Glock21 Op/Ed

Fareed Zakaria on Pakistan

2011-12-04T15:50:00.003-06:00

Zakaria, author of "The Post-American World" and generally one of the few journalists left who doesn't just run some sort of infotainment show, had some interesting thoughts about why our policies in Pakistan are failing and why that has needed to change for a long time:

Text version of the article is available here.

Something Good for Those Who Serve

2011-12-04T02:48:00.003-06:00

Click image for more details on the event or visit the local Toys For Troops website here.

Whatever our opinions are of the wars, our doubts, our fears, our politics... nobody carries the heaviest burden like our men and women in uniform and their families that have sacrificed so much for so many.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

2011-12-04T01:01:00.003-06:00

A year ago TIME Magazine was asking what happens if we leave Afghanistan. At the time there were many people upset at the cover image. I blogged about it here. Behind every attempt to rationalize why we just simply can't keep our forces in play in this unforgiving land, is the haunting memory of what filled the void when the Soviets left Afghanistan two decades ago. A devastating civil war, a brutal theocracy taking control of most of the country, and a regime that became the state sponsor of a terrorist group that eventually gave us 9/11. The humanitarian crisis that existed in Afghanistan was no secret, nor is it just pessimism to expect some return of the Taliban and its brutality as we leave. In a recent article the BBC doesn't ask what if, but shows what has happened in an area where we've withdrawn:

The US pulled out of parts of Kunar last year, beginning the withdrawal process. What has happened in the province since then makes for grim reading.

The new roads are now pock-marked with craters left by militants who plant bombs targeting Western and Afghan forces.

The province is becoming more dangerous - UK aid worker Linda Norgrove was kidnapped on one of the main roads in Kunar last year and in the past few months an Afghan translator was also abducted from exactly the same area.

The stretch between Chaw Kay and Nur Gal has become a favourite haunt of militants seeking targets.

The Taliban now roam at will in some rural districts, ruling villages by night while the government exerts nominal power by day. Taliban radio stations broadcast daily and hypnotic chants exhorting jihad (holy war) dominate Kunar's airwaves.

...

"It is Taliban across the river," one elder said. "They are lying in wait. At the first opportunity, they will descend on the village to take their revenge," he said, refusing to give his name for fear of retribution.

At this point we may just be talking about the inevitable. The American public has lost the stomach to endure much more of this never ending tit-for-tat stalemate we've run into at the Pakistan border, possibly more so since the incursion that killed Osama bin Laden and left al Qaeda an organizational and perhaps toothless mess. But what we've learned from our once reluctant ally of Pakistan is that the real power players were never Musharraf or the elected government that came after him, but the military and ISI upper echelons. The same allies of the Taliban and supporters of terrorism as a tool of foreign relations are in play, orchestrating everything from the Mumbai attacks, to looking the other way in the hunt for Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, to possible direct support... all while crying foul at any attempt by the US to bypass their obstruction.

The sad fact is we chased the war to the Pakistani border, where it languished while we failed to come up with a way to complete it. As we leave the same ideological forces that pushed into the vacuum of post-Soviet Afghanistan will be there to do so again. The humanitarian crisis that results will only be tempered by how much or how long the Afghan forces who oppose the Taliban resurgence can hold out. If there are any good options, the window for them has almost certainly passed. If there are options to minimize the horror that looms on the horizon, I'm all ears... but aren't we all?

Background:

Since the 2008 election, when almost every candidate with the exception of some fringe candidates who did not get much public support, was campaigning on 'winning' in Afghanistan, it's become an unintentional yearly habit to note how our war effort there has only continued to become more bleak (as if it wasn't bleak enough with Bush at the helm).

2010: Losing Afghanistan - "For me the situation is no longer just dire. We're losing Afghanistan. The problems are hitting a critical mass that there may be no coming back from. It breaks my fucking heart."

2009: America's Slow Surrender - "Unfortunately it currently seems likely that this war is going to be treated like it is generally presented to the public, as a television show that has jumped the shark. They're bored with it and they just want to change the channel. The ramifications of which we'll unfortunately not be able to just click off."

Pakistan Pushes Back

2011-11-29T04:17:00.004-06:00

Quick aside: If you're interested I put up a poll on the right column for those who want to express who they support in 2012. Comment if you feel other names should be added for the next poll or other poll question suggestions. Back to business:

We continue to fight and chase down insurgents, sometimes with fuck ups, along the AfPak border. Right now though we have a massive nightmare of our supply lines through Pakistan being bottlenecked and halted in the old nightmare scenario that left them vulnerable to insurgent attacks before.

We have political candidates openly talking about covert operations in progress and as proposals that are having effects on current relations on our relationship with Pakistan. We have military and covert assets in harms way, more than ever attempting to achieve the goals set out for them in spite of the American Idol electoral system we've established in spite of our electoral system. We're putting the lives of some of our most dedicated agents, assets, and operatives in danger over politics... with lives being lost and lord knows what else in the shadows.

The current candidates in the GOP need to heed the warnings of their more experienced peers, including Jon Huntsman, and not put their campaigns above the lives of operatives and assets in the field. As much as many conservatives may despise Obama, their political disagreements do not justify trading votes for the lives of those who fight in the darkest and most dangerous trenches the war on terror has to offer in covert operations.

Just sayin'.

Let's Help Doom SOPA!

2011-11-20T22:22:00.000-06:00

The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate version PROTECT-IP Act are ruffling some feathers across industries and political aisles. I'm strongly in favor of looking at the resources below and then making up your own mind about the issue. Afterwards: Contract Your Elected Officials! Let your voice be heard, even if seems so futile by itself, these campaigns do have the possibility of push back against interests that represent more money than actual votes.

Wikipedia actually has a fairly neutral outline of the various information about the bill and how the support and opposition is breaking down. More importantly it has a great deal of references so that you can verify what was some biased guy's edit or credible information.

Last I heard both these bills are sitting in their respective judiciary committees, so starting out searching for your Rep and Senators for whether they're on those committees to let them know how you feel about these bills would be a good start.

Also worth knowing some of the business interests involved: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/17/which-tech-companies-back-sopa-microsoft-apple-and-27-others/

Here are the co-sponsors of the PROTECT IP bill in the Senate (S. 968): http://thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:SN00968:@@@P

Here are the 24 cosponsors of the SOPA (formerly E-PARASITES) bill in the House (H.R. 3261): http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h112-3261

You'll probably have to click a link for it to show the co-sponsors to see if your Rep or Senator is among them.

I'm in opposition to these bills for some fairly basic reasons. I believe the language is far too broad which could, whether intended or not, open up the statues to abuse or unintended consequences later. All this while poorly dealing with the issues of copyright/piracy they claim to be at the heart of their concerns. Read through it, make up your own mind. Bug your Representatives and Senators and give them an earful.

Thanks to IamKing for the links. Will update later as this bill either continues to be a problem or, hopefully dies in committee.

Concealed Carry Reciprocity

2011-11-20T22:15:00.000-06:00

Is it doomed? It passed the house, but can it pass the Senate and Obama's veto pen? Will we finally end the oddball mix and match honoring of this state license in that state or vice versa rules? According to the NRA it appears to at least be a possibility.

The New York Times also seems to think it is an issue worth looking into if it has a chance of passage. The NRA article delves deeper into the various poison pill and other amendments that attempted to weaken the bill... the NY Times article gets more into general concerns of the possibility of weakening restrictions on concealed carry permits in states with high restrictions by allowing people with other state permits a way around some of their rules.

Overall this bill doesn't seem to be as ground shaking for or against expanding guns rights or intruding upon regulations. Only one State (and the District of Columbia) outright ban concealed carry and they'd be unaffected. For the other 49 states it would certainly simplify the registration process to something more on par with the DMV along with its legal recognition.

One complaint coming from those groups who either overtly or subtly oppose most gun rights issues up for current legislation... they actually tried to pull a "states rights" cards on something Republicans consider an issue that the 14th Amendment incorporation holds against the States, as with free speech and others. It was a bit of a due process twilight zone. It's sad that the opposition to this bill comes from how well it might play among the masses after decades of being misled or just plain ignorant about what powers the federal government has, which are reserved to the states, and how rights protected under the 14th Amendment play a role. It leads to a lot of partisan flip-flopping, but in this case a pretty dramatic one as one local paper makes clear after my U.S. Representative attempted to make the bill apply even to those areas without a concealed carry bill:

But one of Johnson’s congressional opponents as well as the director of the Illinois Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said the amendment was politically motivated.

“While I support concealed carry, I think it’s the job of the Illinois Legislature to bring it to fruition. I don’t think it’s something the federal government should impose on Illinois,” said David Gill, a Bloomington physician seeking the Democratic nomination in the 13th Congressional District. “It sounds like Mr. Johnson and I agree on the issue. But in his desperate attempt to overcome a 20-point deficit in this new congressional district, he’s attempting to pander to voters by making promises he can’t get through Congress.”

Mark Walsh, head of the Chicago-based anti-gun group, said concealed carry is a state’s rights issue, and that Johnson and the other Illinois Republicans are pushing the measure to energize their base.

...

A second Democrat running in the 13th District said he had not read Johnson’s legislation.

“I’m a hunter and a Second Amendment proponent. I believe the Second Amendment provides a constitutional right to bear arms and I would defend that in Congress,” said Greene County State’s Attorney Matt Goetten. “I have not read Congressman Johnson’s amendment, so I can’t comment specifically on that.”

In his letter to colleagues, Johnson noted that some may view the amendment as an infringement on state’s rights.

“(H)owever, the 14th Amendment explicitly protects against infringement of all rights in the Constitution,” he wrote. “Indeed, Congress has even passed a law that allows former law-enforcement agents to have CCW. Why can these citizens be allowed to guard their home, person or family while the remaining law-abiding citizens of Illinois cannot?”

Food for thought.

Atheist Feminist in Egypt

2011-11-19T15:04:00.004-06:00

As reported on CNN:

Cairo, Egypt (CNN) -- Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy has become a household name in the Middle East and sparked a global uproar after a friend posted a photo of her naked on Twitter.

The photo, which the 20-year-old former student first posted on her blog, shows her naked apart from a pair of thigh-high stockings and some red patent leather shoes.
It was later posted on Twitter with the hashtag #nudephotorevolutionary. The tweet was viewed over a million times, while Elmahdy's followers jumped from a few hundred to more than 14,000.

Her actions have received global media coverage and provoked outrage in Egypt, a conservative Muslim country where most women wear the veil. Many liberals fear that Elmahdy's actions will hurt their prospects in the parliamentary election next week.

Elmahdy describes herself as an atheist. She has been living for the past five months with her boyfriend, blogger Kareem Amer, who, in 2006 was sentenced to four years in a maximum security prison for criticizing Islam and defaming former president Hosni Mubarak

The images include nudity so I'm linking to them off-site here at her blog link. I strongly recommend reading the CNN article for more information.

2011-11-18T06:47:00.001-06:00

In America, "fellow traveler" is a pejorative term for people who are seen as foolishly attached to the far left without really understanding it. A kind of "useful idiot". But, it is generally not used when speaking of the far right. This is purely rhetorical.

As usual the complaints of the one are completely appropriate for the other. The truth is that both left and right wing ideologues depend on a large group of "fellow travelers" to provide the political force in pushing their agenda. Those people generally have a poor understanding of the philosophical aspects of the movement they support, and, at best, can parrot slogans and half-logic.

So, why do they go along for the trip?The answer is simple. The ideological leaders of each side appeal to the self-interest of their constituency. There is little piety in the leadership of these groups if it is measured by adherence to the public face of the movements. The ends, they believe, justify the means. They believe that when the people discover things aren't as they were represented, their eyes will be open to the wisdom and rectitude of the actual agenda.

This is why ideologues are the most dangerous, most destructive and least meritorious people on this planet. Their ideologies invariably lead them to do heinous things in service to a "greater truth". Codswallop.Unfortunately, pragmatism cannot appeal to immediate self-interest and so there is little hope in the current model of huge urban centers to adopt a pragmatic approach, which, I believe is the only option that isn't a form of immorality.

—Yaakov

McCain to Cain vs Obama... Really?

2011-10-17T15:56:00.003-05:00

Who knows? Maybe this is just another temporary bounce and saner minds will prevail... but about the only sane guy who still gets any (though little) mention is Huntsman. I don't agree with him on everything by any means, but by resume he seems to be the only guy worth considering for important reasons as opposed to American Idol or factional political suckuppery. How the hell Romney is still even in the running after his blatant dishonesty and flip-floppery that would offend John Kerry, I don't know... it was bad enough in 2008, it's just as blatant now as it ever was except now some conservatives agree because they equate RomneyCare with ObamaCare or some other absurd reason that ignores the vast problems of Romney's "leadership" cred... he has yet to take a stand for what he believes is right, just what might get him elected at any given time.

Obama is back in full campaign mode, though his speech at the MLK monument dedication made some good points, both political and important to the day and the man and the movement to see liberty truly for all. If the McLess Cain ends up being his opponent, his bluntness, even his truly baffling statements may go over better than most talking heads can figure out. Reagan was well known for a similar kind of arrogance and a sense of humor that made democratic opponents furious, sometimes justified in my opinion.

In the end though we have the GOP's top competitors with the foreign policy experience added together that would make even a 2008 Obama look good. A 2012 Obama who has been running wars and has been working within one of the most covert heavy military adventures of our time just makes them look like naive children. Romney, for example, got a lot of shit for being oblivious to the fact that ICBMs don't get launched from airplanes. Cain is all about the economy, but on foreign policy he's still a mystery... a situation, that if you ask any disillusioned Obama supporter... leads to a big ass wake up call that leads to decisions that have made Obama look more like Bush's 3rd term on the subject according to them. Republicans have generally seen his actions as either more irresponsible than Bush given the known information (or unknown, such as in Libya) or confirming that Bush did the Best with the "known knowns" a la Rumsfeld.

As a liberal constitutionalist whose central political philosophy revolves around liberty for all as an ideal, I've been frustrated and impatient with Obama on issues important to me on that front. The main slate of Republicans, including Cain, are often blatantly for taking us backwards on what little gains Obama made on social issues. It was one of the silver linings of Obama winning, even though I was a McCain supporter, that on social issues he might be able to make progress on some issues that I simply don't mesh well with the GOP on. I'd hate to see those gains lost... and hopefully even if Obama loses the system, especially through the courts, will block going backwards. I've recently had friends and family finally officially marry under recent laws and fight for their country without that nagging fear over who they go home to. I don't want to see any retreat on these fronts. But I'm not going to rubber stamp Obama over those victories given the domestic and global economic disarray. He's won me over as a foreign policy pragmatist, but he's lost me as someone who can let go of ideology when it comes to dealing with a stimulus, even if you buy into Keynesian tenets, that can work on the long term as opposed to a temporary band-aide.

I'm still very much a proponent of capitalism leaning mixed economies where regulations ensure liberty and enforcement of contracts while fighting fraud and disinformation that undermines it. Obama's capitulation on a consumer protection bureau with teeth when such an agency could positively ensure well informed decisions in a capitalist society as opposed to actions based on misleading information where the invisible hand picks your pocket more than anything else... well... let's just say I was disappointed.

Huntsman still comes across as the 2012 republican version of the 2008 Richardson. Qualified with the perfect resume for the job... who is left behind because most voters and those polled are too consumed with matters that are either irrelevant or are hyped up over those that have more importance for our nation's current situation.

And to the Ron Paul fans out there who still think his wins at straw polls or strong showings in caucus states in 2008 equate to real ballot box popularity when they actually depend on more organizational support and cult of personality BS... he's getting more press than ever, and he's still fucked. His views aren't just consistent, they're outmoded. He argues for foreign policy that predates the Marshall Court, pushes domestic policy that rings more true for the Articles of Confederation, and tacks on conspiracy theory bones to nutters who take his comments about the Fed or a highway bill to mean something way beyond the evidence... but gets their donations.

2012 may be an interesting race, but Obama has held strong on foreign policy realities that need to be addressed (possibly more than a GOP candidate, even McCain, because he has to prove he's not some isolationist pansy). He has dealt with issues of liberty slowly but surely and with the slow but sure changing of minds of the American public on those same issues making policy changes more feasible. On the economy... he's hurting. Blaming Republican obstructionism like Republicans used to blame Democratic obstructionism is par for the course. The GOP could get bipartisan bills that Dems later disowned even though they had real bipartisan support, not just picking off one or a few of the other side. Dems had super majorities and the White House and couldn't agree on the color of shit for their health care overhaul... leadership problems abound, ask any Democrat. They'll let you know better than I can.

So the big question is are any of the members of the GOP slate reasonably able with any certainty to both deal with the foreign policy issues we face (in this century, Ron Paul fans), the liberty issues we have to deal with domestically, *and* the economic issues that are brutalizing our nation and the world. Obama has 2 out of 3 fairly well... does any GOP candidate have 3 out of 3? Or even a different 2 out of 3 where the missing issue may be more or less irrelevant. Huntsman may be that guy. Huntsman vs Obama is something I'd like to see, even though it is almost certain not to happen.

Cain vs Obama? At this point, with the information available today, I'd vote for Obama. In my opinion Cain has yet to prove he has 1 out of 3... domestic economy being something he has intimate familiarity with. That's simply not good enough. But we shall see what the future will bring. On foreign policy and social issues he ranges from ignorant to damn ignorant from his statements thus far. Not very inspiring.

But he has given me pause enough to consider praying for something better even though I'm atheist. I guess that's something...

...@#*&!!!

On Jumping the Gun

2011-07-23T10:03:00.006-05:00

We've probably all done it once or twice or if nothing else caught ourselves doing it before putting our foot in our mouths. Thanks to the internet blasting whatever stream of consciousness thought that pops into our heads it seems to be in style to jump the gun. Afterwards there are either cries of righteous indignation if their assumptions were questioned but turned out to be right or endless mockery if they were wrong.

With the early reports on the Norway attacks there was speculation that it could have been Islamic terrorism over various policies or incidents and a fairly strong sense coming from folks familiar with the country's problems with xenophobic groups that it might be domestic terrorism. Hell if I knew though. I can't read Norwegian so there was no way I'd be able to verify any of the media's attempts to get scoops regardless of veracity, let alone the speculation.

But even before the news of the attacks broke here, I was already dealing with someone jumping the gun on a related topic. Someone pointed to this blog and stated emphatically that it was undeniable proof that Obama views regular old white folk as terrorists. The video, if someone actually watches it, shows people of various races and looks (from street rat to people posing as doctors to get to radioactive material in hospitals) playing the possible bad guys, while the good guys reporting suspicious behavior instead of letting it slide are still generally diverse, but all look pretty middle class in dress and behavior. The only real concentration of white middle-class white people in the video was in the offices of and including the responders.

The dumbest part wasn't even the jumping the gun without even watching the video. It was the blog's comment:

"Somehow the findings from this December report didn’t make it into the video…
In the last 24 months (2009 and 2010) 126 people were indicted on terrorist-related charges in the United States. All of them were Muslim."

Leaving aside the issue of how accurate that might even be as a statistic, the fact is that white middle class Americans can be Muslim. There have been attempted attacks by people of various races, white, African, Arab, etc... and various income levels to boot... here and around the world. The direct implication in both the blog and apparently the fan I was arguing with, was that you can apparently just look and tell someone's a Muslim... and somehow that in and of itself was more noteworthy than the video's highlighting of suspicious behavior. There was also the implication that Obama is coming to "Kill whitey!" but let's save that nonsense for another day.

Sadly, after the Norway suspect was described as a typical Nordic looking white guy I started seeing commentary by the left mocking those who thought it was some Muslim group... as if that information alone was definitive. Basically pulling the same crap in reverse as those using the Norway attacks to renew their demands of ethnic profiling of Muslims on the assumption you can tell by looks (along with the mindless blog/fan mentioned above before all of this).

To be fair, some people jump the gun more than others. This week's prize goes to xenophobic nutjobs all around. Vast conspiracy theories and other hysteria, even without the violent attacks, isn't helping anybody. Especially them. Maybe next week the prize will go to conspiratorial Islamic fundamentalist militant folks they despise. Maybe both should look in a friggin' mirror.

I hate this crap.

History is Written by the Victors

2011-07-21T11:25:00.003-05:00

Members of the Chinese Labour Corps on the WWI Front Lines

Since the rise of the Communist Party in China, its history in relationship to the West has changed. Of course the facts haven't changed, but history is a human endeavor, a human invention. It is the linchpin of national mythology, the foundation of what a nation believes about itself and about other nations.

With the victory of the Communists in China, both they and the West had reason to rewrite history. But even before that, the West, with little or no respect for the Chinese, wrote them out.

On August 14, 1917, China declared war with Germany and Austria–Hungary. They seized German ships in Chinese ports and assets in Chinese banks. They offered troops to fight in Europe but the Allied Force commanders considered this impractical.

The French convinced the allies that the Chinese could work as paid laborers. They suggested hiring 50,000 Chinese to work on the front lines. They would carry ammunition, dig trenches, and bury the dead. They would not engage in combat, and served unarmed. The Chinese workers found this hazardous duty very attractive because it paid much more than any job they could find at home.

At the deployment’s peak, about 140,000 Chinese worked on the front lines, about 100,000 for the British and 40,000 for the French. Of those, official Western history claims about 2,000 died, but Chinese history has the number at ten times that. The Chinese claims are not unrealistic, trench warfare was brutal and deadly. The Chinese ran ammunition to the entrenched soldiers, often exposing themselves to reach them.

At the end of the war most of the remaining laborers were repatriated. They took home a sense that European society was far from ideal, and that Europeans considered the Chinese less than human. They were often bitter, disillusioned, and suffering from the terrible stresses of war.

After the war, in spite of the substantial contribution of the Chinese both politically and in human terms, the Europeans and Japanese ignored their demands at the Treaty of Versailles. The West and Japan essentially ignored the "sick man of East Asia", an appellation which was the source of great insult to China. The Germans ceded control of Chinese concession ports in Shandong to the Japanese without consulting them. The Chinese were outraged that their sovereignty was so abused and refused to sign the treaty. The Japanese ultimately used their access to ports to stage an invasion of China, resulting in the unspeakable brutalities of the "Rape of Nanking".

Mostly, this is forgotten. China turned from the West and so the West from China. But we can see that, in fact, the face of the West was already turned away. We, in the West, know little of this history. Recently there has been more focus on the facts of a history so unimportant to us that we don't even include the stories of it in our national history. If our national myth raises us on the backs of other nations what have we gained? If we are blinded to the essential humanity of other nations, what do we get? History, read without mythical blinders can tell us that. We dehumanize others at our own peril. If we can imagine what it is like to live an other's myth, we stand a chance of being human ourselves.

—Yaakov

(Thanks to KP)

Comic Relief: Cheers to Booze

2011-07-13T15:39:00.003-05:00

In the wake of government shutdowns, none has had the drastic and horrifying effects that Minnesota's has had. According to reports their booze supply is at risk due to the state not renewing liquor licenses. This literally "sobering" situation could quickly lead to news like this:

Des Moines (GNN) -- Millions of stunned refugees that have flooded across the Minnesota border into Iowa has forced the governor to issue a state of emergency declaration. Riots have broken out in refugee camps, as seen in other Minnesotan camps in Wisconsin, Ontario, and the Dakotas, due to immense hangovers and moments of clarity generally summed up by the protest slogan "Everything around us sucks too?!"

FEMA has stepped up its Iowa operations to resolve the growing problem. Up to 200 Minnesotan refugees are being dropped off at Davenport, IA strip clubs in the hopes they forget about their troubles and which direction they came from. As with most Iowans who visit, most end up heading towards Illinois after and of those who don't drown in the Illinois river, the rest blend in to Northeast Illinois as wondering drunks.

