Taking on the Fallacies

A commenter to a previous post took exception to my contention that Bush was running almost solely on Sept 11th as an issue. He also repeated a fallacy that has become "conventional wisdom", that Bush's tax cuts helped everyone who pays taxes.

Well, allow me to retort.

There are millions of American taxpayers who pay thousands of dollars each in payroll, sales, and property taxes, yet pay no "income" tax. In fact, the majority of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes. As Bush's tax cuts have affected only income taxes, inheritance taxes, and corporate taxes; they have not, in fact, benefitted everyone who pays taxes. Ignoring the fact that most people pay less in income tax than in other taxes makes it easier for the Bushies to pretend their policies benefit us all, but that doesn't make it true.

The explanation for all this is simple: payroll taxes have no deductions and no refunds. They are assessed on every dollar of earned income, from the first dollar. Someone who only makes $10,000/year will likely pay little income tax, but will pay the same percentage of income in payroll taxes as someone making $80,000/year, and a higher percentage than someone making $200,000/year (as the amount of income subject to payroll taxes in capped at just below $90,000). Of course, those who make millions a year off investments but have no earned income will pay no payroll taxes at all (and get a lower capital gains rax rate, to boot).

Sales taxes, of course, are even more regressive. The lower income a person is, the higher a percentage of that income he likely spends on stuff subject to sales tax (especially in states like my own, in which groceries and other necessities are not expempt from taxation).

Do the Bushies really think they're being honest when they tout a mean tax cut of a few hundred dollars per family as averaging in the thousands per family once they've avergaed in all the billionaires?

A flat tax cut of, say, $1000 per family (regardless of income) taken out of either income or payroll taxes would have cost far less than the Bush's plan, and would've helped far more people. Of course, they knew this going in. The intent was never to help the most people possible, it was to cut taxes for the wealthiest by any means necessary.

Luckiest Sumbitch Alive

As my father used to point out, it's hard to get luckier than being born a healthy, straight, white, male American in the latter half of the 20th Century. As Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I just wanted to point out a few things I'm grateful for:

1) I have the single coolest kid on the face of the Earth, bar none. He's President of his high school class, he's an excellent skateboarder, and his favorite movies are The Big Lebowski and Bowling for Columbine. He's been know to spontaneously sing Johnny Cash lyrics, he's got a hell of a jump shot, and he even wants to hang out with his Dad every once in a while.

2) Despite my continuing efforts at self-destruction through poor diet and lack of exercise, my body refuses to cooperate. I have no major health problems of any kind, and there's pretty much nothing wrong with me that a few months in the gym couldn't fix.

3) I live in a society in which I can support myself and my son in what most of the world would consider luxury on a relatively modest income. I have access to all the physical comforts of modern living, good healthcare, a safe neighborhood, and good schools. All these are things that most of the world must do without.

4) I can stretch my mind. Not only do I have access to literally millions of things to read from books, magazines, and the internet; but I can support myself with sufficient leisure to read, to write, and to think without being clouded by exhaustion.

5) I have the freedom to speak my mind without danger. This is also a thing that most of the world must do without. I can't imagine the psychological torture of having to bow and scrape, to pretend agreement with people like Kim Jong Il or Saddam Hussein in order to stay out of trouble. Due to the sacrifices of millions who have come before me (from those who have fought our external enemies, to those who have kept up the fight within the US to safeguard our civil liberties), I give thanks for the freedoms of speech and of conscience above all.

A Comparison

For those of you who don't have problem with the Iowa attack ads, would you be bothered by an ad which said,
Republicans are calling for us to forcibly convert Muslims to Christianity?

If so, why?
Anne Coulter, a prominent and bestselling Republican author, has called for that very thing. Aren't the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of loyal Republicans who've bought her books implicitly endorsing her views? How would this differ from the ads in Iowa, other than being closer to the truth?

Attacking Bush for Attacking the Terrorists

In the first of what promises to be a record-breaking number of cheap shot attack ads run this Presidential election, the Pubbies are running ads in Iowa stating that some people are attacking Bush for attacking the terrorists.

While this is technically true, as one can find old clips of Al Jazeera criticizing us for bombing Al Qaeda bases in Afganistan; it's implications are obvious bullshit. The Republicans are implying, without coming out and saying it in a way which could be disproved, that prominent Democrats think we shouldn't attack terrorists. Since this isn't even close to the truth, they can't come out and say it directly. They can, however, make implications that they hope will smear their opponents (remember the ad last year that had Tom Daschle's face morph into that of Saddam Hussein?).

This is only the first salvo in Karl Rove's Wrap ourselves in Sept 11th election strategy. As Garry Trudeau has already pointed out, you can expect 9/11 to be the official White House response to damned near any question from here on in.

Why are you cutting taxes for bliionaires instead of people struggling to get by?
9/11; next question?

Why are you making it easier for corporations to shelter income offshore?
9/11; next question?

Get used to more of the same.

Of all the responses I've seen, I liked Wes Clark's the best:
I'm not attacking the President for attacking terrorists, I'm attacking him for not attacking terrorists.; with a discussion of the way that invading Iraq has diverted resources away from battling Al Qaeda and that our inattention has allowed them and the Taliban to reestablish power bases in parts of Afganistan.

This could become a very important point to make in the next year: How has Bush's single-minded focus on Iraq actually hurt the War on Terror elsewhere?

We've obviously diverted a lot of intelligence and military assets from Afganistan to Iraq. We just as obviously don't have nearly as much money available to help out in Afganistan as if we'd never invaded Iraq. This has allowed the situation on the ground to deteriorate to the point that the very people we invaded Afganistan to get rid of now openly control big chunks of the country.

This is something we need to deal with immediately. Even a fraction of the troops and resources devoted to Iraq would make a world of difference in Afganistan.

I'm wondering how much of our neglect of Afganistan has been driven by the PR needs of the Bush White House? Just as they prematurely declared victory in Iraq in order to make themselves look good, they seem to have marked Afganistan off their to-do list and moved on, without acknowledging the years of dogged follow up that will be necessary to really be able to declare victory. I know it's no fun to have a long term presence in places without decent room service, and it looks a lot better to declare victory and go home; but sometimes we're gonna have to stick things out to make a real difference. Afganistan is one of those places.

This tendency to jump into things, make lots of promises, shake things up, then bail before the job gets finished is becoming a hallmark of the Bush White House. They did it with the schools (the No Child Left Untested Act without the money to actually improve our schools); they did it in New York after Sept 11th (remember all the money that was promised and then never delivered to help rebuild?); they did it in Afganistan; and now they seem determined to do it in Iraq.

Google

Still the #1 search result for both "William Burton" and "Bill Clinton's Penis" (which always brings in one or two hits a day), but am unfortunately nowhere near the top for "Fuck Rush Limbaugh".

Should We Stay or Should We Go?

This seems to be the big question of the next year or more.

Should we settle into Iraq for the long haul, committing whatever troops, money, and other resources are needed?

Or should we bail as soon as we can to avoid getting dragged into an unwinnable guerrilla war that will mean needless deaths on both sides?

Whether we should've invaded in the first place is pretty much a moot point now. The question is What the fuck do we do now?

It's quite possible to have been against invading, but now in favor of staying (the You broke it, now you fix it approach).

From a pretty amoral Realpolitic point of view, I guess it's possible to have been in favor of invading but now in favor of leaving (the I don't give a damn what happens, as long as Saddam's out of power and isn't looking to get nukes approach).

Whatever we end up doing, it'll have a cost associated with it. And the answer will end up having a hell of a lot greater effect on our lives for the next few years than we were told when this whole mess started. My own personal answer will end up having a tremendous influence on which Democrat I support next year.

This ain't no Get in, get it done, get out situation. If we get out, then it won't be done.

The Bushie plan to draw down forces for electoral reasons regardless of the situation on the ground is the worst of all possible approaches. It leaves us engaged in a costly guerrilla war, but with absolutely no chance of winning, and no chance that the average Iraqi will stick out his neck to side with us (he'll be there long after we've gone).

More on this later.

Thank God for Basketball Season

Vanderbilt 73
Indiana 60

You should also definitely read Armed Liberal's 6 foreign policy points he'd like to see any Democratic candidates endorse:

First, we're not going anywhere in Afghanistan or Iraq until we're done.....

Second, we're too dependent on ME oil. We're going to do something about it, both by pushing conservation, expanding alternative energy, and expanding exploration......

Third, we're going to stop Israel from building new settlements and push them to dismantle existing illegal ones.......

Fourth, we're going to work to expand the ground-fighting capabilities of our military.......

Fifth, we're going to sit with the Arab countries we are supporting and make it clear that they cannot buy internal stability by fomenting hate against Jews and the West and still expect our financial and military support......

Sixth, we're going to develop security mechanisms based on the theory that fine-grained systems that bring information and communications to the existing public safety community, as well as the public at large are better than huge, centralized bureaucratic solutions.

