Emo Phillips Quote of the Day

When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.

Permalink 11:38 AM

In New Orleans, Katrina Aftermath

NEW ORLEANS, AFTER LEVEE BROKE
(Photo via Steve Gilliard).

It was a mistake to breathe a sigh of relief when the storm passed, because the worst was yet to come. Although New Orleans escaped from the worst-case scenario of being flooded from the ocean due to storm surge, it was flooded from the other direction, as the rain-swollen lakes and rivers (particularly Lake Pontchartrain, which is almost as big as a Great Lake), overflowed. New Orlean's levee system was unable to handle the strain, and one of the levees broke.

Steve Gilliard has several articles about the aftermath of Katrina, including the discrepancy between the way the media describes black and white victims. He shows two different news service photos, one showing a black man wading through water with a bag of groceries, another showing a white couple wading through water with a bag of groceries. The first picture's caption: "A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store...". The second picture's caption: "Two residents wade through chest-deep after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store...".

Permalink 11:07 AM

Emo Phillips Quote of the Day

When I was a kid my parents used to tell me: "Don't go near the cellar door, Emo!" One day when they were away, I went to the door and opened it...and I saw birds and trees..."

Permalink 11:36 AM

There, but for the Grace of God

Or maybe it was just the luck o' the devil. With thanks to Altercation.

Permalink 10:58 PM

Shi'ites vs Shi'ites in Iraq

From Reuters via YahooNews:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A power struggle in
Iraq between powerful Shi'ite factions could complicate efforts to stabilize the country as it heads toward a referendum on its new draft constitution, officials said.

Clashes that erupted last week between supporters of a powerful Shi'ite party in the governing coalition and militiamen loyal to a maverick Shi'ite cleric brought into public view long-standing faultlines in Iraqi politics.

What an incredible mess! Our best-case scenario for Iraq has gone from

• The Iraqis will welcome us as liberators, and will become a peaceful, model democracy.

to

• The Shi'ites and Kurds will eagerly welcome democracy, while the Sunnis might resent their loss of status.

to

• It'll be a war of every group against every other group.

[update] Just another comment: For years, the complaint conservatives have had with liberals is that they never allow for unintended consequences. Liberals think that it is enough for your intentions to be noble. With the war in Iraq, it seems that the worst tendencies of liberals have infected the neocons...

Permalink 6:13 PM

Emo Phillips Joke of the Day

[possibly apocryphal]

Houses make strange noises at night like creak, groan and "Emo, I'm going to kill you." ...So I remembered what my mother told me, "Whenever you feel afraid just whistle a happy tune... [whistling] ...then I felt a hand around my throat and a voice said, "Thanks. I thought I'd never find you in the dark."

Permalink 4:50 PM

Maybe GW Bush Isn't a Nice Guy?

The other day, I was riding in the car with daughter Bridget, and we passed a car with a John Kerry bumpersticker. Bridget asked me if I was sad that John Kerry lost. I said that I was. Bridget then added, sagely: "George Bush is a good man, he's just not a good President."

Obviously, she didn't invent this distinction. She either heard me or Connie say it, or else she generalized from the Wizard of Oz movie: "I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad wizard."

I work really hard at not personally disliking those I disagree with politically. My take on George W. Bush has always been that he is just a man out of his depths. He doesn't have the vision to lead a country, and doesn't have the mental rigor to think through the consequences of his policies. But he isn't a bad guy.

Every once in a while, though, tidbits in the news provide little glimpses into his soul, and I wonder if maybe he really is a nasty guy.

The biggest one, of course, was his attitude towards those he put to death as governor of Texas:

Bush went further when he joked about Karla Faye Tucker's desperate plea for life, which had been aired on Larry King Live. During an interview with Talk Magazine, Bush mocked Karla Faye, whimpering "Please, don't kill me" in an imitation of her voice.

More recently, a recent article by Doug Tompson of Capitol Hill Blue details Bush's temper and intolerance. Some quotes:

• “I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan...


• Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.”


