perfidy

Or if she can, she chooses to do it only with special, made-up numbers! See Jane obfuscate.

50 comments on that article and not ONE person has bothered to go to the IRS web site and look up the actual data? OK, maybe some of them have. Links follow.

It occurs to me that perhaps Jane ought to have done at least that before invoking the all-magic, all-powerful "he's lying" spell, usable by all sides in all political battles.

I've found reasonably complete information, in the form of spreadsheets, for the tax year 2000. It's probably fairly representative, although subject to some change.

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=96586,00.html

This link will give you an EXE file that decompresses into a series of spreadsheets. These contain plenty of data on income, distributed into fairly narrow bands.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00inalcr.exe

10 minutes with Excel, and I've found the following:

The average TAXPAYER (not family) with an income under $50,000 pays an average of $2187 in federal taxes. This represents around 13.5% of his income. Since a family of four will have a lot more deductions, the $1600 tax figure seems pretty reasonable to me. According to the IRS spreadsheets, people with incomes below $50,000 pay an average of 13.5% of their income in federal income tax.

Of course, our taxpayer is ALSO paying around 15.8% (his half and employer's half) of his income for the social security boondoggle (which is actually just a flat tax system on the poor, since the money just goes in the general fund anyway). If we adjust the 15.8% for the employer portion (by adding that to total income), it becomes 14.6%.

Add the two of them together, and our guy is paying:

14.6% + 13.5% = 28.1%

Fascinating so far, huh? Our folks under 50k are all paying around 28% of their incomes to the federal government. I'd be pissed off if I was one of them.

So that means are the wealthiest 0.1% of our population are paying more, right? Let's take a look:

In 2000 there were around 240,000 returns filed with incomes in excess of $1,000,000. The average taxpayer in this bracket paid $945,191. Wow. Taxes paid by folks in these bands averaged 30.1% of income. That is ever-so-slightly higher than that paid by our 50k guy. Note that social security payments, as a percentage of income for these taxpayers, are almost non-existent. We can fairly safely factor them out.

If anybody out there wants a flat tax system, I've got news for you: We already have one. People making multi-million dollar incomes pay the same percentage as very hard-working, low-paid folks. And don't cry "investment income" or any such bullshit. All that kind of income has ALREADY been factored out of all of these calculations...taxable vs. non-taxable income.

The bottom line: Clark's numbers are right. He gives the reduction on taxes on those below 50k as around $33 Billion. A 5% tax increase on those over $1,000,000 in income (NOT including that first million), by my numbers, comes to around $35 Billion or so. Seems in balance to me, as of 2000 numbers.

Break out your spreadsheet, and crunch the numbers yourself. You want to leave everything to frickin' pundits and goddamn politicians? Or even worse...bloggers? Like me?

My socialist Canadian education taught me how to use a spreadsheet.

And one other point: If real rich folks use tactics to move more of their income out of the taxable income category, us poor folks win anyway...because to do that, they'll have to invest the money, or put it into non-taxable bonds, or some such thing. These activities benefit the public...

A bold stroke by Clark. A lot of people are going to realize that under this plan, they won't be paying any federal taxes. Damn. Shows you just how much the top end in this country makes...

Don't believe me? Check out this picture.

Why are we doing this again?

Oh yeah -- because the universe contains many things we do not know, and we might as well learn a few of them while we're still here.

Seriously cool stuff.

Den Beste is a good writer, and I certainly wouldn't want to get into any kind of intellectual pissing match with him; I wouldn't last long.

But.

"For thirty years we've been told that patriotism was shameful. " " For thirty years we've been pelted with the message that there was nothing about America that justified any pride."

What the hell is he talking about? "Pelted" with this message? By who? Most of the time? Some of the time?

Be honest. Exactly how much of the time are you pelted with the message that there is "nothing about America that justifies pride". The answer is, of course, hardly ever. The reason? The world's gray, and so is America. There are some very great things about this country and some not very great things.

In Den Beste's America, you're either with him, or you're against him. That is exactly what America is not about.

Several hundred words of bitching about poor, trod-upon "Patriotism", and he doesn't bother to define the term. That seems like something of an omission, until you realize that is isn't an omission. Everybody's definition of patriotism is going to be different. Den Beste's might be "unquestioning adoration for anyone who kicks random ass in response to terrorism". Mine might be "liberty and truth for all". Who knows? But it is almost certain that we disagree.

Den Beste further obscurs by failing to point out that virtually all criticism of America comes from overseas. His "real Americans" are in a sea of, well, people who don't agree with them! Dammit!

The constitution is a fuzzy document, deliberately, so that multiple viewpoints can find a home in this country. We reign in the extremes, and trust that the majority will be reasonably correct.

The poll question I'd like to see answered: Given what we now know about Saddam Hussein's WMD (there aren't any), would you have supported the invasion?

This NY Times article on Captain James Yee's case is rather sobering. Yee, as a few citizens in America may remember, was charged by the military with aiding the enemy, treason, or some such nonsense.

The result of all that is that there has been no evidence whatsoever supporting the charges. They are a complete fabrication. Good, you may say to yourself...the system worked.

Except that this guy spent 76 days, a fair number of them in leg chains, while the assholes who put him there did everything they possibly could to justify their having done so. They've destroyed his life, his family, and everything they could get their hands on.

The military's reaction to this? Pretty much nothing. Would somebody please explain to me how two officers, being charged with exactly the same crime, can be treated so differently? One is given immunity from prosecution, and tells her story. The other is thrown in jail for two and a half months. There must be some kind of legal principle that prevents this. Of course, that may not apply in military courts.

