I've read that more than 3 out of 4 Americans don't have a passport. Not good. America's a big country and one of the most diverse on Earth. We went on a 2,500 mile camping trip around the national parks of the Southwest a few years ago, and it was great. But spending time in other countries provides more than a vacation, more than scenic wonders, more than kicking back at a nice resort. International travel can give you a perspective that's reinforced by physical sensations, personal experience...things you can fall back on later, for a kind of mental nourishment and perspective.
That's even true here in Silicon Valley. My spouse and I have friends from Russia, Ukraine, India, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Scotland, England, Germany, Brazil, and the South (for me it counts as another country). But that's no substitute for breathing another country's air, having to negotiate currency exchange and all the myriad customs and procedures every country has, but which non-travelers take for granted.
We're going to Indonesia ourselves in a few days for a few weeks, traveling with an Indian, several Russians, and a Ukrainian. So we'll be getting multiple cultural perspectives.
People who discuss domestic American politics with no personal experience of how people and governments operate in other countries are flying half-blind--though they rarely realize it.
Of course a few weeks' vacation somewhere doesn't make you an expert. But if you balance that with reading up on that country, you can get a lot out of even fairly brief experiences. We honeymooned in Japan. Just 10 days there, going from Tokyo to the Japanese Alps to Kyoto and back on the bullet train. But I've seen literally hundreds of Japanese movies and studied the country's history and culture. The trip helped. The movies helped. The reading helped. Now at least when I want to consider the Japanese approach to a political issue I have the needed background to start.
So at least I'm eating my own dogfood.
And if you don't have a passport, get one. International travel doesn't have to be all that difficult. Go to an unfamiliar country for the first time with a group that's been there before. That's what we did with Indonesia. Now we're the ones introducing others to the country/language/culture etc.
Lastly, you'll never truly know what it means to be an American until you've traveled abroad.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Two Colorado districts recall Democrats who voted for gun control
What these recall elections reveal most of all is that their advocates' logic & facts are neither logical nor factual--but instead reflect a simplistic, emotionally powerful narrative that's pure propaganda--propaganda spoon-fed to them by their worst enemies, who they mistake for their best friends.
Their worst enemies aren't their boogeymen, the dreaded Gun-grabbin' Metrosexual College boy California Libruls all in cahoots with Uppity Drug-Dealin' Blacks. Their worst enemies are actually the hyper-rich corporatists whose insatiable thirst for More has grabbed away the rank-&-file Republicans' economic security...& then told them that owning an AR-15 with an extended magazine will make up for that.
But an extended-magazine AR-15 can't change the fact that the incomes of the richest 1% have soared into the stratosphere over the last four decades, while most everyone else's has stagnated or gone overseas. However, modern economics are incredibly complicated. Guns are simple, concrete, satisfying. President Obama was right--these people are over their heads trying to deal with modern life but are too proud to admit it, so they do indeed cling to their guns & their tribalized version of Christianity.
They think the rich, conservative politicians & pundits who look like them are like them. That's tribal thinking at work, & as every con artist from The Music Man to Wayne LaPierre knows, it works like a charm.
These NRA members have been played.
Their worst enemies aren't their boogeymen, the dreaded Gun-grabbin' Metrosexual College boy California Libruls all in cahoots with Uppity Drug-Dealin' Blacks. Their worst enemies are actually the hyper-rich corporatists whose insatiable thirst for More has grabbed away the rank-&-file Republicans' economic security...& then told them that owning an AR-15 with an extended magazine will make up for that.
But an extended-magazine AR-15 can't change the fact that the incomes of the richest 1% have soared into the stratosphere over the last four decades, while most everyone else's has stagnated or gone overseas. However, modern economics are incredibly complicated. Guns are simple, concrete, satisfying. President Obama was right--these people are over their heads trying to deal with modern life but are too proud to admit it, so they do indeed cling to their guns & their tribalized version of Christianity.
They think the rich, conservative politicians & pundits who look like them are like them. That's tribal thinking at work, & as every con artist from The Music Man to Wayne LaPierre knows, it works like a charm.
These NRA members have been played.
Sunday, September 8, 2013
Arguing about religion
To me the real issue is whether people can construct a way to live ethically sans religion. Absent that, it's easy to see how someone religious would feel like attacks on religion are trying to pull the rug out from under him, leaving him with a meaningless, foundation-less existence if he loses his religion.
This is why an avowed atheist can't get elected President in America, and public opinion polls back this up--atheists are generally despised and distrusted by a big majority of Americans. They see atheism as the negation of all they hold dear.
Of course the very word--"atheist"--conveys negation. All it describes is what one doesn't believe, not what one does believe. So it's easy to see why the average American would think that atheists believe nothing.
Past that it's tough to describe to a religious person how one's life is organized--other than as a sociopath--if one is not religious. Most religious people believe that only religious people have the feelings of care for others, of empathy, of kindness that they and their co-believers claim exclusive possession of.
For me a person's stated beliefs are only meaningful as I see them acted on in our day to day existence. What you do is who you are no matter what you say.
So if someone's a jerk, whether they're a Catholic jerk or a Methodist jerk or a Zoroastrian jerk or an atheistic jerk, what I care about is their being a jerk. Ditto if they're nice guys, if they're interesting to be around, if their word turns out to mean something.
Your beliefs are your business. Your actions are society's business. I will infer your real beliefs from your real actions, and that's what I'll go on.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Bomb Syria.
Today, with the self-righteous blinders on our hindsight, we condemn Neville Chamberlin for his policy of "peace in our time" appeasement of Hitler.
This is unfair to Chamberlain, to a degree--because he was expressing the will of the English people at that time. World War I had exhausted the English and killed a generation of young men in the trenches of Europe. The last thing they wanted was another war. So they demanded peace at any price, at any sacrifice of anyone who wasn't English.
They paid an enormous price for their shortsightedness.
Now Assad isn't Hitler. Syria is a patch on the 3rd Reich powerhouse. The price of our standing aside will be lower than the price England paid, and Assad at his worst will murder far fewer people than Hitler did.
At the same time, however, the price of our involvement would also be a patch on the price England paid when it was eventually forced into WWII, kicking and screaming. At least they didn't roll over like puppy dogs, like the French did.
The real point of the comparison is that the English were dead wrong in 1938 and didn't realize it.
America's doves-on-Syria are equally wrong. Their efforts to minimize what Assad is doing, to claim we can't tell whether the other side didn't really do it, to say it's none of our business, are all--for the most part--efforts to rationalize an unwillingness to expend any of our treasure to save the lives of people-who-are-not-us.
The far Right are at once hawkish and isolationist. This isn't a paradox, because both are consistent with being tribal. And Syrian women and children aren't included in what they see as our tribe. As good tribalists they're unable to empathize with innocent civilians who aren't part of our tribe, and we haven't been attacked, so their hawkishness isn't triggered.
Plus many of them are sufficiently racist that they're inflamed with a permanent, seething rage at that Uppity Negro in the White House. If he's for it they're against it--almost without regard to anything else.
The far Right are pacifistic. It's amazing to see their moralistic posturing against the American government for thinking of attacking one of the worst governments on Earth--while letting that Worst Government off the hook--is truly amazing. These people are not isolationist. In fact they tend to downplay the importance of national sovereignty--they believe we should give Mexican citizens American citizenship practically for the asking, because the Mexicans are poor and suffering.
