And I Confess, I Shiver

A few things apparently happened during my blog hiatus. Let's take a look-see:

- Seems our Attorney General has decided to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed his day in court. Standard supporters and critics apply. Supporters claimed victory for the rule of law, critics stammered something about "but... but... but he's a terrorist!" You can guess which side I'm on here, though I don't think it was anything remotely resembling a victory for the "rule of law." As Adam Serwer points out, there's no chance KSM will ever be released. Remember, Obama has a three-tiered system* in place wherein the outcome is predetermined and the process is chosen based on that outcome. Holder wouldn't be trying this case in a civilian court if that trial wouldn't certainly result in a conviction. It's a slam dunk, and not a George Tenet one either.

The point is this. Conservatives have long accused liberals of treating terrorism as a law-enforcement issue, an accusation at which liberals have historically shuddered. But my response has always been "why is that a bad thing?" Terrorism, even at its absolute worst, is a large organized crime syndicate. The only difference between John Gotti and Osama bin Laden is one of degree. Crimes committed by al-Qaeda may be gruesome, but they're still crimes and should be treated as such. We don't need all this extralegal scaffolding that has been in place over the past eight years. We have a legal system that is pretty damn good at putting people in jail - why not use it?

It's a fear thing, of course, and that fear arises from not putting terrorism in perspective as a threat. Loose nukes? Huge threat. Nuclear proliferation? Also bad. Terrorism? In the grand scheme of things, not so much. Relying on intel and policework to build cases against terrorist conspiracies and put them behind bars doesn't come with a huge cost. Working outside our legal system does, however, as Johann Hari documents.

That said, creating a section of federal crimes known as terrorism isn't wholly illegitimate. The motivation behind al-Qaeda attacks does make them more potentially disruptive to society than your average St. Valentine's Day Massacre. It's the same idea behind hate-crimes legislation - think of terrorism as a hate crime against Americans. (Which is why it cracks me up when conservatives support massive federal programs to fight terrorism and then balk at hate crimes legislation. It's the same thing, people.)

Anyway, the KSM trial is about perception. Hari reports - and numerous other studies concur here - that one of the things that makes jihadists give up the fight is learning that, shockingly, Americans aren't out to get them. Treating KSM as a criminal instead of as some Muslim warrior that we have to fight a "war" against is important in that regard. So Obama's walking a tightrope - he doesn't want freaked-out Americans thinking he's going to let potentially violent people go, and he doesn't want potential jihadists thinking that America's fighting a war on Muslims. Thus the KSM trial - it's a show with a guaranteed outcome designed to encourage jihadists to give up the fight and undermine jihadist recruitment efforts.

Instant update: This guy says basically what I said about conservatives and terrorism, he's just a hell of a lot meaner and more sarcastic about it.

- From The Times of London on Obama's visit to China:

It appeared that only the party faithful were allowed to raise their hands, since most questions came from members of the Communist Youth League. However, one of the thousands that had been posted online was put by the US Ambassador, Jon Huntsman. Did Mr Obama know, he asked, about the “Great Firewall of China” — the blocks that China’s censors impose on internet traffic to separate the country’s 350 million web users from content deemed inappropriate?

Mr Obama seized his chance. “I have always been a strong supporter of open internet use. I am a big supporter of non-censorship,” he said, adding that a free flow of information was a source of strength.

[snip]

China’s propaganda tsars may have been displeased with Mr Obama’s comments: they relegated coverage of his first full day in China to the sixth item, some 20 minutes into the half-hour evening news programme, and then devoted less than 60 seconds to his arrival.

And from the AP wire via Yahoo:

BEIJING – President Barack Obama is pushing China on human rights, telling President Hu Jintao the U.S. believes all men and woman [sic] have "certain fundamental rights."
Obama met with his counterpart during two meetings Tuesday and pushed for improved treatment of Chinese ethnic and religious minorities. Obama said they agreed to continue the discussion in a session scheduled for early next year.

A little tweak on human rights? Not bad. Not a full-throated blaze-of-glory denunciation, but a minor diplomatic fuck-you nonetheless. Good stuff.

- Doug Hoffman, the loser of the NY-23 special election back in November, is doing his best Al Gore impression. Manbearpig will soon have two stalkers.

- Apparently Carrie Prejean made a solo sex tape and her d-bag boyfriend released it to the media. I don't agree with Prejean a lot, but dude, you have to be kind of a dick to take a very private, very personal tape someone made just for you and make it public. Jeff Fecke calls it sexual assault, and Amanda Marcotte agrees (relating another story of naughty picture madness from Indiana while she's at it). While there's certainly nothing legally that can be done, morally Fecke and Marcotte are right on. Prejean, presumably, didn't want the entirety of America to watch her get herself off. This guy is essentially forcing Prejean to engage in an act of public sexuality in order to humiliate and intimidate her. From a moral perspective, if that's not sexual assault, I don't know what is. (Remember, sexual assault is more about exerting power over someone than it is about the actual sex.)

So that's all the stuff I would have posted on if I had been around this week. And major kudos to anyone who remembers the song in the post title.

*There's also a "three-tiered system" for distributing alcohol in place in most states that causes ridiculous distortions in the market for no apparent reason but to enrich alcohol distributors. Can we all just consign "three-tiered system" to the "Phrases That Set Off Automatic Alarms" dustbin where "five-year plan" now resides and be done with it?

All's Quiet on the Front

I'm heading to Nashville for a conference through Friday, so not a lot of blogging until then. Two quick November 11-related things:

1) Happy Veterans' Day. I guess it was observed on the 9th this year, but it has historically been on the 11th for a reason and I'm stubborn. So thanks to all the veterans and current servicemen and women out there who stumble across this blog (and to all those who don't, for that matter).

2) And we remember the day, 81 years ago at 11 AM, when the guns fell silent, putting an end to one of the dumbest wars in world history.

Crumblin' Down

20 years ago today...

Anyway, here's an article Balko linked to claiming that totalitarian communism killed 100,000,000 people over the course of the last century, mainly through forced-labor camps but also through massacres, genocide, and famine. Worth remembering.

Obligatory Jesus Jones link here.

Update: Just for Mike, here's the Scorpions.

The Kids Are Alright

Remember that survey from a while back that claimed that Oklahoma high school seniors are Teh Stoopid? The one that claimed that only 23 percent of them could name George Washington as the first president? Well, Nate Silver's been on the case, and has apparently discovered that the pollster, Strategic Vision LLC, was just making shit up.

According to Oklahoma Rep. Ed Cannaday, he administered the exam to every high school in his rural eastern Oklahoma district, and the results were much, much better than the ones Strategic Vision reported. The number of students who could identify America's first president is 98%, not 23%. Only two questions - the number of judges on the Supreme Court, and the length of senators' terms - got correct responses from under 70% of students.

I can't remember if I posted on this or not, but this is the kind of story that gets around the blogosphere and can really do some damage. People read this and it fits into a narrative of how kids are getting dumber and less politically involved, that our country's going to shit, etc etc. The truth is that kids aren't stupid, that for the most part they are informed and capable citizens.

What confuses me is why Strategic Vision would make up those numbers. The poll, it seems, was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, who Silver describes as a "conservative-leaning think tank." But it seems to me that liberals have more of an interest in such numbers than conservatives, since such a poll could easily be used to justify increased government spending on education. Why would conservatives want a poll that shows that high school seniors are leaving schools without any knowledge? How do the results of this poll help conservatives? Silver doesn't explain this - I wish he would, because I'm at a loss.

Update: A commenter on the FiveThirtyEight thread, who works as the communications director for the Oklahoma Democratic Party, explains:

There has been an ongoing Republican-led legislative fight to dismantle public schools and essentially create a charter school system instead. Pushing the notion that public schools are failing would help their misguided argument. I still don't doubt that certain GOP legislators will quote the SV results on the floor next session, sadly.

That's certainly plausible - these results would seem to suggest that the schools are failing. But the results could easily be interpreted as an impetus to support increased funding for public schools. So these data, in and of themselves, aren't uniquely useful to conservatives if that's the case.

Note that I doubt OCPA is responsible for cooking the data. SV probably wanted numbers that would play well so OCPA would come back to them for other results. Note also that Cannaday is a Democrat - if the bizarre nature of OK politics means that conservatives want bad numbers while liberals want good ones, Cannaday's survey numbers might be a bit on the high side. Wouldn't explain the entire discrepancy, of course, but Cannaday's numbers might be a little high.

Don't Whisper Prayers

Thomas Friedman has a new column out, and he actually says something intelligent. I won't bother trying to quote it, because Friedman's, er, unique writing style makes quoting him comprehensibly all but impossible, but the gist of it is this: Israelis and Palestinians don't want peace. Let's stop trying to impose it on them.

