A Second Hand Conjecture

Due to popular demand, I’ve thrown my hat into the race.

(HT: My Best Man)

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for each party? Well surprisingly enough, the ideal candidates for Obama and McCain are… Colin Powell. This is the result of a survey which was powered by an Affinnova algorithm it calls “evolutionary optimization”.

Powell seems to occupy a special place in bipartisan politics. Respected by the right for his service and involvement in the Iraqi Wars, and liked by the left because of his split with the Bush administration while Secretary of State.

Rounding out the top 5 for the dems were:

former Vice President Al Gore and former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, who tied for second, followed by Senator Hillary Clinton and former Senator John Edwards.

with Gephardt being a bit of a surprise.

While Powell had a large lead in the Dem list, he narrowly took the to GOP slot.

current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney tied for second. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani came in fifth.

Me? I think Sarah Palin would make a great choice, or maybe Bonnie Garcia.

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From an interview by Stephen Moore (HT: GR):

So what if a President Barack Obama were to impose 50% or 60% tax rates on these CEOs and other big earners? Mr. Gramm pounces: “When you help a company raise capital, to put its idea to work, and you create jobs, those jobs are the best housing program, education program, nutrition program, health program ever created. Look, if a man in one lifetime is responsible for creating 100 real jobs, permanent jobs, then he’s done more than most do-gooders have ever achieved.”

And this:

“Why is America the richest country in the world?” he asks. “It’s not because our people are more brilliant; it’s because we have a better free-market system. Why has Texas created 1.6 million jobs in the last 10 years whereas Michigan has lost 300,000 jobs and Ohio has lost 100,000 jobs? Because governance matters, taxes matter, regulation matters. Our opponents in this campaign are so dogmatic in their goal of having more government because they love the power it brings to them that they’re willing to let it impose costs on the working people that they say they want to help. I am not.”

Gramm is apparently advising John McCain’s campaign. It could use the help.

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David Axe writes on one of the world’s biggest ignored crises—right next door to the much more hip, much more visible crisis in Darfur. The Central African Republic has been spiraling into conflict, forcing over 60,000 people into refugee camps… which are in close proximity to the hundreds of thousands of refugees who fled Darfur. The refugees from Darfur, however, receive nearly 3 times as much aid per capita as the refugees from Chad—making the situation in the technically smaller Chadian camps far worse in terms of resourcing and resilience. Read it in full.

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It is telling that some of the most outspoken anti-gay Republicans out there, who attach their name to anti-gay marriage amendments no less, are tranny bottoms, cruisy sluts, and whore-mongers. Not that there is anything fundamental to Republican Christian conservatism that encourages deviant anonymous sex, but there is a disturbing correlation building. They think people like me, who would really just like the right to get married some day, pose the biggest threat to the family.

I wonder what it is about the relationship with my boyfriend they find so threatening—an appreciation of John Waters and Russ Meyers movies, or repeated viewings of Strangers With Candy? Oh yeah, I don’t really wonder. What despicable men.

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One of the subtextual themes coming out of the conference so far is what can almost be called a double-standard: the participants demand the right to unrestricted speech, but recoil in horror at the consequences such speech brings. It is difficult to discuss this without denying, or, at the very least, denigrating the very real atrocities many have suffered for their writing—whether it is being tortured and sodomized in Egypt, threatened with gang rape in Kenya, or sentenced to death in Afghanistan. However, many of the participants seem to have what can only be called a utopian view of how free speech in both free and unfree societies operate.

Indeed, missing in much of this discussion about what, exactly, free speech and censorship are is a realization of what they are not. Several have complained that blogging can put their jobs at risk, or that if they agitate too loudly they face harassment. So what? In years past, I have been fired for blogging; as a result, for many years now, over many jobs, I have categorically refused to blog about them or on topics that would create a conflict of interest. According to several of the speakers here, that means I exist in a repressive speech environment and “suffer” under a despotic, freedom-hating regime.

If that is the case, then no one is free. And maybe that is true. But to a large degree, there is a tendency to confuse “freedom to speak” with “freedom to speak without consequence.”

The idea of consequences for speech is a tricky one to unravel. Many despotic governments, like Egypt, simply say crippling court cases and unwinnable libel suits are a “consequence” of speaking about political and commercial events within the country. One speaker, from Kenya, detailed how she began to receive not just death threats but rape threats over her activism during that country’s election crisis several months ago. Is that just a “consequence?”

Obviously, yes, but is it a fair one? The point I am getting at is, while it sounds really pretty to talk about how we all have the right to speak freely without threat or intimidation, the reality is that such a thing is so unrealistic as to be nearly childish. I cannot walk up to an overweight person on the street and yell, “you are FAT!” and realistically expect to face zero consequences for it. Similarly, in a work environment, which is by nature hierarchical and requires no small amount of subservience to superiors, I cannot freely speak my opinion to certain people and expect to remain employed. And what’s more, it is not reasonable to demand such a thing.

(more…)

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Hey everybody. First off, Budapest is a great city! We’re about to start the GVO meting, which is focusing mostly on net censorship. Considering my other blog, Registan.net, is definitely blocked in Uzbekistan, and quite possibly elsewhere, this matters tremendously, to say nothing of real people in really dangerous places doing their best get their voices heard. It’s quite a gathering of people: in the last 48 hours, I have had lively conversations with writers from Bahrain, Uganda, Malawi, Tajikistan, Hungary, and Netherlands. This is a truly global group of people trying to make the world a more open, transparent place—exactly the kind of work I’m sure ASHC readers appreciate.