I honestly don't know what the hell #6 is supposed to mean, but the other 5 seem like a good place to a start discussion.

My good buddy Armed Liberal posted a little while back pointing out what I've also said, that announcing our imminent withdrawal from Iraq makes us look weak and that stating we'll stay as long as we need to makes us look strong. He is a good bit more gung ho on the whole enterprise than I am, but I think we see eye to eye on the need to do it whole hog if you're gonna do it at all. Even when we don't agree, it's always good to see AL's clearly thought out and stated writing:

Let me repeat it: "victory can be our only exit strategy."

By taking this position, by making it clear that we will stay as long at it takes, spend the treasure and blood required to break the wave of Islamist rage, in my view we will reduce the amount of actual violence we will ultimately have to impose.

I'm not convinced that we should've invaded Iraq, nor that we should stay there as things get uglier (but I, as yet, haven't seen an alternative that isn't even uglier). I do know that, should we stay, we need to make it perfectly clear that we're there for the long haul. Otherwise, people like Salam Pax would be nuts to openly side with us.

Note to People Who Opposed the Invasion of Iraq

Those who disagree with you are not, by definition, Nazis or fascists. They do not want to round up all the brown skinned people of the world and herd them into concentration camps. Nor, with the exception of real nutjobs like Anne Coulter, do they want to forcibly convert the heathen at the tip of a bayonet. They are simply people who thought Hussein was a threat to the world and wanted to take him out when they had the chance.

Until you can agree to stop accusing anyone who holds different views than you of being a racist who kills babies for oil, don't expect to win any converts and don't expect those of us still on the fence to treat you like anything other than a fucking idiot.

PS: Those of you who don't act this way, please get your compatriots to shut the fuck up. They make you all look bad.

Note to People Who Supported the Invasion of Iraq

Those who disagree with you are not, by definition, supporting terrorism. They are neither supporters of Osama bin Laden nor people who think that we had it coming on Spetember 11th. For the most part, they're people who think that invading Iraq has made it more likely that terrorists will attack us in the future because it has motivated people to become terrorists who wouldn't have otherwise done so.

Those who disagree also aren't big fans of Saddam Hussein. They do not want to give Saddam the keys to the minivan and let him take the kids out for a spin. They don't think he's a great guy. They just didn't want to invade Iraq to get rid of him (Robert Mugabe is a brutal thug, but Bush is never gonna go after the bastard; does that mean he likes Mugabe?).

Also, you should note that protesting the war is not the same as cheering for the enemy to win. The vast majority out there wish all our soldiers were at home safe in their beds; they aren't wishing for them to die at the hands of terrorists.

Until you can agree to stop accusing anyone who holds different views than you of being an Osama-loving Saddam sympathizer, don't expect to win any converts and don't expect those of us still on the fence to treat you like anything other than a fucking idiot.

PS: Those of you who don't act this way, please get your compatriots to shut the fuck up. They make you all look bad.

Adam Felber divines the essential rules for Rovenomics:
Cut its taxes. If it doesn't have taxes to cut, blow it up.

Mo' Blogrollin'

Avedon Carol is all over the healthcare debate currently not getting nearly enough attention (scroll down to Medicine Ball):

Many Americans like to dazzle themselves with the idea that they have really advanced medicine available to them that the rest of the world doesn't get. I'd be interested in seeing some evidence of that, since (a) no examples are usually given and (b) on the rare occasion when they are, they turn out either not to be true or about things that are only available because NIH made them available - that is, they are the product of tax-payer supported programs and not at all owing to the market - and they will be available in Europe a year or two later if not immediately..........

........30 states have malpractice caps, and none of them have cheaper medicine - or cheaper insurance. "Tort reform" is a scam intended to prevent ordinary people from being able to challenge companies that break faith with them. Free-marketeers imagine that we will be able to enforce contracts against big companies just because, oh, big companies are good and honest and moral, I guess.......

.......By the way, I just love the idea that your health insurance is tied to your employer. God forbid you should be in a position to walk out on a job where you are abused, eh? Especially if you're someone with a pre-existing condition. That's what conservatives call "freedom".

That first point is really important. Ridiculously few medical advances have come entirely through the free market. The basic science just costs too damned much and takes too damned long to turn a profit. Private companies are much better at taking government funded research and turning it into a salable commodity. But that's a far cry from doing all the research themselves.

What we have in this country is a system in which our tax money goes to pay for medical research, which only those with health insurance can afford to buy. Those who can't afford healthcare end up subsidizing research benefitiing those who can.

One nit I do have to pick with Avedon is on the value of preventative care. Our health care system would actually turn a profit off giving away free checkups simply because so many people leave their conditions untreated because they lack health insurance. Something like low level diabetes or high blood pressure that might be treated cheaply if caught early enough gets very expensive to treat if you wait until it's life-threatening. We Americans spend a fortune on emergency care for things that could've been easily controlled if caught in time.

Blogrollin'

Oliver Willis on the Democratic Party:

There are some principles that most of the party can agree on: fair taxation, health care availability, equal rights, a preventative (not aggresive) military doctrine, universal access and quality of education, and free but fair markets......For those that choose not to endorse the main planks of the party's reason for being, perhaps it is time for them to choose a new party.

and SKB on gay marriage:

Better yet, the REAL question ought to be, what is it about same sex marriage that poses such a threat to all the hetero soccer moms and NASCAR dads? What is the threat to society? What exactly is it they fear? Some long repressed tingling in their naughty bits? What?

Makes Sense to Me

Iraqi blogger Salam Pax (now added to the blogroll) had a letter to GW Bush published in London's Guardian along with those of a lot of other prominent or not so prominent people (read them all here). His letter is worth reading in its entirety, and expresses better than I could a very real concern: Having gotten America knee deep in Iraq, and having essentially destroyed the only government they've had for 50 years, will Bush finish the job of rebuilding Iraq and reconstituting its civil society? Or will he bail out at the earliest opportunity to help his reelection chances?

I'm telling you; things don't look good so far. The Pentagon has already announced a timetable for drawing down American troop strength, even as things look more unsettled than ever. This really seems to be driven more by the upcoming Presidential election than by reality on the ground.

Regardless of whether it makes military sense or not, they will start pulling out troops early next year. Unfortunately, this makes Iraqi leaders less likely to side with us (as we appear to be turning tail and running) and makes it less likely that the average Iraqi will turn out grateful that we invaded. As I pointed out long ago, the humanitarian case for an invasion was the only one that made sense to me, and it depends entirely on whether or not the Iraqis ended up in better or worse shape than when we invaded.

Kicking Saddam in the crotch then running away is not the way to ensure a peaceful, democratic future for the people of the Middle East. In fact, as the fucker appears to still be on the loose; it isn't inconcievable that Saddam could retake power once we leave. Even many reasonable Iraqis may prefer him to the fundamentalist mullahs who would be the chief alternative.

Well, here's the letter:

Dear George,

I hate to wake you up from that dream you are having, the one in which you are a superhero bringing democracy and freedom to underdeveloped, oppressed countries. But you really need to check things out in one of the countries you have recently bombed to freedom. Georgie, I am kind of worried that things are going a bit bad in Iraq and you don't seem to care that much. You might want it to appear as if things are going well and sign Iraq off as a job well done, but I am afraid this is not the case.

Listen, habibi, it is not over yet. Let me explain this in simple terms. You have spilled a glass full of tomato juice on an already dirty carpet and now you have to clean up the whole room. Not all of the mess is your fault but you volunteered to clean it up. I bet if someone had explained it to you like that you would have been less hasty going on our Rambo-in-Baghdad trip.

To tell you the truth, I am glad that someone is doing the cleaning up, and thank you for getting rid of that scary guy with the hideous moustache that we had for president. But I have to say that the advertisements you were dropping from your B52s before the bombs fell promised a much more efficient and speedy service. We are a bit disappointed. So would you please, pretty please, with sugar on top, get your act together and stop telling people you have Iraq all figured out when you are giving us the trial-and-error approach?

Anyway, I hope this doesn't disturb you too much. Have a nice stay in London, wave hello to the demonstrators, and give my regards to your spin doctors. I bet they are having a hell of a job making you look good.
Regards,
Salam Pax

Request for Enlightenment

If anyone can please let me know why I, as a straight male, should give a damn if two gays want to marry, I'd appreciate it.

Most straight couples are taking longer to get married, many don't bother at all, and most of those who do eventually divorce. It seems that the only people left really excited by the prospect are long term gay couples, all of whom will probably show more respect for the institution than the people who get married over and over again on what is essentially a whim.

I don't want to tell other people what to do with their private parts or who to love, just as I don't want other people telling me the same stuff. If you can convince me that I really should care, more power to you.

Et Tu, Lucy?

Thanksgiving approaches.

If, once again, Lucy van Pelt pulls away the football just as Charley Brown is about to kick it, I may need to have a talk with that girl's parents. This sort of juvenile behavior is inexcusable decade after decade.