This is interesting coming from the generally interventionist Friedman. It is, perhaps, a lesson taken from Iraq - you can't impose your will on an entire population unless most of that population really wants what you're providing. It ought to be clear to most observers that neither Israelis or Palestinians want peace. Sure, they talk a good game, but in the end something else is always more important. Israelis want a good chunk of the West Bank more than they want peace. Palestinians want part of Jerusalem and a right of return for their refugees before they want peace. Peace simply won't happen unless that becomes both sides' first priority. Israel will have to give up its settlements. Palestinians will have to lay down their rockets and learn to share. We can't do that for them.

Two other commentators, Glenn Greenwald and Joe Klein, go further. Both the liberal Greenwald and the moderate Klein think that the U.S. ought to put a hold on "all economic and military aid to Israel" (Klein's words) until the Israelis want peace. This wouldn't be a bad idea if we weren't also helping Palestinians. Or Egypt. Or Jordan. Or... you get my drift.

But if we keep our aid open, what's our leverage? Aren't we enabling both sides to keep the status quo in place by sending them money and, in Israel's case, guns? It's a sticky wicket for sure, and there's no good answer.

So maybe Friedman's right - the best thing to do is simply to disengage from the whole thing. Stop making trips over there, stop making proclamations that aren't listened to by anyone, stop trying to force peace. If there are complaints, don't try to settle them, and if there's violence, don't intervene. Clearly, taking the direct approach isn't working.

Everybody Knows...

800!

I spend a lot of time on this blog whining about stupid people. Well, point taken, xkcd. Stupid people have been around since the beginning of time, and panicking about their effect on our society is just as dumb as panicking over what the queers are doing to our soil. That's not to say we shouldn't call out idiots or make fun of them when they do stupid crap - just that we shouldn't infer that we're somehow getting collectively dumber as a result. We're as stupid as we've ever been, folks, and we'll be stupid tomorrow. So let's just enjoy the ride.

"More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did." Words well worth remembering.

A Sick and Twisted Game

By now we've all read about the shootings at Fort Hood, where a deranged Army psychiatrist - apparently in need of psychiatric help himself - shot up an Army readiness center, killing 13 before he was shot himself. (The shooter remains alive in a civilian hospital in Killeen.)

Of course, the shooter's religion has set a few wingnut blogs all atwitter - professional green-baiter Donald Douglas is hardly able to contain his excitement at the prospect of another Moooooooslim terror attack.

Blaming the shooter's religion - by all accounts, he was a devout Muslim who prayed damn near every day - is convenient, but probably not particularly instructive. In fact, this WaPo profile of the shooter reveals that there are other things to blame that make just as much sense as blaming his religion. For example:

Hasan was born in Arlington

He's from Arlington. The Virginia Tech shooter was from Centreville. That's it - Northern Virginians are all murderous maniacs. Stop me before I shoot someone, readers!

Or maybe it was Obama's fault?

Lee told Fox News that Hasan "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out. . . . When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."

See? Obama killed those troops. I just knew it.

And, well, we Washington-area natives blame everything else on Dan Snyder, might as well blame this on him too:

Hasan is an avid Redskins fan. "That was his main entertainment," his aunt said. "He was not a movie watcher. He worked hard and had been studying for years. He buried himself in his work."

If only Snyder had drafted decent offensive linemen and a receiver, the shooter wouldn't have been so depressed...

Truth is, of course, none of those things make any sense. A more comprehensive reading of the Post's profile gives us a picture of someone who was deeply disturbed, a smart but isolated, depressed, and fragile man, scarred by the stress of his job, who couldn't deal with the added stress of his impending deployment, and just snapped. In short, he bears more resemblance to Eric Harris than to Mohammed Atta.

Anyway, let's pause a moment to remember those who died in the massacre. You expect danger abroad when you're a soldier. You don't expect it at home, on a heavily guarded base, from someone who wears your own uniform.

...

Also, let's give a warm ONAF round of applause to the Fort Hood civilian policewoman, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who ran into the readiness center and took down the shooter despite having been shot herself. In the process, she saved heaven only knows how many lives. And an extra round of applause to the soldiers who immediately began tending to their wounded comrades after the shooting was over. Heroes, all.

...

(Wow, second Unexpectedly Sober reference in a week. WTF?)

Ignorance Is Your New Best Friend

Election hangover time. Here's a few thoughts on last night's vote-o-rama. Nate Silver does some good analysis here, so if you want some intelligent thoughts, make with the clicky. But for you who set sail with the Good Ship Rant, we'll start south and move up:

Virginia: McDonnell won, and won big here. No surprises - Creigh Deeds' campaign was so weak and so negative that one could be forgiven for thinking that this guy was the actual candidate. And as much as was made of McDonnell's woman-hating graduate thesis, he actually ran as more center-right than anything - or at least he kept his distance most of the far-right national luminaries like Sarah Palin. And the people who actually turned out to vote were a conservative lot - according to Silver, they voted for McCain 51-42. Anyway, this continues a bizarre trend in Virginia politics - the party controlling the White House has lost every governor's race in my lifetime (1977 was the last time it didn't happen). I don't want to dismiss the role of Virginia's fierce regional rivalries in this result either - McDonnell, from Fairfax, was probably thought of by a lot of Northern Virginia voters as better on NoVa issues than Deeds, who hails from Appalachia.

New Jersey: This douchebag-turd sandwich challenge went to Republican Chris Christie, a moderate who defeated one of the most reviled governors in the country, Democrat Jon Corzine. Corzine had a perception of sleaziness that wasn't helped by the fact that his former employer, Goldman Sachs, isn't exactly at an acme of popularity right now. Christie, whose reputation as a corruption-buster was called into question in past weeks, was just better enough to win. Independent Chris Daggett was a non-factor. This reminds me of nothing more than the last time a Republican Christie won the NJ governorship - Christie Todd Whitman, back in 1993.

NY-23: The North Country gets its first Democratic representative since... since... hell, I don't know if anyone can remember the last time a Democrat won up there. Bill Owens was the beneficiary of a civil war among conservatives so fierce that when Republican Dede Scozzafava dropped out last weekend, she actually endorsed Owens instead of Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. A sizeable chunk of Scozzafava's voters appear to have followed her, which is what drove Owens to victory. It's tempting to look at this race as a rebuke to far-right conservatives, but I don't think we can discount a major factor - the sheer incompetence of Doug Hoffman. An MSNBC reporter last night said that not only did Hoffman go into an interview with NY-23's largest newspaper not realizing that Ft. Drum was the district's largest employer and that he'd be responsible for fighting to keep its funding if he won, he seemingly went into the interview not knowing what Ft. Drum was. When there's a one-on-one battle between a guy who knows the district and a guy who doesn't, always bet on the former even if his party hasn't won a race there since God-knows-when.

Oh, and is there any doubt that Scozzafava runs away with this race if not for Hoffman's presence? It's a district tailor-made for moderate Republicans.

Maine: In by far the most depressing result of the night, Maine voters chose to take away gay people's right to enter into a legal contract with one another by a 52-48 margin. I was crunching some numbers on this race last night and I noted a couple of bizarre trends. One was that the vote had a distinct urban-rural split. Portland and environs generally held to their liberal lean; the numbers from Portland basically track those of Obama last year. However, the rural areas were a disaster. In Caribou, a town in the sparsely populated northern reaches of the state, Obama won 56-44 last year - but voted to overturn gay marriage 72-28.

Second is that conservatives were far more motivated than liberals (again). Raw numbers for the anti-marriage voters generally tracked McCain's raw numbers for the state - remarkable for an off-year election - while pro-marriage numbers were well below Obama's numbers last year. For the life of me, I can't understand why conservatives are so motivated on an issue that doesn't affect them at all, but there you go.

Anyway, I see two, and only two, ways forward for marriage equality from here. One is to wait until all the old people die off. Opposition to gay marriage is generally driven by cranky meddlesome old people who think they know everything (what I call the Get Off My Lawn Lobby) - young people are generally okay with the idea. The other is to figure out what's causing so many people to think that gay marriage actually affects them. I read an article a while back (I can't find the link for the life of me) that argued that the main problem with democracy was that it's trivially simple for the majority to take away rights from minorities, because they have the numbers. I don't think we can blame widespread malice for the failure of marriage equality in Maine and California though - in my experience, most people don't just to want to take away rights from others out of spite, especially when they're not affected by the decision one way or the other. So people must be convinced that they are affected by marriage equality - but how? How do straight people conceivably think that two gay guys signing a legal contract actually affects them? Answer that riddle and a strategy for achieving full legal rights for gay couples will emerge.

Finally, a fun conservative contradiction: why are conservatives so in favor of the right to free contract when it comes to businesses and employment but not when it comes to personal matters?

Update: Just checked the census data for Maine - it was projected to be the third oldest state by 2010, behind only Florida and West Virginia. As I noted, there's a huge generation gap on this issue, which put equality deep in the hole in Maine before the fight even began...

