March 2005 Archives

Via Laura, the folks at Democracy Arsenal. We'll see how this turns out. Don't know these blokes. I like what I hear so far.

OK, tired of finding different groups to blame for Democrats' inability to get over the wall on national security. Here's my proposal for a ten-step program to get Democrats back on the map:

Step 1. Don't Blame the Victims (grassroots progressives). Beinart lost a lot of credibility with me when he published an op-ed blaming the problem on liberal Iowa voters. It's our job to help them figure out what to think about national security... isn't it?

Step 2. Stop caricaturing what both progressives and the general public want in foreign policy. They think much more sensibly than we give them credit for -- and then don't find candidates who express what they think.

Yet too many progressives still believe that national security is not "our" issue. We still approach these questions as boxes to check. Take this example: the Kerry-Edwards campaign was more focused on national security issues than any Democratic campaign probably since 1960, yet too often it still treated these issues as things we had to pivot off of to hammer Bush on our perceived bread and butter: health care, education, taxes, the environment, etc. etc. People actually said behind closed doors things like "once we give this speech/make this argument/end this debate on Iraq or terrorism, we will be able to pivot onto other issues." Many political advisers thought that we could end the debate with one killer line of attack, and then never have to deal with it again. A big part of our cAzaellenge as national security progressives is to make the case that these issues are not just ones that we can remain credible on (or dispense with through one thoughtful speech), but ones that we can actually win on.

Normally you don't see this kind of stuff. It's occurring on a plane that is only millimeters away, but orthogonal to four dimensional existence.

Click here to see what I put up with on a daily basis around here.

<H/T d-p-u>

Sorry, just had to post this picture I found on Yahoo news.

Looks like Yoda.

I was reading Unfogged's post regarding this little bit from G. Reynolds and was struck by this comment by PJS

I think that the Schaivo case is somewhat anomalous, and is unlikely to inspire in the Glen Reynoldses of the world much in the way of sustained reflection about the company they’ve been keeping. That’s because the libertarianism of Reynolds, and his fellow "small government" militarists, doesn’t seem to be rooted in a broad-based commitment to monitoring the activities of our government with a suspicious eye. More centrally, it just seems to be a brand of white male identity politics. Hence, its concern primarily with infringements on liberty that are likely to affect his social class such as taxes, gun control, and invasive checks at airports, and its relative lack of concern with such things as torture, extraordinary rendition, use of government funds for partisan propaganda, or wars fought on the basis of constantly shifting rationales. (In the semi-early days of Instapundit, he was obsessed with the creeping fascism represented by Norman Mineta, a kind of concern that, needless to say, has not surfaced much since.) Hence, also, its tough-guy support for Bush’s militarism, weird anti-feminism, and attraction to Road Warrior-style fantasies of armed self-reliance. What’s unique about the Schaivo case is that it actually involves an issue that most Americans connect with their own lives. Most people have gone through something like this with a relative, or expect to, or expect to be that relative someday, and are really creeped-out by the spectacle of government interference. (Incidentally, I think that’s why this might be backfiring on conservatives. I think they thought that this would be another issue like “partial birth abortion” – a chance to flamboyantly side with “values” on a personal liberty issue that most people don’t identify with.) The point, however, is that I don’t think that this case will turn out to possess any generalizable lessons for Reynolds and his ilk. When the next case of egregious Republican overreach comes up we won’t be able to count on him, unless it just happens to affect his social class, and provide no opportunity for macho-posturing about dangerous lefitists.

I think the market rocks. I'm a capitalist, through and through. However, just because I like the hammer doesn't mean that everything is a thumb.

Charter schools' troubled waters

DESPITE promising us a compass, charter schools have hit another shoal. More evidence says they are no better than public schools.

''Proponents of charter schools have a deregulationist view of education that says the marketplace leads to better schools," Lawrence Mishel, president of the nonprofit, nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, said over the telephone. ''The facts of the matter suggest that this view is without merit."

Mishel and three other university researchers from Columbia and Stanford universities are authors of the forthcoming book ''The Charter School Dust-Up." The researchers reviewed federal data and the results from 19 studies in 11 states and the District of Columbia. They found that charter school students, on the whole, ''have the same or lower scores than other public school students in nearly every demographic category."

In a politically charged environment where the White House and many governors, including Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, are pushing charter schools, the authors found that federal data ''fail to confirm claims that the performance of charter schools improves as these schools accumulate experience." Charter schools four years or older ''report lower scores than new charter schools."

