I'm to the point with BO where I can't even stand to hear him talk. I have to turn it off. It took me years to get to that point with W.

Freddie Got Fingered

I always liked this movie.

Margo

My co-supervisor died last Thursday. She was a wonderful person and a brilliant scientist. I've written about deaths of friends and family on here before, but I feel like I have very little to say this time, despite the loss being quite severe. I'll miss her.

American public overwhelmingly supports a public option in health care reform. The political class overwhelmingly opposes it.

But... but... but... the political class are supposed to represent the population...

... wouldn't passing something the public wants make them more popular....

... why don't I just cover my ears and sing happy songs

stupid people

Councilor Paula-Ayn Phillips said she was afraid backing a resolution or law that decriminalizes marijuana could lead people to not being punished for driving or flying under the influence of drugs or could encourage people like surgeons to operate under the influence.

i have lots of respect for GG's work, but... what's the problem here? or, i think the answer is obvious

It's a bad time to be an American these days...

I'm not at the point where I can see "begs the question" used to mean "an obvious question that follows from this is..." and not lament the demise of the superior-in-all-ways former meaning of that phrase, but I am at the point where I recognize that I should just... let it go.

celebrate Constitution Day with me!

Today is Constitution Day. The "Constitution" was some document that some old dudes in goofy wigs wrote a long time ago. People used to believe that the purpose of the Constitution was to limit the powers of the federal government. Isn't that cute? Luckily we've made a lot of progress since then and now we know that the Constitution ensures more important things, like allowing George Bush to start wars of aggression and Barack Obama to order his employees to committ murders. Yay Constitution! Yay Government! YAY America!!!!

barely scratching was successful, by the way.

sleeping arrangments

"Sleeping together may be harmful to health and relationship."

We've been dancing around this idea for a while, but reluctant to act on it for various reasons. A recent change we've tried has been to take the two beds we own, one double and one twin, and put them right next to each other.

adspar on demand

I'd like to blog about something, but don't have any great ideas. Post an idea in the comments and I'll write about it.

her nipples are legal!

To follow up on this item, charges against the topless lady have been dropped. Turns out that nothing she did was against the law. Needless to say, the men who kidnapped her will not face any consequences.

I thought this part of the story was interesting:

Two other factors played a role in the police prosecutors’ decision to drop the charge against Nicosia, according to Duguay.

They wanted to keep the N.H. Supreme Court from having a chance to weigh in on the law, which could have happened if Nicosia was convicted and appealed, Duguay said. If asked to examine the state law dealing with indecent exposure and lewdness, the court might find that the language in the statute is too broad and then drop the entire statute, he said.

Apparently we came very close to allowing a court to review the law, which risks determining that the law is inappropriate, and having to change it! Whew, disaster averted!

more on schools

or, or, as prof crispy says:

surely schools are good at absolutely anything compared to their ability to teach individual responsibility. they're more effective at nurturing an extreme ethic of concealment, even as they try to encourage a culture of anonymous denunciation of others etc. and of course what you're subjected to in terms of actual subject-matter is standardized across all individuals, and the behavioral goals are uniformity, silence, and detailed control over people's movements and expressions to achieve homogeneity.

I didn't blame anyone for the loss of my legs - some chinaman in Korea took them from me - but I went out and acheived anyway!

I've been exceptionally unflexible my entire life. Touching my toes was unimaginable; I couldn't get more than 2 inches past my knees. About two weeks ago it occurred to me that this wasn't healthy, could lead to injury, etc., and that I should work on improving it.

So I've been stretching haphazardly during the day, and the improvement is pretty impressive. I can reach down to my shins now, about 2 inches above my ankles.

I used to do pilates every once in a while with Kira, and the sensation at the end of a pilates session was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Now I know that feeling is what stretching feels like.

what's mine is mine

Via Radley Balko, I notice this splendid story about how police forcibly catheterized a man suspected of drunk driving, after he had already passed a breathalizer test. When the blood and urine tests also showed he was innocent, police charged him with obstruction of justice, for resisting their efforts to shove a tube up his penis.