Assorted other issues: It wasn't all bad news for our LGBT brothers and sisters - Washington voters approved full legal rights for same-sex couples, and the city of Kalamazoo, MI passed its anti-discrimination ordinance.

Democrat John Garamendi, to no one's surprise, beat Republican David Harmer to become CA-10's new congresscritter, replacing Democrat Ellen Tauscher.

And if you like gambling, you have a new vacation spot... Toledo. Yes, Ohio voters approved a measure that would allow one - and only one - casino in each of Ohio's four largest cities (Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Toledo). Only one casino per city? Isn't basically granting a monopoly on gambling to one company asking for trouble? Why not just make gambling legal and allow cities to decide whether or not they want casinos, and how many they want? Just a ton of weirdness all around there.

What You Want Said, It Ain't Clear

In which I offer an extremely tepid defense of Virginia Foxx.

Foxx is the representative from North Carolina's 5th District, a rather heavily Republican part of the state that includes the suburbs of Winston-Salem and some of the hinterlands in the state's northwest corner. She has a tendency to say some, well, nutty things, like when she called the Matthew Shepard murder a "hoax." She's a few donuts short of a dozen, to be sure. But the latest Foxxism to draw left-wing ire isn't really all that nutty, considering:

And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

OK, let's get the crappy stuff out of the way. Needless fearmongering? Check. Exaggeration of a threat? Check. Gratuitous invocation of terrorism? Check.

But let's parse a little further and see if she isn't on to something here. The conservative view of the health-care reform package is that it'll create a massive entitlement program that will end up destroying us budget-wise. That'll force us to either raise taxes or go even further in hock to China. Also, conservatives believe that higher taxes will seriously injure our already fragile economy. Put it all together, and conservatives view this health-care reform bill as a serious threat to our country's economic well-being. We can argue about whether or not conservatives are right to fear reform, but for now let's accept that fear for what it is.

(As an aside, my opinion is that the budget concerns are legitimate, but the taxation concerns are not, so if the cost of health care reform rises too much we can raise taxes without really hurting the economy. But that's off topic, and I can post on that later if anyone's interested.)

But note Foxx's comparison to terrorism. She says that the consequences of health care reform - prolonged economic sluggishness and higher taxes - are worse than terrorism. In saying this, she's doing something quite welcome - she's tacitly admitting that terrorism isn't really an existential or serious threat to Americans' well-being. And in that sense, she's right. Botched health-care reform that seriously injures our economy is more worth fearing than terrorism, because terrorism isn't really worth fearing that much anyway.

(Another aside: Foxx's ideological opponents could also point out that abdicating health care reform is a worse mistake than giving up the fight against terrorism, for much the same reason.)

So let's look past the bombast of Ms. Foxx's statement and recognize that the main thrust of the statement is correct. The debate over health care reform is a far more consequential struggle than our "war on terror" against al-Qaeda; it will certainly have a greater overall impact on our lives than any terrorist could possibly have. Now that's not to say this is what Foxx meant when she was saying what she said - it's more likely that she was just trying to score cheap rhetorical points by invoking everyone's favorite bogeyman than it is that she actually views the terrorism threat soberly and rationally. But even the blind mouse finds the cheese sometimes.

And Your Bill of Rights Is Gone

(Yeah, I know that song quote will be known to, like, three people. Sue me.)

Hey, did you ever wonder what our kids are being taught about the Bill of Rights? And did you ever wonder what that means about how our kids understand state power? Well, wonder no more.

A parent in the Garland, TX school district (it's really weird to me when entities smaller than counties have their own school districts, but whatever) posts this disturbing list of what the Bill of Rights looks like after run through a shredder of a 6th-grade history textbook. It's pretty hilarious and awful at the same time.

The parent concentrates mostly on the severe bastardization of the Second Amendment - "We can get permission to own weapons to protect ourselves" - and he's right that it's probably the worst bastardization of the bunch. I mean, that's not even close to what the amendment says. "Get permission?" Don't you mean that the government has extremely limited - if any - power to regulate gun ownership.

But the Fifth and Tenth are pretty awful, too. The bastardization of the Fifth Amendment completely ignores the due process clause and the whole "public use" clause that leads to eminent domain law. The Tenth Amendment fails to recognize the "or to the people" bit at the end, instead saying that states can do anything that the federal government can't, which of course isn't necessarily true. (They screw up the Third pretty bad too, but who cares about the Third Amendment anyway?). And it hedges the Fourth Amendment in a way that the Amendment itself doesn't by saying that police "usually" need permission to search our homes.

Paging James Loewen...

There seems to be a bit of a pro-government control bias here. Each of these oversimplifications makes it look like the government has more power than the Constitution actually gives it. You don't need permission to own a gun - you always have the right to own a gun, and the government can't regulate that power too much. Government can't take away your property without paying you for it, and government can't throw you in jail unless they hold a fair trial and convict you first, but you'd never know that from reading this summary. The states and the federal government both have to abdicate a good deal of their power to the people, but from the summary of the Tenth Amendment, you'd never know that either.

Is it any wonder why violations of civil liberties are so often overlooked by most Americans? They're taught from an early age that government has far more power than it actually should have. Say the government violates someone's due process rights in a terrorism case. How many people who learned the Bill of Rights from this summary are going to know that the government is doing something unconstitutional? And how many are going to call the government on it instead of simply saying "oh, they're trying to keep us safe, carry on"?

It behooves us to teach our children the actual Constitution, no matter how difficult or awkward we might find it to be. People can have different interpretations of it, and that's okay... but we ought to at least all start from the same facts, right?

A Big Ol' Pile of Them Bones

Balko's latest Reason.com post highlights an Institute for Justice campaign to overturn a law against compensating bone marrow donors.

Now I've thought for a while, and I see no reason why this law exists in the first place. Anyone know why a hospital paying a potential bone marrow donor is against the law, especially if donors are in short supply in the first place? I don't think the legal case has that much merit - I don't see a constitutional prohibition against this law, and just because a law is dumb doesn't make it unconstitutional - but it is a dumb law that someone needs to repeal.

Political Football

Breaking off the music quote thing because this title works too well.

By now, we've all heard the story of Rush Limbaugh's failed bid to help take over the St. Louis Rams. Conservatives have tried to spin it as some sort of bias against conservatism in the NFL - as if 32 rich old white guys who once let notoriously bigoted asshat George Preston Marshall own a team could somehow have it in for right-wingers - and liberals have tried to claim a victory for race relations in sports (in a league that still has to require its teams to interview one minority candidate for its coaching jobs, lest all the coaches be white).

You're both wrong. It was a business decision. Dave Checketts, the leader of the group seeking to take over the Rams, needed money. Limbaugh has gobs of it and is from the vague St. Louis area. Makes sense. But when Checketts saw the backlash, what he saw weren't pangs of guilt over associating with a supposed racist. He saw dollar signs flying away. He saw good players refusing to play for his team because of their perception of its ownership. He saw liberal fans (probably a good chunk of St. Louis' fan base) refusing to give money to the team because of Limbaugh. And Checketts realized that he could make more money without Limbaugh than he could with him aboard. Simple as that. We can argue until the cows come home about whether Limbaugh is really racist or whether it's fair to view him as such, but it doesn't matter. In the end, the road from sports to politics runs only one way - high-profile political figures simply aren't going to fly in a business that, by its nature, has to accommodate people from all over the political spectrum. It simply wouldn't do to have half your fan base hate the owner of the team.

Which brings us to our second item today, which is Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder's evolution from incompetent to evil. My beloved 'Skins are already in the aforementioned unenviable situation, except instead of having half the fan base hate the owner, in this case it's more like 75-80%. Many (myself included) blame Snyder and his organization's mismanagement of the team for the fact that the 'Skins haven't won the NFC East since 1999 - all three other teams have won at least once since then - and haven't hosted a playoff game since '99 as well, one of the longest droughts in the NFL. (In fact, when Dan Brown's most recent novel, set in Washington, came out, the D.C. sports community widely lampooned it for being set on a day when the Redskins were playing a playoff game at home. We can deal with the crazy conspiracy theory stuff, but a 'Skins home playoff game? That's too much to believe.)

Anyway, such dissatisfaction among sports fans - ever the expressive lot - are bound to lead to shenanigans at games. Signs, T-shirts, and chants decrying Snyder's ownership have begun to proliferate at 'Skins home games. So what's Snyder's reaction? He bans all signs, and has security throw out people who have the temerity to bring signs critical of Snyder. Mr. Irrelevant has one over-the-top example (bonus: fans chanting "Free Speech!" as he's being escorted out - does this happen in other cities?). Dan Steinberg has a few others.

Snyder's weak reasoning for banning signs is that they could cause injury and obstruct others' views - but if those were really reasons for banning signs it would have been done long ago. Furthermore, Steinberg's chatters report that security threw people out for chanting and wearing T-shirts. Deadspin has more if you trust them. Anecdata isn't the most trustworthy thing in the world, but it does point to a culture of discouraging dissent that Snyder has instituted at FedEx Field. If it sounds dictatorial to you, you're not the only one - The New Yorker's Steve Coll compares Snyder's reign to Zimbabwe.