Running the numbers on the report's measure, the improvement in the index vs. GDP expressed in 1995 U.S. dollars, produces somewhat better correlations (.33, to be precise). But that's still very far from impressive; the improvement in the index can explain statistically less than 10% of GDP growth - ignoring the fact that growth itself probably explains some of the improvement in the index. An analysis of the second chart by the naked eye would conclude the relationship is as good as random.

Now, the point of this post isn't "Hey, freedom sucks!" or "Wow, doesn't the market blow! Let's become communists.". The point is that freedom isn't a sack of magic beans and the free market really isn't like sprinkling magic pixie dust.

Strangely enough, it takes and awful lot of actual thought and a lot of effort and investment to even screw up as bad as the government does. And if you don't even do that, you screw up even worse than a pack of unionized, tenured, liberal biased teachers sucking on the public teat.

I used to be mystified by this. . .

IRS Measures $300B Gap in Unpaid Taxes

Americans' unpaid taxes are now topping $300 billion a year, with people who underreport their income the biggest culprits.

The government is also losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year because Internal Revenue Service computers don't record interest due on penalties for those unpaid taxes.

The IRS estimated the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid, after auditing 46,000 people and combining those findings with older estimates of unpaid corporate, payroll and unemployment taxes.

The report Tuesday estimated the gap at $312 billion to $353 billion for 2001, about 15 percent of the total taxes owed. Taxpayers were slightly less likely to comply with tax laws than they had been at the time of the latest previous study, completed in 1988.

Myself, I think the biggest problem facing democrats today is that the perception of the party is largely built upon old cartoon shorts of the 50's and 60's. It's like people think that we're all a bunch of Communists, Black Panthers and aging Weatherman. It's a cute characterization and will always get you a laugh at parties, but imho, this hasn't been true for about a generation.

In any event, what's really giving me the only joy I can squeeze out of this desperate situation is the schadenfreude I have over seeing hard core republicans wake up to the fact that the Faustian bargain they have struck with the social conservatives isn't working out the way they thought it would. Call it their version of buyer's remorse, but it just gives me giggles to hear this stuff.

After all, the only reason they got into bed with these - uh - religious extremists is because they couldn't even come close to winning political elections without them. If it wasn't for this Frankenstein's monster they so carefully crafted and nurtured over the past generation, they would be a footnote in political history.

So let the wailing continue. Let them put on sack cloth and cover themselves with ashes. It's their fault. They carefully planned this whole thing. The only problem is, the extremists aren't staying in their cage like they were supposed to.

As they say, careful what you wish for. You might just be rewarded with it.

In the Name of Politics

During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.

But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.

The historic principles of the Republican Party offer America its best hope for a prosperous and secure future. Our current fixation on a religious agenda has turned us in the wrong direction. It is time for Republicans to rediscover our roots.

The fact that the movement's increasingly radical agenda can't always be satisified within the rule of law, and the New Model Army's growing frustration with the lip service it is getting from the politicos, may rattle the nerves and offend the sensibilities of the Republican pundit class, but the real GOP leaders, the ones who have power and know how to use it, realize the ships have all been burned and there's no going back.

And if mass opinion finally rebels against the extremists, as it did in the Terry Shiavo case? What then? Well, nobody ever said running a right-wing populist movement on beAzaelf of a wealthy oligarchy would be easy. But the Rovians understand well the central flaw of democracy -- that in the end, a small and noisy minority can usually can have its way over a large but relatively apathetic majority. In fact it's their ace in the hole.

The propaganda machine has plenty of time to repair the damage. Heck, within a few months Fox News will have the true believers convinced that Harry Reid personally pulled out Shiavo's feeding tube while Nancy Pelosi held her down. The ordinary rubes, meanwhile, almost certainly will have forgotten the whole sorry affair. If not, the machine can always manufacture some fresh outrage to wave in their faces (Up next on the No Spin Zone: The liberal attack on the Fourth of July!)

But while this media storm too sAzaell pass, the New Model Army will still be out there, getting angrier by the minute and counting the days until the next election. Which means that for most Republican politicians, when somebody asks about their vision for America, the safest answer is still: "I see everything twice."

Since Blogger seems to be refusing to let me comment on his post, mine as well write my own post about this.

Winston - aka the Philosoraptor - has a post up about left wing bias in the professetariat. The first thought that I have after reading this excellent post is the quotation by John Stuart Mill, who clarified his previous declarative statement on the relationship between conservative bias and stupidity

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

Is the 'raptor suggesting that the ideal academic political bias is "independent"? And is this balance a mixture of conservative and liberal politics, or is this balance achieved by casting a pox on both their houses?

