President Barack Obama is ordering up to 1,200 additional National Guard troops to the border area and requesting an additional $500 million from Congress to slow the flow of migrants.
In addition to the troops, the funding will be used to increase Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security activities at the border with Mexico “to include increased agents, investigators, and prosecutors, as part of a multi-layered effort to target illicit networks trafficking in people, drugs, illegal weapons, and money,” an administration official said Tuesday.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Hope and Change
In an escalation of the drug war, and to "blunt" attacks by xenophobic and racist assholes in Arizona, Obama is sending 1,200 troops and half a billion dollars to Mexican border:
Sunday, May 23, 2010
LOST (Spoiler!@#$%^%)
I think "they all died in the plane crash" is a pretty good ending. And the finale was a well-executed, crowd-pleasing tear-jerker. The final 4 seasons never measured up to the first two, but I'm glad I watched to the end. Solid A- as far as these things go (not every series can end as brilliantly as The Sopranos, after all).
"what worked and what didn't work"
Obama announces a commission to investigate the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Quote: "I want to know what worked and what didn't work in our response to the disaster, and where oversight of the oil and gas industry broke down."
Two points here: (1) You're going to find out "what worked"? That will be a very short list indeed. (2) The "oversight of the oil and gas industry", if there is such a thing, is in a state of breaking down, right now, as we speak, with every passing moment. Whatever BP is doing to ameliorate the situation -- and I assume they are doing quite a lot (out of self interest, of course, not out of any kind of concern about the damage itself) -- they are expending even more of their resources in an effort to obfuscate the true extent of the disaster and to protect themselves against the resulting damage to themselves.
Two points here: (1) You're going to find out "what worked"? That will be a very short list indeed. (2) The "oversight of the oil and gas industry", if there is such a thing, is in a state of breaking down, right now, as we speak, with every passing moment. Whatever BP is doing to ameliorate the situation -- and I assume they are doing quite a lot (out of self interest, of course, not out of any kind of concern about the damage itself) -- they are expending even more of their resources in an effort to obfuscate the true extent of the disaster and to protect themselves against the resulting damage to themselves.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
"they did so reluctantly"
Another $33.5 Billion for our various wars. Add that to the money already appropriated by our Nobel Peace Price winner and our Democratic congress, and that oughta get us through the next coupla months. Great country we have here.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Senate committee on Thursday approved another $33.5 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this year, although some members said they did so reluctantly.
...
Chairman Daniel Inouye said he hoped the Senate would act on the legislation by the end of May. The money comes on top of about $130 billion that Congress already approved for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars through September 30 of this year.
headlines you won't see
Armstrong implicated in cheating scandal
Disgraced fellow cyclist alleges Armstrong cheated death through the use of scientifically advanced techniques such as drug injections, irradiation of body parts, blood transfusions, other cutting edge medical technology.
Armstrong denies charges; says: "I beat cancer through hard work and determination alone."
Monday, May 17, 2010
Jack Bauer is Hannibal Lecter (with a Righteous Vendetta)
Greatest episode of 24 ever? The beady shit-scared Nixon Face of President Charles Logan as Jack Bauer dramatically closes in.
Ok, maybe not the greatest episode ever. But definitely the best 24 scene ever. (The one in the auto-tunnel (obviously).)
By the way: Blog Note: I'm thinking I'm going to post some stuff here from time to time. Probably not any long form commentary, just links and some snark, on occasion.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Mike Leach fired?
Really? Because he banished an entitled, malcontented slacker to a dark room for a couple of hours? How fucking stupid. He is simply the best football coach the school has ever had -- or ever will have.
Bobby Knight did for the Texas Tech basketball program maybe a tenth of what Leach has done for its football program. And yet Knight was allowed to get away with all manner of chicanery while there.
And remember, this is the school that hired a professor with a track record of perjuring himself to the U.S. Congress, working behind the scenes to make torture a pillar of official U.S. policy, and generally being a toadie in the service of egregious violations of the United States Constitution.
Not exactly an institution bound to high standards, in other words. What a fucking joke. I wish only abject FAIL on this school forevermore.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What I did on my summer/fall vacation from blogging:
1. Went to Las Vegas and came back with more money than I took with me. This is due to a roulette strategy known as "progressive betting". In a nutshell:
(1) bet a certain amount X on a 50/50 proposition (red/black, odd/even);
(2) if you win, pocket your winnings and go back to step (1);
(3) if you lose, bet amount X again;
(4) if you win, you're back even and can go back to step (1);
(5) if you lose, bet amount 2X;
(6) if you win, you're back at even and can go back to step (1);
(7) if you lose, bet amount 4X;
(8) etc. keep doubling your bet each time you lose.
This works reasonably well... for a while. But of course if you do it enough you'll eventually bust out (lose your entire bankroll) or run up against the table limit.