The meetings will be liveblogged and webcast at the Summit website: summit08.globalvoicesonline.org. I don’t know how busy I will be, but I’ll try to post whatever updates I can.

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Oooooh yeah!

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Pic: simplistic political activism at the Blaha Lujla metro stop in Central Budapest. My own thoughts on the matter are here. And no, Michael, the Gellert baths were not as molest-y as you made them out to be. Rather, the aggressors weren’t quite as frightening as you implied!

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Check out this creepy photographic project by Oliviero Toscani. Children are dressed up as heroic “eco-warriors for the future,” in some kind of luddite Lord of the Flies homage. It’s a nightmare vision…but it’s doubtlessly many others’ vision of a postindustrial ecotopia.

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The idea of state funded and administered universal health care is a bugbear of libertarians everywhere, and especially those who are subjected to such a system as a matter of course. Routinely held up as one of the worst of the lot of state-run systems is Britain’s NHS. Now, direct from the trenches of the NHS battleground, comes one insider who thinks it’s high time that the system was scrapped:

Here is a great new book to cheer libertarians as we draw close to the sixtieth anniversary of the National Health Service. Written by the director of Nurses for Reform, Dr. Helen Evans, and published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, ‘Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS?’ not only shows that the country’s top 100 health opinion formers no longer actually believe in nationalised healthcare but, gloriously, this book fundamentally challenges the medical monopoly inherent in all health systems around the world.

The IEA finds that the study underlying Dr. Evans’ book reveals an increasing dissatisfaction with state-run health care among those charged with providing it:

Containing a series of devastating blows to the NHS at 60, the research shows that when speaking off the record a substantial majority of Britain’s health elite no longer believes in nationalised healthcare. Instead, an overwhelming majority accepts a much greater role for private provision – including private hospitals, clinics, GP services and dentists.

I recall that the President of the Canadian Medical Association expressed similar sentiments not long ago, so this result is not at all surprising. What is surprising is that, despite copious amounts of evidence, and reams of historical documentation, people still believe that government can run anything very well, much less a system devoted to the ever changing circumstances inherent in the provision of health care to the masses.

Let’s be clear: the government — any government, fair or foul — is only good at two things. One, making rules. Two, using the power of the state to enforce them. That’s it. No government anywhere, throughout history, is much more than minimally competent at doing anything other than those two tasks. In fact, that is exactly why the founders of this country set up a system of limited government. Instead of carving sections of life where the government’s powers would not apply, America’s forefathers devised a system of limited government whereby the limits of action were placed on the single most powerful entity in the land rather than on the individuals comprising its subjects. It was an attempt to shackle Leviathan.

Despite that attempt, Leviathan has broken free is some places, and uses that leverage to tirelessly strain against its remaining cuffs. Advocates of universal health care encourage the beast to break free of its binds, seemingly without the least bit of comprehension as to the carnage that will result. They should take heed of those who have suffered the demon. What better authority than those who have toiled in the belly of the beast and know its strengths and weaknesses? Who better to dissuade such tomfoolery as unleashing the unquenchable thirst for power of a government monopoly over our very lives than those who have experienced such unrestrained power?

But I expect that the opinions expressed in Dr. Evans’ book will have little, if any, effect. When as potent a wellspring of power as state-run health care is dangled in front of those who lust for dominion over others, there is little chance that they won’t take the bait irrespective of the nasty hook.

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Over the weekend I read with fascination William Saletan’s review of the new offering from George Lakoff, “The Political Mind,” and was struck by the remarkable similarities between it and the revolutionary syndicalism espoused during the prior fin de siècle.

In particular, Saletan summarizes Lakoff’s principal idea as the need for progressives to recapture the and reformulate the social myth that drives the political decisions of the masses:

Lakoff blames “neoliberals” and their “Old Enlightenment” mentality for the Democratic Party’s weakness. They think they can win elections by citing facts and offering programs that serve voters’ interests. When they lose, they conclude that they need to move farther to the right, where the voters are.

This is all wrong, Lakoff explains. Neuroscience shows that pure facts are a myth and that self-interest is a conservative idea. In a “New Enlightenment,” progressives will exploit these discoveries. They’ll present frames instead of raw facts. They’ll train the public to think less about self-interest and more about serving others. It’s not the platform that needs to be changed. It’s the voters.

Lakoff’s concept is not new, although his explanation as to why myth-making is important may be. (more…)

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But not forevs. Tomorrow I hope on a plane and fly to Budapest, Hungary, for a well-deserved break from the grunt and grind of every day. At the tail end of the week, I shall be attending the Global Voices Citizen Media 2008 Summit. Despite some closed sessions, I’ll try to report back here what we heard of the state of bloggers and citizen-driven media from around the planet.

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Unbelievable:

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday intellectual-property holders should have the right to collect damages, perhaps as much as $150,000 per copyright violation, without having to prove infringement.

“Mandating such proof could thus have the pernicious effect of depriving copyright owners of a practical remedy against massive copyright infringement in many instances,” MPAA attorney Marie L. van Uitert wrote Friday to the federal judge overseeing the Jammie Thomas trial.