• “Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Of course, this kind of nastiness is not unheard of in politics. LBJ in particular was equally foul-tempered and foul-mouthed. Of course, LBJ had the decency not to run for re-election.

Permalink 8:41 PM

Impliedly--Is That Even A Word?

Republicans like to claim to be champions of state's rights. And in fact they do champion state's rights--as long as the state is promoting the interests of corporate America and white male elites--as when a state wants to weaken environmental regulations or civil rights protections. But they are just as quick to oppose state's rights--if the state wants to do something that is not in the interest of corporate America or tries to broaden civil rights (such as by legalizing gay marriage). Most recent case in point, as noted by Think Progress: "A state law that seeks to reduce motor vehicle carbon dioxide emissions is both expressly and impliedly preempted." This is from the administration's proposed CAFE standards.

Permalink 7:39 PM

Whoops!

Via the Rude Pundit

On August 7, former Justice Dept. prosecutor John Loftus announced on Fox News that alleged terrorist mastermind Iyad K. Hilal, thought to be connected with the July bombing of the London transit system, lived in La Habra, California. Then Mr. Loftus gave out the exact address where this terrorist lives.

Unfortunately for all concerned, Hilal has not lived in La Habra for three years, but the family that currently lives at that address has been harrassed and their home has been vandalized (someone spray-painted the word "Terrist" on it).

Fox News is a menace.

Permalink 2:23 PM

AP Changes its story about Robertson

This is interesting. In the Google cache of an AP story about Robertson is the following paragraph:

The 75-year-old religious broadcaster has made controversial statements in the past. In October 2003, he suggested that the State Department be blown up with a nuclear device. He has also said that feminism encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."

This paragraph is missing from the most recent version of the AP story.

Maybe God put some pressure on AP?

Permalink 2:31 PM

Neglected economics posts at Through The Looking Glass

These are old articles, but I just read them recently, and I think they deserve more attention. Charles Dodgson has a number of articles about the economics of globalization:

1. Why isn't the "oil curse" just comparative advantage at work? This article suggests that the economic theory of "comparative advantage" might explain why countries with oil resources (Nigeria, for example) will fail to develop other industries. (the "oil curse")


2. If a country's comparative advantage is in dirt farming, how can it still industrialize under unrestricted free trade?


3. Innovation in England in the 1950s created jobs somewhere else. What makes innovation here and now different? One argument in favor of globalization is that while some jobs may be outsourced, the good jobs (high-paying, innovative, creative) will still be around for Americans. Charles points out that this is wishful thinking (ignoring history) and/or chauvinism (to believe that only Americans can do the creative stuff).


4. Why do trade treaty regulatory bodies have the right to review environmental policy, but not monetary policy?

Like Charles, I am skeptical of the claims that globalization and lifting of all trade barriers will make everyone better off through the miracle of the marketplace.

Permalink 12:58 PM

Public Service Announcement

Okay, I don't speak Spanish, but I have the vague idea that this is a plea to save the turtles (tortugas). I'm just posting this as an environmentalist.

[Update]

According to AP,

In this photo relased by private U.S. conservation group Wildcoast on Tuesday Ayg. 23, 2005 , Argentine model Dorismar poses for a publicity campaign poster aimed at halting the illegal consumption of endangered turtles' eggs in Mexico. The campaign has run into trouble before even starting, with a women's rights group asking government officials to block public announcements featuring the scantily clad model. The text reads: 'My man doesnt need turtle eggs. Because he knows it doesnt make him more potent.'(AP Photo/Wildcoast,HO)

Permalink 11:28 PM

Taliban makes a comeback

By Jonathan S. Landay, Knight Ridder Newspapers
(via YahooNews)

KABUL,
Afghanistan - Nearly four years after a U.S.-led military intervention toppled them from power, the Taliban has re-emerged as a potent threat to stability in Afghanistan.

Just to make our war-fighting failures complete...

It seems to me that we are so good at toppling governments---it only took a few days for Afghanistan and a couple of weeks for Iraq---yet so bad at keeping the peace afterwards.