The state owns you. It claims your body as its property.

things we can all agree on

chick behind the veil... selfish bitch?

give it up for the boss

or, as RAtM says, the classroom's the last room to get the truth

what schools are

IOZ says schools are "miserable, enervating, spirit-crushing, thought-destroying, mind-rotting, child-processing, conformity factories." IOZ is right.

delicate sensibilities

A family member ("T") unexpectedly read my blog recently and contacted me to complain about an entry titled "give up". It is short, so I'll just repost it in all of its crude glory:

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

T said the entry showed "hatred and bigotry" towards the US and towards Christianity. Uh... no. The object of my scorn is clearly politics in the US. As I've said before, a group of people and the system that rules them are not the same, so I haven't shown hatred or bigotry towards the US. Nor have I shown hatred towards Christianity. I'm not cursing Jesus, I'm just using "Jesus ___ Christ" as a curse, as is quite common practice, e.g. "Ow I just hit my thumb with a hammer! Jesus fucking Christ, that hurts!!". I haven't shown bigotry, I've simply failed to show reverence. There's a difference between hostility towards a religion (which isn't necessarily bigotry by the way - I think I've been hostile towards religion in other entries without being bigoted) and simply refusing to embrace its sacred cows. So I think T is way off on that criticism.

T further said that "[t]his shows no respect or tolerance for the beliefs of others" which "shut[s] down any chance of a civilized debate on real issues." Now I'm not sure how many of my readers have mistaken a profanity-laced comparison of the US political process to a painful act of auto-erotic sodomization for an attempt to initiate a "civilized debate on real issues," but I'll clarify now: I was just pissed off and venting frustration. If you want to see my attempts to start a reasoned discussion, look through my other posts. There's lots there to talk about! Or, if having seen the tiny kernel of thought contained in my rant, you want to start a debate about self-inflicted damage and the political system, I'll gladly take part. I'll even be happy to keep my diction in line with your sensibilities.

What can kill a friendly debate is conflating irreverence with hatred and bigotry. If you want to have conversations about serious and emotional issues, it doesn't help to have a shut-down-the-conversation-because-of-perceived-disrespect system with a threshold so low that vocabulary trips the switch.

her nipples are showing

another thought about this.

americans like to make righteous noise about women being forced to cover themselves from head to toe in muslim countries, lest they risk being stoned to death by angry mobs. definitely a terrible situation. of course, in america if a woman doesn't cover her breasts, she risks being chained and thrown in a cage by men (who might use lethal force against her at any moment).

yes, the latter is better than the former, but it isn't anything to be proud about. america only looks good by comparison to misogynist totalitarian fundamentalism. how about this for a radical crazed leftist lunatic perspective: women should be able to wear whatever they want, and not liking their decision doesn't justify physical coercion of any kind. justification for the use of force against another person requires a high burden of proof. "her nipples are showing" doesn't qualify.

but i know, i know, that's fucking batshit insane, and couldn't even be contemplated in civilized society. so how about this for a perfectly reasonable and moderate position, argued from the popular progressive standpoint of basic gender equality: armed agents of the state should allow a woman to appear in public wearing anything that a man is allowed to appear in public wearing.

image via

NBA stats: finessed to look however the home team scorekeeper wants them to look

greenwald and chomsky

Glenn Greenwald is under contract to write a book (he appears in the comments) that will be "a comprehensive examination of Chomsky’s life as a public intellectual as a means of understanding how America’s dominant media controls and narrows political debates." I look forward to that.

woman chained, kidnapped, thrown in a cage

for not wearing a shirt. I have to think the cops feel pretty stupid about this, right? Some of them anyway.

