Quote of the Day

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says, really, everything that needs to be said on the policy end of VBL Day:

The two possible reactions to 9/11 were to exploit the situation to start conducting a bunch of fruitless wars that would only instigate more hatred towards the U.S. as we racked up civilian casualties, and to limit our response to police actions to nab important terrorist leaders while supporting democratic movements throughout the Middle East.  Liberals have always supported the latter (except for a few featherheads who really did suggest a do-nothing strategy, but they were always a teeny tiny minority), and we were right.  We told you so.  We were right.  And I’m not going to let pointless scolding about “civility” stop me from saying so.  We were right.  Our preferred strategy got Bin Laden.  Our preferred strategy is what is causing change in the Middle East.  We’re not getting what we want by conquering nations, but by recognizing the autonomous desires and abilities of people all around the world.  We were right.

2011
05/02
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If you read one thing I wish I’d written on Libya

Really, it’s very much worth reading the whole thing. It’s balanced and interesting. This graf, though, is worth printing out and taping up somewhere.

This is particularly a problem because there is no good option in Libya: with respect to UN intervention, both “nothing” and “something” are completely terrible. And you need to understand that I understand that, because otherwise — no matter how I say what I will eventually say about it — you may mistake me for someone who is in the business of not only predicting the future, but of demanding that a particular course of action, based on my particular insight into events, is the right one. You will mistake me for someone who is under the illusion that “if I were president” is a useful premise for commentary. It’s not, and I’m not doing that. I’m watching the news day-by-day, reading aboutthepast and revising my opinion as I get more information. “When the facts change, I change my opinion,” as Keynes supposedly said; “What do you do, sir?”

Please, though, do go on and read the whole thing. That’s just a teaser from the introduction, and I mostly quoted it because “there are no good options” is my political philosophy in a nutshell.

2011
03/29
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Whites-only Marijuana.

I didn’t ever actually go back and blog more about the The New Jim Crow, which I mentioned here, but I’d like to bring it up again for a second. The general thrust of this book is that the War on Drugs created a permanent underclass in much the same way that Jim Crow laws and black codes did after the civil war. The statistics and stories presented in the book, as well as the description of how the broad police powers granted by anti-drug legislation and SCOTUS decisions on them have significantly damaged civil liberties, will make you sick at heart.

So for the past few days, I’ve been thinking about medical marijuana. In the early days of this blog, I made some embarrassingly naive comments about medical marijuana. I talked some about American views on poverty, and mentioned race only in passing. Looking at medical marijuana, I think I was wrong to leave out race.

I believe that widespread adoption of medical marijuana laws at the state level, without corresponding decriminalization of marijuana at the federal level, will in effect create a whites-only space to use pot. Consider, for example, the already existing disparities in the way medication is prescribed. Also, see Joe Klein’s “The boomers like it, and really, who else matters” argument in Time from a few years ago. There’s a movement for the reform of marijuana laws in this country, but it’s by and large a movement for the reform of marijuana laws for relatively-affluent whites, rather than a movement aimed at any sort of justice.

2011
03/21
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Intravenous Platitudes

Greeting Cards for the Dreary (c)

Make the pictures in your mind
because
drawings could be difficult

Insert Image Here x13

1. Some people live life through telescopes
and some through microscopes
but most live through toilet paper tubes.

2. What’s your STDatus?

3. LIFE ISN”T ABOUT FINDING YOURSELF.
LIFE IS ABOUT CHEATING YOURSELF.

4. Say “no” a thousand times.

5. If you tread water long enough
you’ll drown later

6. Take me to your feeders

7. Tell me you love me
but take your time

8. I miss your glancing blows.

9. Happy Birthweek.

10. Stop following me.

11. If you’d only stop reminding me
you’re pregnant.

12. Go home and fall asleep.

13. We cream as we cry
with foam.

2011
03/21
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Donald Trump, what the fudge?

He ‘screwed‘ Gadhafi? o_O

Is this 4 realz? Is this guy actually going to be a contender for the Republican nomination? FOX News sure is giving him plenty of opportunities to express his “beliefs”:

And by the way, I can tell you something else. I dealt with Gaddafi.

I rented him a piece of land. He paid me more for one night than the land was worth for two years, and then I didn’t let him use the land.

That’s what we should be doing. I don’t want to use the word ‘screwed’, but I screwed him.

That’s what we should be doing.

What an incredible display of foreign policy cred: his dealings with other heads-of-state consist of selling real estate for “tremendous amounts of money” and making ingenuous deals with dictators for funsies. And he thinks that this is how all of American foreign policy ought to be conducted.