But the odds are pretty decent. Say your starting bankroll is $1,600. Your bets would be $100, $100, $200, $400, $800, so you could lose a 50/50 bet 5 straight times before you busted out. I'm too lazy to figure out the exact probability, but this is a relatively rare occurence, and in all likelihood, before it happens, you will have doubled your original bankroll, in which case the next time you'll have to lose an even-more-unlikely 6 straight times before busting out. But my suggestion is that, upon doubling your bankroll, you grab your chips and head off to get a double vodka at the bar (you'll need it -- this type of gambling is tough on the nerves!).
2. Played softball. Our team is awful. I play third base. I'm probably one of the best fielders on the team, even though I tend to make a sub-par amount of throwing errors (I'm old, and my arm tends to start hurting on about the 4th throw during warm-ups). I'm a poor hitter. I tend to hit the ball hard, but 8 times out of ten it's a fly-out. Hitting a line drive on a pitch that's coming in at a downward angle is harder than it looks. Of course, when batting against our team, a fly ball has about a 75% chance of being a multi-base error instead of a fly-out. So it goes.
3. Went and saw U2 at Jerry Jones' Death Star. The show was awesome, I'm told. Our seats, unfortunately, were terrible. Our view was blocked by a leg of the set's giant spider thing. The seats were also approximately 1/4 mile above the floor. And the acoustics at that altitude, inside the giant reverberating dome, were amazingly bad. We could barely tell what song was being performed. But on the whole, it was quite a scene. The Death Star is a gaudy, monstrous abomination, unparalleled in its enormity (yes, enormity) among such venues. In other words: Great!
4. Fought the law and won. A few months ago I received a citation for "Obstruction of a Fire Lane". This occurred during a night out at a semi-local bar. The parking lot was filled beyond capacity when we arrived, but luckily we found a single parking space around the back. There were cars parked solid on either side of the space. When we returned after leaving the bar, we saw a ticket under the windshield wiper. Sure enough, we had parked in a fire lane, as had approximately 3 dozen other vehicles. I wasn't keen on paying $250 behind this bullshit, so I made the 55 minute drive down to the pissant suburban court two weeks later to plead not guilty (they don't allow you to plead not guilty by mail, though of course you are more than welcome to send them a check for your fine). On the way, I stopped by the bar and took this photo of the place we parked:
Notice that this is the visibility of the fire lane marking during broad daylight. When we parked of course it was pitch black back behind the building. So, after killing the greater part of an afternoon listening to teenagers and immigrants and teen-aged immigrants mindlessly waiving their rights to counsel and pleading guilty and asking for extensions to pay fines levied against them for a whole bunch of really trumped up sounding bullshit charges (ignorance of the system is apparently a huge (and depressing) factor in filling municipal coffers these days), I was called before the judge, pled guilty, and was assigned what they referred to as a "trial date". I found out later that this was not, in fact, a trial date (I never actually believed it was), but rather my one and only opportunity to speak with the prosecutor assigned to my case. So I was then forced to spend another whole afternoon driving down to this podunk court, sitting and watching downtrodden folks (this time, a few of them were actually represented by counsel), be called one by one into a small room to discuss their cases. I went armed with several photographs and a couple of Google Maps, but the nice young attractive prosecutor wasn't interested in my evidence, but rather distractedly cut off my story and explained, in a very rote fashion as if this was the dozenth or so time she had said it, how they had discussed this matter with the fire marshal and the property owners and believed that they had, now, erected, at this particular location, some very obvious indicators of the "No Parking" nature of these specific areas of the parking surface, and that therefore, to the best of her actual knowledge, this type of "mishap" or "misunderstanding" was not at all likely to ever occur again. When I began to relate findings from my most recent trip to this location, which had occurred only within the last few hours, and to impart to her my first-hand observation that, in fact, the condition of the fire lane was exactly as it had been several weeks ago, if not worse, she sort of half-rose out of her seat and immediately interrupted me to say that these observations were not at all relevant to my case, and that the bottom line of the whole situation was that the charges against me were being dismissed and that I was therefore free to go.
And so while there are probably a lot of implications of this story worth delving into, my main takeaway was to wonder, out of all the dozens of people ticketed that night at the bar, and other nights at the bar -- out of all the hundreds of people likely to have fallen prey this municipal con game, this kafkaesque government racket -- how many of those people simply bit the bullet and wrote out a check to the City of Watauga, TX, in the amount of $250, and mailed it in?
(1) bet a certain amount X on a 50/50 proposition (red/black, odd/even);
(2) if you win, pocket your winnings and go back to step (1);
(3) if you lose, bet amount X again;
(4) if you win, you're back even and can go back to step (1);
(5) if you lose, bet amount 2X;
(6) if you win, you're back at even and can go back to step (1);
(7) if you lose, bet amount 4X;
(8) etc. keep doubling your bet each time you lose.
This works reasonably well... for a while. But of course if you do it enough you'll eventually bust out (lose your entire bankroll) or run up against the table limit.
But the odds are pretty decent. Say your starting bankroll is $1,600. Your bets would be $100, $100, $200, $400, $800, so you could lose a 50/50 bet 5 straight times before you busted out. I'm too lazy to figure out the exact probability, but this is a relatively rare occurence, and in all likelihood, before it happens, you will have doubled your original bankroll, in which case the next time you'll have to lose an even-more-unlikely 6 straight times before busting out. But my suggestion is that, upon doubling your bankroll, you grab your chips and head off to get a double vodka at the bar (you'll need it -- this type of gambling is tough on the nerves!).
