign that some rational medicine and science is sneaking into the drug debate.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Israeli is freeing Palestinian prisoners as a gesture of good will toward Egypt and Abbas. Israeli hopes this makes them look like good guys, but to me it makes them look like a bunch of tin-pot despots.
Either these Palestinians prisoners are a threat or they're not. Either they deserve to be jailed or they don't. If these people belong in jail, Israel shouldn't release them because they want some good press. If they don't belong in prison, then Israel should have released them a long time ago. Releasing prisoner en masse as "a good will gesture" for public relations just underscores how unjust their imprisonment was in the first place.
Imprisoning people for little or no good reason, holding them indefinitely, and then releasing them for political points is the kind of thing Saddam Hussein did. Unforuntately, it's also the kind of thing we've done in Iraq. It's good to see these people freed, but perhaps we could have acted more judiciously and never imprisoned them in the first place.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Briefly noted in the NYTimes:
Saddam Hussein has been denied access to legal counsel since his arrest. It takes a year to get him a lawyer? That's ridiculous. It's obvious that the man isn't going to get anything more than a show trial. Of course, there isn't really any doubt that he's guilty of all kinds of horrific crimes against Iraq and humanity, so affording him a vigorous defense would produce a trial of little more substance.
The Times speaks warmly of guns. Notably, the guns in question are carried by police and are being phased out.
New York is debating the death penalty again. There was a time when the death penalty obstacle was Governor Cuomo. Every year, the Senate and the Assembly would pass death legislation, and Cuomo would veto the bill. Pataki, winning office in part on this issue, changed all that immediately upon taking office. It's nice to see the members of the Assembly force Sheldon Silver to allow debate on the issue.
And, finally, Pedro Martinez pretends it's not all about the money. Apparently his going to the highest bidding team is a coincidence.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Pandagon puts out the call to support injured troops with phone cards. At this time of year, being able to call your family, especially when you're injured, is a big deal. Pony up.
Polis | 7 Writebacks | #
You know what's icky? It's icky that people have such rare contact with gays that running into a gay couple is blog fodder. I'm all for people loudly proclaiming that gays aren't icky, but in this case the proclamation itself underscores that, even among open-minded lefties, there is a huge cultural divide between straight folks and not-so-straight folks.
Via Say Uncle.
Polis | 8 Writebacks | #
There was a time when every kid harbored romantic dreams of safecracking. It was all those old film noire scenes involving stethoscopes and black leather gloves that did it. But safe cracking is a declining art, and knowledge is disappearing fast. If you've ever tried to pick a lock or resorted to cutting your way past a padlock, read this history of safecracking before it's gone.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
The heroes of the Supreme Court, bless their cold black hearts, have declined to review a decision upholding a church's right to indulge in hallucinogenic tea as part of a meditative ritual. The tea is made from ayahuasca and contains DMT. DMT can be some good stuff. You will see the face of god, and you will be mildly surprised to discover that she wears a vageuly snotty and bemused expression.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
The Village Voice is usually a complete waste of time, but I popped in today and discovered a few things worth reading.
First, is there Rockefeller Drug Law round up. It's just a page of links to their coverage from the last few years, but the articles do a good job of outlining the problem with ridiculously harsh sentences. They also make clear that we've only just begun to reform those sentencing laws. One article does a particularly good job of illustrating how our current sentencing laws make no sense.
The Voice also covers an article by Frances Kissling in Conscience that examines abortion from a Catholic, feminist perspective. Kissling argues that pro-choicers need to grapple with the ethics of ending potential life. She believes you can do so and still support choice. I agree and am heartened by the Voice acknowledging some complexity in the abortion debate.
Finally, the Voice does a hit piece on Al Sharpton. Seems the Rev's been doing the unholy with a woman who is not his wife. Hypocrisy, blah, blah, whatever. Does anybody really believe Sharpton has any morals? The article is worth reading for prurient interest alone.
Polis | 7 Writebacks | #
There's something incredibly elegant about improving traffic flow and safety by removing road signs and pushing the cyclists and pedestrians right up against the cars.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Canada is doing everything it can to make one simple point over and over: they're not like their backwards neighbors to the south. I wonder how many times Canada can show us up before we start taking human rights seriously.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
In the wake of federal victory and state defeat, groups fighting for gay rights are asking whether they should demand less in hopes of provoking less attack. Even the Human Rights Campaign, so instrumental in winning the battle against the federal hate amendment, is in turmoil because it didn't defeat the state referenda attacking gays. It seems the victims of American oppression blame themselves for their plight.
The fight for equality is not a battle. It's a war. It has been and will be decades and generations of legal and social struggle. There will be setbacks. If each measure of defeat is met with surrender, the war is already lost.
Surrender is based on the faulty notion that bigots and zealots hate gays because they demand equal rights. The hatred and attacks will come, regardless of how hard gays push for equality. Conservatives see which way history is moving, and they know they need to nail down as much anti-gay law as possible while they still can. The attacks will continue, and battles will be lost. But the war is all but won if only people will fight it.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
- $10 anonymous Santa suit - check!
- Pine Sol bottle - check!
- Big gift for a little girl - check!
- Formal invitation - check!
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Lean Left weighs in on European support of democracy around the world. It's long, but it puts some essential facts on the table. If it weren't Friday, I'd call it required reading.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Unfogged links to Eugene Volokh's NYTimes piece on the journalist-source privilege and notes that the perfection of anonymous communication will obsolete such protections. I don't see reporters in a post-Rather world taking unvetted, unauthenticated, anonymous tips, but it's not a bad article.
I'm all for laws and policies that carve out some journalist-source immunity, but in my view there is nothing so fundamentally sacred about telling secrets for publication that we need to protect that ability as a matter of right.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Methodist Bigots have put one of their own ministers, Irene Stroud, on trial for allegedly living with her lesbian partner. If convicted, Rev. Stroud will lose her preachy powers and, presumably, her job prospects will be quite dim.
This case is a big deal-- the trial involves six expert witnesses and Skinimax is interested in the rights to a movie tentatively titled "Defrocked Lesbians". Stroud is unlikely to win, and the only good news is that the prosecution's repeated motions for preemptive stoning have been denied.
I wonder if this case raises any EEOC concerns. It probably shouldn't (1st Amendment and all that), but I wonder if there's any caselaw on it.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Johnny America, leader of the Greene Dragon, has a weekly bloggy thing going on at his website. There he rails against the illness known as consumption. He's nice, he's cute, he's a patriot. Go read.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Americablog is down on the bigots in Alabama and down on the bigots in Alabama. There's good reasons to shower piss on Alabamian haters:
- they're for marriage discrimination
- they want to ban books that portray gays without condemning them
- they couldn't be bothered to repeal anti-miscegenation laws until 2000 (and even then 40% of the people voted against repealing)
- they love Jim Crow
I feel bad for the people who live in Alabama. Of course, I'm just glad they live there and not here.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Drug War Rant has the round up on Raich v. Ashcroft, the commerce clause / medical marijuana case. My prediction remains the same: Morrison and Lopez are outliers and not signals of major shifts in commerce clause jurisprudence. I would like to see the government lose on this, but I think it's unlikely. Let's hope I'm wrong.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
More news comes out about American troops acting like terrorists in Iraq. We all know by now that if we couldn't find somebody we were looking for, our troops routinely kidnapped "female family members to force wanted Iraqi males to turn themselves in," American troops taking hostages is outrageous, but it's not news.
What's news is that higher-ups knew this all along and did nothing about it for months.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Amnesty International thinks tasers are a bad idea. They want police to stop using tasers until we have some proof that they're non-lethal.
As most people know, tasers are sometimes problematic. They get used in situations where lethal force is unwarranted, indeed in cases where no force is warranted, and yet they hurt like hell and sometimes kill.
All this doesn't add up to a need for a taser ban in my book, but police definitely need to consider their taser policies very carefully. For example, no tasing little kids, old ladies, or innocent men in their own homes. If that leaves you with nobody left to tase, just let me know and I'll provide you with a list of people who might benefit from shock therapy.
Links via TalkLeft , which has lots of links to stopries about taser problems, and Say Uncle, who covers tasers here and then.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
TalkLeft writes up Ibogaine a psychedelic drug said to cure addiction to heroin and other drugs. Of course, our government, focused more on the psychedelic rather than therapeutic properties, has placed this drug beyond the reach of care-givers, researchers and suffering addicts.
TalkLeft says "the experience is anything but fun, in fact it sounds awful." In other words, this isn't a recreational drug. It will make you trip, but not in a good way. Ibogaine isn't likely to be used recreatinally because drug users are usually looking for a good time, and Ibogaine isn't a good time.
Ibogaine is a drug with potential use in the treatment of addiction (it's had some documented success). It's a poor candidate to become a party drug or a recreational drug. What's the rationale for scheduling it (a move that makes research difficult and more expensive)?
If you're interested in Ibogaine, read Erowid's page on it, Daniel Pinchbeck's Salon article, and his book, Breaking Open the Head.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
It is a matter of conventional wisdom among ACLU-watchers that the best place to file a first amendment claim is the third circuit. Philly judges are just more likely to be sympathetic to first amendment arguments than judges in other circuits. And not surprisingly, they came through again today.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, found that educational institutions have a First Amendment right to keep military recruiters off their campuses to protest the Defense Department policy of excluding gays from military service.
The best part about this is the court's willingness to use the Boy Scout's exclusion of gays to their advantage:
"Just as the Boy Scouts believed that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the Scout Oath," Judge Ambro wrote, "the law schools believe that employment discrimination is inconsistent with their commitment to fairness and justice."
It's a victory all around, and I applaud it. Some people fear the military will suffer with inferior lawyers if it is disadvantaged in the recruiting process. This is a valid concern, but one easily remedied-- stop discriminating in the hiring of attorneys.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
A few months ago, a friend of mine stuck an anti-GMO flyer on my fridge. She assumed I was all down with the fight against Frankenfood and tinkering with nature's perfect bounty. It seems all my lefty friends are against the genetic modification.
I left the flyer up, just to be nice, but I let her know that I don't have big problems with GMO food, plants, animals, or even people. She narrated for me the parade of horribles we will soon see lest we stop messing with mother nature. And she was right-- it did sound pretty terrible.
But then I always think about the upside, the benefits of this technology, and I just can't pass on things like landmine detecting flowers. I mean, it's a flower! And it finds landmines! How cool is that?
So, yeah, frankenfood is going to make us all sterile, allergic zombies or something, but at least we won't be stepping on landmines.
Via Boing Boing.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
The Greene Dragon joined Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping to celebrated Buy Nothing Day by invading Times Square and getting arrested. The last picture on that page, of the Rev being loaded into a paddy wagon is classic.
Unfortunately, I misread the email and went to the wrong location (just a couple blocks away, but so far!) and missed the festivities. Perhaps next time I can get all patriotic windbaggy with some of the best street theater people around.
Although the Times didn't cover the Rev's latest action, the magazine did a great, flattering bit on him this past summer. Congrats to patriots everywhere!
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Sometimes the best part of protests is coming up with slogans and making posters. You just sit around, drink, smoke and shout out whatever comes to mind. You make a bunch of posters, make your statement, and somehow lose track of all the signs. Then, months later, you're browsing the internet and see your work, carried by somebody you don't know. It warms my cold black heart, yes it does.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Drug War Rant, while debunking the White House's latest book of marijuana lies, reminds us that the easiest and fastest way to reduce the number of kids smoking weed is to legalize it. Go read.
Polis | 12 Writebacks | #
Tennessee school bans pens and pencils. Apparently they're weapons and a violation of the zero-tolerance policy. I suspect the move is part of a long-range plan to convert our schools into padded-cell nurseries.
Via Say Uncle.
Polis | 6 Writebacks | #
What is with Republicans and rules? Every time the rules are inconvenient, they change them. Want to raise the budget, but hampered by the debt ceiling? No problem, just raise the ceiling. My favorite part is that they admit they're going to raise it again next year. They should just abolish the damn thing and get it over with.
House Majority Leader embroiled in a financial scandal? No problem, just change the rules so he can continue to govern after indictment.
These people have no shame.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Bloomberg has followed Elliot Spitzer's advice and directed the city to recognize all marriages from other states, even if they couldn't be performed in New York. The upshot of this is that people married in other states won't suddenly find themselves unmarried upon coming to New York just because they're gay.