God Bless the USA

Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. - US Constitution, article IV

I'm wondering what the over-under is on the number of times John Ashcroft's head spun around like that chick from The Exorcist when he found out that gay marriage is fixin' to be the law in Massachusetts.

The beautiful thing here is that the Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution leaves the intolerant fuckers no outs. If Ashcroft's gay neighbor from Missouri flies to Boston to get married, he's every bit as married in Missouri as in Massachusetts. They can't opt out, and no busllshit "Defense of Marriage Act" will let them (no act of Congress can override the Constitution). Legal gay marriage in one state essentially means legal gay marriage in every state .

I'm guessing I don't want to know the amount of our money the rightwing nutjobs are prepared to spend on overtime pay for their ideological thought police to find a way out of this. But I'm sure hoping they can't. Fat Tony and the Supreme Court may decide to step in, but there will be thousands of gay marriages on the books before they have a chance. Either they'd have to let those stand, or retroactively annul them. Either course would launch a flood of lawsuits.

The really beautiful things here is that no one gives a fuck. We're apparently too busy watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or speculating about how long J-Lo will wait before taking a Zippo to her latest marriage contract to get all worked up over whether or not two guys we don't even know are gonna get hitched. We just don't give a fuck.

God Bless America

I know the wingnuts will be out in force over this, but they'll be alone. We've all got gay friends, coworkers, or relatives. Few of us care what they do on their own time.

I'm happy to see the day where the average guy on the street is far more tolerant than the average politician.

This is still gonna be ugly. There will be lawsuits and more lawsuits. Multiple states will attempt to ignore the aforementioned US Constitution and deny legal rights to married gays. Fortunately, the good guys will win on this one, eventually. If nothing else, it'll come down to the fact that time is on the side of the angels here. My kid's generation really doesn't give a damn what anyone does with their private parts. When they take over, the Orrin Hatches of the world can crawl back into their caves.

Neo-Conservative Fantasists: 0; Reality: 1

An article in the latest New Yorker makes points out how our lack of planning for post-war Iraq has hurt us. We've unnecessarily pissed off Iraqis who may have sided with us; we've wasted the opportunity to immediately begin improving Iraqi lives in small but measurable ways; and we've made ourselves look weak and indecisive. Most of the blame for this can be put to the pointy headed neo-Con hawks who spent the last 2 years selling this war to the American people.

Their best-case scenario was apparently the only one they bothered planning for. The assumption was that all the Iraqis would great us with roses and bottles of Evian, then we'd hand over power to our chosen puppet and fly home on the magic carpet from Alladin while the 700 man Iraqi exile militia and the uninterrupted flow of oil from wells and pipelines miraculously unharmed by years of bombing and economic sanctions would provide for the safety and material well-being of millions of impoverished Iraqis with no history of liberal democracy.

Unfortunately, the monkies flying out of Richard Perle's ass din't do their jobs and this scenario never happened. Instead, we're stuck in a country with effectively no law aside from that enforced by American arms, no money aside from that provided by the American government, and no one to pass power to who is both acceptable to us and to the Iraqis as a whole (Chalabi and the INC ended up about as popular as George Steinbrenner in Fenway Park).

There seem to be two main reasons for our lack of planning:

1) The necessity to sell the War:
If we'd planned realistically for a long-term occupation and reconstruction of Iraq paid for with American money, the hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of troops needed would have seriously dampened enthusiasm for the invasion. In fact, a legitimate look at how much it would cost and how long it would take would've killed the War before it took place. The overriding need to sell a war with Iraq forced the neo-cons running the Bush administration to lie about what it would really take.

2) Wishful thinking and lack of real world experience:
There seems to be quite a bit of evidence that the Bushies were deluded by their own propaganda and ideological blindness. If you spend all your time telling each other that the only real foreign policy problem is lack of toughness on the part of previous administrations, and that nation building is for pussies, you'll eventually start to believe it. If you combine this with a complete lack of understanding the way the world works outside your comfy thinktank, you get big trouble. Unfortunately, we got big trouble too.

Mission Accomplished

Well, The Bushistas said that they'd make Iraq free of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Since it appears that there haven't been any WMDs in Iraq for over a decade, I guess they can mark that one off their list.

As I'd stated before, I have no doubt that Saddam wanted WMDs. I'm guessing he just thought they weren't worth the trouble they'd get him in if caught. This looks like one place in which the Bush Senior/Clinton era containment policy actually seems to have worked. Maybe those guys who have actually held jobs outside neo-conservative think-tanks know what they're doing after all?

Harold Pinter Can Kiss My Ass

The noted British flatulist recently compared the United States to Nazi Germany. Leaving aside the well-known rule of internet argumentation that whoever invokes the Nazis first automatically loses, it's just such an obvious load of horseshit and an insult to those were had to experience Nazi Germany firsthand.

I'm no fan of the Bush administration, but they're no Nazis. They may be short-sighted idiots with little real world experience, but that makes them more like Harold Pinter and his ilk than like Nazis.

Nor, of course, should you compare the hard-working, decent folks in the US military to the murderous thugs who carried Hitler's banner in battle. From what I've seen, the military has gone to great lengths to accomplish it's mission with as little loss of civilian life as possible. They've been put in a bad situation, and are doing the best they can with it.

Why Isn't Rush in Jail Yet?

If I had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, I would be in jail now.

If you had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, you would be in jail now.

If awell known liberal like Phil Donahue or Al Franken had illegally purchased thousands of prescription narcotics over the course of months or years and gotten caught, Limbaugh would be calling for him to be in jail now.

The Fat One was certainly hot to lock up drug offenders for nonviolent crimes back before he got caught.

So what's the problem?

Lock the fat man up, and do it now. Treat him exactly like every other poor SOB who routinely gets crushed by the War on Some Drugs Used by Some People.

Just as we didn't get out of Vietnam until the rich and comfortable started seeing their own sons face the draft, we won't end this stupid, unwinnable war until the powerful and their families start getting sent to Leavenworth and Attica for nonviolent drug crimes. It's too late to bust GW Bush for all the blow he snorted back in the 70's, but it's not too late to make another hypocritical fatcat into a poster boy for reforming the drug laws.

Have updated the blogroll as best I can. Changed addresses for those who have abandoned blogspot for spiffier digs; removed links to blogs no longer being updated.

If I unjustly removed a link to your blog or otherwise screwed up, please email me and I'll fix it.

I'm Back

Am gonna start fixing links, and get the comments back up and running. Then I'll slowly try to crawl back into the public sphere.

I'd like to come up with some story about an Andean plane crash and the nutrients available from overfed ruggers, or at least one about insatiable Scandanavian nursing students and poor internet connections in Lapland. But, alas, I have no legitimate explanation for my absence.

Paying attention to stuff going horribly wrong in the world was depressing the shit out of me. Writing, having people read what I had to say, and knowing at the end of the day that it probably made no difference depressed me even more. So I spent a few months with my head in the sand hoping everything would all just go away. Unfortunately, it didn't.

Just because I stopped reading the paper didn't keep people from dieing, nor did the people making decisions in Washington get any wiser. Like it as not, things won't change without a bunch of little guys like me on the outside shoving. So I'm coming back to push and stir things up, in whatever way I can. Or at least to call people names and point out when they're full of crap.I'm also hoping that writing my blog again will lessen the impulse to shout at the television whenever some idiot starts spewing bullshit he obviously doesn't understand. God help us all.

What He Said

Roublen Vesseau spelled out in my comments what I've been trying to write:

The reason I'm not gung-ho on war with Iraq is that the Administration refuses to give an estimate on American casualties and on Iraqi casualties. If I got a firm sense from this Administration that they were really going to make an effort to minimize the number of American & Iraqi casualties, and that they expected the number of casualties to be relatively small, I would be for removing Saddam.

Broadly speaking, there are two cases for war with Iraq, the humanitarian case and the national security case. The national security case strikes me as almost wholly unconvincing. The moral case is compelling, but it depends crucially on the likely number of casualties.

1) The best case that can be made for removing Saddam is that it will be good for the Iraqis, most of whom want to see the bastard dead. But a good result depends on not killing a bunch of innocent Iraqis (both civilians and draftees) who never hurt anyone. If a Saddam took charge in the US, I'd love to see someone kick his ass out, but I wouldn't want to see millions of dead Americans in the process (I know, of course, that some dead are inevitable; but also that they can be minimized).

2) One of the biggest problems with backing a war with Iraq is having to trust such a fundamentally dishonest administration with carrying things through. How can we know what to expect when they're so obviously lying to us about almost everything?

3) #1 is why I thought that we should make it stated policy to go after the leadership of the "rogue states" rather than simply killing off their armies of draftees as if poor teenagers were somehow stand-ins for the scumbags themselves. You want to cut down on genocide? Hang Milosevic, the other Serbian leaders, and their counterparts from Rwanda live on CNN. Make it clear that they're not exceptions (yes, I know all the legal/ethical/practical problems with this approach, but it's still far preferable to smart-bombing a few hundred thousand people into graves while their leaders walk).