2. Played softball. Our team is awful. I play third base. I'm probably one of the best fielders on the team, even though I tend to make a sub-par amount of throwing errors (I'm old, and my arm tends to start hurting on about the 4th throw during warm-ups). I'm a poor hitter. I tend to hit the ball hard, but 8 times out of ten it's a fly-out. Hitting a line drive on a pitch that's coming in at a downward angle is harder than it looks. Of course, when batting against our team, a fly ball has about a 75% chance of being a multi-base error instead of a fly-out. So it goes.
3. Went and saw U2 at Jerry Jones' Death Star. The show was awesome, I'm told. Our seats, unfortunately, were terrible. Our view was blocked by a leg of the set's giant spider thing. The seats were also approximately 1/4 mile above the floor. And the acoustics at that altitude, inside the giant reverberating dome, were amazingly bad. We could barely tell what song was being performed. But on the whole, it was quite a scene. The Death Star is a gaudy, monstrous abomination, unparalleled in its enormity (yes, enormity) among such venues. In other words: Great!
4. Fought the law and won. A few months ago I received a citation for "Obstruction of a Fire Lane". This occurred during a night out at a semi-local bar. The parking lot was filled beyond capacity when we arrived, but luckily we found a single parking space around the back. There were cars parked solid on either side of the space. When we returned after leaving the bar, we saw a ticket under the windshield wiper. Sure enough, we had parked in a fire lane, as had approximately 3 dozen other vehicles. I wasn't keen on paying $250 behind this bullshit, so I made the 55 minute drive down to the pissant suburban court two weeks later to plead not guilty (they don't allow you to plead not guilty by mail, though of course you are more than welcome to send them a check for your fine). On the way, I stopped by the bar and took this photo of the place we parked:
Notice that this is the visibility of the fire lane marking during broad daylight. When we parked of course it was pitch black back behind the building. So, after killing the greater part of an afternoon listening to teenagers and immigrants and teen-aged immigrants mindlessly waiving their rights to counsel and pleading guilty and asking for extensions to pay fines levied against them for a whole bunch of really trumped up sounding bullshit charges (ignorance of the system is apparently a huge (and depressing) factor in filling municipal coffers these days), I was called before the judge, pled guilty, and was assigned what they referred to as a "trial date". I found out later that this was not, in fact, a trial date (I never actually believed it was), but rather my one and only opportunity to speak with the prosecutor assigned to my case. So I was then forced to spend another whole afternoon driving down to this podunk court, sitting and watching downtrodden folks (this time, a few of them were actually represented by counsel), be called one by one into a small room to discuss their cases. I went armed with several photographs and a couple of Google Maps, but the nice young attractive prosecutor wasn't interested in my evidence, but rather distractedly cut off my story and explained, in a very rote fashion as if this was the dozenth or so time she had said it, how they had discussed this matter with the fire marshal and the property owners and believed that they had, now, erected, at this particular location, some very obvious indicators of the "No Parking" nature of these specific areas of the parking surface, and that therefore, to the best of her actual knowledge, this type of "mishap" or "misunderstanding" was not at all likely to ever occur again. When I began to relate findings from my most recent trip to this location, which had occurred only within the last few hours, and to impart to her my first-hand observation that, in fact, the condition of the fire lane was exactly as it had been several weeks ago, if not worse, she sort of half-rose out of her seat and immediately interrupted me to say that these observations were not at all relevant to my case, and that the bottom line of the whole situation was that the charges against me were being dismissed and that I was therefore free to go.
And so while there are probably a lot of implications of this story worth delving into, my main takeaway was to wonder, out of all the dozens of people ticketed that night at the bar, and other nights at the bar -- out of all the hundreds of people likely to have fallen prey this municipal con game, this kafkaesque government racket -- how many of those people simply bit the bullet and wrote out a check to the City of Watauga, TX, in the amount of $250, and mailed it in?
Friday, September 11, 2009
Progress
Reading about what was done to Alan Turing is enough to make you sick to your stomach. Gordon Brown has now apologized (though of course he had nothing to do with it, personally).
Turing (also a character in one of my favorite books) was the inventor of computer science and played a crucial role in breaking the Nazi Enigma codes during WWII. A genius and a war hero. England repaid Turing by prosecuting him for homosexuality, subjecting him to "chemical castration", and driving him to suicide.
As awful as this may seem, here in America, in these the Aughts, the 21st fucking century, there are still plenty of folks who would not hesitate to advocate for subjecting gays to this kind of treatment if they thought they could get away with it. And even Obama -- Hero and Saint of the Left -- continues, to this very day, to kick homosexuals out of this country's armed forces, and apparently will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Anyway. Gordon Brown:
Turing (also a character in one of my favorite books) was the inventor of computer science and played a crucial role in breaking the Nazi Enigma codes during WWII. A genius and a war hero. England repaid Turing by prosecuting him for homosexuality, subjecting him to "chemical castration", and driving him to suicide.