We're winning the culture war.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Matthey Yglesias gets the scare on by saying there's no middle ground once you overturn Roe v. Wade. He says if we ditch Roe, we lose all kinds of other rights or else we ditch abortion by judicial fiat all across the land:
The logic of the anti-Roe view is either that there's no right to privacy, or else that for some reason the right to privacy does not extend to this particular matter. If you take the former approach than the universal applicability of a bunch of other rights will stand or fall with Roe. If you take the latter approach then the rest of the legal doctrine can stand, but the issue arises of why the right to privacy wouldn't extend to this matter. The answer would pretty much have to be that abortions aren't private conduct because the fetus has the rights of a person. This is the logic of virtually all the pro-life rhetoric one hears, and in the legal context it's the logic of the analogies drawn between Roe and the pre-Civil War slavery cases. This suggests that the upshot of an anti-Roe ruling wouldn't be for abortion to be decided by the congress and the state legislatures, but for a universal abortion ban to be put in place by judicial fiat.
Fortunately, the abortion debate in the courts isn't framed this way. Yglesias casts the problem as two competing rights: that of the mother and that of the fetus. The courts, though, see it as the rights of the mother vs. the rights (or powers) of the state.
The state has the power to regulate and protect certain interests. In this case, that interest is preserving the potential life of a viable fetus. The protestors and certain moralistic legislators talk about protecting fetal life and a fetus's right to life, but the Supreme Court has never employed that language.
Even the dissents in both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey avoid characterizing the fetus in a way that would require the state to protect it. Rhenquist, writing for himself, Scalia and Thomas, goes out of his way to say that while he would recognize the state's right to regulate abortion, "It bears emphasis that our conclusion in this regard does not carry with it any necessary approval of these regulations." Likewise, Scalia writes "The States may, if they wish, permit abortion..."
Roe doesn't turn on the metaphysical question of when life begins. It turns on what protections women have from intrusions of state power. If the Court decides women have no protection in this area, it doesn't need Yglesias's justification that "abortions aren't private conduct because the fetus has the rights of a person." Instead, the Court can easily turn to the state interest in the potential lives of fetuses, which would allow (but not require) protection of those potential lives. And potential life being a pretty unique issue, this can be done without jeopardizing other privacy rights.
We know the Court can do this because this is exactly what the Court does under Roe itself. When they want to draw the line at fetal viability, the Court doesn't cast fetuses as children. Instead, it talks of them as potential lives and says the state can regulate them. There is no suggestion in any Supreme Court writing that government is required to ban abortions of viable fetuses.
When people tell you the Court might go so far as to ban abortion, they are proposing something that no member of the Court has ever come close to saying. They are proposing a scenario more conservative than even the most conservative Justice. They are predicting a ruling that directly contradicts the most conservative Justices' writings on this subject. In other words, it's not going to happen.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
When the Boy Scouts won the right to discriminate against gays, I was bitterly disappointed. For all that they are a private organization, the Scouts are more integrated into public institutions than almost any other civic organization. At the time, I said that if they are so private as to be free to discriminate, they should give up all their public benefits. The Scouts refused to do so, of course, but I had hope that local and state governments wqould stop offering them.
Shortly thereafter, I heard tell of people pulling their kids from the Boy Scouts. And that made me happy. Some schools even closed their doors to troops. And that made me happy to. But most places were happy to keep letting their schools, libraries and parks serve the purposes of bigots. Now, through the intervention of the courts, even that tide is starting to turn.
You want to be a bigotted asshole in the privacy of your own home, go for it. You want to gather with your fellow close-minded morons, be my guest. If you want to have a private club and refuse entry to the people you hate, feel free. But don't turn my government to your evil purposes. Don't use my tax money for your bigotry. Finally, some courts are starting to agree.
Frank Rich is right. We're winning the culture war.
Polis | 6 Writebacks | #
Marginal Revolution mentions that a flat tax isn't necessarily simpler than our current income tax setup. Sure, one tax bracket is easier than several, but the complexity comes from all the exceptions in determining what counts as taxable income.
Once upon a time, our tax system was very simple. A 1040 took ten minutes to fill out. All the little rules, loopholes, and deviations accreted over time. Year by year, the rules go more and more byzantine. If you want to sweep aside all those crusty rules, you can do it regardless of whether we then also move to a flat tax or not.
But the rules all exist for a reason. Every rule we put in place had a rationale. We wanted to incentivize certain behavior, so we made a tax rule to make that behavior cheaper. Or we wanted to favor certain groups, so we make their lives easier with tax credits aimed at them. Giving up all these rules would rejigger society. And there's no reason to think Congress won't immediately start enacting new loopholes and complicated rules on top of the flat tax. It's what they do.
Arguments for the flat tax are arguments for less progressive taxation. They are not arguments for simpler taxation. We could keep our brackets and still file on a postcard because all those crufty rules could be gone any time we want.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Americablog's latest bit of Ohio blogging urges people to donate to Greens and Libertarians in Ohio to fund the recount efforts. I'm not really sure why that's ok when they crucified Nader and the Swiftboat Liars for taking Republican money.
I don't really have a problem with Nader taking red money or the Greens and Libs taking blue money. When two groups with few common goals suddenly find themselves in a position to work together, they should do so. We're all trying to achieve our goals and sometimes your goals match mine even if I usually hate you.
When you let your opponents dictate your allies, you let them divide you and crush you. Branding Nader as a crypto-Republican is as ridiculous as slurring civil rights groups as communist stalking horses.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
A good friend of mine is a leftwing street-level rabble rouser who came out hard for Kerry. He put in hours and days of tough and creative work. He was bitterly disappointed on November 2.
He's also a huge gun nut. You get him drunk enough and he starts muttering about making untraceable gun barrels in his shop upstate. He believes that if our divided nation is going to fight itself, we lefties need better weapons than peace signs and slogans. He has a collection of scary scary guns and a shooting range on his farm.
He also believes, as do I, that the Democrats should give up on the gun issue. Guns are a low-intensity issue for me and most of my leftie friends. Sure most of us support sensible gun restrictions, but none of us get upset about it one way or the other. It's certainly not a voting issue for anybody I know on this side of the divide.
For the gun nuts, though, it's a huge issue. Gun nuts aren't quite single-issue voters, but they come pretty close. From a purely strategic point of view, moving to the right on guns loses you few votes and removes the automatic disqualification from all the second amendment freaks.
And since this post comes a day after Vet's day, I just want to note that an awfully nice gun nut was just called up and sent to Iraq. Dan's a cop and a crazy batshit loonie hard ass, but he also has some pretty high standards for morals and treating the world well. He's exactly the kind of guy you want in Iraq, and he's exactly the kind of guy you're sorry to see go. He served proudly in the first Gulf War, and I know he'll serve honorably this time too. Thanks, Dan and come home safe.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
The NYTimes says bloggy rumors of stolen elections have been debunked, and they're right. This makes me happy, even though it means I was somewhat wrong. As much as I wanted to see Bush pitched, I don't really want another crisis of faith in our election system and democracy. I still think the numbers are out of whack, though, and we need to count the paper ballots in Florida.
Polis | 6 Writebacks | #
Cell phone numbers are going public, so you will be able to get people's numbers from directory assistance. Some like this, others don't, but either way, nobody wants telemarketing calls on their cell. Get on the federal do not call registry and remember to turn your phone off before the show starts.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
If you change the electoral map to reflect each county's population, you get some very nice rorschach looking blots in a variety of pretty purples. Who knew political wonkery could be so artistic?
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Somehwere in my surfing, I came across Unfogged. Sure they're a couple of leftwing loonies, but sometimes leftwing loonies are right. And when they're talking about Bush, "sometimes" turns out to be "most of the time". Just be warned: these fuckers have potty mouths.
Today, they take on Alberto Gonzalez, the abortion=cancer connection, Halo 2. Go read.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
The Catalogue for Philantrhopy publishes a Generosity Index that ranks states according to how generously people donate to charity. As they admit, the index was "conceived in 1997 as a concise way to summarize Massachusetts' and New England's greatest problem in philanthropy: that we have the nation's largest gap between our ranks in income and our ranks in charitable giving." In other words, they set out to make New Englanders feel like penny pinchers in the hopes of getting these people to open their wallets. It is therefore not surprising that they chose a questionable methodology designed to produce the desired results. It's also not surprising that the methodology is completely bogus.
Since some red staters have been citing the Index to prove they have such open hearts and wallets, I looked at the numbers and discovered that it's all a sham.
Here's how the Catalogue ranked the states. They looked at charitable deductions on tax returns and calculated the average amount people give. Then they ranked them relative to how they stack up in income. It looks like a fair way to do it until you look at what they're hiding in their "average".
The big problem is that they ignored any returns that didn't make any charitable contributions at all. Their Index says that "Of the people that gave to charity, these people gave more and these other people gave less." That's like calculating average income but ignoring all the unemployed folks. Sure the data might be useful for something, but it doesn't actually tell you what people are earning or giving on the whole.
The next problem is that they rank the states by subtracting state rank among givers from state rank among earners. Unfortunately, this makes the ranking very arbitrarily related to how much you earn relative to other states. Their method does nothing to account for the distribution of the data. What they should have done was rank the states by giving per capita income dollar. That way, you actually measure how generous people are with what's in their pockets.
So I redid their rankings by calculating how much states give per capita income dollar, which controls for population and income differences. I discovered something interesting but not surprising. The states with the lower rankings all had higher percentages of returns that contained deductions for charitable giving. Both the high-ranked states had a few people making big donations, but the low-ranked states had a lot more people making small donations. This lowered the average in those states. The methodology penalizes states that give more!
Here's what the ranking should look like. It ranks a state's per capita per income charitable giving, as deduced from itemized charitable deductions. I have colored the states red and blue, as some have done. As you can see, the red and blue states are completely mixed, which makes sense because the red and blue states don't exist. We're all blotchy purple, so it would be really weird if small variations in the purpleness of your state correlated highly with charitable giving. It should also be noted that none of the figures looked at include corporate or foundation giving, which is a huge piece of the charity pie.
California
New York
Texas
Florida
Illinois
Georgia
Pennsylvania
North Carolina
Ohio
Michigan
New Jersey
Virginia
Maryland
Tennessee
Alabama
Indiana
Arizona
Missouri
Massachusetts
South Carolina
Washington
Utah
Minnesota
Colorado
Wisconsin
Oklahoma
Louisiana
Kentucky
Oregon
Mississippi
Arkansas
Connecticut
Kansas
Iowa
Nevada
Nebraska
Idaho
New Mexico
Hawaii
West Virginia
Maine
Montana
New Hampshire
Delaware
Rhode Island
Wyoming
South Dakota
Alaska
North Dakota
Vermont
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
John Ashcroft has resigned, saying "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." Congrats on a job well done, John! When do we call our troops back from Iraq and Afghanistan?
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Yet another reason to hit the gym before taking that beach vacation. I've always wanted a pair of X-Ray specs. Now, not so much.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Amidst all the accusations of Republican election fraud and cries that Bush stole the election, it is probably true that, in at least a few areas, our shiny new voting machines miscounted, discounted or recounted a bunch of votes. Evidence of such does not necessarily mean fraud, but it does mean that the machines we bought to fix our ailing system might be distorting results worse than the butterfly ballot they replaced.
I've been looking at Florida's county numbers because Florida has some very curious statistics. After the 2000 debacle, Florida abandoned its paper balloting system in favor of more advanced voting methods. Counties all chose one of two voting systems: touchscreens and optical scanners.
Touchscreen systems are the ATM-style voting machines you've read so much about in the media. These are the machines that are supposed to be easy to use and can avoid the problems associated with butterfly ballots. These are the machines that produce no paper trail and are difficult or impossible to audit after the election.
Optical scanners are a little more complicated. Optical scanning machines use paper ballots. The ballots are filled out by voters and then get fed into the machine, which records the votes. The big advantage of optical scanners is that they produce instant paper trails. The big disadvantage is that they are more difficult and cumbersome to use. After 2000, one of the big arguments for electronic voting was to get people away from filling out paper forms.
No matter which machine a county chooses, the result should be the same. County vote tallies shouldn't depend on the system chosen. What's curious about Florida, though, is that touchscreen systems and optical scanners produced very different results. The results are so different that they cannot be explained by simple chance or variance.
In most parts of the country, party registration is a pretty good predictor of how a county will vote for President. If Republicans and Democrats parties split a county's party registrations 65% to 30% (with, say, 5% registering with third or no parties), they have a 35% registration advantage. You can predict that the county will give around 35% more votes to Bush than Kerry. Things will swing by 5 or even 10 points here and there, but you can predict Bush will beat Kerry in that county. And you'll be right pretty much every time, all across America.
