Squashed

month

July 2010

Who are we to judge the Taliban?

Robot-Heart Politics wrote a thought-provoking reply to my previous post on Afghanistan. Robot-Heart challenges my assumption that any intervention into another country and culture can ever be positive. I am about as ambivalent as possible on Afghanistan. While I disagree with many of Robot Heart’s arguments—I don’t totally disagree with her conclusion. I’m all for...

What’s up with the opposition to the Islamic center that’s vaguely close to ground zero? What’s the concern? Can somebody who opposes it explain it to me?

It’s important to understand arguments we disagree with. Otherwise, it is impossible to engage them and we’re stuck with a shouting match.

We aren't so noble as we pretend

I hear we should withdraw from Afghanistan for the sake of the Afghan people. I hear we should stay in Afghanistan for the sake of the Afghan people. Whatever we do in Afghanistan, we should do it for the sake of the Afghan people. But whatever we do, that won’t be the primary reason we do it. If we stay, it will be mostly because we’re afraid of losing face and losing international...

Reactions to Time Magazine's Cover

The knee-jerk reactions to Time Magazine’s cover of a mutilated woman have been … telling. The heart-wrenching image of Aisha, whose nose and ears were cut off by order of the Taliban when she tried to flee abuse affects us. It should affect us. And we would be better served by reflecting on what it means in the context of our continued war effort than to scramble to fit it into our...

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips....”

– From “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus, 1883. I wonder if Lindsey Graham will put a bill in congress to remove this sonnet from the statue of liberty while he’s trying to amend the constitution to make citizenship less egalatarian.

“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced Wednesday night that he is considering...”

– Politico Because apparently the 14th Amendment went too far with the whole abolition of arbitrary boundaries thing …

“A federal judge has blocked one of the most controversial sections of a tough...”

Consumer Finance Legislation

Unsolicited Analysis and I are unlikely to agree on many things—because we understand the world in fundamentally different ways. He writes: Consumer finance legislation is the worst argument in the world, because you have to argue in code. Credit cards take money from irresponsible people and give it to sharks. That’s how the system works. I pay off my AMEX and AMEX sends me on vacation...

“Why so bitter? Switch banks if you don’t like it.”

– Mike Hudack on my previous post on over draft fees. I work in legal services. I have clients who are literally charged thousands of dollars a year in overdraft fees for the twin crimes of poverty and financial illiteracy. Their homes are now in foreclosure. They may lose their house because the...

I did not give you money the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee the first fifty-nine times they emailed me. Why would I change my mind on the sixtieth attempt?

Credit Cards Take From Poor, Give to the Rich -... →

robot-heart-politics: abbyjean: A new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston says merchant fees and reward programs offered by many credit-card issuers essentially take money from those who have the least and give it to those who have the most. The imbalance may have to be remedied via government intervention, the authors, Scott Schuh, Oz Shy and Joana Stavins, argued. The paper was...

“Why did I check out a disease apocalypse book? I work on nuclear apocalypse.”

– Carolyn, whose work is way cooler than mine.

Secrecy after WikiLeaks

Secrets aren’t always a bad. We can generally demand transparency while acknowledging that there are places where privacy or security require that certain things remain hidden. Even WikiLeaks, which has blown a few secrets that perhaps ought to have remained secret acknowledges the importance of protecting the identity of its whistleblowers. For better or worse, the Internet has made...

apoplecticskeptic asked: I am in an ongoing facebook conversation with an old friend who is a Christian and leans rather Right in his politics. I challenged him for being naive and quite xenophobic on some current national issues, especially with regard to his denouncing the proposed mosque in NYC, and he responded with :

"Point me to the articles or speeches where Muslim leaders condemn jihad against...

The Republican’s new-found insistence that the deficit is the biggest problem facing the country is absurd. Their solution to double-digit unemployment appears to be…elect Republicans who will maybe reveal their secret way to stimulate job growth without spending any money. Fixing the deficit means fixing the Tax base. And that means fixing the economy.

“Heat Advisory … Flash Flood Warning … Severe Thunderstorm Watch...”