Well the Syrians are poorer and suffering vastly more. But it will take acts of war to save those suffering Syrians.
Which means that for the Far Left, others' suffering doesn't matter if it would require action by our armed forces to right the wrongs involved.
This is simply cowardice.
The people who oppose hammering the Syrian government say the President hasn't thought through the potential consequences, which are unpredictable. But they aren't fully unpredictable. Russia isn't going to go to war with us over this because they possess a grossly inferior military establishment relative to ours. We would do to them what they did to Georgia. Syria isn't going to declare war on us, any more than they declared war on Israel when Israel took out missle shipments headed for Hezbollah.
We can't predict who will win this three-way civil war in Syria. But we can predict what will happen if we do nothing, given that Syria is being actively supported by Russia and Iran and the rebels don't have what they'd need to shoot down the government's choppers and jets or take out its tanks.
Right now the Russians are running their mouths about America's weakness. That isn't reason enough to start shooting, but it is a factor that will come into play in other situations. The notion that we're a paper tiger tends to make other governments misunderstand what America can do when sufficiently roused. But you have to use your warmaking power least when others are most convinced you will use it where you say it's important to you.
Both action on Syria and inaction over Syria have long-term consequences. The pity is that we're now suffering the long-term consequence of the previous Republican administration's military recklessness and arrogance. That consequence will go on for decades. This is not, however, an excuse for America withdrawing to our borders and telling the world to go hang itself. Which it will without the moral and physical force of the world's most powerful country continuing its thankless but necessary--for US--role of World's Cop.
This is unfair to Chamberlain, to a degree--because he was expressing the will of the English people at that time. World War I had exhausted the English and killed a generation of young men in the trenches of Europe. The last thing they wanted was another war. So they demanded peace at any price, at any sacrifice of anyone who wasn't English.
They paid an enormous price for their shortsightedness.
Now Assad isn't Hitler. Syria is a patch on the 3rd Reich powerhouse. The price of our standing aside will be lower than the price England paid, and Assad at his worst will murder far fewer people than Hitler did.
At the same time, however, the price of our involvement would also be a patch on the price England paid when it was eventually forced into WWII, kicking and screaming. At least they didn't roll over like puppy dogs, like the French did.
The real point of the comparison is that the English were dead wrong in 1938 and didn't realize it.
America's doves-on-Syria are equally wrong. Their efforts to minimize what Assad is doing, to claim we can't tell whether the other side didn't really do it, to say it's none of our business, are all--for the most part--efforts to rationalize an unwillingness to expend any of our treasure to save the lives of people-who-are-not-us.
The far Right are at once hawkish and isolationist. This isn't a paradox, because both are consistent with being tribal. And Syrian women and children aren't included in what they see as our tribe. As good tribalists they're unable to empathize with innocent civilians who aren't part of our tribe, and we haven't been attacked, so their hawkishness isn't triggered.
Plus many of them are sufficiently racist that they're inflamed with a permanent, seething rage at that Uppity Negro in the White House. If he's for it they're against it--almost without regard to anything else.
The far Right are pacifistic. It's amazing to see their moralistic posturing against the American government for thinking of attacking one of the worst governments on Earth--while letting that Worst Government off the hook--is truly amazing. These people are not isolationist. In fact they tend to downplay the importance of national sovereignty--they believe we should give Mexican citizens American citizenship practically for the asking, because the Mexicans are poor and suffering.
Well the Syrians are poorer and suffering vastly more. But it will take acts of war to save those suffering Syrians.
Which means that for the Far Left, others' suffering doesn't matter if it would require action by our armed forces to right the wrongs involved.
This is simply cowardice.
The people who oppose hammering the Syrian government say the President hasn't thought through the potential consequences, which are unpredictable. But they aren't fully unpredictable. Russia isn't going to go to war with us over this because they possess a grossly inferior military establishment relative to ours. We would do to them what they did to Georgia. Syria isn't going to declare war on us, any more than they declared war on Israel when Israel took out missle shipments headed for Hezbollah.
We can't predict who will win this three-way civil war in Syria. But we can predict what will happen if we do nothing, given that Syria is being actively supported by Russia and Iran and the rebels don't have what they'd need to shoot down the government's choppers and jets or take out its tanks.
Right now the Russians are running their mouths about America's weakness. That isn't reason enough to start shooting, but it is a factor that will come into play in other situations. The notion that we're a paper tiger tends to make other governments misunderstand what America can do when sufficiently roused. But you have to use your warmaking power least when others are most convinced you will use it where you say it's important to you.
Both action on Syria and inaction over Syria have long-term consequences. The pity is that we're now suffering the long-term consequence of the previous Republican administration's military recklessness and arrogance. That consequence will go on for decades. This is not, however, an excuse for America withdrawing to our borders and telling the world to go hang itself. Which it will without the moral and physical force of the world's most powerful country continuing its thankless but necessary--for US--role of World's Cop.
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
As for Syria, America is the world's Shabbas Goy
Around the world, nobody civilized wants Syria's dictator to be allowed to murder over 100,000 innocent civilians--thousands with nerve gas.
And around the world, nobody civilized wants their government to go to war with Syria to stop the dictator and his allies.
And around the world, nobody civilized wants to ask America to stop this mass murder of civilians.
They want America to stop the mass murder without the world's permission.
It's a win-win. You get to demonstrate against the hated Big Bully of the World while America does the unpleasant, deadly work without which Syria's dictator will never stop--not as long as anyone is left alive in Syria who opposes him.
Meaning that America is the world's Shabbas Goy.
In strict Orthodox Judaism, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, you aren't allowed to do secular things like turning on the AC or the radio or getting takeout from the Chinese-To-Go place on the corner. But you can let a Goy (non-Jew) do it for you. But only if you don't ask him. He has to guess what you want, because asking him would break the rule.
That's us. War is so horrible. And Europeans know this from millennia of wars fought on every square foot of European soil, over and over and over. The last war fought on American soil (apart from Oahu and the Aleutians) was 150 years ago, and it's still being refought on the downlow by the revanchist Southerners who are now the hard core of the Tea Party and hence of the GOP--in part because it was on their soil that the war was fought. No real wars have ever been fought in the state I live in, not since the dawn of history. So for me the Civil War is a history book thing--especially since I don't see blacks as The Other.
Imagine what it's like for the Euros. Practically every sizeable plot of arable land could have a plaque commemorating some battle or other--maybe a bunch.
And of course Syria is a very tricky situation with more than two sides. You've got the Sunni majority pitted against everyone else (mostly Shiites and related sects). You've got the educated and the middle class and probably a solid majority of Syrians who want a secular democracy--at least as secular as Turkey's. You've also got Islamist militants who want a theocracy couple with exterminating Christianity and the Shiite branch of Islam in Syria. You've got the Christian minority who are terrified of a post-dictator Syria treating them like post-Saddan Iraq has.
You've also got the bad reputation the Republicans gave America with their trillion dollar (over time) invasion and occupation of the country that hadn't attacked us, based on trumped-up charges and an activist but incurious President telling the world "Trust us." In addition you've got the same administration's incompetent, attention-deficit mishandling of Afghanistan. All within the last decade or so.
And the world has mass murder and mayhem going on elsewhere as well--the Eastern Congo, Sudan, China's stealthy ethnicide of the nation of Tibet. Though weapons of mass destruction aren't being used anywhere else to my knowledge.