The only place you won't be right is Florida. More to the point, you'll be right if the Florida county in question used touchscreens, but not if it used optical scanners. In the 15 counties that used touchscreens, there is a high correlation between party registration and voting. In the 52 counties that used optical scanners, there is virtually no correlation at all.
Math types can measure the significance of the correlation between the proportion of registered voters to a party and the proportion of votes that party gets. They do this by finding the statistical significance of a Pearson Correlation. I won't bore you with the math, but it's interesting to note that while touchscreen counties showed an extremely high correlation, optical scanner counties did not. The odds of the votes turning out as they did by chance in those touchscreen counties (as opposed to correlation) are less than one in a thousand.
In optical scanner counties, we see the exact opposite story. Almost no correlation can be found between registration and voting. When you do the math, you find that suddenly party registration is completely useless in predicting election tallies. This runs counter to every political science study ever done, and it's pretty clear that something strange is going on.
But what? The voting machines were all made by one of three companies: Diebold, Sequoia and Election Systems & Software. A conspiracy to rig optical scanner machines for Bush would probably require collusion between Diebold, ES&S, various Republican officials and perhaps Sequoia as well. Sequoia only provided optical scanners for one county (Baker), although that county deviated quite surprisingly from expectations too. Diebold makes touchscreen systems, but only provided optical scanners in Florida. That's a lot of people, far too many to keep a big secret for long.
If tampering is far-fetched, why does all the improbability cut in Bush's favor? The odds of that happening by random chance are just about zero. One possible answer is that Bush did a very good job of getting out the votes and appealing to moderate Democrats. But if that's the answer, then somebody has to explain why he only did such a good job in counties with optical scanners.
So was Florida rigged? I have no idea. If it was rigged, the riggers did a pretty thorough job, although I can't imagine why they chose to do it on the machines with the paper trail.
What's clear is that the system didn't work as well as it was supposed to. The vote recorders became vote shapers. Putting aside the 2004 election, the lesson here is that we need verifiable backups to our voting machines. A simple paper trail is all people need to restore trust in our election system.
Fortunately, that paper trail exists for all the counties that used optical scanners in Florida. Dust off your FOIA request forms, because it's time for those ballots to be counted. We need to know how badly things went wrong, which means we need to audit those machines. And we will.
As for the touchscreen systems, they need a paper trail too. Every time I use an ATM, I get a receipt. Every time I buy groceries, I get a receipt. This is trivial technology and not expensive when compared to the huge financial, political and social costs of a disputed or doubted election. Every machine should print a slip of paper. The voter should be able to see the slip in a little window on the machine, and then the slip should drop into a locked box. Instant paper trail. Whenever a machine is challenged, we simply count the little slips. It's such an easy answer to end the controversy. Let's do it.
Polis | 9 Writebacks | #
Lean Left has suggestions for what you can do on January 20. They include raising money, throwing parties, celebrating diversity, laughing at Bush and stuff like that. Curiously and conspicuously absent from the list is the thing I plan to be doing on January 20: going to DC and expressing my displeasure at Bush's election. I want him to be trapped in his limo for the entire inauguration again. I want to dispel the delusion of Bush's mandate. Frankly, I want to make so much noise that Bush folds up shop and goes back to Texas.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Several thousand shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles have gone missing in Iraq. I thought we invaded Iraq to keep things like this away from terrorists.
Guesses as to how many are missing go as high as 4000, which would triple the number of missiles in private (presumably terrorist) hands. Mmm... safety tastes like burning.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
France, Germany and Britain have put aside the differences separating old Europe from cool, hip new smells like teen spirit Europe. They have joined forces and convinced Iran to stop enriching Uranium, a move that effectively ends Iran's nuclear weapons program. In return Iran will receive trade deals and nuclear technology that can't be turned into weapons.
This is really good news, and I wish it came from America two years ago. It should be noted, though, that this is pretty much what we did in North Korea and because we never backed it up with working inspections, it ultimately failed. I don't know what the inspections provisions are here, but I hope they do the trick.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Marginal Revolution notes that traffic congestion fees are working in central London.
Overall traffic entering the zone is down 18 per cent during charging hours, with a reduction in car traffic of 30 per cent and a similar reduction in congestion. There has been little displacement of traffic into areas round the zone or additional congestion on the ring road. Motorists themselves have benefited; for those who still drive in the zone, journeys are quicker and more reliable...
Of course, your definition of "working" may vary. London had too much traffic, so they created an obstacle to reduce traffic. It worked, but didn't increase traffic on adjacent roads, which means that people aren't routing around the obstacle. They're just forgoing their trips.
All those people driving through central London were trying to accomplish something, something that probably would have produced an economic benefit for somebody in London. And instead, these people are taking their business elsewhere. I wonder how business is doing in and around the congestion zone.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Grits for Breakfast (ew) tells of a police officer who died while trying to bust somebody for smoking weed. It seems she smelled the weed, and stopped to hassle some passersby. One broke and ran, and she pursued him on foot. Her partner, driving backwards, gave chase in the patrol car and accidentally ran her over. Grits calls attention to the stupidity of a system that hates smoking so much we let police engage in extremely dangerous behavior to stop it.
Via Vice Squad.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Arafat is probably dead or incapacitated or deteriorating. Israeli children will sleep better tonight.
Update: I'm on a mailing list of freaks that is discussing what's going to happen to Arafat's body after he dies. Apparently he wants to be buried on the Temple Mount (fat chance). Regardless, the talk moved on to what you can do with bodies after they're done being animated by the spirit of the Great Pumpkin, and somebody suggested plastination.
Plastination involves replacing a bunch of your fat and water with plastic as a preservation technique. They use flexible plastic, hard plastic, colored plastic and clear plastic to give your body a permanent shape and mode that won't rot. It's way cool. There's a whole exhibit of plastinated bodies for ghoulish kids. I can't wait for it to come to NY.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I dismissed all the other rumors and stories alleging a hidden Kerry victory and a stolen Bush victory, but this one is by Gregory Palast, a reporter I've long respected. Palast's argument is simple. He says that in Ohio and New Mexico, the system is engineered so that ballot spoilage occurs more in Democratic areas than Republican ones. Every spoiled ballot is a disenfranchised voter. He says that if you counted the spoiled ballots, Kerry would have won Ohio and New Mexico. If Kerry had won these two states, he'd be planning a bunch of parties for January 20.
Go read it yourself. It's pretty interesting, although I question how he knows the spoiled ballots are so heavily in Kerry's favor.
Even if Palast is correct, surely Kerry is aware of such tricks. The campaign decided not to pursue it, and to me that makes this a somewhat dead issue.
Update: Palast says there are 247,672 uncounted ballots in Ohio, where Bush won by 136,483 votes. For Kerry to win, he would need to take 192,078 of those uncounted ballots. That means he would have to take 77.6% of the uncounted ballots. Is that plausible, even in heavily minority areas? In Cuyahoga county, which includes Cleveland, Kerry got 66.4% of the vote. The idea that those uncounted ballots are 77% in his favor simply because they're minority ballots is incredible, even if they all came from Cleveland.
Update: A computer error gave Bush an additional 4000 votes in an Ohio precinct. They noticed the error because the precinct only had 638 voters. I wonder how many similar errors will go undetected because they occurred in more populous precincts. I wonder if anybody will investigate the source of the error to see if it is likely to have been repeated in other Ohio districts that used computers.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
Switzerland gives absinthe the green light.
Other places paying homage to Van Gogh: Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Japan, Sweden, Italy, Britain, and the Netherlands.
I don't really understand the absinthe fascination. I like it, but it's not high on my list of potions and magic. I have a bottle that a friend gifted me a few years ago. It sits untouched on a shelf. Maybe I should drink it and hunt for faeries.
In other news, I really like to say "wormwood".
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
If the red and blue map of America gets you all down on our divided nation, check out this purple map. Instead of coloring each state red or blue based on where it's electorals went, the map shows how blue or red each state was based on the percentage of voters that went for Bush and Kerry. The country comes out a nice, soothing purple.
If, on the other hand, you can't get enough of that garish red/blue contrast, check out this map from USA Today. It colors each county based on who won and you can check out the 2000 map for comparison.
Via Boing Boing.
Update: Purple map broken down by county.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Although the presidential race ignored the drug war (the longest, deadliest and most expensive failed war effort in our nation's history), there was some good drug war news on election day.
- Ann Arbor, Michigan legalized medical marijuana and reduced fines and penalties for marijuana possession, control, use, transfer, and sale.
- Columbia, Missouri legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized small amounts of marijuana.
- Montana legalized medical marijuana.
There was also some bad news: Oregon voted against expanding it's medical marijuana immunity, and Alaska decided not to legalize marijuana.
All this news via Drug War Rant: here, here, and here.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
The Democratic grassroots effort to beat Bush was premised largely on the "Field of Dreams" notion that if we register them, they will vote. Deaniacs and progressive activists spread forth throughout the land and harassed their friends into registering. They stood on college lawns, in malls, concerts, bars and everywhere else they might find stoned slackers. They were relentless, and many registered just to get away from these activists who seemed to love Democracy and hate to shower.
We registered them. And on election day, we rested. Sure some of us got out to get out the vote. But most of us rested. Most of us congratulated ourselves on our hard work and looked at the exit polls for our payoff.
But the new voters didn't come. The 18-24 voting bloc was about the same size as in 2000. New voters were about the same percentage of the electorate as in 2000. As it turns out, all that registration didn't get us much turnout.
The lesson here is that voter registration is not the hurdle that keeps people from voting. If a person's desire to vote is so low that you have to bring her the registration form, fill it out, and mail it, that person's desire is so low that she's not going to vote. Registering masses of people is probably a waste of time and resources.
What isn't a waste of resources is ground troops that go door to door and get the voters to the polls. The competing ground wars determined the campaign.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I've been hearing and reading GOP apologists say that Republicans and Democrats are not much different on the marriage issue. On the other side of the divide, marriage proponents say the parties are equally bad. They're both wrong.
It's sort of true that Kerry and Bush both boil down to opposing equal marriage but supporting civil union schmarriage (all the rights but none of the dignity). Kerry has been consistent on this issue. Bush talks out both sides of his mouth, claiming to support civil unions at some times and then expressing disappointment when the Musgrave amendment fails in the House. The myth of Republican tolerance and moderation on this issue is a sham. It's a lie Republicans tell themselves so they can face their children after election day.
Both parties include many more people than just Bush and Kerry. The people in the parties range in their views and those ranges overlap. But it's the Republicans who are generating all the anti-gay political measures and pressure.
All the pressure for amending the federal constitutions to define marriage as heterosexual has come through the Republican party. It was the Republican party that proposed the Musgrave amendment, which would have outlawed civil unions nationwide. It was the Republicans that brought the amendment to a vote to let voters know how much they hate gays. It was Republicans that voted for it (191 for and just 27 against). It was the Democrats that opposed it (158 opposed and just 36 in favor).
And the same story plays out at the state level. In all 11 states that passed a marriage ban at the polls yesterday, Republican officials supported the ban. And presumably Bush did too, given that he (sometimes) wants a federal ban.
The hate doesn't just come from the top. It wins votes from the bottom, too. According to the San Jose Mercury News, "Bush was favored over Kerry by 2-1 among those voters ... who opposed any legal recognition of gay marriage".
People can say the Republicans are not much different from the Democrats on this issue, but it's simply wrong. One party is actively using its political power to prevent gays from getting equal access to marriage rights. The other is not. It's not a coincidence that all the officials that joined San Francisco in performing equal marriages were Democrats and Greens. It's not a concidence that none of them were Republican.
Are the Republicans the party of Lincoln or the party of hate? It seems pretty clear to me that Bush isn't much of a Log Cabin Republican.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Damn straight. Just because he won the votes doesn't mean he won my support. You know where I'll be on January 20.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I was at an election party last night that had a suprise speaker: Howard Dean. He looked better than when he was on the trail. He was less red, more relaxed. He was definitely bummed about Kerry and was preparing the crowd for the loss. He told us to keep fighting, no matter who wins.
The crowd was mostly young progressive activist street theater types. These people are to the left of the Democratic party. They're as apt to vote green as blue and had worked hard for Dean during the primaries. They erupted in cheers at the end of every sentence Dean spoke.
At one point, the election returns were on a huge screen behind him and news came in of a Republican victory. He turned to the crowd and said "I don't know what state that was, and I can't do this because I'm a politician and I have to be respectful, but if you all want to give the finger to that state, you should feel free." And we did. And we cheered and laughed. It was clear that most of the crowd had voted for Dean in the primaries.