Permalink 10:09 PM

Five Years without a Veto

As pointed out in this Christian Science Monitor article, Bush has not yet vetoed a single bill passed by Congress, after 5 years in office. This record is unprecedented in modern US history. Typically, there is quite a bit of fighting between the President and Congress, even when the President's party is the majority party in Congress. That was the case during Clinton's first two years in office (1993, 1994). In contrast, Bush and the Republican congress get along distressingly well.

"We're pretty close to a parliamentary government," says G. Calvin Mackenzie, professor of government at Colby College in Watervillle, Maine, referring to Congress's close alignment with the executive branch. "We don't have much recent history with that."

This harmony might be disrupted by an upcoming bill on stem-cell research, which Bush has threatened to veto.

Permalink 9:54 PM

Pat Robertson Apologizes...to whom?

AP via YahooNews:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson apologized Wednesday for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, only hours after he denied saying Chavez should be killed.

"Is it right to call for assassination?" Robertson said. "No, and I apologize for that statement. I spoke in frustration that we should accommodate the man who thinks the U.S. is out to kill him."...

On Monday's telecast of his Christian Broadcasting Network show "The 700 Club," Robertson had said: "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Is Robertson apologizing to Chavez? When a public figure apologizes for something that he has said, it's often unclear to me whether he means:

I regret any harm my words may have caused to others

or

I regret any harm my words may have caused to me.

Robertson's apology seems more like the latter type.

It's a paradox: Jesus was all about being good, loving your enemies, loving your neighbor, taking care of the poor, serving others; but those who most loudly talk about Jesus and God are (with very few exceptions) boors, hypocrites, bigots, jerks.

Permalink 8:35 PM

Matthew Yglesias' Thought of the Day

Commenting on his trip to Iceland, Matthew says:

Just because your electric bear trimmer says it can operate on European voltages doesn't mean that it can, in fact, operate on such voltages...

Permalink 8:27 PM

Bush's Popularity Plummets across the South

As reported in the Southern studies blog Facing South, President Bush's approval ratings are pretty low across all the Southern states. He only is above the 50% mark in Alabama and Texas, while he is below 50% in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky,Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

The South, of course, was Bush's only solid stronghold in 2000 and 2004. (The noncoastal western states went for him, as well, but there aren't that many electoral votes in Nebraska, Utah, Montana, etc.) I would take heart from these numbers except for the fact that he's not running for re-election. Maybe we could quickly pass a Constitutional amendment allowing him to run a third time, just so we can get the pleasure of rejecting him at the polls.

Permalink 8:42 AM

Bickering on the Right

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott blames his fall from power in 2002 on a “personal betrayal” by an ambitious Sen. Bill Frist, his successor, adding in a new book that President Bush, Colin Powell and other GOP associates played a role.

This kind of intra-party bickering can only be destructive. But it's okay if Republicans do it. Really, go ahead.

Permalink 11:36 PM

The World's Best Bagels

My wife and I agree that the world's best bagels come from Montreal. A physicist, Jacques Distler agrees. He kindly points out a web page where you can order Montreal bagels online: St Viateur Bagel, but alas, they only ship within Canada.


Montreal Bagels 

Permalink 6:24 PM

Bush Campaign Official Accused of Voter Suppression

James Tobin, the president's 2004 campaign chairman for New England, is charged in New Hampshire federal court with four felonies accusing him of conspiring with a state GOP official and a GOP consultant in Virginia to jam Democratic and labor union get-out-the-vote phone banks in November 2002.

A telephone firm was paid to make repeated hang-up phone calls to overwhelm the phone banks in New Hampshire and prevent them from getting Democratic voters to the polls on Election Day 2002, prosecutors allege. Republican John Sununu won a close race that day to be New Hampshire's newest senator.