“It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement,” van Uitert wrote on behalf of the movie studios, a position shared with the Recording Industry Association of America, which sued Thomas, the single mother of two.

A Duluth, Minnesota, jury in October dinged Thomas $222,000 for “making available” 24 songs on the Kazaa network in the nation’s first and only RIAA case to go to trial. United States District Court Judge Michael Davis instructed the 12 panelists that they need only find Thomas had an open share folder, not that anyone from the public actually copied her files.

So collecting evidence is hard, so why should they even bother if they’re suing single mothers for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Crap like this makes me believe the nutroots who claim our country has been sold out to unaccountable corporations—in this case, it very much appears to be the case.

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Chris Weigant demands an immediate end to the “pervasive” pro-McCain and anti-Obama bias of the media. Yeah. No word yet on when Chris will take up the equally necessary cause of converting the Pope to Catholicism.

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Damon Root at Reason takes a look at what’s happened in the three years since Kelo v. City of New London. By now, even non-cynical people can’t be surprised.

So what’s the status of the “comprehensive” and “revitalized” development site today? Here’s the Institute for Justice, the libertarian public interest firm that litigated the case:

Like so many other projects that use eminent domain and rely on taxpayer subsidies, New London’s Fort Trumbull project has been a failure. After spending $78 million in taxpayer dollars, the city of New London and the private developer have engaged in no new construction since the project was approved in 2000. Indeed, since the property owners disputing the takings owned less than two acres in a 90-acre project area, the city has always had a vast majority of the land available for development. Yet, no new development has occurred. The preferred developer for part of the site, Corcoran Jennison, recently missed its latest deadline for securing financing for building on the site and was terminated as the “designated developer.”

This has been a tragedy all around.

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Certainly no “lock of the week”, but Sunday Morning Quarterback has Obama going all the way this year.

HT: Burnt Orange Nation

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According to social psychologist William Szlemko, people who adorn their cars with bumper stickers are far more likely to engage in road rage. Seems like a perfectly sensible conclusion to me. Anyone who would in effect vandalize their own car just to try to force a point to some nameless stranger behind them, has to have a peculiar sense of proportionality to begin with. Or *ahem* lacks a blog.

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Or more specifically it’s the soot, from our tailpipes, our industries, most of our electricity generation—and also from forest fires, volcanoes, and the wind. Black carbon soot is causing most of the loss of polar ice according to this recent piece from Scientific American. Yes, that Scientific American. The same Scientific American that seems to put global warming on it’s cover every other issue, usually including a Soviet-esque five year plan proposed by the editors. Check it out:

Belching from smokestacks, tailpipes and even forest fires, soot—or black carbon—can quickly sully any snow on which it happens to land. In the atmosphere, such aerosols can significantly cool the planet by scattering incoming radiation or helping form clouds that deflect incoming light. But on snow—even at concentrations below five parts per billion—such dark carbon triggers melting, and may be responsible for as much as 94 percent of Arctic warming.

“Impurities cause the snow to darken and absorb more sunlight,” says Charlie Zender, a climate physicist at the University of California, Irvine. “A surprisingly large temperature response is caused by a surprisingly small amount of impurities in snow in polar regions.”

What’s more, Charles Zender, the climate physicist at UC Irvine quoted in the piece, believes that this is warming we can actually do something about, and with policies far less drastically disruptive than those aimed at carbon dioxide production:

He argues that simple steps, such as fully burning fossil fuels in more efficient engines and using cleaner-burning cooking stoves, could help preserve the dwindling Arctic snow cover and ice (see video here). Even changing the timing of such soot emissions could play a role. “If you have to burn dirty fuel, you can do it in the fall or winter” when it will be buried under subsequent snowfall, Zender says. “If you can time your emissions so they have the least impact then you will not trigger these very sensitive regions to start warming by this ice albedo feedback process.”

Al Gore, call your office.

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It seems a rather racy, though well known, merchant is giving some rather startling deals for those who wish to spend their $1200 checks from our government.  They will even send a signed thank you card to President Bush from all those who enjoy their services. Stimulus indeed!

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Allow me a moment of selfish promotion. One of my best friends, Mike, got his “band” profiled at NPR, where they’re going on about how easy it is to make music these days with these kids and their laptops. It’s actually a neat story about how one guy can just sit in his basement and make things sound pretty. Mike was also a finalist on the This American Life Break Up Song Contest. His music is a lot of fun—go check it out!

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Ben Adler observes the painfully obvious fact that McCain’s social media strategy is largely nonexistent, and ineptly executed where it does exist. Yeah, tell you something you didn’t know right? Well, I’m just wishing somebody would tell Mark Soohoo, McCain’s deputy e-campaign manager: “I think we have a strong online operation. It was good enough in the primaries.”

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In much of the former Soviet Union, urban heating is still managed at the block rather than per-building level. This is causing some protest from a population growing accustomed to a new ethos of individual convenience. Something we’ve always taken for granted in the the largely non-centrally planned West.

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Covertress gives us 21 reasons why gun owners might be justifiably doubtful (and not a little alarmed) about Barack Obama’s commitment to their constitutional right.

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R.I.P. Tim Russert:

Tim Russert, NBC News’ Washington bureau chief and the moderator of “Meet the Press,” died Friday after being stricken at the bureau, NBC News said Friday. He was 58.

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” broadcast when he collapsed, the network said.