At any rate anyone around the world who opposes American intervention in Syria can give a lot of reasons for waving placards and denouncing those Warmonger Americans.
I'm sure Dr. Assad the Ophthalmologist is touched by all the support he's getting. If you look at the demonstrations around the world you'd think it was the Americans who were dropping nerve gas on thousands of noncombatants including small children. This is eased by the fact that the murdered civilians aren't Europeans, aren't Anglo Whites. They're Muslim, so they're part of the vast Other whose lives and deaths appear not to be very meaningful to most Rich World inhabitants.
But in the last analysis I think a majority of the rich world's populations want us to stop Assad from using WMDs and then blame us for whatever we do to accomplish that--even if killing a hundred civilians saved 10,000 lives that would otherwise have been lost.
And around the world, nobody civilized wants their government to go to war with Syria to stop the dictator and his allies.
And around the world, nobody civilized wants to ask America to stop this mass murder of civilians.
They want America to stop the mass murder without the world's permission.
It's a win-win. You get to demonstrate against the hated Big Bully of the World while America does the unpleasant, deadly work without which Syria's dictator will never stop--not as long as anyone is left alive in Syria who opposes him.
Meaning that America is the world's Shabbas Goy.
In strict Orthodox Judaism, from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, you aren't allowed to do secular things like turning on the AC or the radio or getting takeout from the Chinese-To-Go place on the corner. But you can let a Goy (non-Jew) do it for you. But only if you don't ask him. He has to guess what you want, because asking him would break the rule.
That's us. War is so horrible. And Europeans know this from millennia of wars fought on every square foot of European soil, over and over and over. The last war fought on American soil (apart from Oahu and the Aleutians) was 150 years ago, and it's still being refought on the downlow by the revanchist Southerners who are now the hard core of the Tea Party and hence of the GOP--in part because it was on their soil that the war was fought. No real wars have ever been fought in the state I live in, not since the dawn of history. So for me the Civil War is a history book thing--especially since I don't see blacks as The Other.
Imagine what it's like for the Euros. Practically every sizeable plot of arable land could have a plaque commemorating some battle or other--maybe a bunch.
And of course Syria is a very tricky situation with more than two sides. You've got the Sunni majority pitted against everyone else (mostly Shiites and related sects). You've got the educated and the middle class and probably a solid majority of Syrians who want a secular democracy--at least as secular as Turkey's. You've also got Islamist militants who want a theocracy couple with exterminating Christianity and the Shiite branch of Islam in Syria. You've got the Christian minority who are terrified of a post-dictator Syria treating them like post-Saddan Iraq has.
You've also got the bad reputation the Republicans gave America with their trillion dollar (over time) invasion and occupation of the country that hadn't attacked us, based on trumped-up charges and an activist but incurious President telling the world "Trust us." In addition you've got the same administration's incompetent, attention-deficit mishandling of Afghanistan. All within the last decade or so.
And the world has mass murder and mayhem going on elsewhere as well--the Eastern Congo, Sudan, China's stealthy ethnicide of the nation of Tibet. Though weapons of mass destruction aren't being used anywhere else to my knowledge.
At any rate anyone around the world who opposes American intervention in Syria can give a lot of reasons for waving placards and denouncing those Warmonger Americans.
I'm sure Dr. Assad the Ophthalmologist is touched by all the support he's getting. If you look at the demonstrations around the world you'd think it was the Americans who were dropping nerve gas on thousands of noncombatants including small children. This is eased by the fact that the murdered civilians aren't Europeans, aren't Anglo Whites. They're Muslim, so they're part of the vast Other whose lives and deaths appear not to be very meaningful to most Rich World inhabitants.
But in the last analysis I think a majority of the rich world's populations want us to stop Assad from using WMDs and then blame us for whatever we do to accomplish that--even if killing a hundred civilians saved 10,000 lives that would otherwise have been lost.
Sunday, September 1, 2013
Best quote from the Sunday talk shows today
About the Republicans clamoring for President Obama to go to Congress about whether we should strike Syria over its use of WMDs:
"The dog has caught the car."
--David Axelrod
However, that said, I worry that President Obama may not be familiar with the principles of war as laid out by Von Clausewitz, the 19th century Prussian officer who's still the most-quoted military scientist in the war colleges.
And I think Von Clausewitz would say that "proportionate" strikes are useless. What's useful is DISproportionate strikes. If our strike hammered every major fixed installation Syria's government has got--took out its air defense system, cratered every one of its airfields, took out every chopper and airplane they've got that's findable, and much more. The nice thing about attacking a country instead of a nongovernment operator like Al Qaeda is that every national government has lots of fixed assets that are much easier to target.
That said, politically speaking, however the Republicans construe President Obama going to Congress as him blinking, him being weak yada yada--if they don't OK this strike they're going to be the ones who are American fries-eating surrender monkeys--contrary to the Republican Party's self image as the swaggering, macho tough guys.
And if they do OK this strike they can't blame him for the results afterwards, because they'll share in those results for better or for worse. Not to mention the fact the Republicans used WMDs as the pretext for invading another country and socking America with the trillion-dollar tab--and that little boo-boo is doubtless why the Brits refused to side with us this time around. A Republican administration made a mockery of America's credibility with the world, and we'll be playing the diplomatic price for that for decades.
"The dog has caught the car."
--David Axelrod
However, that said, I worry that President Obama may not be familiar with the principles of war as laid out by Von Clausewitz, the 19th century Prussian officer who's still the most-quoted military scientist in the war colleges.
And I think Von Clausewitz would say that "proportionate" strikes are useless. What's useful is DISproportionate strikes. If our strike hammered every major fixed installation Syria's government has got--took out its air defense system, cratered every one of its airfields, took out every chopper and airplane they've got that's findable, and much more. The nice thing about attacking a country instead of a nongovernment operator like Al Qaeda is that every national government has lots of fixed assets that are much easier to target.
That said, politically speaking, however the Republicans construe President Obama going to Congress as him blinking, him being weak yada yada--if they don't OK this strike they're going to be the ones who are American fries-eating surrender monkeys--contrary to the Republican Party's self image as the swaggering, macho tough guys.
And if they do OK this strike they can't blame him for the results afterwards, because they'll share in those results for better or for worse. Not to mention the fact the Republicans used WMDs as the pretext for invading another country and socking America with the trillion-dollar tab--and that little boo-boo is doubtless why the Brits refused to side with us this time around. A Republican administration made a mockery of America's credibility with the world, and we'll be playing the diplomatic price for that for decades.
Thursday, August 29, 2013
Science cannot figure out if God exists or not--true, but does it matter?
"Science cannot figure out if God exists or not."
This is literally true but misses how the progression of our understanding of the natural world has gradually occupied space once occupied by supernatural explanations.
What's left is ethics. Religious people dislike atheists so much in part due to the fear that without a deity's carrot (heaven) and stick (hell), humans wouldn't behave, and chaos would ensue.
Or that, at best, we'd wind up with the tribal morality summarized by the Arab saying "Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my neighbor. Me, and my neighbor against the stranger."
This arena--the biology of good and evil--has been my particular interest for many decades. There's actually a fascinating book about it that I hope Jackie reads someday: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology.
Sociobiologists aren't saying they've found the Ten Commandments coded in our DNA. Just that we're designed to care for others--at least others who are related to us, others in our gene pool (perceived as our tribe). The great contribution of Christianity was in expanding the notion of "our tribe" to all peoples everywhere.