Dean was backed by the Hungry March Band, a bad-ass marching band of East Village and Brooklyn punks. He danced his way off stage and by the look on his face, he knew he looked ridiculous doing it. And he knew we loved him for not taking himself too seriously.
Thanks, Howard Dean, for lifting my spirits briefly on a terrible election night.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
All the news is saying this election was all about values. If this is true, then American voters are a bunch of assholes, morons and bigots. They voted overwhelmingly to enshrine marriage discrimination in state constitutions. Exit polls show that most people think Iraq and the economy are ongoing disasters and big Bush failures. Yet 50% of these people still voted for Bush because they thought he was more likely to keep the fags out of the chapel. They deserve what they get: more dead kids and reduced unemployment benefits.
I wish the rapture would come and take all these people away. Leave the rest of us who live on planet Earth to live here in peace.
Update: Pandagon's Ezra Klein says he's open to the idea that some of the people that oppose equal marriage rights aren't phobes. He might have a point. I'm willing to admit that some of them are just all-around assholes.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
It's 8:00 pm here in NY, and with 0% of the precincts reporting, I'm calling this election for President Kerry. That's right. It's reckless, maybe even too daring, but I'm doing it anyway. Because I want to start the celebratory drinking.
OK, OK, you're right. I already started the celebratory drinking. Still, the official statement stands, even if I can't.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Because I can't paint the entire country blue, I settled for painting the bathroom. Hopefully it wil catch on. Since I'm a slob and don't like to ruin my clothes, I usually paint in my underwear or naked. So now my penis is blue. I'm not sure if that's a good omen or a bad one.
Update: Given the election results, I'm going to call it a bad omen.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
Say Uncle is one of my favorite gun nuts, and I love that he's blogging about bb guns the day before the election. He's called the election for Bush and he's willing to put beer where his mouth is. I am more of a bourbon man, so I passed on the chance to steal Uncle's brew.
Personally, I think Bush and his army of dirty dirty trickesters will fail pretty spectacularly tomorrow. The polls have the candidates neck and neck, but that's a great sign for Kerry because undecided voters break against incumbents and because polls undercount young voters who love Kerry and are motivated to vote.
My humble prediction is Kerry by at lest 7 points in the electoral college. Then again, I also picked the Yankees in 6 over Boston.
And while we're talking about pulling statistical predictions from our asses, I recently made a bet that the incidence of child abuse by Catholic priests is no higher than the incidence of child abuse by non-Catholic clergy. I made the bet primarily because my opponent gave me 200 to 1 odds. Given such great odds, the onus of digging up the evidence falls to me. If anybody knows where this information hides, leave a note in the comments. A bottle of decent bourbon to the person that gives me the winning tip.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
A new Bush commercial has a crowd shot of soldiers, and in that shot, some of those soldiers appear several times. As the Bush campaign admits, the shot was doctored for effect.
The head of Bush's ad team took the blame "technically" but then tried to shove the blame off to an overzealous, unnamed underling with too much initiative.
Now that they've been caught, they're going to recut the ad.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Our government thinks Iraqi dead don't count. The Iraqi government counts them, but won't release the figures. Thankfully, somebody cares about finding the true cost of our invasion of Iraq.
A new study, published in the international medical journal, the Lancet, reports that, Iraqi "[m]aking conservative assumptions, we think that about 100000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq." The study is available online after free registration. Or you can check the Independent's writeup on it.
Interestingly, two-thirds of the deaths are clustered in Falluja, which shows how mishandling the Falluja situation has been perhaps the biggest mistake of the invasion.
How many Iraqis can we kill to protect a few thousand Americans from the threat of terror? Apparently, we value Iraqi lives at about 1% the value of American lives. Gotta love American nationalism.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Rudy Giuliani, so famous for standing shoulder to shoulder with cops when they gun down innocent, unarmed men, blames our troops for the missing explosives:
The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Via Dean Esmay, comes news of a Club For Growth ad that blames the flu vaccine shortage on trial lawyers. They say that costly law suits "helped" close six of the seven domestic vaccine manufacturers, forcing America to depend on undependable foreign vaccine suppliers.
For another, less simplistic, explanation of the vaccine shortage, see Marginal Revolution's post on the governmental forces that squeezed out vaccine suppliers. And if this stuff interests you, read their post on the long view of vaccine supply.
Update: yet another take on the shortage.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
President Bush is talking out both sides of his mouth. Or maybe from another orifice entirely.
Here's how Bush spent Tuesday morning: He appeared on Good Morning America and told Charles Gibson that he's ok with civil unions and that the federal government should let states make up their own minds on the marriage discrimination issue. He now claims he's against marriage, but he's ok with civil unions and equal rights.
And here's how he spent Monday afternoon: He stood on a stage with Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, praising her and promising to "protect marriage and family, which are the foundations of our society". Musgrave is best known as the author of the Musgrave amendment, which both she and Bush want to insert into the Constitution. Her current campaign is dominated by discussion of the amendment. Here's what the Musgrave amendment says:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the Constitution of any State, nor State or Federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
This amendment would prevent states from making their own decisions on marriage discrimination. This amendment would ban civil unions. This amendment would ban equal rights of any kind.
Bush flip flops like a dying fish on this issue, trying to have it both ways. He wants to appeal to the bigots in his party, but he knows discrimination is not a value that most of America can stomach. It's shameful pandering, and I'll be happy to see it end next week.
Polis | 12 Writebacks | #
The New Yorker has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in 80 years, and their choice is Kerry.
This is laughable. For anybody that reads the New Yorker even semi-regularly, their unabashed hatred of Bush has been obvious in every political column they print. They call out the president on every manipulatoin and distortion and lie. They run fawning pieces on Democratic do-gooders and nightmare scenarios of doomsday in Iraq. They openly mock the president at every chance and turn.
The explicit endorsement is remarkable for its honesty and not much else.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
The latest Get Your War On reacts to America gifting explosives to the enemy. It is teh funny.
Meanwhile, Americablog tells us that 380 tons of explosives is 760,000 pounds of explosives. Americablog also tells us that this is the same stuff that was used to blow up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, so we definitely know terrorists might find the explosives useful. How useful? Well, blowing up flight 103 took just one pound.
Is Bush's criminal incompetence in Iraq a war crime?
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
From casualties to cash, the Bush administration continues to hide the war costs from the world. If the war were just and necessary, we would count the costs as noble sacrifice.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
A contractor says the mayor of Stamford used his power to get cheap work done on his house. He claims the mayor's brother promised him $80,000 in back-tax relief in exchange for knocking $10K of the renovation bill. Whether any promises were made, no tax relief was provided, so either the mayor can't be bought or he doesn't stay bought.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Americablog speculates on the danger of Rhenquist's death or incapacitation. He says that a contested election would result in a 4-4 supreme court and wonders "what would the nation do in the event of a contested election with no Supreme Court able to break the deadlock?"
Happilly, this isn't a danger at all. The Court, like most, has an odd number of justices, but this isn't necessary. In the event of a tie, the lower court decision stands. So if Kerry wins at the appellate level, a 4-4 court would mean Kerry wins at the Supreme Court level. For Bush to win, he would need to take it 6-2 5-3.
I would hope, though, that if we revisit Bush v. Gore, the Court manages to collect themselves enough to deliver a unanimous opinion. Bush v. Gore was a disgrace, no matter which candidate you sided with.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
TalkLeft rags on Bush for inflating his resume. Bush claims to have developed his compassionate conservatism while he was helping to run Project P.U.L.L., an inner-city program for troubled teens. Bush claims the head of the program, John White, asked him to take the position.
Needless to say, Bush's spin is not the whole story:
But White's administrative assistant and others associated with P.U.L.L., speaking on the record for the first time, say Bush was not helping to run the program and White had not asked Bush to come aboard. Instead, the associates said, White told them he agreed to take Bush on as a favor to Bush's father, who was honorary co-chairman of the program at the time, and Bush was unpaid. They say White told them Bush had gotten into some kind of trouble but White never gave them specifics.
"We didn't know what kind of trouble he'd been in, only that he'd done something that required him to put in the time," said Althia Turner, White's administrative assistant.
"John said he was doing a favor for George's father because an arrangement had to be made for the son to be there," said Willie Frazier, also a former player for the Houston Oilers and a P.U.L.L. summer volunteer in 1973.
TalkLeft doesn't say it, but it's obvious from this account that Bush was satisfying some sort of community service requirement. It sounds like the young Bush got in some trouble and Project P.U.L.L. was his way out. Perhaps this is related to the drunk-driving conviction rumors that swirled around in 2000.
Can you believe this is the guy that calls Kerry dishonest?
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
We've noted before that life for Iraqi cops isn't easy. Apparently, it's only getting worse. Rebels dressed as cops attacked 49 off-duty cops, laid them down in the street, and shot them.
WaPo asked the common man on the street in Baghdad for reactions to the cop massacre. One guy blamed Jews. His reasoning went like this: the cops serve their country, therefore no Iraqi would harm them. Therefore they were harmed by people from other countries. Therefore... JEWS! These are the great and gentle people we have freed from tyranny, a nation seeped in casual and pervasive bigotry.
The next guy Wapo spoke to blamed the victims.
[S]ometimes I think they don't behave well with the people. A few days ago, they came and raided the nearby husseiniya. They were really impolite with the people. So maybe there are some people who lost their son, friend, brother or any relative because of them, so they ambushed and killed them.
But he must be crazy, because Bush tells us there's no such thing as blowback. He also tells us that the sceurity situation in Iraq is improving daily.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
We invaded to disarm Iraq, to take from its government the dangerous weapons that could some day be turned against us. All this time, we've been carping that Iraq didn't really have anything dangerous and that we didn't accomplish this goal. Well, it turns out, Iraq did have a bunch of dangerous stuff and Iraq was disarmed right after we invaded.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
When Rumsfeld et al. said they would give Guantanamo prisoners fair trials, most sane people laughed. We are not so stupid as to believe these men will get anything even approaching a fair trial.
And the early reports rewarded our cynicism. Defense counsel assigned to Guantanamo were understaffed, couldn't meet with their own clients, and complained loud and long about how the process was designed to seek convictions rather than truth. In Guantanamo, everybody not in shackles felt the prisoners were guilty.
But then I read this New York Times piece, which tells us that several of the biased triers of fact have been booted. And my faith was momentarily lifted. Could it be, I thought, that somebody down there is actually concerned with giving prisoners fair trials? Might there be some true Americans down there?
And I was happy. Mind you, a little late attention to process fairness is not the same as according these prisoners fair speedy trials in actual courts of laws with real rules and a process designed to minimize mistakes. No, giving these guys the same presumptions and rights we accord the common American criminal would surely be too good for them. Still, I am a soft touch, and I was happy.
Then I read this. And my faith was restored to its previous, dreary levels.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
For those that think the West Side development stuff is stalled: think again.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
John Kerry is piling up the endorsements:
- Big, important newspapers!
- Little Texas newspapers!
- Stoned slackers!
- Hawkish bloggers!
- Republicanish politicians!
Who cares?! Do endorsements from publications or public figures matter? I've yet to meet the person that has been swayed by the NY Times endorsing a candidate. Some endorsements come with resources (i.e. union endorsements), and those are important, but nobody is going to vote for Kerry just because Chuck Schumer told them to.
Polis | 8 Writebacks | #
The 9th Circuit has decided that confining protestors in cages ad not letting them protest outside those cages violates the 1st Amendment, even if you call those cages "free speech zones". Chalk one up for the good guys.
While the case is a victory, it's not as useful as you might think. Most of us became a little too intimate with such pens while protesting the war on Iraq, but this case was brought by animal rights activists protesting circuses and rodeos.
The small number of protestors and the small crowds attending such events gave the lie to official excuses involving traffic flow and safety. Massive war protests involving several hundred thousand people are a different situation, one that does raise legitimate safety concerns. Those concerns will be used by our government to confine us, and the courts will probably look the other way.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Squidgy beats! Waterfall rhythms! Loungephonical delight! I <3 Q-Burns Abstarct Message and I'm all a-flutter because you can flash stream his new album for free. The album is great and the physical media is only $13. Go listen.
Even better, this guy is a musical slut. Punch his name into your fave P2P music theft device and you'll get tons of compilations with just one QBAM song. Usually the other artists are worth downloading too. And they're albums are worth peeping. Pull the QBAM thread and you just might snag a new tapestry of chill electronic happiness.