He had recently returned from Italy, where his family was celebrating the graduation of Russert’s son, Luke, from Boston College.

No further details were immediately available.

Russert was best known as host of “Meet the Press,” which he took over in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television.

But he was also a vice president of NBC News and head of its overall Washington operations, a nearly round-the-clock presence on NBC and MSNBC on election nights.

This may be a bigger deal to the inside the Beltway crowd, but it is huge for any political junkie.

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Me Want. Badly.

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Eco-tainment ain’t all is was apparently cracked up to be.

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UPDATE: Welcome QandO readers. Please look around after you’ve finished with this post, but McQ says you have to go back over to QandO when you’re done … but I won’t tell if you won’t.
_____________________________________________________________

The recent Supreme Court case involving Guantanomo Bay (GITMO) detainees and writs of habeas corpus promises to be one of the most significant opinions for decades to come. Not because it grants foreign citizens the right to challenge their detention in U.S. civil courts (although that’s huge), nor because the decision will lead to possible terrorists being set free in the U.S. (which is almost inevitable), but because it sets a new standard for the power of the Supreme Court. However, no matter the angle from which one approaches the case, constitutional scholars will likely not tire of discussing its implications and applications for quite some time. This post will concentrate on just one of those angles (with others hopefully to follow). (more…)

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It seems a chiropractor in Canada was manipulating a patient’s neck and paralyzed her. Luckily she isn’t dead from a stroke.

Sandy had been going to Stiles regularly for more than seven years, receiving adjustments to her back and neck that she believed helped maintained her health. Minutes after a routine chiropractic visit that included a neck adjustment, on September 13, 2007, Sandy felt ill and had to compose herself in the clinic’s waiting room. She tried to drive home but only got as far as an off ramp south of Edmonton’s Yellowhead Highway. That’s when she called her husband, David who took her directly to hospital where she suffered a massive stroke.

Stiles said he could not comment on Sandy’s experience, nor on her condition citing patient confidentiality. He declined to comment on the suit.

After life-saving surgery at the University of Alberta Hospital, Sandy, a senior land administrator in the oil and gas industry, was left almost completely paralysed, a quadriplegic totally dependent on machines, hospital staff and her husband for her life support and care.

Some .

Complete Statement of Claim here:
Sandra Nette v. Gregory John Stiles et al.

For news footage of another quadriplegic chiropractic victim, Diane Rodrigue, see here
(About 25 min 45 sec in)

Chiropractic spinal manipulation can be beneficial, but conventional treatments are usually equally effective and much cheaper. However, spinal manipulation applied to the neck can cause stroke and death. So if you see a chiropractor or know someone who does please do not let them touch your neck. You could die.

(HT to the JREF forum)

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First they came for the Press,
and I didn’t speak out,
because the press didn’t speak for me.
Then they came for television,
and I didn’t speak out,
I was tired of watching their bias anyway.
Then they came for talk radio,
and I failed to act,
so now the right is muzzled.
Then they came for my blog…

Could it happen, I don’t put it outside the realm of what is possible.

Why are the Democrats against free speech? Why do they want to bring back the Fairness Doctrine? Why are the stalling on an up or down vote on the Broadcaster Freedom Act?

And the big question, why aren’t conservatives, republicans, and libertarians up in arms over this and pressuring Congress to act.

Heard about this issue again, the other day when Mike Pence was on Hannity’s radio show. Why is it that the Democrats aren’t even discussing this issue? I can think of two reasons, they’re stalling in the hopes that they’ll have Obama to rubberstamp any old thing they pass in Congress. And they’re not talking about it so they don’t anger their base, or rile up the right. Last thing they’d want to do is get the right active again this close to an important election.

Free speech isn’t always fair, that’s why the market provides choices. If a station is forced to provide a “balanced” view of every issue, we will quickly find less and less views on the air. Assuming the stations can survive the legal battle the left brings to them to try and get those “opposing” views on the air. And, should Obama be elected President, what’s to prevent the Democrats from also going after blogs, and other websites, and making sure their version of “balance” reigns supreme.

Congressman Pence’s statement announcing this effort:

“Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would amount to government control over political views expressed on the public airwaves. It is dangerous to suggest that the government should be in the business of rationing free speech. During my years in radio and television, I developed a great respect for a free and independent press. Since being in Congress, I have been the recipient of praise and criticism from broadcast media, but it has not changed my fundamental belief that a free and independent press must be vigorously defended by those who love liberty.

“Sadly, some of the most powerful elected officials in America have said that Congress should bring back this outright regulation of the American political debate. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, Senator Diane Feinstein and Senator John Kerry have openly advocated for bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. Meanwhile, the top Democratic leadership of the House united last summer during consideration of the Financial Services Appropriations bill to oppose my amendment enacting a one-year moratorium on the Fairness Doctrine. But that amendment passed.

“When 309 Members voted in support of the Pence Amendment to ban the Fairness Doctrine for just one year, they demonstrated the broad, bipartisan support that exists in the House for ending the specter of the Fairness Doctrine once and for all.”

23 more signatures are needed to get this on the docket to even be discussed. I think one thing every conservative, republican and libertarian blog should be doing right now is promoting this, and hounding people on this list. Contact your states representatives, and let them know your views on this.

Surely this is something everyone can get behind.

We’ve posted about this issue before, and it’s time to act.