Just wondering.

Update: Found Jonathan Chait's explanation of Why Academia Shuns Republicans in my Furl archive.

But the rise of fashionable left-wing scholarship can be blamed for only a tiny part of the GOP's problem. The studies showing that academics prefer Democrats to Republicans also show that this preference holds in hard sciences as well as social sciences. Are we to believe that higher education has fallen prey to trendy multiculturalist engineering, or that physics departments everywhere suppress conservative quantum theorists?

The main causes of the partisan disparity on campus have little to do with anything so nefarious as discrimination. First, Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into academia ? a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches ? you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else ? a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. ? conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices.

Second, professors don't particularly want to be Republicans. In recent years, and especially under George W. Bush, Republicans have cultivated anti-intellectualism. Remember how Bush in 2000 ridiculed Al Gore for using all them big numbers?

Honestly now. Why is anyone a republican? Especially the libertarian, south park republican dorks. I mean, how absolutely and completely ideological must you be at this point?

Those liberals must be some seriously scary dudes.

TSA Lied About Protecting Passenger Data

The report also details how outside contractors used the data for their own purposes. And that "the agency neglected to inquire whether airline passenger data used by the vendors had been returned or destroyed." And that "TSA did not consistently apply privacy protections in the course of its involvement in airline passenger data transfers."

This is major stuff. It shows that the TSA lied to the public about its use of personal data again and again and again.

Right now the TSA is in a bit of a bind. It is prohibited by Congress from fielding Secure Flight until it meets a series of criteria. The Government Accountability Office is expected to release a report this week that details how the TSA has not met these criteria.

I'm not sure the TSA cares. It's already announced plans to roll out Secure Flight.

New Details on F.B.I. Aid for Saudis After 9/11

The F.B.I. records show, for instance, that prominent Saudi citizens left the United States on several flights that had not been previously disclosed in public accounts, including a chartered flight from Providence, R.I., on Sept. 14, 2001, that included at least one member of the Saudi royal family, and three flights from Las Vegas between Sept. 19 and Sept. 24, also carrying members of the Saudi royal family. The government began reopening airspace on Sept. 13, but many flights remained grounded for days afterward.

The three Las Vegas flights, with a total of more than 100 passengers, ferried members of the Saudi royal family and staff members who had been staying at Caesar's Palace and the Four Seasons hotels. The group had tried unsuccessfully to charter flights back to Saudi Arabia between Sept. 13 and Sept. 17 because they said they feared for their safety as a result of the Sept. 11 attacks, the F.B.I. documents say.

Once the group managed to arrange chartered flights out of the country, an unidentified prince in the Las Vegas group "thanked the F.B.I. for their assistance," according to one internal report. The F.B.I. had interviewed many members of the group and searched their planes before allowing them to leave, but it nonetheless went back to the Las Vegas hotels with subpoenas five days after the initial flight had departed to collect further information on the Saudi royal guests, the documents show.

In several other cases, Saudi travelers were not interviewed before departing the country, and F.B.I. officials sought to determine how what seemed to be lapses had occurred, the documents show.

The F.B.I. documents left open the possibility that some departing Saudis had information relevant to the Sept. 11 investigation.

Just want to point out what's happening with Egypt. Quite frankly, I couldn't care less if the entire right wing claims personal credit for it. What I'd love to see is the current Administration use some of that political capital they have and send our secretary of state into Egypt and use this event to apply the diplomatic screws to Hosni Mubarak.

I can't think of a better opportunity for the administration to show they have a serious dedication to using diplomacy "where appropriate".

Riot police Azaelt Egypt opposition

The Egyptian authorities have deployed thousands of riot police in central Cairo to prevent Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators reaching parliament.

Brotherhood sources say at least six of their members were arrested as they tried to reach the building.

On Saturday, the authorities had arrested about 50 members of the group in different provinces of the country.

The Muslim Brotherhood, although banned, is considered Egypt's largest and most organised opposition force.

Police in full riot gear blocked off whole streets in the city centre to prevent access to parliament.

But hundreds of demonstrators appear to have managed to hold small protests in locations outside the city centre.

<originally posted December 5, 2003>

Well, since I only have a 28.8 connection to the net, I'm effectively blind. Something that Fuller said really comes home under these circumstances: you really don't know what degrees of freedom you have until they are gone. Man, I can't believe that I used to think a 9600 baud modem was fast.

In any event, since I don't have a clue as to what's going on in the world. . . Let's talk about the art of misdirection.

This just reads like the first 10 pages of a bad bio-thriller, doesn't it?