2)

Work in Progress

For the last week, I've been trying to write a piece on the reasons for going to war with Iraq. This is made difficult by several factors:

1) The reasons the Bush administration has stated for war with Iraq have nothing to do with why they really want war with Iraq

2) The reasons the neo-Cons in the administration want to go to war with Iraq are not the same reasons that the good-ole boys in the administration want to go to war with Iraq.

3) The reasons political animals like Karl Rove want war with Iraq aren't related to the reasons in #1 or #2.

4) The reasons Tony Blair, Joe Lieberman, Colin Powell and other non-neo Con, non-good ole boys have for going to war with Iraq aren't related to #1, #2, or #3.

5) There are some legitimate reasons I can think of for war with Iraq, and they're not related to the reasons in #1, #2, or #3 either (but they may be related to the private thinking of those in #4).

So far, all I've been able to write is nonsensical gibberish that sounds like it came from a tech-writer at Microsoft. If I ever get my product into readable form, you'll see it here.

Frankly, this whole thing would be a lot easier if those dishonest bastards in the White House would just drop #1 altogether and explain why they really think war is a good idea.

Wrastlin'

(the real kind)

Today I went to my first wrestling tournament since I stopped wrestling myself (yes, that's a very long time), and have mixed emotions and a few random observations.

On the Good Side:

1) Even those who've never wrestled should be able to enjoy a good match. It moves at lightning speed, there's no down time, and a wrestler with an insurmountable points lead can still lose in the final seconds (as happened twice today). Good wrestling is about the best spectator sport around.

2) Wrestling is also a damn fine sport to participate in. Not only is it a lot of fun, but it feeds something primal within us, something that wants to know how we stack up against our fellow man one-on-one.

3) Wrestling is the most egalitarian sport around. No expensive equipment is required; nor do you need a very big space to work with. Poor schools can compete on a level playing field with rich ones, and poor kids with rich ones as well.

On the Bad Side:

1) There's still a big problem (and I don't know what to do about it) with kids starving themselves to make weight. I remember being yelled at for having lunch when I was a teen, and I know damned well I'm not the only one. I had friends who'd gorge on burgers and then vomit it back up, and others who took diuretics. There's no way to stop this sort of shit completely, but coaches can certainly make the environment less friendly to it.

2) Wrestling is the most brutally Darwinian sport there is. Not only is there only one winner, as in all individual sports, but he wins by asserting physical domination over his opponents. Losing a wrestling match is the most dispiriting kind of loss there is. Not only can't you blame your teammates or the playing conditions to rationalize your defeat, but you (quite literally) have defeat rubbed in your face as you're pinned to the ground.

Random Observations:

1) Oddly enough, with the majority of wrestlers trying to hard to make weight, there are now a number in the upper weight bracket wrestlers who are really, really overweight. I saw a couple who probably shouldn't be involved in competitive sports in any way until they drop some serious weight. These guys wouldn't have even survived the practices I used to go through, and there's no way a doctor should've signed off on them wrestling.

2) It's a whole lot more fun watching the little guys than the big ones. Things move a lot faster and the technique seems a lot cleaner. The big guys seem to try to muscle each other into submission.

3) I don't know if coaching has changed, or what, but at times it looked like I was watching Greco-Roman. When I wrestled, we were taught to go for the legs before all else. Not only did we use the legs for take-downs, but hooking an opponent's leg with an arm and lifting was the preferred method for pinning. Today, I rarely saw anyone going for the legs once on the ground. They were just trying to use body-weight to pin instead of leverage. My coaches would not have been happy.

4) There's still no NBA/NFL-style showboating in wrestling, Thank God. Shakes hands with each other, shake hands with the opponent's coach, give your coach a little hug, and sit the hell down. Wrestling's old school, and so am I.

Sadness

I was in high school when the Challenger blew up. We crowded into the computer lab (the only room with a TV) and watched the replay over and over again, but I could never quite believe what I was seeing (the same reaction I had on Sept 11th). Once it had sunk in, I felt bad for the people who'd died, but I felt even worse for their friends and relatives who'd watched it all happen live and had to relive it every time the explosion was shown again.

Well, I'm a lot older now, and a lot of really bad shit has happened in America and in the world. I no longer have trouble believing what I've seen, but I feel just as bad for the people who're suffering right now. I wish that there were something I could do, but there's not. Nothing I could do or say would make those astronauts any less dead, nor their families any less torn apart. So I'll just sit alone with my sadness and type.

Yes, Virginia, We're Going To War

Only a few short months ago, I'd fooled myself into thinking that all this war talk was simply an electoral ploy. I knew that Bush's brain (aka Karl Rove) was cynical to whip up a war frenzy in order to pick up a few mid-term election seats. I knew that the realistic end-game to a war in Iraq, with its attendant messy occupation, wasn't likely to be much fun. I knew that the chances of bringing democracy to Iraq were akin to the chances of bringing Vanderbilt to the Sugar Bowl or UT to the academic all-American team. In short, I knew that invading Iraq wouldn't be the gimme that lots of other bloggers seem to think it'll be. I also knew that Bush's people, if not the man himself, were smart enough to know these things too.

From all this, I surmised that the war talk was for electoral purposes only, and that Saddam backing down and readmitting weapons inspectors would give the Bushies cause to declare victory and go home (after all, he did change course last Fall and declare UN inspections as being sufficient to forestall an invasion). Ari Fleischer even added to my belief with some idiotic double-talk about how a change in Saddam's behavior would be the same thing as regime change. This all looked like prelude to calling off the war and skipping straight to the victory parade.

That's not going to happen. We're really going to war, and there's nothing anyone lower down than Dick Cheney can do about it. My opinion doesn't matter. Your opinion doesn't matter. Colin Powell's opinion doesn't matter. Even the Republican leaders in Congress have no say here. We're going to war. Get used to it.

I, honestly, can't quite decide whether this is simply part of the neo-con dreamworld of overturning the established order in the Middle East and replacing it with democratic capitalistic societies all of which embrace Israel's right to exist (administered, no doubt, by the monkeys flying out of Richard Perle's ass) or whether this is a simplistic I'm gonna ice that fucker who tried to kill my dad directive from the top. The signals here are mixed. I'm guessing a little bit of both.

Bush's desire for vengeance and his simplistic good guys in white hats vs bad guys in black turbans mindset have got to be really easy for smart guys like Perle and Wolflowitz to manipulate. They also make it very hard for people like Colin Powell (and even Poppy Bush) to impress a nuanced view of the world onto him. The result is that people from ideological think-tanks with precious little real world experience have hijacked the brains of the two most powerful men on the planet (George Bush and Dick Cheney) and have them steering a course into a very uncertain future with all of us along for the ride. Unfortunately, really smart ideologues don't have the best track records in the real world (see Vietnam, American involvement in; also, Marxism; also, Russia, transition to free market economy of; also, music synthesizers, dancing to crappy music made by).

I could be wrong. Things could turn out okay. Those monkeys flying out of Richard Perle's ass could be really lucky and/or competent. I hope to God they are, because we are going to war, and the guy at the helm doesn't know where he's taking us (the really smart guys with the charts haven't told him yet).

PS: I'd love to hear anyone's theory that Bush is a master strategist ordering the world as he see fit and/or a bloodthirsty monster who just wants to kill darkies, but you'll have to convince me that he can name all the countries of the Middle East first. Until then, I'll stick with the available evidence, that he doesn't know shit about international affairs other than that some scumbag tried to kill his dad and that the smart Jews all told him it wouldn't be very hard to take the guy out. If he really knew that the Saudis were on the Big List and that years of disruption to the oil supply might be considered an acceptible cost, I don't think any of this would be happening. But I could be wrong (monkeys can be pretty damned smart).

Clarification: My reference above to Bush thinking some scumbag tried to kill his dad and that the smart Jews all told him it wouldn't be very hard to take the guy out is what's called internal dialogue. It represents Bush's thinking on the subject. Personally, I don't think Perle or Wolflowitz are either particularly smart, or at least not as smart as I'd like them to be given their current influence [nor, for that matter, do I believe that they're part of some massive Zionist conspiracy; given my support for Israel, I'd be part of the conspiracy too, and I'm already annoyed enough that we agree on anything without being in the same conspiracy together]. I do, however, believe that Bush thinks they're plenty smart and is letting them tell him what he really wants to hear (taking out Saddam will be painless and fun) while blocking out those who tell him otherwise.

Further Clarification: Any future reference to Bush thinking of Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell as the reasonable negroes can also be classified as internal dialogue and should not be interpreted to mean that I consider them to be either particularly reasonable or particularly representative of blacks as a group.

Further, Further Clarification: Any past or future reference to Dick Cheney or Karl Rove as fat, evil white men is not Bush's internal dialogue, but my characterization of their personalities, builds, and ethnicity. No offense is meant to either the fat or the evil in lumping them in with all those other whiteys.