Cross posted at The Next Right

Previous Posts:

01/16/07 Free Speech/Grassroots Lobbying Under Threat

04/30/07 The Return of “Fairness” to the Media

05/15/07 The “Fairness Doctrine” looms: Updated with a statement from Senator McConnell

10/05/07 Left Wing Attacks on Right Wing Punditry

10/08/07 Muzzling the Right

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Matthew Yglesias introduces us to DC’s hottest blog of the summer, m4intern. M4intern, DC’s most common sexual preference.

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Yo Yo, a flash in the pan empowered-but-sexless female rapper (try selling that today), got her big break by teaming up with Ice Cube on her 1991 debut Make Way for the Motherlode. Why, here she is, being so early-90’s empowered.

Unfortunately, she was overtaken by Salt ‘N’ Peppa, and later Missy Missdimeanor Elliott, and now the kaleidoscopic variety of rapper-sluts that pollute our previous cable music channels… like how Flava Flav fell from being an outspoken and effective voice for black frustration at their marginalization to spawning atrocities like Flavor of Love and I Love New York. Something is missing, somehow.

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Meanwhile, conservative talk radio, which I have been following with interest for almost 20 years, has become a tornado alley of hallucinatory holograms of Obama. He’s a Marxist! A radical leftist! A hater of America! He’s “not that bright”; he can’t talk without a teleprompter. He knows nothing and has done less. His wife is a raging mass of anti-white racism. It’s gotten to the point that I can hardly listen to my favorite shows, which were once both informative and entertaining. The hackneyed repetition is numbing and tedious, and the overt character assassination is ethically indefensible. Talk radio will lose its broad audience if it continues on this nakedly partisan path.

—The inimitable Camille Paglia, apparently discovering for the first time that right-wing radio is shrill, tedious, and hateful.

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McCain Condoms

Obama Condoms

Have to go with the McCain brand myself. Trust my troops with it more and I have to pull out too early with the Obama brand.

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#1 Mastering six words is enough: Yes — No — Mama — Papa — That — Bah

Read the rest…

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When the most recent unemployment numbers were released, the media bleated about the highest percentage increase in the jobless rate since 1986. For example, The New York Times lamented:

The unemployment rate surged to 5.5 percent in May from 5 percent, the largest monthly spike in more than two decades, as the economy shed 49,000 jobs for a fifth month of decline, the Labor Department reported on Friday.

Economists construed the weak monthly jobs report as an indication of the pain assailing tens of millions of Americans amid an economic downturn that most experts assume is a recession.

The labor market is continuing to deteriorate, eroding the size of paychecks, just as gasoline and food prices surge, and as the declining value of real estate erodes the wealth and credit of many households.

Ed Morrissey was quick to point out why the numbers don’t support what the media narrative claims:

Up to now, employment had held steady through a rocky economy barely staying out of recession. In May, that changed for the worse, as unemployment rose to its highest level since October 2004. However, only 49,000 workers lost their jobs, which doesn’t nearly account for the four-tenths rise … The real story here is unemployment among entry-level workers to the employment system. In summer, teenagers and college students enter the marketplace looking for seasonal and part-time work. This accounts for the significant rise in job-seekers and the 0.4% increase in unemployment. Otherwise, an overall job loss of 49,000 jobs would account for a 0.04% increase in a market of 138 million workers.

King Banaian also took a look at the May numbers (in comparison with April), and while he disagrees somewhat with Ed’s account for the number of new entrants to the job market, he finds validity with respect to the rise in the unemployment rate: (more…)

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How remarkable:

As luxury fashion has become more expensive, mainstream apparel has become markedly less so. Today, shoppers pay the same price for a basic Brooks Brothers men’s suit, $598, as they did in 1998. The suggested retail price of a pair of Levi’s 501 jeans, $46, is about $4 less than it was a decade ago. A three-pack of Calvin Klein men’s briefs costs $21.50, only $3.50 more than in 1998. Which is the better buy?

Factoring for inflation, each of these examples is actually less expensive today. In current dollars, the 1998 suit would cost $788, the jeans would be $66 and the underwear would be nearly $24. As consumers adjust to soaring prices for gasoline, food, education and medical care, just about the only thing that seems a bargain today is clothes — mainstream clothes, anyway.

Clothing is one of the few categories in the federal Consumer Price Index in which overall prices have declined — about 10 percent — since 1998 (the cost of communication is another). That news may be of solace to anyone whose budget has been stretched just to drive to work or to stop at the supermarket; in fashion, at least, there are still deals to be had.

Read the whole thing. Virginia Postrel was really on to something.

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Perhaps the most interesting thing to come out of this (unbearably) long campaign season is the rare opportunity to witness deification in process. From Mark Morford, a San Francisco Gate columnist:

Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain’t no ordinary politician. You buying it?

I find I’m having this discussion, this weird little debate, more and more, with colleagues, with readers, with liberals and moderates and miserable, deeply depressed Republicans and spiritually amped persons of all shapes and stripes and I’m having it in particular with those who seem confused, angry, unsure, thoroughly nonplussed, as they all ask me the same thing: What the hell’s the big deal about Obama?

I, of course, have an answer. Sort of.

[...]