U.S. to create a bird flu virus mutation

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun a series of experiments to see how likely the bird flu virus could result in a human pandemic.

I'm just saying.

I know it's hardly an original prediction, but I've got a nickel riding on the radical religious right (RRR) going completely non-linear after Terri Schaivo finally shuffles off the mortal coil.

And it's going to be pretty ironic when the terrorists that bomb, mutilate and horrify us turn out to be the very people that put Bush back into office.

Pretty darn ironic that it isn't people like Ward Churchill who snapped and decided to start killing off the Judiciary, blowing up IRS buildings and mowing down abortion providers. It won't be Michael Moore calling for the head of federal and state judges. It won't be his fat ass sending ricin cakes to the Supreme court.

Yep. It's going to be a barrel of laughs. It's pretty cool that all the "rational" jokers on the right - you know, the libertarian leaning jackals who are just in it for the tax cuts and regulation relief - decided to animate the dead corpse of Terri Schaivo and created a Frankenstein monster that's going to be a little hard to put back in the box again.

I just can't help but giggle whenever I think that the high and mighty conservatives would never - ever - win if it wasn't for the crazy religious types.

Theocracy now!

Dude!

Chess legend Bobby Fischer

Originally posted on March 18, 2003

First, on March 17, 2004 - a year from now - our Terror Threat Level better be on fucking serene white. If a year from now we're still on piss yellow or scared shitless orange Terror Threat Level, then I'd say the Administration sold us a bill of goods. Quite simply, this war of choice - a preemptive war - hasn't made us any safer. If the Terror Threat Level isn't on Economy is Booming pink on March 17, 2005 - two years from now - I'm thinking we're in the toilet and the Administration put us there.

Second, one year from now, if Iraq is essentially the same security state as Palestine is under Israel today we have a 10 year occupation on our hands. If we still have troops fighting, suicide bombers and all the trappings of modern day Palestine, the critics of this war with Iraq are right. The administration has sold us a bill of goods that we were going to paying for decades from now - occupation of chaos is costly both in dollar terms and lives lost.

Third, if we haven't found any credible evidence of WMD, nefarious connections with Al Qaeda, rape rooms and baby killing factories a year from now, we've been sold a bill of goods. By credible, I mean independently verified. I think the US should take it upon themselves to bring in UN investigators and monitors to ensure that all revelations and facts are verified. We've seen the finest US intelligence agencies and US state department fooled by amateur forgeries, RC model "WMD delivery vehicles" made out of duct tape and weed whackers, as well as Aluminum tubes not as suspicious as we were told. So anything we won't let Hans Blix verify the validity of, I claim is too suspect for evidence in satisfaction of this criteria - either way.

So, I say let the bones roll as the die is already cast. Here's my criteria in a thumbnail. What's yours?

If you don't have one until after the fact, you're just a historian.

See also:
Gallery of US Military Dead During Iraq War
Eyeballing the Iraq Kill and Maim Zone
1,571 US Military Dead During Iraq War
DoD tally

An antiwar protester holds up a poster during a demonstration in Houston, Saturday, March 19, 2005, marking the second anniversary of the the start of the Iraq War. (AP Photo/Houston Chronicle, Steve Ueckert)

I finally got around to reading the infamous report The Death of Environmentalism. I'll have to chew it over quite a bit before I figure out what I think about it. However. . .

One the funniest things about this report is found on the cover. As the authors state on the first page of the report

On the cover is the Chinese ideogram for “crisis,” which is comprised of the characters for “danger” and “opportunity.”

A whole industry of pundits and therapists has grown up around this one grossly inaccurate formulation. A casual search of the Web turns up more than a million references to this spurious proverb. It appears, often complete with Chinese characters, on the covers of books, on advertisements for seminars, on expensive courses for "thinking outside of the box," and practically everywhere one turns in the world of quick-buck business, pop psychology, and orientalist hocus-pocus. This catchy expression (Crisis = Danger + Opportunity) has rapidly become nearly as ubiquitous as The Tao of Pooh and Sun Zi's Art of War for the Board / Bed / Bath / Whichever Room.

The jī of wēijī, in fact, means something like "incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or changes)." Thus, a wēijī is indeed a genuine crisis, a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry. A wēijī indicates a perilous situation when one should be especially wary. It is not a juncture when one goes looking for advantages and benefits. In a crisis, one wants above all to save one's skin and neck! Any would-be guru who advocates opportunism in the face of crisis should be run out of town on a rail, for his / her advice will only compound the danger of the crisis.

Woo hoo!