As awful as this may seem, here in America, in these the Aughts, the 21st fucking century, there are still plenty of folks who would not hesitate to advocate for subjecting gays to this kind of treatment if they thought they could get away with it. And even Obama -- Hero and Saint of the Left -- continues, to this very day, to kick homosexuals out of this country's armed forces, and apparently will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Anyway. Gordon Brown:
It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
anti-drug operations are about power, not drugs
When a local "drug task force" dresses up in black military gear, arms up with assault rifles, breaks down someone's door, forces the occupants to the ground at gunpoint, shoots their dogs, and vandalizes their residence, this is not about drugs. It is about projecting the power of the state into someone's home and terrorizing that person, along with anyone else who might be visiting or looking on from across the street, etc. It is a statement. It says, "We are powerful and you are powerless. So keep that in mind as you go about living your life."
Similarly, when the federal government pours billions worth of military resources into a podunk South American country ostensibly for purposes of assisting "drug interdiction efforts", it isn't about drugs. It is about projecting American military power into that country and intimidating its neighbors. In this case, the federal government is completing an agreement to base troops and military aircraft in Colombia "in a battle alongside Colombian forces against Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers".
First, I don't know exactly who these "Marxist guerrillas" are supposed to be, or whether they actually exist outside the imaginations of politicians and journalists, but assuming there are such people, this appears to signal U.S. intervention in a Colombian civil war. And all I have to say to that is: WTF?
But back to the point: I do actually know who is referred to by the term "drug traffickers". These are farmers and the middlemen who transport their crops to market. Since 2000, the federal government has spent $6 billion -- in Colombia alone -- to inundate their farmland with herbicides and to shoot at them from helicopters. The result? Colombia's share of the cocaine production market has fallen from 74% to 54%. Great. Of course, the overall production of cocaine in Latin America has risen by 16% over roughly the same time period. Oops.
It might surprise many of the folks in the various sectors of our Anti-Drug Industrial Complex here in the U.S.A., but South America is a big fucking place. It has lots and lots of remote areas, many many many square miles of which are perfectly suited for growing coca. South America is furthermore full of many thousands and millions of poor people, many of which are suited for becoming (relatively) wealthy coca farmers. Quite simply: if, tomorrow, you withdrew all American forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, South Korea, and all the other dozens of countries in which our far-flung military might be stationed on any given day of the week, and then you instituted a draft and conscripted about a million more soldiers, and then transported the entire sum of all American soldiers and military hardware down to South American and ordered them to "assist in drug interdiction efforts", you would still barely make the smallest dent in the amount of cocaine available on the streets of the United States. You would make a small dent, that is, for just as long as it took for some enterprising Africans to learn how to farm coca.
But notice I said it might surprise many of the folks in the anti-drug industry. Most of them, up to and including our Drug Warrior In Chief, President Obama, know this quite well. Why, then, would they embark on the pointless project outlined above (i.e., stationing soldiers and military aircraft in Colombia for purposes of drug interdiction)? Because it's not about the drugs. As in the hundreds or thousands of neighborhood drug raids conducted each day across America, drugs are merely the excuse.
And perhaps if Hugo Chavez wasn't such a loon, and hadn't become known as the Leftist Kook Who Cries Wolf, someone might pay attention when he says he "sees the base plan as U.S. 'imperialist' aggression".
Similarly, when the federal government pours billions worth of military resources into a podunk South American country ostensibly for purposes of assisting "drug interdiction efforts", it isn't about drugs. It is about projecting American military power into that country and intimidating its neighbors. In this case, the federal government is completing an agreement to base troops and military aircraft in Colombia "in a battle alongside Colombian forces against Marxist guerrillas and drug traffickers".
First, I don't know exactly who these "Marxist guerrillas" are supposed to be, or whether they actually exist outside the imaginations of politicians and journalists, but assuming there are such people, this appears to signal U.S. intervention in a Colombian civil war. And all I have to say to that is: WTF?
But back to the point: I do actually know who is referred to by the term "drug traffickers". These are farmers and the middlemen who transport their crops to market. Since 2000, the federal government has spent $6 billion -- in Colombia alone -- to inundate their farmland with herbicides and to shoot at them from helicopters. The result? Colombia's share of the cocaine production market has fallen from 74% to 54%. Great. Of course, the overall production of cocaine in Latin America has risen by 16% over roughly the same time period. Oops.
It might surprise many of the folks in the various sectors of our Anti-Drug Industrial Complex here in the U.S.A., but South America is a big fucking place. It has lots and lots of remote areas, many many many square miles of which are perfectly suited for growing coca. South America is furthermore full of many thousands and millions of poor people, many of which are suited for becoming (relatively) wealthy coca farmers. Quite simply: if, tomorrow, you withdrew all American forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, South Korea, and all the other dozens of countries in which our far-flung military might be stationed on any given day of the week, and then you instituted a draft and conscripted about a million more soldiers, and then transported the entire sum of all American soldiers and military hardware down to South American and ordered them to "assist in drug interdiction efforts", you would still barely make the smallest dent in the amount of cocaine available on the streets of the United States. You would make a small dent, that is, for just as long as it took for some enterprising Africans to learn how to farm coca.