I usually don't like Boing Boing's music recommendations, but I have to thank them for the tip. My ears are happy.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Iraq has barred it's Health Ministry from releasing Iraqi casualty figures and is instead only giving partial (i.e. spun) figures through a different (i.e. more political) office. The NYTimes says they are doing this to "streamline the relase of figures", which is a fancy way of saying they're releasing less information. The other reason for the switch: "It's a political issue,"
Don't let it be said that America has nothing to teach Iraq. Our government is media savvy enough to refuse to collect or release casualty data when that data reflects poorly on the administration. The new Iraqi government was naive enough to think that data was meaningful and worth disseminating. Now that they've wisened up, it's good to see how much Iraq is learning about Democracy from the country that invented it.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
In an article entitled, "Help I'm Stoned, Who Should I Vote For?", High Times gives the short answer (Kerry) and then the long rant on why he won't be such an asshole.
The magazine's reasons for endorsing Kerry are a little wierd. First, it's obvious they just don't like Bush (Iraq, etc.), but their best evidence that Kerry will be more honest on the drug war is that he headed an Iran Contra investigation to expose CIA involvement in narcoterrorism. Apparently this shows that Kerry "wasn't afraid to take on the dirty dealers who run our nation's corrupt Drug War."
It's hilarious that the editors at High Times can't find a single more recent Kerry accomplishment on fighting the drug war. And really, how much courage did it take to expose Reagan's illegal arms-for-hostages scheme? Kerry did the right thing, but it's not like other Democrats were scrambling to cover up the scandal.
High Times concludes by telling us that "Kerry has promised to end the raids on medical marijuana gardens" (which is true) and that he "will have a policy towards marijuana and other drugs that makes sense" (which is false).
I don't think I've ever read High Times before. It makes me really happy that my first exposure confirms the impression I've always had of them as a bunch of stoned slackers eating chips and watching the John Stewart Show.
If you hate the drug war and want some better reasons to vote for Kerry, check out Drug War Rant's endorsement.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
When the Yankees went up 3-0 on the Sox, I figured this year they wouldn't cause me so much anxiety. They just have to take 1 of the next four. No team has ever failed to do that in the playoffs.
Then the Sox won the next two and now it's anybody's game. I don't care that nobody has ever come back to win four straight after dropping the first three. The Sox are no longer faced with that challenge. They've already won two and now they merely have to win two in a row in the Bronx. Sure that's a daunting task, but they're capable of it. In fact, they've done it as recently as last month.
So now I'm all anxious, worried about this series going extra innings in game seven with Ortiz at the plate.'
My original prediction was Yanks in 6. I stick by it and look forward to seeing them win tonight. I hope.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
Tonight is MTV's Choose or Lose special on the drug war. They'll compare Bush to Kerry and hopefully provide some ducmentation to their claim that "drugs kill about 17,000 Americans per year". I didn't know MTV was still rocking the vote. I wonder what Tabitha Soren is up to these days. I also wonder what percentage of MTV's viewership is old enough to vote.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Anybody surprised that America has applied harsh and inhumane tactics in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay?
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Drug War Rant compares Bush to Kerry on the drug war. It's Kerry all the way. Struggling to find something nice to say about Bush, the best the Rant can come up with is that Bush is so ridiculously over the line that he helps recruit people to fight the drug war.
Then the Rant compares Kerry to the libertarian candidate, what's-his-name, and finds Kerry lacking. It's a really long post. Here's the version fo people on Ritalin: Bush is bad, Kerry worse, so vote libertarian in safe states and Kerry everywhere else.
Polis | 10 Writebacks | #
Everybody knows that the Government Accounting Office made a list of 1049 laws that discriminate against unmarried people. Here's one woman's account of how some of those instances of legal discrimination impact her life:
After being in a romantic partnership for almost eight years, after living together for four years, after jointly purchasing property, sharing bills and income, after having a ceremony during which we publicly declared our commitment to one another in front of all our friends and family, Terra and I are still denied 1,049 federal rights automatically granted to heterosexual, married couples.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
Ralph Nader is a stealth spoiler. In 2000, he attracted people to his campaign by giving them a voice. It was all about getting enough votes to make the Green party legit nationwide, to qualify for federal matching funds. He wasn't campaigning in swing states. He wasn't trying to derail the election.
And then, towards the end of the season, he changed his mind. He began to hit the swing states hard. In fact, he campaigned almost exclusively in swing states. Michael Moore, an early supporter, jumped ship and has since denounced Nader's misleading tactics. Michael Moore calling you a liar is like Keith Richards thinking you have a drinking problem.
Nader reached his goal. He got to play spoiler, which is almost as good as king maker. Maybe better if you're as bitter as he is. He thought swinging an election would force the Democrats to take him seriously, to listen to his ideas, to move leftward an co-opt him. But instead it just pissed them off.
Today, Nader is doing it again. He's angling to spoil Kerry's chances, and he's lying about it. Nader claims that Zogby polling shows he draws his support equally from both parties. But this is a lie. As Nader has been told by innumerable people, Zogby disagrees:
A spokeswoman for Zogby International, Shawnta Walcott, said that Zogby polls showed Mr. Nader drawing far more from Mr. Kerry. She said the polls, aggregated from March through last month, showed that if Mr. Nader was not an option, 41 percent of his supporters went to Mr. Kerry and 15 percent went to Mr. Bush. Thirty percent went elsewhere and 13 percent were undecided.
Nader draws support from Kerry supporters 2.5 to 1 over Bush supporters. When he says otherwise, he's lying so that people won't hate him if he swings another election.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Everybody is all hot and bothered over the O'Reilly sex suit. The Smoking Gun has the complaint and they opine:
Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O'Reilly's more steamy soliloquies.
I have a friend that knows Mackris who says she does indeed have tape. Video tape. Can't wait to see it.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Bush's tailor says it's just some bunched up fabric.
Is anybody else reminded of Larry David's Pants Tent?
Polis | 6 Writebacks | #
The AP ran a story about John Edwards talking tough on Meth. Edwards called for tougher restrictions and tracking on the consumer products that can be used to produce meth. He pledged to throw more money down the law enforcement hole.
You gotta love a politican with the balls to take a firm stand on meth, a menace so ferocious we need federal action to defeat it. Asshole.
You know what would take real courage? Standing up and defending meth. It's a good drug. It has its uses and benefits, along with its dangers and drawbacks. I will vote for any candidate that even tries to open a discussion of a proper place for drug use in normal life. I'll vote for any politician that doesn't frame drug use as a crime problem.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 5 Writebacks | #
TalkLeft blogs an AP story saying 66% of Brits, Aussies and Italians think the Iraq war has left them more vulnerable to terrorism. Those people agree with the 50% of Americans that see us as less safe since invading Iraq.
I don't think Iraq made me less safe. It maybe even made the world a little safer. In our post-invasion world, state sponsors of terror have to make extra sure they get the wink and nod from Washington before protecting terror groups.
But the question is not whether we've derived any benefits from invading Iraq. The question is whether those benefits are worth $200 billion and thousands of lives. The question is whether we could have gotten a lot more benefit from that money and those lives. Was invading Iraq the best way to make us safer from terrorism?
Update: Come to think of it, maybe the world is less safe now that we invaded Iraq.
Polis | 8 Writebacks | #
Drug War Rant reels off a list of reasons drug laws are bad:
- Drug laws Don't Work. In the 30 or so years of the intensified drug war, drug wars have failed to achieve any of their so-called goals.
- Drug laws have a Negative Cost-Benefit Analysis. There's simply no way to show that any benefits of the drug war could possibly outweigh the costs (both financial and societal).
- Drug laws are Scientifically Unsound. Drug laws assume that basic principles such as the economic laws of supply and demand will politely step out of the way.
- Drug laws use Cruel and Unusual Punishment. The laws' disproportionate penalties do far more harm than the drugs they attempt to prevent. It would be like forfeiting your car because the parking meter ran out five minutes ago.
- Drug laws are Contrary to our Nation's Principles. As Abraham Lincoln said, "A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded... Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes."
- Drug laws Promote Lawlessness. Since almost half of the population has used an illegal drug, there is a tendency to hesitate in actively cooperating with enforcement personnel. Additionally, enforcement efforts aimed at drug laws take away from the focus on other crime.
- Drug laws Promote Dangerous Crime. The demand for drugs under prohibition creates a very profitable black market in the criminal realm. Increased prohibition efforts escalate related violence and other criminal activities.
- Drug laws Endanger the Public Health. The drug laws prevent safety, age and purity regulations, actually making drugs more dangerous.
Drug policy really is this simple. Anybody who tells you it's complex is obscuring the fact that drug policy is ineffective at its best and deadly at its worst..
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Some of the most outrageous documentaries on Bush fecklessness will never make it to the big screen. They won't even go directly to video. The only place you can see them is over at Information Clearinghouse. Here's some of the more interesting ones:
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Recently, the Sixth Circuit ruled that NWA violated Funkadelic's copyright when they sampled a three-note guitar riff from "Get off Your Ass and Jam" for their song "100 Miles and Runnin'". The ruling eliminates fair use protections for de minimus musical copying and handcuffs the entire genre of non-commercial remix mashups.
To commemorate and protest the ruling, Michael Bell-Smith and Downhill Battle have created a website, 3 Notes and Runnin'. They've posted the sampled riff and have invited people to cut it up and put it back together. They're posting the best submissions on the site.
The submissions are all around thirty seconds and contain nothing but the riff. They vary in tone, tempo, style and flavor. Some are interesting and some less so, but together, they are quite a testament to the power of the remix in musical creation.
Downhill Battle also has a decent page on why sample rights matter.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
One thing Cheney and Edwards agreed on in their debate is that Iraqis should take over the policing of Iraq. There's a great piece in Slate that outlines how difficult and dangerous life can be for Iraqi cops.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Matthew Yglesias makes a good point about marriage. He says that no matter who wins in November, we will continue to slowly march toward greater equality.:
Substantive equality for gays and lesbians has advanced under four years of rigid Republican control (despite the intentions of our elected officials) because of . . . long term factors, and will continue to do so no matter who wins.
Matthew is right, of course. And the New Yorker backs him up:
One particularly striking CBS News/New York Times poll, taken last year, asked respondents if they would favor or oppose "a law that would allow homosexual couples to marry, giving them the same legal rights as other married couples." Among adults under age thirty, 61 per cent said they would favor such a law and 35 per cent said they would oppose it; among sixty-five-year-olds and up, 18 per cent were in favor and 73 per cent opposed. The numbers vary from poll to poll, but the huge age gap is always there.
Old, homophobic voters slowly get replaced by young, liberal, and tolerant voters. Ideas modernize. Eventually it will be rather common wisdom that marriage discrimination is morally wrong.
This is why all the marriage haters are on the wrong side of history. This is why they're all going to look quite foolish down the line. The religious righters can have their Bull Connor moments. Their children's children will wince at their memory.
Polis | 9 Writebacks | #
Uncle took the bait and we landed a whale of a post. He starts with civil asset forfeiture and goes full tilt into a libertarian rant that includes a long list of the many injustices "our" government visits upon us every day. It's a rant worth reading, whether you love freedom or hate it. Maybe especially if you hate it.
Uncle condemns the pols for scaring us into distraction with terrorism and gay marriage while they nibble our rights into crumbs. But I get the feeling he would put most of the blame on us, not the pols. We elect them, we let them run us around in circles over nonsense. When Uncle writes, "They need you stupid. They need you compliant", the accussation is levelled at you, not them.
Polis | 9 Writebacks | #
The other night, Cheney got all post hoc ergo propter hoc when he said
One of the great by-products, for example, of what we did in Iraq and Afghanistan is that five days after we captured Saddam Hussein, Moammar Gadhafi in Libya came forward and announced that he was going to surrender all of his nuclear materials to the United States, which he has done.
The notion that America flexing its muscle in Iraq convinced Qadafi to give up his weapons is simply untrue. Libya's nuclear disasmament was the end of a chain of diplomatic efforts begun in the late 90's by the Clinton administration.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Come November, I'll be voting for Kerry (assuming I'm not busy and I can find a clothespin). Yeah, he kinda sucks. Yeah, he's got no spine. Yeah, I wish I could vote for Howard Dean. But Bush is the devil, so I'm a Kerry hater for Kerry and I'm not alone.
Polis | 10 Writebacks | #
All my friends talk about how John Kerry is going to be better than Bush on a range of issues. Kerry is no authoritarian meanie willing to trade our liberty for security. Well, there's one issue where that's exactly what he wants to do: civil asset forfeiture.
Asset forfeiture is a way for the government to take your property. Regardless of whether you've committed a crime, they can (and have!) seize cash, cars, houses, computers, and anything else whether they can carry it away or sell it on the spot. They can do this without convicting you of any crime. They can do this without even charging you with a crime!