Science: Climate Change Inevitable

Even if all greenhouse gases had been stabilized in the year 2000, we would still be committed to a warmer Earth and greater sea level rise in the present century, according to a new study by a team of climate modelers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The modeling study quantifies the relative rates of sea level rise and global temperature increase that we are already committed to in the 21st century. Even if no more greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere, globally averaged surface air temperatures would rise about a Azaelf degree Celsius (one degree Fahrenheit) and global sea levels would rise another 11 centimeters (4 inches) from thermal expansion alone by 2100.

And a very special "Fuck You" to Nicholas D. Kristof. Without people like you, none of this would be possible.

Oh, we be puttin' on sack cloth and throwing ashes in acts of despair. Imagine! We could have had some voters for a song. (Via Roxanne)

I've been telling my Democrat brother for over a year now, "We're here--Bush voters who aren't social conservatives--and you could have had us for a song. We're on special, we're on markdown, we come cheap. But instead of wooing us, you sat around and complained that Kerry wasn't left enough. You put Howard Dean on the DNC. You defended people who said and did indefensible things, out of a much stronger sense of party loyalty than I've ever seen displayed on the right. You could have guaranteed your party would run this country for the next 16 years if you'd only moved to the middle, if you'd only been willing to concede that the non interventionist policies America pursued in the decade leading up to 2001 did not work in her interests."

I think progressives who are seriously interested in working to change things, need to listen up. The last election was very close. Unless you've got some magic beans that'll grow brand new Democrats (who will show up and vote) next time around, we may need to do something to bring people like Ilyka around. Or not.

Myself, I could give a flying fuck at a rolling donut for this crowd. I'm sick and tired of being repeatedly bitch slapped for completely imaginary and totally overblown events which don't even have anything to do with the price of tea in China.

Let's start with just the fragments of Ilyka's comments. In particular, the notion that "if you'd only been willing to concede that the non interventionist policies America pursued in the decade leading up to 2001 did not work in her interests". Now I'm sure everyone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't really think I would characterize the 90's as a decade dedicated to non interventionist policies. I'm certainly not going to rattle off all of the interventions that happened during that decade (hey, Bosnia, Haiti just to name a few). But I will just point out that Bush, in his 2000 presidential campaign, was running on an isolationist, non interventionist platform. And so when some idiot tells me that the democrats could have had them for a song if only they would have been more interventionist - well, I just want to scream and bitch slap these jerks until they figure out just exactly what reality we really live in.

And bitching about Howard Dean? What the fuck is that all about? As far as I can tell, the only thing these sniveling twits have against Howard Dean is the fact that he stands up and says that the Iraq war was a stupid, ill conceived action which has been prosecuted by a bunch of Morons. It's people like Michelle and Iyaka who - because they are so personally invested in the Iraq war - twist whatever Dean says into an attack on the troops, or proof of his unwavering support of Al Qaeda. I mean, as far as Dean's actual record goes, he's a middle of the road centrist.

And who in the hell are the people we defended who "did and said indefensible things"? Just who in the hell is Iyaka talking about?

And Michelle's post - well, I won't even go there. Roy at alicublog has the definitive post on that subject.

The election was four months ago. At that time, her reaction was a long harangue at liberals ("You ran your own campaign, one filled to the brim with bile and acidic spittle and you wonder why you feel so black today?"). Later she wrote, "Just because a state is blue on a map, Ted [Rall], does not mean that we, the red zombies, are not here. We are. We exist. And for the next four years Horton the elephant is watching over us." Later she wrote, "How the Democrats, the left, the liberals, whatever they want to call themselves, have suddenly decided it's ok to pass around the jugs filled with smug hatred, to lick their lips as they drool the slobbering bigotry all over themselves, to become everything they always claimed they weren't." Later she wrote... well, you see how it goes.

I would like to be more sympathetic. I'm told we need to be reaching out. But I know that if the Democrats nominated Jesus Christ Almighty in 2008, and Jeb Bush's people told this woman that JCA is soft on terror and unfit for command, she'd fall for that, too. And blame us afterwards.

If you really are serious about getting more democrats, then how about attacking the real source of the problem.

More surprising perhaps are the large numbers (albeit not majorities) who believe the following claims not made by the president and which virtually no experts believe to be true:

• 47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).
• 44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).
• 36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S.invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

Another interesting finding is that only 46 percent believe that Saddam Hussein was prevented from developing weapons of mass destruction by the U.N. weapons inspectors, a fact which most reports now support.

