US POLITICS: "I figured clueless was better than argumentative."

nu thread, still just as righteous

old thread:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=40&threadid=81891

inaugural article, courtesy Phil D.

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/08/bob-inglis-tea-party-casualty

US Politics: Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things.

still can't load that article, but now they want me to buy the Economist!

yeah i wanna read that too but no go!

"503 Service Temporarily Unavailable"

I wonder in what way 503 refers to the Federal Reserve?

?! the mother jones article isn't loading?

maybe the site is slammed, i have it up

"Barack Obama is a socialist, communist Marxist"

lol. not original, but gotta love the triple descriptor

man I'm sure Bob Inglis is a reactionary dick & whatever but this almost made me cry with its otm-ness:

I refused to use the word [socialist] because I have this view that the Ninth Commandment must mean something. I remember one year Bill Clinton—the guy I was out to get [when serving on the House judiciary committee in the 1990s]—at the National Prayer Breakfast said something that was one of the most profound things I've ever heard from anybody at a gathering like that. He said, "The most violated commandment in Washington, DC"—everybody leaned in; do tell, Mr. President—"is, 'Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.'" I thought, "He's right. That is the most violated commandment in Washington." For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I'm conservative. We disagree...But I don't need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

Do conservatives see Barack Obama as more 'socialist' than e.g. FDR or LBJ?

they see him as more "black" but aren't allowed to say so

Or Nixon?

x-post

does ILE see the other thread as more socialist than others?

Republicans move to block US citizenship for children of illegal aliens
Senators plan to halt 'invasion by birth canal' by overturning constitutional guarantee for anyone born on US soil

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/03/republicans-block-citizenship-illegal-aliens

Kenya stakes its reinvention on referendum

The new constitution hems in Kenya’s imperial-style presidency, devolves more power to local government, paves the way for land reform and gives Kenyans a bill of rights. Donor nations, especially the United States, are so eager to see it pass that they have pumped millions of dollars into voter drives and civic education campaigns.
The United States Embassy in Nairobi has been sharply criticized by several Republican members of Congress for taking sides and accused of breaking federal rules. The Republicans say the new Kenyan constitution would make it easier for women to get an abortion (a claim that constitutional scholars dispute) and that the embassy, by giving grants to Kenyan groups that openly support the constitution, has violated federal provisions prohibiting American diplomats from lobbying for or against abortion.
Johnnie Carson, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said Tuesday that “a very small percentage” of the civic education grants had gone to groups advocating for a “yes” vote but that this was “an accident and error.”
“We support a process, not an outcome,” he said, though recent statements from American officials have left little mystery as to which side the United States is on. At the same time, several American Christian groups have been working closely with Kenyan allies to mobilize people to defeat the constitution.

Ugh, I can understand the concern about choosing sides, but mobilizing to defeat the referendum because of…abortion? Ugh

Ugh, sorry for weird formatting (iPhone), ugh

this is what happens when you let zombies run bureaucratic processes

yup, k-lo is not happy. well, k-lo doesn't have an original thought in her head, the catholic hierarchy doesn't like it.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/242352/constituting-culture-death-tomorrows-vote-kenya-kathryn-jean-lopez

every single answer to those questions is nauseating. like a master class in tendentiousness and bad faith

Q: Why should a busy American care about the Kenyan constitution?
A: Because the Obama administration cares so much about it.

you have to remember, KLo is a moron

how many politics threads do we have now

is this the current one? cuz I'm still pissed I couldn't read the other one on the plane cuz I was sitting next to a nice old lady

Q: There is a lot of confusion about abortion and this constitution. Does it legalize abortion or not?
A: Quite clearly, it does. The problem with the final draft of the constitution is that, while it has an explicit clause that protects the right to life from conception, it provides for exceptions in the event that the health of the mother is in danger or where permitted by any other written law. In every place where a broad exception for the health of the mother has been allowed, abortion on demand has resulted.

xp k-lo isn't giving the answers here! sadly there are other morons at work in the world.

xp
ha, yeah this is the one. goole and I fought a duel

In every place where a broad exception for the health of the mother has been allowed, abortion on demand has resulted.

hmmmmmmm wonder why THAT could be

Because Satan is confusing people into making horrible personal decisions!

I was actually kind of serious, though this may have been discussed on other threads. What is the general perception of people like FDR or LBJ amongst the kind of people who consider Obama a socialist?

Commies. They're all commies. Except for Nixon, who the commies hated.

FDR was considered a socialist by a considerable portion of the population. If you think FOX News is toxic, you should hear radio shows from the mid thirties. He was loathed.

Ned OTM

republicans anti-FDR but he rarely comes up, LBJ never comes up. american politics before carter doesn't get a lot of attention in our political dialogue.

you should hear radio shows from the mid thirties

Link please? I'd love to hear some oldschool mudslinging, if only to explore the idea that things might not really be all that different in the field of political fearmongering.

Actually, this is one of my favorite FDR clips:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIqe4aeublo&feature=player_embedded

Startlingly contemporary.

Glenn Beck, the few times I've seen him, cultivates an aura of historical evidencey-ness, so he most decidedly does go after people like FDR and LBJ. The last time I caught him he was spinning an elaborate conspiracy web linking Valerie Jarret to Woodrow Wilson (who is evil fyi). I imagine some of that sensibility trickles down and FDR is considered a fascist.

they were also socialist! but it's really really hard to tell if the current right-wing frame of mind admits to any kind of degrees or continuums or modes of socialism...

honestly a better way to think of it is that there is a core of good people or a good "way of life" ("the real america") that has been beset at all times by enemies through history. all of these enemies have of course been working in concert, because being against the RA is their purpose. the nazis, the communists, foreign empires, the UN, the third world, the muslims, it hardly matters...

many xps

I do loathe Wilson though.

Reagan specifically campaigned on ending The Great Society.

LBJ never comes up

don't think this is strictly true but could be a result of him being loathed by BOTH sides - on the right for civil rights/expanding the "welfare state", and on the left for Vietnam

xp
yeah, the scary thing about his anti-Wilson ranting was that much of it was on point, it was the rest of the chalkboard that was deranged.

hmm. I saw that months ago, so let me amend that to "some of it was on point."

I see. That was helpful, thanks.

(I was actually kind of under the impression that there was some positive consensus around FDR. Not entirely sure why now.)

he was a nazi who fought nazis. strange, i know

This terrible book got a lot of traction in 2008 before the election. She's tickled by the discovery that most of FDR's answers for ending the Depression failed! It's like she hasn't written a new book in fifty years.

xp
I think there used to be; ten years ago I think you'd be fringey to go after him.

not only a Nazi but he appeased Stalin!

amity shlaes is a nutcase

*written = read

Great critique.

i have also read somewhere that shlaes has merely an undergrad degree in english. i like to think i understand econ to some degree, but come on

her name looks like it lost several vowels and consonants.

Shlaes graduated from Yale University magna cum laude[1] with a bachelor’s degree in English in 1982.[2]

Shlaes writes a syndicated column for Bloomberg News.[3] She is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her many appearances on television and radio include commentary on public radio for Marketplace.

She wrote columns for the Financial Times for five years, until September, 2005, for which she won the International Policy Network's Bastiat Prize for Journalism in 2002.[4] Earlier, she worked at the Wall Street Journal, where she was a member of the editorial board. She has written for The New Yorker, The American Spectator, Commentary Magazine, Foreign Affairs, Forbes, National Review, and The New Republic, among others. Her obituary of Milton Friedman appeared in The New York Sun.[5]

She was awarded the 2007 Deadline Club award for Opinion writing,[6] and the Newswomen's Club of New York's Front Page Award for her Bloomberg columns.[7]

Miss Shlaes teaches an MBA course titled the Economics of the Great Depression at NYU/Stern School of Business.[8] She is the 2009 winner of the Hayek Prize awarded by the Manhattan Institute.

This is pretty famous:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9yoZHs6PsU

thanks for the FDR clips alfred

first one: 515 views, posted october 2009

Just curious - if a senator (or senators) wanted to sit on the other side of the aisle, could they do it? Why doesn't anyone ever try it? Wouldn't it be a nice symbolic bipartisan gesture?

I should run for senate…"vote z s, he'll literally sit on the other side of the aisle"

interesting, but this is not a great idea in practice imo

One Progressive's Nat'l Scheme To Burn Confederate Flags At Tea Party Rallies

AAAARGH I did post that for the amusing URL earlier and nobody bit.

ACLU intervening in the Awlaki case we were discussing earlier: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/03/awlaki

― elephant rob, Tuesday, August 3, 2010 12:57 PM (5 hours ago)

aclu are heroes. on point article from greenwald too

IMPORTANT

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/reliable-source/2010/08/bristol_levi_breakup.html?hpid=artslot

Someone lock Sullivan back in his Levi-proof soundbooth!

man FDR bringin the "I welcome their hatred"

fucking awesome

love how Levi's knocked up some other bimbo

worked so well the first time!

xpost love the excitement in FDR's voice; he really gets off on the hate.

burning confederate flags seems like a terrible idea

I mean as a political statement at a tea party rally. not in general.

I wonder if Levi's ever worn a condom in his life.

I wonder if Levi's ever been in a gay chatroom and talked to Sullivan in his life.

Maybe Trig is Sullivan's baby.

levi's life decisions might actually affect the future of america

Maybe Trig is Sullivan's baby.

Not unless there's a miracle.

Fuckin' Palins -- how does Sully work?

re: Levi & Palin's - all i can think about is the first 3 minutes of Idiocracy

dumbass clinton/bush advisor lady just on blitzer: "no it's okay, there's a whole system of review and checks & balances when the gov't decides someone is a threat to the country".

nevermind that there's no due process

clinton/bush advisor?

clinton's bush advisor?

xp haha whatever she was, idk she was like a national security person i think

Did Bill Clinton need a bush advisor? SRSLY NOW.

Rad for the ACLU. Hope they make it in time.

I cannot believe that article about Levi J expects me to buy "Rex Butler" as the name of an actual human being.

His MySpace page. Classy for a lawyer, I know: http://www.myspace.com/rexbquelaw

wow!

Love many, trust few. Always paddle your own canoe.

I also enjoyed:

Mood: satisfied ;)

Roffle.

damn, Ned, serious LOLs

that brought me lols when I needed lols, much appreciated

today's dose of who the fuck ARE these people??:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/08/co-gov-goper-maes-hickenloopers-bike-love-is-a-un-plot.php

i read about shit like the flouridation panic in the 50s and i can hardly believe it was real. i don't have any less trouble getting my head around this tbh

"Bike agenda spins cities toward U.N. control, Maes warns"

http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15673894

you want to say, very interesting, can i subscribe to your newsletter? but the guy probably does have a newsletter.

O_O

i spent some time reading about the "redemption movement" yesterday after reading that inglis article

just... holy shit

a lot of it is kind of standard 'bankers own the world' conspiracy but the idea that if you somehow file the right forms in the right order at the right time and youll become a "real boy" ("sovereign individual")... its amazing! its like casting a magic spell of bureaucracy

and the blending together of like, actual law, and shit like the wizard of oz

its like a pynchon novel

wow, it's like that 'sovereign citizen' militia shit that those drug dealers in baltimore were spouting in court all of a sudden

uh ok it's not "like" that, it is that. same thing, i realize

i am sort of baffled by a line of reasoning that holds that your body is owned by bankers... but that those bankers will let you be free if you manage to fill out the right paperwork

wowowowowowow, just skimmed the wiki article

makes me want to go to grad school

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2008/0805.carey.html

They hold that an inalienable right is an "in-a-lien-able" right, having some relation to liens.

This is awesome

awesome article goole

yeah that was crazy

i don't have a specific link to hand, but i'm also standing mouth agape at all this 14th amendment business. really??

The GOP as focus group.

will never go anywhere - a bunch of election-year grandstanding that the GOP is all-too-eager to engage in as they know it doesn't have a chance in hell of actually being legislation. this is the kind of "stand" elected GOP officials live to make.

Meantime, the man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnx-SqMYknI

Prop 8 overturned

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/08/04/news/news-us-gaymarriage.html?_r=1&hp

holy moly

well, it's not that surprising. will be more surprising if Scalia agrees

Somewhere Anthony Kennedy is smiling in anticipation of the opinion he will write in three years.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_sW65ilskOC8/SNKj3EkAvKI/AAAAAAAANUY/dZWHvN6baDA/s400/TonyScaliaLoganUtah.jpg

yeah, will be very curious to see which legal reasoning was employed here

hopefully nothing to do with the "14th" amendment

It begins:

Remaking Marriage
August 04, 2010 5:21 PM
By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Actual quote from the ruling today: “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

This is a court ruling, not an academic seminar at Berkeley.

This isn’t about equality. This is about recreating our fundamental institutions.

? Um, that's exactly the reasoning that should be employed. I don't understand

xp

This isn’t about equality.

keep tellin yrself that, tubby

For years people like K-Lo and Gallagher have repeated INSTITUTIONS INSTITUTIONS INSTITUTIONS as if they were an ideal form instead of an entity comprising people.

which way is it more likely kennedy will swing on same-sex marriage? with scalia & co.?

For years people like K-Lo and Gallagher have repeated INSTITUTIONS INSTITUTIONS INSTITUTIONS as if they were an ideal form instead of an entity comprising people.

well yeah

oh hey weird these ppl are also ~really religious~

which way is it more likely kennedy will swing on same-sex marriage?

you see what you did here

Things moving quickly:

2:23 PM: Chris Roberts reports that "it's an absolute scrum" at the City Clerk's office, where Vanessa Judipli and Maria Ydril have been issued a marriage license.