– Weather.com’s scrolling severe weather warning can’t decide what to warn me about first. I’m waiting for either “Plague of Frogs” or “Apocalypse Watch.”

“After the Shirley Sherrod episode, there’s no longer any need to mince words: A...”

– Eugene Robinson (via azspot) (via robot-heart-politics)

“That’s not called rape. I didn’t rape her in the forest and throw...”

– Saber Kashour, husband and father of two, who pled guilty to rape by deception. Berezina writes, The man claims she was deceived by his nickname, Dudu, which is normally Jewish, and that he didn’t explicitly lie to her. She didn’t seek rape charges when he failed to call her the next day, only...

More on Rape and False Pretenses

In response to my post that defrauding somebody into having sex with you is unethical and should be illegal, Jonathan-Cunningham writes: That’s ridiculous and you know it. Can you name any other instance that a man was convicted of rape in Israel for lying about something trivial, like parentage or finances? He was convicted because of his race and for no other reason. If a black man was...

Rape and False Pretenses

The case of the Israeli Palestinian who was convicted of rape after falsely telling a Jewish woman that he too was Jewish has raised a lot of interesting questions. Some see it as further proof that Israel is a horribly racist society. Their logic goes something like this. 1) This bad thing that happened to a Palestinian man shows that Israel is racist. 2) Okay, fine, maybe he was a bit rapey. 3)...

“An Arab man convicted in Israel of rape because he pretended he was a Jew when...”

– BBC News - Israeli Arab who ‘raped’ a woman says verdict ‘racist’ (via curate, inascaldingjoy,robot-heart-politics) In many jurisdictions “sex under false pretenses” constitutes rape. (PDF) I’m not terribly sympathetic to the Arab man. If consent is obtained by deceit, it’s not consent. And Not...

“An Arab man convicted in Israel of rape because he pretended he was a Jew when...”

– BBC News - Israeli Arab who ‘raped’ a woman says verdict ‘racist’ (via curate, inascaldingjoy,robot-heart-politics) In many jurisdictions “sex under false pretenses” constitutes rape. (PDF) I’m not terribly sympathetic to the Arab man. If consent is obtained by deceit, it’s...

“With all of the environmental and health reasons, and on top of that, the...”

– shshh (via Robot Heart: Sex, Religion, and Politics) As Robot-Heart points out, there are options between not caring about some of the worst elements of the dairy industry and completely abstaining from milk. You could buy organic milk, for example, which at least has some minimum requirements for...

White House Intervenes in Firing of Civil Servant... →

I don’t have a lot to say on this matter, other than to express my disgust at the lengths of deceit and manipulation certain conservatives will go to to bolster the paranoid delusion that the Obama administration is somehow systemically and maliciously discriminating against white people.

unsolicitedanalysis and I still disagree on whether preventing GM’s collapse was a mistake. I think that even if it cost tax payers a few billion it prevented an almost inconceivably bad catastrophe. squashed: “Surely.” Huh. You sound pretty confident that Toyota would magically and rapidly build a whole bunch of new factories, instantly retool them, and hire on a bunch of employees....

I too am sort of curious ..

Robot-Heart has queried her followers on how old she was—and either because I’m also curious or because I’m having trouble remembering, I’ll ask the Internet the same question: How old am I?

Making Home Affordable Program Update

Crazynutjob has read through the latest HAMP performance report (pdf warning) and has some thoughts. He takes issue with the following statement: Approximately 45% of homeowners in canceled trials entered an alternative modification, based on survey data from the eight largest HAMP participants. Fewer than 2% of homeowners in canceled trials went to foreclosure sale. For the first time in a...

Elizabeth Warren Could Head CFPB Without Senate... →

crazynutjob: This would bring the grand total number of competent regulators to 1. If CrazyNutJob and I agree on something it’s either an unambiguously great idea or an unambiguously terrible idea.

Anonymous asked: Why do you think growing public approval of Obama's major reform efforts, like the health bill, has failed to translate to his personal numbers? I am enormously happy with him because of what he's managed to accomplish in spite of things. He's not perfect, but he's bending the government-effectiveness curve back up, so to speak. What's everyone else's problem?