The Richard Nixon of Football

Al Davis doesn't sleep tonight. He paces the hallways, alone with his pain; gnashing his teeth until blood flows; plotting his vengeance. They've made him look like a fool; they've made him look like a chump; they've made him look like a loser. They must be destroyed. It may cost him millions and hurt his chances of winning another Super Bowl, but he will be avenged. This is more important than winning, more important than money. Vengeance will be his, oh yes, it will be his.

Politics As Usual

Ever notice how little of the politics of the "pro-life" crowd has to do with actually reducing the number of abortions?

If you want to keep the number of abortions down (as I do), the obvious way is to make sure that women who don't want to get pregnant don't. To do this, you can hold your breathe until everyone stops having sex (the obvious reason Orrin Hatch is so discolored) or you can try to get people to use sensible precautions when they do so. This includes both birth control pills and condoms, either of which is a really good, though not perfect, way to keep babies out of where they're not wanted. And both of which serve to reduce the number of abortions by the millions every year. Any way you want to look at it, the pill and Trojans have stopped more abortions in a single year than all the protesters have since Roe v Wade.

Do the "pro-life" crowd embrace condoms and birth control pills as a sensible way to prevent abortions without intruding in women's lives? Of course not. They do everything they can to reduce the access and information that women, especially young ones, are given to brith control, thereby increasing the number of abortions every year. That's right, there will be more abortions this year worldwide than there would've been had George Bush not taken office. Take it to the bank. There will be even more because the Republicans took control of Congress a few years back and immediately started slashing family planning funds both at home and abroad.

Instead of sensible family planning leading to fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer abortions, we get remarkably ineffective Just Say No programs wasting millions of taxpayer dollars. The Nation ran a series last Spring about these programs, and how they've become pork-barrels for right-wing politicos. I guess making sure that The "Christian" Coalition is well fed takes precendence over doing anything about teen pregnancy and abortion rates.

Want to know how well "abstinence education" works? Just ask Pat Robertson, who was married a few months before his first child was born, or even George Bush, who was born a few months after his parents were married. Maybe that's why they hate birth control so much?

To the Editors of The New Yorker

The plural of the word you is spelled ya'll and pronounced yawl. It is neither pronounced nor spelled you all.

There can be no peace between our peoples until this matter is laid to rest.

How Not To Get Invaded Even If You're A Tinpot Dictator Who Craves Power

By Kim Jong Il
cc: Damascus, Baghdad, Rangoon, Tripoli, Tehran, Tallahasee

1) Very important! Don't try to assasinate the former President or anyone who might be related to a future President, especially not anyone who fits into both categories. This is just asking for trouble.

2) Act nuts. I'm not talking Pinky and the Brain/Dr Evil style taking over the world nuts. I mean genuinely nuts. Dress and act strangely, always refer to yourself in the 3rd person and/or invent a 4th person tense if your language allows. The goal here is to have every major news outlet in the Western world question your sanity openly.

3) Invade your neighbors. Not for vital oil wells, nor for Leibensraum. Just invade them for the hell of it. Send troops over the border, kill a few villagers, then withdraw. When they ask why you did that, respond that you don't know what the hell they're talking about and that the villagers probably shot themselves.

4), A few days later, admit that you invaded, and promise not to do it again. A few days after that, retract the admission and start challenging people to duels.

5) Then invade again, except this time by sea. Again, withdraw, deny, admit, then deny again all within a week.

6) You guessed it! Invade again. The goal here is to both reinforce #2 and to get people to see these occasional border skirmishes as a regular part of your personality, not as something that can be deterred.

7) Build you nuclear plants right on the border with your neighbor friendliest to the West (which is also who you should've been invading all these years). It really helps if the prevailing winds would make bombing the plant mean contaminating your neighbor's largest city.

8) Declare that your nuclear plants are only for peaceful production of power.

9) Then declare that you're going to build nukes and no one can stop you. Get an astrologer to say that you're destined to be a world leader, and say that having nukes is your destiny.

10) Then deny having said that at all, blame your translator, and have him shot. If you've already shot all your translators and are having trouble finding new ones, kidnap a few foreign nationals to speed the training process.

11) Deny having denied making nukes.

12) Deny having kidnapped foreign nationals.

13) Deny having denied having denied making nukes.

14) Admit to having kidnapped foreign nationals, but say they're all dead and promise not to do it anymore.

15) Deny having denied having denied having denied building nukes, but promise not to do it anymore.

16) Admit that some of the foreign nationals are alive, but deny that they don't want to go home.

17) Start test-firing your newest rockets so that they travel directly over a nearby industrialized democracy before splashing down in the ocean.

18) Deny that the rockets have military uses.

19) Admit that, of course, the rockets have military uses. Shoot more translators.

20) Deny having denied having denied having denied having denied making nukes. If you have any translators left, shoot them.

The goal of all you actions should be to make people fear not only the short-term effects of a war to take you out, but to fear all the crazy shit you might do if they launch one. Acting like a rational leader will get you killed playing this game.

America and the West don't fear rational leaders of small countries; they can either be bought off or overthrown with few complications.

America and the West rightly fear crazy-ass motherfuckers with a long history of irrational behavior who apparently don't give a damn what people think of them, especially ones who might or might not have nukes and who've shot all the people who know for sure. If they fear you, they'll leave you alone.

They fear me, do they fear you?

The Big Dog Eats

Trent Lott is a racist, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out. Trent Lott is not a particularly likable guy, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out. Trent Lott made a habit of manipulating Senate rules more boldly than any majority leader since LBJ, but that's not why the Republicans forced him out.

Chalk another one up for Bill Clinton's Penis.

The Republicans forced out Trent Lott because they'd never forgiven him for not kicking Bill Clinton out of office when he had the chance.

It didn't matter how much water he carried for the right wing. It didn't matter how he twisted arms and manipulated the rules to further their agenda. It didn't even matter that he personally voted to convict. To the wingnuts, he would always be the man who let the Big Dog run loose. He had Bill Clinton's mighty Penis in his grasp (so to speak), and it squirmed away.

Anyone familiar with politics could be forgiven for listening to Republicans talk amongst themselves, or to talk radio (which is the public equivalent) and wondering who the hell they were talking about when they described Trent Lott. I've heard the admirer of Strom Thurmond described as not really conservative. I've heard the man who kept over a hundred of Clinton's judicial nominees from getting hearings described as an accomodationist.

Say what they like, make any excuses that come to mind, and it still boils down to one thing. Trent Lott is only the most recent victim of Bill Clinton's Penis. Has the Big Dog eaten for the last time? Or are there more people waiting to be brought low by his powerful implement? Only time will tell.

Note to aspiring Woodsteins: Bill Frist's family business (and the source of his millions in wealth), HCA, paid the largest fine in world history (over a billion dollars if memory serves) for defrauding the US government out of medicare payments. There's dirt there, dig.

I'm Back From The Grave, And Ready To Party

Regular incoherent ranting about current irrelevancies should resume shortly.

Christmas Vacation

Instead of trying pathetically to keep up the pretense of blogging while doing too much other stuff, I've decided just to take a couple weeks completely off. I should be back shortly after New Year's.

Meanwhile, contemplate the delicious prospect of Trent Lott being forced out of the Senate leadership for saying what he really felt.

Money and the Net

AOL has just announced that it's going to put Time/Warner content on the net, and make it available exclusively to AOL users. Since there's been little progress in making money off of content (just ask the people with stock in Salon, to name one of the still solvent content providers who'll never turn a profit), they've decided to leverage their content to get more people using AOL for internet access and to make money that way. This doesn't bother me, since there's so much other content on the net available for free and there are only two companies that could make this play with any chance of success (AOL and MS). I'm guessing that it'll help AOL a little but not a whole lot.

As another way to make money off of content, I've noticed the NY Times and a bunch of magazines that previously made their archives available for free now charge to download articles. Again, this doesn't bother me. It's their content, they can do what they want. Though I doubt that they'll make much money. Slate became a subscriber only site for a while, then switched back when no one subscribed. I see the magazines going through the same thing when they realize that people like me who read old articles on a lark aren't willing to pay for them.

What this all amounts to is a desperate attempt to make money off of content other than porn, and I'm hoping it doesn't succeed. Let me explain.

Right now, the companies who sell internet access couldn't care less what I or you look at. They get their money whether you read big influential newspapers, little influential magazines, or bored liberals with nothing better to do. We're all the same to them. If someone comes up with a universal way to make money off of readership, this will all change. Suddenly, there will be big money for the presumably best sites with the highest readerships and even bigger money for those who figure out how to drive readers to sites regardless of how good they are. This would completely change the rules of the game.

For several years now, people have been predicting a future internet model based on micro-payments. Essentially, every time you went to a site you would pay it some tiny amount of money. Big sites would have a lot to gain. Little sites would still get something for their effort. Even though this would make me a few bucks, I think it would lead to real trouble. Once people got paid for clicks, there would be massive attempts to game the system for maximum profit. Popups, of course, would become even more ubiquitous, but that wouldn't be the real problem.