Permalink 5:05 PM

What a Maroon

Donald Luskin does a thing he calls "The Krugman Truth Squad." Think "Swift Boat Veterans For Truth," or "fair and balanced," or "I'm going to change the tone of politics in Washington," and you get the general idea. My mother has noticed that it is a popular marketing tactic to promote a product as the opposite of what it is--like a particularly soggy cereal that bills itself as staying crunchy in milk. Madison Avenue has nothing on conservative hacks.

Luskin's latest piece is particularly illustrative. He starts by complaining that "One of the Left’s sleaziest rhetorical tricks is to discredit conservative ideals by claiming they are based on religious beliefs...." or "faith based." and follows by citing a few conservative nostrums that he claims are based in science--without providing any scientific bases for the claim.

One claim that he makes is that recent economic performance provides: "scientific, empirical, real-world proof. Supply-side economics works. Lower tax rates, higher economic growth, and higher tax revenues go hand in hand in hand." Let's see... taxes were raised in '93 and '94, followed by a booming economy and rising tax revenue. Taxes were cut in the late 90's, and the economy and growth of revenue began to slow, peeking in 2000. The government lowered taxes further in 2001 and every year since, and tax revenue continued to decline until this year. After five years of declining taxes and tax revenue, the economy is finally growing faster than tax rates are dropping--and this proves that lowering taxes will result in higher tax revenue?

Yeah, and spinning my belt over my head will make it rain--eventually.

Another claim Luskin makes, with even less evidence, is that the taxes Krugman recently called for (28% of GDP), "can’t be done." To support this claim he points out that: "federal income tax rates have, at one time, topped 90 percent" and still didn't bring in 28% of GDP. Noting that Krugman has called even 70% marginal rates insane, he asks: "So if rates even worse than insane won’t do it, what will?" But surely Mr. Luskin knows that the United States has never had a 90% across the board tax rate. That rate only applied to the richest of the rich, and it was accompanied by numerous loopholes and deductions, so that almost no one ever paid the top rate.

It's as if he leaps from the observation that say, a 90% tax on income over $1 billion would yield less than 1% of GDP (probably true, but only a guesstimate on my part), to the conclusion that 2% of GDP is unattainable (obviously false, we get 17% of GDP today). Calling that kind of claim "faith based" is unfair--to people of faith! It's being unfairly generous to the people who make such groundless claims and try to pass them off as science.

Speaking as a person of faith, I take umbrage at the association. There is a big difference between having faith in a belief, and pretending that a belief is a scientific theory or has been proven scientifically. For one thing, people of faith do not take offense (or pretend to take offense) when their faith is called faith. Who wants to rename "The Affirmation of Faith" "The Proof Of Our Immaculate Theory?" Not me. And I certainly do not want to call someone else's theory "faith"--especially if he does not have enough faith in it to call it that himself.

But then what should we call claims such as: "Lower tax rates, higher economic growth, and higher tax revenues go hand in hand in hand" or "[a given tax rate] can't be done," when they are offered as scientific theories or even proven facts, but for which their proponents offer virtually no supporting evidence or logic? My suggestion: "luskinisms" or the adjective form: "luskinesque."

Permalink 11:34 PM

The Dread Pirate Bin Laden

Via Rich Magahiz in comments (thanks):

How thinking of terrorists as pirates can help win the war on terror.

By Douglas R. Burgess Jr.

INTERNATIONAL LAW LACKS A DEFINITION FOR TERRORISM as a crime. According to Secretary General Kofi Annan, this lack has hampered "the moral authority of the United Nations and its strength in condemning" the scourge.

But attempts to provide a definition have failed because of terrorists' strangely hybrid status in the law. They are neither ordinary criminals nor recognized state actors, so there is almost no international or domestic law dealing with them. This gives an out to countries that harbor terrorists and declare them "freedom fighters." It also lets the United States flout its own constitutional safeguards by holding suspects captive indefinitely at Guantánamo Bay. The overall situation is, in a word, anarchic...What is needed now is a framework for an international crime of terrorism...