The horror, the horror...

Retiring the Doctrines

2011-07-10T04:26:00.004-05:00

In a recent Washington Post article, Fareed Zakaria argues that times have changed and the idea of a comprehensive foreign policy doctrine may be too anachronistic for our ever more complicated position in the world. An excerpt:

The fashionable criticism is that Obama does not have a consistent policy toward the Arab Spring. But should he? There are vast differences between the circumstances in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria and Saudi Arabia; American interests in those countries; and our capacity to influence events there. Take the case where American interests and values most starkly collide, Saudi Arabia. Were the administration to start clamoring for regime change in Riyadh, and were that to encourage large-scale protests (and thus instability) in the kingdom, the price of oil would skyrocket. The United States and much of the developed world would almost certainly drop into a second recession. Meanwhile, the Saudi regime, which has legitimacy, power and lots of cash that it is spending, would likely endure — only now it would be enraged at Washington. What exactly would a more “consistent” Middle Eastern policy achieve?

In Libya, the administration confronted a potential humanitarian crisis in which Moammar Gaddafi’s domestic opposition, the Arab League, the United Nations and key European allies all urged international action. It found a way to participate in a multilateral intervention but has been disciplined about keeping its involvement limited. Syria is different, with a regime more firmly and brutally in control. And while I wish President Obama would voice his preference that President Bashar al-Assad should resign, it is worth noting that the same critics who want Obama to say this also criticize him for calling for Gaddafi’s ouster when he does not have the means to make it happen. Or perhaps they want us to intervene in Syria as well, which would bring the war count to four.

Even the so-called "Bush Doctrine" of preemptive military force against nations supporting terrorist groups of global reach was never, nor could it ever be realistically applied in toto. While Bush often spoke broadly when addressing a public that clamored for rhetoric of us being good versus evil, his most specific remarks included using all the tools at our disposal to deal with global terror networks... from diplomacy to international banking regulations and cooperation. These non-military measures continue in the background to this day, often expanding and/or adapting to deal with essentially a stateless enemy.

Some even viewed the "Bush Doctrine" as specific to WMDs, but even that was way off the mark in reality. Of course we don't like any nation that is hostile towards us to have some of the nastier weapons in their arsenal, but that alone couldn't be the threshold. Iraq, with its long history of violations of the ceasefire agreement and most often specifically in regards to not cooperating with the UN for verifiable disarmament, probably still wouldn't have been invaded if not for the other circumstances of our hostilities since they invaded Kuwait. The most pressing matter being that our allies seemed poised to relent on the sanctions and return to business as usual with an enemy that had still yet to cooperate to prove it had disarmed nor given any indication they would be suddenly disinclined to support those who opposed our interests or cause us harm.

We're no longer the runt nation that has to worry about entangling alliances that could get colonial powers aligned to crush us. Our economy has grown to all ends of the Earth, and with it concerns about our prosperity and security. Many try to label us as the "world police," but we have neither the resources or manpower to intervene in such general doctrinal terms. Many of the same people who accuse us of being the world police in one breath don't see the irony when in the next they accuse us of hypocrisy for not policing other parts of the world when we intervene somewhere else. Some even find it shockingly cruel that decisions on whether we intervene or not might involve weighing our interests. We are not exempt from Cardinal Richelieu's concept of raison d'Etat just because we outlasted the Cold War. We're a super power, not all powerful.

I have to agree with Zakaria that our current reality is far from being able to sum up foreign policies as simply as a Monroe Doctrine, Roosevelt Corollary, or even the ideological dichotomy of the Cold War that resulted in us making strange bedfellows across the globe. The strengthening poles of this multi-polar world order will only further complicate how we'll have to carefully navigate foreign policy decisions for our interests. There has long been reason to worry about how we'll fare in the crucible of the post-Cold War era. George H.W. Bush had hopes that our alliances such as NATO could be built upon for a better world. Disagreements have continued to fracture those relationships ever since. And now, even when we supposedly stand united against an enemy that has attacked major NATO powers, we ended up with a poorly coordinated mess in the middle of Afghanistan... historically not a place you want to be stuck with a poorly coordinated military mess.

Some people may gravitate towards the wishful thinking of Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul that we can somehow simplify the world or go back in time and interact with the world through trade and become isolationist with the sword. Beauty queens may wish for world peace. Human civilization rarely accommodates such naivety in practice for very long. The "rise of the rest" was how Zakaria described the multi-polar world forming around us. Abstaining from the fate of the future is not a realistic option for the world's last remaining superpower. We have wealth and plenty, we have influence and power, we have allies and friends... but we also have growing competitors and enemies. As the global population continues to grow and the desperation for resources grows into a downward spiral of chaos, we cannot afford to be caught unprepared nor overextended.

There is no doctrine that can shine a light on this dark and dangerous path we face moving forward. All we can be certain of is that going backwards isn't an option. Christians may want to recite "The Lord's Prayer" right about now. As for me, I see a world with plenty of evil to fear. Let us hope that good men do something about it.

Uglier Sides

2011-07-05T09:23:00.004-05:00

A couple articles worth checking out on Afghanistan, one with an interview with someone who was an early part of our rendition programs... the other painting a far less optimistic look at the Afghanistan situation than the Obama Administration is putting forward to justify his draw down of forces.

Some Will Call Me a Torturer

...
But CAPTUS doesn’t divulge the al-Qaida plans the CIA suspects him of knowing. So the agency sends him to “Hotel California” — an unacknowledged prison, beyond the reach of the Red Cross or international law.

Carle goes with him. Though heavily censored by the CIA, Carle provides the first detailed description of a so-called “black site.” At an isolated “discretely guarded, unremarkable” facility in an undisclosed foreign country (though one where the Soviets once operated), hidden CIA interrogators work endless hours while heavy metal blasts captives’ eardrums and disrupts their sleep schedules.

Afterward, the operatives drive to a fortified compound to munch Oreos and drink somberly to Grand Funk Railroad at the “Jihadi Bar.” Any visitor to Guantanamo Bay’s Irish pub — O’Kellys, home of the fried pickle — will recognize the surreality.

But Carle — codename: REDEMPTOR — comes to believe CAPTUS is innocent.
...

It's a long article but interesting. Given the nature of the material it's difficult to say how much is accurate or if it will ever be possible to confirm or give the other side of the story.

UN Shreds US Claims on Afghanistan

So this is what “fragile and reversible” progress looks like in Afghanistan: violence is up 51 percent since this time last year, thanks to a hurricane of insurgent suicide attacks, assassinations and bombs, undermining U.S. military claims that it’s breaking the momentum of the Taliban.

The closest thing the war has to a report card comes in the form of a new quarterly report from the United Nations. And the American troop surge appears to be dangerously close to flunking. According to the U.N., not only is violence on the rise, but so are civilian casualties. Compared to the spring of 2010, civilian deaths and injuries are up 20 percent, with 1,090 dead and 1,860 wounded. Over 435,000 Afghans are displaced by the war, a 4 percent rise.

The U.N. report directly contradicts an emerging talking point in the U.S. military. Lt. Gen. John Allen, the incoming war commander, told a Senate panel on Tuesday that “violence is five percent lower so far this year in comparison to last year,” (.pdf) a statistic that David Ignatius attributes to Gen. David Petraeus in his Wednesday column. Not only is violence not going down, if the U.N. is to believed, it’s going way up — far from a war effort that’s arresting Taliban momentum.
...

Obviously far from encouraging. Certainly not the greatest stories I wanted to stumble upon on a long weekend for Independence Day. Sort of ruined the mood of my otherwise patriotic history-nerd fun.

Any thoughts, comments, etc. Feel free to share. I'm a bit overwhelmed to process it all.

Taking a Stand

2011-07-02T17:48:00.004-05:00

Two stories to bring the issue home on DADT and gay marriage. The first is about a well respected soldier who we lost in Afghanistan:

Andrew never denied his sexuality. But like so many, he struggled with what it means to be gay in America. Yet it was only one part of him. He was so much more. In the note on his laptop, he never used the words gay or homosexual to define himself. His younger sister, Martha, says it's the least interesting thing about him.

But with his death, his parents have taken up the cause of gay rights. Andrew fought for his nation in a foreign land. His parents' war is being waged in their home state of Minnesota. To them, it's about defending the Constitution -- protecting the rights of all citizens.

...

Andrew didn't have a significant other. If he had, the partner wouldn't have been allowed to escort his body home from Dover Air Force Base, nor would he have received Andrew's $100,000 death benefit.

I highly recommend reading the full story at the link provided. Keep in mind all of the various arguments put forth here and around the world, among our NATO allies, Israeli forces, etc. that somehow our military is too unprofessional to deal with a known gay comrade. Throughout the world and even within pockets of our own military this has simply not been the epidemic nightmare made out to be.

The second story involves two lesbian marines who tried to work the system to gain equal treatment for active duty benefits. They now face possible prison time and dishonorable discharge for the attempt.

(CNN) -- Three California Marines have been charged with marrying for financial gain, accused of manipulating the military's off-base housing program so a lesbian couple could live together, according to a woman at the center of the case.
Marine Cpl. Ashley Vice says she and two others have been charged with conspiracy, making false official statements, fraud and adultery for allegedly marrying to collect thousands in financial assistance offered by the military to heterosexual married couples.

If this is how we treat those who most directly fight to secure the blessings of liberty, on such an unrelated matter of conscience so far removed from their capacity to do the job... it's no wonder that the violations of liberty throughout the country along the same lines continues along with it. Madison embraced a notion of liberty that defended matters of conscience from state intervention and attempted to enshrine that notion in the first amendment (see Church and State: Revisited and Church and State: Follow Up).

In this case many will argue the military isn't the place for social experiments... but gays in the military predate the policies. The problem isn't that we're forcing new radical social changes on the military, we're forcing outmoded discrimination on the military to the detriment of the mission and the men and women fighting in it. They're looking at the problem bass ackwards. Unfortunately it may take many more Andrew Wilfahrts to remind people that we're talking about real soldiers here, not some bizarre alternate reality where gays in the service result in pink camo and columns of troops turn into gay pride parades a la San Francisco.

Reality needs to sink in. Our military deserves better. Our citizens deserve better. Liberty is not for the majority to force matters of conscience on the minority. And no, just because something is legal doesn't mean you have to like it, or that you're being "forced" to approve of it. Acceptance of liberty involves tolerating many things one disagrees with. It cannot reach inside your mind and force you to agree with everything done within the bounds of liberty. Deal.

Not So Super Carriers

2011-06-22T12:04:00.003-05:00

While we're waiting to hear from the President tonight on the final draft of his final decision on ending the Afghan surge by the end of 2012, supposedly 10k this year and 20k the next... so says the rumor mill...

Carriers! Super carriers!

We got 'em. We've dominated the seas and lands within range with them.

Unfortunately the defense systems to prevent these massive floating airbases from falling to increasingly effective anti-ship weapons just aren't keeping pace. As a Danger Room article on the subject today points out, our dependence on these broadside-of-a-barn sized targets, that would severely cripple our capabilities in the area if taken out, is making less cost-to-benefit sense over time:

Instead of today’s small number of gigantic carriers, the Navy of the future should operate a larger number of smaller flattops, Capt. Jerry Hendrix asserts in the pages of Proceedings magazine. “Moving away from highly expensive and vulnerable supercarriers toward smaller, light carriers would bring the additional benefit of increasing our nation’s engagement potential.”

It would also spread out U.S. naval air power instead of concentrating it in just a few places, where it can be more easily knocked out.

...

Even Gates was forced to backtrack after his speech last year criticizing the Navy’s over-reliance on huge flattops. “I am not going to cut a carrier. Okay?” Gates said. “But people ought to start thinking about how they are going to use carriers in a time when you have highly accurate cruise and ballistic missiles that can take out a carrier.”

To Hendrix, that means having more carriers. And that means they need to be smaller.

As with any military resource shift, this would be controversial and involve a lot of fights between vested interests and partisan gamesmanship. The article and the supporting links make strong points about why we should adopt a hybrid carrier strategy, with a mix of modern carriers and some super carriers. The hybrid strategy would allow stronger adaptability for the offensive in conflicts we currently face with al Qaeda related groups and likely military scenarios of the future. On the defensive end it would not only keep us a step ahead of advanced powers, but mitigate potential mass disasters should other enemies obtain and use newer effective weapons against our naval forces. Taking out a single super carrier could immediately add thousands of deaths to the war tally in addition to the strategic and monetary slam.

Given these issues it may be necessary to upgrade from the AEGIS and other defense systems available even in a hybrid mix for the remaining super carriers. When the mission relies upon them, we better not be caught with our pants down.

Molester "Touched Many Lives"

2011-06-22T09:23:00.005-05:00

Apparently my local, and liberal leaning, college town is a bunch of hateful jerks who don't care about social issues. Why? A judge passed down a long prison sentence to a guy who molested an 8 year old for nearly a year. In spite of a psychiatric evaluation afterwards not indicating any intent for self-harm, he killed himself 12 hours later. Apparently there wasn't enough sympathy or outcry in this case (warning: link may induce vomiting).

The article was mainly in response to the local news obituary and guestbook linked within. If you made it through that, you probably saw my response, but I'm posting it here for those who didn't or want to skip ahead:

A lot of assumptions about what “we” do or don’t do in this odd piece. Assuming “we” just don’t want to think about issues as opposed to the obvious reasons why this case isn’t a great one to rally around for mental health and prison reform is more than a little insulting. The man molested a child for nearly a year and admitted to the sex acts, so even if there had been a mental health confinement, it would almost certainly have to be of long duration. Rehabilitating pedophiles is difficult to impossible and without rehabilitation they remain a threat to the children they have contact with. Even with needed reforms it may have been possible that he remain confined to an institution for the rest of his life.

Does any of that change the fact that there are serious reforms that need to be made with our mental health and prisons (which have sadly become the largest mental institutions themselves)? Nope. Does it get anybody off the hook for negligence for prior suicides or this one if applicable? Nope. Even the fact that he passed a psychiatric evaluation after the sentencing, while not supportive of an argument of negligence, doesn’t necessarily rule out any other evidence that people might have or may later present.

Bashing the community as if “we” don’t care about these social issues isn’t productive. Ripping on the community as if “we” are hateful because a judge passed down a harsh ruling for someone who sexually molested a young child over the course of months upon months, isn’t inspiring. And any appeal for leniency for child molesters should not begin with how they “touched many lives.“ It’s insensitive and wince-worthy. Words of wisdom? Ugh…

While most of my mental health posts have been in relation to veterans care, it's a topic along with the justice system that deeply concerns me... especially due to the fact it continues to leave people out to dry or doesn't deal with the problem until they're incarcerated and it's too late. Trying to use this case of all things as a rallying cry to get people involved is just mind boggling. While it's reasonable for family members to be upset given the loss, lashing out at the community as hateful and using embarrassingly insensitive language in the process ain't going to endear you to anyone.

As a general rule it's not very compelling to go on about how nice people were in other aspects of their lives when the crimes involve manipulation, gaining and violating trust. We've heard it before on everything from pedophiles to serial killers, how nice they were outside of that recent raping and killing stuff we found out about. This is not a hill to make your stand on. It sure as hell isn't the place for parenting tips. "We only teach them to hate." Puh-lease.

Obama the War President

2011-06-20T08:10:00.006-05:00

From asserting his Article II war powers over congressional restrictions to the media frenzy about "peace talks" with the Taliban that aren't, Obama continues to surprise.

War Powers

Obama ends up being the President who not only challenges the constitutionality of the War Powers Act of 1973, but actually defies the law? The constitutionality issue has been ongoing with presidents since its passage, but previous presidents have adhered to the provisions despite their protestations. Seems a long ways since his early notoriety among the Iraq War opposition.

Speaking of Iraq... is anyone speaking about Iraq? Occasional headlines about bombings, but otherwise no news is good news? Following the DoD page on operations gives the impression that things are mostly on track with the Bush era SOFA withdrawal agreement made with the Iraqi government at the end of 2008. It's certainly not the "precipitous withdrawal" that Republican candidates warned against and many of Obama's supporters considered necessary. In fact it seems that Obama's actual follow through on Iraq trumps many of the 2008 Republican primary candidates who seemed to go chicken-shit on the issue of Iraq [cough]Romney[cough].

The irony isn't that Obama's campaign rhetoric and actual policy are at odds. You'd be hard pressed to find a successful presidential candidate who completely avoided hypocrisy. The real irony is that of all the complaints about how the Iraq War was authorized, via the War Powers Act, even by democrats who voted in favor in spite of its language that included some executive determinations... Obama was one of the candidates whose rhetoric would have never given the impression he'd favor interpretations of Article II powers that would render those complaints moot.

Afghanistan and "Peace Talks"

Now in 2012 we have a new bunch of GOP candidates who seem to be going soft on Afghanistan. Obama's record there has been more interesting behind the scenes as he inherited the massive covert war that constantly crossed the Pakistan border. It'll be interesting to see if Obama turns out to be the more hawkish candidate in 2012, even if his rhetoric once again swings to sooth base supporters who want the war to end sooner rather than later.

Speaking of ending the war... you'd think we were in peace talks with the Taliban given all the headlines recently saying Gates affirmed we were in "peace talks with the Taliban." The problem is he said no such thing in spite of the headlines. The interview and the quoted comments are all about making contacts, not negotiating any sort of peace. He also highlights the biggest hitch: finding any real leadership in the frayed Taliban organization that could meet all of the US and Afghan conditions. I can't say with any certainty how Osama bin Laden's death has shaken the ties between Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, the ISI, and other insurgent elements of both domestic and foreign origination. I'm uneasy with any reliance on Taliban, even if decoupled from those other organizations, to honor any agreement or even stay decoupled. It's a legitimate concern, but that's not what we're doing.

The distortion of what we're currently doing may sell headlines and freak out anyone who views the Taliban as an insidious element of the AfPak situation that will reach out to all sorts of bad actors again to retake the country. It's not, however, the current US policy nor the reality of what we're doing... at least not yet. The Taliban issue will remain a long term problem for Afghanistan regardless of whether they retain any hope of retaking the country. Even in the best case scenario there will be Taliban elements and sympathizers within parts of Afghan society and politics. It's something we'll have to deal with one way or another. Whether any sort of talks could be part of the equation really depends on what conditions are met, who exactly we're talking to, and the conditions on the ground.

Strange Bedfellows

McCain has always been an odd duck on foreign policy, allying with those who are aligned with his views or going it alone and pissing off everybody. He continues to annoy many liberals and independents with his push to sell his conservative credentials in his home state after his 2008 primary and general campaigns that irritated the right-wing base far and wide, but lately he has been irritating them again by aligning with Obama on Libya and Afghan issues. He ripped on the slate of candidates debating in New Hampshire as embracing isolationist fringe ideas. With Libya his support has been more direct, challenging the constitutionality of the War Powers Act and arguing against attempts to defund the military operations there.

Personally I find the Libyan situation unsettling, mostly due to lack of information. It's easy to want a monster like Gadaffi removed from power, even before his most recent crackdowns and state backed slaughter. Stepping in to stop that slaughter would generally fall under the purview of the United Nations as opposed to the NATO alliance... though given the UN failures in the area of defending populations from slaughters it was intended to prevent, it makes sense to find alternative solutions. But going through NATO after all the nightmares of divided leadership, disparate tactics, and commitment variance in Afghanistan throughout the war? Perhaps there really wasn't much of an alternative given our current military strain and the inherent problems with trying to form new coalitions for such operations, especially if we aren't necessarily in the lead.

"Leading from behind." Now there's an expression that's been tossed around a lot. What bothers me about it more than the conservative complaints is the history of trying to rely on European powers to take the lead to deal with humanitarian crises. George H.W. Bush initially pinned his hopes with such European initiative for the crisis in the breakup of Yugoslavia. He also seemed to strongly support the idea of NATO dealing with humanitarian crises in the post Cold War era. The long and troubled crucible for these ideas in Eastern Europe throughout the 90s isn't encouraging. It doesn't set in stone how the world has or will change for such ideas and perhaps Libya will prove to be a turning point in spite of the difficulties thus far.

But this approach with Libya is something I could see a McCain presidency doing. Obama going around the UN to deal militarily with a humanitarian crisis must have his supporters wondering if even Hillary would have been so Clintonian. Given the nature of politics, especially partisan politics, it should make them wonder if McCain would have been limited further by public and thus congressional opposition on all of these issues. The fierce opposition to Bush's foreign policies has died down to things like fundraiser war protest songs with "we love you"s afterward for Obama generally continuing them with different rhetoric (and sometimes eerily similar rhetoric).

It's very frustrating to Obama's earlier supporters and just generally confusing in my opinion. Even the Nobel Peace Prize committee has to be wondering what the hell they were thinking. One thing seems clear out of all of this: Obama, regardless of rhetoric, has embraced his position as a war president in policy. To what end? Only time can tell us when it comes to war and war presidents.

Remember

2011-05-30T00:35:00.005-05:00

Remember the sacrifices that got us here. Memorial Day movie pick this year: Restrepo.

One of the better ways to honor the fallen, in my opinion, is to support our current military members and the veterans who have come home. While there are plenty of great organizations out there that help with current and former military members, Toys for Troops, a local support organization run by a local soldier's mom, deserves a shout out.

For other avenues of support, here's an updated excerpt from an older post on the same idea:

Here are the top rated veterans/military charities as listed on their website:
VETERANS & MILITARY

Armed Services YMCA of the USA
703-313-9600

A–
Fisher House Foundation
888-294-8560

A+
Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund
800-340-4376

A+
National Military Family Association
800-260-0218

A

There are also a variety of ways to help located at OurMilitary.mil which lists a few of the places I donate to: AnySoldier.com, USO Care Packages, and others.

Do what you can. Just don't do nothing.

2012 GOP Lineup

2011-05-27T10:16:00.002-05:00

Meh...

So far I'm not seeing anything all that impressive coming out of the ranks. My animosity towards Romney's tactics and taking flip-flopping and lying about it to all new heights is hardly a secret on this blog. There is a vast shortage of foreign policy experience among most in the field which is unnerving given that the candidate is likely to inherit at least a couple conflicts in progress with some serious upheaval to boot.

It's primary time, so there is a great deal of playing lip service to the base... which is obnoxious to an independent like me, but some of these social conservatives have a history that suggests far more than lip service. Sadly the irony of their own policies on integrating religion and government as they try to stoke the fires of fear over Shari'a law based systems goes totally over their heads.

Obama, who came into office with strong academics but almost no significant leadership or foreign policy experience went from a fairly naive ideologue in the 2008 primaries to an extremely nuanced general election candidate and even more pragmatic President once in office... he even has his supporters complaining that he's fulfilling Bush's 3rd Term (it wasn't just me!). I still disagree with a number of issues with Obama and certainly disagree on the proper roles of the various levels of government, but on the whole he was no where near as bad as he could have been if he had ended up being that naive ideologue we saw in 2007 in the primary campaigns for 2008.

Will the Republicans ante up with a reasonably qualified candidate who can offer something that's actually better? Will they go off the rails and try to be so far right of Obama that they scare off the moderates and independents who don't see everything as Republican or zomg-socialists!!!

It's not looking good. But it's still early. I guess we'll see how it goes from here. If the economy takes another hit, it may not matter so much about the details as people run towards something else to help deal with it. If the economy improves, it's hard to see Obama too threatened by the current GOP slate. Don't quote me on that though. My crystal ball is broken.

Bloggers Block

2011-05-27T08:26:00.003-05:00

There's been so much going on in the news and in politics that I often want to jump right on the blog and opine, correct, rant, or whatever. It seems that being out of the habit makes it a bigger mental hurdles than I previously realized, especially when I have excuses of being busier than normal with school and/or work. Lately I've been having more good days overall than bad with regards to my medical issues, so I've made a big push to re-invigorate my otherwise stalled business while I'm not in classes this semester. So far, so good.