Snyder, of course, can do what he wants with his property. But it does seem to suggest something that's occurring to a greater extent in our culture. Our public figures are unwilling, for the most part, to listen to people who criticize them. Admitting error has become a sign of weakness rather than of strength, and so people like Snyder who want to continue to appear "strong" can't change course. The only option, in their mind, is to control the message, and that means crackdowns on dissent in the stands.

(Fascinating side note - when the 'Skins played the Chiefs two weekends ago, the Kansas City Star refused to print the name of the team, which many Native Americans find offensive, referring to them instead as "the Washington football team." One advantage to the 'Skins' shittiness is that the row over the team's name hasn't been all that serious since the last Super Bowl. Once the 'Skins are healthy again, we're going to have to confront that name)

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

I bitch about anti-gay rights laws in America in this space, and with good reason: I take the whole "equal protection under the laws" thing seriously. Also the Ninth Amendment.

But you know what? We might be bad, but at least we're not Uganda, which has just introduced an anti-homosexuality bill that even one-ups the strictest reading of Leviticus. Burroway, who I linked to there, has a summary of the bill's main features here:

The proposed bill would:

• Reaffirm the lifetime sentence currently provided upon conviction of homosexuality, and extends the definition from sexual activity to merely “touch[ing] another person with the intention of committing the act of homosexuality.”


• Create a new category of “aggravated homosexuality” which provides for the death penalty for “repeat offenders” and for cases where the individual is HIV-positive.


• Criminalize all speech and peaceful assembly for those who advocate on behalf of LGBT citizens in Uganda with fines and imprisonment of between five and seven years.


• Criminalize the act of obtaining a same-sex marriage abroad with lifetime imprisonment.


• Add a clause which forces friends or family members to report LGBT persons to police within 24-hours of learning about that individual’s homosexuality or face fines or imprisonment of up to three years.


• Add extra-territorial and extradition provisions, allowing Uganda to prosecute LGBT Ugandans living abroad.

The list goes on. If it passed, it'd probably put half of Uganda behind bars.

Of course, the chances of a Western country actually extraditing someone found guilty of Teh Ghey (or of supporting someone who has Teh Ghey) are slim to none. And I don't know what the bill's chances for passage are, considering it violates some 10 articles of Uganda's constitution. But still, the fact that someone in Uganda thinks that this bill is actually a good idea... it just boggles the mind. Even our wingnuts aren't that nutty.

See The Idiot Talk

This online column by professional idiot Bill Donohue might be the worst piece of writing ever published in America. I'd answer Donohue's arguments, but I have no idea what they are. It's like his computer got food poisoning and the Washington Post published the ensuing vomit. He apparently has a book along these lines - I'm kind of morbidly curious about it, actually.

Mr. Donohue, I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Down with the Sickness

H1N1 fever is sweeping the nation, kids, and so it's time for ONAF to look at this supposedly SUPER-DEADLY DANGEROUS OUTBREAK OMG!!!11!1!!1 and see if the panic is warranted.

First, there's not a lot of data we can go on right now. Flu season hasn't begun in earnest yet, so current infection and hospitalization rates aren't really indicative of what the final rates would be. We can, however, get a sense of how dangerous the virus is compared to the normal flu by comparing the mortality rate of H1N1 with the mortality rate of the average flu.

The CDC, ever helpful, provides both in this web page, but of course you have to go digging for it. The normal flu, claims the CDC, kills 36,000 and hospitalizes more than 200,000. We'll assume that those who die of the flu are hospitalized first - that leads to a mortality probability of roughly 0.18 for flu infections serious enough to require hospitalization. (That number seems a bit high to me, but it's corroborated by the academic literature.)

So what has the swine flu wrought? So far, there have been 4958 confirmed H1N1 hospitalizations in the U.S. and 292 deaths. That's a mortality probability of 0.059 - far less than the standard seasonal flu. Not all infections lead to hospitalization, of course, but it's reasonable to expect that similar symptoms would lead to hospitalization for both seasonal and H1N1 flu.

Now I'm not prepared to say that this means the H1N1 virus is less deadly than the seasonal flu, but that appears to be the case right now. So why the disparity? The reason could be that H1N1 tends to infect younger people. For some reason, old people - those most at risk for death from the seasonal flu - aren't getting H1N1 at anywhere near the normal rate, while younger people are getting H1N1 at a higher rate than normal. Since H1N1 is infecting lower-risk populations, one would expect the mortality rate to be significantly lower.

So why the hysteria over H1N1, if it's not any more dangerous than the seasonal flu? One reason is that it's a novel flu strain that people haven't experienced before. This means more people will get H1N1 than would normally get the seasonal flu, as natural immunities to the seasonal flu strains won't protect people against H1N1. The hysteria is certainly misplaced, but it's worth noting that because of H1N1, this flu season will probably be a bit worse than normal flu seasons. It's not a super-deadly strain of influenza, though, and fears of a 1918-style pandemic are overblown. Flu symptoms from H1N1 might be worse because of the lack of antibodies in the average person's system, but so far it won't kill you any more than season flu would.

The final question revolves around the vaccine, and I'd like to pose a question to the commentariat here. Novartis' documentation says their H1N1 vaccine is only intended for children ages 4 and up. Is there a toddler version of the vaccine that is proven safe for little people like my daughter? Has anyone heard differently about kids under 4 not being recommended for the vaccine? Anyone know who the FDA approved it for?

His Soul Is Marching On

The story is this: a bearded religious fanatic, convinced of the righteousness of his cause, hatches a plan to violently attack all those who stand in his cause's way. He attracts several like-minded recruits, who join for a variety of reasons, and carries out a string of successful, often bloody and destructive attacks, culminating in a symbolic attack on an American landmark that is remembered for a long time thereafter.

There are those who say it's difficult to get inside the mind of a terrorist, to understand what could possibly drive them to kill their fellow man. But if you sympathize with the story of radical abolitionist hero John Brown, whose story I just told you and whose attack on the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry occurred 150 years ago last week, you should find it rather easy. Brown was, after all, a terrorist... but one that, on the whole, most Americans agree with. (Southerners who still hold out in their opposition to Brown, substitute William Quantrill or John Mosby here. While both were official rebel army officers, their tactics were similar to Brown's.) Perhaps we can support Brown because history proved Brown right - the despicable institution of slavery would require widespread violence to bring down. Or perhaps it is because we know that slavery was a violent system, and using violence to bring it down was therefore justified. Or perhaps it's just because the model of non-violent resistance practiced by Gandhi and King simply hadn't been thought up yet.

But make no mistake - were Brown alive today, he'd be considered a terrorist. (So would Mosby and Quantrill.) So when we call someone a "terrorist," we'd do well to realize that they care about whatever cause they support in the same way John Brown cared about ending slavery, and that if we're to fight them, we might want to understand what that cause is, and why people care about it so much. This isn't to say that Brown was wrong, or that the Islamic extremists are right. It's just to say that the kind of passion terrorists have for their causes isn't so foreign to us after all.

Don't Go Tossin' Your Stones Around

Incidentally, since Mike's not doing it any more, I figured I'd pick up with the song lyric post title thing.

Anyway, Greenwald reports some good news on the drug war:

The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday.

This is good to hear, of course, but color me skeptical for now. This was one of Obama's campaign promises, but DEA raids on CA medical marijuana clinics have continued so far. In fact, the "as long as they conform to state laws" statement is a pernicious phrase - it means that should a marijuana clinic violate any little state regulation (and CA has a ton of 'em), the DEA can bring down its vengeance upon that clinic just like old days. It'll take a year or so of that not happening before I'm a believer.

Greenwald points out, though, that Obama's already taking a better approach to the "war on drugs" than his predecessor - he didn't pressure Mexico out of decriminalizing minor possession crimes. On the other hand, the Democratic Congress and Obama also included the awful Byrne Grant program in the stimulus bill, so we have a bit of a mixed bag here. And the "war on drugs" goes far beyond Obama, of course - even ending the worst of the war on drugs requires a sea change in the attitudes of police forces across the country (insert obligatory Agitator plug here). And if you expect Obama and the Democrats to do the right thing and completely remove federal drug laws, you're freakin' nuts.

One more thing: Greenwald notes the following about Obama's new drug policy:

Just as is true for Jim Webb's brave crusade to radically revise the nation's criminal justice and drug laws, there is little political gain -- and some political risk -- in adopting a policy that can be depicted as "soft on drugs" or even "pro-marijuana."

I disagree that there's little political gain from softening the tone of the drug war. Anti-drug war sentiment has exploded in the past few years, as more and more people become affected by the heavy-handed tactics it employs. See the outrage over the Cheye Calvo incident for proof of that.