Hopefully primary voters will recognize him for the pandering know-nothing that he is.

2011
03/21
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Need to bone up

Who among you can recommend me some good books to get up to speed on the following topics:

  • International Relations Theory
  • History of Africa from ~1800 onward
  • History of Asia (outside of China), from about the same time frame

I’m keenly feeling my deficits in these areas, and want to improve.

ETA: Also, any human-readable books on computer science or cryptography would be appreciated.

2011
03/19
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Today, cell phone; tomorrow, tricorder

The first MacGuyver-esque cell phone microscope is here! Though not the first iteration of such technologies, this is the first that literally anyone can assemble: all you need is about $20 worth of rubber bands, tape, and a small glass ball, and voilà! you can image blood cells!

This type of laboratory-grade technology available on consumer products platforms could truly globalize medical science. The article mentions being able to transmit a sample to a pathologist in a lab halfway ’round the world and get an accurate diagnosis sent back to the site in real time. Basically, it’s one step closer to having tricorders, and that is a development that would be good for everybody.

2011
03/11
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Peter King – American Radical

I alluded in an earlier post to the supreme and hysterical irony of Peter King leading a committee on support by American minorities for foreign terrorists. Salon has a run down here, for anyone interested.

2011
03/11
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Ignoring the white elephants in our midst

To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this committee — to protect America from a terrorist attack.

That was Rep. Peter King responding to criticism of hearings begun today before the House Homeland Security Committee on the radicalization of American Muslims. He went on trying to rationalize this farce as necessary to better protect our nation, saying that he believes most Muslims are “outstanding patriots,” but that Muslim leaders “do not face up to [the] reality” that there is a persistent al Qaeda threat to America.

I’ll grant him that al Qaeda wants nothing less than the destruction of America. But if he wants to talk about “facing up to reality” in national security, then he ought to address the truly persistent threat to American domestic safety: violence and threats of violence from right-wing white nationalist organizations and anti-government militias. Here is a handy timeline of so-called “insurrectionist” activity since 2008; here is a report on militant extremism in the U.S.:

[T]he FBI has reported that roughly two-thirds of terrorism in the United States was conducted by non-Islamic American extremists from 1980-2001; and from 2002-2005, it went up to 95 percent.

As some readers have argued, these incidents of violence lack a coherent strategy and are isolated from one another. True, but only to a point. The above report indicates that so-called “lone wolf” attacks are on the rise. However, as the timeline reveals, the rationale behind these attacks bears a very common stamp: resistance to perceived government tyranny and the rights of an armed citizenry. While the stimulus for each incident is often different, they all feed a common ideology of paranoia and violent reactionism. So long as Peter King fails to face this reality (the reality that the rest of the country, including the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, which actually have to deal with this violence), he is unfit to even sit on the Homeland Security Committee.

2011
03/10
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Legislating for the people, not a party

Well, the Wisconsin Senate GOP has done its part to strip public sector unions (except police and firefighters) of their collective bargaining rights, passing an amended version of the “budget repair bill” 18-1. I don’t really have much to say about the details of the bill; you can read about that here (NYT), here (Trib), here (WSJ), here (Nat’l Review) …

It looks as though the bill itself is safe on technical grounds, because the purely “fiscal” provisions were removed (See Wis. State Constitution, Art. VIII, Sec. 8), though there is a chance it may’ve violated public notice provisions of Wisconsin’s open meeting law.

Regardless of whether or not you think that weakening unions is a necessary step in battling state budget deficits, it cannot be ignored that there is a very relevant political element to these proceedings: weakening the electoral clout of organized labor. Of the elements remaining in the bill, the only ones which strike me as directly affecting the budget deficit are the increases in employee contributions to their pensions and health care; forcing annual votes on union membership and curtailing collective bargaining have only a dubious (or even nonexistent) relationship to budget deficit reduction.

Jonathan Chait neatly sums up the larger implications of this type of legislating:

Obviously, Republicans think that crippling the Democratic Party is long-term is part of what they need to do to control state-level budgets. But I think the more likely result is simply that Democrats will pass a ball allowing collective bargaining among public employees as soon as they return to power. The ramifications of parties using their political power in order to try to cripple the opposing party are a lot deeper and more dangerous than Walker seems to be reckoning.

On the upside, since this section of the budget repair bill was removed (though probably only temporarily), the sale of Wisconsin’s state-owned power utilities to Koch Industries has been delayed!

 

2011
03/10
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