On the world being on fire:

The Arab Spring appears to have hit some bloody lines in the sand. I still find a lot of room for optimism in Tunisia and Egypt, but less so in Libya and Syria. The outcry over Obama not adhering to the strict deadlines of of the Libya operation shouldn't shock anyone since the War Powers Act of 1973 is on untested Constitutional ground on whether Congress has the authority to limit him in such a way beyond their own Constitutional powers that keep him in check (appropriations, funding generally, declarations of war (which is generally confused as some power to make war happen or not as opposed to the legal domestic/international ramifications). We'll see how that plays out. I expect a lot of hypocrisy from the right on this one after the Bush admin by seizing on the technicality.

Fareed Zakaria had some recent comments on Egypt showing how precarious the situation remains in spite of reasons for optimism here at CNN. Whether you agree with him or not, Zakaria's perspective is an interesting one to add to your sources for an educated perspective on many of the foreign policy matters that are important to us. His main site is on CNN.com at the Global Public Square.

I still find myself in on-line arguments about whether Islam is specifically and especially evil and demands a higher level of scrutiny than others in America. Granted there is a high number, even if minute overall percentage, of Muslims who follow the militant fundamentalist ideas that emerged from Qtubbism and led to groups like al Qaeda. But this is, historically speaking, a relatively new movement. Violence in humanity has had bases in religion along with exploiting religion for political goals... and as cultures, international relations, perceptions, etc shift, the religious component of conflicts has had varying amounts in direct or indirect ties to that violence.

While I'm all for rooting out the militant extremist groups and opposing those who'd limit the liberty of others, it seems that the demonization of Islam is being used more as an excuse to go overboard in the name of security with policies that are ultimately useless or frankly inefficient. On the other side of the equation are those who go out of their way to defend Islam beyond religious liberty and into wanting special treatment or supporting policies that smack of the religious right's own attempts to legislate morality based on religious dogma. It's a mess. Our greatest allies in the War on Terror has been the Muslim Community who have had to deal with the stereotyping and bigotry of being lumped in with fundy nutters like Osama bin Laden. The last thing we need are policies that make them feel more excluded or even fearful to come forward with possible information. It's a lot easier to tell authorities you saw/heard/etc something suspicious when you believe that if you're wrong that person will be treated fairly... and that you won't be treated like a terrorist for knowing them.

The irony is that it seems that many who want to enact policies that would effectively ostracize Muslims more and give them further reason to believe they would not be treated fairly even if they tried to help, are often the same people who complain that the Muslim Community doesn't do enough (while neglecting all they have done already).

On another note: Fuck tornadoes.

Hooyah!

2011-05-02T17:22:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged much lately at all, but wow. After all these years... we got him. Credit where credit is due: foremost to our armed forces who have sacrificed so much since 9/11... to our intel operatives who have been putting their asses on the line for ever speck of intel that could get us to this point... to Obama for taking a pretty damn gutsy risk in ordering this operation.

Outstanding!

Drug Cocktails for Veterans Still Deadly

2011-02-13T13:57:00.004-06:00

From the NY Times:

After a decade of treating thousands of wounded troops, the military’s medical system is awash in prescription drugs — and the results have sometimes been deadly.

By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those. The Pentagon has looked to pharmacology to treat those complex problems, following the lead of civilian medicine. As a result, psychiatric drugs have been used more widely across the military than in any previous war.

But those medications, along with narcotic painkillers, are being increasingly linked to a rising tide of other problems, among them drug dependency, suicide and fatal accidents — sometimes from the interaction of the drugs themselves. An Army report on suicide released last year documented the problem, saying one-third of the force was on at least one prescription medication.

“Prescription drug use is on the rise,” the report said, noting that medications were involved in one-third of the record 162 suicides by active-duty soldiers in 2009. An additional 101 soldiers died accidentally from the toxic mixing of prescription drugs from 2006 to 2009.

This is a problem that just doesn't seem to be going away. I pointed out concerns about this phenomenon a couple times over the past two years:

Veterans as Guinea Pigs: AstraZeneca forced to settle after being caught giving kickbacks to doctors to prescribe Seroquel for unapproved uses on veterans that led to many dying in their sleep.
Side Note: Harm and Benefits: Earlier post documenting an unexplained surge in deaths of veterans taking a "PTSD Cocktail" leading to erratic behavior and dying in their sleep
VA Watchdog.org Archives: Search results for related stories along these lines.

If we don't demand higher accountability for those who take care of our nations veterans, we might as well stop pretending that we haven't left them forgotten, usually to worry about our own (and often far more petty) problems. Meanwhile the backlog of veterans claims still keep stacking up, the resources for both the aging and new veterans is ever more strained, and in spite of any supposed reforms to the health care system, the VA's problems have gone almost entirely ignored.

This is unconscionable.

Egyptians Claim their own Sovereignty

2011-02-11T13:24:00.003-06:00

Now comes the hard part: eternal vigilance to maintain it. Will they succeed? No one can say with certainty. Is there hope? Real hope? Yes. For the first time in a very long time. Here's to hoping they do not waste the opportunity. Cheers.

Writers Blog, err block

2011-02-08T17:37:00.002-06:00

Blog neglect is becoming an epidemic. Way too much personal crap going on on top of a lot of news that has me left in a wait and see status. I have some medical excuses on top of that, but I won't bore you.

I have high hopes for Egypt transitioning to a system with stronger self-governance, though not without reservations. The religious atmosphere of Egypt isn't as scary as some would portray it as entirely analogous to past movements in other countries with entirely different conditions... but the underlying religiosity is always a concern, just as it is here in the United States. Radical elements, even if they lack the power to put their ultimate goals into effect now, can use the more moderate population's beliefs against them with the right circumstances. Thus far I've agreed more with Fareed Zakaria's stance of cautious optimism with a solid appreciation that the more moderate forces in Egypt still lack a solid leader to ensure theirs is the ultimate force behind a new Egyptian government. Like I said, it's wait and see.

Our wars have fallen into the media shadows for the most part, which is upsetting given the extremely volatile situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan when it comes to whether or not we can actually achieve the goals laid out by this and the previous administration. The economic woes have helped overshadow these concerns as people understandably worry more and more about their own situation as the continued crushing of economic stagnation makes things ever more frightening. It's not a good excuse, just a human one. The solutions offered on the economy are almost as disheartening as reading about the half-assed attempts at salvaging the Afghan situation. Lots of bickering and fighting over ideas that only partially address the daunting overall mess we're in. It's depressing to say the least.

On the religious front there were some humorous moments with Bill O'Reilly making fallacious arguments from ignorance by putting his own ignorance on full display, with Colbert mocking it relentlessly in classic comedic fashion. Some of the biggest voices against Egypt's democracy movement have chimed in over their religiosity in spite of their own histories of supporting Christian religiosity to dangerous levels in our government. My irony meter broke. Picked up a newer translation of the Koran to read through when I have time. Thus far it is only reinforcing my view that reading holy books in the context of their history is often the best way to loose all faith in the divine inspiration in them. They aren't totally devoid of good ideas, but the bad ideas and blatantly bogus nonsense certainly destroy any rational excuse to believe them literally or take their claimed origins seriously. They're important works that have changed the world, and in as much are worthy of study, but that doesn't really help the arguments contained therein.

On the scientific front we've discovered earth sized planets in our own galactic arm nearby and the theoretical physics of figuring out what reality really is continues to boggle the mind. At least the amazing confusion of how it seems to work has far more application than previous guesses that gods of the gaps used to fill. It seems that the more we learn about how the universe operates, the less we can rely on the languages based on human experience, and the more we have to speak in the language of mathematics... not unsurprising given that most of human experience clashes with the reality behind the photons and vibrations and thermodynamic properties we perceive. Stranger still is that often we find what makes the math work turns out to have real consequence and applicability to the real world... in new and surprising ways.

That's the kind of stuff that's been on my mind lately, and I hope getting some of that out will get me out of my writing funk that has not only this blog but also another project at a stalemate with my brain. We shall see.

Obama Believes VA, Oops!

2011-01-26T10:54:00.004-06:00

From yesterday night's State of the Union Address:

"Veterans can now download their electronic medical records with a click of the mouse."

The VA likes to say this, but it isn't true, at least in any common usage of the terms. Jim Strickland over at VAWatchdogToday explains:

My first reaction when I heard that was anger. I soon morphed over to embarrassment for our Commander in Chief. He has no clue that he has been duped by your Department of Veterans Affairs.

To say that the statement is wrong doesn't do it justice. It's so far away from the facts that it takes my breath away. It would appear that it's up to me to correct the President of the United States...no small responsibility.

Mr. President, sir...my VA has lied to you. I know you don't have time to sit in front of a computer to check on exactly what VA is pushing off on you as a function that will enable veterans to "download their medical records" but there is no such thing. That function does not exist, never has.

I'm sure you were told of the seemingly magic Blue Button that's available via the "eVet" web site. Please allow me to explain just how that works, sir.

Veterans may now go to the eVet web site and once they are properly registered (no small task in itself) they will see a link to the Blue Button. The instructions and the FAQs associated with the Blue Button run into the thousands of words. All of those words are designed to obfuscate and hide the ultimate truth. That truth is that there is no access to a veterans electronic medical record.

There is no direct route that a veteran may utilize to connect into his or her electronic medical record (EMR)...otherwise known as VistA. Access to VistA does not exist. There is no right for the veteran to enter or see any part of the EMR. No access, no entry, no viewing of any information in VistA; none, nada, zip, zero.

That the VA implies otherwise is a preconceived plan to try to tell veterans and the taxpayer that there is progress where there is none.

So what medical information does a vet have access to electronically?

If the veteran cares to spend a lot of time and labor, he or she may enter all of their health care data that they have personally available to them in the Blue Button records. Once the veteran has completed all that, they may then download a report of the data that they have uploaded.

Only what he uploads himself. Not the VA's actual records on the veteran, just the veteran's own record he establishes personally on a VA server.

Why is this a big deal a sign of so little progress? Because actual access was the original goal of this overgrown and mostly useless web interface that has become a bloatware for prescription refills. It works just fine for prescription refills, don't get me wrong. But the promises of what it would do beyond that have never been fulfilled. Among those promises was access to our medical records... which they BS'd there way out of after spending gawd knows how much failing (some VA computer system projects run well over 100 million dollars before they're scrapped and nothing is accomplished... meanwhile a 1 million claim backlog for benefits ensues).

And what the hell was up with the sputnik reference and the awkward comparisons to previous innovations matched with government involvement, as if the government involvement was the driver as opposed to the necessity. If I'm understanding him correctly he thinks government subsidies are now officially the "mother of all inventions" in the USA. "Necessity" has been relegated to "red-headed step-child" dragged along. It's bass ackwards. It'd make just as much sense for a private company to turn the same idea on its head and somehow consider that sensible policy. I'm tossing it up there with some desperate attempt to link his presidency to JFK's that just fell flat, because what followed was just a rambling mess.

Otherwise we got a lot of the usual promises. And I'm not holding out much hope that it is any less just talk than the last yahoos and the yahoos before them and the yahoos before them, etc. Especially when we're passing health care "reform" laws at the federal level that almost entirely avoid reforming the broken federal health care programs, including the VA. Progress? Not seeing it from this side of the claims backlog. Sounds nice though. Good luck with that.

On a Less Ranty Note

2011-01-20T18:22:00.003-06:00

I did have a happy solstice celebration, though the exact day of wasn't all that great medically. The nice thing about just enjoying the astrophysics and enjoying the fact that it indicates a real new year where the days start getting longer again and we even had a kick ass total lunar eclipse if you weren't in an overcast area in the States.

The exact day is nifty and all, but it's not gospel to me. And since most of the people I know prefer to celebrate around Christmas day (as chosen by some pope once) and/or new years by the typical western calendar in use... I'm willing to compromise and let them have their fun and join in too.

A merry time was had, though the survivors of New Years celebrations seemed a bit rough the next day. With the medical stuff I just felt as crappy as normal so I guess that's one silver lining of it... I guess. Bleh.

I hope your holidays or whatever festivities you enjoy or get dragged to went well. I've made it a habit to explicitly demand nothing for Christmas since, well, I'm an atheist. I like giving gifts because I want to, not out of some superstition based obligation that some families feel so guilty about they come up with strange gift exchanges of pointless cheap-ass gifts with little meaning... or just for humor's sake. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot to that.

This Christmas, for obvious economic reasons, has been a bit harder for people than usual. I tried to make it a little better than it would have been for some where I thought I could do the most good. I did my usual donations to charities I support, and strongly advocate giving to reliable charities that have been vetted for veterans and their family members while the fight goes on to ensure they get the benefits they earned with blood, duty, and loyalty to serve their country... even when the government itself gave them little reason to trust in their bureaucratic promises.

Fighting for ideals, even when "mistakes were made," doesn't make them any less our responsibility as a nation, as a community, as part of humanity. The Veterans Administration only gives so much for benefits to help make a home accessible to those who have lost limbs or use of them among other organs. I'm a strong supporter of charitable organizations that also work with active duty troops who are currently facing situations in a volunteer army that the "Greatest Generation" faced that were similarly painful, even if for radically different reasons more often than not.

The greatest gift I could receive is a receipt of a donation to one of those vetted charities, using MS Paint or Photoshop or whatever to block out the personal details. It would be my perfect birthday present. Maybe, just maybe, this year... if not for veterans or active duty military... at least some reputable organization that has a proven track record of providing for and efficiently using funds to help people in need. Ask for that as your birthday or christmas or whatever gift giving celebrations you may have in your family.

If you need some inspiration. I'll refer you to "Don't Do Nothing"

It is absolutely recommended reading. I'd call it required reading if I didn't have such libertine views on that subject. But you'll get the point. If you don't, well, you might need to seek counseling.

So where the hell have I been?

2011-01-20T17:25:00.003-06:00

Dealing with medical issues. Yippee.

So where have I been? Mostly on my couch in agony.

What does it matter? In the grand scheme of things, not much. Nobody ever read this blog to hear my personal problems.

Where has the world gone... wow. After reading "Obama's Wars" by Bob Woodward... I don't think I can encapsulate the spectrum of strong feelings, both positive and negative, to even start to sum it up while watching the scant news coverage. American Idol still gets more air time in commercials alone. Veterans issues? Resigned to sidebars or local rags mostly. Iraq is practically in the same boat.

Fareed Zakaria's "Post-American World" is becoming just as relevant as his added prologue said it would given the continued global economic problems.

A nutbag went on a killing spree and the only rational voice on the subject seems to be coming from the Daily Show taking a serious moment to address the problem and later criticizing/mocking the press and partisan reactions. New gun control measures has mostly been a media concern than a political one. For the media it's an attention getter... for politicians it only helps those in districts that have strong leanings on the subject... which are usually places where gun violence is a problem of black market guns fitting the usual 3-4 shots fired (FBI stats) trafficked into areas where guns are restricted by gun runners who use straw purchasers. The mass shootings, especially two of the more notable recent ones have pointed out a huge gap in our system for when people are blatantly seen as a threat to themselves and others, yet never come close to being put on the prohibited list in our instant background check system.

That needs to change. Not just the random psycho, but the constant blood bath that kills far more on a regular basis than the big media circus events of mass shootings by nutjobs that get the higher ratings. Apparently poor people are only good for the occasional expose. Doesn't that just suck.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know (not everyone who reads this are familiar with firearms) the 10 round limit is entirely arbitrary and based on nothing more than pulling a number out of some politician's ass. Most normal capacity magazines carry more rounds in common handguns... usually between 8-17 depending on the caliber or design. The old 1911s and their more direct spin offs are generally the 8 rounders. And given that 1911 refers to a year, you can guess why modern designs are more efficient with space. A 13 round magazine for a Glock Model 21 is a normal capacity magazine... not an extended/high/etc capacity magazine. It's normal for the gun.

There were some Barettas that normally came with a 15 round magazine. Yet despite the Hollywood exaggerations and politicians using functionally normal firearms styled to look like military assault rifles or full auto weapons (strictly regulated by the feds to own since the chaos of organized crime and prohibition issues) that's not where you're going to save lives. Just get a foot in the door by scaring people with bullshit. If you're an adamant opponent of one or more of our current wars over the lives lost of our young men... let alone injuries... they pale in comparison to what our nation has been facing in the quasi war zones of some inner cities. If you spend all your time worrying about weapons like real full auto AK-47s that are already prohibited to own unless you get a virtual anal probe by the feds and your state allows it too... you're basically worrying about fighter jets when you should be worrying about IEDs in Afghanistan.

The assault weapon ban had no effect on gun crime according to the bipartisan commission (you can guess which party didn't like the results of the commission they organized). Then, as now, there's no way to know who has magazines over 10 rounds. There aren't any databases to come after them. And the reason the last ban on them had to grandfather current owners was because the Constitution forbids the taking of property without just compensation and only in cases for public use... on both the federal and thanks to 14th Amendment incorporation, the State/local level too.

What effect did it have? It made things more expensive by limiting supply. The supply is still there. Nobody I know had any problem with getting normal capacity magazines for their guns that normally hold more than 10 rounds... whether they were handguns that usually range between 8 and 17 or rifles that range from 5 to 30 or shot guns that range, well... I'm not a shotgun guy, but you get the point. All it did was raise prices. When the prohibition expired, the normal magazines were reasonably priced again.

If you really want to help stop the bloodshed... the bulk of it? Deal with poverty and organized crime in the inner cities and gun runners arming them like the assholes who profited off arming African civil wars. If you want to do something to make more of these nutcase mass killings rare... demand a stronger intervention ability of the gov't for mental health with due process included. You can't just give the gov't carte blanche power to lock people up for being nuts... especially when they'd also have the power of saying what is or isn't nuts. Seen any partisan propaganda by either party describing other partisans as insane? Yeah, gov't not trustworthy on this subject without strong due process rights afforded. But my god, we went from one extreme of abusing the mentally ill and basically treating them like lab rats to not intervening until they end up in the criminal prosecution system. Our prison system has become our largest mental health facility.

We have a vast degree of liberty in this country. To many other cultures, a very dangerous amount, even as they argue we're somehow fascist at the same time often enough. But liberty may allow assholes, but one's basic human empathy and the blessings of our liberty to have access to information unfettered (or fettered if we prefer confirmation bias) should remind us of the republican (not party, the ideology) values of a government by the people and for the people.

Our deficiency isn't liberty. It's how we're using it... and sadly how often we're not.

I've left out a lot, but that's my first step back into the blogosphere of really speaking my mind. I'd link to references. But I want to get this posted and done and work on my next rant instead. I'll work on getting less lazy later.

Hey, Hu's on First?

2011-01-20T01:11:00.003-06:00

Hu Jintao's in town. Maybe we should remind him, given the recent holiday, of some of the wisest words ever spoken:

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - MLK Jr in his letter from a Birmingham jail.

War on Christmas: Fundy Firing Squads

2010-12-19T19:44:00.004-06:00

Well this is a switch from the normal war on christmas stories. A bunch of bored Texans apparently felt that Santa's religious crimes were so grievous and deplorable that they should act like al Qaeda, make an internet video reading off his offenses and finding him guilty of religious crimes, then executing him. They almost, but not quite, were able to behead him. Personally I don't think they were using the right ammo for the job, but that's just me.

Putting the nutter in fundynutterbutterinsane. Congrats anti-coexist coalition! Irony WIN! Public relations FAIL... 'bring the kids in closer for this part'... brilliant!

(via Skeptic Money via Friendly Atheist.)

Lunar Eclipse on Solstice? w00t!!!

2010-12-19T06:23:00.003-06:00

From Nasa:

The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth's shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the "bite" to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.

If you're planning to dash out for only one quick look - it is December, after all - choose this moment: 03:17 am EST (17 minutes past midnight PST). That's when the Moon will be in deepest shadow, displaying the most fantastic shades of coppery red.

...

Geoff Chester of the US Naval Observatory inspected a list of eclipses going back 2000 years. "Since Year 1, I can only find one previous instance of an eclipse matching the same calendar date as the solstice, and that is 1638 DEC 21," says Chester. "Fortunately we won't have to wait 372 years for the next one...that will be on 2094 DEC 21."

What a wonderful time for a solstice... start out with a early early early morning total lunar eclipse. Check your local light pollution and whether/visibility maps as we approach to see where you can get a great view! Meanwhile, remember the "scale of the universe" zoomtoy from planck lengths to beyond the known universe? Have a happy solstice!

DADT Down, DOMA to go?

2010-12-19T05:40:00.003-06:00

Now that the absurd policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, is finally on its deathbed, it opens up the doors to the next fight over the Defense of Marriage Act. This nonsensical federal overstep of authority to regulate relationships across the nation has to go. It may be yet another uphill fight against endless dishonest rhetoric and blatant lies, but it is a necessary battle to win for both civilians and our military alike. As it stands, ending DADT still leaves gaping holes in equity among our fighting forces. From The Atlantic:

The looming demise of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" personnel policy doesn't mean the end of two-tiered justice for gay or lesbian service members.

For example, now that the Pentagon will finally be recognizing the existence of such service members in its ranks, it will also as a matter of law and logic be recognizing the existence of same-sex partners or same-sex spouses. But those folks are barred by the federal Defense of Marriage Act from receiving some of the benefits that opposite-sex partners or opposite-sex spouses would receive from the military.

The spouses and dependents who might otherwise see benefits as well as benefits service members themselves may receive for having such dependents are DOMA blocked. Even if the service member dies in combat for his country, his legal spouse and dependent child in his home state could find themselves entirely left out to dry. Education benefits for dependent children of their spouse out the window, widow benefits, and even the typical increased pay for having dependents just *poof* gone.

DOMA does this to all federal benefits, not just military however. The end of DADT may very well help highlight this gross injustice and (regardless of whether one likes the phrase being applied here) how our current system of marriage versus gay marriage/civil unions has effectively established a separate but unequal system of government regulation of relationships.

If you have this kind, your widow may be taken care of. The other? Good luck.

If you have this kind, your dependent child may get education benefits. The other? Good luck.

Celebrations are in order for DADT and Illinois allowing civil unions. But in the overall fight, we've just moved slightly closer in the trench warfare of demanding equal treatment.

Grab a shovel.

Pesky Facts

2010-12-01T17:54:00.003-06:00

A little basic astronomy and understanding of human nature and you too can figure out why ancient people, pagan religions, etc thought this time of year was noteworthy. Understanding gullibility helps explain how easily a pope from centuries ago has a billion people or so thinking it's all about some rebellious Jew. A guy notably absent from any historical documents of the time, but conveniently documented by others (with contradictions) long after people had been celebrating these solar holidays... and long before that same pope declared that "the reason for the season" was his favorite mythical cult figure.

Which is why I enjoyed making this little photochopped book cover:

I'm an ass that way. (but not big enough of an ass not to say where I saw the picture at the top of this post... at the Cafe.)

Happy solstice!

The Death of Real News

2010-11-16T09:12:00.003-06:00

Ted Koppel rants and raves against the confirmation bias peddling ways of modern "news" as most explicitly demonstrated on the infotainment cable news networks:

The commercial success of both Fox News and MSNBC is a source of nonpartisan sadness for me. While I can appreciate the financial logic of drowning television viewers in a flood of opinions designed to confirm their own biases, the trend is not good for the republic. It is, though, the natural outcome of a growing sense of national entitlement. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's oft-quoted observation that "everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts," seems almost quaint in an environment that flaunts opinions as though they were facts.