Most importantly, though, here's a Newsweek poll that says that 80% of Americans think marijuana should be legal for medical purposes. Aligning your policy to agree with 80% of Americans hardly carries a political risk. In fact, I think Obama could probably go further without incurring too much risk. That same poll suggests that only 21% of Americans think minor possession should be a prison-worthy offense. Abolishing federal prison sentences for drug possession would be another positive step that would carry next to no political risk.

And here's another thing. Check this chart on drug use from the head drug warriors at the ONDCP. The key stat: over half of people aged 18-35 have used illegal drugs. Almost a third of those aged 18-25 have gotten high in the past year. Remember, Obama won the White House with roughly 2-1 support from young voters. Not only have most young people used drugs (weird that I'm in the minority here), but most of the data I've seen suggest that young people are far more likely to support legalization of marijuana than older voters. Roughly half of voters under 45 support legalization, and while I haven't seen any numbers, my guess would be that support for legalization would float around 60% for the 18-29 set. Obama will need to keep his margin among young voters if he is to win in 2012. Adopting policies that are popular with young voters is hardly a bad strategy for him.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight makes much the same point I'm making, though he notes even higher numbers for marijuana usage among the aging-hippie generation.

(Weird statistical issue, though: according to Rasmussen, men actually favor legalization while women are heavily opposed. Why the gender gap? And does the gender gap exist among younger voters, or is it just prim-and-proper old Phyllis Schlafly types dragging the numbers with them? Marijuana polls need to have better demographic info...)

(Update 10/20: Gallup reports that the gender gap has closed. Also, a majority of Americans under 50 support legalizing marijuana outright. It's only the Get Off My Lawn Lobby holding us back here.)

You Live Inside Your Jesus Dream

The stupid. It burns.



OK, first off: that wasn't an ox, it was a cow. Second, that's one big fucking rat. Ben, watch out, apparently rats are HUGE in Georgia. Third, I think the ox caused that house fire and the tornado... and if not, he certainly wasn't doing shit to stop them. Fourth, I'm all for taking money from the Georgia Department of Insurance, but I definitely don't want to be crushed by freakishly large C-notes in the process, thank you. And finally, I think every conservative stereotype is there - the inexplicable reference to Hollywood and France, the completely random Reagasm, the veiled Confederate flag fellating... it's all there.

Dumb? Yes. But you'll be saying "King Roy. Thuuuuuh raat" and cracking up inexplicably for the rest of the day. Trust me.

Kudos to anyone who makes sense of the post title, by the way.

I'm Not A Team Player

WARNING: May contain unhinged rant.

OK, can we call it quits with the "team politics" bullshit now? I'm sick of it.

You know what I'm talking about. People who treat politics as if you're part of some "team," and if anyone on your team does ANYTHING you have to defend them and if anyone on the other team does ANYTHING you have to criticize them. Oh, and if someone criticizes someone on your team? They're the fucking devil.

Look, Obama didn't deserve the Nobel Prize based on his past accomplishments. Let's face it - he doesn't have that many "past accomplishments." Getting new equitable rules for equal-pay lawsuits is something, but it ain't worth the Nobel. Escalating the war in Afghanistan and continuing policies of indefinite extralegal detention sure as hell shouldn't be winning anyone a "Peace" prize. (Then again, launching terrorist intifadas shouldn't be winning people peace prizes, but Arafat got one anyway, so there ya go.) The Nobel committee gave Obama the prize in order to encourage him to pursue peace, which is cool and I understand that, but criticism of the prize is valid. Most liberals may not agree with the criticism, and that's cool too, but that doesn't make critics like the fucking Taliban and Hamas.

Oh, and on gay rights? Sorry, Obama, but you're chickenshit. There, I said it. You're completely chickenshit. You too, Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi. Chickenshit, all of you. I want "don't ask, don't tell" repealed and I want it done yesterday. Of course, the White House thinks I'm just part of some "internet fringe" for saying that. How dare you criticize the President, Jeff! You're a liberal, Jeff! You don't understand, Jeff! Bullshit. I can count. And 75% ain't "fringe". Three in four Americans want DADT out. According to Rep. Baldwin (D-WI), 89% think LGBT people shouldn't be discriminated against in the workplace. Hell, even 57% of Americans support legal recognition for gay couples! You think that's "fringe"? That the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and DADT repeal have to wait because of the "challenges of governing a closely divided country?" Bullshit. You're chicken, and I'm calling you out on it, and if you don't like it go suck on a lemon. If you don't believe in gay rights, you shoulda said so during the campaign.

Guess what? There's more than one proper way to be liberal. The DNC isn't some square-dance caller telling us all what liberals are supposed to think. I'm going to think my fellow liberals are wrong a fairly good chunk of the time. And guess what? I'm gonna say so. And you know what else? A lot of the time, when I do say so, I'll be agreeing with a few conservatives. It's called "mature political dialogue," people. Chances are, even you, Mr. Anonymous White House Official, have disagreements with Obama and Pelosi and Reid sometimes. It's okay.

This whole thing is getting out of hand. You're either a Socialist Health-Care Rationer or you Want People To Die Quickly. You're either a Terrorist Sympathizer or a Child-Killing Warmonger. This is Karl Rove bullshit. I expect it out of the Republicans. I expected better out of the Democrats. Guess the Democratic leadership thinks they should be out there playing a game of political football against the Republicans. Fine, get out there and beat each other up. The rest of us are going to just hope someone actually starts acting like an adult around here.

OK, I'm done.

Monday Morning Movie Thoughts

I went to see Capitalism: A Love Story, and like most of Michael Moore's movies, it proposes a lot of questions and leaves little in the way of answers. This is not a bad thing, mind you - expecting all the answers to our economic and social ills to come out of a two-hour movie is foolhardy. But Moore has the balls to challenge a lot of our sacred cows on economic policy, and these are worth musing about here.

I don't post on economic issues here a lot, not because I don't think they're important, but because I don't know a whole lot about them. I went on a mini-rant on economic policy in response to Balko once, but that's about it.

So here are some ill-formed questions that came out of the movie with me, and that perhaps people with better economic knowledge can answer...

- People on the right throw around the term "socialism" as if it's a proven evil. If it's socialism, it's necessarily bad. Well, is socialism necessarily a bad thing? Why? What about capitalism makes it better than socialism?

- Let's say our current employment climate continues. If I reach the point where I'm reasonably wealthy, and could provide for my daughter's well-being and my own with the wealth I had accrued to that point, would it be ethical for me to continue working no matter what age I'm at, and whether or not I enjoyed my job? And what's the point in working more than you need to in order to live comfortably?

- Is it better to rely on a system of charity to help the poor or compel rich people to help the poor? I'm reminded of a Jewish rabbinical story I once heard. Two men of equal means come upon a beggar in the street. One is not compelled (in this case, by his religion) to give anything, yet out of his sense of compassion, he gives $5. The other is repulsed by the beggar, but because his religion demands it, he grudgingly gives $10. Who has done the better deed? The rabbis said the guy who gave the most money, of course - his heart will catch up, but in the meantime, more good is being done. So is compelling the rich to help the poor (via taxation) more ethical than removing all compulsion and expecting altruism to do the trick?

- Moore claims the solution to our economic problems is to "destroy" capitalism. But he spends half the movie criticizing a cozy relationship between Capitol Hill and the banks that doesn't resemble actual capitalism at all. If we destroy the corporatist mentality in Congress, would capitalism lead to the negative things we liberals associate with it? On the other hand, is the capitalist ideal even possible, or will capitalism always breed corporatism? And because ideal anything is impossible, aren't some regulations necessary for the proper functioning of a real-life capitalist marketplace?

Jibber jabber.

Iran's "President" Tallit-Weaver

There are some bizarre news stories out there, but this one, if not a hoax, takes the cake:

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

"Sabour" is the Persian word for the Jewish prayer shawl better known by its Hebrew name tallit.

So A-Train (S-Train? Let's call him that from now on) has Jewish roots, though his family converted when he was four, so he likely has little recollection of his Judaism? Guess no one has asked him if he's circumcised, then? Color me skeptical for now - I feel like this is the kind of thing that someone would have noticed before. If it's true, though, one of global politics' weirdest characters has gotten even weirder...

Update: Looks like the skeptic in me was right - while A-Train's family did change their name, the change has more to do with upward social mobility in Tehran and less to do with a family disguising its supposed heathen past. His mother is believed to be a direct descendant of Muhammad, which means she's probably not Jewish. And Sabourjian is most likely a name derived from a peasant cloth-spinner, which is not really a Jewish name.

Incidentally, now we have a Christian head-of-state falsely accused of being a Muslim, and a Muslim head-of-state falsely accused of being Jewish. Now we need someone to try to prove that Netanyahu's a Christian. You know, just to complete the cycle.

Update link from this Twitter user who, like me, tweets about soccer and politics a lot.