Roberts reports that Supervisor Bevan Dufty is on scene to perform the ceremony "before anything happens with the stay" (that is, the request made by supporters of Proposition 8 to prevent any same sex marriages from taking place until their appeal is heard).

I understand the enthusiasm but seems kinda stupid to obtain a wedding license under such legally contentious circumstances - like, in all likelihood you're just gonna be making things more difficult for yourself when that license gets rescinded, and then you have to go back to get another one, but oh wait whoops there's another court case/DOMA's been upheld, now you AREN'T married after all! etc.

Even in his Lawrence v Texas and Colorado dissents, Scalia never explicitly condemned homosexuals the way the Bowers v Hardwicke decision implicitly did (Byron White and Burger's majority opinions will make you cringe), so I've no idea how he might respond now that he's backed into a corner.

As for Thomas, he called the Texas law prohibiting sodomy a "dumb" one and had he been in the legislature he would have voted to repeal; but since the right to homosexual sodomy ain't written in the Constitution he voted nay.

Thomas is the one who doesn't think the Constitution guarantees a right to privacy, no...?

? Um, that's exactly the reasoning that should be employed. I don't understand

was just making a joke about the GOP's attitude towards its legitimacy, hence the scare quotes

I can't wait for this

somebody describe the trailer to me I can't stand to watch it

yeah i refuse to watch that

ya'll are missing out on Antz-style CGI caricatures, Reagan deification, and just a hint of Tea Party glorification.

two good things happened today (Prop 8 overruled, and, also in California, SB 782 cleared committee & will be sent to the assembly; this restores funding to domestic violence shelters, which lost iirc all their funding under the last budget), I wanna keep what glow I've got

You should contribute to the U.S. presidents thread, aero: it'll keep your buzz.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/us/04shield.html?scp=4&sq=charlie%20savage&st=cse

so how do we feel about this?

(you all can tell by now the time of day i finally get around to reading the paper)

it's an awesome bill, regardless of how one feels about wikileaks, and i hope it passes

i would not vote for the bill as i understand it. the original idea is pretty good - there should be, at a bare minimum, some judical recourse if a journalist is subpoenaed to reveal his sources - but my two main gripes are:

The information seeker would also have to exhaust all other means of obtaining the names before seeking a journalist’s testimony, though matters involving threats to national security would be exempted from some protections.

The idea, aides said, would be to add language bolstering a section defining who would be covered by the law as a journalist — an area that can be tricky in an era of blogging and proliferation of online-only news media outlets.

on another note i'm really glad savage is back from his little vacation - his awlaki/ACLU article today was good too

this law wouldn't restrict anyone tho -- it would just protect people who currently aren't protected. even if it's not as broad as you'd like, it's hard to not vote for it. it's much better than what we currently have.

also savage lol

tho if this is just a "incremental measures are great," versus, "i can only vote for bills that are perfect" disagreement, i'm not really interested in having it and i'll assume i totally understand your position upfront

well yeah except the bill was clarified to pretty willfully exclude protections for certain people in certain media, which i think is bullshit. i don't think it's a 'bad bill'; i don't support the reactionary narrowing of its scope.

u got beef with savage?

tho if this is just a "we write a decent bill, cross our fingers while it gets fucked with and diluted on both sides of the aisle, but vote for it anyway so we can claim a victory", i'm not really interested in having it and i'll assume i totally understand your position upfront

what savage are you talking about that just went on vacation?

charlie savage, the reporter who wrote the story i linked to. i haven't seen his byline in the last couple weeks. he's good ppl, i started this book of his recently and am enjoying it

oh lollll 'savage' was not referring to you, if that's what you thought

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/s/charlie_savage/index.html?offset=0&s=newest

Enjoy. He's written like a dozens pieces this month.

yeah dude i was being pretty literal when i said "little" vacation - i subsribe to nyt and have been noticing less of him over the last couple weeks.

ANYWAY THO

you guys are cute when you bicker

more like YOU are

we all are cute when we bicker

untrue

we all are cute when we bicker

This needs to be ILE's next board description.

“WikiLeaks should not be spared in any way from the fullest prosecution possible under the law,” Mr. Schumer said in a statement. “Our bill already includes safeguards when a leak impacts national security, and it would never grant protection to a Web site like this one, but we will take this extra step to remove even a scintilla of doubt.”

vs.

Greg Marmalard: But Delta's already on probation.
Dean Vernon Wormer: They are? Well, as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!

Where is the line drawn, how is it worded? Is there some kind of fee you pay in order to become an authorized real news organization or are you just not allowed if you aren't owned by one of the global media giants?

yeah the line seems to be, well, not even being drawn! they're teeing off on WL just because.

this all seems like dem-hawk grandstanding, considering assange pointedly doesn't call himself a journalist but an 'information activist' (do i have that right?), and there's nothing the US gov't can do against him, legally, anyway.

i'm sort of against special protections for journalists anyway, but i haven't really worked out my position fully

Ok, so no one here knows where the line is drawn because we haven't seen the language yet (and if someone finds the language please post it). But it's not like the question of, "what is a journalist?" is a brand new question that has never been asked before or discussed. I don't know that the Democrats drafting the bill will sift through the mountains of journalism ethics trying to ascertain the best way to circumscribe the field, but there are definitely discourses of journalism and from all the journalism i've been involved in, Assange falls outside those discourses.

He also falls outside the jurisdiction of US law, so, you know.

Maybe let's move the conversation to either WikiLeaks page or to Poly Phi page? Cause I'd like to have a discussion about what constitutes journalism and why I think Assange falls outside the field, but I'm thinking here might not be best.

Schumer and Feinstein are calling for prosecutions.

Feinstein is so worthless

its like okay I'm glad you're so into gun control, but you're pretty much terrible on every issue I care about

can we talk about lol http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/05/pentagon-demands-wikileaks-return-unseen-afghan-war-docs/

Pentagon doesn't fully understand digital information, do they? "Oh, here's a flashdrive with all the info. i promise, really, there are no copies. really."

maybe the Pentagon thinks Assange will mail the documents in a sealed envelope to himself.

Maybe let's move the conversation to either WikiLeaks page

Good idea, throw in defining "free press" as well.

Kagan confirmed 63-37.

5 Republicans voted for her, 1 Democrat against.

Nelson is such a tool.

i'm giggling in anticipation of which quote to try to put in here, for this

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008050030

xp jesus fuck nelson, i doubt even nebraska is as horrible as you seem to believe it is...

ha, just saw that goole. I have a feeling our google readers overlap...

yeah probably!

Breitbart's Latest

— By Kevin Drum
| Thu Aug. 5, 2010 11:36 AM PDT

Meet Dr. Kevin Pezzi, the latest addition to Andrew Breitbart's stable of internet stars. Seriously. Click the link. You want to meet this guy. You can thank me later.

The usual:

Five Republicans Yes votes: Collins (Maine), Snowe (Maine), Gregg (N.H), Lugar (Ind.), Graham (S.C.).

No Scott Brown this time.

kinda love that Scott Brown only pisses off the Republican base when his vote matters, but he's willing to vote against if the vote is gonna go through regardless

omg @ breitbart dude.

kinda love that Scott Brown only pisses off the Republican base when his vote matters, but he's willing to vote against if the vote is gonna go through regardless

yeah it's kind of blatant

Ol' Fred kinda looks like what I expect most of the out-of-wing looks like constantly these days.

http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/imgad?id=CLLcq5T0srWdfhCsAhjvATIIaYCCe6QV6yg

Can we create some alternate slogans via Photoshop plz?

Out-of-wing, there's an idea. Out-of-it wing I meant.

"I Need a Nap -- Ask Me to Participate in Another Presidential Candidate Debate!"

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/pezzi2.jpg

"sup, I cured cancer; wanna see my gigantic penis?"

He looks like that Peter Pan guy.

Sandy Duncan?

"sup, I cured cancer; wanna see my gigantic penis?"

you would not believe how well this one works at bars

http://www.pixyland.org/Images/RandyPan_220w.jpg

Oh he went to MSU! That explains everything.

http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/images/item/pezzi2.jpg

"I said I cured cancer, not rosacea. Wanna see my gigantic penis?"

Tutti quanti, Pezzi de merda

Nicole, just friend to friend, may I ask, what the fuck

The Peter Pan picture or the MSU insult? Or both

the picture that has destroyed my innocence

aerosmith are you unaware of the randy constan phenomenon?!?!?

don't go to the clusterfuck thread then, there is an animated GIF there that will haunt you until the Rapture and then follow you into heaven

^^^ REAL TALK

aerosmith are you unaware of the randy constan phenomenon?!?!?

yes and I will remain unaware

Pezzi's photoshopped myspace harem = deep deep laughs but I think this Pezzi quote is the one that goes to the heart of the man

What might have stopped the Japs from behaving like savages? Do you think they'd wake up one day and suddenly realize that their prior actions were an unconscionable moral abomination that revealed a deep character flaw in their culture? I doubt it. Had the Japs won WW2, you -- being a hot young female -- wouldn't have had the luxury of spending your day reading my web site and then writing to me to nitpick about whether it is politically correct to use the word "Chink" to bash Chinese people who do evil things and evidently don't give a shit about it. Instead, you probably would have been raped a dozen times or more by Japs whose culture taught them that they are so superior to others that non-Japanese people are less valuable than dogs. Don't believe me? Do some research, learn more history, and listen to the words of people who witnessed and experienced the many Japanese brutalities that gave us a transparent view into their souls. Yes, the Japanese people have changed for the better in the interim, but only because the United States forced them to change. Go ahead and denounce American rectitude as people around the world love to do in finding fault with "the Great Satan," the United States, but our virtue is a light-year ahead of anything you could get from others who inexplicably have no conception of their own shortcomings. Get a mirror, for heaven's sake!

aerosmith are you unaware of the randy constan phenomenon?!?!?

Isn't that one of the US Bar Bands of the 70s?

aero no shit you are in for a world class treat. pixyland is a jewel of the internet.

^^^^ srsly

start here

was that meant to be a link to Hey Jude?

DAMMIT

lol
I thought maybe you had to listen to all 6 minutes before you could really appreciate the randy constan phenomenon

RIP elephant rob

oh, did i fuck something up? i am confussed

don't go to the clusterfuck thread then, there is an animated GIF there that will haunt you until the Rapture and then follow you into heaven

oh my poor eyes/mind/soul

DAMMIT

― people are for loving (HI DERE), Thursday, August 5, 2010 9:27 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol better luck next time MISTER BEATLES

ah, I did fuck it up. sorry HI DERE!

themoreyouknow.jpg

So I stopped at the library tonight to pick up a book I had reserved. This is in Cleveland Heights, one of the most reliably Democratic/liberal neighborhoods in Cuyahoga County. There's a courtesy phone there, where people can call someone to pick them up, etc. The library asks people to limit use to five minutes.

While I was there, I watched some schlubby guy -- he looked like and talked like one of Bill Swerski's Superfans from SNL -- call three or four different people and say, "It looks like it's official, we got another feminazi bull dyke on the Court." I literally turned around and stared at him in shock.

Sometimes I just hate this country.

hope you called in the black helicopters on his ass

I'll alert the Elders of Zion just to be safe

If I'd have thought faster, I'd have sashayed over to him, slapped him with one of my bike gloves, and said, "Well, I NEVER!" and pranced off.

Charles Nelson Reilly would've been proud

He has "information about a new cure" for cancer, which he "stumbled upon while reading an editorial and article in one of the many journals I read.

one of the many journals I read

A friend on Facebook re Dr. Pezzi:

AFAICT Breitbart responded to mediamatters' post in less than two hours by completely scrubbing Pezzi from his website. The links go nowhere, ALL of the google results for pezzi+site:biggovernment.com go 404, he's not in the contributor list ...

Confirmed:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008050053

Linking to Breitbart's site where this note now appears:

Earlier this week, we read an on-line column which provided one of the most thorough and well-researched examinations of the many controversies surrounding former USDA employee Shirley Sherrod. We asked the author of the column for permission to reprint his article. Since publishing the articles, we have been made aware of other writings from this author which do not reflect the principles and values of this site. Because of this, we have removed the articles from Big Government. While we stand by the information contained in the articles we published, we do not wish to see the underlying issue confused or diminished by other work the author has done. We regret the error.

The commenters there are slightly vexed.

Breitbart has absolutely no concept of the definition, or even the existence, of the term "due diligence," does he? I mean, he just leaps right into action, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. From that thing where he flipped off the Invisible Children protestors to ACORN to Sherrod to this, there's no filter between I WANT and DO IT DO IT DO IT.

Pezzi's personal web page really is fugly:

http://www.erbook.net/kevinpez.htm

Plus he's so obsessed, for whatever reason, with smearing this woman, that he's going to just keep digging deeper and deeper until he finds himself completely unable to defend against her forthcoming defamation suit. Loved this take on the whole thing by Digby.

Meanwhile The Corner is miffed that Al Franken was making faces during a Mitch McConnell speech:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) scolded Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on the Senate floor Thursday for allegedly mocking him while he delivered a solemn speech on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

The dust-up came seconds after McConnell delivered a speech on Kagan’s nomination shortly before the Senate voted to confirm her to the high court.

Franken, who was presiding over the chamber from the dais, gesticulated and made faces while McConnell explained his opposition to Kagan, according to witnesses.

The television cameras broadcasting the speech on C-SPAN remained fixed on McConnell, missing Franken’s antics from the Senate president’s chair.

McConnell grew increasingly angry as Franken made fun of him before a crowded public gallery and Senate aides lining the chamber walls. Senate aides said they were shocked that Franken would flout the decorum of the chamber during such a solemn occasion.

After McConnell finished his remarks, he walked up to the dais and rebuked him.

“This is not 'Saturday Night Live,' Al,” McConnell said, making reference to Franken’s career as a writer and actor on NBC’s long-running comedy show, according to a witness who overheard the exchange.

