January 2012
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Iowa Caucus Predictions
It’s New Years, which makes it a great year for irresponsible predictions.
First Place: Rick Santorum - 28% Second Place: Mitt Romney - 26% Third Place: Ron Paul - 18% Fourth Place: Newt Gingrich - 11% Fifth Place: Rick Perry - 10%
This is a bit unconventional, but there’s no glory in a safe prediction. I think Santorum will pick up some of Bachmann and Perry’s love as the...
December 2011
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Drone On →
The Callus have added their thoughts to Jeff Miller and my discussion on drone strikes. This discussion has been eerily amicable.
Would somebody like to weigh in on the anti-drone side?
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Reservations about drones →
Upon the request of Elijah Lain, Jeff Miller responded to my long post on why Obama’s authorization of drone strikes isn’t really an issue for me. It turns out we mostly agree.
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Drone Strikes and the American Way
War means death. If you order a BLT sandwich, don’t act surprised when it comes with bacon in it. Bacon is an integral part of a BLT. You got exactly what you ordered. Support for war is support for death. You don’t get to choose who dies. Many of the dead will be non-combatants. Some will be children.
I don’t want anything in this post to trivialize, understate, or excuse any...
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than...”
– Andrew Lang
—not specifically about any candidate, but apt for pretty much all of them.
(via politicalprof)
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The Dr. Ron Paul Freedom Report →
Have those of you who still support Ron Paul looked at this stuff? How do you reconcile it with your continued support?
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Republican primary analysis
Gingrich is sliding in Iowa. His moment of relevance is pretty much over. He’d need to win in Iowa—and that’s looking unlikely as recent polls put him behind Romney and Paul.
Romney has seen minor gains—but nothing that suggests an anointing. His supporters are reluctant—and reluctant support can kill you in a caucus.
Paul has a shot in Iowa—but an...
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People and Principles
The conservatives do best when they take a stance based on political principle. It makes sense. After all, political theorists created those principles as, essentially, a guard against the excesses of popular opinion. To the extent that conservatives are the party of, “Let’s not do anything crazy just yet,” the stance based on political principle makes sense. (Unfortunately for...
Newsweek generously turned its journalistic... →
Is Anonymous a force for evil now?
Perhaps somebody closer to all this could clarify this for me? It sounds like Anonymous stole a bunch of credit card numbers from people it thought were bad and used those to make bogus charitable donations. Net result? A bunch of people have a massive headache sorting this out, a bunch of charities get a bunch of illusory donations they’ll have to waste resources sorting out, and a...
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“Again, let me stress. I would not categorize that as “homo-phobic,” but rather...”
– Former Ron Paul staffer, Eric Dondero (h/t SFB)
Personally? I would choose to categorize that as homophobic. The rest of Dondero’s piece is pretty interesting, including the part where Ron Paul thinks Israel should be abolished.
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The extrajudicial killing happens in the third...
The Marxists and the Neocons raise the same pattern of argument. It goes something like this.
Step One: Something bad is very bad. (Examples: Saddam Hussein is bad. Police Oppression is bad.)
Step Two: You know, we can and should do something about that bad thing
Step Three: Some stuff will happen.
Step Four: Something imaginary but hopefully possible is good. (Examples: A free and...
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Libertarians and Racism
thecallus:
Dismantling social institutions that guarantee rights for minorities = racist. Who is in favor of dismantling social institutions that guarantee rights for minorities? Libertarians.
A = B. B = C. A = C.
If your magazine is nicknamed Reason, we hope that you can agree with the critical usage of logic.
Many will recognize the above construct as the relatively basic critique that...
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“Lawyers in the Bradley Manning case have produced logs of online chats that...”
– New spying claim against Assange
This is something of a game changer regarding the legality of Assange’s actions. Publishing information—regardless of how it was obtained, is generally protected by the first amendment. Soliciting that information is more dubious—but probably...
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“When Huntsman was running for governor of Utah, in 2004, Liddy, then sixteen,...”