If you want your property back, you have to sue the government to get it. And you'll lose. It's extremely difficult to win because you have the impossible burden of proving a negative-- i.e. that your property hasn't been even remotely involved in any criminal activity.
While you're hopelessly suing the government to get your stuff back, your local police will be auctioning it off and pocketing the money. Law enforcement agencies make money from seizing your property. Talk about perverse incentives! It's a recipe for corruption and just another way the drug war pits common citizens against the authoritarian police state.
What does Kerry think about such unconstitutional injustice? Well, in the mid-90's, the legislature debated asset forfeiture. Here's what the Media Awareness Project says about his position:
[Kerry] thought U.S. asset forfeiture laws were working so well that he wanted to export them. "We absolutely must push for asset forfeiture laws all over the planet," Kerry wrote in The New War. "In the words of one plain spoken lawman, 'Get their ass and get their assets.' "There was, tellingly, no discussion at all of civil liberties issues.
Kerry added that we can't reasonably expect another country "to assist us in our struggle with crime if it does not see direct benefit for itself, especially if it is among the countries with highly limited funds for law enforcement." It didn't seem to occur to Kerry that, without safeguards, countries "with highly limited funds" might go after the assets of innocent people or third parties with only a tangential relationship to the criminal.
Indeed, the only "dark and dangerous underside" of international forfeiture he identified was the possibility that criminals would give up assets in exchange for avoiding jail sentences. "We must ensure that asset forfeitures do not become a substitute for serving time," he wrote.
So there you have it. John Kerry hates freedom. Of course, as with most drug war issues, it doesn't matter which candidate you vote for. They're equally bad.
Polis | 13 Writebacks | #
Six reasons why Dick Cheney lost the debate:
- He voted against Meals on Wheels. What kind of asshole is against Meals on Wheels? Dick Cheney hates your grandma! And he voted against Head Start. Dick Cheney hates your children!
- He was asked what he would do about ultra-high rates of AIDS infection among black American woman. In his response, he babbled for a few minutes about how AIDS is bad, mmm'kay? Then he said he didn't know black women suffered disproportinately high AIDS infection rates. Anybody that gives two figs about AIDS is aware of this problem. You could see the moderator, a black woman, seething. Ah, but what the heck. The Bushies aren't courting the black vote. They're suppressing the black vote.
- He came off surly, angry, and unpleasant. He did seem well-informed and competent, but nobody likes to vote for an asshole whose heart is two sizes too small.
- Cheney rebutted all the Halliburton accusations by directing viewers to FactCheck.com, which he billed as an independant website that debunks all the sordid rumors. In doing so, he came off assured and hip to the new technology. Unfortunately, the independant website that tells people Halliburton is a red herring is FactCheck.ORG. The .com website redirects you to GeorgeSoros.com, where George Soros tells you all the reasons why Bush is a scumbag.
- Cheney never countered the attack that Bush is a flip-flopper.
- He lied about never having met Edwards before.
Five reasons why John Edwards lost the debate:
- Whenever he had to explain Kerry's confusing position on the Iraq war, he babbled. By now, you'd think he would have a coherent three-sentence paragraph that explains it all. But he doesn't, and that's telling.
- Edwards never really made the case for Kerry's Iraq plan. Training more Iraqis is cool, but that doesn't really explain how we're going to defeat the Iraqi rebels. Faster reconstruction is also cool, but Edwards doesn't tell us how Kerry is going to pull that off.
- He was asked what he would do about ultra-high rates of AIDS infection among black American woman. In his response, he babbled for a few minutes about how AIDS is bad, mmm'kay? He never once mentioned black women or what he would do to help them. After Cheney and Edwards gave their nonresponses, the moderator, a black woman, snapped, "We'll move on."
- Edwards never defended Kerry against charges that he's a flip-flopper.
- Edwards pretended to say a bunch of nice things about Mary Cheney, Dick's gay daughter. But really he said all those things to tell America that Cheney's daughter is a dyke and that Cheney is an asshole for relegating her to second-class citizenship. Edwards also babbled incomprehenisbly on the marriage issue. He is speaks with such clear, forthright and moral language on other issues, but when it comes to marriage, he can't make simple declarative sentences. This is because his position is morally reprehensible and he knows it.
Overall, I think Edwards ran away with this one. Edwards needed to make John Kerry look good. He knows nobody cares about him. And he did his job. He ignored all the attacks on him, his record, his experience and his honor. He responded to every one of them by attacking Bush/Cheney and bigging up John Kerry.
Cheney couldn't take Edwards's approach. He has too big a hand in the White House's dealings, and if people lose confidence in him, they lose confidence in the ticket. So Cheney had to defend both himself and Bush, which is twice as much lifting. On top of that, he didn't seem to realize that nobody cares about Edwards. He kept attacking Edwards and forgetting that the real target is Kerry.
Polis | 6 Writebacks | #
Tonight, Bush and Kerry will pretend to debate. It took months of haggling to agree on the rules for this complicated, stylized Kabuki dance. Fortunately for the rest of us, the drinking game rules required just a few minutes and ten shots of Evan Williams. I'm gonna drink until I'm less coherent than George Bush!
Of course, both campaigns have been spinning expectations like crazy and they even have a disinfo campaign on the rules themselves.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
Tired of hearing Bush's stump speech over and over again? Now thanks to Mr. Sun, you can make your own Bush stump speech.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
There were over 2300 attackes by Iraqi rebels last month and the NYTimes has a handy pictographical guide to all the freedom (in the sense of "free punches") over there.
Bush, Inc.'s response is that things are going as planned. There are no problems and there's nothing to see here except smiling kids drinking Coke. All the violence means that we're winning.
Meanwhile, career civil servants working with the administration think the rebellion is worse than admitted and that the situation is getting worse, not better.
I guess that's why Bush's hometown paper in Crawford, Texas, has endorsed John Kerry. They went with their local boy in 2000, but have become disenchanted with his "smoke-screen agenda". I'm not sure what Bush's plans are for smoke screens, but if they're anything like his missile defense system (which is only 20% effective), I'd be pretty disenchanted with them too.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
A recent national Gallup poll shows Bush trouncing Kerry, which would be bad news for Kerry if the poll were accurate. Fortunately, it's not.
It's true that Gallup asked a bunch of likely voters who they prefer, and it's true more of them said Bush than Kerry. But for some reason, Gallup interviewed a lot more Republicans than Democrats. It shouldn't surprise anybody that a bunch of Republicans are voting for Bush.
What's great is that Bush's margin of victory was less than the bias of the polling group. The interview pool was 12% more Republican than Democratic, yet Bush's edge was just 8%. I wonder what a fair poll would have found.
Another thing to note is that polls select likely voters from people who voted in prior elections. As a result, all these "likely voter" polls are missing all the people that have registered to vote just for this election. It's also missing people that usually don't vote, but will in 2004 because the battle is so contentious. My gut says most of the new registrations are Anybody-But-Bush folks.
Regardless, ignore the polls. The only poll that matters is on November 2. Go register. Register your friends. Vote Kerry.
Via AmericaBlog.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
How many Iraqis do we have to kill to save the country? At least 3500 and counting. That's how many Iraqis have been killed by Iraqi police and coallition forces since April 5. Those deaths are in addition to the 13,700 Iraqis we've wounded.
The good news in these numbers is that the Iraqi resistance has only managed to kill half as many people as we have. Is that what Bush means when he says we're winning?
Another good question: How many did we kill and wound prior to April 5? Nobody knows because we didn't bother to keep track. If you think we didn't keep track because it's hard to justify killing and wounding tens of thousands of Iraqis to prevent attacks that kill a few thousand Americans, then you only hate America and all its freedoms, you terrorist Commie.
Via Matthew Yglesias.
Update: Matthew's blog has an ad for Betty Castor's Florida Senate run. The ad has a picture in which she looks surprisingly like Herman Munster. No word yet on whether this helps or hurts her candidacy.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
In Lousisiana, land of haters and bigots, voters have passed their own little hate amendment. And they wonder why hurricane Karma just trashed their state.
Assholes.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Annan said at the UN today, "Those who seek to bestow legitimacy must themselves embody it, and those who invoke international law must themselves submit to it." Not only is he slamming Bush for wiping his ass on the International furniture, he's reminding us all that Bush is a pretty poor pretender to the throne.
I'd vote for Annan. Let's pass the Schwarzenegger Amendment so he can run instead of Kerry.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
San Diego had a problem with dangerous, illegal street racing. They coupled harsh penalties for racers and spectators with weekly legal drag racing nights at Qualcomm stadium. The nights are open to all and cost just $20 to race or $5 to watch.
The legal venue keeps the dangerous activity off the streets and puts it in a venue where it can be done more safely and under supervision. Car deaths and injuries (a big killer of teens) is down in the area and many of the formerly illegal racers are now happily complying with the law.
To me, this is a model of good governance. Instead of just pounding people with penalties (which doesn't work in this context or any other), they found a way to make a dangerous practice less dangerous. They accepted that they won't eliminate the dangerous activity and instead worked to reduce the harm caused by that activity. If only the racist drug warriors would do the same.
Kudos to San Diego.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
Mark Kleiman makes the case for why Kerry's Iraq position is nuanced and those of us who don't see it just lack the ability to comprehend anything more subtle than a punch in the nose. He has no problem with Kerry voting for the war and then saying it's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kleiman says
There is, then, no inconsistency in saying both (1) that changing regimes in Iraq was a valid goal and (2) that waging war when and as we did was imprudent.
Kerry wriggles out of flip flopping by saying he was abstractly ok with forcing Hussein out of Iraq. He claims that when he later learned the flimsiness of the evidence for WMD and saw Bush botching the entire thing, he saw that it was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.
What's wrong with this is that the entire anti-war bloc (about half the country) was astute enough to see the WMD claims were bogus and that Bush would botch the entire thing. America's alienation of its allies and the problems in post-regime-change Iraq weren't suprises to anybody but Bush and Kerry. If Kerry's excuse is "I didn't flip flop, I just have bad judgment", he shouldn't be president. We already have a president with more conviction than judgment.
The vote for the war was a vote for this war in this place at this time. If Kerry saw that coming, he shouldn't have voted for it. If he didn't see that coming, he's not fit for office.
My own guess is that he saw it coming but didn't thought it would hurt him politically to vote against the war.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
I've never been afraid of genetically modified foods. The potential upside of GM food is that it will revolutionize the world, end hunger and chronic malnutrition. We can use GM foods to make foods healthier, heartier, better-tasting and cheaper. GM fibers will change the materials that make up our daily lives. And GM organisms will produce chemicals and drugs that will save millions of lives.
Unfortunately, the potential downside is similarly huge-- trashed ecosystems, extinction of natural crops, super strains of killer plants, and refreshingly addictive tomacco.
My desire for more GM food and research is based on a belief that the downside risk can be pretty easily eliminated. GM seeds can be engineered to be barren. Any plant that can't reproduce can't run amok for more than a generation. Obviously we need to be careful and do the research and make sure things are safe, but barren seeds are a pretty foolproof protection.
So bring on nature's bounty. The second green revolution will change the world even more radically than the first.
Oh, wait. Nevermind.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
China might not have free, fair and open elections, but then again neither do we. One thing they do have is an orderly succession of power, which means they got it all over us. We can keep patting ourselves on the back for muddling through the 2000 coup without a civil war, but but maybe we should rethink the whole democracy thing. What's the point of having elections if they're rigged?
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Anybody who's nobody understands that New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws need to go. So it's not surprising that an underdog challenger won the Democratic primary for Albany DA on a drug reform platform. The challenger, David Soares, pitched his message of getting politics out of the criminal justice system and beat the get-tough-on-crime incumbent.
Congrats, Mr. Soares. In November, we'll celebrate your victory as one more step towards ending the racist drug war.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
Kofi Annan has finally stopped pussyfooting around. He's come right out and said that America's invasion of Iraq was illegal.
This doesn't change much. It's not like the UN can sanction America. And whether the invasion was legal or not, it doesn't change the situation in Iraq, which is where attention needs to be focused.
This is America. We do what we want. International law is ours to make, break and dictate.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
New York recommits to recycling. When Bloomberg gutted NYC's recycling program, everybody screamed and howled. Sure the old program wasted a lot of money and didn't result in much recycling, but a lot of people took up the "mend it, don't end it" cry.
Bloomberg brought back some recycling, but the program still wasn't really working. And now, after three years of tinkering and brainstorming, we get an innovative, widely-praised private-public approach that seems poised to both lowre our trash costs and recycle a lot of waste. Bloomberg, it seems, has done something right for once.