The shit would really hit the fan when companies like AOL and Microsoft figured out that the easiest way to drive traffic to their sites was to restrict access to everyone else's (and don't think micro-payments or something similar wouldn't lead to exactly this). It wouldn't always have to be a total block of sites, although that would be a possibility. First, the internet providers who also make content would rework their servers so that their customers accessed their content way faster than they could access anything else. Then they would start bribing Google and the other search engines to give them preference, the easiest way would be simply to list every hit for a paying customer ahead of every one for a non-payer (which would mean goodbye to being the #1 hit for my name on google), then you could eventually drop the non-payers completely on the grounds that no one clicks on them anyway.

If this weren't enough, the ISPs would then start cross-licensing each other (AOL and MSN giving each other preferential access, etc). Soon enough, what websites you could access (and how easily) would depend on who your ISP was, with the thousand or so paying sites being accessible to all and the rest of us not. Most people wouldn't mind so much, since all the stuff they were looking for (sports scores, stock quotes, naked pictures of Britney Spears) would still be accessible. You'd still be able to play games online. You just wouldn't see any non-approved or non-paying sites.

The people who did mind wouldn't always have a choice (there are still big chunks of this country with only one or two ISPs). They also wouldn't have a voice, since the big media would be the real winners in all this.

Of course, you'd be able to set up a blog or webpage through MSN or AOL, but I'm sure it wouldn't be free. You'd also have to watch what you say, they do have community standards to uphold. You may think that my blog wouldn't be worth blocking. It wouldn't be, but all of them combined would be (that's millions of hits a day). Those bloggers who played along would be allowed to operate (for a price). Those who wouldn't, wouldn't. If someone really popular didn't play ball, I'm sure that AOL could find someone willing to imitate his style for a nice salary.

Who would stop this? Would the big media conglomerates (who'd stand to make millions) raise a fuss? Would Congress step in, and interfere with the free market? [and it would still be as free as broadcasting is right now]. Would the Rehnquist Court rule against a few companies just trying to make a buck? Sure, new ISPs would open that promised free access, but they would be easy to buy out or marginalize (imagine if those 1,000 most popular sites stopped being accessible from certain ISPs or if the XBOX and PCs couldn't play online through those same ISPs).

I'm guessing that if we ever institute a system by which sites get paid for every reader without subscriptions, that'll be the end of the web as we know it. It'd just be a matter of time before the internet was a bunch of sheep looking at the pretty pictures brought to you by Chevrolet and Time/Warner.

Who's gonna prove me wrong?

To the Women of America

If a man in your life ever hits you or even seriously threatens to, walk out the fucking door and don't come back.
I don't care how much you love him.
I don't care how sweet he is when he apologizes.
I don't care how hard it is to find another man (they are out there).
I don't even care how hard life will be without him (it'll be far easier than putting up with abuse).
Walk out the door and don't come back.

You deserve far better than to have some asshole hit you when he gets pissed off at life. Staying with an abuser not only physically hurts you, but it hurts you psychologically. It makes you feel like like you had it coming. You didn't. Or that you provoked it. You didn't. There are no circumstances in which a man is ever justified in hitting a woman (other than defending himself or his kids against the woman's violence, but that's a situation in which the man should walk out the door and never come back).

You also need to think about the effect on your kids. Not only does domestic violence model bad behavior for them when they're grown, but it's hurting them now (even if the abuser isn't, and he will eventually). Think about how helpless and full of rage a child feels watching his mother be beaten. Think about how this rage will follow him around his whole life. Do you want that for your children? Walk out the door and never come back.

From a societal point of view, this would change the incentive structure for men (not that this should be the responsibility of women). Men would know that a single raised fist meant losing their family. Don't think this would change their behavior? There aren't a huge number of men each abusing one woman. There are a relatively small number of men who abuse practically every woman they get involved with. The sooner these men are left alone the better. We'll all be better off if they can't find anyone to stay with them. They may even change their behavior.

I know that a lot of people are going to jump in with It's more complicated than that or Don't you realize how hard it is to raise kids on your own?. I know, and I don't care. Sometimes there are no good choices, but putting up with abuse is never the best available option. Even moving to a shelter for a while is better than being abused or watching your mother be abused.

Others may balk at a strict zero-tolerance policy. After all, couldn't this be a one-time thing? No, it couldn't. The fact is that the vast majority of men have never hit a woman. Those that have do so more than once. If he hits you and you stick around, he will do it again. Guaranteed. Walk out the door and don't come back.

Note to the men who hit women:
Why? Does it make you feel like a tough guy? Does it give you some sense of power in an otherwise powerless life? Do you just like the idea of pushing around those weaker than you? Is your temper that uncontrollable? Get help. There are programs to help you change your behavior. If that fails, then leave. If you can't control your anger, then you need to walk out the door and never come back. Everyone in your life would be better off if you just got the fuck out. If you neither want to change nor to leave, drop me a line next time your temper gets the best of you. You're probably bigger than I am, but I'd give you a much better challenge than a woman or a child. Or are you afraid to fight a man?

Best of the Web

CalPundit has written a really good review of The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq by Kenneth Pollack. You should read it.

I, for one, hate Saddam and would love to see his head hanging from the national Christmas tree in Washington. However, I think so little of the competence and intentions of the Bush administration that I don't trust them to do things right. If they'd only stop lying to us all the time and make a real case against the bastard......

You should also read Limbs of No Body: World's Indifference to the Afgan Tragedy, which was written by an Iranian before the terrorist attacks that reminded all of us of what was going on in Afganistan.

In this hour, 14 more people will have died in Afghanistan of war and hunger and 60 others will have become refugees in other countries. This article is intended to describe the reasons for this mortality and emigration. If this bitter subject is irrelevant to your sweet life, please don't read it.

Don't worry. It really takes far less than an hour to read.

Meanwhile, Jim wants you to take a look at the man behind the curtain. Despite any impression left by our current dance with the UN, he believes that we are going to war with Iraq, no matter what (here and here).

American citizens might be forgiven for wondering what kind of suckers their government takes them for.

The aggressive movement of Israeli, Turkish, and American special forces into Iraq is another sign that the U.S. and its allies are not seriously engaged in any kind of peace process. In fact, what is going on is pre-war -- not an adjective, a noun.

Pre-war is what negotiation and diplomacy really mean in our modern newspeak. Pre-war is a constant vigilance against peace. It is the Tonkin Gulf and the USS Maine and, when even these kinds of charades are no longer necessary, it is a first-strike foreign policy.

Given the Bush administration's unwillingness to change policies even when circumstances change (see Tax Cuts, Deficits; also Fuel Economy, Saudi Utility Vehicles), I think he may be right.

Jeanne D'Arc give us a rundown of the mess that is Nigeria (the people who brought you Biafra and death by stoning for premarital sex). She's posted some feedback giving more detailed info on Nigeria here. Given its oil, its population, and its position as the strongest military power in a very fucked up part of the world (not to mention its tribal and religious strife), Nigeria is one to watch. A meltdown there (a very real possibility) could not only kill millions of people through war and starvation, but a ripple effect could destroy reform efforts in other African countries, plunge the whole region into even more chaos, and reach out to bite us here in America (plus, obviously, make most of Africa off-limits to Americans and Israelis for the forseeable future).

Lastly, take a look at UggaBugga's flowchart detailing possible outcomes in Iraq. And, yes, pigs fly is listed as a possibility (just under US transforms region into Western style capitalist democracies).

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas ... . For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves. ... For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society.
- John F. Kennedy

Mea Culpa

I know I said that I'd ignore other bloggers and day to day politics until I finished spilling my guts on the issues, but man is fallible and weak. I have several wordy, poorly, written, and annoyingly imprecise posts in the hopper on subjects ranging from education to foreign aid. Unfortunately, they'll take some serious work to even meet my exceedingly low standards for publication, and I'm not in the editing mood. Once I get them into a form comprehensible to anyone other than the voices in my head, I'll post them. I promise.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

More Politics

CalPundit weighed in on the Kevin Phillips essay and had this to say:

I think this business of "rebuilding" the old FDR coalition is tiresome. FDR — with the Depression as background — was able to build a coalition based on labor, the poor, and minorities. The problem is that labor and the poor are shrinking constituencies, so focusing there just won't do the job.

I think he's right that a coalition of the poor, minorities, and labor is an electoral loser; I just don't see that as the true New Deal coalition.

As a percentage of the American population, the truly poor (as opposed to those who are simply on the low end of the scale, but are doing okay) has shrunk pretty much every decade since the depression, with the possible exception of the 80's. Their share of the electorate has shrunk even faster, because the poor have always voted in low numbers but now vote even less. Any electoral strategy that appeals primarily to the poor is a sure loser (and this is where I think much liberal rhetoric goes wrong).