To put it another way, morality has an amoral basis--the gene pool's need to grow and prosper--with moral results: marriage, good citizenship, the Golden Rule, rule of laws, not men--and the willingness to defend all that, even with deadly force (if all peaceful alternatives have failed).
Religion articulates, shapes, and reifies natural impulses. Science can tell you where those impulses come from. It can't deal with the "supernatural" but it can tell you where the notion that there is a "supernatural" came from.
I have no desire to replace religion with nothing. I want humanity to live by moral codes. But across the rich world in particular, the moral codes of religions are gradually being supplanted by secular moral codes. This has already happened in much of Western Europe, and is expanding in America, though still by a small minority.
The advantage of moral codes based on nature is that nature is the firmest foundation. The disadvantage is that it's harder to explain to the average person. I can say that, living in a very secular neck of the woods--Silicon Valley--I don't see the nonreligious people I know stealing from orphans and cheating on their mates any more than do the religious people I know (and I know many of these as well, via my spouse).
The nonreligious people I know don't picket churches with placards saying "Don't Believe!" They just go about their business, never thinking about religion one way or another. It's simply irrelevant to them.
This is literally true but misses how the progression of our understanding of the natural world has gradually occupied space once occupied by supernatural explanations.
What's left is ethics. Religious people dislike atheists so much in part due to the fear that without a deity's carrot (heaven) and stick (hell), humans wouldn't behave, and chaos would ensue.
Or that, at best, we'd wind up with the tribal morality summarized by the Arab saying "Me against my brother. Me and my brother against my neighbor. Me, and my neighbor against the stranger."
This arena--the biology of good and evil--has been my particular interest for many decades. There's actually a fascinating book about it that I hope Jackie reads someday: The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology.
Sociobiologists aren't saying they've found the Ten Commandments coded in our DNA. Just that we're designed to care for others--at least others who are related to us, others in our gene pool (perceived as our tribe). The great contribution of Christianity was in expanding the notion of "our tribe" to all peoples everywhere.
To put it another way, morality has an amoral basis--the gene pool's need to grow and prosper--with moral results: marriage, good citizenship, the Golden Rule, rule of laws, not men--and the willingness to defend all that, even with deadly force (if all peaceful alternatives have failed).
Religion articulates, shapes, and reifies natural impulses. Science can tell you where those impulses come from. It can't deal with the "supernatural" but it can tell you where the notion that there is a "supernatural" came from.
I have no desire to replace religion with nothing. I want humanity to live by moral codes. But across the rich world in particular, the moral codes of religions are gradually being supplanted by secular moral codes. This has already happened in much of Western Europe, and is expanding in America, though still by a small minority.
The advantage of moral codes based on nature is that nature is the firmest foundation. The disadvantage is that it's harder to explain to the average person. I can say that, living in a very secular neck of the woods--Silicon Valley--I don't see the nonreligious people I know stealing from orphans and cheating on their mates any more than do the religious people I know (and I know many of these as well, via my spouse).
The nonreligious people I know don't picket churches with placards saying "Don't Believe!" They just go about their business, never thinking about religion one way or another. It's simply irrelevant to them.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Looks both the Republicans and Democrats are ignoring Von Clausewitz when they talk about Syria
GOP leaders are faulting the President for not being bold and decisive about Syria. I guess their model is Bush with Irag. Some model. Meanwhile the President is talking about a "measured response" to the Syrian dictatorship's ethnicidal efforts using war gases.
Republicans should remember that Von Clausewitz said never go to war until you get the people behind you. And the American people don't want us to get involved in Syria. I'm not saying they're right or wrong--just that if you do want to go to war, first you have to make sure of popular support. You don't have to make the argument after a Pearl Harbor or 9/11. You do when we haven't been attacked.
Democrats should remember that Von Clausewitz said if you do go to war, your first blow should be hard enough to flatten the enemy. War isn't a slap fight. That's why Bush's effort in Afghanistan was such a failure--he went in light, failed to get Bin Ladin, and while he decapitated the enemy regime in the capital, it had plenty of fight left, as the ensuing decade has shown.
I'm not saying a blow hard enough to impress Von Clausewitz would require a full invasion of Syria. But it would have to create "shock and awe" in the enemy.
Oh, and never make public threats you aren't willing to follow up on. Don't say something is unacceptable unless you mean it and act on that. Otherwise say something else.
Republicans should remember that Von Clausewitz said never go to war until you get the people behind you. And the American people don't want us to get involved in Syria. I'm not saying they're right or wrong--just that if you do want to go to war, first you have to make sure of popular support. You don't have to make the argument after a Pearl Harbor or 9/11. You do when we haven't been attacked.
Democrats should remember that Von Clausewitz said if you do go to war, your first blow should be hard enough to flatten the enemy. War isn't a slap fight. That's why Bush's effort in Afghanistan was such a failure--he went in light, failed to get Bin Ladin, and while he decapitated the enemy regime in the capital, it had plenty of fight left, as the ensuing decade has shown.
I'm not saying a blow hard enough to impress Von Clausewitz would require a full invasion of Syria. But it would have to create "shock and awe" in the enemy.
Oh, and never make public threats you aren't willing to follow up on. Don't say something is unacceptable unless you mean it and act on that. Otherwise say something else.
Saturday, August 24, 2013
What's wrong with income redistribution?
The Republican Party and its talking heads on TV and radio denounce the Democrats daily for advocating "redistribution of wealth." Democrats want to steal money from the makers and hand it over to the takers (psst: especially Black and Brown "takers").
Next time you hear a friend or relative soapboxing about this, ask them a simple question:
How do they account for the fact that since 1979, the inflation-adjusted income of the richest 1% has soared at 26 times the rate of folks in the middle class?
Sure looks like wealth redistribution to me--only not by Democrats.
But Republicans tend to flatly deny statistics like the one I cited here, gotten from financial journalist Ali Velshi on his new AlJazeera news program. And if you say you got it from AlJazeera, well, that's like saying you got it from Sadam Hussein.
But how about the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)? The right wing quotes the CBO part of the time and then denies its validity the other part (when they don't like the figures).
But for what it's worth, check out the CBO's report "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007."
For example:
The share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.
"The rich get rich and the poor get poorer..."
See what sorts of mental gymnastics your right wing friends and acquaintances and relatives go through as they try to fit the facts into their anti-Democratic Party narrative.
Despite the simple fact that there is a class war going on all right, and you can see the results in that chart. It's the 1% against the 99%, and they've won and we've lost.
So far.
Next time you hear a friend or relative soapboxing about this, ask them a simple question:
How do they account for the fact that since 1979, the inflation-adjusted income of the richest 1% has soared at 26 times the rate of folks in the middle class?
Sure looks like wealth redistribution to me--only not by Democrats.
But Republicans tend to flatly deny statistics like the one I cited here, gotten from financial journalist Ali Velshi on his new AlJazeera news program. And if you say you got it from AlJazeera, well, that's like saying you got it from Sadam Hussein.
But how about the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)? The right wing quotes the CBO part of the time and then denies its validity the other part (when they don't like the figures).
But for what it's worth, check out the CBO's report "Trends in the Distribution of Household Income Between 1979 and 2007."
For example:
The share of income going to higher-income households rose, while the share going to lower-income households fell.