Oh man, this Pezzi dude is solid gold.

http://www.erlove.com/

Emergency Room Cases Pertaining to Love or Lust

Before I became an ER doctor, I assumed that emergency rooms treated only genuine emergencies such as heart attacks, strokes, and assorted injuries. That assumption proved to be very naive. In reality, patients go to emergency rooms for just about every imaginable reason, including many that deal with sex, love, and lust. Furthermore, ER doctors, nurses, and patients sometimes become romantically involved with one another, oftentimes in ways that are far more salacious than the romantic entanglements depicted on television medical shows constrained by censorship.

This site presents cases involving everything from puppy love to the real thing. In that hormonally-fueled gamut are some expected things, such as flirting and affairs, but also others that you've probably never heard about, nor could even imagine. There is something about the intensity of emergency rooms that tends to foster passion. After reading these stories, I think you'll agree.
Love & Lust in the ER

You can read the ER stories on this site, or download Love & Lust in the ER, which includes the same cases in an Adobe Acrobat (.pdf Acrobat icon) format. Since the book is free, you can send a copy of it to your friends and family.

Want to star in an ER film?

I am producing an indie film based on some of the stories in this book and my other ER books *. If you wish to volunteer as an actor or crew member, please contact me.

xpost -- aw, Ned beat me to it

In fairness Mitch McConell looks like this:

http://nicedeb.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/mcconnell_cnn_small.jpg

I mean, honestly, could YOU resist?

Pezziness:

Personalized Candy Bar: What woman wouldn't be impressed by receiving a candy bar molded with her name on it, wrapped in a custom wrapper?

http://www.er-doctor.com/images/folic_acid.jpg

Riches to be had here:

http://www.podcastdoc.com/

guys stop paying attention to Breitbart, you're only encouraging him

Imagine if you could sit down with a smart doctor and listen for hours as he revealed information you'd love to know. Wouldn't that be great?

I'll stop after this but:

Audio excerpts from True Emergency Room Stories by Kevin Pezzi, MD

Small talk with patients (49 seconds, 239 KB)

A commercial you'll never see! (38 seconds, 186 KB)

A gorgeous stewardess and the VIP syndrome (4 min 32 sec, 1.29 MB)
Links for this story: 1) Donna and the pitfall of being pulchritudinous, 2) The text for this story, including additional details and a more extensive discussion of the subject of caring for patients who are celebrities or unusually attractive.

Here to deliver my baby (1 min 4 sec, 317 KB)

Strange Priorities (1 min 20 sec, 393 KB)

DIY Surgery (1 min 26 sec, 421 KB)

I assume the last one does not cover how to get your head out of your ass.

BOOM

guys stop paying attention to Breitbart, you're only encouraging him

― Party Car! (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, 5 August 2010 23:36 (Yesterday)

Pretty sure Breitbart is gonna be just straight up embarrassed about this one.

this man is my hero, this dr pezzi

Seeing others wonder about him a few months back is enlightening:

http://www.google.com/m/url?channel=iss&defaultloc=San+Nicolas+Dr,+Newport+Beach,+CA+92660&ei=zlJbTPirDqSQrAOLycMK&gl=us&hl=en&q=http://more.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t%3D709967&safe=images&source=mobilesearchapp&ved=0CBoQFjAFOBQ&usg=AFQjCNGN41AZEYhK0dtVVOunUl0OsFdVPQ

Dr. Pezzi has over 850 inventions to date, and is currently developing a device that will make you wonder if you've been teleported a century into the future.

That's all it does though.

I give Wayne State by the end of business tomorrow to claim this guy never went to their med school.

btw, it's a sad development that we've gone from near unanimous votes for Scalia and Ginsburg to 63 votes for someone like Kagan.

That's what happens when you don't put Robert Bork on the court.

pezzi:

"He has beaten Bill Gates, an acknowledged math and computer genius who is Chairman of Microsoft, Inc. and the richest man in the world, on a test of mathematical ability and logic."

is probably a reference to this (which is a bogus story): http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/08/tennessee-primary-results.html

With most of the results in for today's Tennessee primary, Bill Haslam has easily won the GOP gubernatorial nomination, winning (at this point) 48% of the vote, with Zach Wamp running second at 29% and Ron Ramsey third at 22%. Internet hero Basil Marceaux is running a little under one-half of one percent, with 3446 votes.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Al Franken might be the only guy in the Senate worth saving at this point.

poor basil

he took on powerful interests, there was no way theyd allow him to win

The important thing is he got his ideas out there.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) scolded Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) on the Senate floor Thursday for allegedly mocking him while he delivered a solemn speech on Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.

Will a day come when the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities and laugh at them—and by laughing at them destroy them? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestionably one really effective weapon—laughter. Power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution—these can lift at a colossal humbug—push it a little—weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.

Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.

-Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger

was that meant to be a link to Hey Jude?

― elephant rob, Thursday, 5 August 2010 22:27 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

moreover, does this count for whiney's phd survey?

Ugh, McConnell should apologize to the worst for giving such a boring, insincere speech.

http://c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/08/03/HP/A/36465/Senate+Floor+Debate+on+Supreme+Court+Nominee+Elena+Kagan+Part+Seven.aspx

worstworld

could start using 'the worst' as a collective term for the senate

senatwurst

pols kielbasesless

The head of Target is sad that are you sad and promises to not be so mean in the future, sorta maybe.

Ugh, I hate "I'm sorry if you were offended" apologies.

Although I have probably used it a couple of times here when I wasn't really sorry.

As someone noted on Balloon Juice, he didn't even apologize to the public, just to the employees.

"We're so offended that we will continue not-shopping with you until MN Forward are asked to return the donation. SIMPLE."

One last Pezzi note -- the overall design of his webpage suddenly changed. Not the CONTENT but anyway...

lol I misread his book title as Love and Lust in the EAR

"You're doing it wrong."

"But I'm a doctor!"

it seems like a frivolous thing, but this "Dr Nick" Pezzi affair is a window into a crucial difference between the left and right approach to media. or even approach to facts, really.

breitbart has been going on and on about Journolist nearly constantly. there's a clip of him at some tea party event braying on about how "the biggest story in the WORLD right now" is the journolist conspiracy and collusion, elites ignoring it, you know the drill. he mentions spencer ackerman by name every time. ackerman, at one point during the campaign, emailed that "we" should just accuse karl rove of being a racist instead of talking about rev. wright. that's pretty dumb on the merits, if you ask me, but it's become this totemic statment for breitbart. every time he's on TV, ackerman is proof of... everything and anything

so, why shouldn't this Pezzi fucko be the same way? every time someone's talking to breitbart, or about him, or about conservative media, why shouldn't the question be "what do you have to say about this fake doctor?" "does breitbart have a credibility problem?" etc. we could be hearing about the good doctor for months, the way we're still hearing about, fuck, bill ayers.

but it's obvious why not. that's not how the left rolls. there's no cadre of media figures to repeat the line over and over again. it would seem like a waste of time -- even though manic repetition of non-stories makes them stories -- it works. that level of psychosis and repetition and immunity to embarrassment is just not possible for the institutional liberal establishment, is it? who could you imagine banging that drum? can't think of anyone. i'm not entirely sure why -- i'm hesitant to go to pop-psych stuff about why people go to one politics or another. but christ i'm having a lot of trouble drawing a bright line between conservatism and a personality disorder these days.

(i haven't had much sleep, this doesn't look all that novel now that i write it all out)

oh and k-lo can cry in her damn pillow, the kenyan constitution was ratified

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/world/africa/06kenya.html?_r=2&hpw

There's probably a Limbaugh thread where I should post this, but it's also a general political question. I was listening to him out of Buffalo yesterday; I'm in Toronto. He was going on about how (I'm paraphrasing) the daily assault on his freedoms and liberties that he's experienced the last couple of years is the worst thing he's ever lived through. Serious question (again, from the remove of Canada): exactly what is it that Limbaugh can't do today that he was able to do three or four years ago? I'd ask that of any American, but especially someone exceedingly rich. If you can point to anything, please tell. I mean, are there really changes I'm just not aware of?

None at all.

I guess what I'm asking is, is this just a tax thing--i.e., he doesn't have the freedom to pay only x-amount on his income, he now has to pay y-amount--or is it something like he doesn't have the freedom not to purchase the health care he'd be purchasing anyway? Or is there really something specific that's been taken away from him?

The only thing that's been taken away from these scumbags is the cozy illusion that as white men who have done some amount of what was societally expected from them, their current financial/social/class superiority and promise of future increases are unassailable.

No, nothing at all. He is, how you say, stirring shit up. xp

His oxycontin and Viagra were taken away.

yeah you'll drive yourself crazy trying to find the fact-to-assertion linkage in anything these people say. it's about giving shape to a feeling, it just has to feel true.

also his access to the political leaders of the country. Laurel is otm.

Thanks--I took it for granted that he was just making stuff up (I obsessively listened to Hannity during the '08 campaign, so I know the game), but I also wondered if I missing something.

It still blows my mind that Limbaugh is played on Armed Forces Radio. A daily dose of vomitous slandering of their commander in chief, and these guys get it piped straight into the fucking barracks.

well, i can't see a case for walling off the enlisted from media critical of their political leadership. but i get you.

yeah,Rush's racism and xenophobia is a much better reason to take him off AFR than slandering the c-i-c.

Yeah, I was wondering something similar about this quote from Glenn Beck (from a couple years ago): You know the guy who designed the Canadian healthcare system now admits that it's in a crisis? The guy who designed the Canadian healthcare system says it's in a crisis and he's now advocating private control of much of the system and we're going towards that? What the heck is wrong with us? He said, "We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it."

Who could he conceivably be quoting?? Tommy Douglas has been dead since 1986, Lester Pearson since 1972, and presumably anyone who was involved with the advent of universal health care in Saskatchewan in 1946 is either dead or extremely old.

It's Claude Castonguay, btw

OK. He's a long way from being "the guy who designed the Canadian health care system" but he is at least a real person.

This must be an old restaurant, I thought, when I saw just one urinal in it that looked like a trough. From its length and absence of dividers, it was obviously intended to be used by multiple men simultaneously. Thankfully, no one else was in the room. This event occurred before I discovered how to trigger what amounts to a “second puberty” of penile growth—which I describe in The Science of Sex and Advanced Enlargement. So, at that time, I was especially fond of privacy.

http://www.erlove.com/er_stories/catfight.php

wat

Couple the unwarranted popularity of postcoital Coke douching with our second-rate system of public education, and what do you get? A question like this: “I want to use Coke as a contraceptive, but I don't know how much to drink. Can you tell me?”

the unwarranted popularity of postcoital Coke douching

yikes

That's the new Mars Volta album, yes?

You mean Roger Waters solo album, Ned.

it sounds like the title to a Severed Heads b-side

i am dying over here. this Pezzi guy just gets better and better.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/06/terrence.lakin.birther.bio/index.html?hpt=T1

lol/sad

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/06/birther.court.martial/index.html?hpt=T1

hoo boy

I would really like to beat up a birther sometime

'cause I really fuckin hate these dumbasses you know? man

not that I could probably beat up army birther, army dudes are good at fighting, but if anybody knows any birthers right about my size & combat experience who wanna scrap, tell em to meet me down at the harris teeter parking lot and I will kick their ass

that story right there tho is like exhibit a for how some strains of political thought are, as we've suggested before, veering wildly into the pathological

like, this guy is willing to throw away his career (and pension!!!!) as a respected officer and physician because of a v tenuous conspiracy theory. i mean i will eat a fucking hat if he is 'martyred' and then exonerated by history---this isn't a person who has been ground under the heel of an illegitimate regime, he's a dude that is ~suspicious~ of something.

the problem is that EVERYTHING about his behavior is pathological (imo), but i'm also hesitant to take that up as an argument against the right because its a bit of a nuclear option i'd really prefer not to release, you know?

I hate to say it, but 'pathology' is culturally situated. It definitely seems pathological to me, but lots of stuff in the world seem pathological to me. The vast majority of human beings seem pathological. At some point you've gotta be like: This craziness is actually normative.

oh well yeah. i throw pathology around a lot because, you know, i like talking shop.

still tho you'd think that in the army they'd have hauled this guy up before a psychiatrist and been like "dude are you for real? lemme ask you some stuff"

like the bike initiative = UN puppetry? that is straight up delusional, on some "we never landed on the moon" type shit. and yet the guy is winning the support of other, presumably non-crazy, people.

obv both ends of the spectrum are gonna have their share of crazies buying into ridiculous "theories" (cf morbs' google reader j/k bro <3 u long time), but the way these guys are getting traction and acceptance from the right is either indicative of widespread sympathy, or cynical political gamesmanship where hey a vote is a vote

and yet the guy is winning the support of other, presumably non-crazy, people.

I think I might have spotted the flaw in your thinking.

Like, every time I leave my own house I assume that about 15% - 20% of the people around me are just absolutely screaming bonkers.

ha, figured someone would---all i mean is that for every granuloma of ppl that say "well you know i think i read somewhere that he might not have been born in the us, but i don't know..." there is a caseating whacko like the honorable lt col at its center.

it's a spectrum disorder :P

as far as military dudes go, this guy seems allright

Newt Gingrich searches in vain for "Turn Off Comments" button . . .

Newt Gingrich would like you to know, via the Newt Gingrich Twitter feed, that you can find his thoughts on the Proposition 8 ruling at Newt.org. Here they are:

Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they've affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.