And that's what the intelligentsia's grand strategy is? If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? What a bunch of absolute morons. And these people wonder why we lose? They can't even diagnose the problem correctly. Worse, they think the cure is to get in bed with the disease.

So, I say fuck 'em. Fuck 'em all. If winning means getting a lobotomy and joining in the fantasy world these people live in, then it's simply not worth it to me. In the long run, we'll all be dead anyway. And if these self centered jerks who were pretty much wrong about everything are complaining their "bold roll of the dice" didn't work out the way they thought it should - well, I'm not going to sit around and listen to them blame us for their decisions and I'm certainly not going to sit around and listen to them whine about some bizarro world that they paint which portrays the democrats (and Howard Dean!) as the sole source of their problems.

Fuck 'em.

Update: See also Ian's most excellent post on the same subject over @ BOP - make sure to read the comments. I just love it when Democrats with a spine start spanking.

I always love the torture fantasy crowd. People who, like our good friend Eugene Volokh, watch the torturous death of a monster and imagine themselves as the victims extracting revenge and say, "Yea! I'd do that - and MORE!". There's something just particularly perverted about this point of view when you really think about it. But thinking about it isn't really the point - it's a visceral thing.

As usual, the left side of the parrotosphere is abuzz with excellent commentary. My favorite is uggabugga's take on the whole sordid affair

In general, we support Yglesias's reasoning. But we're happy to see law professor Volokh out there loudly trumpeting his views. Why? Because he has aspirations for getting on the California Supreme Court. The more Volokh is on the record advocating repulsive policies, the less likely he will ever make it to the bench.

But I'm not sure about this any more. I think that it's pretty clear now that the majority of American voters are either okay with the whole torture thing, or don't think the torture issue is as important as - say - the prosecution of the war on terror, or the president's view on abortion.

I think the right has turned all of this into a blood feud. Torture, carpet bombings - hey, even Matt Y had Afghanistan nuking fantasies on 9/11 - these are now the norm. These subjects which used to be outside the bounds of normal thinking (without cringing and saying "ewwww"). Now, they are part of serious political discourse.

I think what changed on 9/11 is that the right no longer cares anymore what anyone thinks. They really have just given up on the whole higher brain thing and have descended to the visceral level - the dog eat dog world of real politik. The world of prisons, fictional westerns and 3rd grade playground politics is the new political reality.

Pretty much everyone seems to be counseling us (the liberals) to dump people like me and get "tough". I mean, even the doves are saying we have to talk tougher, so it's not just the Lieberman and Zell Millers who are doing the bitch slapping.

Let's face it. Torture is the new black.

Update: Jeff G

And let’s face it: often times the sanctimony we build into our laws eclipses our natural human desire for vengeance—sometimes to good affect. But by arguing that in all situations our restraint is a sign of our being civilized and deliberate, we are suggesting, implicitly, that we as a society don’t have the capacity to draw distinctions between the severity of disparate acts. Yet I would argue that our legally-mandated “restraint”—rather than being a measure of our civilized maturity—is instead a sign of our codifying our own self-righteousness into law, often at the expense of those who are actually most affected by a criminal’s actions. In short, we induldge our self-congratulatory impulses, which rely, at base, on the statistical likelihood that we as individuals will never have to face what the families of the victims face. Worrying about how we will be judged “as a society,” and doing so at the expense of those whose pain we presume to understand—all in the service of some abstract principle that we hope, deep down, separates us from the “animals”—this is what diminishes us. By seeking to control our base emotions, we wind up punishing those we should be advocating for: the aggrieved.

The LO supplies a wonderful service by providing the debunking of "originalism" in 60 seconds.

To me, the whole "originalism" belief structure is one big stinking pile of poo and sums up all I despise about conservatism in one easy to understand package.

In short, all Article III says is:

The Judicial Power sAzaell extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which sAzaell be made, under their Authority

It doesn’t say that the “Judicial Power” can’t be used in this way or that way.

It doesn’t say judges can’t use this or that sort of reasoning when ruling on cases.

It doesn’t even say judges must explain their reasoning by issuing opinions.

(Does Scalia violate the Constitution by writing legal opinions? The Founders didn’t say he could!)

They are free to use whatever rationales they wish, stated or unstated, to get to whatever outcomes they wish.

(The only real check on their power is the possibility of impeachment by Congress.)

H/T to Jim Henley for the post title.

You must see this while you still can.

Here's the link to the full length version of the Burger King Tender Crisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch commercial that I posted about previously. They only seem to be playing silly cut versions (30 and 15 second destructo versions) which don't do the commercial justice.