Epic Map Fail

So Glenn Greenwald and Arianna Huffington were on MSNBC's Morning Meeting with host Dylan Ratigan on Tuesday, but that's not what's important here. Go to the 0:46 mark of this video.

Notice that Mr. Ratigan's staff labeled a country "Turkmenistan." Note also that the country in question is actually Turkey.

Point. Laugh. Continue.

Honestly though, how did they screw that up? It's not like they mislabeled some little country and got it confused with its neighbor. I have trouble remembering which one's Tajikstan and which one's Kyrgyzstan, personally. I get it. But this isn't some little country they screwed up. This is Turkey. Kind of a major country. And it's not like some blogger made a proofread error. This is a multi-billion-dollar news network - you'd think they could afford someone to double-check the freakin' map.

Funny side story - I woke up from wisdom tooth surgery a few years ago absolutely demanding to know the capital of Turkmenistan. It's Ashgabat, by the way. Yes, I did that from memory.

That's all I got. Enjoy your obligatory Yeah Yeah Yeahs video.

I Love The Smell Of Schadenfreude In The Morning

You know that bill that was supposed to defund ACORN? The one that was passed with veto-proof Congressional majorities? The one that was called the "Defund ACORN Act"? Seems that the bill, in order to avoid bill-of-attainder status, was written so that it not only defunds ACORN but almost all major defense contractors! Good job, guys!

Here's the text of the bill. Note that it forbids federal funding to any organization who filed an incorrect form with the government. And that if it employs anyone who has ever defrauded the government, it can't get funding. That's quite a standard to meet.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is helpfully trying to compile a list of companies who should get defunded by the bill here. The list includes a few false positives (Grayson himself calls it an "unverified list") but the documentation is pretty good for the most part. He needs to get his list into the record by Friday - help him out here. Greenwald has an interview with Grayson up here.

Oh look, here's an even more helpful list of all federal contractors, defense and otherwise, how many times they've defrauded the government, and how much money they've effectively stolen from the taxpayer. I'm sure they're being a bit pessimistic (I think they include alleged fraud as well as proven fraud, but hey, so does the "Defund ACORN Act"), but it's a stunning list. Considering the size of our deficit, we could really use that $26 billion right now, I think. Oh, and of the top 20 contractors, only one - MacAndrews AMG (who makes humvees for the military) - would be able to continue receiving federal funds.

Not just that. Note the bill prohibits federal funding "in any form." So ExxonMobil (39 instances of fraud or alleged fraud) can kiss its precious subsidies goodbye. Royal Dutch Shell (20 instances) can too. General Motors (12 instances) isn't getting any more bailout cash. Corrections Corporation of America (5 instances, including tax fraud) wouldn't be able to be paid for operating jails anymore. I could go on.

While it would be hilarious, I don't foresee a sudden defunding of our entire military-industrial complex, not to mention cessation of a few subsidies here and there. Rather, it'll hopefully force Congress to re-evaluate how government contracts are awarded and overseen. These instances of fraud happen because the government lets these big companies get away with it - fraud can be stopped by ensuring competitive bidding, strengthening cost oversight, and requiring proof of completion for a contract to be paid.

Last Chance to Lose Control

One of the best articles on sex crime hysteria I've read (via Balko, of course).

The hysteria over sex doesn't exist in a vacuum, of course. Previous generations didn't have this hysteria because sex was hidden from view. We didn't allow ourselves to think of children as sexual beings, even though starting with puberty (about age 11 for most kids) that's exactly what they are. (And studies have even shown that even younger children have sexual thoughts.)

Now? There's been a growing movement since about the mid-60s to view sex positively. And there's been one hell of a backlash to said movement from the puritan Right. When the puritans started losing the battle against positive views of sexuality, they decided to embrace big government and attempt to force others to have their views on sex. In the conservative mind, adolescent sexual exploration is not a natural urge to be explained and guided by adults but a "sinful nature" (to invoke my least favorite philosopher of all time) to be controlled and subdued by adults. But that's not all - as the puritans lost the battle even more, they looked at the changing culture and concluded that more mature reactions to adolescent sexuality were destroying America. So why did the government get involved? Well, if people wouldn't adopt conservative views anymore, and liberal views were destroying American culture, conservative views had to be imposed. Hysteria over children's sexuality is a way of using government to convince kids that sex is evil and dirty and should be avoided at all costs, because in the conservative mindset, the stakes are too great to not invoke Big Government. It's a combination of cranky get-off-my-lawnism and apocalyptic nuttery - imagine if the old man became convinced that his house would blow up because kids kept cutting across his yard.

If anyone wonders why I tend to scoff at crisis/emergency language in political discussion, this is why. Such talk leads to destroyed lives.

Lost in the ACORN Shuffle

You know what is happening right now? A former Secretary of the Interior is being investigated for steering oil shale leases to a favored company. A current House member (sadly, one I really like) may have done the same with bailout funds. One defense contractor may have gotten a little help from a Congressional friend so they coulddefraud the Navy out of millions. And it's old news, but I still don't think anything has been done about the defense contractor whomay have tried to cover up the rape of their own employee.

But oh, by all means, obsess over a couple of low-level ACORN staffers playing along with a stupid joke. (I mean, look at this video. It should be clear within 30 seconds to everyone with a brain that the employee in the video is screwing with the filmmakers. She claims to have shot her ex-husband for fuck's sake. And this moron O'Keefe takes her seriously? That oughta destroy any credibility he has right there.)

So yeah. Actual, honest to God corruption abounds in our system, and it's being ignored for this horseshit.

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE.

OK, there, I'm done. Sorry about the outburst, it happens sometimes. Frustration, you know. (One more. Why aren't conservatives going after Murtha? He's high up in the Dem leadership and the bastard practically oozes corruption. And that's corruption that's stealing from the armed forces and, by extension, our troops. "Democratic leader steals from troops and gives to his rich well-connected friends"... isn't that practically Glenn Beck's wet dream?)

Race for the Stupid

This sets world records for stupidity:

Catholic dioceses across the U.S. and organizations like STOPP International, an affiliate of the American Life League, disagree and have dubbed Komen [that's Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer research fundraising organization - ed.] a menace to women. They’ve also launched a boycott of SGK’s Race for the Cure.

It's unclear what the imagined wrong committed by SGK is, but it apparently has something to do with abortion. Apparently, SGK gives money for mammograms to women's health giant Planned Parenthood, an organization which a lot of the less-perceptive pro-lifers mistakenly believe is only about abortions. The boycotters also cite a link (which has since been debunked by pretty much every reputable scientist on the planet) between abortion and breast cancer, which apparently means that everyone who gets breast cancer is a baby-killing slut who has it coming. Also, this site seems to imply that the Diocese of Little Rock thinks SGK supports embryonic stem cell research, though it's unclear how much of SGK's money actually goes to a research avenue that is not really related to breast cancer. As best as I can tell from SGK's site, the research is currently being done on cancer stem cells (which come from tumors).

I seriously don't get it. Why would pro-life organizations care about an organization that fights breast cancer by encouraging early detection and research? This makes absolutely no sense. The abortion issue has nothing to do with SGK's activities. Did someone's wires get crossed somewhere to create some sort of "Susan G. Komen Kills Babies" hysteria? The stem cell criticism might have the most truth behind it, but it's still tenuous - as far as I can tell, the research is only obliquely related to embryonic stem cells and is only a very small part of what SGK actually funds. Fortunately, most people (even most pro-lifers, from what I understand) think this is a bit beyond the pale. But if the hysteria doesn't stop, it could have real consequences for breast cancer research and detection...

Meet the New Boss, Iraq Edition

Increasingly similar to the old boss:

Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. “Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional standards,” says Samer Muscati, who works for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby. His outfit reports that, with American oversight gone (albeit that the Americans committed their own shameful abuses in such places as Abu Ghraib prison), Iraqi police and security people are again pulling out fingernails and beating detainees, even those who have already made confessions. A limping former prison inmate tells how he realised, after a bout of torture in a government ministry that lasted for five days, that he had been relatively lucky. When he was reunited with fellow prisoners, he said he saw that many had lost limbs and organs.

Conservatives will almost certainly take this as evidence that Americans should have stayed in Iraq longer and not agreed to the withdrawal timeline mandated by the Iraqi government. But realistically, what did we think was going to happen? We weren't going to turn Iraq into Puerto Rico East. At some point, we had to leave Iraqis in charge if Iraqi affairs. The Iraqis themselves told us that they wanted us out. Our choices were stay and start battling the inevitable insurgency all over again, or leave and watch as Iraq reverts to a police state, just with a different guy in charge.

So now we all know what we should have known back in 2003: spreading democracy at the point of a gun doesn't work. You have to make people want democracy first, and you can't do that by bombing their country.