Pinker on violence and anarchy

In the interest of confronting ideas that challenge my beliefs, here's Steven Pinker writing that violence has steadily declined over the centuries. I've seen him sing this song before. One hypothesis he mentions for why we see such a trend is the rise of the State, which specifically is the notion that I find unpleasant. He doesn't defend that particular idea too vigorously, just mentions it, but I do want to take exception to part of it. I don't like the way he uses "anarchy" here:

And today, violence continues to fester in zones of anarchy, such as frontier regions, failed states, collapsed empires, and territories contested by mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband.

He's using anarchy to mean lack of a powerful state in a particular geographic area, but also using it to mean chaos, violence, etc. I don't know what frontier regions he might be talking about so I can't quibble with that, but it occurs to me that many of today's "failed states and collapsed empires are failed and collapsed" because of the states that did or continue to exercise power in the area. Examples? duh, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc. As for "mafias, gangs, and other dealers of contraband," what is the distinction between those entities and State governments? Scale?

So needless to say, I don't buy this logic:

These tragedies can be averted by a state with a monopoly on violence. States can inflict disinterested penalties that eliminate the incentives for aggression, thereby defusing anxieties about preemptive attack and obviating the need to maintain a hair-trigger propensity for retaliation.

But if you take out the "disinterested" part I think there might actually be an important idea here. If the State is the only actor who can legitimately use violence, and the state is controlled by the interests of an elite few, that in and of itself could reduce violence. Rather than dozens or hundreds of little mafias, you just have a few big mafias. If nobody else gets to use violence, seems like that could indeed reduce overall violence.

So those are my hastily thrown-together thoughts on the matter. Comments?

more sports thoughts

good and bad things about various pro sports, from a fan perspective, and trying to ignore overall issues about priorities, expense, etc.

football

bad - i don't like to support it because it is too violent. nfl players get seriously hurt very often, and after a few years in the league they're often fucked up for life. the players contracts aren't guaranteed, so many of them don't even really make very much money considering the risks they face. plus the amount of hype and commercialization of the game is fucking insane, worse than any of these others. it is impossible to sit still through an entire game with the constant commercial interruptions.

good - the complexity of 22 players on the field at once, all with very specialized roles, results in some very cool strategy and creativity. football is a good sport to sit around and watch with people while not actually paying much attention to the game. i guess that doesn't say much for it.

basketball

bad - almost all coverage of the sport is asinine, focused on personality, interpersonal drama, soap opera bullshit etc. commentary and coverage of the game itself is all about flashy plays, with very little attention paid to what actually wins games.

good - watching nba players compete (while ignoring the announcers) is amazing. i love to play basketball, so seeing the same number of players in the same amount of space with the same ball and same hoop, but doing such different things is very fun for me. the popular criticism that nba players don't try hard is wrong. they play hard, and when they play smart, it is very enjoyable.

baseball

bad - it can get boring. all the best players have been cheating for the last 20 years. the best teams can just buy the best talent.

good - it is a thinking man's game. all about anticipation, playing the numbers, etc. deep history. sitting in the bleachers at a nice ballpark is a great way to spend a summer evening.

soccer

bad - the best soccer is played in time zones that make it hard to watch where i've lived. soccer riots are stupid.

good - 45 straight minutes of uninterrupted coverage per half. that's huge. also, as the most widely-played sport in the world, i suspect that the best soccer players are better at their sports than any other players in other sports, if you follow. there are also 22 players on the field like american football, but each of them basically does the same thing, just in different parts of the field, so it isn't as complex as nfl games. that's not a bad thing, there is real beauty to the subtleties of the game.

take that, cara!

banality of evil

For years now I've thought there might be something useful about writing a book about about how sports and politics are kind of the same. Meaning, there's something genuinely meaningful to them, but there are so many layers of preposterous bullshit on top that it is impossible to take them seriously. The primary focus would be how media coverage of political matters is just as flawed as media coverage of sports, the idea being that it is easier and less controversial to convince people that sports coverage is obiously retarded, and from there showing how political coverage is at least equally retarded, and vastly more important to human lives.