Stimulus and Heroin

I replied to Unsolicited Analysis’s previous post about seeking an intellectually sound alternative to Keynes: I think the large but temporary stimulus and targetted regulation is the intellectual life raft. You don’t like it. Many people don’t. But you’re in the odd curious position of realizing that “tax cuts” isn’t an intellectually defensible alternative. Keynsian economics...

“Part of the problem is people go into journalism because they are “word people”...”

– Reddit (via nickdouglas) (via unsolicitedanalysis)

Wall Street Reform and Lobbyists

As I’ve said before, I’m almost ecstatically happy over the Wall Street Reform Bill. I’m puzzled why I’m so lonely in my excitement. My guess is that it’s a combination of a few things. Financial stuff is boring and complicated. Even if people are paying attention, there are too many numbers for many people to feel comfortable. WALL STREET = BAD = WHERE’S MY...

An Open Letter to Glenn Beck: We're Sending You... →

(via azspot) Serene Jones here. I’m President of Union Theological Seminary in New York, home of James Cone, the scholar featured on your liberation theology program this week. I write with exciting news. Bibles are en route to you, even as we speak! Kindly let me explain. On your show, you said that social justice is not in the Bible, anywhere. Oh my, Mr. Beck. At first we were so confused. We...

Presidential Accomplishments

Thus far, Obama has passed three very significant and potentially transformative bits of legislation: The stimulus Health care reform The financial reform bill The Republicans didn’t want any of them. The far left was unhappy about some of the compromises. But they’re all huge. And they’re all exciting—if not as exciting as some had hoped. (“But I didn’t...

Sarah Palin and Mel Gibson are both in (various degrees) of hot water for using bad words. In both cases, even if a better word was used, the broader statements would be just as awful. Why is so much attention concentrated on the bad word? Is it that we can agree that everybody agrees that using forbidden or imaginary words is bad? Why the obsession over relatively technical transgressions in the...

This week in the Tea Party

The NAACP called on the Tea Party to distance itself from some of its racist elements. Mark Williams, Tea Party Express spokesman, called the NAACP a party for racists. Mark Williams proceeded to write an exceptionally racist post on his blog. Even read as satire, the letter was racist. The Tea Party Federation kicked out Williams and the Tea Party Express to show that it was, in fact,...

“Purple cardboard (f) attached to downtown (art) bicycle hoops in guerrilla act...”

– This is the AnnArbor.com headline. Ann Arbor is the sort of place that puts up hoops that say “art” where you can tie your bicycle. It’s also the sort of place where somebody puts cardboard F’s to make them all say “fart.” Finally, it’s the sort of place...

Green Policy and Consumption

Generally speaking, our consumer economy is at odds with the health of the environment. Just as recycling beats throwing something away, reducing and reusing beats recycling. “Green consumption” is still consumption. But not all consumption is equally harmful. A lot of energy and chemicals go into making a bottle from recycled plastic. But it’s a whole lot better than a bottle...

Very, very good news from today:

The oil leak is (tentatively) plugged. We’re not out of the woods yet—but we (might) at least be on the path. Financial Reform passed the Senate. So it’s almost law. And it still has teeth. This is the best substantive consumer protection statute we’ve had in a long, long time.

“In several case files of African American families, workers described a parent...”

– Michigan Race Equity Review (PDF) I’m posting this in case anybody still believes we don’t have a serious problem with structural racism. This is one of the findings of a very comprehensive study by Michigan into why black families and black children fare worse in all levels of the of...

“Racists have their own movement. It’s called the NAACP.”

– Mark Williams, Tea Party Express spokesman. Clarification for anybody confused: This is a phenomenally stupid thing to say.

Harry Reid sets vote on Wall Street reform for... →

The Wall Street Reform bill is sort of like getting a shiny bicycle for your tenth birthday when you wanted a pony. On one hand, it’s not a pony. On the other hand, there was no chance you were actually going to get a pony. You knew that. So a bicycle is an awesome gift—particularly because you usually get socks and underwear.