"An outrageous disrespect" is a little grammatically shaky for a scholar and published author. Still, unlike Sarah Palin's sanitized Facebook feed, Newt.org doesn't seem to mind a little dissent. Or a lot of it. Some of the comments that have been up on Gingrich's site since last night:

• Newt you cheated on your first wife then dumped her when she was in the hospital with cancer. Later you cheated on your second wife with a 27 year old congressional aide. Maybe you should pipe down about defending marriage.
• No, I want to hear more from the twice-divorced man about how marriage has to be reserved for one man and one woman. I wonder if the two former Mrs. Gingriches would testify as to Newt's reverence for marriage.
• Do we have a right to judge Mr. Gingrich? People make mistakes, people change and regret their former mistakes. How do we really know him and the reasons that caused his divorces. It is it our duty to judge him? I happen to think that people change or that we have never learned the truth to his changes. Quite frankly I feel it not our place to be in judgment of him.
• Mr. Gingrich will become immune to allegations of hypocrisy on the issue of marriage when he stops passing judgment on the right of others to marry.
• No one with Mr. Gingrich's sorry record of serial adultery and failed marriages has any business dictating who may marry and under what conditions they may do so... Due to his personal history, silence is the only honorable option left to Mr Gingrich.
• I respect you tremendously, Newt, and if you run, I'll vote for you. But I wholeheartedly disagree with you on this. I hope you and my fellow conservatives change their minds about this. The churches can, should, and need to do what they deem fit, but the state does not have that freedom. It needs to apply the law equally to everyone.
• Newt, I am a libertarian. In fact, a CONSERVATIVE libertarian. However, as a CHRISTIAN, I can't condone the inequality that Proposition 8 created. If we want to make marriage a religious institution, then NO ONE should be allowed to be married and have special rights as such through the government. Let churches marry and everyone in the country has civil unions.

Newt Gingrich is unafraid to face his critics. That or he has a lazy webmaster. Either way, right now, the top-rated comment on Ginrgich's Prop 8 post—liked by 49 Newt.org readers—is "Which one of your multiple marriages was the most sacred to you?" That, Sarah Palin, is some real online community-building.

awesome!

ugh, US Politics.

drunken ramble go

You've got Michael Steele boasting that "Nancy Pelosi will be in the back of the bus", but at the same time delivering the horrible truth: "We have 88 days. In less than two years, we have gone from a demoralized super-minority party to a legion of effective shock troops who are on the offense and making Democrats sweat."

Absurdly, the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States effectively killed an already floundering energy/climate bill due to Big Energy's hold on Washington and disinformation campaign across the United States. The window where meaningful action on climate could have actually PREVENTED catastrophe passed years ago. The energy bill collapsed because Republicans, in lockstep, opposed a cap and trade plan that is based on the Acid Rain/SO2/NOx legislation from the Bush I era, a MARKET-BASED plan rather than relying on regulation, with shitloads of giveaways to industry. While trying to push for passage of the bill, co-sponsor John Kerry uttered the inspirational line "We believe we have compromised significantly and we're prepared to compromise further." FUCK MAN, c'mon. EPA regulation will help, to a degree (i work there), but will almost certainly only affect NEW coal plants (and very few coal plants are even being built these days, thank catbeast) and is subject to congressional revision under whatever environmental neanderthal that might become president.

Obama+Democrats are going to take the hit for the economy in the elections, but for all the wrong reasons. The real reason is that the stimulus bill should have been much larger, something that Krugman et al were repeating ad nauseum at the time. But instead, the Fox/rural angle is that Obama caused the recession (what) and that the stimulus that was passed worsened the situation (rather than barely adequately mitigating it). In the meantime, Republicans will insist that those making above $250K should not be taxed at rates similar to the entire 20th century.

The Senate is irredeemably broken.

And, I hate to play into the DC elite dude thing, but is it just me or is at least half of this country totally bigoted? I feel like if you'd do a big BIGOT survey, at least 50% would give an unconscionable answer regarding gay rights and/or racism. Half the country believes that this planet is 8000 years old, that evolution is a false "theory". The assault on the 14th amendment is actually a political winner in many areas...and so is the (former) AZ law...

ugh, so drunk, plz ignore, but underlying it all is the reliance on an economic system that requires growth. A hiccup in the upward trend causes misery across the globe. The growth is tied to increased consumption, and we're on a finite planet that is at or near peak oil production (and we haven't invested adequately within an order of magnitude in clean energy substitutes) with collapsing soil fertility and water scarcity. Who is driving this car? Few are even willing to talk about any of these issues. Try to think of the last time you heard any American politician discuss soil fertility. Or heard about it in the media. Does even 1% of our population have any clue that the foundation of FOOD is has been steadily deteriorating across the world? ditto water?

Sorry for turning this into a resource/environmental screed, but when you get down to it, that's the shit that's unavoidable in our current system. 40% of phytoplankton, one of the fundamental building blocks of the marine food chain,have been eradicated from the oceans due to climate change, and no one gives a shit. Yeah, maybe you saw it in the huffington post, but really, no one fucking cares.

And the party that's about to take power? Boehner. McConnell. Cantor. Ryan. Palin. Gingrich. Limbaugh. Beck. Hannity.

http://i36.tinypic.com/24275a0.jpg

argh, so many mistakes in there, grammatical and otherwise, should have posted this in Posts you had second thought about and decided not to post - put them here

i for one applaud yr righteous anger, howsoever plotzed you may be

yes ZS. We are an irredeemable country of dolts and/or hatemongers, which is what I realized before giving up about 25 years ago.

Welcome to the Let Me Die Before Road Warrior Time club.

Trying to argue with the batshit Republican wing - let alone the faux Libertarian, Devil's advocate, intellectually corrupt wing that includes my dad, my uncle, etc. - is a bit like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqKFadyJxwg

That George Packer article about the Senate is a fantastic piece of reporting.

Fantastic=soul deadening. Abandon all hope, ye who enter.

We are an irredeemable country planet of dolts and/or hatemongers, which is what I realized before giving up about 25 years ago.

Do individuals, groups, or the whole world population kindle your misanthropy the most?

I get all of this from Huffington Post, not from first-hand listening, but I assume it's accurate: yesterday, Limbaugh says that Michelle's vacation amounts to reparations for "our slave past," and the day before, Beck compares America in 2010 to The Planet of the Apes, where "nothing makes sense."

Do these guys accidentally let this stuff slip through, or have they carefully worked out some elaborate strategy whereby such comments yield some political advantage eight reactions and counter-reactions down the road?

Haven't been following US politics for the last twenty years?

Almost 40. But they're stepping up their game.

Just to expand a bit before I turn in. I'm not naive; I understand the many precedents. But this feels qualitatively different to me, especially Beck's comment. This isn't an unguarded Macaca moment. It's not Willie Horton or Jesse Helms's "Hands," both of which were ads and operated on the level of insidious imagery. It's not some anonymous cretin at a Tea Party rally waving a toy lawn jockey. It's a guy on a major television network, commanding a huge audience, talking about a black president, and linking his stewardship to The Planet of the Apes. (Leaving himself, I suppose, just enough wiggle room with the "nothing makes sense" line.) To me, that's crossing a new line, but you're probably right, a lot of people will just yawn and it'll be a one-day story. I guess I've answered my own question--I have to put it down to a carefully worked out strategy--but I haven't yet figured out the strategy.

The strategy: say anything and everything short of something that can be roundly and easily agreed upon as being racist, then deny that any racism is at play and by so doing make subsequent claims of racism appear to be just a chip on the shoulder of the offended party. It's been working wonderfully so far.

^Absolutely this. Also, in childish rhetoric terms, calling Certain Black People 'racist' follows the old 'say it about them first so nobody engages with real issues of inequality' strategy.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/08/06/glenn_beck_planet_of_the_apes/index.html

Full monologue is just disgusting.

Baltimore -- Democratic mayoral controlled since 1967, including the mayor named Sheila Dixon. She was great. She was only charged with 12 counts of perjury, theft, misappropriation and misconduct -- but only 12. The current city council -- all Democrats.

Newark, Democrat since 1928. Now, that's quite a streak, Newark. I knew I like you for a reason.

Current mayor, Corey Booker, prides himself on progressive programs. He's working like this with the Center for American Progress on green jobs, because that's what I think of when I think of Newark, New Jersey. Four years in office and Newark still ranks the 10th most poverty-stricken city in America.

You got it going on. Word to your mommy.

...no racial tension at all here

I don't know I just read the whole Beck rant and it's far, far more anti-union/anti-progressive than anything else. The world is falling to pieces, cities are crumbling, we are in some kind of apocalypse, progressives are destroying the constitution, etc. All of this is pretty much same-old Beck, none of this is surprising or shocking. He mentions POTA at the very beginning but doesn't reference it at all afterwards. If it's meant to be a sly nod to a white supremacy website then that's something else but when taken in context of the entire speech I don't see much racially insensitive going on in the full rant.

There's this whole liberal cottage industry of picking apart every Glenn Beck speech for damning offenses. The guy on that website also makes the case that the movie itself is racist, which frankly seems a bit of a stretch.

The Limbaugh comment is far, far more disturbing and solely exists to offend.

glenn beck says something dumb
world keeps turning

Cory Booker's faults have much more to do with the pecularities of New Jersey politics than they do with either being a Democrat or his color. for that reason alone, i don't care what Glenn Beck has to say about the guy.

Managed to gather my thoughts enough (dishwashing is good for that) to distill this Beck/Rush shit into a pithy FB message aimed at my conservative relatives.

There's a subtle alchemy at work that turns "thanks to the First Amendment, it's okay for me to say racist things" into "thanks to the First Amendment, it's okay for me to be a racist."

I know I'm years late to the party, but it seems like that could be a good way to frame the argument against the right, and I haven't seen it put exactly that way.

why can't beck be struck blind AND mute? there is no god.

I like that--maybe the drift from "to say" to "to be" is the elusive line I'm looking for. I watched most of two out of the three roundtables this morning, and not a word about Beck's comment. (To me, much more of a "he actually said that?" grenade than Limbaugh's comment, which strikes me as a variation on standard reverse-racism tripe.)

no one bringing up beck/palin/limbaugh whatever on in political discussions seems like paradise to me, actually

glenn beck says something dumb
world keeps turning

not so fast...only two weeks ago...

http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-07-21/news/21991372_1_chp-officers-body-armor-san-francisco

If someone's a nut they are a nut. And Glenn Beck has never said "you should go kill the ACLU". Might as well blame ICP/Marilyn Manson for Columbine.

bullshit. Beck has clearly been shown to harp on and on about Tides foundation, no one else is weaving them into a conspiracy web of sinister intent. No doubt that this guy was a nut but to say beck had about the same amount of influence as a record in this guy's imagination strikes me as a bit disingenuous.

So Beck has magical powers with the sound of his voice that makes people do things they wouldn't otherwise do? Byron Williams was just a normal joe until he heard Glenn Beck?

All im saying is i find people that agree with Glenn Beck far more dangerous than the man himself. He's a TV clown, a professional troll.

yeah that's exactly what I said (xpost)

There are thousands of disaffected, discouraged, disenfranchised, undereducated and ground-down ciphers out there who are desperate to be told where to go and what to do. And then there's Glenn "there's a revolution a-comin'" Beck making subtle hints about where to go and what to do. He's not going to pick up the gun, but yeah, he's one of the reasons shots get fired.

*shrugs* what are you gonna do

word to your mommy

so, complete outsider question here, in response to my scummy right-wing American Facebook friends being all blah blah blah - did Elena Kagan do anything wrong besides 1. be left-leaning and 2. be female?

well she's a careerist, but no, she's very innocuous

she's also a flautist and a perambulist

i think a right-winger and a left-winger would be say there's something wrong about kagan, they'd probably just differ about what. asking about what your friends on fb think on ilx is not going to be spectacularly productive. but i'm sure some people here would be happy to explain why they're dissatisfied with her.

"Murfreesboro has a very small Muslum Comunity and does not need a 52,000 square feet Mosque. The Muslums are trying to do to Murfreesboro what they did in Europe. I am a BORN BRED AND RAISED NEW YORKER and what the RADICAL MUSLUMS DID TO MY HOMETOWN WAS PURE EVIL. I had a very CLOSE FRIEND who jumped from the 96th story of the twin towers on 9/11. I also had another close friend that was disintegrated as she worked on the 105th floor for Cantor Fitzgerald when the plane came crashing through her office ! We don't want or need that kind of terrorism in our country let alone Murfreesboro. Anybody out there who thinks the muslums just want to build the Mosque to worship in peace is fooling themselves. The truth is Murfreeswboro dosen't need or can support a 52,000 square feet Mosque. What the radical muslums are trying to do is build a 52,0000 compound to train terroists in order to attack our very way of life and freedom ! The muslums are trying to impose Shiria law on Murfreesboro and its surrounding suburbs ! WE MUST STOP THEM AND SAY NO TO THEIR 52,000 SQUARE FOOT TRAINING FACILITY!"

Well, glad we got that settled.

http://www.topix.com/forum/city/murfreesboro-tn/TTKLKAH5HHIBIO0D1

yeah there was an article in the NYT today about that and...idk the trend is equal parts horrifying and unsurprising. just immensely fucked up, what some people will say, especially with their names attached

"but how big is this mosque?"