"The rich get rich and the poor get poorer..."
See what sorts of mental gymnastics your right wing friends and acquaintances and relatives go through as they try to fit the facts into their anti-Democratic Party narrative.
Despite the simple fact that there is a class war going on all right, and you can see the results in that chart. It's the 1% against the 99%, and they've won and we've lost.
So far.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
The hidden contradiction in the GOP's denunciation of President Obama's response to the Egyptian coup
It's easy to say that the President is weak and waffling about the situation in Egypt. Just as it's easy to say that the Arab Spring has failed, and that its failure is somehow President Obama's fault.
The hidden contradiction stems from the fact that the people saying that are generally the people who want our foreign policy to be dictated by Israel's current right wing government headed by Benyamin Netanyahu.
And Israel's current government wants us to be doing exactly what President Obama is doing--not fully supporting anyone, not fully withdrawing from our current commitments to Egypt.
As for the Arab Spring failing--that's just shortsightedness. How long did our Colonial Spring take to succeed? From the first protests to becoming fully independent, it took us at least 35 years (to the end of the War of 1812). Giving the Arab Spring a couple of years to succeed makes no sense at all. And it should be obvious that things will never return to the old status quo there.
Interestingly, left wing ideologues are also very unhappy with President Obama's cautious approach. Ideologues Left and Right love the simple, bold approach based on principle, without taking consequences into account.
But the Leftists don't hate President Obama because he's black, while a majority of the Rightists do. And this provides a perfect example. Given their slavish devotion to Israel's Netanyahu government, they should be praising President Obama for--in this case--doing exactly what Netanyahu wants him to do.
Yet they just can't help themselves--they're compelled to denounce the President for whatever he does, even when he's carrying out conservative plans, such as the Affordable Care Act.
Another argument for supporting the Egyptian military's brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is the fact that in the last few days Brotherhood supporters responded to the Army crackdown, in part, by attacking a dozen Christian churches around Egypt. Right wingers talk about Muslim persecution of Christians, and they're factually correct. So shouldn't they support President Obama supporting the force in Egypt that's protecting Egyptian Christians from Muslim extremists?
The hidden contradiction stems from the fact that the people saying that are generally the people who want our foreign policy to be dictated by Israel's current right wing government headed by Benyamin Netanyahu.
And Israel's current government wants us to be doing exactly what President Obama is doing--not fully supporting anyone, not fully withdrawing from our current commitments to Egypt.
As for the Arab Spring failing--that's just shortsightedness. How long did our Colonial Spring take to succeed? From the first protests to becoming fully independent, it took us at least 35 years (to the end of the War of 1812). Giving the Arab Spring a couple of years to succeed makes no sense at all. And it should be obvious that things will never return to the old status quo there.
Interestingly, left wing ideologues are also very unhappy with President Obama's cautious approach. Ideologues Left and Right love the simple, bold approach based on principle, without taking consequences into account.
But the Leftists don't hate President Obama because he's black, while a majority of the Rightists do. And this provides a perfect example. Given their slavish devotion to Israel's Netanyahu government, they should be praising President Obama for--in this case--doing exactly what Netanyahu wants him to do.
Yet they just can't help themselves--they're compelled to denounce the President for whatever he does, even when he's carrying out conservative plans, such as the Affordable Care Act.
Another argument for supporting the Egyptian military's brutal crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood is the fact that in the last few days Brotherhood supporters responded to the Army crackdown, in part, by attacking a dozen Christian churches around Egypt. Right wingers talk about Muslim persecution of Christians, and they're factually correct. So shouldn't they support President Obama supporting the force in Egypt that's protecting Egyptian Christians from Muslim extremists?
Why is it called "ObamaCare" ?
When you're engineering propaganda campaigns in a democracy with laws you pretty much have to obey such laws as exist (political statements can be more slanderous and just plain false than slander of private citizens, businesses and institutions).
But for most statements you need plausible deniability while you're communicating with people in dogwhistle language.
"ObamaCare" is a perfect example. Who could complain? It is, after all, the signature legislation of the President's presidency.
But that's the thing about dogwhistles. You don't hear what the dogs hear.
"ObamaCare" serves several masters. Personalizing the huge omnibus bill that represents the first reform in America's healthcare system in over a century lets the Republicans avoid the issues involved. Making it about hating the person sidesteps all the benefits for ordinary Americans in the ACA and focuses voters' minds on just hating the person of the President.
Enormously wealthy special interests and demagogues have spend hundreds of millions of dollars since 2007 stoking personal hatred for the President--to a degree that's striking even in America's highly adversarial political system.
So calling the Affordable Care Act "ObamaCare" piggybacks on all the propaganda of aggrievance and scapegoating put out by the special interests that have profited so enormously from the old healthcare system.
But for most statements you need plausible deniability while you're communicating with people in dogwhistle language.
"ObamaCare" is a perfect example. Who could complain? It is, after all, the signature legislation of the President's presidency.
But that's the thing about dogwhistles. You don't hear what the dogs hear.
"ObamaCare" serves several masters. Personalizing the huge omnibus bill that represents the first reform in America's healthcare system in over a century lets the Republicans avoid the issues involved. Making it about hating the person sidesteps all the benefits for ordinary Americans in the ACA and focuses voters' minds on just hating the person of the President.
Enormously wealthy special interests and demagogues have spend hundreds of millions of dollars since 2007 stoking personal hatred for the President--to a degree that's striking even in America's highly adversarial political system.
So calling the Affordable Care Act "ObamaCare" piggybacks on all the propaganda of aggrievance and scapegoating put out by the special interests that have profited so enormously from the old healthcare system.
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Al Quedatalk--a perfect example of Republican lying about what the President is saying
The Republican leadership desperately needs President Obama to be weak and feckless when it comes to Al Qaeda.
The GOP brand has depended for many decades on the narrative "Conservatives strong, Liberals weak." In addition, the Party's deeply racist Southern core has depended for 250 years on imagining that all Negroes--in particular Negro men--are incompetent in positions of responsibility.
Problem is, President Obama nailed Osama bin Ladin and has been pursuing Al Qaeda diligently around the world.
But the GOP leadership realizes that for many if not most people, an emotionally compelling narrative trumps mere facts.
And so we have the spectacle of the Republican leadership consistently misrepresenting what President Obama has said and done regarding Al Qaeda.
The President says we've busted up Al Qaeda HQ, greatly hampering their ability to mount the kind of spectacular attack on us that 9/11 exemplified. He also says that their ideology has metastasized, such that there are many regional Al Qaedas now in existence--in part courtesy of the last Republican President attacking the wrong country and thus validating Al Qaeda's own narrative to Muslims that America is at war with Islam, and also courtesy of the incendiary things so many Republican leaders have said about that religion in toto, to be quoted endlessly by Islamists.
The Republicans say the President said Al Qaeda is finished and there's nothing to worry about now. He never said that, he never implied that, and his actions belie that. But this baldfaced lie is consistent with both the emotional anti-Liberal narrative and the White Southern anti-Negro narrative, and so it's believed by the GOP's more thoughtless voters.
The GOP brand has depended for many decades on the narrative "Conservatives strong, Liberals weak." In addition, the Party's deeply racist Southern core has depended for 250 years on imagining that all Negroes--in particular Negro men--are incompetent in positions of responsibility.
Problem is, President Obama nailed Osama bin Ladin and has been pursuing Al Qaeda diligently around the world.