Of course, the deeply skeptical cynic in me predicts this will cost us several times more than promised and we'll be reading a Daily News expose on how all the recylcables are lining landfills within 5 years. Hush, little cycnic, maybe this one will be ok.
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
The secretary who would have typed the Bush-dissing National Guard memos says they're forgeries. But she also says their content is right-- i.e. while she didn't type these specific memos, she typed something quite like them.
Meanwhile, Dan Rather, tells the Observer that Bush could sidestep this whole document farce by answering three questions plainly and honestly:
- Did Mr. Bush get preferential treatment for the Texas Air National Guard?
- Was then-Lieutenant Bush suspended for failing to perform up to Texas and Air Guard standards?
- Did then-Lieutenant Bush refuse a direct order from his military superior to take a required examination?
It seems to me the answers to these questions are "yes", "yes", and "yes", followed by "big fucking deal". But that's just me and maybe I got the extra credit question wrong.
Rather defends his story, saying
It’s never been fully, completely denied by the Bush-Cheney campaign or even the White House that he was suspended for meeting the standards of the Air Force or that he didn’t show up for a physical. The longer we go without a denial of such things—this story is true.
The gauntlet has been thrown. Bush's response comes via his wife, who has rendered her expert opnion that the docs are both altered and forgeries. Setting aside the obvious logical problems with that, we can all just forget them now because if she says it's bunk, it's case closed. After all, she's a librarian and she knows from documents.
Ultimately, it all comes down to... me not really caring whether he flew those last few months. Like a lot of rich kids, Bush hid from Vietnam in the National Guard. Strings were pulled. He got favors. None of that is affected by the memos, and if Bush's privileged admission into the Champagne Unit is a voting issue for you, I'm sure you've already made up your mind about it, forgery or not.
I came of age after Vietnam and I was raised to believe that if America ever went to war again, I should oppose that war and refuse to fight. This refusal wasn't an idealistic stand for pacifism. It's statement was really just "I ain't gonna die in no white man's war". My mother cried the day I sent in my selective service card, and she assured me the whole family would sooner move to Canada than see me in uniform.
Bush ducked service that I would have ducked. Sure, he used influence to do it and you can probably say some poorer, less connected kid went in his place, but I have a hard time judging him for that. If you had his options arrayed before you, what would you have chosen? Perhaps a better question is what would you have chosen for your son or your brother? Even on my beer budget, I know I'd chose champagne for my family every time.
There's a lot of reasons I don't like Bush, but I can't honestly say his National Guard service is one of them.
Polis | 2 Writebacks | #
Remember when Abu Ghraib became synonymous with torturing and killing innocent Iraqi men, women and children? It turns out we all rushed to judgment way too soon. Before deciding that Abu Ghraib would forever stand for American shame, guilt and horror, we really should have made sure there weren't other Iraqi cities vying for the honor.
Via TalkLeft.
Polis | 1 Writebacks | #
In the finest of democratic traditions, Vladimir Putin proposes to put an end to Russian elections of governors and independent lawmakers. They will instead be chosen by his appointment. It's a democracy of one. It's one man, one vote (but that man is Putin).
Apparently, there is all kinds of support for this plan. The major parties love it. The governors love it. Nobody's asked the voters how they feel.
Yay democracy!
Polis | 0 Writebacks | #
The Washingtonpost has a good article on the Assault Weapons Ban being a "big nothing" ban on gun cosmetics.
The only reason to renew the ban is as a stalking horse for more stringent legislation. And whether you want more strict legislation or not, that's the kind of thing that should be debated on its merits and not snuck through by incrementally strengthening a toothless ban.
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
Yes, yes, Burning Man is over. I haven't thought about this website in a month (and apparently neither have my co-bloggers), and I come back to some truly hideous news. When I left NY, the Yankees were up 10.5 games over the Red Sox and I come back to a 3.5 game lead, an injured Kevin Brown, and an under-utilized Steve Karsay. It's like if I don't watch every game they fall apart.
In other news, John Kerry has pretty much managed to lose my vote. I'm not voting for Bush or anything stupid like that, but I won't be pulling JFK's lever in November.
What gets me is that Kerry doesn't have a clear, consistent and easily articulated position on Iraq. For many, Iraq is the biggest and most important issue this year. The ways these two candidates differ in their approaches to Iraq will determine a lot of votes. Despite this, Kerry has managed to be a muddled mess about his past positions on Iraq and refused to explain how he'll get us out of Iraq if he's elected.
One day, he's all against the whole Iraq endeavor (wrong war, wrong time, wrong way, wrong everything). The next, he stands by his war resolution vote. Sort of. He's not sure whether he supported invasion or just the threat of invasion. And if he can't find some conviction and the courage to take a sure stance, I just can't vote for the guy. Simple as that.
If Kerry were president would we have invaded Iraq? Would we have rattled the saber, stepped to the line, ignored the problem? Just what would Kerry have done differently that would lead us to a better place than Bush has? At least with Bush, you know what you get. You might not like it (I don't), but you can see it coming.
All I can say is praise jeebus I live in NY, where my vote doesn't count. I'll be writing in Grandpa Al Lewis.
Update: Time Magazine invited Kerry to draw the contrast between himself and Bush on Iraq. Here's Kerry's response:
The contrast could not be clearer. They spent a lot of money trying to confuse people, but I have been consistent. I would not have taken the country into war the way he did. I would not have put young Americans in harm's way without a plan to win the peace. I would not have interrupted as abruptly the effort to build alliances with other countries. I would not have turned my back on the international community. And Americans are paying a $200 billion cost today because this President rushed to war.
In other words, not one word about what Kerry would have done. Would Kerry have taken us to war? Under what circumstances and in what way? What would have been Kerry's plan to win the peace? How would he have handled our alliances differently? How come we don't know the answers to these questions six weeks before the election?
Polis | 4 Writebacks | #
It is unquestioned received wisdom on the left that Reagan's Star Wars missle defense notions were sheer nuttery. Star Wars and SDI are big laugh lines in any Democratic speech, and everybody seems to believe we don't need SDI, not that it would work anyway.
I tend to oppose SDI proposals, for practical reasons, but I must admit I don't get the joke.
It's true that missle defense technology isn't very good. The last time we tried anything like it in the field was when we tried to stop Iraq's Scuds with Patriot Missiles during Gulf War I. results)">Although the US claimed a 70% success rate at stopping Scuds, everybody else seems to agree the actual rate is somewhere between 0 and 30%.
So it didn't work, and all those opposed to missile defense chortled and snickered. But we did learn a few things and newer versions of missile defense try to account for those early errors. Missile defense is probably still an iffy thing, but I have a lot of confidence that it is not an unsolvable problem. Eventually, we will be able to take out a good number of incoming missiles. We should stop laughing at the ridiculous notion and start figuring out how to do bring the task within possiblity.
Of course, just because missile defense might be possible, doesn't mean we need it, and it doesn't mean we can afford it. Still, I think exploring the option isn't so terrible a use of our resources.
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Drug War Rant reminds us that the racist drug war is not a liberal or conservative program. After all, there is virtually no difference between Kerry and Bush on drug policy. Likewise, opposition to it is not liberal or conservative, and people who have woken up to the terrible cost of the drug war come from all over the political spectrum.
The Rant cites Grover Norquist speculating that in 10 years conservatives will be calling for an end to the drug war. I'm not so optimistic as to think that would mean across-the-board legalization, but I hope a few outspoken, respectable, conservative politicians could be the first cracks in the dam.
It's a shame that right now very few officals elected to high office have anything approaching enlightened views on drug policy.
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Colorado is considering changing the way presidential candidates get electoral votes. Currently, whoever wins the most votes gets all the state's 9 electoral votes. Under the new proposal, each candidate would get votes in proportion to the votes he or she wins at the polls.
As a matter of gamesmanship, I'm not sure if this benefits Colorado. States generally want to give candidates incentive to court them, that incentive being their electoral votes. If the Republican and Democrat are going to split 5-4 every election cycle, neither really has much reason to devote resources to wooing Colorado voters. The payoff just isn't enough.
For third parties, though, this is wonderful (and probably the motivation for the change). Now Nader can dream about grabbing a couple electoral votes if he shows big in Colorado, a state that is relatively friendly to his run (which is to say not very friendly at all). If enough states follow Colorado's lead, Nader could pick up enough votes in a bunch of states to swing the election, even if he doesn't swing any one state.
Gore would have won in 2000 if Colorado had given him a few of their electoral votes. If every state did this, the electoral college would be essentially moot.
My only problem with killing the electoral college is that it shifts the emphasis from states to population centers. As a person who rarely leaves Manhattan, this would benefit me, but I tend to think it wouldn't be a great idea for the nation as a whole.
Via Lean Left.
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NJ Gov Jim McGreevy is stepping down, revealing that he is a "gay American" and was forced to step down after a former lover tried to extort $5 million in hush money from him. McGreevy, a married father of two, feels he can't get through this scandal and be an effective governor.
What bothers me about this situation is that straight politicians have affairs all the time. When they get caught rooting in the cookie jar, they just bite their lips and apologize. They don't lose the ability to govern.
But because McGreevy's is a gay affair, it's a juicier scandal and harder to shake. And that sucks. What kind of narrow-minded straight-privilege motherfuckers still find gay sex more salacious than straight sex? Fucking bigots.
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Cheaper prescription drugs.
Unlike Bush, who has done everything he can to oppose Americans paying the same low prices for prescription drugs enjoyed by our neighbors to the North, Kerry would support allowing us to reimport drugs from Canada and thus pay the lower Canadian price.
Gotta love cheap drugs.
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Marijuana has an image problem.
Lots and lots of people have smoked weed or know people that do. And the more you know, the less impressed you are by the claims that marijuana will make the sky fall. This is because "An individual's perception of the risks of substance use has been shown to be related to whether he or she actually uses the substance." Imagine that.
To convince us that weed is really, really bad for you, the ONDCP has embarked on a campaign to convince us that the nice, harmless weed you smoked in the 1970s is nothing like the big, bad weed of today. To that end, they ONDCP promotes studies proving the obvious: weed has improved over the years. They spin this as increased "potency" and try to claim this is a bad thing.
But those of us who actually smoke know that better weed is a good thing. Smokers self-regulate. Weed hits you pretty fast, so you know how high you're getting, and you generally know when to stop. And if you smoke too much, you get a little quiet, maybe even sleepy-- i.e. the perils of potent marijuana aren't dangerous or even offensive.
The ONDCP keeps telling us a tale that doesn't match up with what we know. So we keep ignoring them and they lose all credibility. When they tell us about dangers that actually do exist, we ignore those too because they're a bunch of liars.
Imagine if the ONDCP could do honest research designed to make drug use safer, to reduce the harm associated with drug use. Imagine if they could issue safety bulletins that we could trust, listen to, and rely upon to actually promote health and save lives.
The ONDCP is a $12 billion agency that does little more than lie to us. Imagine using that $12 billion to make us safer.
It's a shame that neither candidate for office wants to fix the broken, misguided drug warriors.
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A California court annulled 4000 San Francisco marriages. Just like that, they took 4000 married couples and declared that they are no longer married. Furthermore, they spit in the face of reality and claim these people were never married at all. What true courage that takes.
Moreover, they ducked themost important issue: deciding whether or not people actually have the right to nondiscriminatory marriage. Sure, why settle the question? It's not like anybody is eager for an answer or anything.
"Del is 83-years-old and I am 79," Lyon said. "After being together for more than 50 years, it is a terrible blow to have the rights and protections of marriage taken away from us. At our age, we do not have the luxury of time."
Oh well, two steps forward, one step back. Gotta love Gavin Newsome and we should always remember he was the more conservative candidate for mayor in SF.
Via A Brooklyn Bridge.
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If you're going to Burning Man and have old, unused prescription glasses, bring them with you. Lions Camp is collecting your unused prescription eyewear.
They will be cleaned, sorted and gifted to programs and people that need glasses but can't afford them.
Lions Camp is located on the 3:00 outpose at 10:00. They're with the Bookmobile people.
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Dean Esmay relates that "Islamofascists" claim to have beheaded a CIA agent. The CIA says all its peope are accounted for and nobody is yet sure whether the video is real. I hope its fake.
Like many, I've never really liked the term "Islamofascist". I don't think the term is racist or anything like that, but it just strikes me as inaccurate.