Goodbye, Mr. Borlaug

Agricultural scientist Norman Borlaug, one of my personal heroes, died over the weekend at age 95. He is most famous for developing high-yield semi-dwarf strains of wheat that resist decimation from disease; this work increased crop yields in the developing world dramatically and likely saved hundreds of millions of South Asians from starvation. His life is a testament to the power of science to help people and save lives.

Borlaug was sort of a pioneer of biotechnology, in some respects. His breeding experiments were done the old-fashioned way - via cross-pollination rather than by genetic engineering. However, the difference between the two methods is one of efficiency, not result - genetic engineering of crops is essentially a way to cross-breed varieties of plants with desired characteristics more reliably. Borlaug wanted to breed certain characteristics into his plants - genetic engineers merely find those characteristics in the DNA and splice them into a new seed.

So I'm going to commit an act of environmentalist heresy here and say that I don't see the problem with genetically modified organisms, at least when it comes to plants. And it's bizarre that this is a heresy among environmentalists, because from an enviromental perspective GMOs are an undoubtedly good thing. Scientists are designing strains of crops that are disease- and pest-resistant and that produce more on less land. What's the problem with that? The hardier a crop is, the less chemical pesticides have to be used. That's a good thing, right? If more food gets produced on the same plot of land, that's less forest that has to be torn down to plant crops. That's good too, right? And the more food that gets produced, the less people starve. Also good, right?

What's baffling about the debate over GMOs is that the opposition to GMO food makes little to no sense to me. One one hand, you get fanatics complaining about "Frankenfood," as if genetic engineering would produce wheat crops that will get up out of the ground and eat your babies or something. What these critics don't realize is that they're already eating GMO food. Researchers have tested modern GMO food and found that it poses no health risk, but they miss the point - people have been eating GMOs for thousands of years. Take corn, for example. You know those little baby corn cobs that come in your Chinese takeout? Did you know that used to be about the size of all corn crops, and that the only way corn became the corn-on-the-cob you're familiar with nowadays is through human-influenced breeding (which, as I mentioned earlier, is genetic engineering by far less efficient means)? That's right, your "organic" corn is actually genetically modified. Same with your "organic" navel oranges. And all those tomatoes. And... you get the picture. Crops have always been bred for certain characteristics - genetic engineering just makes the breeding process more efficient and reliable. The end result is the same.

On the other hand, more thoughtful critics cite the use of farming methods that encourage monoculture and benefit agribusiness at the economic expense of small farmers, and that use unsustainable high-input practices. These critics have merit, but one might notice that none of these criticisms are of GMOs per se. The two criticisms are linked - high-input farming methods require capital that only large businesses possess. Fair enough, but that's a good reason to expand biotechnology research into developing high-yield crops that don't require high-input farming, and to develop high-yield cover crops that can be used in an efficient, sustainable crop rotation. Science is the way out of this, people. And finally, an agribusiness oligarchy and high-input farming methods, while not ideal, are certainly preferable to the starvation and land degradation wrought by low-yield crops.

Look, I like buying local, organic food as much as the next guy. I like my beef grass-fed, my apples wax-free, and my tomatoes... well, I don't like tomatoes, but you get my point. It's nice to live in a relatively less-densely populated country where such things are possible. But organic, "natural" farming methods where Farmer Tom down the street can sell you veggies that were in the ground an hour ago so you can have them for supper are a luxury that many densely-populated poor countries can't afford. They rely on the high-yield methods pioneered by Borlaug simply to survive. Organic, low-yield methods just wouldn't cut it in India - you'd have to plow under the whole country or let people starve to adopt such methods.

Borlaug referred to critics of GMOs as elitists who don't understand hunger. I don't think the E-word is fair - elitism implies a disdain for those suffering from hunger, and I don't believe the average environmentalist looks down on the average starving African. But I think the second half of that statement is right: environmentalists simply don't understand the gravity of the hunger situation. While we Americans have the luxury to choose between "organic" and "conventional" methods (as the labels at Whole Foods proudly proclaim), poor countries don't have that option. They need the high-yield of genetically engineered crops and high-input farming practices to simply produce enough food to exist. We can disdain GMOs all we want - for the average Indian or Pakistani, "Frankenfood" is literally a lifesaver.

Update: Here's a fascinating (if long and kinda wonky) read - Borlaug's 2000 lecture to the Nobel Prize people where he describes many of the problems facing food production and the possible way out of them. His discussion of the need to conserve water by designing more water-efficient ways to use land is especially interesting. He also discusses rather frankly a lot of the problems that have arisen in the wake of the Green Revolution and what he thinks can be done about them.

A side note: I think a lot of people have a distorted view of scientists - that is, they think scientists believe that their work is perfect and will cure all evils. Thus, by pointing out a problem that the scientist didn't solve or that arose as a result of the scientist's last solution, the critic believes he is "discrediting" the scientist and their research. Scientists, of course, realize that research is never complete, and that constantly dealing with new questions and confronting new problems is what science is all about.

Update 2: Penn and Teller skewer the anti-GMO crowd. It's a bit harsh on the protestors even for me, but worth a watch. Also fixed a few goofy issues with the main post.

All That Needs To Be Said

From Mike's Facebook status:

8 years later, we're still laughing, loving, working hard, playing harder, and rocking out. Because we're Americans, dammit. That's just how we roll. And that's why the terrorists will never win.

Joe Wilson's War

OK, let's get this straight. Joe Wilson (R-SC) made himself look like an idiot when he shouted "You lie!" in the middle of Obama's speech last night. For one thing, it's a rule of Washington etiquette to not interrupt the President when he's speaking. For another, the section he chose to yell at - a part of Obama's speech in which he said that his health-care bill does not include benefits for undocumented immigrants - was not an opinion or a stretched truth but an absolute fact. It'd be like a kindergartener shouting "You lie!" at the teacher who just said that two plus two equals four.

But somehow I just can't bring myself to be anything more than amused at the whole thing. See, if this had occurred in Britain, it wouldn't have even been remarkable. I mean, have you ever seen question time? Heckling is a way of life there.

Here's the thing. In the name of "civility" we have condemned anyone who dares speak a contrarian point of view in a somewhat unorthodox manner. Journalists love calling partisans on both sides uncivil. Problem is, those partisans frequently have a point, and by condemning protests we narrow the range of debate so much that we start to crowd out alternative viewpoints. The fact that Wilson's outburst was just plain wrong is not the point. Anyone with an Internet connection and the slightest ability to do research can ferret that out. But by forcing artificial rules of "civility" on people, we allow actual honest-to-God lies and distortions from the powerful to go unquestioned and unpunished.

Let's look at it this way. What if a Democratic Congressperson had yelled out "You lie!" in response to Bush's claim that Saddam had WMDs, or that he was responsible for 9/11? Wouldn't we on the left consider that a good thing? It would have been a challenge to Bush's obvious lie, whereas Democrats keeping to these artificial rules of civility allowed Bush to say these things pretty much unchallenged.

So while I'll condemn Wilson for being stupid and wrong, I just can't condemn Wilson for speaking his mind in a manner that contradicts established rules of etiquette, which seems to be the consensus condemnation of the day. He didn't prevent Obama from finishing his thought or actively prevent others from hearing what Obama had to say (unlike, say, the town-hall protestors who have frequently done just that to their Congresspeople). In his mind, he saw bullshit and called it. While Wilson's bullshit meter is apparently broken, I just don't think we ought to be too hard on someone for using theirs.

Of course, this doesn't make Wilson immune from mockery. Such is the lot of the protestor whose position is ill-thought-out...

Freak of the Week #3

It's tempting to give the award this week's Freak of the Week award to the Pope, for this unintentionally hilarious bit of pablum:

Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where his existence is denied? If the human creature's relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the "final authority," and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

An attempt to blame atheists for environmental degradation is so absurd that, in any other week, it's a clear winner. Well, Holy Father, you would have taken it, but you had the misfortune of having to go up against this guy:

“If you’re African American, you’re six, seven or eight times more likely to have a violent history,” Keith said. “I didn’t go out there and put a gun in your hand and say, ‘You commit eight crimes, and I’m a white man, I’ll commit one.’ That’s just instincts, that’s just how it is.”

Yup. Black people have an "instinct" to commit more crime than white people. Forsyth County (NC) District Attorney Tom Keith, step right up, you're this week's winner!

Some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses, indeed.

Hat tip to @Jerimee for pointing me to the story.

Update: Your lucky day, Holy Father. Seems like we have to disqualify Mr. Keith in light of this: it looks like Mr. Keith was misquoted. He actually said "statistics," not "instincts." This doesn't make his argument less intellectually bankrupt (the debate is over racial disparity in the application of the death penalty, not over disparity in actual convictions or arrests), but it does remove the bigotry from the equation. Which means he's not the Freak of the Week anymore. I thus declare Pope Benedict XVI the winner by default.

Obama Screws Up Honduras

According to the Washington Post, Obama is threatening not to recognize the winner of Honduras' constitutionally mandated democratic election in November if the interim Micheletti government doesn't step down and allow Manuel Zelaya to step down.