– Are Jon Huntsman’s Daughters Helping his 2012 Campaign? : The New Yorker
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Property and the Propertied
In an excellent conversation with Political Prof on property, enlightenment values, and contemporary politics, huskerred writes:
My wanting to defend property would have nothing to do with others getting property. It is defense of the status quo that matters here.
Huskerred has (unintentionally) summed up everything that’s wrong with the libertarians’ insistence that they are...
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A funny story about the payroll tax extension ...
It passed with near unanimity in the Senate, marking it as one of those compromises Progressives love to hate. But John Boehner’s insistence that he get more backfired completely—so suddenly it’s seen as a huge victory for Obama and the American People.
I suppose it makes sense. It’s hard to weigh what we like and don’t like in any complex piece of legislation. But...
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A Ron Paul win in Iowa would be great news for...
About half of the Republican voters seem to want Anybody1 but Romney. A Ron Paul victory would make things look comparably palatable for most of the base. Gingrich’s supporters don’t like him enough that they’d take Paul over Romney—and if Romney can paint the race as Anybody but Paul, he’s suddenly the most reasonable candidate.
Excluding Ron Paul ↩
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Giving
This year, the end of the year giving was easier than it was other years. The charity budget wasn’t in tension with the food budget. Previous years, there was some question of whether we could really afford to give away the desired percentage of our income. We concluded (I believe correctly), that if we couldn’t manage to find a way to give away a few dollars when we didn’t have...
thecallus asked: Do you agree that the vociferous insistence that there is a "war on Christmas" despite its purely secular nature bears a strong resemblance to efforts to wield religiosity in political and war-making endeavors? In other words: the "war on Christmas" is really just a statement that no one involved in those discussions cares about Christ more than the culture wars. It's a...
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Today's word: Eleemosynary
Definition:
of, related to, or supported by charity
Appropriate uses:
Unless you are directly quoting the 1919 Michigan Court case Ford v. Dodge, there are no appropriate uses. Unless you’re trying to mark yourself as a pretentious ass (who has read Ford v. Dodge), you will never use this word.
Except … if you’re already having a pretentious-ass-off with somebody who drops...
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War on Christmas: Great War or Greatest War?
So … on one hand, this whole thing is stupid. On the other hand, it gets funnier every year.
“Let’s prevent the secularization of a holiday by ensuring that all the cheap materialism associated with it says ‘Christmas’ on it as garishly as possible.”
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Sarah Palin just criticized the Obamas for...
She just took the wrong side in that culture war. Who will help me stop Sarah Palin and her war against dogs?
What's the littlest amount of sleep you've gotten...
Or, to ask a similar question Mohandas Gandhi’s question, what’s the most you’ve had to drink with breakfast before an exam and still done well on the exam?
Seriously—just get the sleep you need before the exam, particularly when it’s a law school exam. You won’t regret it. The law school exam is testing both mastery of the material and the ability to...
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Justice and Income Inequality
A Wide Place has responded to my earlier post discussiong Occupy Wall Street, income inequality, and a range of other things. Because our fundamental disagreement has to do with concepts of justice, I’m going to do something a bit different here. Take this snippet from A Wide Place’s About page
[T]his blog will explore religion and politics under the twin convictions that the...
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Prayer and solidarity
Last week, AZspot linked to a thought-provoking piece by Kristin Rawls titled “Fuck your prayer, show me solidarity.”. I whole-heartedly agree with the article’s central claim, that evangelicals (and Christians in general) ought to act more passionately and more radically on poverty issues, though I find the call to explicitly embrace “class war” rhetoric, the...
Bradlley Manning and Gender Identity →
There’s a lot to think about in this story.
Many of my family are dyed-in-the-wool Iowa Republicans. A holiday conversation briefly veered into “What are we going to do now?” one of the more conservative men, after calling Obama a socialist, mentioned that the person he’d support above the current field was … Hillary Clinton.
That was interesting
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How to be a Super Famous Blogger
Earlier today, Internet Flotsam wrote::
Oh, Squashed: why in the world don’t you have more followers?