I'm reminded of this at 11:50pm on a Friday night because I just read this. If anyone cares about this matter, post a comment and I'll revisit it and decide if I'm justified in my thoughts.

In other news, I think I might try out for the tennis team. I haven't played any serious competition in 10 years, but I'm not sure this league would be serious competition. Plus if I can barely scratch my way on to the squad, it might at least be fun to practice for free.

knocked up

Human pregnancy tests work on bonobos. That's kinda cool. I wonder how far out the phylogeny that keeps working.

The Largest Street Gang in America

The Largest Street Gang in America

give up

among all the things that take themselves seriously, is there anything more fuck-yourself-in-your-own-asshole-with-your-own-cock-and-complain-about-the-pain retarded than politics in the US? jesus ass-fucking-with-his-own-cock christ!

ok so i actually like henry's work usually, but his politics piss me off so i'll start ripping on him. this shit is retarded. so what if he supports gangs? how is that worse than supporting the US gov?

update: to clarify, my issue is with the hypocrisy, not defending my love of violent gangs

I bought a pair of Nike shoes recently, and felt pretty bad about it. As far as I can tell, Nike gets rich by exploiting wage slave peasants throughout Asia. I bought the shoes, a pair of (football) cleats, because they were the cheapest shoes that would provide for sure footing during slightly damp softball games. So the ethical dilemma is whether safety during my leisure activities should trump my reluctance to support the way Nike does business.

Does anyone know of any ethical cleat makers?

Greenwald ripping into GE's coporate censorship of NBC, as part of a sleazy deal with Fox News. GE agreed to prevent MSNBC from criticizing Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, in exchange for Fox agreeing not to report on GE's unpopular businesses.

Fuck GE.

ok, here's a thought. it sometimes occurs to me that this pointless shit i write will probably be posted on the internet forever, or at least until everyone blows each other up. so in addition to total strangers from whereeverthefuck reading what i write, theoretically my great-grandchildren could read this drivel in 2068. if they aren't too busy blowing each other up of course.

so...

hi kids! if i'm still alive, maybe you should go visit me. i'm old and lonely. bring beer!

indoor compost

My wife put together this helpful information about vermicomposting for a friend:


[I don't know why the 2nd one is sideways and I can't figure out how to change it]

I've included pictures of our bin and links I found helpful but basically this is what I did:

-Read up on vermicomposting (using worms to eat away organic matter then using their poo as great fertilizer!)

This series of short vids was great, since they described set up and then documented their failures and re-did it all.
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/03/24/apartment-composting-101-vermicompost-with-barb-finnin/ (she makes a kinda crucial descriptive mistake about depth versus width and length but a good intro nonetheless)
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/05/16/vermicomposting-jay-gives-a-worm-bin-update/ (hmmm)
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/06/16/vermicomposting-changing-the-world-1000-worms-at-a-time/ (put more of 'em to work!)
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/08/15/vermicomposting-results-barb-finnin-measures-us-up/ (oops)
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/09/14/vermicomposting-born-again-worm-bin/ (much better)
http://ryanishungry.com/2007/12/04/vermicompost-our-worm-bin-rocks/ (hooray!)


-Find a container that's waterproof and is longer and wider than it is deep. Worms will be active within the top few inches, just out of sunlight and just close enough to eat some stuff. Not deeper than 10-12".

-Vent this container (I drilled holes in all sides for drainage and airflow).

-Have something underneath to catch liquid or escapees.

-Decide how many worms you might need considering your bin size and your diet/output.

-Find a source for your worms (I called around to some bait shops after reading about different kinds of worms. None had them but luckily the Green Venture Eco House here in Hamilton had some.)

-Inside the bin I placed long strips of uncolored newspaper that had been wet and wrung for bedding. Emptied the worms and their castings (finished compost) on top (I also added soil, but learned later that some potting soils may be too harsh as well as unnecessary) and fed them.