I've written before on this mess, and later tried to clarify that there was no coup here. Rather, the whole saga is an attempt to deal with the impeachment of a president who should, according to the constitution, clearly be impeached, but unfortunately also dealing with a constitution that doesn't provide a means for impeachment. It's an internal affair that, if we quit our ridiculous posturing, would all work itself out in November when Honduras elects a new democratically elected president and neither Zelaya nor Micheletti have a claim to anything.

I honestly don't understand what Obama thinks he's accomplishing. There's no strategic gain to supporting an unpopular leader who should have been impeached. There's no moral imperative here - no one's imperiling Honduras' democracy here (and if anyone was doing so in the first place, it was Zelaya, who started this whole kerfuffle by trying to unconstitutionally extend his own time in office). So Obama should leave Honduras alone, let Costa Rica President Oscar Arias deal with the negotiations, and see what happens in November.

Unless this is an attempt by Obama to kneecap Honduras in advance of our important World Cup qualifier there on October 10. In which case... interfere away.

The John Rockefeller Code

Brayton posts some hilarious shit from Glenn Beck that honest-to-God feels like it was written by Dan Brown. Rockefeller! Communism! Fascism! It's all in the art!

FAIL.

Tired of the Same Old Story

There's a lot to unpack in this article that details the insane practice of coercing single pregnant women into giving up their children, something that most people thought went out with the '60s but is apparently still around. I don't share Joyce's concern that the problem is a systemic one involving all crisis pregnancy centers or even the entire organizations that run them - I think there's more evidence to suggest that a significant minority of rogue CPCs are doing the damage. Joyce portrays the issue as a supply/demand thing - the concept is to funnel babies from "bad" unwed mothers to "good" Christian families.

And that sheds a little light on Arkansas' odious Amendment 1, forbidding unmarried couples (including same-sex couples) from adopting children. (I need a stronger word than "odious," but I can't think of one right now.) On its face this seems foolish - why would you want to limit the potential pool of adoptive parents? - but when you read Joyce's article it falls in place. A majority of Arkansans, it seems, want to funnel babies into "good" Christian families, so it makes sense to get rid of the competition by putting such a law in place. The Constitution would forbid a religious test for adoptive parents, else I'm sure Arkansas would have a ban on adoptive parents who aren't either Jewish or Christian.

So why the social engineering from the so-called "leave us alone" crowd? Let's look at a couple of other things I've been reading...

Oh look, here's an article by Kay Hymowitz arguing that feminism and the subsequent treatment of women as people with individual, often conflicting desires is driving a mass frustration on the part of men. Men are "going Galt," as it were, to protest the evil evil evil feminist encroachment on their world. I won't deal with this argument further - Will Wilkinson demolishes it and Amanda Marcotte pisses on the ruins, and they say all that needs to be said. But keep that in mind.

And here's Marcotte celebrating her birthday by writing about the bullshit notion that people are not "growing up," incidentally something parroted by Hymowitz in the first paragraph of the article I just linked to. She cites a commenter's insight, which ties it all together, for me:

I’m beginning to think that maybe what I thought defined being grown up was the shedding of uncertainty. Frankly, I’m pretty good with uncertainty. It keeps me honest, grounded, and skeptical. By that definition, I hope I never grow up.

Marcotte goes on to explain further:

Giving up the illusion of adulthood gives you a certain ability to be flexible, intelligent, forward-moving, and not calcified. Which is good for your health, you know.

(She also comments, towards the end: "Be goofy. Who gives a shit?" That's a worthwhile philosophy, there.)

See what's going on here? Conservative ideas are about certainty, and social change threatens that certainty. No great insight, I know, but one that's worth reemphasizing in this context. Conservatives have a certain idea of what the family is, and the growth of single motherhood (and fatherhood) doesn't fit with that vision. So they fight against it. Gay and lesbian people starting a family doesn't fit into that vision, so they fight against it. Women who desire something besides a family life don't fit into that vision, so they fight against that too. And people in general who want to pursue something else? Widespread panic.

Conservatives remind me, somewhat, of the goofy anthropologists who condescendingly insist on "preserving" some native culture. But guess what? As Hank Williams might say, "time marches on." Things change. Cultures change. People begin to want different things. And society isn't gonna collapse because of it. So give it a break and embrace change. You can live your life the way you want, and that's great. I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life. But trying to calcify something as dynamic as culture is a path to never-ending frustration and - in the case of the forced adoptions I linked to above - outright cruelty. Change is okay.

In short, conservatives, quit whining about cultural change and... well... grow up.

Take it away, Kevin Cronin (incidentally, I forgot how badass this song was until I started the search for this post... really, if you want to view this entire post as an excuse to put up this video I won't blame you):

Go, Canada

Our northern neighbors might be figuring out this free-speech thing.

Behind the "Oligarhy"

By now, everyone on Earth has seen the video of Glenn Beck forgetting a letter in the word "oligarchy" and has probably had a good chuckle or two. I know I have. Brayton has a good embed if you haven't seen it.

But what struck me is the fact that Beck used the word "oligarchy" to describe Obama. See, I'm so used to right-wingers calling Obama a Communist or a Marxist or whatever that the use of the word confused me. Mainly because "oligarchy" is, from an ideological standpoint, the polar opposite of Communism. Oligarchy describes a country ruled by a small group of elites - in a Communist society, power is supposed to rest with the "proletariat" - i.e. everyone who isn't one of the elites.

Of course, in every large-scale Communist society* that's been implemented, Communism has turned into an oligarchy as the revolutionary band that seized power essentially installed themselves as the new elites. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. And I think this understanding is what is driving a lot of the opposition to the health care reform initiative currently on the table.

Sure, the notion that meaningful health care reform will turn America into Stalinist Russia is nutty and deserves to be treated as such. But look closer and you'll see the legitimate fear that government interference in the marketplace will lead to the concentration of power in the hands of a few, instead of the diffusion of power among the many participants in the health care process.

This fear is not without its merits. One need only look at the sordid recent history of the 2008 toy manufacturing act to see that even the best-intentioned government regulations can lead to a concentration of power in the hands of a few large companies who pay off the regulators. It's not insane to think that the well-connected politically would benefit from a government-run health care plan at the expense of the non-connected. And if you think about it, even the most batshit-crazy rumors about this reform - the death panels and such - come from the fear that the non-politically connected will be screwed.

It's a legitimate fear, but I think it's somewhat ill-placed when it comes to health care. What we have to realize is that we already live in what is essentially a health-care oligarchy, where a small group of elites (insurance companies) chooses who gets care and those not favored by the insurance companies get screwed. A lot of the rhetoric flying around from more traditional conservative sources talks about giving government power over your health decisions and taking it away from physicians and patients. Wrong - the power right now lies with insurance companies. Whatever power physicians and patients have under the new health care plan will be an improvement. Meet the new boss, marginally better than the old boss.

So if we're going to have an oligarchy, why should it be run by government rather than by private insurance companies? The answer is responsibility - who is more responsible to the people. In a traditional market, companies are responsible to their customers. Provide bad service at a high cost, and you're out of business. However, it's clear that health insurance doesn't function like a normal market. For one, insurance in general makes profits by providing as little service as possible to customers who have already paid for said services. Furthermore, health insurance includes so many variables that it's far easier to deny a claim than it is for, say, car insurance. For another, the actual consumer doesn't participate in the competition to select a provider. Most people with health insurance don't have any real choice in the matter - their employer chooses their insurer for them. There are so many levels between the consumer and the service provider that poor service on the part of the provider lead to no consequences. In such a situation, the insurance company, freed from responsibility to its consumers, is now only responsible to its investors. So while usually, disgruntled consumers are a major threat to a company's profits, in the current health care system disgruntled consumers are a mere annoyance. Government faces a greater threat from disgruntled voters than the health insurance companies face from disgruntled policyholders, so it's a little more likely to respond to public pressure when it screws up. Again, meet the new boss, marginally better than the old boss.

In an ideal world, we'd be able to nuke the entire health-care system and start from scratch, possibly adopting a model like the one proposed by David Goldhill in his excellent Atlantic piece. Unfortunately, the American political system is set up specifically to thwart radical reform, so we'll have to make do with incremental band-aid solutions until the political will for reform reaches the tipping point. Implementation of a public option and public subsidies for people who buy their own health insurance are steps toward the first, and most obvious, goal of any meaningful reform - breaking the employment-health insurance link. But it'll be a while before people are the consumers of their own health care - we're stuck with an oligarchy into the forseeable future, reform or no.

Which, I'm afraid, is what Glenn Beck doesn't "c". (GROAN)

*I say large-scale because Communism has worked well on a very small scale, most notably on Israeli kibbutzim.

Bachmann Joins Judean People's Front

Am I wrong if I read this from Michelle Bachmann:

“What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

and think this?



Always look on the bright side of life, Michelle.