Mr. Flotsam’s question was probably rhetorical, but I’m not going to let that stand between me and holding forth on Something I Have Feelings About.
First, let me say that I’m consistently flattered and amazed by the number of people who do read whatever scratchings I...
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I'm fake angry at President Obama because he's...
This act contains some really bad language. There have been a few changes that at least give the executive the option of not grossly violating civil liberties—but it’s a real shame to see indefinite detention without trial enshrined in law. That said, I think the practical effect will be fairly minimal.
Because the act doesn’t require this administration to use the provisions,...
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A cautionary word about veterinary advice from the...
Beckett ate half a loaf of raw bread dough. He stopped at half because he was caught in the act. At this point, a certain amount of scolding the dog ensued. His English is weak, so the tone is more important than the language. Hence, we tend to say things like, “Beckett, look ashamed!” He obliges by lowering his head and offering his largest puppy eyes. (His tail is still wagging,...
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A fun fact for the kids:
Santa only comes to your house if you’ve been good last year. But … a lot of naughty kids’ parents go buy presents at the store and pretend that Santa came so you bad kids don’t feel ashamed.
“The epochs of Newt Gingrich’s public life are defined by the books that have...”
– The problem with Gingrich’s simplistic attack on sharia - The Washington Post
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Sound social policy is not class war
Charles Krauthammer (and SDS) are unhappy that Obama has blamed the “breathtaking greed of a few” for the great recession and our difficulty in recovering from it.
The problem is that Obama is right.
A relentless drive to squeeze higher and higher profits by shaving margins thinner and thinner left the economy hollowed and teetering like a Jenga tower primed for collapse.
...
SOPA Update
staff:
This weekend, we hosted a meeting at Tumblr HQ with top technology companies, politicians and advocacy groups to coordinate our effort to reform or prevent the well-intentioned but deeply flawed Stop Online Piracy Act from becoming law. You guys have already made a huge impact in Washington, but the legislation still poses a threat.
This week is crucial for action as the bill may be...
“I also pledge to uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to...”
– Newt Gingrich, in a letter to the Family Leader, a conservative group in Iowa. (via officialssay)
I’m tickled that this is apparently necessary now.
Mohandas Gandhi on Sharia Law →
mohandasgandhi:
I find that those who have the biggest aversion to Shari’a law are those who haven’t studied the various schools at all or know anything about Islam. I’m saying this as an Atheist. The responses I received sound like they came straight from Western right-wing talking points. Yes, there are countries with statutes in place that claim to be based on Islamic doctrine that are rather...
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“In the same fashion, House Republicans have continued in the negotiations to...”
– Politico
We should be very clear on a couple things. The Republicans have attempted to muddy the water over who is beholden to corporate interests—but their legislative agenda is a series of giveaways to the dirtiest parts of the energy and financial industries. They are doing everything...
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John Bolton, Secretary of State
John Bolton never saw a country he didn’t want to invade. He may be the single most bellicose public figure I know. Bush named him Ambassador to the U.N. as a way of telling the U.N. to go screw itself. Naming a horse would have sent about the same effect. But now Newt Gingrich says he would name him Secretary of State if elected President?.
I know there’s some dissatisfaction with...
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Justice and Income Inequality
WidePlace has responded to my criticism of her or his post suggesting that the Occupy Wall Street protestors were motivated by greed. I had suggested that if a teenager working a part-time, minimum wage job started throwing around the kind of cash you can’t earn at a minimum wage job that a parent (or anybody looking) would have some legitimate questions to ask about where the money came...
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“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed...”
– The Beatitudes
Sometimes, when the Republicans debate … I don’t know. It’s discouraging. The Jesus and Ass-Kicking movement is a strange pairing.
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Occupy, Inequality, Envy, and Class Warfare
Suppose your highschooler comes home one day driving a brand new Mercedes. You know you didn’t buy it for him. You’re also pretty sure he can’t afford a Mercedes on his part-time, minimum wage job at the bagel shop. Yet somehow, he’s driving a brand new Mercedes. A grossly irresponsible parent might shrug and be happy for his success. But most of us are going to ask some...