TIPS
-After reading of some successful and unsuccessful bins, I've decided to process our waste in a blender before giving it to the worms.
-Check them daily (but they're fine with minimal to no care for days). Feed them if they've finished most everything. Don't keep it too wet (suffocation) or too dry (dessication).
-You'll get mites and wire/white worms but they're essentially a part of a healthy system.
-Covering their food with dry newspaper has kept fruit flies from laying their eggs and gives the worms some privacy while eating.
-I can tell the worms are happy and healthy when I pull off the lid and they all retreat into the dirt.
-ALWAYS wash your hands after handling (bacteria, fungus, mites).

DO NOT include the cabbage family. Some people warn against onions and garlic, and they do have a smell, but decaying Brussels sprouts give off an offensive odor. Truly.


Some Helpful Links:
http://www.nyworms.com/vermicomposting.htm
http://www.pr.uoguelph.ca/sustain/vermicompost.html
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/08/green-basics-vermicompost.php
http://agri.and.nic.in/vermi_culture.htm
http://www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html
http://www.redwormcomposting.com/

Good Luck!

standard

This audio is pretty amazing, but typical. (You'll get the point in the first few minutes.) The hosts of this show are some local political officeholders in Keene, the mayor and someone on the city counsel or something like that.

After the hosts evaded answering questions about a specific issue of open government (something like... the city clerk has been refusing to allow cameras in the city clerk's office, despite a law saying such filming is allowed), callers reduced the issue to a very simple question: "should government bureaucrats be arrested for breaking the law?" The hosts repeatedly just cannot answer that simple question. They just refused to talk about it after a while. They even admit that the reason is because it makes them uncomfortable. Of course it does! They know that if they say no, they are openly advocating government lawlessness, and if they say yes, they're 95% of the way to saying that the specific issue under discussion should be resolved by the arrest of government bureaucrats. So they just refuse to answer the simplest of questions.

Such are the people who control our most powerful institutions.

weird sleep

saturday - 9am
friday - 2:30pm
thursday - 6am
wednesday - 11am

those are my last 4 awaking times. each night i went to bed between 12 and 1am. no naps or extraordinary physical exertion or drinking as a noteworthy explanation for the extreme fluctuations.

fruit of the commute

lately i've been picking and eating wild rasberries, which seem to be growing wherever i go. i find this incredibly exciting. i'm having fantasies about collecting vast quantities of them and making preserves. instead i'm here blogging about it.

blood-drenched war criminal dies

Robert McNamara, dead at 93.

Rather than read that link, read Chomsky's take on the man.

via D.P

didn't see this one coming did ya?

i have a hard time seeing how sarah palin would be a worse president than BO

yo, so i'm an anarchist and whatnot, and that is an unpopular stance. let me just say once thing. this man is the fucking leader of the world's 10th largest economy.

yeah. authoritarian power-based governments are awesome ideas.

accidental email

I think it had been over two years since I stopped getting political emails from my family, but I got one this week. Below is the original email and my response. For previous editions of this fun little game, see here and here.

-----

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

By Lou Pritchett

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I k now nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because yo u have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett


Note: Lou Pritchett is a former vice president of Procter & Gamble whose career at that company spanned 36 years before his retirement in 1989, and he is the author of the 1995 business book, Stop Paddling & Start Rocking the Boat.

Mr. Pritchett confirmed that he was indeed the author of the much-circulated "open letter." “I did write the 'you scare me' letter. I sent it to the NY Times but they never acknowledged or p ublished it. However, it hit the internet and according to the ‘experts’ has had over 500,000 hits.

----

Obama scares me too, for a few of the same reasons. These 3 in particular:

>You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild
>and irresponsible spending proposals.

When the Republican Congress moved in lock-step to pass everything
Bush/Cheney told them to, they were rightfully criticized by Democrats
as mindlessly following executive orders. Now Democrats are doing the
same thing. In many cases they're actually saying that they oppose
the legislation that they're voting in favor of, but believe it is
more important to support "their" President. It is hard to see what
the point of Congress is, from a check-and-balances perspective, if
they just do whatever the executive says. It scares me to see how
easily people in positions of extreme power will cynically invoke or
ignore important principles at their convenience.