Coming up with such a framework would perhaps seem impossible, except that one already exists. Dusty and anachronistic, perhaps, but viable all the same. More than 2,000 years ago, Marcus Tullius Cicero defined pirates in Roman law as hostis humani generis, "enemies of the human race." From that day until now, pirates have held a unique status in the law as international criminals subject to universal jurisdiction—meaning that they may be captured wherever they are found, by any person who finds them. The ongoing war against pirates is the only known example of state vs. nonstate conflict until the advent of the war on terror, and its history is long and notable. More important, there are enormous potential benefits of applying this legal definition to contemporary terrorism.

Read the rest in Legal Affairs.

Permalink 3:07 PM

Make sure your son doesn't turn out gay

Helpful advice from James Dobson: (via Bradford Plumer)

[T]he boy's father has to do his part. He needs to mirror and affirm his son's maleness. He can play rough-and-tumble games with his son, in ways that are decidedly different from the games he would play with a little girl. He can help his son learn to throw and catch a ball. He can teach him to pound a square wooden peg into a square hole in a pegboard. He can even take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger.

Permalink 5:49 PM

Kathleen Parker, Ignoramus

Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker is one of my least favorite people. Her columns are ignorant, bigoted and mean-spirited, and yet she ladels out this tripe as if it were just plain common sense.
[Click permalink to read more...]

Just among her recent columns are: A column warning that same-sex marriage is a step towards fascism, many columns demonizing and/or ridiculing Hilary Clinton (here, here, here and here), a column suggesting that maybe Islam is just an evil religion, a column in which she wonders aloud what is controversial about teaching intelligent design in schools. Kathleen isn't as famous as Rush Limbaugh or Michelle Malkin, but in my opinion, she deserves to be. I wouldn't pay her much attention, except for the fact that her column is published in the Ithaca Journal, which is such a skimpy paper that I feel like I have to read every article to get my money's worth.

Her most recent column is another polemic against gay marriage. It's quite bizarre. She argues that gay marriage (and in particular, gay parenthood) is a step on the slippery slope towards "the elimination of any biological/procreative connection to parenthood". Well, I'm not gay, but I have four adopted children. For me, there is no biological/procreative connection to parenthood. For all practical purposes, parents are the people who raise you. I don't see how gay couples are any more of a threat to the traditional biological notion of parenthood than adoptive parents are.

She goes on to say the following

As long as children are viewed as mere extensions of our selves, put here to satisfy some narcissistic need for self-actualization, it is easy to suppose that our needs and their needs are complementary.

Narcissistic? How is a gay couple wanting to have a child any more narcissistic than a heterosexual couple wanting to have a child?

Whether you are gay or straight, you may be completely unselfish about taking care of your child, but whatever steps you took to get a child were motivated by your desire for children. How could it be otherwise?

Her other so-called point was about birth certificates: The current birth certificates have slots for mother and father. Allowing gay parents changes this to "Parent" and "Second Parent". So blankety-blank what?

It does bring up a strange thing that I have discovered about birth certificates. In the case of adoptive parents, in many communities in the US it is possible to get official fake birth certificates that make it appear that the child is not adopted. It might be that it is nobody's business whether a kid is adopted or not, but I don't like the idea of lying on official forms.

Permalink 10:43 AM

Hiroshima

Sixty years ago, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending World War II. Those bombs killed 120,000 civilians instantly, and another quarter of a million died later due to the after-effects.
[Click permalink to read more...]

(This is a variant of a comment I made on the BattlePanda blog.)

Okay, I'm a little bit hesitant to say anything about Hiroshima; the enormity of what happened there is almost beyond words. On the other hand, there isn't much point in remembering the past if we don't try to take it into account. I'm afraid that what I'm going to say will offend some (I'm not too worried about it, since I only have two or three readers...)

In the middle of this Global War on Terror® we really need to get clear in our minds: What is terrorism? Was the US commiting acts of terrorism when we bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden, Berlin, Cambodia? What about the "Shock and Awe" campaign in Iraq? I'm sure that to some, asking such questions makes me anti-American, but it's really hard for me to understand what is the point of political freedom, if not to question decisions made by our government.