And so, among the many benefits we have come to believe the founding fathers intended for us, the latest is news we can choose. Beginning, perhaps, from the reasonable perspective that absolute objectivity is unattainable, Fox News and MSNBC no longer even attempt it. They show us the world not as it is, but as partisans (and loyal viewers) at either end of the political spectrum would like it to be. This is to journalism what Bernie Madoff was to investment: He told his customers what they wanted to hear, and by the time they learned the truth, their money was gone.

Olbermann responded almost immediately by whining how unfair it was for Koppell not to focus enough on how much better MSDNC is about it than Fox... which given their own criticisms of Fox, ain't saying much.

Some people call it a false equivalence. Others just start to recognize that when you start taking tips and strategies from the "great satan" of news to come up with a profitable model, you bring these comparisons on yourself. Just sayin'...

Vote Smarter! Vote Responsibly!

2010-11-02T05:23:00.001-05:00

VA Watchdog.org Closing

2010-10-26T17:26:00.005-05:00

Over the years I've referenced multiple articles at or through VA Watchdog.org. It was one of the most handy internet spots to keep up to date on veterans news and analysis of the Veterans Administration's failures, weaknesses, and sometimes even getting something right. There was also a mailbag section for veterans to ask questions about the confusing bureaucracy and claims process veterans face, which will continue on other sites (see the farewell message for more information).

Unfortunately due to failing health this searchable depot for veterans news will only be around for a few more months with no updates forthcoming. Larry Scott, the man who tirelessly kept veterans and their advocates across the nation up to date on what the national media often missed and the internal issues they often overlooked,... after 5 years is going to have to spend his time dealing with his failing health. He's far from an unsung hero, even if perhaps you've never heard of him. You will find littered through the site comments and testimony of veterans and their advocates successes in dealing with and fighting to reform the VA's broken system.

I highly recommend that if you are a veteran, family of a veteran, or an advocate for veterans issues to take some time to search through the site while it is still up. You may find it to be an invaluable resource for any questions or research. If you've been putting off looking into this issue or that, don't miss an opportunity to access the plethora of news, analysis and internal documents available on the site.

To Mr. Scott, you have my thanks, and as many veterans and advocates have already done in so many words: I salute you. Get well soon. Here's wishing you a happy voyage home from the stormy seas.

Less Indifferent

2010-10-24T02:14:00.003-05:00

If you've been following the death penalty case out of Texas involving the alleged arson deaths of two children, you may recall the various articles and interviews with those involved basically getting their asses handed to them by using bullshit fire investigation techniques. Think of a fire investigator who comes off as if his only training was watching the movie "Backdraft" and you're pretty well there.

Frontline has a recent update on the investigation into the man put to death for killing his children in spite of every educated fire investigator pointing out that it was impossible for him to have committed the crime:

I can't stand our current governor Quinn. His allegiance to Blagojevich should cost him his political career for all time. Brady, his Republican opponent, was far from what I was hoping for to come out of the Republican primary, but I don't entirely despise him regardless of his fundamentalist nutterbutter nitwittery. This reminder of our dysfunctional justice system on the death penalty however has taken me off the fence of supporting a third party to help them with ballot access or leaving the gubernatorial section of my ballot blank.

Brady has vowed to resume executions in Illinois. Quinn has vowed to continue the moratorium. As I have zero trust in our judicial oversight of the State putting people to death, I've fallen off the fence. I will not sit by and do nothing to stop people from dying without fair trials that often come down to how much money one has to get a fair trial.

I'll be voting for Quinn, even as little as he deserves it and as much as his policies may suck. It's not worth the potential loss of life of an innocent man in our arguably fucked up justice system. I believe the death penalty is Constitutional (it wouldn't make sense for the Constitution to limit depriving people of life without due process if it weren't) but our current system is so screwed up and biased towards those with the financial resources to exploit the loopholes or establish a reasonable defense that I can't trust it has truly vetted those deserving from those who just lacked the resources to prove their innocence.

Now only if I can find a reason to not be entirely disgusted at my Senate choices too. I'd prefer an asshole who'd vote my way over some nice guy who'd vote against how I'd vote in their government seats. So far I have two assholes, but one embellished his military record. A guy I supported in the primary. Apparently my asshole rule has its limits. Quinn's an asshole, but at least I won't have innocent lives on my conscience by voting for him. Don't know if this helps anyone else given the sucky primary results, but figured I'd share. Good luck voting this November. Bring a manure shovel.

Electoral Indifference

2010-10-02T12:37:00.003-05:00

After all the excitement of the 2008 election, these upcoming midterms have been more of a let down, full of pet peeves:

It didn't take long for the Democrats to blow their filibuster proof supermajorities in Congress (losing Ted Kennedy's seat of all things).
In spite of their strong majorities even after that they've continued to blame Republicans for their failures to get support... meanwhile neglecting to mention that the opposition included their own Democratic Party members (the opposition was bipartisan... why is it so hard for news outlets to point that out?)
Some of the things I actually agreed with Obama on got gutted or totally fragged by his Dem Congress who apparently can't agree on the color of Donkey shite.
Extending the tax cut, at least temporarily during the recession... who knows? Maybe? We'll get back to you as lame ducks.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't have a clue as to whether they'll actually end this bass ackwards policy.
Health care reform being touted as a great accomplishment! Yes, we went from the most expensive and least efficient health care system in the world to one with slightly better access maybe, some year, and those "reforms" well... we mostly just made broken current systems bigger. Yay!
Meanwhile die hard conservatives have been pushing out moderates and so far with some success... only the general election will tell us for sure if we not only are getting a shift in congressional power, but a bunch of fundy fruit loops to boot.
Outside influence and money has always played a role in winning congressional races, but for some reason this peeve of mine seems particularly peevish this year as the people who actually are being represented by the congressman and senator are tending to be less and less a factor in arguing for or against who will represent them. Obnoxious.
Assholes either making up military stories out of whole clothe or embellishing to the point that they're nearly on the same asshat level hasn't seemed to hurt their election odds much on both the Democratic or Republican party sides (The Democrat even made his apologies in front of a VFW podium, an organization he was admitting he no longer qualified for since he wasn't actually a veteran of a foreign war... that takes balls... or a whole lot of stupid).
Last, but certainly not least, I'm generally disappointed with my ballot options. I participated in Illinois' open primary but apparently got outvoted by people who trust a guy who vouched for Rod Blagojevich's integrity and his running mate with a bad habit of getting stabby around girlfriends. The other general election ballot choices aren't quite that awful, but I'm less than impressed... and can't help but feel some of my bad options were due to out of state marketing.

Ultimately it is up to the Illinois voter to look at who and why people are getting backed by folks who don't even live in the district or State an election is taking place. Sadly folks with the time, energy, and interest are outvoted by those who don't.

Are we getting the government we deserve... am I an elitist for feeling we deserve better?

Comic Relief: Promises, Promises

2010-09-29T07:23:00.000-05:00

Polar Bear Hunting?

2010-09-29T00:59:00.003-05:00

That's what some are calling the recent local attacks here in Champaign, IL. Everything from white children to adult white men and college students being attacked by groups of black men... apparently just for sport, with no theft involved. From the link above on the attacked men:

CHAMPAIGN – The number of reports of beatings to white men in Champaign appear to be coming in quicker than police can even process them.

Champaign detective Sgt. John Schweighart said police received three more reports since late Thursday night.

...

Schweighart said the similarities in the attacks and the race of the attackers and the victims tie the cases together. But it's clear the problem is spreading.

"Geographically, we can't even map this. It covers from one end of the city to the other," he said.

Police have stepped up patrols in the campus area to deter the attacks and were able to nip an attack in the bud in the 500 block of East Green Street on Sept. 18. But because they usually last only seconds, Schweighart said it's "happenstance" if police catch one in progress.

It was late August when police went public asking for help in catching the attackers, but a Jerseyville woman who contacted The News-Gazette after reading of recent attacks said her son was the victim of two similar attacks in 2008.

From the other link above:

The motive in all the attacks appears to be sport, not theft or robbery, Rein said.

"It's almost like it's 'Let's go get our kicks, punch someone in the face to see if we can knock them out,'" Rein said. "Years ago, I can't say a specific year, that was part of a local gang (rite) to see if you could knock out someone with one punch. They call it polar bear hunting."

I haven't heard any details yet whether this may have to do with increased gang activity due to the hard economic times, or if this may be due, at least in part, in retaliation for a police related shooting where a black teenager was shot and killed while struggling with a police officer to avoid arrest. In that situation the social justice activists in town pushed the idea that the officer had essentially murdered the kid, whereas the investigation and police viewed it in light of the struggle of resisting arrest... with minimal punishment over how he handled the situation.

Either way, or perhaps with both or other factors playing a role, this is an unusual amount of racial tension in this Central Illinois town, a fairly typical University town in the Midwest. Maybe something else entirely is going on here and these incidents aren't as linked as they appear? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Obama Admin and Afghan...

2010-09-22T04:59:00.006-05:00

...it just keeps getting worse.

Remember the fallout from the McCrystal comments in Rolling Stone? How the media mostly focused on the celebrity-style drama of the main actors and avoided the overwhelming problems of having a cohesive strategy even from our own side, let alone with our allies (strategic and otherwise)... that post here: Losing Afghanistan

The New York Times has a piece on a new book coming out that highlights that far more pressing matter and then some. It shows that the strained relationships were far more, far deeper, and far more damaging to any hope of operational success than has ever been reported before (at least with something real to back it up other than just ideological pessimism and punditry).

WASHINGTON — Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book.

The book, “Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.

...

But Mr. Biden is not the only one who harbors doubts about the strategy’s chances for success. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing that the president’s review did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard C. Holbrooke, the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted saying of the strategy that “it can’t work.”

Mr. Woodward, the longtime Washington Post reporter and editor, was granted extensive access to administration officials and documents for his account, including an interview with Mr. Obama.

The article goes on to highlight the deep divisions between pretty much every top dog in the White House, Military, and State Department in utter disarray in coming together on a strategy whilst political agents hell bent on focusing on elections are derided as more focused on polls than wars. The full article is worth the read, and probably the book too.

It brings back to mind a quote from the post referenced above:

“There are very few things we control in Afghanistan. In every review of COIN best practices, ‘unity of effort’ tops the list. Every. Single, Review. And we’re totally fucking it up; fucking up the one thing that should be in our control,” the advisor says. “We can’t control Karzai, or the ANP [Afghan National Police], or the Pakistani tribes, but we should be able to get our shit in one sock and we’re not.”

Only it's much worse than the Rolling Stone article portrayed and far worse than the media and pundit obsession with scoring political points over drama ever seemed to delve into.

9th Anniversary of 9/11... and even with a change of leadership, the biggest quagmire is within our own ranks. Meanwhile real asses are on the line waiting for some actual leadership that is focused on either achieving our objectives or chalking up a win for al Qaeda. Obama needs to make up his god damn mind unless he's really planning to run against Bush's 4th term in 2012.

Recent Afghan Posts:

Pet Peeves on Afghanistan arguments/rhetoric: (1st post)
Old Memes and Old Positions: (follow up on the pet peeve list
Propaganda or Unpleasant Reality: the horrific downsides of leaving the Taliban another foothold to retake Afghanistan from (repeating history much?)
Why We're Bombing Afghan Troops: SNAFU of the day

DADT and "I give up" 2.0

2010-09-21T18:58:00.005-05:00

The last time The Daily Show ran an "I give up" segment it was about the 9/11 responder bill and how election politics were driving both parties to be absolute schmucks or totally incompetent while screwing over real people (the video has been up and down today... I'm guessing from lots of hits):

With the recent out-maneuvering by the GOP to demand amendment options for the military bill that the Dems were trying to get through with some of their favorite provisions (including one of mine, ending don't ask don't tell nonsense), the Dems are once again left empty handed for no gain... and both sides (at least to me) come off looking like assholes more concerned about their jobs than doing what's right for us or our men and women in uniform.

I'm feeling a bit nauseous.

Reductio ad Hitlerum ad Nauseum Redux

2010-09-17T19:33:00.002-05:00

This is an older post worth bumping since the Pope (a former Hitler Youth conscript who is an educated man who friggin knows better) attempted to link atheists and Nazism again. Pharyngula has a nice new list of Hitler's views on theism, none of which suggest he was an atheist, though it does highlight persecution of them and links in this older post point out how Darwin's scientific theories were supressed in lieu of Nazi pseudo-scientific creationist nonsense. He may not have been a Christian or a "true Christian" etc... but he was no atheist. Mein Kampf promoted views that contradict atheism and scientific Darwinism. (It helps to remind some people here that "social Darwinism" is not something Darwin himself pushed or agreed with... that was a perversion of the science and antithetical to actual scientific evolutionary theory. Anyhoo: Here's the old post:

A recent entry from John Loftus' blog links to a very informative discussion of the weakness of arguments that Nazism was somehow based on or primarily influenced by atheist interpretations of Darwin's theory of evolution. People who saw Ben Stein's craptastic denialist propaganda flick "Expelled" is fully aware of the tactic... it got him bashed by the Anti-Defamation League over it:

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler's genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

And of course why this is true is generally obvious from the history. As the link mentioned above summarizes in part:

Dr. Weikart’s entire method is fundamentally flawed. Its main flaw is holding to arbitrary and inconsistent definitions of Darwinism. If permutations or misinterpretations of Darwin’s books count as “Darwinism,” then permutations and misinterpretations of the Bible or Christianity should count as biblical and Christian influence in Nazi ideology. If we are consistent in this manner, then there is no question that Christian anti-Judaism and the Bible influenced Nazi ideologues and everyday Germans to carry out the Holocaust much more than Darwin’s books or ideas.

...

Much of what he believes to be inspired by Darwin actually turns out to be held by self-described Christians, even if it is also Darwinist. Indeed, Dr. Weikart seemingly cannot even envision that Pseudoscientific versions of Darwinism and racialized versions of Christianity were not opposed to each other, but walked hand in hand, in Nazi Germany.

More importantly, an unfamiliarity with the longer and broader history of Christianity, biblical exegesis, and theology often leads Dr. Weikart to think that concepts such as eugenics and the struggle between the races are new or non-Christian, when they are old and/or part of biblical and Christian traditions.

I'd highly recommend reading the full article, but I'd also add to this mix an old summary of points against the Hitler/Darwinism conflation:

As one Christian literalist was explaining to me, the threat is grave. Imagine endless hordes of godless, and therefore moral-less, minions praying to Darwinism! It would be Hitler all over again! This is hardly a novel argument by any means, though it seems to be getting more play these days than in years past. It was a central theme of Ben Stein's hate mongering Expelled movie as well as the recent Darwin bashing forward added to Kirk Cameron and the Banana-man's special edition of the Origin of Species. But like most arguments that spiral into Godwin's Law, this one is utter horseshit.

First off, Hitler was a creationist, not some atheist science nerd with a hard-on for evolutionary theory. A recent rebuttal to similar claims lays this out quite nicely:

First of all, as has already been established courtesy of searching through Mein Kampf in detail, Hitler's assorted eructations on nature reproduce well-known creationist canards, including the static species fallacy, and Hitler also asserted that fertile, viable hybrids were inpossible, which is manifestly refuted by this scientific paper (among many others):

Speciation By Hybridisation In Heliconius Butterflies, by Jesús Mavárez, Camilo A. Salazar, Eldredge Bermingham, Christian Salcedo, Chris D. Jiggins and Mauricio Linares, Nature, 441: 868-871 (15th June 2006)

Also, even an elementary search of Mein Kampf reveals the following statistics. The number of instances of key words are as follows:

"Darwin" : ZERO

"Almighty" : 6

"God" : 37

"Creator" : 8

None of this is too surprising for a guy who was raised Catholic. Some would like to argue that Nazis couldn't really be Christian because of their heinous sins against humanity, an argument that falls neatly within the definition of the logical fallacy of No True Scotsman. This fallacy is a common tool of anyone who wants to disassociate themselves from a reviled figure among their ranks, and who can blame anyone for wanting to distance themselves from the ultimate bad guy in history? Similar arguments have been made that killers and molesters who happened to be Christian weren't "true" Christians, otherwise they'd have never done those awful things, but for a religion that considers everyone a sinner it becomes difficult to see how they can regurgitate this fallacy with a straight face.

But even if we let them get away with it and agree that Hitler was not a "true" Christian, we certainly can't argue that he was an atheist, nor can it be argued that Nazism was an atheist god-denying ideology when it came to be centered on the creationist god espousing Mein Kampf. For all their oppression and purges of various dissenting religious views and individuals, atheism never played a significant role, let alone forming any basis for the ideology. The same can't be said of Luther's influence or of the Positive Christians who found the melding of Christianity with Nazi ideology to be perfectly viable.

Indeed, the foot soldiers of Nazi Germany who marched across Europe didn't go forth sporting any symbols of atheism, but with shiny buckles proclaiming "GOD WITH US":

But what about evolution? That evil science of the atheist militants that a perplexing number of Christians (though few young earth creationist conspiracy theorists) happen to find accurate anyways. Just because the Nazis weren't an atheist group, perhaps their evil can be explained by their dark overlord, Charles Darwin! Again, this idea falls flat on its face as well. From that earlier rebuttal:

Additionally, the Nazis placed textbooks on evolutionary biology on their list of seditious books to be burned, as illustrated nicely here, where we learn that in 1935, Nazi guidelines with respect to seditious books included:

6. Schriften weltanschaulichen und lebenskundlichen Charakters, deren Inhalt die falsche naturwissenschaftliche Aufklärung eines primitiven Darwinismus und Monismus ist (Häckel).

Translated into English, this reads:

Writings of a philosophical and social nature whose content deals with the false scientific enlightenment of primitive Darwinism and Monism (Häckel)

The evidence is therefore conclusive. Nazism was not inspired by evolution, and indeed, much of Hitler's own writings are creationist in tone. The Nazis destroyed evolutionary textbooks as seditious (much as modern day creationists would love to), and the Nazi view of the biosphere is wholly at variance with genuine evolutionary theory, involving fatuous views of race "purification" by the establishment of monocultures that are the very antithesis of genuine evolutionary thought, which relies upon genetic diversity.

The confusion among many seems to stem from the endless dishonest attempts by some creationists to equate "Social Darwinism" with actual evolutionary science. The term itself wasn't even coined until a few years before Darwin's death and was not popularized until later. Darwin himself argued against the growing eugenics movement due to his concerns (typically clipped out of cherry picked quotes used to dishonestly show the opposite) that it went against our sympathetic instincts which were themselves an evolutionary and advantageous development.

Indeed, if one is to study evolution in school you'll find no advocacy for "Social Darwinism" but rather endless scientific evidence showing how it absolutely conflicts with evolutionary theory. But alas opponents of the theory, motivated to protect the mythology they were indoctrinated with, enjoy playing dumb when it comes to these facts. It's the same motivation that drives them to use Darwinism as a pejorative for some sort of 'atheist religion' and really going for some ironic points by dismissing atheists as 'fundamentalists.' Apparently this is supposed to make us feel dirty or something, but it comes across as pure stupidity just begging to be mocked. One may as well refer to a disbelief in unicorns as a religion and admitting that disbelief in unicorns as being a fundamentalist about it. Other than mockery I suppose we could just scratch our heads and go about our day. But mockery is more fun.

Few things could be as mock worthy as attempting to pin the blame on atheists for a creationist Christian gone mad. Or pinning the blame on evolutionary theory for the actions of people who burned books on the subject and otherwise disagreed with the science behind it.

It's ironic how much dishonesty can be thrown from those peddling "the Truth!"

Holidays and the Theaters

2010-09-17T14:16:00.003-05:00

A local soldier mom posted a video of troops returning from Iraq to thunderous applause:

But the missions aren't over. There is more heartache and many returns left to come, both somber and jubilant. We have an obligation here on the sidelines to support our men and women serving overseas, as the USO puts it, until they all come home. There are still a lot to come home. With holidays coming up, I strongly suggest saving up for care packages and other charitable donations to reputable veterans support groups for those who came back disabled... but it never hurts, if you have the spare budget room these days, to treat every day like Thanksgiving and the winter holidays troops and their families celebrate in our diverse forces.

If you're worried about the reputability of a charity, check it out. The internet has great resources for finding the top rated and suspicious con-artists. Take the time and do your part. And if you're broke, there are other ways to show your support... sometimes you might feel a little nuts doing it alone, but the thumbs up, the honks of support and the thanks will make that awkwardness go away. It also helps if you've felt people have forgotten to see so much support... even if you're just some lone nut standing by a bus stop, solemnly displaying the flag on 9/11.

It'll never feel like enough here on the sidelines, no matter how much you donate or show your support. But as a pretty sharp soldier mom once said, "Don't Do Nothing." She argues it better than I ever could, so check out that link and let her explain it.

All Quiet on the Blogger Front

2010-09-10T08:31:00.003-05:00

9/11 is almost here again and it hasn't gotten much easier for me to deal with due to the permanent ramifications it had on my life. There's been so much to comment about. From the Park51/Cordoba House/etc project that some call the "Ground Zero Mosque." The other being some Christian fanatic threatening to burn Korans to spite Islamic extremists and get his otherwise unknown and irrelevant opinion on Islam being generally bad to an international audience.

Both situations are due to the actions of religious people and the reactions, some reasonable, some extreme themselves have generally been other religious people or arguments coming from other religious views.

What's an atheist to do? I support religious liberty here and freedom of speech/expression... though that doesn't mean I have to agree with every religious idea or speech/expression that allows.

Generally speaking I have no metaphysical faith that would fit with Islam or Christianity... let alone any real desire to see extremists of either rile people up to violence here or elsewhere. Moderate interpretations certainly are more tolerable to me than the extremist, fringe, or militant religious groups... though my own views clash even with moderate metaphysical ideologies to varying degrees.

So again, what to do?

I certainly frown upon the hysterical disinformation campaigns to rile people up with rumors, conspiracy theories, emotive rhetoric, etc that may help in the polls, but could have the nasty side effect of whipping some nutters, drunks, etc towards targeted violence and intimidation... very antithetical to liberty.

Extremists trying to get a rise out of other extremists with little regard for national security concerns are pretty low on my list... very close to those extremists who'd respond with rhetoric geared towards response by violence over the symbolic act that is ultimately harmless to them.

The Park51 mosque is a messier situation than opponents and even some supports like to make it out to be. Opponents arguments have generally been along the lines of regurgitated rumors, conspiracy theories, out of context quotes, etc passed along by irresponsible media pundits. There are certainly some valid criticisms of even a moderate Muslim (as an atheist, I probably have more than the average bear), but the depictions of him as some sort of terrorist sympathizer generally fall flat when the full light is shown upon the facts and context.

The timing of the outrage is fairly suspect as well with important mid-terms coming up... suddenly this and mosques across the country and Islam generally is getting on everybody's shit list... even though the building in NY has been used as a mosque for quite some time with a fairly large congregation without issue until recently. The mosques and their congregations being protested elsewhere (or threatened, or bricked, or arson incidents, etc) generally aren't new to the communities in question.

The timing is particularly odd in that both Bush and Obama have continually pushed the public to respect each other's religious liberty and gone out of their way to point out how Islam generally has little to do with these fringe Qtub extremists and their unpopular interpretations. It's not as if Christians would be for guilt by association with the Westboro Baptist Church, nor would more liberal congregations want to be held responsible for more repressive sects, or those who push views they vehemently disagree with. Nobody likes that. Even atheists hate it when their disbelief in god is used to link them to other atheists who happened to be authoritarian, brutal, etc... as if disbelief in god provides guilt by association for all the atheists out there who are libertarians, liberal, conservative, etc. All this seemed to have been covered and we had generally moved on...