But notice I said it might surprise many of the folks in the anti-drug industry. Most of them, up to and including our Drug Warrior In Chief, President Obama, know this quite well. Why, then, would they embark on the pointless project outlined above (i.e., stationing soldiers and military aircraft in Colombia for purposes of drug interdiction)? Because it's not about the drugs. As in the hundreds or thousands of neighborhood drug raids conducted each day across America, drugs are merely the excuse.
And perhaps if Hugo Chavez wasn't such a loon, and hadn't become known as the Leftist Kook Who Cries Wolf, someone might pay attention when he says he "sees the base plan as U.S. 'imperialist' aggression".
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
guns and the nuts who carry them
A faithful reader suggests it might be productive for me to offer my thoughts on this story:
So that's my starting point here. And my initial reaction to this story is along the lines of: just because something is legal doesn't mean it's a good idea (along with the corollary: just because something is a bad idea doesn't mean it should be illegal). As a recent example of this, the First Amendment does indeed allow a person to use the word "nigger" when referring to a black person. This does not mean it is a good idea to do so. The linked-to blogger (a regular commenter over at Barry Green's House of Right-Wing Crazy) wears his ignorance and hatred and faux-victimhood as a badge of honor, and gets his thrills by oh-so-rebelliously inflicting slavery-era insults upon those segments of humanity whom he can readily identify as being "below" him. These folks are easily identified by virtue of their skin pigmentation.
Legal? Yes. Likely to advance the cause of civilization? Not even remotely.
Likewise, carrying a gun to a presidential event may in fact be legal in Phoenix, Arizona. Is any good likely to come of it? I think you know the answer to that one.
One further point, though. Those people in the story carrying guns aren't looking to advance the cause of civilization. They are trying to assuage their own personal feelings of powerlessness in the face of the ascendancy of certain points of view which they find extremely frightening ("socialism" being the most charitable of these fears -- among other fears which are far less charitable).
But I also suspect that another, more sinister purpose -- though perhaps not well thought out -- is to provoke a confrontation in which they can be portrayed as the victims. For example: "Obama's brownshirt thugs attacked me, arrested me, and took away my assault rifle -- even though I was simply protesting his fascist policies in full compliance with all the laws!" This, the fantasy goes, will inspire thousands or millions more like-minded patriots to take to the streets bearing firearms, which in turn will result in either: (a) a bloody civil war in which all their fantasies of minority-directed vigilantism will come true, or (b) the removal of Obama from the presidency, to be replaced by someone more palatable who will -- in comparison with Obama -- reduce (even further) the tax burden on the wealthy, reduce (even further) social services for the poor, increase (even more) spending on defense and law enforcement, and increase (even more) the tax burden on the poor. This, in the fevered minds of these decidedly unwealthy, gun-toting protesters, is called "Liberty".
PHOENIX – About a dozen people carrying guns, including one with a military-style rifle, milled among protesters outside the convention center where President Barack Obama was giving a speech Monday — the latest incident in which protesters have openly displayed firearms near the president.As you can see from the photo down on the right, your humble blogger is familiar with firearms. I'm comfortable around them, I grew up around them, I own several of them, and I like to take them out and shoot them from time to time. Some of my best memories of growing up revolve around my Dad and Granddad taking me out target-shooting. I support the Second Amendment, and in general I oppose most gun control measures.
So that's my starting point here. And my initial reaction to this story is along the lines of: just because something is legal doesn't mean it's a good idea (along with the corollary: just because something is a bad idea doesn't mean it should be illegal). As a recent example of this, the First Amendment does indeed allow a person to use the word "nigger" when referring to a black person. This does not mean it is a good idea to do so. The linked-to blogger (a regular commenter over at Barry Green's House of Right-Wing Crazy) wears his ignorance and hatred and faux-victimhood as a badge of honor, and gets his thrills by oh-so-rebelliously inflicting slavery-era insults upon those segments of humanity whom he can readily identify as being "below" him. These folks are easily identified by virtue of their skin pigmentation.
Legal? Yes. Likely to advance the cause of civilization? Not even remotely.
Likewise, carrying a gun to a presidential event may in fact be legal in Phoenix, Arizona. Is any good likely to come of it? I think you know the answer to that one.
One further point, though. Those people in the story carrying guns aren't looking to advance the cause of civilization. They are trying to assuage their own personal feelings of powerlessness in the face of the ascendancy of certain points of view which they find extremely frightening ("socialism" being the most charitable of these fears -- among other fears which are far less charitable).