Were these bombings terrorism?

The rule of thumb that we've been going by recently is that terrorism is intentional infliction of harm on civilians in order to weaken a nation's resolve or to convince them to change their policies. I don't see any way to look at the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and see anything other than terrorism.

The intent was to terrorize the Japanese people, to weaken their resolve to keep fighting. There was no other purpose. That doesn't mean that I disagree with the claim that fewer lives were lost in the atomic bomb blast than would have been lost in a conventional endgame.

So what does it mean if we defend the bombing of Hiroshima, but condemn terrorism? I think it's a little muddled, and not as straight-forward as saying that the ends never justify the means. Obviously, we don't really believe that.

Our real beef with terrorists is either that we don't approve of the ends (which we certainly don't in the case of Islamic extremists), or else we think that they are doing their cost-benefit analysis wrong (even if the ends are admirable, they might not be worth the massive loss of civilian life).

There's another aspect of killing civilians that I have trouble getting a firm grip on: Is there a moral difference between an action that you know will have 10,000 innocent civilian casualties as "collateral damage", and an action that intentionally kills 10,000 civilians? If so, why?

Permalink 9:40 PM

Netanyahu Resigns over Gaza Pullout

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resigned from his post Sunday to protest next week's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank...

I never particularly liked Ariel Sharon, but if he has Benjamin Netanyahu mad at him, he can't be all bad...

Permalink 1:21 PM

Down, down, down (Savings rate)

From the Christian Science Monitor via YahooNews:

Americans have stopped saving for a rainy day. Instead, they are living paycheck to paycheck, depending on credit cards to get them through emergencies, and hoping that the rising value of their homes will give them a retirement nest egg.

This personal economic chasm is showing up in the national savings rate, which has been declining for years. Tuesday, the Commerce Department reported that the personal savings rate fell to zero in June, the lowest since a one-month buying binge in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

I'm not a bit surprised, but I don't really take this to be a character flaw. The reason that past generations saved so much was because that was the only way to afford things like cars, major appliances, etc. With the ease of credit today, there is no incentive to save, other than the sense of security that it gives you. But people don't believe in that kind of security any more. No matter how much you save, it can all be wiped out by a major illness or similar catastrophe such as your kid going to a private university.

Permalink 12:05 PM

Good news on Jobs

From Reuters via YahooNews:

U.S. job growth picked up last month as employers added 207,000 workers to their payrolls, a healthy gain that outstripped Wall Street expectations, a government report showed on Friday.

Yay! Don't let it be said that I never have good news.

I noticed though, that the Dow lost a little---maybe good news for workers is taken as bad news for business.

Permalink 12:00 PM

Less-controversial approach to stem cells

From Reuters (via YahooNews):

Scientists looking for easier and less-controversial alternatives to stem cells from human embryos said on Friday they found a potential source in placentas saved during childbirth.

They described primitive cells found in a part of the placenta called the amnion, which they coaxed into forming a variety of cell types and which look very similar to sought-after embryonic stem cells.

Permalink 11:58 AM

Down, down, down (Bush's numbers)

Bush's approval rating drops some more, to just 42%. On his handling of Iraq, only 38% think he is doing a good job. On his honesty, only 48% of those polled characterize him as honest, while 50% disagree.

Permalink 11:44 AM

Bush Calls for Teaching Intelligent Design

President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and 'intelligent design' Monday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life. . .

I have no comment, except Arrrgggg!!!!

Permalink 6:39 PM

IRA Disarms

Some good news! The Irish Republican Army has renounced the use of violence.

I have always been sympathetic to the cause of Irish nationalism, having read about how the Irish have suffered at the hands of the British, especially the harsh anti-Catholic measures adopted under Cromwell and perpetuated until the 19th century. On the other hand, the IRA has been one of the most brutal organizations in modern history. I hope that the IRAs can keep their vow, and I hope that the Unionists reciprocate.

Permalink 10:39 AM