But now 9 years later there is a sudden resurgence in the sensitivities, antagonisms, and violence that we haven't seen at these levels since the original attacks? The timing is just odd. Whether one blames media sensationalism and/or political divisiveness being used to justify undoing all that progress to sell ad revenue or win votes... we have a big problem. A problem that could get a lot worse over time if it works for those who are using the tactics. We need to nip it in the bud.

Another Atheist Take on the Mosque

2010-08-28T13:09:00.004-05:00

As an atheist, it is a bittersweet activity to defend religious activities in many cases on the grounds of religious liberty. As with defending speech I disagree with, it comes down to a political philosophy of liberty that is often far from utopian but the best equilibrium of rights and limitations in my opinion. But as part of a minority group it is pretty important to me to protect the liberty of others to ensure my own.

Notorious atheist, Christopher Hitchens, weighed in on the subject as well. He generally criticizes the hyperbole in the debate, but pulls no punches in his disfavor of Islam and in particular the imam of the Mosque who, while trying to find compromise and ways towards peace, has made some statements that would make many Americans (and secularists in general) cringe. His full commentary on it is available here.

His assessment of the imam is far more harsh than I'd probably go, though he's not entirely off base either. Unfortunately many Christians and others who stereotype all Muslims may not notice the subtlety behind his words. Islam is an extremely diverse religion, just as Christianity is. You have extremists, nutters, people willing to do violence in the name of it, and people who treat it more like a family label without even practicing... and everything in between.

I agree with Hitchens and somewhat with Harris that religions are prone to radicalization, and history has given plenty of examples that the Abrahamic religions and even the Eastern religions to start or fuel much bloodshed in their name. We see this more with Islam today in the news more over cultural/historical deviations in my opinion. I'm not sure there is an equivalent to the Peace of Westphalia that helped limit the full scale inter-Christian wars. There are also matters of historical power balances and colonialism that while seem like the distant past to many have a great deal to do with why we're even in Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place. Not to mention how those power balances and controls led to advantages or (more commonly) disadvantages in competing in a world that has become more interconnected and competitive.

As Hitchens points out, it's one thing to disagree with Islam (or any religion for that matter) and find their moderates to be enablers of terrible things... it's quite another to make oneself a target of Godwin's Law by stereotyping all of a group under an evil label that makes no sense given the diversity of the subject. Disagreement can be civil. Generalized hyperbole specially timed before an important election is an attempt to induce hysteria for political gain. And that is repugnant.

Comic Relief: Fox News Supporting Terrorism

2010-08-25T05:45:00.005-05:00

This was just friggin' brilliant:

That's right. Running out of any actual ties to terrorism of the imam of the Cordoba House (the planned community center and mosque) in New York... they've resorted to demonizing one of the owner's of Fox, technically its parent company, News Corp.

He's not just any owner, he's the biggest owner outside of the Murdoch family of owning NewsCorp which owns Fox News. They implied repeatedly that he and his foundation were connected to terrorism to tar this imam getting funding from him. An imam tapped by both the Bush and Obama admins to reach out to moderate Muslims, whose greatest crime to date was agreeing with some liberals that some of our policies in the middle-east result in some blowback. *gasp*

But as Fox can't find anything worthwhile to keep its readers hysterical about this supposed "victory mosque" or "terror mosque" or whatever they're calling it now... they've indicted themselves as terrorism supporting idiots with a hand in funding the "terror mosque." The problem is they've previously praised this same organization and this man and the organization and the man are both financially and socially tied to News Corp and its owners (being one himself).

The tensions the media is whipping up over this project are bad enough, but Fox going out of its way to lie its ass off to out-do them all in adding to the hysteria to keep viewers glued to the tube and get their ad-revenue?

That's fucking unethical as hell. They might get people killed. It's downright evil.

The fact that most of their viewers don't fact check their reporting may be a safe assumption, but they know they're scrutinized by their non-fans and hate club and would notice such a huge heaping pile of BS that could smelled from outer-space. That was downright fucktarded.

Apparently its good for business though... Fox keeps getting worse, and their ratings keep getting higher... truth be damned, the harm they cause by inducing/increasing hysteria be damned. It's becoming more and more the epitome of modern day "Yellow Journalism"... which Beck's show is already a full-blown example of.

Disgusting.

Iraq Flashback

2010-08-20T15:10:00.006-05:00

I'm sure everyone has heard the news that the last combat troops have now left Iraq. A lot of people even believe it too. The Daily Show covered this long planned PR stunt quite a while back:

That's right. The last combat troops haven't left, they were just renamed something other than "combat" troops. It's nothing to blow off as typical government BS though. Those non-combat combat troops are still and will continue to be combat troops, even if their name changes. One soldier mom has her say about her combat soldier son still in Iraq after all combat troops have left. Compare the new spin to first hand knowledge from the sandbox:

[His (US soldier's)] company has been "assisting" the Iraqi military for the last year. I asked him what that means; are they just a burly menacing background presence, like bouncers or bodyguards? His answer:
"we lead all the missions still, sometimes with an Iraqi army truck, or Iraqi police truck with us to put an Iraqi face on our missions"
Leading the missions. That is supportive.

Sometimes I absolutely hate politics. I'd stop paying attention but my guilt complex, morbid curiosity, and conscience just won't cooperate with my need for better mental health.

Personality Disorder Scam...

2010-08-18T22:45:00.003-05:00

...becomes Multiple Personality Disorder Scam.

VA Watchdog.org caught the ArmyTimes article on an old scam getting a new personality of its own:

Two years ago, under congressional pressure, the military changed its policy on separating troops dealing with combat stress for pre-existing personality disorders — an administrative discharge that left those veterans without medical care or other benefits.

Now, veterans advocates say, the personality-disorder discharges have been replaced with similar discharges for “adjustment disorder.” And once again, Congress seems poised to jump in.

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, R-Mo., plans to send a letter to President Obama asking that the military provide detailed data showing how many people have been discharged for adjustment disorders. In the meantime, Bond’s staff has been gathering more general data that shows discharges for “other designated physical or mental conditions not amounting to disability” — a broad category that includes adjustment disorder — have increased from 1,453 in 2006 to 3,844 last year, an increase of 165 percent.

Over the same time, discharges for personality disorder dropped from 1,072 in 2006 to 260 last year.

“We request your assistance to ensure that a new loophole has not been created that abuses the administrative discharge system by erroneously discharging members of the armed forces who are experiencing symptoms of PTSD and/or TBI, rather than providing them with compassionate medical care worthy of their service and sacrifice,” states a draft copy of Bond’s letter

If all of this sounds familiar this is just a rehash of the Personality Disorder Scam I've posted about numerous times before, and as one example from the ArmyTimes story points out, it goes down about the same way:

One of them is Spc. Daniel Upshaw, who served in Rustimiya, Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 66th Armor Regiment as a Bradley mechanic in 2008.

Upshaw said that for about a month after he came home to Fort Carson, everything seemed fine.

“Then it started,” he said. He had nightmares and problems sleeping, and he started drinking a bottle of booze every night. “I’d drink until I knocked myself out. One night, I finished a bottle and then went to sleep with a loaded gun in my hand, hoping I’d shoot myself in my sleep.”

He sought help, and his chain of command sent him to behavioral health. At an inpatient clinic, he was diagnosed with PTSD by a psychiatrist. Then, he said, a counselor at behavioral health changed his diagnosis to adjustment disorder and recommended an administrative discharge.

Bye-bye military benefits. Aren't those bureaucratic beancounters lovely? Pardon me, I think I'm going to throw up.

Following up on these older posts:

Widespread 'Isolated Incidents': About a stunning admission of a military doctor that they are being pressured generally to avoid diagnosing PTSD in returning soldiers... caught on tape.

Dr. Phil on VA Failings: Dr. Phil puts the spotlight on veterans and the bureaucracy that regularly fails them while the bureaucracy responsible pulls the 'isolated incident' routine.

Bombshell: The VA Shredder Scandal reveals a depressing peek into what lows the bureaucracy will sink at the expense of disabled veterans.

Pentagon Disorder Update: Finally some action to tackle the personality disorder scam to defraud veterans of their earned benefits.

Pentagon Disorder Update: Finally some action to tackle the personality disorder scam to defraud veterans of their earned benefits.

Pentagon Disorder: Part II: More of the personality disorder scam stories and a PBS special giving the issue more public attention. Still no action.

Shhh...afting Veterans: VA employee caught red handed suggesting that her staff misdiagnose PTSD patience in order to save money.

What's More Disgraceful?: New stories of the military misdiagnosing service connected ailments as a pre-existing Personality Disorder, and the denial of benefits that result.

Psychological "Friendly" Fire: Veterans struggling with the VA claims backlog and bureaucracy and how the misconceptions and deceptions pushed by the Pentagon are making it even harder for returning veterans to deal with the VA bureaucracy.

Pentagon Disorder: The Personality Disorder Scam. The DoD takes service connected disabled vets and says they have pre-existing mental problems that get the government off the hook for paying for benefits for their war time and service connected disabilities. A real travesty.

More Vet Funding But...: Some good improvements on Vet funding, but still no movement on the Personality Disorder scam being used to deny benefits to veterans.

Pharyngulated

2010-08-16T02:28:00.003-05:00

On-line polling is notoriously unscientific and generally about as reliable as a crack addict watching your stuff. PZ Myers of Pharyngula fame (noted atheist professor not known for his subtlety in trashing things he finds absurd) has a "pointless polls" section on his blog where the mere mention of some silly unscientific poll generally leads to his many readers adding their input... often overwhelming the polls that usually have little use other than confirmation bias.

In this case the latest Pullman WA religious group website got pharyngulated. You may or may not recall the name from an old post here or from the interesting back and forth at the Cafe (including book duels. By the time the heathens had stated their view in overwhelming numbers, the site administrator finally pulled the poll off the page entirely (as opposed to a brief attempt to just move the poll widget somewhere less noticeable.

Click to enlarge.

If you're having flashbacks to the Ron Paul 2008 Primaries where Paul kept losing primaries with a meager 5% of the vote typically, even within the supposedly conservative voting demographic he claimed to represent... yet the internet was full of on-line polling that seemed overrun by coordinated groups attempting to overwhelm those polls designed for a much smaller slice of the on-line community (e.g. people currently watching a news show... a local newspaper poll... etc etc).

On the bright side, in spite of how cruel it may seem to pick on this little irrelevant group, they did appreciate all the traffic and exposure. Not that I'd have felt bad regardless due to their penchant for getting into long debates, and when cornered rely on playing dumb about the multiple meanings of words they seek to equivocate to "prove" their position. A pet peeve of mine that left me fairly disinterested up to this more humorous nerdy moment.

The new site doesn't allow comments, which is probably a good thing given my warped weakness to engage in futile arguments with people who use disingenuous tactics knowing full well I'll just be wanting hours of my life back, as was the case with their original site. But for anyone interested in seeing logical fallacies and definitional slight of hand at its 'finest' I suppose it may be worth the look. Just don't get your hopes up that they'll listen to reason to the point of having to consider doubting their position... at that point the childish games begin and a strong desire to have those moments of your life back ensue.

This is barely a political post, but the gist is: fundamentalist creationists selectively evade logic and reason when it could potentially send them to hell (from their view), on-line polls are unscientific and just pointless beyond giving visitors something to tinker with (which will undoubtedly be people who just want to screw with you), and Ron Paulian devotees helped confirm exactly how unreliable such on-line polling could be when compared to real world support... very similar to how a well organized and motivated group of supporters can do well in caucus states even though in primary states with direct ballot voting for anyone show how non-viable and fringe they may be.

I hope Paul decides to sit 2012 out... if for no other reason than to keep the internet significantly less obnoxious than its normal state of being extremely obnoxious.

Old Memes and Old Positions

2010-08-10T19:07:00.006-05:00

This is another edition of pet peeves I have on Afghanistan discussions:

1) Senator Obama versus President Obama: Political maneuvering or accepting reality?

The first comes from the Huffington Post criticizing one of their own, in this case, Barack Obama, for more behavior reminiscent of Bush's 3rd term:

This quote mish-mash can be take a few different ways, but here a couple ways to consider. Obama was more of a pragmatist than he let on in order to win votes from the left as he was approaching the primary and dialed it back for the general election and his actual presidency. The other way to take it is that a lot of the rhetoric against Bush on Afghanistan was more about winning elections than realistic expectations or being pragmatic. I'll let you make the call on that one.

2) With us or against us, a meme that keeps popping up to this day.

Remember all the complaints back in the day about Bush destroying our support among our allies after 9/11 by demanding they were either "with us or against us" or "with us or with the terrorists" unless they marched in lockstep with our policies? It was a common refrain from his detractors that highlighted Bush's no-compromise, black and white, and otherwise cowboy mentality in what would become an unmitigated disaster.

The context of those comments, like so many sound bites that themselves take on a life of their own in redefining what was actually said, throws the disingenuous framing of the statements out the window. Here's an example from shortly after the 9/11 attacks:

"This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." - George W. Bush, 9/20/2001

The context here reveals that he was specifically talking about nations that continued to aid and harbor terrorists... not putting our allies on the spot to agree with all our policies or else. Another example from a joint press conference with the French President, praising their efforts, where he was asked about the role allies should play:

Q: Mr. President, you said this morning that you wanted more than sympathy or words from other countries. What nations were you specifically talking about, and what do you want from them?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I am going to the United Nations to give a speech on Saturday. And I am going to praise those nations who have joined our coalition. But a coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy; a coalition partner must perform. And our coalition partner here has performed; we work together.

And that means different things for different nations. Some nations don't want to contribute troops, and we understand that. Other nations can contribute intelligence-sharing, and for that we're grateful. But all nations, if they want to fight terror, must do something. It is time for action. And that's going to be the message of my speech at the United Nations.

I have no specific nation in mind, at least as I stand here now. Everybody ought to be given the benefit of the doubt. But over time, it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity. You are either with us or you are against us in the fight against terror. And that's going to be part of my speech at the United Nations.

Again this is hardly "our way or the highway" cowboy diplomacy. What it pointed out was that coalition partners all needed to play an active role in addressing the issue of global terrorism... in whatever way they could, as doing nothing but send a sympathy card would still allow terrorist groups to exploit their nonfeasance.

Bush made clear what he was getting at in that previous answer on his upcoming remarks to the UN in his speech to the UN later that week:

"The conspiracies of terror are being answered by an expanding global coalition. Not every nation will be a part of every action against the enemy. But every nation in our coalition has duties. These duties can be demanding, as we in America are learning. We have already made adjustments in our laws and in our daily lives. We're taking new measures to investigate terror and to protect against threats.

The leaders of all nations must now carefully consider their responsibilities and their future. Terrorist groups like al Qaeda depend upon the aid or indifference of governments. They need the support of a financial infrastructure, and safe havens to train and plan and hide.

Some nations want to play their part in the fight against terror, but tell us they lack the means to enforce their laws and control their borders. We stand ready to help. Some governments still turn a blind eye to the terrorists, hoping the threat will pass them by. They are mistaken. And some governments, while pledging to uphold the principles of the U.N., have cast their lot with the terrorists. They support them and harbor them, and they will find that their welcome guests are parasites that will weaken them, and eventually consume them.

For every regime that sponsors terror, there is a price to be paid. And it will be paid. The allies of terror are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to justice." - George W. Bush, 11/10/2001

In the end he was making clear that inaction would just allow terror networks to continue to exploit a system that gave them global reach. Far from some ultimatum that French refusal to join our Iraq invasion somehow made them "with the terrorists" in Bush's own words/mind... as some have opined... these remarks, soon after 9/11 were about global terror networks and the need for international cooperation to limit their reach. Inactivity by coalition partners would allow that reach to continue.

Ironically these lines, quotes, and paraphrasing got rehashed during the Iraq debates, stripped of context, and applied disingenuously to mean something far different. In the case of France it was particular Ironic since Bush was praising France for its actions a joint press conference with the French President at the time in one of the quotes often used to "prove" the meme.

Previous post/list of pet peeves: Pet Peeves on Afghanistan

Comic Relief: I Give Up

2010-08-06T01:54:00.002-05:00

The Daily Show exposes the Democrats and the Republicans as self-serving schmucks who will play games over 9/11 first responder benefits for even the most remote advantages in election season:

Mosque Debates

2010-08-06T01:31:00.005-05:00

Not a neutral source, but it certainly raises an interesting fact:

Why did no one object to the "Pentagon mosque"?

...

The "ground zero mosque" story seems to be dying down, but nothing lays bare the absurdity of what we've just lived through quite so much as this Washington Times story, quoted above, from 2007.

Yes, Muslims have infiltrated the Pentagon for their nefarious, prayerful purposes -- daring to practice their religion inside the building where 184 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. They haven't even had the sensitivity to move two blocks, let alone a mile, away from that sacred site.

The "ground zero" mosque debate isn't alone. Other mosque plans across the country have brought out protesters and activists trying to stop them. In spite of the last two Presidents making clear that we're not playing into al Qaeda's dream of a holy war and we will retain religious tolerance... some people want to rile up the fundamentalists on their side as if holy war is exactly what we're dealing with.

I really wish they'd stop. But mid-term elections are coming up and riled up people are more enthused to get out to the polls. Even if they're riled up over the non-issue that we have religious liberty in the United States being spun into terms of military conquest and subversion that must be restricted in order to win the holy war that doesn't exist.

al Qaeda and Qtub inspired militant groups like them want this to be a holy war... but they've failed to get more than a very small minority of extremists on their side out of roughly a billion people. Politicians trying to whip up Christian or other fundamentalists here in the United States to treat this as a holy war only helps feed al Qaeda's propaganda machine for recruitment and helps validate the view of those being radicalized that this is another crusade. To whip up these folks for some temporary political gain is pretty disgusting.

I've harshly criticized Democrats for their election tactics, specifically on war related issues, in the past. Republicans pulling this crap don't get a free pass.

Propaganda or Unpleasant Reality

2010-08-03T08:01:00.005-05:00

A recent TIME Magazine piece has been described as "pro-war propaganda" by many who oppose continuing the war in Afghanistan. The piece talks about the brutality of the Taliban under their previous reign and where they still terrorize populations within their control today:

As the war in Afghanistan enters its ninth year, the need for an exit strategy weighs on the minds of U.S. policymakers. Such an outcome, it is assumed, would involve reconciliation with the Taliban. But Afghan women fear that in the quest for a quick peace, their progress may be sidelined. "Women's rights must not be the sacrifice by which peace is achieved," says parliamentarian Fawzia Koofi.

Yet that may be where negotiations are heading. The Taliban will be advocating a version of an Afghan state in line with their own conservative views, particularly on the issue of women's rights. Already there is a growing acceptance that some concessions to the Taliban are inevitable if there is to be genuine reconciliation.

...

For Afghanistan's women, an early withdrawal of international forces could be disastrous.

In TIME's explanation of their decision to run the story and cover photo they point out that:

We do not run this story or show this image either in support of the U.S. war effort or in opposition to it. We do it to illuminate what is actually happening on the ground.

Pointing out the possible ramifications of our actions, both positive and negative, are things the American people need to hear. To dismiss the fact that leaving the Taliban in power over parts of Afghanistan will guarantee a return of their oppression there as "propaganda" is merely dismissing any facts that don't support one's arguments as "propaganda." The article focuses on womens rights, but it cannot be denied that the Taliban's oppression goes far beyond sex.

Another unpleasant reality for most self-described humanitarians who feel withdrawing is a simple matter for the US, is that on top of abandoning the Afghanis in Taliban controlled areas to brutal oppression, it also leaves the Taliban in a position to retake the entire country (again) later on.

Another Afghanistan civil war would be almost certain to break out later. The prior civil war left roughly 90-95% of the country under the Taliban's oppression. It had no problem using al Qaeda to aid them in that civil war due to some of their shared goals and ideology and in spite of their differences. Any promises against renewing civil war or re-aligning with terror groups would be hollow given their history... especially considering the consequences would be minimal at best. Just ask the South Vietnamese. Once we're gone, the political pressure against getting back in would be insurmountable.

Just leaving may sound simple at first... but with more information, it is only simple if one lacks a conscience.

Sometimes it is Way Worse than You Thought

2010-07-28T22:16:00.002-05:00

The Department of Veteran Affairs has many problems... and has long before Obama or Bush or whoever the partisans want to blame. Many of them are gut wrenching in their effects on veterans and their families alike. But how they treat a specific group of some of the most vulnerable of veterans has me more shocked than usual. Milgram Experiment on Crack.

Jim Strickland has it all laid out here, with gut wrenching stories from the people this poorly managed program has turned into living hells. This is absolutely a must read... keep a barf bag handy:

Link to Part 1

Link to Part 2

The patriotic ideals I hold for my country are constantly in great conflict with the government and its bureaucracies that exploit us from cradle to grave.

Sometimes it is as Bad as You Think

2010-07-28T02:22:00.002-05:00

This about sums it up:

At least for people who even bother to think about the war anymore. sigh

Smoke on the Water

2010-07-21T13:57:00.003-05:00

Mix fresh hot oil from road work and a sudden downpour...

Somehow I think the very narrowed lane reductions here could be a slight road hazard. Yikes.

Media Induced Hysteria

2010-07-20T18:55:00.002-05:00

OMG, did you hear that Shirley Sherrod is racist? Of course after she was fired, and after the full video came out, it turned out that the proof of her racism was actually a cherry picked video edit of a tale of racial tolerance and personal growth from decades ago. Now nobody believes she said or did anything wrong... on the left... or the right.

Yet, from CNN:

President Obama was briefed after Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack decided to seek Shirley Sherrod's resignation and fully supports that decision, a White House official said Tuesday.

One career ruined before all the facts were in. Sticking by being stupid even once they are? Brilliant!

If you need me, I'll be out back kicking puppies...

Comic Relief: Totally Unrelated

2010-07-19T12:39:00.002-05:00

Glenn Beck tells audience he may be going blind.

Totally unrelated: Older report that conservatives may be the most active porn consumers.

(I'm sure it has more to do with the tear-inducing eye drops he's been caught using.)

Youth Drug Rehab Backfiring?

2010-07-16T15:38:00.003-05:00

TIME had an interesting article today about younger offenders becoming far more likely to have serious drug problems after rehab compared to the minor infractions that got them there. Whole article here, and excerpt below:

Increasingly, substance-abuse experts are finding that teen drug treatment may indeed be doing more harm than good. Many programs throw casual dabblers together with hard-core addicts and foster continuous group interaction. It tends to strengthen dysfunctional behavior by concentrating it, researchers say. "Just putting kids in group therapy actually promotes greater drug use," says Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).

The exposure can be especially dangerous for impressionable youngsters. "I've known kids who have gone into inpatient treatment and met other users. After treatment, they meet up with them and explore new drugs and become more seriously involved in drug use," says Tom Dishion, director of research at the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon, who has documented such peer influence in scientific studies.

...

In another study looking specifically at the impact of group interventions, teenagers who had been identified as being at high risk for drug use and delinquency at ages 11 through 14 were more likely to smoke cigarettes and have disciplinary problems at school three years later if they had been enrolled in a teen focus group about drugs, compared with those who underwent private counseling sessions with their immediate families. "Any condition that promotes kids talking about or endorsing drug use [with one another] would increase the likelihood that the treatment would have a negative effect," says Dishion.

The article offers some anecdotal evidence as well, but the gist of the problems seems fairly straight forward, especially given the differences between younger versus older minds and why the same types of intervention for drug abuse for both just doesn't make much sense. This comment stood out to me:

"...they told me that I was a drug addict and an alcoholic," says Thomas. "There was no turning back. The whole event solidified and created this notion in my own mind and in my social status. Who I was, was an alcoholic and drug addict."