Labor's percentage of the vote is also shrinking, and many union members are now well-off enough that they can vote based primarily on social rather than economic issues. Most union voters still vote Democratic, but this is far from monolithic. Minority voters (black, hispanic, asian, and gay) are more reliably Democratic; but discrimination has lessened and enough of them are doing well enough financially that many of them now vote based on their self-identification with the investor class rather than from concern over civil rights. [Note: I don't consider this and a lessening of poverty to be bad things just because they hurt Democrats at the polls. Far from it. I consider these as things that the nation and the Democratic Party can be proud of. They do, however, have electoral consequences, and they cannot be ignored]. Expecting union members and minorities to vote Democratic based solely on their identity as union members and minorities is also a sure loser.

I believe that FDR's appeal was not to minorities, the poor, and to union members just because they belonged to those groups (even in the 30's that wasn't enough to win elections). I believe that his appeal to them was part of his greater appeal to huge chunks of the American electorate. That appeal was more psychological than based on race or other identity. FDR spoke to and for what America as a whole was feeling during the 30's and 40's, and that is still applicable today.

I'd say that FDR had two basic constituencies, with a great deal of overlap: the anxious and the powerless. Speak to those constituencies today and you win elections (a great deal of Reagan's popularity was his appeal to those who felt anxious about the future and those who felt powerless in the face of government).

Whatever the drawbacks (and they're too many to list) of the era, there was a lot less anxiety in the 50's and early 60's than there is now. If you had a job assembling cars, you could be pretty sure that the job would stick around and that you'd be able to support your family with it. If you had a job in middle management at GM or at a bank, you could be pretty sure that job would be there your whole life. If your kids were in college, then you could be pretty sure that good jobs would be waiting for them when they graduated. Things were more predictable, and that made people less anxious.

Compare that to the 30's and 40's, in which the Great Depression and war made everyone anxious. You couldn't be sure that your job would be there in a year. You couldn't be sure your son would be alive in a year. You couldn't even be sure that your way of life would be around much longer. FDr dealt with this anxiety by letting people know that we were all in this together, and by using the government to actively make things better. He knew that when things are bad, people don't want the government to simply step out of the way and let nature take its course (the Hoover approach); they want the government to step in and make things better.

This activist approach to government is very popular and should be just as big selling point for the Democrats now as it was then. While social dislocation and unemployment is nothing close to what it was in the 30's and the War on Some Terror Funded by Some People (none of whom happen to be Saudi) pales in comparison to WWII, the public today is still quite anxious. A factory employee, a middle manager, even a professional doesn't know for sure that his job will be there in a year. If it's not, he doesn't know for sure he'll be able to replace it. He doesn't know if his kids will find good jobs when they graduate college; nor does he know what the world will be like in even a few years. This leads to a lot of anxiety, and elections will go to those who act to calm it and are willing to take steps to make things better. If both parties pretend the anxiety doesn't exist, then elections will go to the party willing to promise the biggest bribes to the most people(and that's usually the party that wants to cut taxes the most).

The second thing in people's minds that FDR spoke to was a sense of powerlessness in the face of the forces controlling events, sometimes these were the market forces which caused the Great Depression, sometimes they were world events spinning out of control. This, too, is still a powerful emotion today, though there are obviously different things driving it. Even those with lots of money often feel powerless in the face of events. Even those who have secure jobs themselves know for a fact that they have little true influence on the way things will go down the line (the people with true power in this country could fit into Madison Square Garden).

People feel powerless in the face of their jobs moving overseas. They feel powerless in the face of HMO's denying them medical care. They feel powerless in the face of their 401k's being eaten away by corporate malfeasance. They feel powerless in the face of international terrorism. Whoever reliably sticks up for those that have little power on their own will win elections. Given their unwillingness to face down corporate donors over economic issues and their unwillingness to do more than slavishly follow George Bush on foreign affairs, the Democrats shouldn't be surprised to see Bush fairly popular. At least he seems willing to stick up for them against terrorists (even though he's dishonest as hell about where the true threat lies).

Speaking for those who feel anxious and those who feel powerless was the true source of FDR's coalition, much more than simply listing its members ethnicities and incomes. That is the sort of coaltion the Democrats should be rebuilding. Give them policies which try to address (rather than just stoke) their anxieties and which give them a collective voice in events they're powerless to affect alone, and you'll win the support of most Americans. Stoking fears without offering solutions and hoping people vote based solely on ethnic identity is sure not to.

Skybox Politics

Kevin Phillips used to be in the mainstream of the Republican Party, but for the last decade or so the Party has moved away from him to the point where he appears further from the Republicans than many mainstream Democrats are. he's written a good thinkpiece for the LA Times, and it's obvious from his tone who he now identifies with.
Greed Is Putting Party in Peril (username=laexaminer; password=laexaminer):

The weakening economy and skewed wealth distribution were obvious rallying points, yet Democratic leaders, despite having the freedom that comes from being out of power nationally, abandoned them, save for cliches about protecting Social Security and providing prescription drugs.

While hardly new, this marked an escalation in the national party's willingness to discard old beliefs and the interests of ordinary citizens in order to woo big-contributor money that has captured the center of U.S. politics -- the new "venal center."..............

.............This is a losing politics, because the dominance of venality automatically favors the Republicans. Innately on the side of money, many, if not most, Republicans are philosophically committed to upholding its principles and some of its excesses. By contrast, the worthy history of the Democratic Party, especially during its periods of dominance, has been to question those principles and to indict related excesses. When abuses mount and Democrats remain mute, they lose both constituency appeal and their historical raison d'etre.

Regaining this balance is not turning left, an implausible description for the great Democrats from Jefferson to Truman. What it has involved is correcting the excesses of plutophile conservatives from Alexander Hamilton through the 20th century and down to the present day. Under current circumstances, it would take years for any such correction to be leftish............

.............What the Democrats have to pursue, then, is neither rightward nor leftward movement but a double-barreled recommitment to Middle America and the party's old Jackson-FDR constituencies. That will require them to forswear both rightist economics and left-chic culture. If any such effort succeeds, what opponents try to label it won't matter. Indeed, we can reasonably speculate that any such new politics able to overcome the venal center would also go a long way toward recreating another vital center.

Armed Liberal has already commented on this, but I can't say that I agre with him when he says:

Until the Democratic Party can wean itself from the golden teat of large donors (primarily from lawyers, labor, technology, and media), they will be transparently captive to their investors' interests.

or with Phillips when he insists that money from Hollywood is the worst of all.

I would first point out that the traditional Democratic donor groups don't scare me, nor do they scare most people likely to vote Democratic. The unions, trial lawyers, environmental groups, abortion rights groups, and socially liberl Hollywood types are the most solidly Democraic donor constituencies. Try as they might, the Republicans have never gotten significant numbers of people to vote against the Democrats because of who gives money to them (people may vote pro-life, but they're not changing their votes if the Democrats stop taking money from NARAL). These traditional Democratic donor groups line up pretty closely with good Democratic policies.

The problems occur when Democrats start relying on money from traditionally Republican groups. When Democrats start depending on money from banks, from insurance companies, from the investor class, and from big business in general, then they find themselves in an untenable position. To keep these donors happy, they must abandon traditional Democratic policies and the political advantages that come from representing the majority of the American people against those with outsized power and influence.

As soon as Democrats start selling access to anyone willing to write a check, they're lost. It's not that Democratic ties to their traditional supporters scare off voters; it's that Democratic reliance on their traditional opponents paralyzes them. This reliance makes it impossible for them to put forth the sort of policies that will truly differentiate them from the Republicans. This is where Kevin Phillips has things wrong. Gray Davis didn't fail to excite California voters because he was too beholden to Democratic interest groups. Davis failed to excite them because he was too beholden to Republican ones. His Skybox Politics were so dependent on big corporate money that he was unwilling to do anything to piss that big corporate money off. In effect, Davis came off as a Republican Lite, and this it what failed to excite voters.

I'd say that it's good news for Democrats indeed that such an unappealing politician as Gray Davis won almost solely because of residual loyalty to the Democratic Party (it's not like most of his big donors didn't secretly want Simon to win). It says something about the Republican Party that they've moved so far to the right that they can't beat an empty suit like Davis.

I'd also say that it's good news for the Democrats that some big money that had straddled the fence in the Clinton years has now gone over entirely to the Republican side. That's right. It's good news, but only if the Democrats learn the proper lessons (and some Democrats, like Joe Lieberman, seem unwilling to learn those lessons).

Since the oil companies now give almost all their money to Republicans, the Democrats now no longer have to give a shit what the oil companies think about anything. They can formulate and push policies that favor conservation and that favor consumers even in the face of stiff opposition from the oil companies. Why? Because the oil companies won't support them anyway, so there's no downside. In fact, they can go out of their way to antagonize the oil companies with almost no repercussions.