Since I can't download the quick time to keep it for all posterity, you'll have to go click on the above link yourself to witness the full glory.

Yea, I'm insane. Yes, I think this is pretty much the epitome of art in the human species.

Yes, this does explain my Xenophile tendencies.

Update: Managed to get both the long version and the bastardized 30 second spot in both windows and quicktime versions.

Enjoy

Fantasy Ranch 30 second windows
Fantasy Ranch 30 second quicktime
Fantasy Ranch Full length windows
Fantasy Ranch Full length quicktime

When my belly starts a-rumblin',
and I'm jonesin' for a treat.
I close my eyes for a big surprise,
the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch.
I love the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch,
the breasts they grow on trees.
And streams of bacon ranch dressing,
flow right up to your knees.
Tumbleweeds of bacon,
and cheddar paves the streets.
Folks don't front 'ya cause ya got the juice,
there's a train of ladies comin' with a nice caboose.
Never get in trouble, never need an excuse,
the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch.
I love the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch
no one tells ya to behave.
Your wildest fantasies come true,
Dallas cheerleaders give you shaves.
Red onions make you laugh instead,
and french fries grow like weeds.
Ya get to veg all day,
all the lotto tickets pay.
The king who wants you to have it your way,
that's the Tendercrisp Bacon Cheddar Ranch.

Not really sure of the point of this meme, but none the less, here it is. . .

bold the states you've been to, underline the states you've lived in and italicize the state you're in now...

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

Shorter Nicholas D. Kristoff

I Have a Nightmare.

We should all be alarmed of the success in tarring the sins of the few on the backs of the many because it is precisely times like these that you really wish their credibility hadn't been ruined by people like me.

Thursday night I went out to have a few drinks with a group of fellow SF bay area bloggers. I had a great time talking with all these wonderful people and it was nice to put faces on the blogs. Only downside was the drive to Oakland in rush hour traffic. Still, not a terrible thing.

Looking forward to next month's get together.

*

Idle Thought

Why are the same people who are saying there's no crisis in fixing the Social Security crackup in mid-century the same people who say we have to act now to prevent the earth from warming up a Fahrenheit degree or two by 2100?

Or further, why are the people claiming some Arabic scrawled on a local bar napkin represents phenomenal evidence linking Al Qaeda with Saddam Hussein, the same people who say that the plausible deniability of torture is entirely plausible.

H/T Steve M.

I'm just saying.

Spam word? Man, that never even started.

Remember their names.

Democrats
Biden-DE; Byrd-WV; Carper-DE; Conrad-ND; Johnson-SD; Kohl-WI; Landrieu-LA; Lieberman-CT; Lincoln-AR; Nelson-FL; Nelson-NE; Pryor-AR; Salazr-CO; Stabenow-MI

"Moderate" Republicans
Allen-VA; Chafee-RI; Collins-ME; Hagel-NE; McCain-AZ; Snowe-ME; Specter-PA; Voinovich-OH

So, today's pro-Syrian rally is at least double the number of the anti-Syrian rally that forced the resignation of the government last week. So what's up? How are we to count this? By the number of babes in the photos?

And if this turns into violence as pro and anti Syrian supporters meet in the street, then what? Does Chimpy McHitlerBurton still get the credit? Or is that only when the babes show up for pictures?

Strangely, almost the entire right wing of the Parrotsphere (formerly known as the blogosphere) is completely silent on today's events.

Inquiring minds want to know. Is freedom still on the march or what?

Update 4: Lebonese democrats (I just love that phrase) strike back with more than a million babes marching for FREEDOM. You go girl!

Update 3:

Lord have mercy, but the neocon straightman, otherwise known as David Brooks, speaks truth through the medium of Andrew Sullivan.

This is in a country where people used to kill each other, over such things, remember. Now they are rallying. This is part of what Wolfowitz was working for.

Update: Jeff plays to his crowd of adoring fans and reminds of us why the pencil neck geeks at the circus always seem to rake in the big bucks. You simply can't pay for entertainment like that (oh, and I love the Dusty girls for their shirts, too).

Well, say goodbye to all that. . .

Tracking PCs anywhere on the Net

Kohno seems to be aware of the interest from surveillance groups that his techniques could generate, saying in his paper: "One could also use our techniques to help track laptops as they move, perhaps as part of a Carnivore-like project". Carnivore was Internet surveillance software built by the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation. Earlier in the paper Kohno overshadowed possible forensics applications, saying that investigators could use his techniques "to argue whether a given laptop was connected to the Internet from a given access location".