>You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view >from intelligent people.

I find this scary too, and this is true of all presidents in recent
memory. More on this later.

>You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

The media is highly deferential to power. Bush had an abysmal
approval rating for much of his presidency, and still the media
refused to call him on his blatant lies and multiple crimes against
humanity. A popular president like BO will get and even easier time
from the media, which is pretty damn terrifying. Just like Congress,
the mainstream media has abandoned any adversarial function it should
be performing, if it ever actually served one at all.


That said, the rest of the list is fairly insane. What does it say
about the author that he can begin a list with "I know nothing about
Obama," then go on to list 19 things he knows about Obama? He claims
to even know Obama's deepest feelings and desires (e.g. "you falsely
believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient"). I guess if you
can simultaneously hold two contradictory beliefs, you can believe
pretty much anything, regardless of reality, which partially explains
the craziness here.

I won't address everything point by point, though I'm tempted, but
there are two general themes of his list that I'd like to comment on.
The first theme concerns these items:

> You scare me because you lack humility and 'class',
> always blaming others.

> You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned
> yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you
> refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who
> wish to see America fail.

> You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the
> 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

The mainstream American media allows a certain a spectrum of opinion
about American foreign policy. On the right/nationalistic/

reactionary
extreme is the opinion that the US Government (hereafter "USG") is a
force for pure good in the world that is always perfectly morally
justified in anything it does and is always selflessly trying to
spread freedom and democracy across the globe. On the left/liberal
extreme is the opinion that the USG is a force for good in the world
that always acts with the purest intentions, but that has sometimes
gotten carried away in its quest for spreading freedom and democracy
and in a few isolated incidents has made regrettable mistakes. That
is the spectrum of opinion that is allowed in the US media (I say
"allowed" because editors and their bosses self-censor, not because of
any state censorship.)

The far right side can't stand even the suggestion that the USG has
ever done anything wrong, and so anyone who ever acknowledges American
misdeeds is instantly part of the "Blame America First Crowd," and
endlessly beaten over the head with this slur. This is objectionable
on several different levels.

One level of offensiveness is the inability or unwillingness to
distinguish between a group of people and their rulers. Is "America"
a nation of 300,000,000 people or the comparatively tiny group of
people that control the USG? To criticize the actions of a government
is not the same as criticizing the people of the nation, especially a
nation whose government often acts against the wishes and interests of
its population, as ours does.

So what would it mean to "wish to see America fail"? The overwhelming
majority of "radical extremists" who he's characterizing this way are
those who object to the actions of the USG, some of whom maybe even
wish for the dissolution of the government. But that doesn't mean
they wish harm on the 300,000,000 who live in the US; they think those
people would be better served with a different social arrangement.

Conservatives like Mr. Pritchett claim to value limited government.
They loved Reagan's "the government is the problem" line and supported
Gingrich when he led a shut down of the federal government in
opposition to Clinton. One would think such people would be cautious
about slinging accusations about "wishing to see America fail." But
given the breath-taking contradiction he chose to lead off this
tour-de-force screed, I don't suppose that connection has ever
occurred to him.

Beyond that, it should be noted that Obama himself is well within the
mainstream spectrum of opinion. And nobody within the spectrum
"blames America first." They all assume that America has noble
intentions, and any misdeeds they reluctantly acknowledge are taken to
be aberrant: it isn't really our fault because we were trying to help
but got carried away, or a few bad apples ruined it, or those
ungrateful Iraqis weren't willing to accept our help, etc.