But the GOP leadership realizes that for many if not most people, an emotionally compelling narrative trumps mere facts.
And so we have the spectacle of the Republican leadership consistently misrepresenting what President Obama has said and done regarding Al Qaeda.
The President says we've busted up Al Qaeda HQ, greatly hampering their ability to mount the kind of spectacular attack on us that 9/11 exemplified. He also says that their ideology has metastasized, such that there are many regional Al Qaedas now in existence--in part courtesy of the last Republican President attacking the wrong country and thus validating Al Qaeda's own narrative to Muslims that America is at war with Islam, and also courtesy of the incendiary things so many Republican leaders have said about that religion in toto, to be quoted endlessly by Islamists.
The Republicans say the President said Al Qaeda is finished and there's nothing to worry about now. He never said that, he never implied that, and his actions belie that. But this baldfaced lie is consistent with both the emotional anti-Liberal narrative and the White Southern anti-Negro narrative, and so it's believed by the GOP's more thoughtless voters.
Monday, August 5, 2013
What makes journalism balanced?
The Republican Party's nominal leader--Reince Priebus--has declared that the Republicans should boycott any future presidential debates that occur on CNN or MSNBC, if both do their planned documentaries on Secretary of State Clinton. Because they're so biased against all things Republican.
For proof there's the Pew survey of the three news networks' coverage on the eve of the last election:
>>Numbers on the eve of the 2012 election from the Pew Research Center showed CNN and NBC’s cable network, MSNBC, spent more time on stories that painted GOP nominee Mitt Romney in a negative light than any other network.
While 36 percent of CNN’s stories about Romney were negative, by Pew’s count, just 11 percent were positive.
And while 71 percent of MSNBC’s coverage of Romney was negative, just 3 percent was positive.
Pew shows CNN was much more evenly split when it came to President Obama, while MSNBC’s coverage of Obama tilted very favorably in the president’s direction.
(On the flip side, Fox’s coverage tilted heavily in Romney’s favor and was very critical of Obama.)<<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/08/05/why-the-rnc-is-picking-a-fight-with-nbc-and-cnn-in-two-charts/?tid=pm_politics_pop
But there's a logical fallacy here. Why should coverage be 50-50? Or positive? Or negative? Doesn't the truth count?
For example, after Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the Oklahoma bombing, MSNBC's coverage of him was all negative. But nobody accused MSNBC of bias because of that. The current mayor of San Diego--a Democrat--has gotten 99% negative coverage on MSNBC recently, because he's a sexual harasser of epic scope. By the RNC's logic they should ding MSNBC on not giving that mayor 50-50 coverage. Note, by the way, that MSNBC comes down hard on Democratic politicians who prove to have feet of clay, while FOX is far gentler on wayward pols if they're Republican.
How about the idea that politicians don't deserve positive--or negative--coverage just because they're elected officials or wannabes? They have to earn our respect with good political words and actions.
So maybe the less-positive coverage of Romney and more-positive coverage of Obama on MSNBC was because Obama was a better candidate.
You don't have to agree with that. I'm not proving it here. Just that the implicit 50-50 rule for coverage of politicians is complete hogwash--worse, I'd propose that it's mostly invoked by and for the inferior candidate--at least as far as the mainstream press is concerned.
I expect MSNBC and FOX News to have an editorial slant, even though FOX News constantly claims it's "fair and balanced" which is laughable--as it would be if MSNBC made a similar claim (only it doesn't). But I expect the major broadcast networks and CNN to be actually fair and balanced.
Which they aren't if they prop up the inferior candidate with equal and equally positive coverage.
For proof there's the Pew survey of the three news networks' coverage on the eve of the last election:
>>Numbers on the eve of the 2012 election from the Pew Research Center showed CNN and NBC’s cable network, MSNBC, spent more time on stories that painted GOP nominee Mitt Romney in a negative light than any other network.
While 36 percent of CNN’s stories about Romney were negative, by Pew’s count, just 11 percent were positive.
And while 71 percent of MSNBC’s coverage of Romney was negative, just 3 percent was positive.
Pew shows CNN was much more evenly split when it came to President Obama, while MSNBC’s coverage of Obama tilted very favorably in the president’s direction.
(On the flip side, Fox’s coverage tilted heavily in Romney’s favor and was very critical of Obama.)<<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/08/05/why-the-rnc-is-picking-a-fight-with-nbc-and-cnn-in-two-charts/?tid=pm_politics_pop
But there's a logical fallacy here. Why should coverage be 50-50? Or positive? Or negative? Doesn't the truth count?
For example, after Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the Oklahoma bombing, MSNBC's coverage of him was all negative. But nobody accused MSNBC of bias because of that. The current mayor of San Diego--a Democrat--has gotten 99% negative coverage on MSNBC recently, because he's a sexual harasser of epic scope. By the RNC's logic they should ding MSNBC on not giving that mayor 50-50 coverage. Note, by the way, that MSNBC comes down hard on Democratic politicians who prove to have feet of clay, while FOX is far gentler on wayward pols if they're Republican.
How about the idea that politicians don't deserve positive--or negative--coverage just because they're elected officials or wannabes? They have to earn our respect with good political words and actions.
So maybe the less-positive coverage of Romney and more-positive coverage of Obama on MSNBC was because Obama was a better candidate.
You don't have to agree with that. I'm not proving it here. Just that the implicit 50-50 rule for coverage of politicians is complete hogwash--worse, I'd propose that it's mostly invoked by and for the inferior candidate--at least as far as the mainstream press is concerned.
I expect MSNBC and FOX News to have an editorial slant, even though FOX News constantly claims it's "fair and balanced" which is laughable--as it would be if MSNBC made a similar claim (only it doesn't). But I expect the major broadcast networks and CNN to be actually fair and balanced.
Which they aren't if they prop up the inferior candidate with equal and equally positive coverage.
Thursday, August 1, 2013
Most Republicans insist that their judgments are color blind. True?
A recent AP poll found that 79% of registered Republicans expressed overtly racist beliefs. Of course if you believe that blacks actually are inferior, you won't believe you're PRE-judiced. You'll believe you're POST-judiced.
That is, if blacks really are inferior, a person who believes blacks are inferior isn't racist, and those who claim he is are just prejudiced against whites and/or "playing the race card."
I bring this up because I was just reading down the comment thread on the U.S News website about the 2nd Zimmerman juror who said he "Got away with murder."
If you skim down it a ways you'll see a lot more than the fact that nearly all who see themselves as conservative believe that George Zimmerman was totally justified in every single thing he did the night he shot Trayvon Martin dead. You'll see innumerable expressions of racist beliefs so hate-filled that I'd have thought I was on a Ku Klux Klan website.
These expressions were not needed to argue the facts of the case or how Florida's Stand Your Ground law exonerated Zimmerman. Or even simple self defense, though it should be obvious from the judge's instructions and the jurors' interviews that Stand Your Ground was integral to the case despite the defense team not citing it (because they knew the state of Florida would do it for them).
So these expressions were gratuitous expressions of hatred and contempt for blacks, not much different from what Southerners have been saying for hundreds of years in order to justify what they did to blacks.
Of course nobody said "I think blacks are inferior to whites." But..I don't even want to repeat what they said here. Just skim down the thread.
And after skimming down the thread, you should also understand why 95% of blacks vote Democrat.