I'm kinda okay with being at war with these people

That's a horrible story, Shakey. Not so much a good reason to launch, or sustain, a war, though.

pretty sure we didn't invade Afghanistan cuz some hicks murdered a pregnant lady

altho now that I think about it there were probably some pregnant women killed during 9/11

"some hicks" lol Shakey.

not to get all Mordy here (I imagine he'll be along shortly) but I take your point Phil - the key issue is whether we think its our responsibility/worth it to forcibly export Western enlightenment values via the military in Afghanistan. When I read stories like the above I am inclined to think it is. When I consider the odds of success and the cost involved, I hesitate to endorse the effort. I'm really of two minds about our involvement in Afghanistan - I understand and sympathize with our rationale for being there and the ostensible goals (much more so than I did with Iraq, which was a ridiculous and poorly justified effort from start to finish) but I quail at the ominous historical precedents and the insane level of costs involved. Mordy would probably argue that we should do the right thing regardless of odds/cost, since that's how morality works.

it would maybe be an okay reason to launch a war against those specific guys, but it doesn't seem to have played out that way

lol Shakey, that's pretty much exactly how I feel about this particular thing. I would just point out that I'm not about abdicating pragmatism entirely -- just pragmatism in the face of morality. Like on the question of: Should we do something to help? I'd say yes regardless of pragmatic calculation. But to the second question of: How should we do it, I'm in favor of reintroducing pragmatism -- there are better and worse ways of accomplishing things. but also -- what's wrong with getting all Mordy? :P

http://twitter.com/georgelazenby/statuses/20688353332

whoops wrong thread

lol

George Lazenby: "I figured clueless was better than argumentative"

what's wrong with getting all Mordy? :P

haha nothing of course, just didn't want to presume to speak for you

but I take your point Phil - the key issue is whether we think its our responsibility/worth it to forcibly export Western enlightenment values via the military in Afghanistan. When I read stories like the above I am inclined to think it is.

I think you and Mordy are both handwaving away whether it's even possible to forcibly export Western/enlightenment values via the military. History suggests that the answer is very much "No."

Really? A discussion to have for sure, but it's hard to look at the world and say that Western values haven't been incredibly catchy -- and the links between capitalism + military might and other such stuff are too interweaved to merely say that the military had nothing to do with that spread.

Really? How'd that work out in, say, nearly all of Africa?

Like historically? Africa is way more westernized today than it was 50, or 100, or 400 years ago. The enlightenment project has been incredibly potent throughout the world. I think the more important question is whether all Western values are worth importing. For instance, I'm in favor of a lot of Western values but still deeply cynical of Capitalism. (Btw, if you haven't read Shock Doctrine yet, Klein makes a strong case that military is vastly important to importing capitalism.)

whoa whoa whoa guys

what are "western values"

which ones have been "incredibly catchy"

and "where" and "in what ways" and "what are the net results"

The war in Afganistahn is probably 90% about the drugs. Some contractors are probably getting insane kickbacks for unlimited access to these opium fields. "You say 30 million dollars worth of crop was destroyed yesterday? Well, legally since it's a battle zone we aren't responsible for property damage..." Wonder how good of a lawyer you can find in the average Afgani desert village.

and what methods of "exporting western values" have been "successful" and in what sense of the word "success"

yeah this discussion smells a lot like colonialism

i think mordy is "pro" colonialism? sort of?

For starters, most of the world is Capitalist today in some meaningful way. Some countries have different variations on it (Welfare capitalism in Europe, populist capitalism in SA, totalitarian capitalism in China, whatever american-style corporate capitalism we have here, etc). It's a freaking virus. It's all over the place.

History suggests that the answer is very much "No."

Roman Empire would beg to differ. So would the British Empire. America's track record is not so hot, unless you count Eastern Europe, but hey we've only been at it for 100 years or so.

of course this is colonialism

No doubt American style capitalism being brought to those opium fields.

Wait, you guys are collapsing two different questions. There's a question of whether you can export "Western values" (this anomalous thing that we can try to break down further), and then there's a question of whether you should. The second question obviously depends on what Western values are. I'm in favor of exporting values that I believe in (things like free press, free speech, democratic elections, etc), and less in favor of exporting values that I don't believe in (primarily our current capitalist system). Ironically it seems like it's much easier to export the latter than the former, but I think that in exporting the latter we've shown that these things can be catchy. Certainly there are many more countries in the world today that are Democratic than were 60 years ago. The US hasn't always been on the right side of that (we've often undermined democratically elected governments as people on this thread well know), but I'm in favor of the exporting democracy project in a general sense.

one person = one vote is a Western value, for example. the right to private property is a Western value. Freedom of religion and freedom of the press are Western values.

There is a lot of ugliness wrapped up in the export of these ideas, I have no problem acknowledging that.

xp

im not "collapsing" two questions im "asking" several questions

equal rights under the law is another good Western value. I'm down with that being exported anywhere (including lol back here to the US)

I'm in favor of exporting values that I believe in (things like free press, free speech, democratic elections, etc), and less in favor of exporting values that I don't believe in (primarily our current capitalist system). Ironically it seems like it's much easier to export the latter than the former (...)

of course it's easier to export the latter; no one was ever put in a position where they could buy an awesome car because of democratic elections

Also, I don't have a radical colonial critique. I believe that when colonialism is exploitive (as it often is and was historically) it's problematic, but I'm also skeptical of 'prime directive' style critiques whereby we don't have a right to encourage democracy abroad because people are entitled to their own values. I don't believe people are entitled to the value of clitorectomies or honor killings, for instance. I know some people believe we don't have a right to critique those cultures, tho, and I think that's a fair argument to make. But it's not my position. Colonialism, like almost everything else, is a spectrum disorder.

no one was ever put in a position where they could buy an awesome car because of democratic elections

TELL THAT TO REAGAN

I think I fall on the other side of your binary Mordy and I spend a lot of time trying to think of what gives one person the right to demand something of someone else much less one country demanding something of another

I am skeptical that America at this stage even has the moral authority, let alone the resources, to gallivant around the world using guns to force people to be more liberal.

Anyway, there are more important things we could be discussing, like this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannyn-moore/sarah-palins-homer-moment_b_675198.html

TELL THAT TO REAGAN

presumably he could buy awesome cars well before he was governor of California

"important"

Like obv the real issue is that the concept of Western Values is itself a Western invention born of out certain critical discourses and whatnot. It's a very vague term (as is the enlightenment project and other stuff that tries to discuss the impact of Western culture on the world). So maybe we should ask more basic questions. Is it possible to export democratic elections and free speech abroad using military might? And I think that any answer that totally ignores any military might in favor of other things is going to be flawed. It's hard to quantify the importance of military might (expressed and implicit) in exporting culture + ideas. Sometimes a country goes to war to show that they're the hegemonic power, and it's that display of power that exports things as much as the work being done on the ground. Or at least it seems that way to me.

the primary troublesome activities of afghans seem to be 1. growing the highest return commodity crop and 2. cooperating enough with the local hardmen to keep the foreign hardmen off their backs, and vice versa. so i'm not so sure the concepts of "capitalism" and "liberty" are so alien to them.

plus they all know karzai rigged his election, and we continued to back him, and now they hate him even more. so "voting rights" and "international relations" aren't bizarre concepts to the populace either, to my mind.

Sometimes a country goes to war to show that they're the hegemonic power, and it's that display of power that exports things as much as the work being done on the ground. Or at least it seems that way to me.

― Mordy, Monday, August 9, 2010 2:04 PM (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can i get an example of this?

I think I fall on the other side of your binary Mordy and I spend a lot of time trying to think of what gives one person the right to demand something of someone else much less one country demanding something of another

It's a fair position, I think! I totally understand the reasoning. My response to it is just that a) people and nations are going to try to export their interests abroad regardless of my opinion, and I'd rather Western values (lol whatever that means) get exported than something I found more morally abhorrent and b) pragmatically if you can make people's lives better, you should do that.

Related: I was reading that Afghanistan has gone from 200,000 students enrolled in school before the war to 6 million now including 1/3rd girls. I have a hard time feeling bad about that -- that's amazing! I'm huge on education and think that educating people is the #1 way to improve their lives. Everything terrible about the war put aside, how can you completely condemn something that put 6 million students into classrooms?

horseshoe, the obv example of the Gulf War

is*

Is it possible to export democratic elections and free speech abroad using military might?

"Exercise free choice or we'll shoot you!" Which value is that?

Everything terrible about the war put aside, how can you completely condemn something that put 6 million students into classrooms?

"Please! This is supposed to be a happy occasion. Let's not bicker and argue over who killed whom!" Seriously, it's real easy for YOU to put aside. Maybe not so easy for Afghanis.

Phil, what are you talking about? "put aside," isn't some general claim to never look back at the deaths ever again, but simply to consider that there is real value that has occurred here.

Like are you unable to do that thing where you weigh good things and bad things and acknowledge that both can exist simultaneously?

Phil D. is Mister A and I claim my $5

About 20,000 people have died in Afghanistan, correct? Around 9,000 civilians. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War, 406,000 Americans died in WW2, etc, etc, lots of big casualty numbers in different wars. If suddenly I can't say that sometimes people die, and good things still come of it, then basically I have to reread all of history. Was the Civil War not worth having? Should we not have entered WW2? Like this is a little reductive and purposely challopsy, but I think there's a point here which is: People dying in a war sucks, but you have to be willing to look at more than just who killed who. I would never feel comfortable saying 620,000 lives are worth ending slavery in X country, or 9,000 lives are worth creating a public school system -- these aren't calculations moral human beings should make. But we can "put aside" for a moment the deaths and see if there is any value occurring elsewhere. I don't know if this war is going to get rid of the Taliban -- I'm not hopeful. But re: Shakey's link above, it's hard to say that this isn't something worth fighting for. (Maybe you can argue that we shouldn't be fighting -- that's kinda dyao's position, that we have no right. And maybe you can argue that the net worth isn't worth it, that maybe we'll be sacrificing too much good we could've done by squandering it here -- that's kinda a realist foreign policy perspective.)

well this is going to be fun

lol

Mordy, no, I'm perfectly capable of weighing good things and bad things. But it's just so blithely dismissive of all the miseries in Afghanistan for which we're directly responsible, and also a real easy balancing act to perform when you don't have to live there. You can sit here and clap your hands for all the new kids in schools -- and sure, that's terrific! I myself love education! -- but it just smacks of the crap the Bush administration tried to get away with re: Iraq: "But Saddam is dead! And the schools got painted! Everything worked out!"

I just find it really distasteful and white-man's-burdenish for American's to be sitting here debating whether 6 million Afghani kids in schools balances out all the destructions we've wrought. Maybe you should be concerned with how Afghanis feel about it, not how you feel about it. Because, when it comes down to it, their calculus might be just a teeeeeeensy bit different from yours. And just because you have bigger guns doesn't make yours correct.

xp See, again, sure, good things often follow on the heels of terrible tragedies. But this passive voice thing -- Sometimes people die -- is complete and utter bullshit. Let's attribute some agency here, OK, so you can at least own your part of the responsibility for those deaths?

(also, quick full disclosure, I personally find US isolationism morally reprehensible for personal familial/ethnic reasons + i believe that, for instance, the US should've entered WW2 earlier than they did, and I'm pro the Kosovo campaign for similar reasons and so in general I believe in moral intervention with some reservations about how it's done.)

s/Americans/American's

Mordy, it would be easier to follow your arguments if you didn't keep equivocating.

Because, when it comes down to it, their calculus might be just a teeeeeeensy bit different from yours.

Can I point out that some number of them will come to exactly the same conclusion Mordy has? You are, after all, talking about a large group of individuals and not a monolithic hivemind.

Sure they will, Dan. I'm not saying they won't.

Because, when it comes down to it, their calculus might be just a teeeeeeensy bit different from yours.

some of which are totally a-okay with shooting pregnant women in the head

And some of which would really like a better life but not at the expense of having their village bombed or their wedding reception annihilated.

is there some way we can have neither of those scenarios?

Phil, it's unclear to me what you believe here. Is it that you're against any intervention abroad? Or is it that you're against any military intervention abroad? Do you believe that if the US sends its military to intervene in a genocide, and lots of people die during that intervention (maybe even civilians caught in the fighting), that it was morally wrong?

guh

like, okay we promise to stop "accidentally" bombing your wedding parties if you stop shooting pregnant women in the head sounds like a fair deal to me, and yet somehow it just hasn't worked out. hmmm

Sure they will, Dan. I'm not saying they won't.

Mordy's unspoken hypothesis is that the majority will reflect his opinion/train of thought. Really, that is the unspoken hypothesis of all of us engaging in these arguments, so it seems like arguing "but what do the AFGHANIS think???" is being used more to deflect rigorous defense of a position than anything else.

Having said that, I believe less and less in what we are doing in Afghanistan as time goes and and am coming to favor unequivocal withdrawal more and more.

Or is your point that, "yes, there are lots of shitty things happening in Afghanistan, but we're not fixing any of them and we're doing our own shitty things which is making it worse," which I accept as a reading of the situation, but my point re the education stats is that we are fixing some of them. That's actually happening.

i am not an isolationist by any means, but every liberal live likes to think he'd be in the abraham lincoln brigades if he were a young buck in the '30s. i might have been gung-ho about vietnam had i been such in the '60s, is the problem.

anti-isolationism aside (lol so much going "aside" in these discussions), shakey, there is a point where some people shooting a pregnant woman in the head, somewhere, is not your problem? or mine or "ours"?

"alive"

"is there"

whoops

is there some way we can have neither of those scenarios?

What you mean "we," paleface?

xxp Oh, christ. MAYBE I JUST LOVE HITLER, MAYBE THAT'S IT?

What I believe is that the planet is not our toy to play around with, and maybe we should sit back for a while and think about what we've done, and perhaps it will lead to some better decision-making in the future.

God forbid someone extends your argument to actual real history interventions. I think it's a serious question. If you want to say that WW2 was an ahistorical once in ever event where it was actually justified to go to war abroad -- then say that. But don't be an idiot about it.

Phil, the thing you are leaving out is what decisions you want us to make, which is why Mordy keeps coming at you.

the next time a really toxic ideology takes over one of the globe's major industrial powers and starts gobbling up its neighbors, let's have a debate about the limits and purposes of intervention. the taliban or "talibanism" don't rise to this level.

nuclear proliferation and spectacular acts of terrorism do throw some wild variables into that calculus however.