Since the drug companies now give almost all their money to Republicans, the Democrats now no longer have to give a shit what the drug companies think about anything. They can formulate and push policies that favor consumers even in the face of stiff opposition from the drug companies. Why? Because the drug companies won't support them anyway, so there's no downside. In fact, they can go out of their way to antagonize the drug companies with almost no repercussions.

You get the point. The Democrats can make a list of every industry that favors Republicans over Democrats, then go down that list getting rid of every policy they ever instituted to favor those bastards. They once opposed price controls fro prescription drugs; they should now favor them. Not only is it good politics in that millions of voters would benefit from Democratic policies, but sticking it to your enemies is also good politics. It gives the big donors a reason to fear you, and may convince some of them to stay the hell out of politics completely. The same is true for sticking to the oil companies, the insurance companies, the big polluters, etc.

Most of the big Republican contributors do scare voters, and it's much better politics to protect the public from those out to fuck 'em than it is to compete for donations by helping to bend the public over. Does this mean the Democrats will lose some more financial support in the short run? Yes. Does this mean that some Democratic politicians will lose elections in the short run? Yes. Both of these are likely true, but they're worth the cost. Actually articulating a message that puts voters over donors, that truly serves the people and not the powerful would make the Democrats the majority party for the forseeable future.

As people like Kevin Phillips and Michael Lind prove, there are a lot of voters disaffected with the direction the Republicans have pushed politics in the last two decades. Those voters, most of them Rockefeller Republicans, are looking around for a choice. The Democrats, by competing for big money donations from those same interest groups that have driven away lifelong Republicans like Phillips, haven't given those partyless voters any reason to support them. The people want politicians who'll stick up for them even when the big money goes the other way. Those policians are unlikely to ever be Republicans, but right now they're not Democrats either. It's not that the people have been given a choice and chose the Republicans, it's that they've been given little choice (at least economically) and are evenly divided. Democrats win elections on economics, but they have to give voters a true choice. Skybox Politics doesn't give the voters that choice.

Gays in the Military

I remeber looking at all the fuss made over Letting gays in the military back in '93, and thinking Are these idiots under the impression that there aren't any gays in the military? If so, were any of these idiots in the military themselves? I can tell you, for a fact, that there are gays in the military right now, just as there were gays when I was in the Navy, just as there were gays when my father was in the Navy, and just as there were gays when both my grandfathers were in the Army. It's just a matter of whether they have to lie about it.

I knew several guys who were almost certainly gay when I was in the Navy. One of them had the bunk underneath mine for over year. I went drinking with others on several occassions. I never knew for sure, because they didn't tell me and I wasn't about to ask. They were simply my friends and shipmates. What they did in their own time was none of my business.

There are laws on the books to handle sexual harassment, and they should be applied to everyone fairly. If no sexual harassment or other violations are actually occurring (ie, if everyone involved is a consenting adult) and if no one violates their chain of command, then I don't see why it's anyone's business what anyone else does with their private parts when off duty.

Women in the Military

I was in the Navy back before women served on combat ships, so I had little interaction with females while in the military. I can tell you that I found them to be as professional and as competent as men when I did come into contact with them. I also happen to be a big supporter of women in the workplace in civilian life, as I've said before. I feel that a huge part of our competetive advantage over backward-ass places like Saudi Arabia comes from the fact that we allow women to contribute to our society both economically and politically in a way that other societies don't. Until big chunks of the globe figure that out, they'll continue to be backward-assed.

So you'd probably expect me to support women in the United States military, and you'd be half right. As I'd said before, we have a huge number of non-combat jobs in the military, most of which I think could be done as competently and much more cheaply by civilians. These jobs, and some that I think should stay in military hands, can be done as well by women as by men. For the several hundred thousand jobs for which there are essentially no physical demands, women should be (and are, as far as I know) be treated equally. The non-combat jobs in the military that I think should become civilian jobs could be done as well by women (civilian or military) as by men.

However, the purpose of the military is not to do paperwork. The purpose of the military is combat, and for that most men are better suited than most women. I'm not making any assumptions about emotional makeup, nor about how anyone would react to combat. I assume that there are plenty of women who would react coolly under fire, just as there are many men who would wet their pants and panic. No, I'm talking solely about physical suitability.

The military has a little-discussed institution known as Gender Norming, which essentially means that women are compared solely to other women when being physically tested. In everything from height, to aerobic capaicty to pushups, women are held to lower standards than men. What's the problem with that?, you may ask Why should women be compared to men? Can't a woman be in good shape even if she's not as strong as a man in worse shape?. I'd agree, if physical standards were simply arbitrary benchmarks which served no real world purpose, but they're not and they do.

As it stands now, a 4' 10", 110 lb woman is welcome in the Army, but a 4' 11" 130 lb man is not. Why is that? Is there some sort of benefit to the military in doing this? Are 110 lb women somehow more physically able to do their jobs than 130 lb men?

This is neither a sports contest nor a test to see how well we're taking care of ourselves, this is real life. Here in real life, the military needs people who can accomplish certain physical tasks, and those tasks don't care if you're a man or a woman. Loading a 5" gun or shouldering a pack won't be easier for women than for men. Ammo will not become lighter, nor distances shorter. Holding women to lower physical standards than men puts lives in jeopardy, and I'm against it.

My ship (DD-980, Da Moose) was a Spruance class destroyer with approximately 300 men on board. all of us were trained for multiple jobs, including firefighting. My main job was operating radar and keeping charts, which required nothing more than the ability to stay awake and to pay attention. I was also in charge of destroying cryptographic material for a few hellish months. If these were my only jobs, then a woman much smaller than me could've done it more efficiently (since she would've taken up less space and eaten less food), but this was not my only job.

At other times I would be:
1) Dragging a fully charged fire hose across a metal deck, through hatches and passageways
2) Carrying a wounded comrade in a stretcher
3) Standing guard on the quarterdeck with a .45
4) Repelling boarders with a 12 gauge shotgun
5) Climbing the radar mast of my ship to do repairs (boy, did that suck...it would sway in the wind and scare the shit out of me)
6) Loading 40 lb shells in a gun turret
7) Pulling the Search & Rescue swimmers and anyone they rescued aboard by hand (I turned down the chance to go to SAR school and I still regret it)
8) Maintaining fire equipment
9) Scrubbing nuclear contamination off the outside of the ship

None of these jobs could be done as efficiently by a smaller woman or man, and some of them couldn't have been done at all. A stretcher bearer had to be able to lift someone through a hatch almost singelhandedly (and yes, we practiced this). Someone fighting a fire may have to be on the nozzle by himself because everyone else was wounded. These were not jobs which could be passed off to someone else if inconvenient. The 300 men on board were all we had to rely on, and there's no way to know who would be available and who would be injured if we were in combat.

In my (not-so-humble) opinion, neither small women nor small men belong in the US Navy, nor do people belong who aren't strong enough to perform certain physical tasks. If women are strong enough to perform those tasks, then welcome aboard. If not, I think it's doing a disservice to everyone involved to lower standards for them. If strict physical standards happen to exclude more women from service than men (and they will), I couldn't give a shit. This isn't about being fair, it's about getting the job done.

The Marines have a philosophy that everyone is a grunt at heart, that every single marine could be sent into combat with a rifle whenever needed. Because of this, they should expect every marine to be able to carry a pack and hike for miles, regardless of gender or age. Being a combat rifleman is the very essence of being a marine, and I don't see why it should be compromised. Nor do I see why the Marines would want to recruit those who could never be sent into combat regardless of how badly they were needed there. I feel the same way about women in the Army. If they meet the same physical standards as men, then they're welcome. If not, then not.

Women in the Air Force may be a different matter, since they're the only branch that may very well not be anywhere close to combat. So the Air Force may not need to be as strict for non-pilots, but they should still hold everyone to the same standards (If not, then why have standards at all? Are they just competely arbitrary and unimportant?). Those standards could, however, be more lax and so leave room for more women.

I do have one note about women in combat, they need to be very aware of the risk of sexual assault. This is neither to scare away women nor to give an excuse to keep them away. If taken prisoner, there is a probability that any female captive will be sexually assaulted. Of the two American women captured during the Gulf War, one was raped repeatedly. The Israelis, in fact, no longer put women in front line positions because they were routinely raped if taken captive. They didn't consider it worth the risk. My own personal opinion is that a woman should be able to make up her own mind about running that risk, but that we have a duty to let her know that she is running a risk.

So there it is. The relatively few women who can meet the necessary physical standards should be welcomed into the military, those who cannot should not be allowed in (nor should men who can't meet tough standards). Nor, for that matter, should physical requirements be relaxed for older men and women.

For similar reasons to that stated above, I'd hold women and men to the same standards for becoming cops and firefighters. In fact, I can't figure out why any job with physical requirements at all would have different ones for men and women. If they can be lowered like that for women, why not lower them for men as well? If they really don't matter, then why not do away with them altogether? I'm sure there are some jobs out there that have physical standards for no good reason at all, but the military ain't one of them.