But I also suspect that another, more sinister purpose -- though perhaps not well thought out -- is to provoke a confrontation in which they can be portrayed as the victims. For example: "Obama's brownshirt thugs attacked me, arrested me, and took away my assault rifle -- even though I was simply protesting his fascist policies in full compliance with all the laws!" This, the fantasy goes, will inspire thousands or millions more like-minded patriots to take to the streets bearing firearms, which in turn will result in either: (a) a bloody civil war in which all their fantasies of minority-directed vigilantism will come true, or (b) the removal of Obama from the presidency, to be replaced by someone more palatable who will -- in comparison with Obama -- reduce (even further) the tax burden on the wealthy, reduce (even further) social services for the poor, increase (even more) spending on defense and law enforcement, and increase (even more) the tax burden on the poor. This, in the fevered minds of these decidedly unwealthy, gun-toting protesters, is called "Liberty".
let God sort them out.
From SCOTUSBLOG:
In other words, innocence is no constitutional impediment to execution, so long as the condemned has had a "full and fair trial". One of Sullivan's stand-ins asks if this a "crazy view". I don't know if it's "crazy", but I'd definitely vote for "callous and amoral".
But the point I want to get at is the Sullivan stand-in's subsequent statement: "Procedural rights (like the right to a lawyer or the right to avoid self incrimination) do not guarantee a specific outcome (like the correct decision in a case). It is possible to imagine a fair trial that respects everyone's rights but nonetheless reaches the wrong conclusion."
Emphasis mine, because I think this is undeniably true, and is probably the absolute best argument against the death penalty you are likely to ever see.
The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I've always thought that this should be interpreted as prohibiting the death penalty except in truly exceptional circumstances.
Obviously the Fifth Amendment allows for different levels of "process" being due to a person depending upon what the state is trying to deprive the person of. On the one hand, if it seeks to deprive you of some small amount of property (say, by imposing a fine for a parking ticket), the not a lot of process is "due". On the other hand, if the state intends to deprive a person of a great deal of liberty (say, by imposing a sentence of life in prison), then quite a lot of process is due.
My argument is that if the state intends to deprive a person of all of his property, and all of his liberty, and all of his life (say, by strapping him down and injecting him with a lethal dose of toxic chemicals), then the amount of process due that person is essentially infinite. Especially given the idea noted above: namely, that even the fairest and fullest trial may in fact reach the wrong conclusion.
The Supreme Court, over two Justices’ dissents, on Monday ordered a federal judge in Georgia to consider and rule on the claim of innocence in the murder case against Troy Anthony Davis (In re Davis, 08-1443) The Court told the District Court to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence.”Scalia, of course, was one of the dissenters, having never yet encountered a criminal defendant he didn't believe was guilty. The crux of his dissent: "This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent."
In other words, innocence is no constitutional impediment to execution, so long as the condemned has had a "full and fair trial". One of Sullivan's stand-ins asks if this a "crazy view". I don't know if it's "crazy", but I'd definitely vote for "callous and amoral".
But the point I want to get at is the Sullivan stand-in's subsequent statement: "Procedural rights (like the right to a lawyer or the right to avoid self incrimination) do not guarantee a specific outcome (like the correct decision in a case). It is possible to imagine a fair trial that respects everyone's rights but nonetheless reaches the wrong conclusion."
Emphasis mine, because I think this is undeniably true, and is probably the absolute best argument against the death penalty you are likely to ever see.
The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". I've always thought that this should be interpreted as prohibiting the death penalty except in truly exceptional circumstances.
Obviously the Fifth Amendment allows for different levels of "process" being due to a person depending upon what the state is trying to deprive the person of. On the one hand, if it seeks to deprive you of some small amount of property (say, by imposing a fine for a parking ticket), the not a lot of process is "due". On the other hand, if the state intends to deprive a person of a great deal of liberty (say, by imposing a sentence of life in prison), then quite a lot of process is due.
My argument is that if the state intends to deprive a person of all of his property, and all of his liberty, and all of his life (say, by strapping him down and injecting him with a lethal dose of toxic chemicals), then the amount of process due that person is essentially infinite. Especially given the idea noted above: namely, that even the fairest and fullest trial may in fact reach the wrong conclusion.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Whole Foods Fail
I've often argued against anti-corporate regulations and general government interventionism in many contexts on the libertarian theory that corporations hate bad publicity, and if they do something wrong they will usually be punished by the resulting consumer backlash. For example, you don't need laws against tuna company fishing practices which snare a bunch of dolphins, because more often than not, if this is truly something that people don't like, tuna companies following these practices will suffer in the marketplace, and either change their practices or lose market share to companies who don't kill dolphins (and eventually go out of business).
This is only a general rule, of course, and subject to many exceptions in particular contexts. But today we have an especially ironic example of this rule in action. John Mackey, CEO of the grocery chain Whole Foods Market, is apparently somewhat of a libertarian himself. Yesterday he took to the pages of the ultra-right-wing WSJ editorial page to argue vehemently against government involvement in health care.
I think you can see the problem here. Whole Foods caters to hippies, crunchies, and granola types. These are its hard core of support -- its target group of customers. And this demographic is heavily slanted toward liberal (or "progressive") views on various political issues. Such as for example: health care.