I'm suddenly having flashbacks to Labeling Theory in Sociology 101.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere Stimulus Signs

2010-07-16T08:45:00.003-05:00

At almost every construction site one sees anymore, there's an extra sign that has nothing to do with warnings of a construction zone, or lane reductions, or speed limits, or the usual informational signs we've grown to groan over every summer.While on a little road trip last year, I commented on the new signage:

While on the road I saw many road projects in action and typically introduced by a sign just like this:

Made me wonder a couple of things. If the typical resentment of having to wait for road construction delays will create a negative association to the ARRA plan and associated policies... and another on a more "bean counter" level: I've seen the full color Recovery.org logo on everything from forms to signs now. Typically such full color stuff costs extra but perhaps the technology is improving enough for it to be an insignificant issue? It's hard to imagine that even an otherwise insignificant cost wouldn't add up with form after form, sign after sign, department of redundancy dept. government we have though.

Apparently some Republicans are attempting to make issue of it as a waste of money purely for propaganda purposes to build support for the President's policies. From the Chicago Tribune:

WASHINGTON — First-term Republican Congressman Aaron Schock of Illinois is peeved over the green highway signs that have sprouted across the U.S. touting stimulus dollars at work.

"Propaganda. An unnecessary overhead expense," argued Schock, who, like every House Republican, opposed last year's $787 billion stimulus.

Lately some Republicans have been taking aim at signage for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This month, Schock introduced a bill, the "End the Stimulus Advertisement Act," to prohibit them.

In Illinois, about 950 signs have been posted at highway, road, transit and other projects, said Josh Kauffman, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation.

The signs cost about $300 each, and it costs another $200 to install them, he said. The bottom line? About $665,000, a calculation Kauffman said is based on buying a sign and installing it in two locations.

The cost has come out of the $936 million Illinois has gotten in transportation stimulus cash, he said.

Illinois residents are no strangers when it comes to spending on road signs. Four years ago, tollway leaders were criticized for planning to drop $480,000 on 32 signs extolling "Open Road Tolling. Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor" ahead of the 2006 election.

In an interview Thursday, Schock asserted that the costs nationally have reached an estimated $20 million. His spokesman said that figure is based on reports from eight states and media accounts.

The article correctly points out that these signs are made by people, who probably enjoy a little job security in the sign building business. But it seems a bit odd to waste their time on such unnecessary and politically self-serving signs. Prior to the ARRA we still had plenty of road construction every summer here in Illinois, but now it seems that almost every project gets one of these signs... which may leave the misleading impression that almost none of the construction zones we get stuck in would be happening if not for the program extolled on the sign. This would be very doubtful. In the grand scheme of things this is a drop in the bucket of our overall spending problems, but like they say, 'a billion here, a billion there, and sooner or later you're talking about real money.

Personally I think the results should speak for themselves. And there seem to be projects more in line with the lofty goals of reinvigorating our infrastructure as the ARRA was supposed to do. Take this recent article on updating a 100 year old metra bridge, for example. There are probably numerous projects that deserve some special recognition that are more along the lines of the hype of the ARRA (Rachael Maddow recently compared it to Ike's involvement in establishing the interstate system). Slapping signs on road construction, much of which was probably likely to happen anyways? Just seems a bit pointless to me.

Congress on Immigration: WWJD?

2010-07-15T04:17:00.003-05:00

Fun with "absolute truth" where there's rarely a consensus on which prophets got the right truth, which translations got it right, and which of the endless factions got the right interpretations of any of the above... now on the immigration debate. From CNN:

Congress tackled the role of religion and ethics in the politically explosive immigration debate Wednesday as biblical passages and church doctrines were invoked during a heated discussion of various reform proposals.

The argument exposed a sharp philosophical divide on an issue that has taken center stage in the wake of Arizona's passage of a controversial law designed to crack down on illegal immigration.

"We are so far apart philosophically," one Democratic congresswoman said, that it's hard to see how a middle ground can be found.

The full article is worth the read, but can be summarized pretty easily: some parts of the Bible promote the idea of upholding civil law and having a civil administration to do so, others call on kindness to strangers or foreigners, others can be pretty contradictory depending on who one considers "neighbors"... which seems to get interpreted differently by different factions to justify or oppose wars, etc as well.

It reminds me of a recent "Gameshow" spoof by the nonstampcollector:

It's my opinion that if there is an "absolute truth" and it is actually knowable to human beings... Congress is looking in the wrong place. I still say they should be looking at more earthly concepts... especially how our immigration / work visa policy is fighting supply and demand and creating a black market in labor. Just my 2 cents.

Debt and Consequences

2010-07-14T08:17:00.005-05:00

From the Chicago Tribune:

While Illinois continues its biggest borrowing spree in recent years, it is paying a steep premium for loans because of its failure to significantly address its financial crisis, observers say. In peddling another $900 million in Build America capital projects bonds on Wednesday, Illinois could face interest costs of about $9 million a year more than if the state were in better financial shape. The extra costs would total about $225 million over the life of the bonds. The annual hit may not seem like a huge sum compared with the state's $25 billion budget. But it's more than Gov. Pat Quinn's $8 million in cuts to the Department of Natural Resources, for example, or his $8 million in cuts for veterans programs.

The big oof came later though:

Illinois is the only U.S. state listed among 10 government entities most likely to default, coming as No. 8, right after Iraq, according to CMA DataVision. The rankings are based on the cost of insuring a state's debt against default.

The cuts are already starting. Can tax increases and deeper cuts really be far behind, or even avoided?

On the federal end, the "Bush tax cuts" (often erroneously qualified as only applying to "the rich") are soon to expire with no certainty on which cuts may get renewed and for how long:

Bush tax cuts up in the air

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Odds are good that the middle-class will get to keep their tax cuts. The question now is for how long.

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire in six months. President Obama had promised to make them permanent for the majority of Americans. But the reality of the federal budget's impending shortfalls is making that a hard promise to keep.

Indeed, some influential players in Washington have signaled that it's no longer a given that the tax cuts will be made permanent, at least not right away.

...

Budget and debt experts, however, have said repeatedly that the magnitude of changes needed to bring better balance to the U.S. fiscal situation will require changes both to the spending and tax sides of the ledger.

They acknowledge that an immediate increase in taxes could harm the economic recovery. They favor extending the cuts for a short period of time but not making them permanent. Any long-term extension would constrain lawmakers as they consider broader tax reform.

As worried as some seem about the state of our economy, there seems to be little acknowledgment (beyond the usual hypocritical partisan sniping) of how serious the debt issue may become. CNN recently had a quiz for its viewers on deficit related questions. It's available here. If you'd like to take it, skip the spoilers ahead for now:

Of the $13 trillion, $8.5 trillion represents the debt held by the public. By 2020, it is on track to more than double to $20.3 trillion. That assumes, among other things, that Congress extends the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the majority of Americans. - Source: Treasury, CBO
Over the next decade, the government is projected to add $9.76 trillion to its debt under President Obama's proposed budget, according to a CBO analysis. More than half of that amount -- an estimated $5.64 trillion -- will be due to the interest owed. - Source: CBO
Interest owed will account for 73% -- or $916 billion -- of the $1.25 trillion projected deficit for that year, according to the CBO analysis of the president's budget proposal. That $916 billion, combined with the more than $3 trillion projected that year for spending on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security would eat up 95% of all federal tax receipts. So 95 cents of every tax dollar will be spoken for before lawmakers consider what to spend on everything else from education to infrastructure to defense.

Campaign season is heating up again. How much you want to bet that these problems take a back seat to rumor, innuendo, and blaming the other guys for it all whilst providing no coherent long term plan to actually deal with any of it? If I were a betting man, I'd put some money down on a lot of talk about tax increases and spending cuts that on their own (or even in combination) wouldn't make a serious dent.

When you're dealing with a government that gets away with calling roughly 3 trillion in IOUs a "trust fund" or constantly raiding those funds as they come in as an "investment" when tax payers end up having to pay the money back plus interest on the funds their tax money originally provided... we might be too comfortable with the government encouraging our delusions.

Local Prof Loses Job over Anti-Gay "Hate Speech?"

2010-07-09T09:40:00.005-05:00

A professor at U of I is apparently not being retained over a student complaint that his descriptions of homosexuality went beyond his job of teaching Catholic thought, but overreached into preaching hate speech. The News-Gazette has his letter to the class used as evidence against him here. It also has the student's letter complaining here. The story is here.

I've had the opportunity to discuss religious and atheist viewpoints with this particular fellow on another blog, and while I strongly disagreed with him, I never got the sense his work at U of I crossed any ethical line. Reading through the allegedly incriminating e-mail it also doesn't appear he was doing anything beyond discussing how certain schools of thought are viewed by the Catholic Church on such matters, including some based on "natural law." The student and the faculty seemed to misinterpret this as more than it was and it appears that some academic freedom advocates are already on the case.

Read through the e-mails and the story and if you still see this as something other than him just doing his job, I'd love to hear your arguments. As an atheist who supports religious liberty and academic freedom myself, I'm actually on the Catholic's side on this one. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Romney Still an Ignorant Liar

2010-07-07T17:12:00.004-05:00

(Via LGF) - A point by point smackdown of Romney's total confusion on nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and even the difference between bombs and missiles: Wrong-Headed Romney

There were way too many inexperienced candidates in the 2008 pool, but criminey, this one term Mass governor puts the rest to shame in showing it off (Huckabee is a damn close runner up).

Why We're Bombing Afghan Troops

2010-07-07T14:34:00.002-05:00

War is hell. Sometimes it's also fucking retarded. Saw this in the local news feed from the wires:

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) – NATO mistakenly killed five of its Afghan army allies in an airstrike Wednesday while they were attacking insurgents in the country's east, officials said.

Three American soldiers were also reported killed Wednesday in a roadside bombing in the south.

An Afghan defense official condemned the latest "friendly fire" deaths, which came at a time when international troops are trying to improve coordination with Afghan security forces in hopes of handing over more responsibility to them nearly nine years into the war.

...

NATO spokesman Josef Blotz confirmed the botched airstrike. He said he regretted the Afghan National Army deaths, telling a news briefing that a joint investigation has been launched.

And noticed this in the Danger Room feed right after:

Technology has largely resolved these miscommunications among the United States and its NATO allies. All kinds of tools are now used to prevent so-called “friendly fire” incidents — from simple reflective tags to GPS beacons and digital maps. But NATO apparently doesn’t trust its Afghan allies with the tech. There’s “a very real issue with illiteracy” among Afghan soldiers, a NATO officer tells Danger Room, making it doubtful that they’d be able to manage or maintain “sensitive technical equipment.”

Of course, anyone with a cellphone these days has gear this complicated. (That’s how Google Maps knows where to steer you.) The idea is the same in the military: Give your unit a GPS device, and the Eyes in the Sky that talk to air support will know that the mysterious band of guys with guns beneath them creeping in formation toward a target is actually a friendly unit.

It’s called Blue Force Tracking (because blue forces = the good guys in military lingo), and it’s simple, straightforward, real-time geolocation. (Well, provided your network data speed is decent.) General David Petraeus praised it to the heavens to Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman a few years ago.

But the Afghan friendlies don’t currently show up on the grid.

SNAFU

Carry on.

Pet Peeves On Afghanistan

2010-07-06T09:15:00.006-05:00

With the operations in Iraq winding down and generally going to plan for our reduction of forces there, the debates on Afghanistan have continued to flare up (with the media pushing controversy more than informing at times). As with Iraq, I've developed some pet peeves during the various arguments and debates I've read or engaged in while discussing Afghanistan. On Iraq I made out a list of common utterances along these lines, with debunking and explanation as needed. There was also an actual comparison of Iraq and Vietnam given all of the popular equivocation. With Afghanistan I've never compiled anything similar, but perhaps it is overdue.

Introductory Peeve

A recent example that popped up in comments on another blog was the often used line "what would a win even be?" This is typically matched up with examples of conventional wars in the past, with surrender ceremonies and official and formal ends of hostilities declared. It both appeals to people's desire for something easier to grasp while obfuscating the whole point that we're fighting an asymmetrical war that deals more with objectives than any formality. It'd be like comparing a sports game to a to-do list... as if one should expect the same applause and definitive rules on "winning" depending on how many errands or tasks you completed and to what degree. The tactic is deliberate in its appeals to what people wish the situation is and also in its implication that it's the only viable option.

It was a perfect example of one of my pet peeves running wild throughout the rhetoric on Afghanistan for quite some time, by the media, by politicians, and of course the regular folks who made them their own. Here's some more, in a list that will surely grow over time as the Iraq one did:

1) "Why are we in Afghanistan?"

Unless you're a child who hasn't had enough time in this world to know or understand the 9/11 attacks and its ramifications, this question is likely to get one punched in the face... or at least equated intellectually to a brain damaged cow. Conspiracy theorists from the far-left to the far-right to the just plain far-gone, well they have their explanations that might complicate the answer to this question. They all generally reflect their willingness to accept any convoluted connection of disparate dots to form titanic non sequiturs that help confirm their previous biases and delusions. They all handily explain why the Jews, Illuminati, the Bush Administration, the Lizard People, the Corporations, the Military, etc etc etc are provably evil and their evil tactics are provably proven for the world to see now.

For everyone else, the reason we are there is pretty unforgettable and if you feel compelled to ask, you might want to stop to think about how dumb you can play before others will come to the conclusion you aren't playing dumb. There is a far more reasonable question one can ask without sounding oblivious and ignorant. It is also the next pet peeve:

2) Why are we still in Afghanistan?

The "still" is critical in this question (see pet peeve #1). This may initially seem to be an unfair pet peeve since people can reasonably disagree on whether or not continuing our operations there is something they agree with. The reason it is a pet peeve for me is that it implies the questioner is oblivious or playing dumb about the reasons given by the last two Presidents of the United States who laid out why we're still there on prime time national television for all to hear, and still available on the web to watch/read later. They laid out our objectives, what we hoped to accomplish in general, why we considered it vital to both our national security and national ideals. A person can certainly disagree with much or everything they said when talking to someone who agrees with most or everything they said.

Asking the question above just makes it look like the person asking never paid attention... and any confusion they may have on the question leaving them in a confused void of what is happening in the world is, in fact, self-inflicted. If called on this and they claim to be very well informed, the only realistic scenario remaining is that they're playing dumb. Either way, ignorance or playing dumb, it's annoying as hell and not a great way to intelligently argue one's point of view.

3) "Afghanistan is Obama's Vietnam"

Somehow I doubt the meme of any war where we get heavily involved being equated to Vietnam will end in my lifetime... no matter how absurd the comparison. The same thing happened with Iraq, and it helped to actually compare the various aspects of the wars to see how useless the comparison really was. I recommend clicking that comparison link and substituting the relevant details on Afghanistan in the Iraq column for starters. I'd also recommend reading this CNN comparison of Afghanistan to the Philippine-American War that shares far more relevant parallels, and also reveals why the Vietnam comparisons are generally half-assed at best.

There is also a lot of irony that tends to float around this particular pet peeve. Often in the same conversation one can catch suggestions that would actually create far more parallels to Vietnam, particularly the post-ceasefire disasters, atrocities, and national embarrassment that made sealed its legacy in our national consciousness. But this leads to the next pet peeve:

4) Selective concern for the Afghan people.

This one comes up quite a bit during conversations with folks who make it clear that their endgame revolves around domestic concerns... and often sadly more over a political agenda as opposed to actual humanitarian concerns. These conversations can be absurdly contradictory and unfortunately all too common. One part of the conversation will be dominated by the plight of the Afghan people as they deal with our military activities, with every heart string pulling anecdotal and accusations of cold blooded intentions whipped out to make the case. Yet, almost without fail, when the plight of abandoned people, and the historical basis (including Afghanistan) for the concern of massive humanitarian crises that make the current problems seem tame in comparison... "fuck 'em" is the gist of the response, in so many words, directly or subtly.

This sudden abandonment of concern is usually accompanied by ideological arguments about war in general, interventionalism, the cold calculus of prioritizing our domestic policy goals over some foreign peoples, or even directly admitting they don't give a damn what happens as long as its not on our hands. The plight they were so concerned about before, or which they'll conveniently lean on later in the conversation, is revealed as a dishonest ruse... or at least a fantastic example of cognitive dissonance.

Sometimes this happens over the course of several conversations or extended periods of time, but in the end their concern over the plight of the Afghan people is still just a handy dishonest emotive ploy. Used selectively when they think it helps their case, and abandoned entirely when it doesn't. It may be the most revulsion inducing pet peeve I have on the subject. There are plenty of ways to argue that our strategies or even our direct involvement is not helping the Afghan people and suggesting other alternatives to avoid humanitarian crises in our absence. The sheer dishonesty and repugnance of the selective caring approach isn't the way.

5) Atheist Flip-Floppery

In the aftermath of 9/11 one of the most popular atheist books out there was Sam Harris' "The End of Faith." It was a brutal thrashing of religion that was inspired by the attacks and set out to show why religion set the stage for militant fundamentalists to build their armies upon and had become a threat to humanity in the nuclear age. If any demographic of America would be hellbent on ensuring that the Taliban, the theocratic loons who enabled al Qaeda's twisted militancy, never again come to power... well militant atheists you'd think would top the list. Unfortunately you'd often be wrong: Atheists for Theocracy! Wait... what?

I realize that atheists tend to gravitate towards political ideologies that tend to fully accept their view of religious liberty and strict separation from government involvement. This seems to lead to a disproportionate number who affiliate with far-left groups and far-right libertarian factions within their single issue comfort area... and also a tendency to adopt other policy stances of the group... which for both is generally anti-war, anti-interventionalism, etc. As a political independent whose ideology is fairly unusual, to say the least, I may share this pet peeve with very few political moderates and independents. I'm listing it anyways because this is my pet peeve list. I hope other anti-war atheists out there might consider why I might be a bit frustrated with their disinterest in ensuring that a theocracy responsible for one of the most heinous attacks on a country based on religious liberty ideals they embrace (even if imperfectly implemented) is a worthwhile goal... if not for us in the long run, for their inevitable direct victims in Afghanistan more immediately. Just a thought.

6) "This is just a continuation of the Great Game."

Another oddball one, but it's a pet peeve I've run into more times than I can remember. If you're unfamiliar with the game in question, wiki has a pretty decent summary. The gist of the summary is that the British Empire and the Russians fought multiple wars in Afghanistan to aid their interests in South Asia. The comparison to our efforts today falls almost as flat as the Vietnam meme, however. The motivation comparisons fall flat on pretty much every level, from entirely different geopolitical goals to our modern domination of air and sea both for trade routes and militarily. The military scenarios if not entirely outdated are completely different, and most have to rely on the more recent proxy war which kills the analogy right there.

The desires of the Afghans themselves while notoriously fractured and fractious are often dishonestly over-simplified down as if they are currently just repelling outside invaders again. In spite of enemy propaganda and the dishonest arguments of some anti-war activists who will throw anything to see if it will stick, the Taliban government and its forces were routed almost entirely by Afghan fighters and boots on the ground. The US assistance was intentionally a small footprint and providing air superiority for the Afghan fighters. The Taliban certainly want people to believe we're just a new breed of foreign crusaders hellbent on exploiting Afghanistan for our imperialist goals in the region. The facts of their removal, mainly at the hands of Afghans, reveal how much they were despised by the people they oppressed and terrorized during their rule.

The situation of course is far more complicated than any summary can explain. The ethnic and fractured nature of Afghanistan's social divisions do certainly complicate our objectives and that of a unified Afghan government. There are reasonable arguments to be made about our strategy and goals without yet another useless comparison to failed wars of the past with little to negligible connection to the problems we currently face beyond geography.

To be continued...

That's a decent start for a list, especially given the references. Given the litany of pet peeves I have on the subject, and in the blogging format, I'll leave it off here for now and add updates in future blog posts.

Happy Independence Day!

2010-07-04T01:22:00.005-05:00

From the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...

Generally my political rants tend towards complaining about political ideologies that I feel conflict with some of these Revolutionary concepts. Democrats who don't share my philosophical priority on liberty and the government's role in protecting it, as opposed to regulating it for our own good. Republicans who similarly fall into the same trap to institutionalize their morality regardless of whether it conflicts with an individual's inalienable protections for matters of conscience. As always there are debates about whether the religious beliefs of this founder or that was somehow relevant to Madison's repeated arguments for and codification of his desires to keep government separate from matters of conscience, religious and otherwise.

One issue that has come up repeatedly in the current political climate is a litany of appeals to Revolutionary statements and ideas that would appear to legitimize a revolution by force. Though dismissed as just talk by the more level-headed folks and denied as an actual objective of their or other major movements against the current Administration... there are far too many people out there in the ranks who openly discuss such thing as an inevitable or possible tactic. Some of the better PR schooled leaders seem to walk a fine line in what they may be tacitly condoning. Either way, this portion of the Declaration seems quite relevant to, if not wholly overlooked by, them:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

It wasn't that long ago that many on the far left were going absolutely hysterical with their hyperbolic claims that were indistinguishable from arguments that Bush had met the Declaration's requirement that the government had become destructive to the ends of protecting liberty and self-government with no way out (remember the conspiracies that he'd use emergency powers to cancel elections?). Now many on the far-right are committing the same hysterical reliance on hyperbole being taken as fact. Neither group can admit to themselves how they're emulating each other's hysteria. They are fringes among the groups, but their riled hysterics are still exploited by both sides to demonize or use them to their electoral advantage.

But as before, elections aren't going to be canceled and policies the other side doesn't like will be up for changes or repeal as the power balances shift again. The impact on our various views of the ideal of liberty may be frustrating, but not permanent. The chips may be down, but America has endured worse and persevered. We've even hit lows so atrocious that we literally rounded up American citizens and others into camps... and we did not let that stand. Self-government did not end. The failures of the past have continued to have an opportunity to be corrected.

As with the calls for "regime change at home" during the Bush Administration, the calls for coups or a hostile takeover during the Obama Administration would be over light and transient causes... and we would all be more disposed to suffer.

So if you're angry about the government getting away with this, that or the other... even if your anger applies to both parties, it's important to remember that the mechanisms of self-government are still operational. The government derives its power from the consent of the governed. We're the boss. It's a job that requires eternal vigilance. If you want to really help renew the revolution and help bring the government closer in line to its primary function of securing the blessings of liberty... your fellow voters are who you need to convince. Otherwise your point of view will continue to be outvoted.

It's a Republic, if you can keep it.

Fox: Fuck with Vets During Fireworks

2010-07-03T00:17:00.003-05:00

In an odd display of ignorance while trying to be super-patriotic, Fox offered some horrible advice:

If you're at the fireworks this weekend and you see a man quietly move away from the crowd to escape the thunder, there's a good chance he's seen the real bombs bursting in air. Go stand by him because he likely stood watching over us as we safely slept in the hometowns he has kept free.

So he's implying the guy might be having an anxiety attack or flashback and is getting away from other people to deal with it... and encourages people to go chase him down. Fucking brilliant. Worse, the guy could be having an anxiety attack because of the crowds. Either way, being chased down by Fox devotees trying to prove their super-patriotism isn't the answer. WTF was this guy thinking? Was he thinking?

Criminey!

Comment Moderation

2010-07-03T00:00:00.001-05:00

If anyone was wondering about the sudden appearance of a lot of comments deleted by an admin... apparently I have a new adoring fan (with a nickname declaring he kills people like me). Generally most of the crazies and spammers can be dealt with one at a time. But every now and then a spammer will find some new bypass or some new crazy thinks his opinion is special. Lately we've had one of those crazies (if you really want to read his craziness, just highlight the area below to reveal it):

"...you're a cunt. When you write words, they're cunt words. When you talk, your lips move like a cunt. I'd like to fuck your mother in her mouth. I'll ram her mouth hard and drop my load of sperm down her cunt mouth. Your slut mother will wonder what she ever saw in your white trash father when she sees a real man sized penis."

"I told you to eat shit you fucking cunt.