Another application for Kohno's technique is to "obtain information about whether two devices on the Internet, possibly shifted in time or IP addresses, are actually the same physical device."

The technique works by "exploiting small, microscopic deviations in device hardware: clock skews." In practice, Kohno's paper says, his techniques "exploit the fact that most modern TCP stacks implement the TCP timestamps option from RFC 1323 whereby, for performance purposes, each party in a TCP flow includes information about its perception of time in each outgoing packet. A fingerprinter can use the information contained within the TCP headers to estimate a device's clock skew and thereby fingerprint a physical device."

Kohno goes on to say: " Our techniques report consistent measurements when the measurer is thousands of miles, multiple hops, and tens of milliseconds away from the fingerprinted device, and when the fingerprinted device is connected to the Internet from different locations and via different access technologies. Further, one can apply our passive and semi-passive techniques when the fingerprinted device is behind a NAT or firewall."

Via Double Plus Ungood, I find that my extremely shitty American private religious education didn't have the intended effect on my ability to actually understand and used commonly confused words. . .

Advanced
You scored 86% Beginner, 100% Intermediate, 100% Advanced, and 61% Expert!
You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels' questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don't use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

So, my eyes are bleeding. Jason Alexander is playing with Colin Quin. In the championship game.

Playing some variation of "Texas hold-em". Texas hold-em, naturally, is the bane of any blogger (it is the number one spam phrase here) - they are playing the game of comment spammers.

Dave Foley (Kids in the Azaell fame) is hosting the "showdown".

My wife says "he looks cute in gray hair".

Ye gods. It's painful to watch and yet I can't tear my eyes away. . .

Why are the clouds darkening? And that fog - when the hell it did it show up? Hey, those aren't tentacles - right?

The horror.

The horror.

My Blog Log is a nice little service which tracks which outgoing links people click on your website. I've been using it for the past 2 days, and it's quite entertaining to see what links people click on.

There's a free version and one that'll cost you $25 a year.

I don't know. It just seems entertaining and useful. I'm sure there's some way to do this with MT - it's just a java script.

Oh, and BTW, the new Burger King commercial for their new Bacon Cheddar Ranch is positively surreal. If you see the shortened versions, you really don't get the whole effect and so it doesn't have the same smack to the center of your forehead.

But really. Ever since Burger King came out with that commercial of "Waking Up With The King", I was wondering where they were taking this.

I must say that it's kind of fun paying attention to commercials again.

Via The Church Sign Generator

So Andrew has another post up about the perception and reality of the democrats as far as national security is concerned. Myself, I feel simply infuriated by these kind of posts. And it's nothing personal against Andrew - he seems like a righteous dude despite being on the right side of the political fence. He points to an article Mathew of the widely misspelled last name which looks to be pretty good, but since it's behind a subscription wall I'll never read it (sorry, but I already have, like a zillion on line subscriptions and I don't need yet another).

Mathew's a great guy, a good liberal and he's a dyed in the wool member of the cruise missile left. I read his blog religiously, and it's pretty obvious that he has a far greater mind than I do in these policy areas. Maybe I understand basically what Matthew says - most likely not. I don't always agree with the guy, even though he's - like - a zillion times smarter than me.

In any event, it's not like I disagree with the entire premise of Andrew's post - i.e. that the democrats have a huge perception problem wrt national security issues. That's part of what's particularly infuriating about his post.

Okay, so I think I have it figured out now. There is a fixed amount of "freedom" and "democracy" that's been allocated to our planet.

For 220 years, the bulk of this freedom has been selfishly locked up in a handful of western countries - a small fraction of the world's population. As we spread freedom across the parched lands of the middle east, we must correspondingly "draw down" from our own private "freedom" accounts.

So I think this is where the compassion comes in the conservatives that rule our land. They really are just being generous taking the freedoms the blue states love so much and giving them to all these other countries.

When they are laughing and mocking the anti-war protesters marching in the streets, it's only because they are cheering the 2,000 Iraqis who are protesting the militants who are killing their families.

When they degrade you and leave a bag of flaming shit on your doorstep because you had the audacity to question Bush's 2000 election victory, it's only because that freedom was selflessly given to the Orange Revolution^tm as well as portions ladled out to the Cedar Revolution^tm.

Iraq merely takes a stunningly huge investment of our freedom in order to bear fruit.

But just think how free they'll be when the investment pays off.

Dude. This is, like, right across the street. 25-50K people. Out of nowhere. Right on my doorstep. Tomorrow morning.

Still, 50 foot waves and people who apparently have no fear. Gotta love that. Cold as hell, though.