How I feel about what we should or shouldn't have done in events the most recent of which was over half a century ago has little bearing on what we're doing now, Mordy. And it's awfully rich to wave away dropping cluster bombs on wedding receptions as "Sometimes people die," then accuse me of acting like an idiot.

Phil, it seems to me like you're avoiding spelling out your beliefs. Maybe because you feel that in Afghanistan they are palatable, but if you explain them explicitly you're afraid people will be turned off to them? From what you've said, I'd guess that either: a) You don't believe in interventionism at all in any scenario. b) You believe in intervention in some cases, but Afghanistan isn't that case. c) You believe in intervention in many cases, including Afghanistan, but like me you disapprove of the ways that the US has chosen to intervene and you believe it could be more successful. Or d) You don't actually believe anything, but death makes you sad and so you're against the war in Afghanistan but you haven't exactly figured out why outside the fact that death is wrong. (Cause you know what else is wrong? Subjecting women to all kinds of abuses, not educating your public, starving regions of your country, stealing money from international aid, destroying sacred monuments of other religions, etc, etc on and on. And you haven't dealt with this at all -- you've just decided to ignore it.)

the thing you are leaving out is what decisions you want us to make

do you guys want Phil to explain what he would do, ideally, back in 2001 pre-invasion? or now that we're already there?

you know what is really conducive to getting someone to open up on a sensitive subject, is calling them an unconscionable monster

Like if you come here and you say, "All those things the Taliban did were horrible, but the US shouldn't intervene in other people's affairs ever," then you set forward a stance that is internally consistent and we can argue about whether hegemonic powers should or shouldn't intervene in other people's affairs. But the way you're talking now I have no idea what you're arguing just that this particular war is wrong. Well, why? What's the reason why we shouldn't be there? (Not to mention the fact that we went there because of a military provocation -- but that's an aside at this point.)

HI DERE, I don't think my speculating about why Phil isn't forthcoming about what he believes (which might not even be unconscionable but simply hard to defend) is less conducive than Phil accusing me that I'm ignoring people's deaths.

this is like fifteen minutes of xposts since yall are so speedy but

mordy my main issue with posing questions like "should we have not gone into wwii?" is that they literally do completely zero to inform the dialogue. wwii already happened---setting up a strawman hypothetical about wars been and gone presupposes that all of the good stuff (kids in schools! no more nazis! etc) was necessarily hitched to the bad stuff that preceded it. AND that the moral/ethical/whatever climate here today is even remotely similar to 1940s Europe or 1860s America (hint: it isn't). like not to get to metaphysical here (shouldn't be a problem w/you, i'm guessing), but don't you suppose that there is a way to put 6 million kids in schools that doesn't involve invasion? can you draw a causal thread between a guy who just saw his friend get iced by a IED and who then in a panic shot some ppl that didn't earn it, and an afghani girl's first day of school? like there's more than one way from A to B. that war HAS been correlated with "good results" doesn't mean it's the only way to achieve those ends. UNLESS, maybe, those ends are actual, physical ends to specific people like bin laden or whoever.

but that's the thing: we went into afghanistan ostensibly to ~wage war~ against specific dudes (Al Qaeda!), and quickly that metamorphosed into "nation building and Taliban AND Al Qaeda fighting w/helpings of Western-style democratic boot-strapping." you may find that to be a pleasing result, but it's a creepy one to me because it means, like Iraq, our invasion likely happened under false pretenses. it's one thing to say "holy shit there is a str8 up genocide going on here we are explicitly moving in to prevent it" or "the taliban is disgusting savages who hate women and we are going to slay them" and do specifically that, it's another to leverage spurious intel (did we ~really~ think we could catch bin laden easily? or was it assumed early on that it would take a while?) and do a war w/some btw nation-building on the side.

(plz bear in mind that post is literally minutes and 1000x mordy posts behind, so apologies if any of its been addressed)

I guess I feel like the question of whether we should enter WW2 is about as relevant as the question of whether we should enter Afghanistan and for that matter the question of whether we should leave Afghanistan. We entered WW2, it happened. We entered Afghanistan, it happened. And we're going to stay for a bit of time, that's also going to happen. We just doubled our troop level there. If the reason we can't discuss hypotheticals is because they do zero to inform the dialogue, then why can we discuss these hypotheticals re Afghanistan at all?

but that's the thing: we went into afghanistan ostensibly to ~wage war~ against specific dudes (Al Qaeda!), and quickly that metamorphosed into "nation building and Taliban AND Al Qaeda fighting w/helpings of Western-style democratic boot-strapping." you may find that to be a pleasing result, but it's a creepy one to me because it means, like Iraq, our invasion likely happened under false pretenses.

I agree with a good chunk of this sentiment, which is why a large portion of my support for Afghanistan is waning.

xp: The point being made is that the hypotheticals you are posing aren't equivalent and you seem to be using them solely to belittle the ppl you're arguing with. At least, that's how it appears to me.

did we ~really~ think we could catch bin laden easily?

more like Dubya didn't give a shit about investing resources in catching him back when it would have been easier, and instead decided to go after the guy who tried to kill his daddy

Btw, I'm happy I didn't have to make the decision to go to Afghanistan or the future decision to leave Afghanistan when it's made. I think it's a really hard question and I don't trust my own opinions far enough to make the kind of decision that affects people's lives so broadly. There are good reasons to stay right now and good reasons to leave right now. My main argument here is that rather than not mention the good reasons to stay and weigh the debate on one side, I think we can look at the fact that it's a complicated decision.

xp: and yes, on the flip side I feel like some people are flat-out belittling you pre-emptively and in return (based on when they joined the conversation) by painting you position as "war is awesome! kill more civilians yay!"

Cause you know what else is wrong? Subjecting women to all kinds of abuses, not educating your public, starving regions of your country, stealing money from international aid, destroying sacred monuments of other religions, etc, etc on and on. And you haven't dealt with this at all -- you've just decided to ignore it.)

Because -- and I've tried to explain it, and you've ignored it, and here it is again -- I don't fucking live in Afghanistan. There are things in the world which are both utterly reprehensible, and also not our problem to solve.

I don't know if you've noticed here, but while we're spending countless volumes of money on this exporting-the-enlightenment-to-Afghanistan experiment, our own country is collapsing around our ears, politically, socially and economically. Sometimes, governments have to make choices, and right now, our choice needs to be to fix our own country's problems rather than seeing how many Afghanis we can shoot before they decide to adopt the Bill of Rights.

If you can't glean from context that my beliefs are somewhere between B and C, you're not a good reader. On the other hand, nice whiplash move from "Oh you just think death is sad go cry emo boy" to "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE SACRED MONUMENTS?!" is LOL-worthy. Kudos to you for that one.

many xps

(Not to mention the fact that we went there because of a military provocation -- but that's an aside at this point.)

OK WAHT?!?!?!

Because -- and I've tried to explain it, and you've ignored it, and here it is again -- I don't fucking live in Afghanistan

How the hell is this an ethical position at all? You believe all decisions should be made based on self-interest?

...

hoo boy

(Not to mention the fact that we went there because of a military provocation -- but that's an aside at this point.)

OK WAHT?!?!?!

Bin Laden responsible for 9/11, Taliban refused to turn him over. the end

FYI there is nothing inherently wrong with self-interest, particularly when you have limited resources

ending fascist control of most of industrialized world and ending their killing factories was worth the cost to America and the rest of the Allies.

but no, more schools in Afghanistan is not worth the ten years we've spent there. not worth it for us, or them.

i understand that, for political reasons, we will have to make some little "progress" over there before leaving, so i hope something works. there is no draft pain-point in the general population to leverage against continuing this thing otherwise. it could go on forever (or until we're bankrupt).

as an aside, it it bizarre to anyone else how remote Bin Laden seems these days? will we ever find him? or, his body, likely enough? i mean, fuck, SOMEONE must know where he is. he has ascended into pure myth...

1. some afghans DO believe in shooting women in the head for adultery
2. we can stop them by changing their minds
3. we can stop this by completely controlling the country directly or indirectly.

realistic ideas for 2 and 3 please.

i take mordy to be saying, "well, my reading of history shows that occupation and guns CAN SOMETIMES MAKE IMPRESSIVE CHANGES IN SOME LOCAL PRACTICES. and sometimes you gotta try, you just gotta try to stop it regardless."

im not taking his word on it. how has it worked in afghanistan historically? any sign that its working now? is it getting better or worse? if success seems reasonable, do we have the resources to keep it up? because its not gonna happen by pure "force of will." its gonna happen by the application of massive resources and effort.

in the face of this "well we can't make the situation worse- its fucking afghanistan!" well, im not so sure of that either at this point. if you can't demonstrate a net positive effect with sustainable results, do no harm. and i don't believe that is what we are doing now- because its impossible. we're in a position we in order to keep order, we are committing atrocities of our own- that's how armed conflicts and occupation are, especially when the occupation is as tenuous as what we have there.

fucking god knows, sometimes it may be worth it to try intervention. we have. we either need to try harder, whatever the fuck that means, or stopping doing harm. if ngos wanna go in there and do their best to ameliorate the suffering, great. if interventionists wanna volunteer at this point, it seems like a good point in time to do so. believe me, im not a big believer in this "making your commitment personnal" type of rhetoric usually, but we're what 9 years deep?

i find this "what have the romans ever done for us" style shit ridiculous here. that occupiers can sometimes improve material, or even cultural conditions sometimes? that's not a truthbomb. how does that map to what youre seeing reported from afghanistan?

xpost

It's fine to say that we can't afford to do this work (btw I'm very skeptical about the US falling apart narrative -- I think we're settling into a post-US superpower role and it's going to be bumpy getting there, but good. the US shouldn't be running the world by itself), or that we could do it better, or that by expending resources in Afghanistan we're limiting our ability to positively affect things elsewhere. but i don't think "i don't live there" is a good case for why we should or shouldn't intervene.

pardon my strawman on making shit worse, a conversation elsewhere bled in there. sorry xpost

Not to mention, we're partially responsible for the situation Afghanistan was in before we invaded! Arguably if we let the Communists in years earlier the country would be in much better shape. We do have an obligation to right some of the fucked-up wrongs we perpetrated in our totally misguided quest to end Communism in the world (which is in my mind really the major issues underlining all of this -- the assertion of capitalism and the cold war).

quick full disclosure, I personally find US isolationism morally reprehensible for personal familial/ethnic reasons

You believe all decisions should be made based on self-interest?

http://diseaseoftheweek.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/exploding_head_.jpg

augh Mordy

Entering WWII and entering Afghanistan are two totally different scenarios, in different times, and, as you note, in the past, sorted. Trying to make a case for going into Afghanistan (why bother, it already happened, but do go on...) by making comparisons to the moral/ethical calculus used for WWII is so intellectually bankrupt, I kinda can't believe you're bothering. The only thing that makes them similar is that a) there are ethical questions (NO SHIT) and b) the Taliban and Al Qaeda are bad (NO SHIT). That's about it.

Moreover, you're using this totally specious historical conflation to make bad faith arguments ("wait so now you're saying 6M kids in school is something that should never have happened??") that make other people look like Nazi-huggers. No one here has a time machine, so don't worry about it's deployment---those kids are staying right where they are, for now.

I mean, it still seems to me that the main thrust of your argument is that positive developments have followed in the wake of horrific warfare, so that must mean that war isn't so bad, right?

(hella lagging xposts for miles)

is women going to school a "western value"

quick full disclosure, I personally find US isolationism morally reprehensible for personal familial/ethnic reasons

You believe all decisions should be made based on self-interest?

Ok, Phil, if you really don't understand how these aren't mutually exclusive... I mean, that's some serious bad faith. I can believe in something because historically I've seen how important it was and how it struck close to home. Ie: I saw that the Allies saved relatives lives in WW2, so I understand that saving lives, even if they aren't related to you personally, is important. Like, when Nancy Reagan embraces stem cells, it's because she's seen that it could make a huge difference in people's lives because of her personal experiences. This isn't a contradiction at all.

is women going to school a "western value"

yeah, mostly

Entering WWII and entering Afghanistan are two totally different scenarios, in different times, and, as you note, in the past, sorted. Trying to make a case for going into Afghanistan (why bother, it already happened, but do go on...) by making comparisons to the moral/ethical calculus used for WWII is so intellectually bankrupt, I kinda can't believe you're bothering. The only thing that makes them similar is that a) there are ethical questions (NO SHIT) and b) the Taliban and Al Qaeda are bad (NO SHIT). That's about it.

I'm not sure what you're claiming here. I said that if you want to make a case for intervention, you can appeal to history to discuss whether intervention is ever appropriate. That's all. You could say they're different cases, and claim that some intervention is good and some isn't. But that's the thing! No one who is arguing with me has argued when intervention is good and when it isn't. That's all I'm asking for. When do you intervene? (Actually, that's not totally true, someone -- maybe max? -- argued that WW2 was different because it was a world superpower and the Taliban isn't. I'm not sure why that makes a difference -- possibly because he believes Germany was a threat to the US, but that's another isolationism position, that we should only engage if it affects our own situation.)

maybe max

jesus what do i have to DO around here

positive developments have followed in the wake of horrific warfare, so that must mean that war isn't so bad

That's kind of a true statement, though, at least within the context of wars that have directly led to positive developments. You can't argue that all wars are justified, because they aren't. Conversely, you can't argue that NO wars are justified either, because some are. What you can argue about is whether a specific war is justified, and what is screwing up this conversation is that it seems like both sides of it are attempting to extrapolate their position on Afghanistan into a truism on war and I really don't think you can do that.