Bbbbbaaarrp ppoooooffft brap.

That's your momma's fart hole you cunt. The bitch is loud!"

"I thought I told you to eat shit you fucking cunt.

Now excuse me while I squirt a hot load of sperm down your mother's throat."

"CONTROL JEWS, NOT GUNS!!!"

"CONTROL JEWS, NOT GUNS!!"

"Fuck the Jew.

Fuck the fucking Jew.

Fuck the Godless fucking Jew fuck.

Ban Jews, not guns!"

"I don't dial 911 you Jew-loving cunt. A Jew-bred African shows up in my house uninvited, and the last thing that welfare sucking Jew-brad African monkey is going to see in this world is my muzzle flash."

Lovely, eh? Racist, antisemitic, sexually frustrated, over-compensating for physical deficits left and right. Just pathetic. Fortunately, easy to ignore for now. Sorry to the users without severe mental problems for any delay on comments.

Chicago Redefines Reasonable

2010-07-02T17:33:00.004-05:00

From the Chicago Tribune's website:

“I can’t imagine why anyone would oppose these reasonable regulations, these reasonable restrictions, but I know there will be those who believe that this right to bear arms is unrestricted and that anyone can have any weapon anywhere at all,” Ald. Joe Moore, 49th, told the mayor during the council meeting. “I will stand with you defending this ordinance against the inevitable attacks from the far right wing, and I hope that wisdom and rationality prevails in our court system and that these laws will be upheld.”

Talk about a false dichotomy. Some of the new regulations might seem reasonable, but lets go down the list, and see if you feel you're an irrational right-wing nut job for agreeing with me:

Key provisions include:

*Applicants would need a Chicago firearm permit, costing $100 every three years, as well as an Illinois firearm owner's ID card. They would be required to register all their guns with the city, at a cost of $15 per gun every three years.

This might initially seem reasonable to some people, especially if they're unaware that Chicago permit is just a redundancy of the State permit (FOID card). Why have two permits? To make it way more expensive to even have the option of owning firearms. Does it make anyone safer? No. Does it limit access for no apparent reason? Yes.

The state manages its permit system with a 10 dollar fee... every 5 years... to renew your card. We're one of the few states that requires a permit card to just own or possess firearms and ammunition as opposed to permits to concealed carry.

So which is more reasonable? The State system already in place? Or adding expensive redundancies to it?

*Firearm sales would be banned in the city.

Not only will it be more expensive to even have the choice of owning a firearm, you'll have to go outside of the city to purchase one? Anyone used to city living knows that many residents forgo having their own car out of economic necessity or convenience (or both), so this can be a bigger hurdle and expense than the burbs or country folk may realize. Given all the required background checks and limits on sales, both for individuals and firearm dealers, wouldn't it be more reasonable to require working security systems, monitoring, etc of shops to prevent theft and a video record of sales to prevent illegal sales? Is this just another attempt to keep firearms out of reach of many Chicagoans, literally?

Careful with your answer, you might be an irrational right-wing nut.

*Chicago residents could register no more than one handgun per month for each qualifying adult in a home.

This one initially comes off as reasonable. Straw purchasing by people with a clean record to sell to proxies for illegal sales is a serious problem and loophole in our gun laws. But for one gun a month laws are aimed at stopping the illegal sales of weapons to people who can't legally own them. This is neither aimed at those illegal sales (since Chicago is banning sales) nor is it aimed at people who can't lawfully own them ending up with the weapon (who of course don't try to register them and announce to authorities they're committing felonies). This bit is trying to imitate what many consider reasonable restrictions, but absurdly has nothing to do with the problem they're meant to address. This one is more pointless than unreasonable. Collectors have almost certainly left Chicago long ago, so it is about as unlikely to inconvenience lawful owners as it is to affect illegal transfers of firearms.

*People who now own firearms illegally would get a 90-day grace period after the new law takes effect to register the guns without penalty.

Given how the ban was ruled unconstitutional, they really didn't have a choice on this one. Reasonable enough (though I'm sure some of Daley's lawyers looked for a way around it).

*Gun training totaling four hours in a classroom and an hour on a firing range is required before getting a permit. But firing ranges are banned, so training would need to be completed outside Chicago.

Generally this level of training is only required in states that issue concealed carry permits (though not even all of them require extra training to qualify for one). This adds to the initial cost to own beyond even the jacked up redundant permit fees. This provision is attempting to mirror the "common sense" of drivers license requirements. But cars are far more complicated equipment where you need a drivers license to use it on public roadways where you could seriously injure those you share that public space with... which is why most gun rights advocates make it analogous for concealed carry permits, not to just own one on your own property. If you've ever paid for professional training, you can get an idea of why they like this expensive "reasonable" restriction that requires their residents to leave the area to get... and if you've ever spent an hour at the range, you also know how expensive that can get even before tacking instructor fees on top of range fees and costs of ammo, etc.

Reasonable or overkill meant to deter ownership? You make the call.

*To transport a gun, it would have to be "broken down," not immediately accessible, unloaded and in a firearm case.

So after making people go through more training, fees, and hopes than most concealed carry permit holders throughout the nation they also go way beyond the States current restrictions on transporting firearms by having it in pieces and creating a legal blackhole while trying to take it to or from your car to even take it to a range. How do you put your pieces of unloaded gun in a car while keeping it inaccessible to anyone?

Reasonable or overkill?

* Firearms could be possessed only inside the dwelling. It would be illegal to have a gun in the garage, on the front porch or in the yard. Guns also would not be allowed in hotels, dorms and group living facilities.

This one may seem more reasonable to some, depending on your point of view. To me it seems to be attempting to add technicalities that would get someone in trouble if they ran outside because their wife was being attacked on the front porch. To others it might just be a way of preventing "shot in the back burglar" syndrome. Rights advocates would probably rest their arguments on what the property difference is between your yard, porch and dwelling that is relevant to your ownership rights... though they might agree about the public restrictions.

Could you make this more reasonable?

*Only one firearm per permit holder can be kept in ready-to-fire condition. Other guns must be taken apart or have trigger locks in place. In homes with minors, all guns must be secured when they are not in the possession of the owner.

The State already has laws on access to minors, so the key part of this regulation is redundant. The restriction of access otherwise might seem reasonable if it wasn't futile against its intended purpose of deterring theft... which if someone is breaking into your house, they can break through a trigger lock or reassemble a gun. It doesn't add to safety, just adds yet another thing a lawful owner can get in trouble for.

Redundant and futile, or reasonable?

*Permit applicants must be at least 21 years old, unless a parent signs for someone 18 or older.

Redundant to State law already in effect. I have a hard time calling pointless redundancies "reasonable." Maybe that's just me?

*Assault weapons are banned, as are sawed-off shotguns and "unsafe" handguns, as defined by the Chicago Police Department, which will maintain an online list of prohibited guns.

"Assault weapon" is a legal term, not a technical term. There's no technical definition of what is or is not an "assault weapon." A ban on assault weapons could include every gun, certain guns deemed to dangerous even if for cosmetic reasons, etc. It's whatever the law defines them to be. Daley thinks all handguns are "unsafe" so time will only tell how he'll abuse these provisions. This one uses wording to "sound" reasonable, but essentially empowers Daley to institute a de facto ban all over again by ambiguities most people are unfamiliar with. Your average person hears "assault weapon" and thinks of machine guns... but as of yet no "assault weapon" ban covered fully automatic weapons since many States ban them already outright (including Illinois) and have been federally restricted since the days of Al Capone. All those guns that look like military weapons when politicians talk about "assault weapons" only look like them, they don't actually have full-auto or 3-round burst capabilities like actual military weapons (those are already banned here and restricted federally to boot). A squirt gun might look like an uzi, but it's not actually a machine gun in function. Looks can be deceiving and politicians deceive people intentionally by leaving out the details.

Reasonable? Or a back door attempt to still ban guns?

Remember, if you can think of things far more reasonable and/or disagree with many of these provisions, you're probably just an irrational right-wing nut who would refuse any regulation whatsoever on firearms.

*cough*

Riiiiight.

Comic Relief: Libertarians

2010-06-29T22:12:00.003-05:00

Hat tip to Pharyngula... except for the part where HIS links took you to a malware infecting site (yeah, don't click his links at his site). Safe to view (and even click to enlarge):

Kirk Now Sorry... Selectively and Sorta

2010-06-29T18:16:00.004-05:00

From CNN's Political Ticker:

Washington (CNN) - Rep. Mark Kirk, the Illinois Republican hoping to capture President Obama's old Senate seat in November, apologized Tuesday for mischaracterizing his military record.

"I've made mistakes when characterizing certain aspects of my accomplishments and experiences. I apologize for my mistakes and I pledge to correct any errors. I am not perfect, and I was careless. I will do better and make sure this never happens again," Kirk said.

Well that's one way of putting it. Another way would be that he outright lied to embellish his record on numerous occasions that put his 'slip up' excuse on par with Blumenthal just accidentally saying or directly implying he had served in the Vietnam War. At least unlike Blumenthal, Kirk's apology didn't occur while continuing to be deceptive (Blumenthal made his apology from a VFW labeled podium surrounded by veterans wearing VFW clothes... as if the VFW was okay with him posing as a veteran of foreign wars - which he wasn't - and continuing to try to look as if he was even as he apologized for it... yeah, it was that bad).

So Kirk isn't quite a Blumenthal, but he's still SOL on the honesty department. His opponent, for obvious reasons, isn't going to let him off the hook with his apology for lesser things that avoided even dealing with the other charges. From the same article:

"Congressman Kirk wasn't careless and he didn't misremember – he lied. One mistake is careless. Misrepresenting, embellishing or not telling the truth about 10 different phases of your military career over a 10-year period is a pattern of lies, plain and simple," Giannoulias campaign spokesman Matt McGrath said.

I don't like Giannoulias either. I disagree with him on more issues, though not all. His character is deeply flawed as a power hungry political prodigy... already jumping at higher office way beyond any experience to reasonably justify the move. He's more of the same problem Illinois politics is embarrassingly notorious for.

What upsets me most about Kirk's betrayal of his fellow veterans with his attempt to steal their valor for his own personal gain... well, that upsets me plenty right there. What also upsets me is that he's taken that part of my ballot and made it pointless. I didn't agree with him on everything, strongly disagreed with him on some issues... but compared to Giannoulias, who had some good policy stances, just not enough to make up for his character and my other policy disagreements with him...

Well... now they're on par. I don't know who's worse. I still feel like my best option is leaving that part of my ballot blank. Unfortunately for the people of Illinois, one of them will win regardless. Ugh...

With this on top of the Illinois gubernatorial race... Blago's Lt Governor who vouched for his integrity? Verses a fundy conservative running in a Blue State and so blatantly wrong on so many of the social issues Illinois is facing.

Now there's some great choices too. At least Quinn has a new running mate after it was discovered the Illinois voters, in all their wisdom, voted for a Lt Governor candidate who had a bad habit of getting stabby with his girl friends in drug addicted rages or some such crap.

Can we pick 'em or what? With this Kirk nonsense I feel like I'm part of the problem. But at least I was never brain damaged enough to think re-electing Blagojevich after all the proof of his corruption along with State and Federal investigations into the same was a bad idea for Dems to rally behind in the 2006 primaries. I sure as heck think Obama and friends were off their rocker helping him kickstart his original 2002 campaign for governor. I didn't support Blago's integrity defending running mate, Quinn, in the 2010 primaries. I didn't support some of the crazy tea party choices the repubs put up that eventually got the one reasonable gubernatorial candidate left out of the general election.

So I might be a small part of the problem. But the partisan nonsense, defending the indefensible, or turning hysterical party purification demands into political suicide missions, or just paying attention long enough not to vote for Mr. Stabby... well, at least I'm not that freaking bad. Sheesh!

Chicago to See 2nd Amendment?

2010-06-28T17:44:00.003-05:00

CNN seems to think so:

Washington (CNN) -- In another dramatic victory for firearm owners, the Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional Chicago, Illinois', 28-year-old strict ban on handgun ownership, a potentially far-reaching case over the ability of state and local governments to enforce limits on weapons.

A 5-4 conservative majority of justices on Monday reiterated its 2-year-old conclusion that the Constitution gives individuals equal or greater power than states on the issue of possession of certain firearms for self-protection.

"It cannot be doubted that the right to bear arms was regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as states legislated in an evenhanded manner," wrote Justice Samuel Alito.

The court grounded that right in the due process section of the 14th Amendment. The justices, however, said local jurisdictions still retain the flexibility to preserve some "reasonable" gun-control measures currently in place nationwide.

The Chicago Tribune is less optimistic:

Daley had no details how the city's ban would be revised. City Hall has been drawing up plans since the justices heard arguments in the case in early March and appeared to indicate they would rule against the city.

In an interview with the Tribune, the mayor said his primary goal would be to protect police officers, paramedics and emergency workers from being shot when responding to an incident at a home. He said he also wants to save taxpayers from the financial cost of lawsuits if police shoot someone in the house because the officer felt threatened.

Chicago could require firearm owners to purchase insurance and receive training or maintain a registry of how many guns are in particular homes so that police responding to an address will know what they're up against.

...

Wayne LaPierre, chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association, said he was concerned that the "constitutional victory" of today's ruling will be "turned into a practical defeat by defiant city councils and cynical politicians who seek to nullify or revise this decision through a byzantine labyrinth of regulations and restrictions" to make handgun ownership "unaffordable and inaccessible."

Addressing Daley, LaPierre said: "He's saying, 'I don't care if it's a constitutional right.' The opinion of Mayor Daley doesn't entitle him to throw out the Bill of Rights."

LaPierre, anticipating Daley will protest the high court's ruling, continued, "Can you imagine if he did this with a case about speech, about religion or the right to vote?"

So will Chicagoans see their 2nd Amendment rights? I'll believe it when I see it. My money is on years of fighting left to go. I have no doubt that Daley's Tammany Hall is in full swing to come up with every "regulation" they can think of that will make it virtually impossible for the average citizen to own a gun. A few hundred lawsuits later and then maybe, just maybe...

I wouldn't hold your breath.

Losing Afghanistan

2010-06-24T18:45:00.003-05:00

The news out of Afghanistan has been dismal for a long time now. The news from the home front has been equally dismal for a long time as well. From a post I made just under a year ago:

Recent polling from CNN and ABC/Washington Post are painting a grim future for the conflict in Afghanistan as they show public support has gone straight into the gutter. From the CNN polling:

Fifty-four percent say they oppose the war in Afghanistan, up 6 points from May.

"Afghanistan is almost certainly the Obama policy that Republicans like the most," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "Nearly two-thirds of Republicans support the war in Afghanistan. Three-quarters of Democrats oppose the war." [emphasis added]

During the primary election there were only a couple candidates with at least barely-realistic chances who dared to oppose both Iraq and the Afghanistan conflict. Neither Kucinich nor Paul ever got any serious traction beyond their own small niche of fervent supporters. Now a year or so later it appears most Americans, and a shocking number of Democrats are ready to throw in the towel on a conflict both general election candidates claimed was central to American security.

The Drama with McCrystal started long before this recent flare up over a Rolling Stone article that got him canned. The article is worth the read, though it is readily apparent which way the author leans on the war and our strategy. It mercilessly pans the COIN strategy that will now be implemented by General Patraeus instead. I'd argue it also grossly oversimplifies the concept, but it does point out some real world shortcomings in the process. What, if any changes might come with the switcheroo is unknown... especially after Obama went on the record as saying that the move didn't indicate a change in policy. What is more clear is how absolutely befuddled our leadership seems in trying to deal with Afghanistan, both in getting the job done and winning the PR war. The demotion of Patraeus, a familiar and trusted name in the military, to run Afghanistan instead of CENTCOM is extremely telling:

The senior administration official said despite the fact that Petraeus was asked to give up Central Command, he did not consider it a demotion. Obama acknowledged the move was not "the normal course" for a top general to go from being in charge of Central Command to taking command in Afghanistan. The president also acknowledged it was "a sacrifice for Petraeus."

In a rare moment it had me in agreement with Oliver Stone:

"He's asking the head of the whole region, CENTCOM command, Petraeus, to step down in authority to take this post. That shows a complete breakdown in the military, to me," Stone said in an interview with CNN's John King.

"You don't promote down," added Stone, a veteran of the Vietnam War. "It's like asking Eisenhower to lead a division in World War II after he's led D-Day. You don't do that."

...

Gates also said Obama himself suggested putting Petraeus in the new post.

"It was the president's idea," Gates told reporters Thursday. "It was the president who first raised Petraeus' name." Gates also called the Petraeus appointment the "best possible outcome to an awful situation."

The idea coming from the political realm as opposed to the military just screams that this has more to do with PR than military necessity... and it's about the only way the move makes a lick of sense. McCrystal almost certainly had to go, and the reasons Obama listed in accepting his resignation were right on the ball. But it still leaves us with a mess in Afghanistan that keeps looking more and more dismal. The objectives are still the ones Obama laid out last year and Bush before him. But we're relying on a strategy that depends on a lot of things people running the show can't agree on. From the Danger Room:

Not only is McChrystal the “only one with any sort of relationship with [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai,” says this civilian advisor to the McChrystal-led International Security Assistance Force. Eikenberry “has no plan, didn’t get COIN [counterinsurgency] when he was the commander and still doesn’t.” Plus, the advisor adds: “The Embassy hates Eik. That’s not necessarily an indictment (I’m no fan of the Embassy). But it contributes to the dysfunction and it means that half the Embassy is focused on keeping Eik in line.”

But even this McChrystal backer admits that the backbiting and the shit-talking between the general’s camp and Eikenberry’s is hurting the war effort.

“There are very few things we control in Afghanistan. In every review of COIN best practices, ‘unity of effort’ tops the list. Every. Single, Review. And we’re totally fucking it up; fucking up the one thing that should be in our control,” the advisor says. “We can’t control Karzai, or the ANP [Afghan National Police], or the Pakistani tribes, but we should be able to get our shit in one sock and we’re not.”

We're not just losing the one guy who has most successfully dealt with the Afghan leader, but we're not solving the direct conflicts of our own leadership on Afghanistan while maintaining a policy that directly relies on their ability to cooperate (both in action and image). For an Afghani currently unsure of who will be the guys in charge after the dust settles, there's little reason for them not to assume that the Taliban will hold out the longest. And with their history of retaliation and brutal oppression, what motivation is there for him to cooperate with a country that openly shows how eagerly it wants to abandon them?

Is it even possible to convince an Afghani that we are no longer intent on abandoning them, even if somehow that is magically true in the near future? Would you bet your life and your family's life on it? I wouldn't. Could you be bribed with schools the Taliban will merely burn down with your daughters in it? Could you be bribed with infrastructure the Taliban will demolish to reinstate its 6th century worldview again? Could you do it for protection from people whose bosses (us) openly and often send memos of reneging on ASAP?

Read the Rolling Stone article. Read arguments for and against our current strategy. Read various opinions and facts on the people involved on both our side and theirs. If you can come to the conclusion that we have both the necessary leadership to implement the strategy and a strategy that our leadership agrees enough on to implement... to actually achieve the objectives they've set... well... I'd love to hear your argument.

For me the situation is no longer just dire. We're losing Afghanistan. The problems are hitting a critical mass that there may be no coming back from. It breaks my fucking heart.

Comic Relief: This May Be Racist

2010-06-24T16:54:00.015-05:00

Some people argue that Obama is too calm. The Daily Show offered some suggestions yesterday... and that inspired a warped scenario in my mind... apologies in advance (for both quality and stupidity):

Somewhere on Capitol Hill:

Tony Hayword: I'm sorry, I didn't get your name. I got yours, Vincent, right? But I didn't get yours...

Jules: My name's Pitt. And your ass ain't talkin' your way out of this shit.

Tony Hayword: No, no, I just want you to know... I just want you to know how sorry we are that things got so fucked up with us and Mr. Obama. We got into this thing with the best intentions and I never...

Jules: I'm sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn't mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What's the matter? Oh, you were finished! Well, allow me to retort. What does Barack Obama look like?

Tony Hayword: What?

Jules: What country you from?

Tony Hayword: What?

Jules: What ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?

Tony Hayword: What?

Jules: ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO-YOU-SPEAK-IT?

Tony Hayword: Yes!

Jules: Then you know what I'm saying!

Tony Hayword: Yes!

Jules: Describe what Barack Obama looks like!

Tony Hayword: What, I-?

Jules: Say what again. SAY WHAT AGAIN. I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Say what one more goddamn time.

Tony Hayword: He's b-b-black...

Jules: Go on.

Tony Hayword: He's tall...

Jules: Does he look like a bitch?

Tony Hayword: What?

Jules: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?

Tony Hayword: No!

Jules: Then why you try to fuck him like a bitch, Tony?

Tony Hayword: I didn't.

Jules: Yes you did. Yes you did, Tony. You tried to fuck him. And Barack Obama don't like to be fucked by anybody, except Mrs. Obama.

Military Desperation

2010-06-22T03:46:00.008-05:00

At a loss on how to handle the toll war has on veterans, the military is now relying on ancient Chinese mysticism as a possible answer. From VA Watchdog.org:

"The military, in many respects, is kind of a front-runner" in using alternative treatments, said Alexandra York, a research associate in military medical research at the Samueli Institute in Alexandria, Va., which studies alternative therapies. "I think it's because of the complexity of the conditions they see. It almost demands that other options be examined."

About 30 to 45 percent of soldiers come home with some mental health problems, said Dr. Marcia Valenstein, an associate professor in the University of Michigan Department of Psychiatry and a staff psychiatrist at the Department of Veterans Affairs Center of Excellence in Ann Arbor. PTSD is one of the most common. A study in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry estimated that as many as 17 percent of U.S. veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have PTSD, which can cause symptoms such as depression and anger.

So far, about 16 programs across the various branches of the military for active-duty troops with PTSD exist or are in the works, offering acupuncture and other alternative treatments along with counseling, said Jerry Wesch, a clinical psychologist at one of the nation's biggest programs, at Fort Hood in Killeen. Since the Fort Hood program started in August 2008, 250 soldiers have gone through it, Wesch said. It was modeled after a program that began at Fort Bliss in El Paso in July 2007, becoming what is believed to be the first comprehensive effort of its kind in the military combining alternative and traditional therapies for troops with PTSD.

The article is littered with anecdotal evidence that reads like the testimonials of almost every other alternative medicine racket out there, from homeopathic sugar pills to vertebral subluxations of chiroquacktic fame. The article buries the pertinent information about this sort of treatment deep into the article (though not before trashing "skeptics" as a bunch of philistine bullies):

Other research on acupuncture and depression has been inconclusive or inconsistent.

How acupuncture works is not well understood. Practitioners place needles along what they say are energy pathways in the body that are linked to the organs, muscular system and nervous system. Practitioners say that ill health or injury causes a break in the energy flow. They say acupuncture needles unblock the flow, restoring balance or health to the person.

That's classic Daoist mumbo jumbo, based on the concept of energy or life energy flow of the world. The problem, of course, is that this notion of energy comes from the minds of confused ancients who were trying to figure out the world in mystical terms they could work with. Given their historical scientific ignorance, it's not like their creative human minds had many other options at the time. We shouldn't embrace that same problem.

Unfortunately for many people, the typical science curriculum doesn't really leave them with the resources to recognize what utter bunk this gross oversimplification is. A good con artist selling this and other alternative "medicines" can usually seize on our general scientific ignorance and make their snake oil sound pretty plausible. Tack on some testimonials and you have yourself a great racket: selling placebo effects and getting depressed people off the couch with something to do. Generally I'd recommend something that doesn't involve shoving needles all over yourself based on the body maps of ancient peoples who would fail BIO 101, let alone be allowed a medical license.