Barack Obama isn’t really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

This is what I find myself offering up more and more in response to the whiners and the frowners and to those with broken or sadly dysfunctional karmic antennae – or no antennae at all – to all those who just don’t understand and maybe even actively recoil against all this chatter about Obama’s aura and feel and MLK/JFK-like vibe.

Morford apparently thinks that his explanation of Obama’s appeal is comforting to such people. I am one of those that recoil at the inane chatter, and yet somehow I still don’t feel comforted.

To them I say, all right, you want to know what it is? The appeal, the pull, the ethereal and magical thing that seems to enthrall millions of people from all over the world, that keeps opening up and firing into new channels of the culture normally completely unaffected by politics?

No, it’s not merely his youthful vigor, or handsomeness, or even inspiring rhetoric. It is not fresh ideas or cool charisma or the fact that a black president will be historic and revolutionary in about a thousand different ways. It is something more. Even Bill Clinton, with all his effortless, winking charm, didn’t have what Obama has, which is a sort of powerful luminosity, a unique high-vibration integrity.

Oh, I get it. He’s like a glow-in-the-dark alarm clock!

Dismiss it all you like [Ed. - Will do!], but I’ve heard from far too many enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people who’ve been intuitively blown away by Obama’s presence – not speeches, not policies, but sheer presence – to say it’s just a clever marketing ploy, a slick gambit carefully orchestrated by hotshot campaign organizers who, once Obama gets into office, will suddenly turn from perky optimists to vile soul-sucking lobbyist whores, with Obama as their suddenly evil, cackling overlord.

I can understand why “enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people” would not be blown away by Obama’s policies, but that’s setting the bar a little low for his presence isn’t it? As to why these people would be “intuitively” blown away by that presence, so much so that they simply cannot fathom Obama behaving like just another politician after obtaining office, is difficult to discern. Maybe he’s a Jedi knight? Obama-wan Kenobe?

Here’s where it gets gooey.

Got that? NOW it’s going to get “gooey.”

Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) [Ed. - Right. 'Cus Obama knows those people don't know what their talking about] identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

The unusual thing is, true Lightworkers almost never appear on such a brutal, spiritually demeaning stage as national politics. This is why Obama is so rare. And this why he is so often compared to Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., to those leaders in our culture whose stirring vibrations still resonate throughout our short history.

What Morford doesn’t tell you is that you too can be a Lightworker, and it’s free! In fact, hold that thought for a minute …

…

…

Ha! There! Now I’m a Lightworker too! My Lightworker name is “ObiMike Wadobe.” Me and Obama, saving the world.

Are you rolling your eyes and scoffing? Fine by me.

Cha, as if you had a choice, Darkloafer.

Now, Obama. The next step [after Kennedy]. Another try. And perhaps, as Bush laid waste to the land and embarrassed the country and pummeled our national spirit into disenchanted pulp and yet ironically, in so doing has helped set the stage for an even larger and more fascinating evolutionary burp, we are finally truly ready for another Lightworker to step up.

He means Obama, of course, not ObiMike.

Let me be completely clear: I’m not arguing some sort of utopian revolution, a big global group hug with Obama as some sort of happy hippie camp counselor. I’m not saying the man’s going to swoop in like a superhero messiah and stop all wars and make the flowers grow and birds sing and solve world hunger and bring puppies to schoolchildren. Because that’s silly; puppies don’t belong in school.

I may have added that last sentence. It’s Lightworker humor. You may not understand (unless you sign up. It’s free!!!!).

Please. I’m also certainly not saying he’s perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual.

No, of course not. That was the “enormously smart, wise, spiritually attuned people” saying all that. Unless Morford was lying about that whole “intuitively blown away” thing, which Darkloafers tend to do.

While Obama’s certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn’t hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it’s not even about Obama, per se.

I think this is one of the “gooey” parts.

There’s a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that’s been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama’s candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically draw to him. It’s exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

[/gooey]

{#!/bin/sh

if [ -d /gooey ]; then
rm -rf /gooey

fi}

That’s Geekworker humor … different universe.

Don’t buy any of it?

Hell, I won’t take it for free.

Think that’s all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls– and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you’re talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time.

Because I know some of you unenlightened beings won’t pick up on my subtle Lightworker humor here (which indicates a problem with your right parahippocampal gyrus), nor on the actual point of this post, let me make it explicitly clear to you ground dwellers: THIS IS NOT ABOUT OBAMA. IT IS ABOUT THE MORONIC DEIFICATION OF OBAMA BY HIS GLASSY-EYED SUPPORTERS LIKE MARK MORFORD, A PAID JOURNALIST.

HT: Charles Johnson, who had the most concise summary: “Oh, good grief.”

Further HT: James Joyner, who tipped me off as to the Lightworker thing, and closed with the Quip Of The Day:

Interestingly, charges that Fred Thompson was a light worker were harmful to his campaign. Go figure.

Everything found via Memeorandum.

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I’ve always loved that quote from Charles Austin Beard about earning a reputation as a “dangerous citizen” by quoting the founding fathers. This quote is from the man who made the “dangerous citizen” a cinematic icon, including in one of my all time favorite movies The Outlaw Josey Wales:

I don’t pay attention to either side,” he claims. “I mean, I’ve always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else’s hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they’ll misuse it on ya.

When asked about his current political leaning, Eastwood declares that he’s undecided (”It’s kind of a zoo out there right now. So I think I’ll kinda let things percolate.”), but also claims that he and his wife have had some affinity for McCain in the past.