Violence is never pretty. Sometimes it is necessary. There was a point where I would have strenuously argued it was necessary in Afghanistan but I don't really believe that is the case anymore.

maybe max

jesus what do i have to DO around here

― goole, Monday, August 9, 2010 3:08 PM (55 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

TAKE IT AS THE COMPLIMENT IT IS

Like, I'll lay out one particular thought-process I have. a) I believe that the genocide in Nazi Germany was horrific and required an intervention from the United States. I would believe this whether or not the US had been attacked at Pearl Harbor, and whether or not Germany was trying to conquer many of the nations surrounding it in Europe. b) If I believe that, clearly I believe that some foreign affairs, even if they don't affect the US, require an intervention. Genocides are a good example of that, and most people I believe agree that we should intervene in a clear case of genocide assuming we are able to do so. c) Ok, how about Afghanistan where there wasn't a genocide per se but many other human rights violations that are horrific? That's where I get fuzzy and start thinking about what's gone right and what's gone wrong. But I got there by going through these other steps. I want to know what people feel about (a) and (b). If you want to distinguish between different things that's fine, but being like, "lol Nazis are different," doesn't do anything and certainly doesn't forward the convo at all.

where, exactly, is the line between "let's just kill the taliban off" and "let's make the korengal valley a little more like indiana"

the answer to that question is, well, i have no idea. but the US is acting as if it knows! that's the plan, right now!

war needs no justification to exist, you just do it and it ain't pretty but you did it so there

There was a point where I would have strenuously argued it was necessary in Afghanistan but I don't really believe that is the case anymore.

what's changed, in your view?

I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive. I'm saying that, when someone does roll out self-interest as a basis for making decisions, you aren't in any position to pull a "J'accuse!" here.

No one who is arguing with me has argued when intervention is good and when it isn't. That's all I'm asking for. When do you intervene?

One is tempted here to defer to Potter Stewart and "I know it when I see it." You're asking people to give you a general case, which is impossible, for obvious reasons. Or, as Dan just said, "what is screwing up this conversation is that it seems like both sides of it are attempting to extrapolate their position on Afghanistan into a truism on war and I really don't think you can do that."

WWII - yes
US Civil War - maybe
WWI - no
Vietnam - hell, no
Iraq I - probably
Iraq II - can't we arrest Bush yet?

maybe???

"let's make the korengal valley a little more like indiana"

christ, can't we do a little better than Indiana? Mike Pence has probably shot some pregnant ladies himself.

Great, Phil, so you're pro intervention in some cases and against it in others. Now we can discuss why we shouldn't intervene in Afghanistan. Why do you think we shouldn't have intervened assuming that you believe that intervention is appropriate in some cases?

(Also, you're totally wrong about the self-interest thing -- I think you should think about it, because it's self-evident why you're wrong.)

is women going to school a "western value"

yeah, mostly

― glitter hands! glitter hands! razzle! dazzle! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, August 9, 2010 3:05 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not true btw

Mordy we didn't "INTERVENE" in fucking Afghanistan!!!!!

That is not why we went there!

saying that's ~why~ we're there is just patently untrue.

(Essentially, you're confusing belief by personal experience with a theory of power used only through self-interest. They are totally unrelated and have nothing to do with each other, unless you're designing an overarching narrative of subjective experience and self-interest -- in which case, exciting, but you'll probably want to think it through a little more than just, "lol hypocrite.")

Now we can discuss why we shouldn't intervene in Afghanistan.

because we've been trying for a decade and aren't doing very well at it?

history is not an application of principles on a checklist, it's an experiment in real-time, and this one has failed. time to try something else.

if the goal was (and still is?) to get Bin Laden and Al Zwahiri, how exactly do we accomplish that without a military presence in Afghanistan

not true btw

hey that's why I said mostly

what's changed, in your view?

Two things:

1. Squandering of resources in Iraq on some bullshit.
2. Ever-changing goals in our Afghanistan deployment that smack of goalpost-shifting obfuscation to distract from either our inability to achieve our original aims or some hypothetical "true purpose" for in going into Afghanistan.

saying that's ~why~ we're there is just patently untrue.

not to mention that the story Shakey linked to that kicked this off proves that after 9 years we haven't actually stopped the Taliban from executing women for adultery.

woah xposts

Woah, how do you disentangle women's education from Western civ?

is education a western value

im still confused about this western values thing

Woah, how do you disentangle women's education from Western civ?

study Islamic history

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrasah#Female_education

if the goal was (and still is?) to get Bin Laden and Al Zwahiri, how exactly do we accomplish that without a military presence in Afghanistan

― glitter hands! glitter hands! razzle! dazzle! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, August 9, 2010 2:16 PM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark

"military presence" is pretty vague, you realize. is that a Special Forces team camping out in the woods, unbeknownst to the citizenry? or is trains of humvees and outposts and nation-building and what not?

"getting the bad guys" is simply not what we're doing anymore. we've expanded the scope (maybe it was expanded from the outset) and we are paying the consequences.

is education a western value

glad this came back up; I know we reduced it down to "education for women" but educating people is not a Western-only phenom

Women in Islam played an important role in the foundations of many Islamic educational institutions, such as Fatima al-Fihri's founding of the University of Al Karaouine in 859. This continued through to the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries, when 160 mosques and madrasahs were established in Damascus, 26 of which were funded by women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system. Half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were also women.[2]

According to the Sunni scholar Ibn Asakir in the 12th century, there were opportunities for female education in the medieval Islamic world, writing that women should study, earn ijazahs (academic degrees), and qualify as scholars and teachers. This was especially the case for learned and scholarly families, who wanted to ensure the highest possible education for both their sons and daughters.[3] Ibn Asakir had himself studied under 80 different female teachers in his time. Female education in the Islamic world was inspired by Muhammad's wives: Khadijah, a successful businesswoman, and Aisha, a renowned hadith scholar and military leader. According to a hadith attributed to Muhammad, he praised the women of Medina because of their desire for religious knowledge:[4]

"How splendid were the women of the ansar; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned in the faith."

While it was not common for women to enroll as students in formal classes, it was common for women to attend informal lectures and study sessions at mosques, madrasahs and other public places. While there were no legal restrictions on female education, some men did not approve of this practice, such as Muhammad ibn al-Hajj (d. 1336) who was appalled at the behaviour of some women who informally audited lectures in his time:[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_education#Islamic_history

because we've been trying for a decade and aren't doing very well at it?

I guess this is where we disagree. I look at a chart like this and I think it's a mixed bag and I'm not sure what the right decision to make is.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e20133f297c602970b-550wi

if the goal was (and still is?) to get Bin Laden and Al Zwahiri, how exactly do we accomplish that without a military presence in Afghanistan?

I mean, how much longer are we going to give it?

it would be weird if it turned out that the "western values" we are exporting (exporting!!) to afghanistan are defined more or less exactly as being the opposite values held by the taliban

woot, Afghanistan is killing it in opium production

"but the US is acting as if it knows! that's the plan, right now!"

OK admittedly my reading of this comes largely from Rambo III and Charlie Wilson's War, but there was great regret in many corners of various branches over not following through with nation-building projects after Afghans defeated Soviets for the US in the proxy war, so the plan is, in fact, nation-building, but done under the aegis of "global security" which is the more politically palatable reasoning.

nothing but drug dealers w/ prepaid phones

is afghanistan 'the wire'?

YOUNG drug dealers w/ prepaid phones!

maybe???

― iatee, Monday, August 9, 2010 7:13 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

My feelings about the good achieved by the Emancipation Proclamation and the postwar Amendments is tempered by my feeling that the United States should be a voluntary union, and that states should be permitted to secede.

xxxp lol we lowered Afghani life expectancy by three years, and we can't even blame it on a change in the infant mortality rate. USA! USA! USA!

can we take credit for it being because of the really excellent heroin?

oh god i'm not going to discuss secession...

My feelings about the good achieved by the Emancipation Proclamation and the postwar Amendments is tempered by my feeling that the United States should be a voluntary union, and that states should be permitted to secede.

OT but I don't agree with any of the things in that sentence.

mordy aside from schools, there's not much on that table to get me excited.

-how are we defining access to healthcare? vague as hell imo. 81% of the population had a checkup when an army doc came through town! good thing? yes! but does it equal "they have a healthcare infrastructure now"? LOL @ U
-i don't care that they got the internet, or have cell phones---central africa has those things, too

You don't think any good came from the Emancipation Proclamation?????

I mean, that's what you just said, but I don't actually think that's what you meant...?

p sure everyone except phil d thinks the civil war was a good war, can we move on since it's completely irrelevant?

no he does, but he thinks the right to secede is almost as important? which seems basically crazy to me.

xp
Mordy, where is that chart from? I see Andrew Sullivan, but i assume he didn't make it?

lol, obv not that part. Tho I wouldn't call it 'good,' so much as a moral necessity -- like it wasn't that white people did a nice thing by letting slaves go. It was that the unconscionable actions of slavery were finally made fully illegal throughout the US. But that's kinda a semantic thing and I'm sure Phil agrees on this point.

The chart is originally from here apparently: http://www.tnr.com/afghanistan

anyway all of this shit is ex post facto justification for a war that is looking like it never should have happened. i'm all for saying "well ok so we fucked up but there's been some upsides, any withdrawal strategy should seek to preserve those things as much as possible," but def can't abide "we should look to social changes like this when we need to come up with reasons to go to war!"

btw u guys have u heard of the democratic republic of congo lol

Yes, I do. But I still think states should be permitted to secede. (Declaration of Independence, yo.) Think how great it would be right now if, instead of just running their yaps all the time, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi could just GTFO.

that place could use some serious state building xp

does drc have western values

the state might, but they don't have a monopoly on coercive force. they're basically powerless to assert anything in the country atm. it's a totally toothless government

surely mordy u can agree that we should have some troops or at least watchdogs in the kivu provinces, yes? or maybe have like a whole wing of the military dedicated to liberating the Lord's Resistance Army and acing JKony?

i'm kind of optimistic about afghanistan's future, but in a long-term timeframe. it's a poor, landlocked, mountainous country. but it is smack-dab in the middle of all the rising coastal powers; turkey, iran, russia, india and china (something central africa lacks). you could imagine it being the "truck stop of the new asia" in 50 years. and all those minerals! gosh!

but right now, there's really nothing worthwhile for people to do (AS I SAID WAY UPTHREAD NOW, THANKS) except grow drugs and stay alive, so our goals to "make" something out of the country have to remain limited.

xps Mordy you need something to knock out your certainty in top-down coercive force.

(btw those are rhetorical qs---not sure if/how to approach troops in central africa because, you know, it's complicated)

anyway all of this shit is ex post facto justification for a war that is looking like it never should have happened.

Disagree with this; it's looking for the good things that came out of a war whose execution was completely botched. As I said, going after bin Laden in the wake of 9/11 made sense to me then and still makes sense to me now. What did not make sense was diverting funds and effort to attack Iraq, and it is my belief that that bungled diversion contributed tremendously to the dissatisfaction and inability to achieve our original goals in Afghanistan and that it is likely now be too late/expensive to do what we initially intended.

(AS I SAID WAY UPTHREAD NOW, THANKS)

i think max said that actually

lol, yeah, like maybe seeing an example of a successful country that doesn't have top-down coercive force (hint: none of them ever in history ever)

Yes, I do. But I still think states should be permitted to secede. (Declaration of Independence, yo.) Think how great it would be right now if, instead of just running their yaps all the time, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi could just GTFO.

iowa, oklahoma and mississippi all got pretty good deals going for em

Yes, I do. But I still think states should be permitted to secede. (Declaration of Independence, yo.) Think how great it would be right now if, instead of just running their yaps all the time, Iowa, Oklahoma and Mississippi could just GTFO.

lol what kind of joke is this. If states were allowed to secede, Texas and California would kiss the rest of your asses goodbye and y'all would starve/be powerless

is top down coercive force a western value

is secession a western value

"top-down" coercive force comes as a result of bottom-up consensus. when that fails, the "top-down" killing occurs, that's the whole story of e.g. the civil war -- the consensus failed around a crucial issue, finally. you have it backwards.

is posting on message boards a western value

you know what is a western value, is booty shorts

Yes, obv, goole. That's where the legitimacy of coercive power comes from -- it's given.

shakey otm...texas, california, maybe alaska...

is posting on message boards a western value

― glitter hands! glitter hands! razzle! dazzle! (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, August 9, 2010 3:35 PM (29 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

apparently a thousand afghans or whatever have the internet now was this a western value

(Or taken in rare cases where command of the military gives you the monopoly on force.)

what you guys think of afghan security converted to purely private ventures? i'm sure the mineral rights alone ought to be enough to fund something.

Also isn't California bankrupt? Seceding seems like the worst possible idea for them.

Texas would totally secede but the realization that they don't actually have any food might make them come back.

Kinda interested in hearing more about a serious case for letting States secede whenever the democratic majority does something they don't like -- great concept there.

california wouldn't be bankrupt if it collected its citizens' federal taxes

i mean obv i'm only bringing up the DRC because it is like the A#1 humanitarian crisis in the fucking world right now but it's-for-their-own-good hawks don't really seem to care about it for some reason.

because basically what happens there periodically is really ~some of the worst shit in the world~. buuuuuuut since there's no good way to sell our intervention their ideologically (central africans are not engaged in "a culture war" with the US), it's like why bother right only 45k ppl die a month

When you find someone who believes that, let me know, Mordy.

^^^iatee OTM re: CA bankruptcy lol

lol, Phil, YOU believe that! If you believe States should have the right to secede when they want, that's what you believe!

it's like why bother right only 45k ppl die a month

also they don't send suicide bombers to knock down our buildings

But I'm now extremely amused by the idea of simultaneously defending "Western values" and also claiming that those values don't including severing yourself from a political body to which you no longer wish to belong.