Fascism is all about the glorification of the state. It's an extreme kind of nationalism. But that's not what Islamic terrorists are about. They couldn't care less about nations. The people that make up these groups move fluidly from country to country, are made up of people from all over the world, and they strike indiscriminantly against all nations. Their goal is to devalue the state, to lessen the role of nationality and weaken the power of governments.
To the extent Muslim extremists are statist or work with governments, it is in service to their religious goals. If they were really fascists, it would be the other way around. They would be using religion as a way to strengthen and unify the state.
There should be a better term. I understand that fascism is a bad word that has been diluted to mean something like "cruel and authoritarian", but that's a shame. Fascism describes a historical political movement and torturing language to slander the enemy doesn't get us very far.
That said, I don't really have a better word. We've never really faced something like this before, so I don't think history will provide the term.
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John Perry Barlow was a lyricist for the Grateful Dead. He also helped found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which really should be called the Electronic Freedom Foundation. They were the first and are the premier fighters for rights and freedom and libertarian technoanarchy in this digital world.
Today, he's still involved in Dead affairs and with the EFF. He spends most of his time spouting off. He's arrogant, opinionated and sometimes get things quite right.
Brian Doherty interviewed him for Reason magazine. It's a good read and he has some insight into "lifestyle libertarians".
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The convention is coming to town, and it's going to be complete chaos. The protestors won't play by the rules (though they have their reasons). The cops might not play at all. As for me, I'm outtie.
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TalkLeft is down with the movement to let non-citizen immigrants vote. The rationale is pretty easy:
They live here. They work here. They pay taxes and support the community. Why shouldn't they be allowed to vote in local elections?
And the answer is just as easy: because they're not citizens. To me, voting is the essence of citizenship. It's what it means to be an American.
If we erase the citizenship requirement for voting, then what is the meaning of citizenship? Why would immigrants care about the color of their passports? We require a certain long term committment and allegiance to America before we let people vote. The certification of that committment and allegiance is citizenship.
The taxation without representation argument pushes all our grade school civics buttons, but it is pretty meaningless. Non-immigrant foreigners working here pay taxes, live here and get involved in community, but we don't let them vote either. And nobody cries foul. They pay taxes because they have a financial obligatoin to support the society that they live in. Period, end of story, and it has nothing to do with voting.
It seems to me that if immigrants are so tied to America by work, taxes and community involvement, then they essentially are functioning as citizens. And so we should give them citizenship. But fudging things by giving them all the trappings of citizenship while denying them recognition as Americans just clouds the issue.
So here's my solution. Don't let immigrants vote. Instead, recognize their contribution by making it easier for immigrants to become citizens. Shorten the timeframe and cut down on the paperwork.
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Say Uncle is pretty much the center of my pro-gun universe. I waffle back and forth and don't really feel the issue with much intensity, but to the extent I'm down with arming our polite society, I look to him to articulate the arguments. Usually he does a good job.
But here's one argument I just don't buy. A group of people killed some other people with baseball bats and knives. Sounds like a pretty standard day for the Bensonhurst neighborhood watch to me. But because they used bats instead of guns, pro-gunners make the argument that if the killing potential of bats doesn't justify making them illegal, the killing potential of guns can't justify making guns illegal.
They usually don't come right out and make the argument. Instead, they make some snide comment about banning bats and knives and anything else that could possibly or implausibly serve as a weapon. Perhaps this is for entertainment purposes or perhaps it's because when you spell the argument out it becomes a little foolish.
Bats and guns are apples and oranges. They occupy very different places in society and have very different killing potentials. It makes sense that society would have two different regulatory approaches to these two different items.
To say that consistency requires us to ban bats if we ban guns is as ridiculous as saying consistency requires us to ban bats if we ban tanks and bazookas.
It's just not a very good argument, and whenever I see it, I think about how loony much of the second amendment crowd can be.
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My good friend Claire Smith edited a book about Burning Man by Reason's Brian Douherty. The book is called This is Burning Man, and it has its own blog.
The book is quite good, a revealing factual and ideological history of Burning Man from inception to (in some eyes) impending death. It has great stories, lots of famous-for-Burning-Man characters, and it sparked a bunch of memories for me.
The thing that sets this books apart from the rest is that its author has been going to Burning Man for almost a decade. A lot of the people he discusses are people he's known for many years. A lot of the formative events he relates are ones he's actually witnessed.
On top of that, Douherty is an actual journalist, a guy with the training and ability to write about the history and pathos of Burning Man with skill and vigor. The book is no academic slog, no wide-eyed paean, no naive rant about consumer commercial culture.
Douherty being an editor of a well-regarded libertarian magazine, it's not surprising that he grinds his political axe a bit much, but at the same time he really celebrates the spirit of Burning Man. Most of the time, he soft-pedals the politics, and if you skip the weird montage at the back of the book, you'll have a fun read.
If you have any interest in Burning Man, you should check it out. You'll be glad you did.
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Media Matters has details on the deception that is the Swiftboat Vets ad.
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Unmedia discusses suspicious things he has done on airplanes. As an American who is ethnically Indian and religiously Bohra, he has a different point of view on the subject than many Americans.
Via Boing Boing.
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A bunch of blogs (here, here, and here) are quoting the President and his latest verbal gaffe:
Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
Sure this is funny and I'm not a fan of Bush, but the glee lefties get from poking fun at Bush's tortured speaking style is getting as old and tasteless as the jokes about Michael Moore's weight I keep hearing from the right.
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I just watched the Swiftboat Vets ad. Like Dean Esmay, I think this is "the most devastating political ad I've ever seen". Those vets are all Tanya Harding and John Kerry is Nancy Kerrigan's knees. Kapow!
It's a shame the ad is misleading. Most of the vets in the ad say they served with Kerry, which makes it sound like they directly observed his behavior in Vietnam because they served by Kerry's side.
But they didn't. Most of those guys know as much about Kerry as you or I do. They've seen news clips, heard a lot of hearsay, maybe know his 1971 Senate testimony. They don't like him (perhaps with good reason), but their opinions aren't based on the experience implied by the ad.
Still, lies misleading or not, it's incredibly effective. People will see that ad and run from Kerry.
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Some bloggers seem to think we've found WMD in Iraq. They cite questionable news accounts (but never the discrediting followups) or just boldly assert that the WMD have been found. They talk about moving goal posts and say "See, techincally, we found WMD."
But we didn't find what we were looking for. Even the president admitted so on August 2, 2004, and you can see it on the Whitehouse website (at least, until they edit the historical record):
Let me talk about the intelligence in Iraq. First of all, we all thought we’d find stockpiles of weapons. We may still find weapons. We haven’t found them yet.
Via Josh Marshall.
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To the long list of crimes committed by the Israeli army, we can now add a new and different atrocity: smoking pot. Apparently patrolling Palestine is a stressful job and the weed helps. Who knew?
I wonder if could be the basis of a movement to let our troops in combat smoke. Of course, if all the soldiers and the terrorists and the insurgents and the freedom fighters and the war lords sat down and passed the peace pipe, there wouldn't be any fighting.
I also wonder how much opium and hash our troops are smoking in Iraq and Afghanistan. I would bet it's a lot.
Support the troops, get them high!
Via Drug War Rant and TalkLeft.
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The New York Times says Barack Obama is a different shade of black because he's not black in the usual way. It's a weird opinion piece because it doesn't really understand what makes a person black (or white, for that matter).
Race is a cultural group. What makes Obama black is that he considers himself to be of that group and other people treat him like he is of that group. Obama can identify with the black experience because he lives it. Just because his mother is white doesn't mean anybody treats him like a white man.
And these are the things that make him black, just like every other black person in America. It's not just about skin color or a drop of blood.
Vanessa Williams, writing for the Washington Post, takes the Times to task for treating Obama like a "brother from another planet". It's worth reading, even if you skip the Times piece because it effectively makes the point that White America only sees one kind of black person, and this reduction of people to one signifying trait is what objectification is all about.
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The free speech cages where police confined protestors during the DNC are, of course, disgusting. And it won't be any better at the RNC.
But at least we get cartoons out of it.
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I was walking on the Upper East Side today and passed a bunch of television vans, the kind that news crews use to broadcast their latest on-location lies. These vans were different from the usual ones in that they were black and unmarked-- no logos, no identifying markings at all.
It was odd enough that I walked around the entire van to figur eout where it was from. Parked behind it was another van just like it. And as I looked at that second van, my eye caught an awning. The awning, unlike the vans, did have a logo. Fox.
If I were them, I guess I would hide my face in shame too.
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Via Drug War Rant comes news that Drug Czar John Walters opined on the radio that meth and heroin are "vastly" less "important as a problem" than marijuana. He also said cocaine is half as "important a factor in addiction" as marijuana.
Adjust your drug use accordingly.
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Michelle Malkin comes out as a secuirty mom and a freak who scares her four-year-old daughter with stories about Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. She actually brags that her daughter "knows that there are bad men in the world trying to kill Americans everywhere" and doesn't mind raising a chronic bed-wetter basketcase.
Realpolitik Parenting aside, the thing about Malkin's screed that bothers me most is when she goes wandering into the fields of madness. She cites, as evidence of the growing number of terrorism-conscious mothers, a woman whose son was shot by drug traffickers. Drug traffickers!
If winning the War on Drugs is a prerequisite to winning the War on Terror, we might as well start shooting up and praying to Mecca right now.
Via Say Uncle.
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The NY Times reports on Albany lack of Demcratic process. Among the sins of our civic leaders:
- Of 11,474 bills to reach the floors of the House and Senate over a five-year period, not a single one was voted down.
- From 1997 through 2001, the Legislature held public hearings on less than 1 percent of the major laws it passed.
- 95% of the major laws passed by the Senate and Assembly did so with absolutely zero floor debate at all.
- Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno have almost total power over which bills members are allowed to vote on.
- If present for any vote that day, members are presumed to vote yes on all bills unless they physically cast a negative vote. New York is the only legislature that allows (indeed, forces) "empty-seat voting".
The article also reports that "while New York has one of the most expensive Legislatures in the nation, if not the most expensive, its rate of bills that actually become laws is one of the lowest in the nation." I suppose this is a measure of efficiency, but it seems to me there is much virtue in rejecting legislation as there is in passing it.
Another Albany sin, not mentioned in the article, is the statewide gerrymandering agreement between the Senate and Assembly leaders. They agree to keep the Senate Republican and the Assembly Democratic, denying voters any real choice in who governs us. It's shameful, corrupt, disgusting and should be criminal.
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Hegel is the common starting point of both Marx and Nietsche. He is "one of those thinkers just about all educated people think they know something about." But what if everything those educated people think they know about Hegel is wrong?
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Jesse, over at Pandagon, is on about the connection between trial lawyers and medical malpractice insurance. He says the link between high attorney's fees and high malpractice premiums is unproven and he implies that it is irresponsible to say it exists.
He's half right. The link might be unproven, but it definitely exists and not in the way people usually assume.
When an attorney gets paid from a judgment, his fee is taken from the client's share. It's not a fee imposed on top of what the victim has been awarded. As such, attorney fees costs doctors and insurance companies nothing.
But the fees are what motivate the lawyers to pursue the cases. Every contingency malpractice case has a probability of resulting in a fee for an attorney. The greater the probability and the greater the fee, the more a case is worth. It's expected value is higher to the attorney. By lowering the expected value, insurance companies hope to lower the value of cases to the point where lawyers stop pursuing marginal cases. In this way, medical malpractice costs will go down and permiums will supposedly go down and healthcare costs will supposedly go down.
So the link between attorney fees and medical malpractice awards is not completely faulty, but it's completely unjust to save money by capping fees and awards. Some of those marginal cases that can't find a lawyer have merit. And instead of being litigated, they will be neglected, which means we are trying to balance the books on the backs of medical malpractice victims.
It seems to me that the real problem is not attorney's fees. The real problem is that we don't trust courts and juries to accurately decide when and how much to compensate injured patients. That's a problem that won't be solved by stiffing lawyers and denying the valid claims of injured patients.
Polis | 3 Writebacks | #
What does a responsible and moral foreign policy look like? In Uzbekistan, it's tying aid to human rights reforms, and not letting oil-rich countries off the hook. It means moving dictators towards democracy. It means building bridges with Muslim nations.
Surprisingly, this is exactly what we're doing. Kudos to the Bush administration for putting some teeth in its morality talk.
This aid money has been flowing for a couple years and is given to Uzbekistan in return for cooperation in fighting terror. It is worth noting that $18 million dollars only buys so much. If it buys a lot of reform, it doesn't buy much terror fighting and vice versa. From a larger point of view, though, human rights and democracy reform are terror fighting. So this is a win-win in my book.
Via Matt Yglesias.
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