My final note on that matter is that at no point does it have anything
to do with reality-based argument. There's no attempt to understand
the world, no argument as to why Obama's alleged "blame America first"
is factually incorrect or illogical. It is simply a smear designed to
demonize and avoid intelligent debate. If, as I would contend, the
unmistakeable reality is that foreign policy of the USG is not and
never has been about spreading freedom or democracy, and that it has
repeatedly immorally destroyed innocent lives around the world, should
we not acknowledge this as our first step to correcting it? (Not that
Obama does so.) Yelling "BLAME AMERICA FIRST" eliminates that
possibility, which is of course the entire point of yelling it. And
you have to yell it even at the people on the left end of the
permissible spectrum so that people outside it to the left (i.e. the
reality-based community made up of the vast majority of the rest of
the world) are ignored. And this is from the same guy who complains
about someone "refusing to listen or consider opposing points of view
from intelligent people."

So that wraps up my first general theme about discussion of American
foreign policy and "blame America first."

My second comment on general theme concerns the subtle bigotry running
through many of those items above plus these:

>You scare me because after months of exposure,

> I know nothing about you.

> You scare me because I do not know how you paid
> for your expensive Ivy League education and your
> upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

> You scare me because you did not spend the formative years
> of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

> You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the
> Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing,
> conservative points of view.

Again, America is a nation of 300 million people, the vast majority of
whom can name an immigrant among their recent ancestors. The idea
that there is a single American culture or that spending 4 years of
your childhood in another country is necessarily sinister is
incoherent at best. It strikes me that when you combine that
xenophobia with the innuendo about mysteriousness about his life and
finances, it taps into the same pockets of fear and anger that in less
polite company express themselves as overt racism. Combine THAT with
the "Blame America" nonsense, and you get "Obama is a secret Muslim
working with the terrorists to destroy America, because after all he's
a nigger with a funny name so it is obvious." The conservative
commentators he listed regularly invoke this kind of bigotry, often in
not very subtle ways, and certainly deserve scorn. (Not that Obama
actually "demonizes" yet alone "wants to silence" them).

I suppose I'll leave it at that for now.

yup

Floyd:

When I saw that the president also invoked the words of Martin Luther King Jr. (“Martin Luther King once said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice’”), I very nearly threw up. To quote an apostle of non-violence, who spent his last days standing with striking workers and railing against the American government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" because of its murderous war machine, when you yourself are in command of that war machine, spewing out Vietnam-style death (and "targeted assassinations") in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan; when you are striving with all your might to defend, shield and in many cases continue to heinous torture atrocities of your predecessor; when you are pouring trillions of public dollars into the purses of the financial elite while letting millions of workers go hang; and when you yourself have made repeated statements that you will never take any options "off the table" when dealing with Tehran, including the nuclear destruction of the Iranian people for whose liberties and well-being you now profess such noble concern -- well, that seems a bit much, if I may riot in understatement.

rock on

as the blurg turns

i think one my primary uses of this blog has been to deal with changes. once i come to terms with the change, i lose the urge to write about it. this has happened repeatedly as frequent themes came and went: leaving my first job, poker strategy, poker life, career/grad school, atheism, political awakening, anarchism.

i'm kind of losing the desire to deal with political issues now, as i feel like i've 1) got things figured out and 2) have absorbed that understanding into my day-to-day psychology. the second point is more relevant to blogging because much of my blogging has been driven by outrage, and outrage derives from expectations. i'm still outraged on a moral level by a lot of things that happen in the world, but the outrage that primary drove the blogging was more about how other people respond to travesties, and now i have different expectations there.

anyway i think the kinds of changes i'm dealing with these days are not the kinds of things i'm likely to want to blog about. that's not meant to be ominous or anything; i'm just noting that i expect blog volume to continue to decline.

ratchet

here is a very nice explanation of the role of the two major political parties in the US. if you don't have 5 minutes to read that, take 20 seconds and read this summary.

textbooks

James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me criticizes the way popular high school textbooks cover American History, and gives a great history course along the way. Here's an insider perspective on textbook publishing that makes it easy to understand why the books are so awful.