Yeah, so reread the part where I said that I'm in favor of certain Western values and not in favor of all of them and maybe you'll be less amused oh my god

which is the best western value

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_tax_revenue_by_state

hey look another $313,998,874,000 a year! (admittedly we gotta pay for all kindsa shit now)

xp
I'm not sure what someone in power would actually say gbx, but "intervening" in the Congo may just have way too much historical baggage. I mean if genocidal maniacs took over Vietnam next year, say, we would have a hard time whipping up support for invasion. Obv that's an exaggerated analogy, but I would be intensely skeptical of any US politico talking about liberating the DRC.

"since there's no good way to sell our intervention their ideologically (central africans are not engaged in "a culture war" with the US), it's like why bother right only 45k ppl die a month"

Are they resource rich? One possible way out is to invite 'colonization' in the form of mining rights for x years in exchange for building infrastructure.

max, costco is the answer

I believe states have the right to secede, yes. The "when they want" is your attempt to damn that belief by tying it to something trivial.

Just so we're clear, here, you do not believe in the right to self-determination? You believe that the values and principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer apply?

Should Virginia be allowed to reclaim West Virginia? Why/why not?

I believe in the individual right to self-determination. I don't believe State governments have that right, and I also believe that the right to self-determination isn't a way of sneakily getting out of democratic decisions and enforcing inequalities on people. Do you also believe corporations are human beings?

FOR THE RECORD, we do have a political philosophy thread now, for this kind of shit...

but anyway

Just so we're clear, here, you do not believe in the right to self-determination? You believe that the values and principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence no longer apply?

― thanks for the feedback (supra) (Phil D.), Monday, August 9, 2010 2:43 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

these rights apply to the individual, not to a fake set of lines on a map called a "state"

xp to smc

you're right! you know who else didn't? everyone else we've been to war with!

like again i am bringing this up because the "situation" in the DRC is far worse than the "situation" in Afghanistan on immediate, visceral humanitarian grounds. one would assume that if you are predicating a warmongering policy on "good results" from "intervention" it might seem pretty simple to pick the DRC from yr list of terrible places what might be good for war and go there.

and yeah, the DRC is one of the most resource rich countries in africa, if not THE most

gbx, if we hadn't been mired in Iraq + Afghanistan, spending tons of money and resources and basically committing all of our armed forces to those causes, I might be keen to discuss strategies to help the DRC.

I'm about as in favor as, say, NATO helping DRC and I was NATO helping in Kosovo. I think there are places for those interventions for sure.

Do you also believe corporations are human beings?

No.

But, again, just so we're clear, had you been around in 1776, you would have fought with:

A) the American revolutionaries
B) the loyalists.

(Pick one)

The revolutionaries because I believe in democracy?

time machine getting a real workout itt

lol

self-determination is a funny thing to bring up when the single issue driving the whole 19th century in america was slavery and the status of black people.

we can't just swerve into this empyrean realm of 'principles' -- or this dickhead game of accusing others of not having certain principles, thanks -- the details matter.

crushing the confederacy, and the nazis, totally worth it. other conficts under discussion here, a little less so, for their own sui generis reasons.

He started it

Kinda interested in hearing more about a serious case for letting States secede whenever the democratic majority does something they don't like

Gore Vidal's complaints about Lincoln to thread.

crushing the confederacy, and the nazis, totally worth it. other conficts under discussion here, a little less so, for their own sui generis reasons.

The question isn't whether any of us are on the right side of history in those events. The question is why. If crushing the Nazis was worth it because they were committing genocides, then where do you draw the line for when it's worth it to intervene and when it isn't.

Genocide? Okay. You can intervene then but only if X amount of people have already died.... << I believe those calculations are essentially immoral, but I'm trying to force them out if they're there. Afghanistan no, Kosovo yes? What's the difference?

I mean, believe me, I'm not shedding any tears that the Confederacy got its ass handed to it. Far from it. My predecessors fought for the Union and I'm glad they did. But taking it out of the realm of that conflict and into the abstract, if the state government of Texas, or Florida, or Ohio, or wherever, decides they no longer want to be a part of the US, I need a more convincing argument than "Because!" as to why they should be forced to remain.

XXXXP Jesus Christ, Mordy, you sure don't like being the one pressed to make a declarative statement or come up with a general case, do you?

I'm always making declarative cases! What didn't I state?

Crushing the Nazis was worth it because they, combined with the aspirations of the Japanese, posed a serious threat to the security of the entire world.

mordy i used the phrase sui generis for a reason

What's the difference?

what do you think it is Mordy?

there isn't a theory for this stuff and there never will be

otm

^

seriously

lol xps

is sui generis a western value

It's worth reading the various FDR biographies to understand why we finally entered the war. Firstly, the U.S. was deeply, invariably isolationist; it wanted NOTHING to do with war in Europe, under any pretext. Secondly, FDR and Wendell Wilkie were neck in neck until FDR made his infamous promise in October 1940 that he would "never" send "your boys" to fight in "any" foreign war; FDR then surged ahead and handily won the election. Thirdly, we declared war on Japan before Europe, which is significant: American citizens would never have countenanced a war against Hitler because, well, Hitler didn't attack us Pearl Harbor. Fourthly, although FDR understood the central theatre was Europe, the nature of Nazism wasn't fully known; he wanted to intervene on a rather vague commitment to Wilsonian-type principles, i.e. we're-on-this-together.

Genocide had nothing to do with our entering WWII.

time machine getting a real workout itt

roflz

is gucci mane a western value

sorry wrong thread

*war on Japan well before we did in Germany

xpost

Yes, Alfred, I'm fully aware of why the US entered the war. I believe they should have entered earlier because of the genocide.

Yeah, but "because of the genocide" is a false premise. No one in the US government knew the extent of the atrocities.

American citizens would never have countenanced a war against Hitler because, well, Hitler didn't attack us Pearl Harbor

I BEG TO DIFFER

http://scrapetv.com/News/News%20Pages/usa/images-2/bluto-animal-house.jpg

Is there a breakdown somewhere of how much federal money CA spends?

We knew about the Nuremberg laws, but outrage wasn't enough to turn American sentiment around.

xps
I think Alfred's point may have been that the US seldom acts on moral principles anyway even in a clear case like WW2, so this discussion is excessively academic?

People in the US government knew the extent of the atrocities for awhile before we entered the war, Alfred. And even after we entered, we didn't do enough imo to stop the genocide. See: Not bombing the train tracks.

No, they didn't.

And yes, if you're point is that Americans tend not to care about genocide, I think I agree with you? I don't see how that changes my mind about the fact that I care about genocide.

your*

meaning "people in the US government" did not know in 1939 and 1940 -- the height of the European agency -- of what Hitler was up to.

*emergency

ty alfred---the reason i mentioned the DRC is because it is a situation that ought ONLY to appeal to the US' more nobler interests, and it doesn't, because we don't actually have any

is genocide a western value

lol stop it max

max, are you okay?

I'm sorry, Alfred, but you're wrong on this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Karski

lolling at max, here

is the socratic method a western value

...which is why i can't help but roll my eyes at ppl saying "good stuff" comes from wars, as though that EVER enters into whatever calculations we performed beforehand

lol crut

Is there a breakdown somewhere of how much federal money CA spends?

all of it

In 1942 Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments on the situation in Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust of the Jews. He had also carried from Poland a microfilm with further informations from the Underground Movement on the extermination of European Jews in German occupied Poland. The Polish Foreign Minister, Count Edward Raczynski, provided on this basis the Allies with one of the earliest and most accurate accounts of the Holocaust.[3] Jan Karski met with Polish politicians in exile including the prime minister, as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN, SP, SL, Jewish Bund and Poalei Zion. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. In 1943 in London he met the then much known journalist Arthur Koestler. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His report was a major factor in informing the West.

tbh i almost wrote something about genocide as a western value upthread in a petulant moment; i think if max had avoided "is sui generis a western value" he would have been completely otm/lolsy in this thread

Is there a breakdown somewhere of how much federal money CA spends?

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/federal-taxing-and-spending-benefit-some-states-leave-others-paying-bill-58481717.html

admittedly minnesota has even more reason to secede!

can I just ask a question here: what is reality

shit, sorry, looking for the cannabis politics thread

Koestler! crazy. didn't know that

Mordy, this was 1943. I know about Karski -- I specifically mentioned 1939 and 1940.

is being otm/lolsy a western value

is stopping it a western value

...which is why i can't help but roll my eyes at ppl saying "good stuff" comes from wars, as though that EVER enters into whatever calculations we performed beforehand

Um. Presumably the people entering into the wars have objectives that they want to achieve that they consider "good", otherwise it's kind of less about "waging war" and more about "indiscriminately killing people for no discernible reason" and regardless of how I feel about Iraq II or what Afghanistan has become, I would be hard-pressed to describe either as THAT.

Alfred, my point is that the US knew about the genocide before entering the war. They did.

and may I suggest, rather cynically, I guess, that it suddenly made more sense for FDR to care about the "conditions" within Poland after the war in the European theatre had already started to turn in the Allies' favor?

what is reality

a western value foisted on hapless poorer countries via colonialist militaries

WHOAWHOAWHOA this responds to way upthread but I've had to edit for confidentiality...

Development issues are cropping up in my social life. Strangely, a friend of mine here is from the family of the man who won the most recent Somaliland elections, and he was recently there observing the way people are circling for mineral rights of various kinds as another relative will shortly become the economics minister. He felt that the most important thing to do was to make sure the neocolonialists don't find some way to steal resources, and he thought that would be best done by selling franchises to various rights. The words were "they can rent a gift shop, but we own the hotel."

What was giving him the megaLULZ was that some of the players trying to have at these things are the parents of some of his friends, so he says he's gained the most wonderful insight into what kind of people they are by how their kids have been raised, and is reporting to his family accordingly. He also reports O HILAR incidents where he appears in a group of other rich kids and the parents themselves give him strange 'you don't belong here' looks because they just see Somali in tracksuit and not their kids' peer n every way. Also reported to the family, who will of course be noting which parents bring their game face to meet Somalis in suits.

'strangely'

Yes, Alfred! I agree, people don't care enough about genocide! Like, what are you going to prove? That people suck? I know people suck. xp

a friend of mine here is from the family of the man who won the most recent Somaliland elections

suzy this is your best namedrop ever, a++

lol we all need to move to DC

btw

Congo crisis

is caring a western value

I've lived near DC. It is NOT a western value. Although there is a Best Western.

i know this will be lost and the subject will not be changed, but what the hell...

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/08/change_the_senate_blasphemy_ch.html

Change the Senate? Blasphemy! Change the Constitution? Why not?

Lately, Republicans have been shocked and appalled that Democrats are even considering arguments that could lead to them considering changes to the Senate's rulebook. At the same time, Republicans are planning to introduce no fewer than two major amendments to the United States Constitution. One would change the way the country grants citizenship. The other would remove Congress's discretion to run budget deficits and surpluses. And both these changes would be to the Constitution, which the Founders made very difficult to change, rather than to the Senate's rules, which they made very easy to change.

I think the word you're looking for here is "principled."

By Ezra Klein | August 9, 2010; 3:13 PM ET

looks like our ability to alter that situation is about as likely as altering the past.

hey is there actually a poltiical philosophy thread maybe if i post there some people will answer my questiosn

a western value foisted on hapless poorer countries via colonialist militaries

fuckin A

there is in fact such a thread!

u guys already talked about the george packer article, right? cause i just finished it and am ready to be pissed off.

can someone link me to it so that i can continue my interrogation of western values

i want to perform a stalinist purge of the US senate from our history.

no such body has ever existed, that whole side of the building has always been our national broom closet.

is google a western value

Yeah, there's also the House GOP pushing a resolution to not allow the lame duck House to do anything after the November elections, since the GOP is convinced it will gain seats if not a majority, and we wouldn't want to buck the will of the voters. Remembering of course, that the GOP-led lame-duck House in 1998 IMPEACHED THE FUCKING PRESIDENT after losing the majority in the election.

goole otm

j/k max: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/09/100809fa_fact_packer

haha i meant the political philosophy thread

totally familiar with the western values espoused by the senate

About 20,000 people have died in Afghanistan, correct? Around 9,000 civilians. About 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War, 406,000 Americans died in WW2, etc, etc, lots of big casualty numbers in different wars. If suddenly I can't say that sometimes people die, and good things still come of it, then basically I have to reread all of history. Was the Civil War not worth having? Should we not have entered WW2? Like this is a little reductive and purposely challopsy, but I think there's a point here which is: People dying in a war sucks, but you have to be willing to look at more than just who killed who. I would never feel comfortable saying 620,000 lives are worth ending slavery in X country, or 9,000 lives are worth creating a public school system -- these aren't calculations moral human beings should make. But we can "put aside" for a moment the deaths and see if there is any value occurring elsewhere. I don't know if this war is going to get rid of the Taliban -- I'm not hopeful. But re: Shakey's link above, it's hard to say that this isn't something worth fighting for. (Maybe you can argue that we shouldn't be fighting -- that's kinda dyao's position, that we have no right. And maybe you can argue that the net worth isn't worth it, that maybe we'll be sacrificing too much good we could've done by squandering it here -- that's kinda a realist foreign policy perspective.)

― Mordy, Monday, August 9, 2010 2:20 PM (1 hour ago)

you write like bill o'reilly, fwiw

I would not read that New Yorker article unless you got a few Tuinals and a bottle of Jameson ready ready for the aftermath.

god i can't believe i just realized that
xp

the reasons we have one 'california' and yet two 'dakotas' remain mysterious even to our finest scholars. luckily this has little effect on the governance of our great nation.