Along with the vast majority of Americans who object to racism.
And you should also see why today's Republican Party is seen as primarily a regional party representing the Southern states along with their rural Midwestern and Southwestern satellites.
I was just reading a comment on another article--one in the NY Times--by a professional woman who with her husband moved to the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle in North Carolina. Both had gotten great, well-paid jobs. They settled in and planned to make their careers there. But within a year or so the lady reported that they pulled up stakes and left the South despite the great jobs they had there, because both we so disgusted at the pervasive racism and misogyny.
Many Northerners just don't realize just how bad it is down there.
That is, if blacks really are inferior, a person who believes blacks are inferior isn't racist, and those who claim he is are just prejudiced against whites and/or "playing the race card."
I bring this up because I was just reading down the comment thread on the U.S News website about the 2nd Zimmerman juror who said he "Got away with murder."
If you skim down it a ways you'll see a lot more than the fact that nearly all who see themselves as conservative believe that George Zimmerman was totally justified in every single thing he did the night he shot Trayvon Martin dead. You'll see innumerable expressions of racist beliefs so hate-filled that I'd have thought I was on a Ku Klux Klan website.
These expressions were not needed to argue the facts of the case or how Florida's Stand Your Ground law exonerated Zimmerman. Or even simple self defense, though it should be obvious from the judge's instructions and the jurors' interviews that Stand Your Ground was integral to the case despite the defense team not citing it (because they knew the state of Florida would do it for them).
So these expressions were gratuitous expressions of hatred and contempt for blacks, not much different from what Southerners have been saying for hundreds of years in order to justify what they did to blacks.
Of course nobody said "I think blacks are inferior to whites." But..I don't even want to repeat what they said here. Just skim down the thread.
And after skimming down the thread, you should also understand why 95% of blacks vote Democrat.
Along with the vast majority of Americans who object to racism.
And you should also see why today's Republican Party is seen as primarily a regional party representing the Southern states along with their rural Midwestern and Southwestern satellites.
I was just reading a comment on another article--one in the NY Times--by a professional woman who with her husband moved to the Raleigh-Durham Research Triangle in North Carolina. Both had gotten great, well-paid jobs. They settled in and planned to make their careers there. But within a year or so the lady reported that they pulled up stakes and left the South despite the great jobs they had there, because both we so disgusted at the pervasive racism and misogyny.
Many Northerners just don't realize just how bad it is down there.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
The GOP has won and will continue to win if you look at it this way.
Apart from the Presidency, the Republican Party is sitting pretty in the 22 or so states they dominate. They've gerrymandered those states ruthlessly & passed laws designed to suppress Democratic voting blocs--especially blacks.
So they're created a kind of New Confederacy among those 22 states, able to resist Washington's efforts to civilize them because they can rely on their representatives in Washington to block nearly anything a Democratic President and Senate majority tries to do to them. They can't lead the nation through the Presidency & a Senate majority, but they've ensured that the nation can't lead them either.
They did this by using the rigidity & extremism that moderate conservatives and some political observers--such as the NY Times' Charles Blow--say is a problem for them. But it's only a problem if they still believe they can dominate America. If they're content with dominating the New Confederacy and hamstringing Washington from affecting their domain, it's a winning strategy for them, just as it is.
And since their voter base is undereducated, aging white men and their wimmenfolk, mostly imbued with a brand of political Christianity harsh enough to justify calling them the Republican Brotherhood, it's easy to get their base to believe anything that fits their fears and prejudices.
"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, & dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, & unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
-John F. Kennedy
So they're created a kind of New Confederacy among those 22 states, able to resist Washington's efforts to civilize them because they can rely on their representatives in Washington to block nearly anything a Democratic President and Senate majority tries to do to them. They can't lead the nation through the Presidency & a Senate majority, but they've ensured that the nation can't lead them either.
They did this by using the rigidity & extremism that moderate conservatives and some political observers--such as the NY Times' Charles Blow--say is a problem for them. But it's only a problem if they still believe they can dominate America. If they're content with dominating the New Confederacy and hamstringing Washington from affecting their domain, it's a winning strategy for them, just as it is.
And since their voter base is undereducated, aging white men and their wimmenfolk, mostly imbued with a brand of political Christianity harsh enough to justify calling them the Republican Brotherhood, it's easy to get their base to believe anything that fits their fears and prejudices.
"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, & dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, & unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
-John F. Kennedy
How to discuss ObamaCare with your Tea Party friends & relatives
My fellow Democrats--here's how to talk about ObamaCare with your Tea Party relatives, workmates, and acquaintances:
Don't. Make them talk about RepubliCare. That's the Republican Party's alternative to ObamaCare.
I realize it's a challenge, since they never, ever talk about it, and have never offered a single piece of legislation that would implement it.
But just as you can make a drawing from "negative space"--shading in everything but your subject--you can describe RepubliCare and its consequences precisely:
It's what we'd have if ObamaCare were repealed and nothing introduced to replace it.
It would be the status quo for American healthcare, the most expensive on the planet on a per capita basis, with some of the poorest health outcomes (if you aren't a millionaire) of any advanced nation. It's the system every sane economist says is completely unsustainable. And of course RepubliCare strips you of any protection from your health insurers, letting them cancel your insurance the moment you really need it--as has been SOP for decades.
Force your Republican friends & family to tell you first, exactly what RepubliCare is, and second, exactly how its provisions compare with those of ObamaCare.
Don't let them bring up any other theoretical health plan. The GOP has offered NOTHING but repealing ObamaCare, so nothing but the old status quo is exactly what they must defend.
They keep trying to get us on our back foot to defend our law. Don't fall for it. Make them defend theirs.
Don't. Make them talk about RepubliCare. That's the Republican Party's alternative to ObamaCare.
I realize it's a challenge, since they never, ever talk about it, and have never offered a single piece of legislation that would implement it.
But just as you can make a drawing from "negative space"--shading in everything but your subject--you can describe RepubliCare and its consequences precisely:
It's what we'd have if ObamaCare were repealed and nothing introduced to replace it.
It would be the status quo for American healthcare, the most expensive on the planet on a per capita basis, with some of the poorest health outcomes (if you aren't a millionaire) of any advanced nation. It's the system every sane economist says is completely unsustainable. And of course RepubliCare strips you of any protection from your health insurers, letting them cancel your insurance the moment you really need it--as has been SOP for decades.
Force your Republican friends & family to tell you first, exactly what RepubliCare is, and second, exactly how its provisions compare with those of ObamaCare.
Don't let them bring up any other theoretical health plan. The GOP has offered NOTHING but repealing ObamaCare, so nothing but the old status quo is exactly what they must defend.
They keep trying to get us on our back foot to defend our law. Don't fall for it. Make them defend theirs.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
It seems more like Trayvon Martin was convicted of attempter murder, doesn't it?
Trayvon Martin’s posthumous conviction for assault with intent to kill, along with the letters here justifying that conviction, show the longevity of the South’s Myth of the Black Brute. Southern slaveholders created this myth to justify their abuse of blacks. After the Civil War they continued it to justify their virtual re-enslavement of blacks.
In the 1970s the GOP inherited it as part of Nixon’s Southern Strategy–only now it’s hidden in terms like "Urban Drug Gang" and "Chicago." Meanwhile America’s criminal "justice" system prosecutes and sentences blacks vastly out of proportion to whites arrested for similar crimes.