I’m cognizant of the seeming double standard in quoting a Hollywood A-Lister about a political point when I would likely deride such a person making a point I disagreed with (if it were George Clooney, for example). The difference is that I don’t offer the quote as some sort of proof as to the validity of its subject. Instead, I’m impressed that libertarianism was directly connected with smaller government and a check on political power (“Give politicians power and all of a sudden they’ll misuse it on ya.”). Usually the ideology (if you can call it that) is paired by quotable persons with either the war in Iraq or smoking pot. In this case, a silver screen star directly connected personal liberty and smaller government, AND got quoted in a left-wing newspaper.

And c’mon, it’s Clint Eastwood who said it. That’s worth something isn’t it? [/toungueincheek]

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This is the most recent of a series of posts on Registan.net where I explore some of the fundamentals of conflict within the tribal areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. At the end of this post is a link to the rest of them.

Nightwatch argues that May was the most violent month in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion:

NightWatch almost has completed its monthly assessments of combat for both April and May. In the data sample drawn from unclassified reporting sources that NightWatch uses, April featured 199 violent incidents in 86 districts, making it the most lethal April in the six year conflict. May featured 214 incidents of violence in over 100 districts, also a new six-year total for May and the highest single monthly total. Despite official efforts to spotlight improvement, the spring offensive thus far is worse than last year’s spring offensive. The security situation has deteriorated again.

At no prior time has the Taliban managed to stage attacks in over 100 of the 398 districts. The previous highs were 86 in April 2008 and 83 in May 2007. Fighting has been heavy in Garmser District in Helmand Province but it has been significantly higher in Zormat District in Paktia Province; Andar District in Ghazni Province and Asadabad District in Konar, all across from the tribal areas of northern and central Pakistan. If Taliban fighters are heading to Pakistan, they are going back to base to rest and to get more ammunition and supplies.

Now, it is notable that the worst fighting has actually not been in the south, but in Paktya, Ghazni, and Kunar, all of which are provinces operating under the new success metrics breathlessly regurgitated by our lazy propagandists. Kunar in particular was the site of David Kilcullen’s now-seminal piece on the magical IED-stopping power of roads; Asadabad in particular is the site of one of the PRTs making the most talked-about progress in terms of construction and violence reduction.

Are we being sold a bill of goods? Are the areas bordering the FATA in far worse shape than we were lead to believe, and is the South in comparative good health?

It is not as simple to answer as it may seem. There are three metrics to look at: actual numbers, comparative numbers, and perceived numbers. For our purposes—i.e. for the purpose of some sort of permanent defeat of the Taliban and associated militias—the real numbers don’t matter. The comparative numbers might, if there was an effective IO campaign in place—not selling roads as bomb shields, but selling the astonishing success of the brand new national telecommunications network, or the very real benefits of steadily improving developmental indicators. But since there is not, the comparative numbers could be interesting, but haven’t really gone anywhere.

What of the perception? Again, this is a difficult question to unravel: security is rarely at the top of a typical Afghan’s priority. Most want food, or an end to the pervasive and devastating impact of official corruption.

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One of the strongest arguments against current COIN doctrine has been made by the anonymous blogger Fabius Maximus—namely, that if we are so great at engineering societies we can write a slim manual about it, why haven’t we done so in our inner cities? He points out today that we’re now trying exactly that.

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Lanier has been struggling to reverse D.C.’s spiraling crime rate but has been forced by public outcry to scale back several initiatives including her “All Hands on Deck” weekends and plans for warrantless, door-to-door searches for drugs and guns.

Under today’s proposal, the no-go zones will last up to 10 days, according to internal police documents. Front-line officers are already being signed up for training on running the blue curtains. Peter Nickles, the city’s interim attorney general, said the quarantine would have “a narrow focus.” “This is a very targeted program that has been used in other cities,” Nickles told The Examiner. “I’m not worried about the constitutionality of it.”

Others are. Kristopher Baumann, chairman of the D.C. police union and a former lawyer, called the checkpoint proposal “breathtaking.” Shelley Broderick, president of the D.C.-area American Civil Liberties Union and the dean of the University of the District of Columbia’s law school, said the plan was “cockamamie.” “I think they tried this in Russia and it failed,” she said. “It’s just our experience in this city that we always end up targeting poor people and people of color, and we treat the kids coming home from choir practice the same as we treat those kids who are selling drugs.”

The proposal has the provisional support of D.C. Councilman Harry “Tommy” Thomas, D-Ward 5, whose ward has become a war zone. “They’re really going to crack down on what we believe to be a systemic problem with open-air drug markets,” Thomas told The Examiner. Thomas said, though, that he worried about D.C. “moving towards a police state.”

Yeah, I remember the propiska being one of those inhuman restrictions we used to call the USSR evil for imposing upon its citizens. The upshot of this is, at least police states usually have really low crime rates.

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From Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s statements to the U.S. military court today:

The accused al Qaeda mastermind of the September 11 attacks stood in a U.S. military court on Thursday, sang a chant of praise to Allah and said he would welcome the death penalty.

“This is what I wish, to be martyred,” Pakistani captive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative in U.S. custody, told the Guantanamo war crimes court.

He and four accused co-conspirators appeared in court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. naval base in Cuba for the first time on charges that could result in their execution.