The link above will take you to a DailyKos post vilifying (rightly or wrongly) Mr. Mackey for his strident stance against health care reform. The post, in turn, links to the forums section of Whole Foods' website. When I first read the DailyKos item I of course immediately clicked on over to the WF forums to rubberneck at the trainwreck carnage. Sure enough, threads and comments, running roughly 99% against Mackey and WholeFoods, were proliferating at an amazing pace.
So I had my fun, and went on to something else. I clicked back over a while later just to check the comment count, and lo and behold WF's web minions (and, presumably, P.R. staff) had done a massive purge of forum threads and were, even as I watched, engaged in a heroic effort to scrub the new posts and comments as quickly as they were being posted. These new comments had moved from the obvious "Food Politics" section and were now inundating more innocuous sections of the forums, such as "Recipe Swap" and "Gluten-Free Diets".
I only skimmed Mackey's op-ed. I don't know for sure whether his ideas are good or bad. But either way, the irony here is delicious. Mr. Mackey surely believes in the idea that "the market will decide" what's best for everyone -- consumers, corporations, and society alike. I tend to agree. And I have a feeling that the market for organic arugula is going to decide to teach Mr. Mackey a hard-earned lesson about where his whole-grain bread is buttered.
Of course, Mr. Mackey can always hope to pick up some customers from the ranks of folks who agree with his health care views. You know, the "Death Panel" "keep your dirty gubmint hands off my Medicare" crowd. Good luck with all that. That particular demographic is on record as stating that arugula is only consumed by communist muslim illegal aliens, and that organic farming is nothing more than a Satan-inspired conspiracy to force us all into interracial gay marriages and abort our white babies. I'm sure they'll all be lining at your stores any minute now, Mr. Mackey.
[UPDATE] Well, it appears now that the P.R. staff is starting to realize that the delete-ignore-hope it all goes away strategy isn't going to work. They've now created a whole new forum category (Current Events/Health Care). Which is good, I guess, but it didn't stop someone from posting, in the "Recipe Swap" forum, a thread entitled "Recipe for Obviously You Don't Know Your Customers Soup". Heh.
This is only a general rule, of course, and subject to many exceptions in particular contexts. But today we have an especially ironic example of this rule in action. John Mackey, CEO of the grocery chain Whole Foods Market, is apparently somewhat of a libertarian himself. Yesterday he took to the pages of the ultra-right-wing WSJ editorial page to argue vehemently against government involvement in health care.
I think you can see the problem here. Whole Foods caters to hippies, crunchies, and granola types. These are its hard core of support -- its target group of customers. And this demographic is heavily slanted toward liberal (or "progressive") views on various political issues. Such as for example: health care.
The link above will take you to a DailyKos post vilifying (rightly or wrongly) Mr. Mackey for his strident stance against health care reform. The post, in turn, links to the forums section of Whole Foods' website. When I first read the DailyKos item I of course immediately clicked on over to the WF forums to rubberneck at the trainwreck carnage. Sure enough, threads and comments, running roughly 99% against Mackey and WholeFoods, were proliferating at an amazing pace.
So I had my fun, and went on to something else. I clicked back over a while later just to check the comment count, and lo and behold WF's web minions (and, presumably, P.R. staff) had done a massive purge of forum threads and were, even as I watched, engaged in a heroic effort to scrub the new posts and comments as quickly as they were being posted. These new comments had moved from the obvious "Food Politics" section and were now inundating more innocuous sections of the forums, such as "Recipe Swap" and "Gluten-Free Diets".
I only skimmed Mackey's op-ed. I don't know for sure whether his ideas are good or bad. But either way, the irony here is delicious. Mr. Mackey surely believes in the idea that "the market will decide" what's best for everyone -- consumers, corporations, and society alike. I tend to agree. And I have a feeling that the market for organic arugula is going to decide to teach Mr. Mackey a hard-earned lesson about where his whole-grain bread is buttered.
Of course, Mr. Mackey can always hope to pick up some customers from the ranks of folks who agree with his health care views. You know, the "Death Panel" "keep your dirty gubmint hands off my Medicare" crowd. Good luck with all that. That particular demographic is on record as stating that arugula is only consumed by communist muslim illegal aliens, and that organic farming is nothing more than a Satan-inspired conspiracy to force us all into interracial gay marriages and abort our white babies. I'm sure they'll all be lining at your stores any minute now, Mr. Mackey.
[UPDATE] Well, it appears now that the P.R. staff is starting to realize that the delete-ignore-hope it all goes away strategy isn't going to work. They've now created a whole new forum category (Current Events/Health Care). Which is good, I guess, but it didn't stop someone from posting, in the "Recipe Swap" forum, a thread entitled "Recipe for Obviously You Don't Know Your Customers Soup". Heh.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
some disjointed observations
1. It's been a while since I was in law school, but from what I remember from my first year torts class, there's a name that lawyers have for this type of thing: false imprisonment.