As with most religious belief systems, there is often some wisdom to be divined from their thoughts and writings... but applying a bit of common sense and an appropriate level of skepticism when it comes to applying it in the modern world and within the realm of modern understanding would be a smart approach. We don't have to assume some sort of mystical "life energy" anymore, let alone rely on such a concept to "cure" us. We have chemistry... and the body is full of it. We get the chemistry set mainly from the food we eat, full of all the molecules needed for cells to go about their business... making proteins... growing replacement cells... making hard bone or stretchy muscle. That food generally came from other life using the same materials available in other life that it generally ate and is available all over the planet. The fusion ball in the sky we call the sun helps pump in quite a bit of energy via plant life too... no mystic life force required.

The chemical reactions balance out just like they did in your high school or college chemistry courses (cue the flashbacks to stoichiometry, conservation of energy, etc). There's no missing "life energy" needed to explain why the chemical reactions occur. Granted, in a highly complex organism there's a lot going on all at once... so trying to figure out how one mutation on a DNA chain affects the production of some protein and how that affects all the various specialized cells throughout the body and how that in turn shows up as some illness... well it can be overwhelming for anybody. But it's still not a good reason to assume that people who knew far less than your average grade school science whiz is a good replacement for your doctor.

The fact that the military is jumping on board with this should certainly not be taken as a sign of optimism by those who swear by snake oil alternative medicines with the same zeal as a cult member. If anything this is a sign of desperation by the military... overwhelmed by the full costs of war, and resigning themselves to throw tax dollars away for placebo effects to help mitigate their predicament. Unfortunately for some veterans this could leave some very real medical problems to go untreated and become worse later on. As with any bureaucracy, the government would rather put off as much as it can during the current budget and resource crunch to get through their day of not knowing what the other hand is doing... if veterans suffer, they can always blame it on the other hand.

As voters, we should be holding them accountable.

Health Care Bill: NOW it's a Tax

2010-06-17T21:07:00.003-05:00

After months upon months of hearing how it isn't a tax... well guess what, it is now, to call it Constitutional. From the Associated Press:

A key issue in the suit by the states, National Federation of Independent Business and several individual taxpayers is whether the federal government can require individuals to purchase health care insurance and fine those who fail to do so.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said Thursday that the government's defenses clash with comments Obama made during the health care debate, "including the president's insistence on national television that the purchase mandate was absolutely not a tax."

In its arguments for the motion to dismiss, the Justice Department says the requirement to buy coverage is an exercise of Congress' constitutional power to tax and spend.

"The Supreme Court has long held that an exercise of this power is valid, even if it has a regulatory function, even if the revenue purpose is subsidiary, and even if the moneys raised are 'negligible,'" wrote a team of government lawyers led by Assistant Attorney General Tony West.

Karen Harned, executive director of National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal Center, called the administration's argument a "bait-and-switch move" because of Obama's prior no-tax statements. She said the law itself does not used the word "tax" for the insurance requirement.

Somehow I don't think this is what Pelosi meant about us finding out what's in the bill after it's passed. Suckers.

CNN: The American Public are Nimrods

2010-06-17T02:03:00.003-05:00

Imagine seeing this recent front page teaser CNN used for one of its articles:

President Obama's speech on the gulf oil disaster Tuesday night was written at a 10th-grade level, which, according to analysts, may have gone over the heads of many in his audience. FULL STORY

As if that wasn't insulting enough in and of itself, the actual article went on to describe what level the American public really responds to:

Obama's nearly 10th-grade-level rating was the highest of any of his major speeches and well above the Grade 7.4 of his 2008 "Yes, we can" victory speech, which many consider his best effort, Payack said.

"The scores indicate that this was not Obama at his best, especially when attempting to make an emotional connection to the American people," he added.

I'm not sure exactly who should feel more insulted. The president, who as it stands generally talks at a junior high level... or his audience, who apparently get lost in confusion if someone smarter than a high school sophomore is yapping at them. I suppose it really shouldn't surprise so much why the big campaign events and presidential debates are so dumbed down and relegated to regurgitating talking points.

Perhaps this is why after years and years of the problem getting worse and worse under the last couple presidents... the Veterans Affairs claims backlog has finally topped a million... not to mention all of the other institutional calamities that go back way beyond recent presidents. Talking down to the audience is apparently not that effective in fixing these issues... and I think Bush has proven that dumbing it down even more didn't work...

So new tactic:

These boobs want you to know that vets are being screwed over. You should do something about it.

Mark Kirk Goes Down in Flames

2010-06-16T15:43:00.002-05:00

From the Washington Post:

Mark Kirk's Senate campaign has now acknowledged a second misrepresentation of his service record, admitting to me that his Web site falsely claimed that he was "the only member of Congress to serve in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

This latest admission comes after Kirk, an Illinois Congressman, recently admitted that his official bio had falsely claimed he'd been named U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award for his service during NATO'S war with Serbia in the 1990s.

But apparently that wasn't all:

As of about a week ago, I think the list was up to eight separate incidents: Kirk (1) falsely claimed he served "in" Operation Iraqi Freedom; (2) falsely claimed to "command the war room in the Pentagon"; (3) falsely claimed to have won the U.S. Navy's Intelligence Officer of the Year award; (4) falsely claimed to have been shot at by the Iraqi Air Defense network; (5) falsely claimed to be a veteran of Desert Storm; (6) falsely claimed to be the only lawmaker to serve during Operation Iraqi Freedom; (7) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kosovo; and (8) falsely claimed to have been shot at in Kandahar.

I supported Mark Kirk in the primaries. I feel betrayed. He's become almost as bad as Blumenthal lying about serving in the Vietnam War. If voters had the least bit of integrity they wouldn't sanction either one of their lying asses. Sadly it looks like Blumenthal's supporters could give a crap about pissing on the honor of veterans. Kirk on the other hand is rightly screwed.

As for me, I don't like the democrat in this race either, so I'm leaving my ballot blank on this one. How disappointing.

Tax Dollars At Work

2010-06-15T02:59:00.004-05:00

Full rant here, but this little excerpt alone exemplifies the "progress" the VA is making with its atrocious error rates and backlogs on claims:

VA claims revolve around three core issues to prove: proving you have a current ailment, showing that ailment was either caused or aggravated by something in your military service, and showing the nexus between the two. In this case the veteran's ailments were shown to have that nexus to his service, and the VA was giving him the benefit of the doubt (as they're required to by law, but rarely actually do unless it meets a list of bureaucratic technicalities).

By their own admission he met the criteria for approval. But they denied it anyways. Reasons unknown. Reasons not even given. In previous posts I've talked about this common phenomenon where huge percentages of vets are given decisions that any person with some time and common sense would view as not making a lick of sense... and similarly lawyers and VA advocates can only take as claim raters not taking the time to even read through entire claim files or even what they've typed up. There are quotas to hit, and generally the preference, whether pushed from the bean counters above, or out of their own self-interest, seems to be getting through them with the least amount of hassle. Starting off with denial in mind saves them a lot of headaches... doesn't work out so well for the veteran or taxpayer in the long run.

Sure helps hit those quotas though (though still not enough to decelerate the growing backlog... especially when vast numbers of claims have to be resubmitted after being rated as if a brain damaged sadistic squirrel was rubber stamping this idiocy). But hey, resubmitted claims and appeals don't count against that guy's quota or that bean counter's numbers. That all gets tallied up elsewhere and is someone else's mess.

It's another fine Milgram Experiment, but it's the veteran in the hotseat, and it isn't an act.

Beck: Cranking up the Crazy...

2010-05-14T22:28:00.003-05:00

...and breaking off the dial.

Via Colbert Report:

Colbert pretty well sums it up here. Previous post's on Beck's modern twist of yellow journalism here. My first post on Glenn Beck was over his Comrade Update skit, which if you missed it a year ago, you can see the signs were all there:

COMMUNISTS!!! ZOMG!1!!!
Youtube clip of the fox news response as soon as Obama got done signing the schip bill:

They're not even trying anymore. Criminey.

This guy is out of his freaking mind.

Veterans as Guinea Pigs

2010-05-08T20:44:00.006-05:00

Some shrinks at VA hospitals are relentless in pushing Seroquel as part of a "drug cocktail" to treat veterans afflicted with PTSD. This alone seems pretty innocuous. But now AstraZeneca, the makers of Seroquel, are looking at half a billion dollars in fines for their role in that. From the Wall Street Journal via VA Watchdog.org:

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday confirmed a settlement under which AstraZeneca PLC (AZN) will pay about $520 million to resolve allegations the company improperly promoted the antipsychotic Seroquel.

A finalization of the settlement has been expected since October, when AstraZeneca booked a $520 million reserve to cover an agreement in principle to resolve government probes of Seroquel sales and marketing practices.

The department alleged that AstraZeneca illegally marketed the drug for unapproved uses, such as for the treatment of aggression, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Such improper marketing led to millions of dollars in false claims against federal and state programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the department alleged.

The Justice Department also alleged that the drug maker offered and paid illegal kickbacks to doctors to encourage them to prescribe Seroquel for unapproved uses.

The article goes on to explain how this isn't a victimless crime. Unfortunately it seemed to focus more on the economic effects more than the public health risks. Most dramatic of those risks has been highlighted in veterans news for a while. From VA Watchdog.org:

Sgt. Layne was not the first veteran to die after being prescribed medical cocktails including Seroquel for PTSD.

In the last two years, Pfc. Derek Johnson, 22, of Hurricane, West Virginia; Cpl. Andrew White, 23, of Cross Lanes, West Virginia; Cpl. Chad Oligschlaeger, 21, of Roundrock, Texas; Cpl. Nicholas Endicott, 24, of Pecks Mill, West Virginia; and Spc. Ken Jacobs, 21, of Walworth, New York have all died suddenly while taking Seroquel cocktails.

Death certificates and other records collected by veteran family members show that more than 100 similar deaths have occurred among Iraq and Afghanistan combat vets and other military personnel, many of whom took PTSD cocktails that included Seroquel and other antipsychotics, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, sleep inducers and pain and seizure medications.

On top of these deaths, the damage to strained budgets of public health programs and economic damage... AstraZeneca's Seroquel adventures have allegedly included burying unfavorable studies showing other dangers of the drug as well.

There's a whole lot fishy with this whole mess, especially on the part of AstraZeneca, but the government itself hardly comes off innocent in this. The government shouldn't be complicit in allowing giant pharmaceutical companies to use veterans as guinea pigs for off-label testing of drugs so they can get their foot in the door to expand their markets regardless of the death and suffering it may cause.

This ongoing story of Seroquel based PTSD cocktails has only grown worse and worse over the years. It's starting to make me feel sick. I'm sure they have a pill for that too. #@$*

Warehousing Disabled Vets

2010-04-27T08:02:00.004-05:00

Mentioned this in an earlier post, but I wanted to get back to it after a little escapism with the Boobquake event (no surprise, the results are in and immodesty apparently doesn't cause earthquakes... go figure). Here are the links again to the bigger story: Via VA Watchdog from the NY Times:

Last August, Specialist Crawford attempted suicide with a bottle of whiskey and an overdose of painkillers. By the end of last year, he was begging to get out of the unit.

“It is just a dark place,” said the soldier, who is waiting to be medically discharged from the Army. “Being in the W.T.U. is worse than being in Iraq.”

Created in the wake of the scandal in 2007 over serious shortcomings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Warrior Transition Units were intended to be sheltering way stations where injured soldiers could recuperate and return to duty or gently process out of the Army. There are currently about 7,200 soldiers at 32 transition units across the Army, with about 465 soldiers at Fort Carson’s unit.

But interviews with more than a dozen soldiers and health care professionals from Fort Carson’s transition unit, along with reports from other posts, suggest that the units are far from being restful sanctuaries. For many soldiers, they have become warehouses of despair, where damaged men and women are kept out of sight, fed a diet of powerful prescription pills and treated harshly by noncommissioned officers. Because of their wounds, soldiers in Warrior Transition Units are particularly vulnerable to depression and addiction, but many soldiers from Fort Carson’s unit say their treatment there has made their suffering worse.

The whole article is worth the read as it touches a several problems. The most pressing issue seems to remain that the military still hasn't learned the lessons of Walter Reed one iota. Instead of offering what is necessary to deal with affected veterans, they're still basically putting them into mental health pressure cookers in the shadows. They've helped create yet another new bureaucratic snafu of hopelessness where many are setup to fail... right down to demotions, jeopardizing benefits, and ending up in the criminal court system due to unrealistic expectations and disciplinary measures enforced on people who are drugged into stupors while not getting the additional or actual help they need.

As with most government programs at the moment, especially those dealing with veterans, there are budget problems and backlogs leaving people waiting absurd amounts of time to get where they need to be in those systems. The article points out that the government's attempt to better synchronize medical separations from the military with the VA system have resulted in prolonged delays for veterans left warehoused in the background. Take this feeling of being abandoned, frustration, and hopelessness and add on to it a system that still treats them as if they're a bunch of malingering pansies... punishing them for their inability to cope no matter how deliriously drugged they may be, no matter how much their doctors protest that their conditions are interfering... while watching their military benefits slowly (or abruptly) get weened away for themselves and their families.

The biggest question is why this hit the front page of the NY Times but has otherwise been forgotten by the media and especially our elected representatives who could be making an issue of it. I'd recommend that you ask them.

Journalism Fail

2010-04-26T08:52:00.003-05:00

Fox News wonders if boobs really do cause earthquakes. No, I'm not making this up:

If I'm found dead of massive head injuries, just let the cops know it was a case of uncontrollable facepalming.

Boobquakes Emerge Already

2010-04-26T06:29:00.003-05:00

First strike is Taiwan, though nothing out of the ordinary... well, okay maybe the picture they chose was:

Of course what this means is that more boobquake testing will be required to ensure we aren't getting bad results from too small a sample size. It's a tough job, but I think we can do this.

I'm sticking with the Save the Boobs ad for my contribution for the day:

A more serious post is upcoming later today on the treatment of returning veterans after the fallout of the Walter Reed scandal via VA Watchdog.org and the NY Times. I was going to start off talking about it, but it was so infuriating and depressing that I decided to stick with the light hearted stuff for now and come back to it. Worth the read in the mean time though... or while you're out and about helping cause boobquakes.

Speaking of Boobs

2010-04-22T05:17:00.005-05:00

Apparently Comedy Central is still not comfortable with letting South Park show depictions of the prophet Muhammad, and nutterbutter fundamentalists still get pissed off over this:

Yeah, that. Spoiler Alert: it turned out to be Santa Clause in the bear suit anyways. Doesn't matter. The viewer being led to believe that a non-existent representation behind the bear suit could be imagined to be Muhammad... well that's enough for thinly veiled call to arms and telling the faithful where to direct their fanatical stupidity:

Islamists have warned the creators of TV show South Park they could face violent retribution for depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a bear suit.

A posting on the website of the US-based group, Revolution Muslim, told Matt Stone and Trey Parker they would "probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh".

The Dutch film-maker was shot and stabbed to death in 2004 by an Islamist angered by his film about Muslim women.

...

The posting gave details about a home Stone and Parker reportedly co-own.

It also listed the addresses of their production office in California and the New York office of South Park's broadcaster, Comedy Central.

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," warned the posting, written in the name of Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee.

Of course none of this was even on the radar when the South Park crew actually did depict Muhammad before 9/11 cranked up the crazy and broke off the dial among fundies of various stripes. The real irony is that a South Park depiction of anybody is hardly all that accurate or detailed to begin with:

What will be far more interesting, when Comedy Central regrows its testicles, is what the South Park crew will do to Muhammad once they get the green light to mock him as mercilessly as they mock every other religion, non-religion, pseudoscience, or, well, anything they've ever heard of. The illiterate pederast holy man at the center of one of the world's biggest religions should never be off limits. The only real question is whether I'm talking about the pope or Muhammad.

(The answer is "yes.")

Oh, and what is the title talking about? This awesome Islam-insulting idea for a Boobquake to lay to rest the notion that immodesty causes earthquakes.

Boobquake 2010

2010-04-20T23:53:00.002-05:00

Just to be clear, it wasn't my idea: It's from the Blag Hag.

I'm not saying I don't like the idea though. I'm outta luck in joining in, short a new diet of bacon-cheeseburgers for the next several months... but, there was this one ad that might help:

Anything I can do to help scientific inquiry, y'know.

Baby Steps

2010-04-16T05:32:00.002-05:00

One of the many unique challenges facing gay couples involves hospitals. Yesterday President Obama made a small step towards rectifying one of the more heart breaking of them. From CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- President Obama has asked the Department of Health and Human Services to establish a rule that would prevent hospitals from denying visitation privileges to gay and lesbian partners.

The president's Thursday memo said, "There are few moments in our lives that call for greater compassion and companionship than when a loved one is admitted to the hospital. ... Yet every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides."

Gay and lesbian Americans are "uniquely affected" by relatives-only policies at hospitals, Obama said, adding that they "are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives -- unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."

When Lisa Pond collapsed during a family vacation in Florida three years ago, her partner of 17 years was kept away from her hospital room.

Janice Langbehn begged and waited for hours to stand by Pond's bedside at Miami's Jackson Memorial Hospital, but it wasn't until her partner's sister arrived that she got any information. In the end, the person Pond was closest to was relegated to a waiting room as she died from an aneurysm.

"To hold Lisa's hand wasn't a gay right, it was a human right," Langbehn told CNN on Thursday.

Obama requested that the regulation make clear that any hospital receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding, which includes the vast majority of U.S. hospitals, must allow patients to decide who can visit them and prohibit discrimination based on a variety of characteristics, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

Unfortunately this is only a small step. The very same programs (Medicare and Medicaid) that are being used as the stick to goad hospitals into fairer treatment do not recognize gay partners for spousal benefits, regardless of whether or not States have same-sex marriage or civil unions for them. Such marriage laws are supposed to put gay couples on equal footing, in practice if not in name, but they aren't treated the same under federal laws and often not within the States themselves. I realize many people cringe at the use of civil rights rhetoric for racial equality for the gay rights movement, but I don't know how else to describe this situation as anything other than "separate but equal" failing all over again.

Beyond federal health care, disability, and retirement programs there are a litany of other State and federal policy areas that simply do not treat gay couples the same even if they have a civil union or same-sex marriage recognized by their State. One of the more striking problems in my opinion involve military policies that would treat such a thing as a "tell" and grounds for separation... not to mention that if "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was ended, federal law would still prevent their partners from being recognized as legitimate spouses which effects notification policy in the event of a loved ones injury or death, widow benefits, and other normal spousal benefits and courtesies.

This is positive move on the Administration's part, but in the grand scheme of things it is just a baby step in the right direction. There is so much work left to be done.

Fireball

2010-04-16T00:41:00.002-05:00

From CNN:

(CNN) -- Authorities in several Midwestern states were flooded Wednesday night with reports of a gigantic fireball lighting up the sky, the National Weather Service said.

The fireball was visible for about 15 minutes beginning about 10 p.m., said the National Weather Service in Sullivan, Wisconsin, just west of Milwaukee.

"The fireball was seen over the northern sky, moving from west to east," said the NWS in the Quad Cities area, which includes parts of Iowa and Illinois.

"Well before it reached the horizon, it broke up into smaller pieces and was lost from sight," the service said. "Several reports of a prolonged sonic boom were received from areas north of Highway 20, along with shaking of homes, trees and various other objects including wind chimes," it said.

It said the fireball was seen across parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. CNN affiliate WISN-TV said that people in Ohio also saw it.

On a related note, if you missed the NOVA special on telescopes and hunting the edge of space, it's worth checking out. Here's part one.

Tetris in Hell

2010-04-11T06:24:00.005-05:00

Found here. Enjoy (not really):

Inspired by an equally cruel xkcd cartoon named "Hell":

People are cruel and certainly unusual.

Political Label Test

2010-04-10T17:20:00.007-05:00

There's a popular political test on-line called the Political Compass Test, that many folks all around seem to enjoy for categorizing their views and the views of others. Where it sucks miserably is for federalists who don't hold different levels of government to the same roles or priority of concerns. Many of the questions just don't make a whole lot of sense in this regard. One can come up with a couple divergent results whether keeping in mind Federal concerns versus local/State ones:

Political Compass Results:

With Federal Government in Mind:
Economic Left/Right: 4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.82

With State/Local Government in Mind:
Economic Left/Right: -5.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.08

Not that doubling it up like this makes much sense. A 3-D graph with federalist questions in there may be helpful, but it might confuse the flat earth political philosophies of most folks. The test already suffers heavily from its dumbed down weighting of dumbed down questions and limited answers.

If anybody has found an on-line quiz that's less dumbed down and inherently biased, I'm all ears though.

Westboro Gets More Free Advertising

2010-04-07T14:10:00.004-05:00

American Atheists commented on this exchange between a Fox anchor and one of the Westboro Baptist minions (NSFW... perhaps not safe ever):

The anchor made a fatal mistake. Trying to go head to head with a fundy fully aware of the scripture that justifies their repugnant views. In this case Levitucus 19:17:

"Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt."

The anchor quoted the next line that seems to contradict their behavior, if not for the fact that they make it clear they're just regurgitating their god's outright disapproval and wrath for such things. The Westboro nutter knew the preceding line from memory justified their rebukes, indeed demands such rebukes to avoid sharing the guilt, which when the sentence is burning in hell for such guilt, one would be a bit crazy not to rebuke as much as possible if they really believe this crap.

But that's the issue isn't it? The Westboro fundies actually believe this stuff down to the letter. The hippy dippy love everybody moderates who clamor for the 10 Commandments be put in schools yet ignore the fact that it came with death penalties, or are otherwise oblivious why the masters of the Bible throughout the centuries couldn't figure out the modern interpretations (based on modern secular morals) weren't what it was really saying until many centuries after their persecutions and bloodbaths fully supported by the same book. Even the people we consider fundamentalist nutters generally don't believe the Bible to be inerrant or infallible... why else do they keep up with cherry picking to avoid all those horrible parts and qualifications about neighbors, etc. The Bible is repugnant, or just plane absurd... you won't see many people who claim it's all about Jesus doing everything Jesus commanded either. More cherry picking.

It seems what really upsets moderate Christians, including the fundamentalists who would have been heretics in the past with their moderation (regardless of how extreme it may seem to some of us today), isn't that the Westboro Baptists are misinterpreting their Holy Book, but that they're interpreting too much of it. Including the parts that are absolutely repugnant. That makes the foundation of Christianity, the Bible, look repugnant. The Westboro Baptists are repugnant because they don't ignore the repugnant parts.

The big question isn't whether the Westboro Baptists or the Bible is repugnant, that much is obvious. It's whether anyone should defend the Bible as inerrant or infallible once they've been made aware of the horrible or absurd things in it. If it's a choice between deciding to abide by modern secular based morality or bronze age morality from books that justified everything from genocide to death penalties for working weekends to messiahs demanding I sell all my stuff and saying he didn't come to change the old rules... well, I think I'll go with the "moral relativism" that most Christians make and decide to cherry pick from a variety of ideas on morality and ethics.

It's often said that religious folks disbelieve in thousands of other gods believed in throughout the ages, and atheists just disbelieve in one more. For many religious folks who disbelieve in large portions of their holy books via convoluted "interpretations" or straight-up ignoring them, I think it's fair to say that we're already on the same page, I just disbelieve in a little bit more. The irony is that while I'll be accused of "moral relativism" for my subjective moral choices, their "absolute morality" continues to be chosen by which interpretations, of any of various sects, of any of various "prophets," of any of various gods, that they choose to believe in or choose to continue to adhere to. They can even change their minds from one set of "absolute morality" for another that fits their views better... and somehow it isn't their own fallible subjective choices?

Who is truly the moral relativist there?

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