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the huge number of jailed black men used to justify imprisoning even more black men (and then disenfranchising them).
In reality, poor uneducated blacks are about as likely to commit violent crimes as poor uneducated whites; ditto black doctors vs. white doctors. What drives violent crime is poverty, undereducation, police misbehavior, easy access to firearms...and being Southern. The South’s cult of violent "honor" stems from the brutal exigencies of slavery, living on in these Stand Your Ground laws.
"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
--John F. Kennedy
In the 1970s the GOP inherited it as part of Nixon’s Southern Strategy–only now it’s hidden in terms like "Urban Drug Gang" and "Chicago." Meanwhile America’s criminal "justice" system prosecutes and sentences blacks vastly out of proportion to whites arrested for similar crimes.
This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the huge number of jailed black men used to justify imprisoning even more black men (and then disenfranchising them).
In reality, poor uneducated blacks are about as likely to commit violent crimes as poor uneducated whites; ditto black doctors vs. white doctors. What drives violent crime is poverty, undereducation, police misbehavior, easy access to firearms...and being Southern. The South’s cult of violent "honor" stems from the brutal exigencies of slavery, living on in these Stand Your Ground laws.
"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
--John F. Kennedy
Zimmerman was not found "innocent."
This is a point the right wing Constitution-thumpers don't seem to get: the American criminal justice system, taking into account human fallibility and evidentiary problems, is designed to let many guilty people go free in order to ensure that no innocent people are proven guilty.
This is what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
So the jury may well have felt that Zimmerman was guilty--just not past "a reasonable doubt."
That's a heckuva long way from thinking he was innocent.
And there's the added problem of the "stand your ground" law, written up by the NRA and obediently put into the books in states controlled by the NRA's political arm, AKA the Republican Party. The "stand your ground" law makes it so difficult to convict anyone of murder that police departments hate it while criminal gangs love it.
So the jury may have obeyed Florida's "stand your ground" law's dictates while feeling that this law is bad law. In states that rule out citing "self defense" if you initiated the altercation, Zimmerman would have been found guilty of manslaughter. That's what juror B29 was trying to say, I believe.
This is what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
So the jury may well have felt that Zimmerman was guilty--just not past "a reasonable doubt."
That's a heckuva long way from thinking he was innocent.
And there's the added problem of the "stand your ground" law, written up by the NRA and obediently put into the books in states controlled by the NRA's political arm, AKA the Republican Party. The "stand your ground" law makes it so difficult to convict anyone of murder that police departments hate it while criminal gangs love it.
So the jury may have obeyed Florida's "stand your ground" law's dictates while feeling that this law is bad law. In states that rule out citing "self defense" if you initiated the altercation, Zimmerman would have been found guilty of manslaughter. That's what juror B29 was trying to say, I believe.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
ObamaCare vs. RepublicCare
Given how America's political system works, the only alternative to ObamaCare is RepubliCare.
But while the GOP and its friends have spent over $400 million telling you how awful ObamaCare is, they haven't spent a cent telling you what their alternative is.
I can tell you what it is, though:
1. Repeal ObamaCare in toto.
2. There is no "2."
So RepubliCare is for-profit medicine by the medical-industrial complex, for the medical-industrial complex, by the medical-industrial complex.
RepubliCare is overcrowded emergency care facilities being used by the poor as their primary care. RepubliCare is your health insurance that you paid into for forty years getting canceled as soon as you really need it.
RepubliCare is private health insurance for those whose employers don't provide health insurance plus freelancers plus retirees, which provides excellent care for millionaires, while the rest find it's either too expensive to buy or whose deductibles are so high it's useless.
RepubliCare is the most expensive per-capital healthcare system on Earth, with the worst outcomes for most people compared to those of other developed nations--the healthcare system growing in costs so rapidly that it's consuming the American economy--the healthcare system every responsible economist said is unsustainable and running us over a cliff in short order.
ObamaCare has plenty of shortcomings--mostly due to compromises made at the behest of those who are now trying to kill it. But it's a dream compared to the nightmare of RepubliCare.
So--the next time your Republican friends, family and acquaintances want to talk to you about how awful ObamaCare is, make them do so not against some imaginary ideal but against the reality of RepubliCare.
But while the GOP and its friends have spent over $400 million telling you how awful ObamaCare is, they haven't spent a cent telling you what their alternative is.
I can tell you what it is, though:
1. Repeal ObamaCare in toto.
2. There is no "2."
So RepubliCare is for-profit medicine by the medical-industrial complex, for the medical-industrial complex, by the medical-industrial complex.
RepubliCare is overcrowded emergency care facilities being used by the poor as their primary care. RepubliCare is your health insurance that you paid into for forty years getting canceled as soon as you really need it.
RepubliCare is private health insurance for those whose employers don't provide health insurance plus freelancers plus retirees, which provides excellent care for millionaires, while the rest find it's either too expensive to buy or whose deductibles are so high it's useless.
RepubliCare is the most expensive per-capital healthcare system on Earth, with the worst outcomes for most people compared to those of other developed nations--the healthcare system growing in costs so rapidly that it's consuming the American economy--the healthcare system every responsible economist said is unsustainable and running us over a cliff in short order.
ObamaCare has plenty of shortcomings--mostly due to compromises made at the behest of those who are now trying to kill it. But it's a dream compared to the nightmare of RepubliCare.
So--the next time your Republican friends, family and acquaintances want to talk to you about how awful ObamaCare is, make them do so not against some imaginary ideal but against the reality of RepubliCare.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Here's an easy way to distinguish the civilized world from the rest.
I'm in the process of buying something on eBay from a professional eBay seller. Reading the fine print, I came across this notice:
"Due to custom issues and heavy lost packages, we DO NOT ship to the following countries/regions:
1. Africa,
2. South America, Central America, Mexico,
3. Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel, Italy, and
4. Asia (except Singapore and Japan)."
The civilized world, then, would be:
1. All the English-speaking countries outside of Africa--that is, the U.S. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K.
2. Western Europe except for Italy, but including Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
3. Singapore and Japan
4. All the Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations (unless they're too small to get listed on the shipper's do-not-ship-to list, which is conceivable).
I wasn't surprised at Italy showing up on the prohibited list; I was surprised by Israel, because I like it, and Belarus, because it's an authoritarian dictatorship. Maybe Israel is not so much crooked as highly customs-restrictive. I don't know.
But in general I think this eBay shipper's list tells us a lot about the current world, and gives a handy way to divide all the nations into two buckets.
"Due to custom issues and heavy lost packages, we DO NOT ship to the following countries/regions:
1. Africa,
2. South America, Central America, Mexico,
3. Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Croatia, Estonia, Georgia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel, Italy, and
4. Asia (except Singapore and Japan)."
The civilized world, then, would be:
1. All the English-speaking countries outside of Africa--that is, the U.S. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K.
2. Western Europe except for Italy, but including Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia.
3. Singapore and Japan
4. All the Pacific and Indian Ocean island nations (unless they're too small to get listed on the shipper's do-not-ship-to list, which is conceivable).
I wasn't surprised at Italy showing up on the prohibited list; I was surprised by Israel, because I like it, and Belarus, because it's an authoritarian dictatorship. Maybe Israel is not so much crooked as highly customs-restrictive. I don't know.
But in general I think this eBay shipper's list tells us a lot about the current world, and gives a handy way to divide all the nations into two buckets.
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