2. Though I find Judd Apatow movies generally amusing, I'm not a huge fan and am on the verge of being an anti-fan simply because the guy gets so much hype nowadays. But aside from that, I guess I never realized that his movies had this element of "conservative family values", a fact which, I suppose, means that the message was clever and effective. In any event, Matt Yglesias makes a really insightful point in discussing the linked article. Namely, the tendency of a high percentage of the folks most loudly espousing these ideals to place a highly disproportionate amount of importance on those parts of "Christian family values morality" that are the easiest for them personally to adhere to. For example, most people are not gay. For those people, refraining from having sex with persons of the same sex is easy -- they have no desire to do so. On the other hand: being charitable, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, keeping lust out of your heart, being faithful to your spouse, subordinating your materialistic desires in favor of your love of Christ and your fellow man, or -- to take the teachings of Christ literally -- to give away all of your material possessions and lead a simply, godly life in service of the Lord: these things, to a greater or lesser degree, are all very difficult. But hating fags: simple!
3. This story comes from one of my old stomping grounds -- a place where Christian charity abounds. Apparently County Judge Tom Head thought it would be a good idea to paper the courthouse cork board with a racist wingnut email he printed out. When caught, rather than admitting error and apologizing, he chose to defend the message, deny any racism, and state that he was attempting to "try and get people talking to one another". Because, ya know, in Lubbock County, Texas, the best way to promote a civil, productive conversation about racial issues is to use the county courthouse as a forum to champion the idea that blacks are all a bunch of crack-smoking, wife-beating felons. I predict this guy will be re-elected in a giant landslide.
4. Apropos of the post below, Sarah Palin recently broke her post-employment silence to assert that Obama's health care reform plan is evil because it will establish "Death Panels" (no doubt populated by gay muslim terrorists) for the purpose of euthanize her grandmother and her Trig-baby. (the same Trig-baby, by the way, that is OFF LIMITS! to all political speech -- just FYI, dontcha know.) Prominent conservatives then lined up to support this ludicrous conspiracy theory. This is really reaching some kind of limit, isn't it?
5. Or maybe not. Here's another brain-dead ideologue's valuable contribution to the national conversation on health care, in which we are told that under the UK's state-run health care system, brilliantly intelligent special needs persons such as prominent physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance" -- would, in other words, presumably be put of of their misery, just like little Trig -- never mind that Stephen Hawking, of course, is British and has lived in the UK his whole life. No word on how he's managed to evade the NHS death squads for the last 67 years. (link is to secondary source, as the original has -- after being righteously (and hilariously) pilloried far and wide -- been scrubbed.)
2. Though I find Judd Apatow movies generally amusing, I'm not a huge fan and am on the verge of being an anti-fan simply because the guy gets so much hype nowadays. But aside from that, I guess I never realized that his movies had this element of "conservative family values", a fact which, I suppose, means that the message was clever and effective. In any event, Matt Yglesias makes a really insightful point in discussing the linked article. Namely, the tendency of a high percentage of the folks most loudly espousing these ideals to place a highly disproportionate amount of importance on those parts of "Christian family values morality" that are the easiest for them personally to adhere to. For example, most people are not gay. For those people, refraining from having sex with persons of the same sex is easy -- they have no desire to do so. On the other hand: being charitable, turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, keeping lust out of your heart, being faithful to your spouse, subordinating your materialistic desires in favor of your love of Christ and your fellow man, or -- to take the teachings of Christ literally -- to give away all of your material possessions and lead a simply, godly life in service of the Lord: these things, to a greater or lesser degree, are all very difficult. But hating fags: simple!
3. This story comes from one of my old stomping grounds -- a place where Christian charity abounds. Apparently County Judge Tom Head thought it would be a good idea to paper the courthouse cork board with a racist wingnut email he printed out. When caught, rather than admitting error and apologizing, he chose to defend the message, deny any racism, and state that he was attempting to "try and get people talking to one another". Because, ya know, in Lubbock County, Texas, the best way to promote a civil, productive conversation about racial issues is to use the county courthouse as a forum to champion the idea that blacks are all a bunch of crack-smoking, wife-beating felons. I predict this guy will be re-elected in a giant landslide.
4. Apropos of the post below, Sarah Palin recently broke her post-employment silence to assert that Obama's health care reform plan is evil because it will establish "Death Panels" (no doubt populated by gay muslim terrorists) for the purpose of euthanize her grandmother and her Trig-baby. (the same Trig-baby, by the way, that is OFF LIMITS! to all political speech -- just FYI, dontcha know.) Prominent conservatives then lined up to support this ludicrous conspiracy theory. This is really reaching some kind of limit, isn't it?
5. Or maybe not. Here's another brain-dead ideologue's valuable contribution to the national conversation on health care, in which we are told that under the UK's state-run health care system, brilliantly intelligent special needs persons such as prominent physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance" -- would, in other words, presumably be put of of their misery, just like little Trig -- never mind that Stephen Hawking, of course, is British and has lived in the UK his whole life. No word on how he's managed to evade the NHS death squads for the last 67 years. (link is to secondary source, as the original has -- after being righteously (and hilariously) pilloried far and wide -- been scrubbed.)
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