As the judge questioned him about whether he was satisfied with the U.S. military lawyer appointed to defend him, Mohammed stood and began to sing in Arabic, cheerfully pausing to translate his own words into English.

“My shield is Allah most high,” he said, adding that his religion forbade him from accepting a lawyer from the United States and that he wanted to act as his own attorney.

In other news, Br’er Rabbit reiterated his plea welcoming death so long as he is spared the briar patch.

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David Weigel at Reason gives all of us another reason to say, “No”. David looks at the reports coming out in the past few days about the alleged tape of Michelle Obama going off on a racist rant and finds lots of conflicts. Among which:

Johnson, on June 2:

It features Michelle Obama and Louis Farrakhan. They are sitting on a panel at Jeremiah Wright’s Church.

Johnson, two days later.

I do not know where this occurred.

David goes on to email Larry about his lie here (calling him a liar), and is promptly told to “F’ off”. This tape may exist, but we’ve seen no evidence that it does, and the one’s saying it does, have no credibility. Remain skeptical people.

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A very interesting read and perspective.

H/T Reason.

EDIT: Excellent comments at the reason link.

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Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr appeared on the Colbert Report last night. Check out the video after the jump. Some commentary from the American Spectator here.

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This has to be seen by all judicial and college football fans. I’m not sure what the original complaint was, but the opinion is great. Pay special attention to the footnotes to learn that it is the official opinion of the U.S. Judicial system that the “Game of the Century” for this century is the 2006 Rose Bowl. Images of the document after the jump.

EDIT: More at the comments at Volokh.

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Isn’t it great when our Chief Diplomat doesn’t really see the need for diplomacy?

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Today, the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight heard testimony from Sheikh Khalaf al-Ulayyan of the Sunni Accordance Front and Nadim al-Jaberi of the Shiite (and anti-Moqtada, anti-Maliki) Fadhila Party. Both oppose a long-term presence in their country, but what was even more interesting, as Spencer Ackerman notes, is what they said about the occupation, the invasion, and the Surge.

For starters, Jaberi accused the U.S. of putting the Iraqi government “in a difficult situation” by insisting on the long-term presence of U.S. troops. al-Ulayyan, through a translator, cautioned that a reckless withdrawal would be catastrophic, but that a long-term presence would be counterproductive.

When Rep. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, tried to pry out some good quotes supporting the Surge, al-Ulayyan demurred:

“Increasing the number of forces didn’t affect the level of violence in Iraq. Because the war there is a war against gangs and they are like ghosts. They hit and run. What led to the reduction of terrorist acts and violence are the forces of the Awakening. They are from the tribes of the area where terrorists are more [in number]. And those forces managed to eliminate the other party, the terrorists, because they know them and know the tactics. We suggested that a long time ago for our government and the American government but nobody listened.

“I believe the reduction in the level of violence is due mainly to the efforts of the volunteers. The thing that will reduce the violence more is not military force but having realistic solutions to convince others to join the political process. I believe the best method to achieve that is a real national reconciliation. We need real reconciliation, not only slogans as is being done now. And reconcilition should involve all the Iraqis, whether they are involved right now in the political process or not.”

“As soon as the troops have withdrawn, it doesn’t make sense for these groups to exist,” Jabari added. “It is my belief that when troops withdraw these groups will not bear arms any longer. For as long as we have foreign troops on our land, these gangs will increase in number, they will hold onto their goals even longer… So I say the presence of foreign troops are actually serving these groups.”

Of course, such thinking would lead one to think that maybe Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a phantom threat and the real problem comes from deeper (or perhaps shallower) societal issues, rather than the dark puppetmaster of an enemy we can barely define, much less count. Remember that time the Congressional Research Service indicated that AQI was less than 2% (pdf) of the attacks in Iraq? That is because most of the insurgents—the vast majority—are not AQI, but rather nationalists fighting a foreign occupier. The Iraqis know this. But we have a hard time thinking that our mere presence somewhere can spark hatred.

After all, many Iraqis feel our invasion led to the destruction of Iraq, and kind of resent that. While these two Parliamentarians may not speak for the entirety of Iraq (the Kurds surely have a different opinion of us), their opinions are not wildly out of the ordinary, and represent a large and persistent strain within the mainstream of Iraqi society. Our deep unpopularity is our worst enemy.

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Guess what part of your brain is not primarily for storing information about a two gyrating hippos on a camping trip.

The right parahippocampal gyrus. Much to your (and my) surprise, that part of the brain is used to detect sarcasm. Because apparently there is not enough info about gyrating hippos to fill up the left one, and then the right one would have nothing to do, so it got sarcasm detection instead.

“Stupid brain.”

[HT: Hot Air]

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After speculating upon Hillary Clinton’s strategic thinking with respect to the Democratic nomination, James Taranto concludes (emphasis added):

To summarize, Mrs. Clinton maximizes her chances of becoming president if she (1) does enough damage to Obama to snatch the nomination away from him, (2) failing that, does enough damage to him to bring about his defeat in November, and (3) gets herself on the ticket, whether he wins in November or not.

Some will say Mrs. Clinton is being disloyal to her party if she undermines Obama’s chances of winning in November. But maybe she just practices a different kind of party loyalty. After all, if you can be a patriot while hoping your country loses a war, why can’t you be a loyal Democrat while hoping your party loses an election?

It is an interesting question.

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