I am just stunned by the whole thing. At what point does a prosecutor figure that it's time to back off?

The double standard is appalling.

I wonder if Donanld Sensing, the team players at LGF, Winds of Change might care to refine their assessment of the case, and perhaps state their views on prosecutor infallibility.

Want to see a very scary graph? Check this graph. If you're not employed and you're in the population, you're being supported in one way or another...this is the real drag on the economy. I'd sure like to know how many of these people are employable and are not working...

This show is what they're basing their hopes on? Gimme a break! Idiots! Arggh!

Fox had one of the best shows in memory in their stable in 2002 -- the vastly underappreciated "Firefly". Having purchased the DVDs and finally watched the episodes in order, I can say that this show would have been their season. Dumb-asses!

I have been busy writing a screenplay for a dead show, over the past few days. It's a boatload of fun.

Die Fox, Die!

Well, here we all are. And we are all here, which is a good thing, given that a big chunk of the planet can't stand us right now. Feel free to insert my standard "bush sucks" boilerplate here. But...my light reading for the plane ride home was Irshad Manji's "The Trouble With Islam". It's light fare, but quite sobering. She's decidedly on the opposite side of where I've been on certain issues, with regards to Islam...a lot of what she says rings true. If so, and I can't find a way around it, certain opinions of mine are going to have to change...

Greetings, 2004, the year of the robot. We are all on autopilot now, automatons entering a maze, programmed with a rule set for some reality. Let's hope our maze is roughly the same.

You might want to read this particular Republican Fundraising Letter. What's it about? Simple!

" Please help us reach our goal of 450,000 AMERICAN grassroots contributors to the Presidents campaign."

This is a direct attack on Dr. Dean's unprecedented contributions from over 540,000 AMERICANS. Bush has been campaigning, or been president, for almost six years now. During that time he's amassed around 400,000 supporters, the majority of whom are direct beneficiaries of his policies. Dean's only been on this roll for about a year, and he's already got more individual contributors.

Bush's problem is that he's hit the folks who are going to give him cash already. Republicans have always relied on a small number of wealthy donors to drive their fundraising. They've done it through a laundry list of perqs and "access" come-ons. I've had GOP neighbors ask me to attend a dinner, or attend fundraisers, and $5,000 a plate. "Why?" I would ask. "Because you'll meet ALL the right people", they explain. "You'll be able to get to know people who can help you."

That's my GOP fundraising experience so far. We should probably note at this point that I'm Canadian, and as such, cannot (and will not) contribute to any election, at least in monetary terms.

That GOP fundraising letter is an attempt to mislead supporters into believing that the gosh-darned foreigners are trying to buy the election. Foreigners like George Soros!

Except....the Soros is an American citizen.

You gotta love these blatant attempts to fan the flames of racism and xenophobia. You gotta be scared of the people it works on.

Gregg Easterbrook sounds off on the lack of positive press coverage of Bush's "environmental initiatives".

I started wandering around the CBO site and the EPA site, trying to get a feel for how the budgets have changed over the past decade or so. It's pretty hard to do -- the budget offices have conveniently changed their categories and document formats, seemingly every year...which makes it really hard to break out a category, such as air quality, and understand it.

EPA gives the 2004 legal services budget as $46 million or so. That sure doesn't seem like much; $46 million to chase after every non-compliant polluter in the country? My understanding is that the EPA is absolutely snowed under -- major polluters are out there that they simply do not have the budget to go after. In some of these cases, there are crimes being committed. The budget just isn't there to pursue it.

My overall impression is that Bush has gutted the enforcement end of the EPA budget. We all know that nothing pisses off a Republican more than some pinko commie environmentalist wanting to save a stupid squirrel or spotted crap-warbler or whatever it is that's currently in front of the bulldozer. Scattered searches have shown me that there's been around a 20% reduction in enforcement manpower over the past two years.

One way to avoid having pollution laws is to stop enforcing them. This is the Bush method.

Easterbrook says "The rub is that existing Clean Air Act power-plant regulations and "state implementation plans," which govern overall airshed quality, have led to runaway litigation, with the typical Clean Air Act rule taking ten years of legal proceedings to finalize, according to a study by Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute. Bush's Clear Skies bill would scrap the litigation-based system and substitute the "cap and trade" approach that has been spectacularly successful at reducing acid rain. "

Makes me wonder if a "cap and trade" system would work for crime. You know, criminals in low-crime communities could buy the right to beat people up or kill people from criminals in high-crime communities. Everybody wins! Crime goes down.

Or, maybe we realize that pollution is a bad thing, and whatever we can do to reduce it is probably a good idea.

Let's remember that Bush is gutting the current legislation, which would have achieved the pollution targets far more aggressively (particularly with regard to mercury -- remember that Bush's EPA suppressed a study on mercury for nine months because they didn't like the scary sounding results), in favor of a much slower approach. The justification is that the current system is "litigation intense". It doesn't make sense to complain on one hand that a system can't litigate fast enough, and then to cut that legal department on the other hand. Bush is essentially creating a problem (or, to be fair, making it worse) by cutting the budget, then pointing at that problem as the reason for scrapping the program.

All I see here is that we could have chosen to enforce the current laws, and air pollution would have been dramatically cleaned up inside of five years. Instead, we're on a 15 year merry-go-round, subject to the whatever the current whims of the energy industry are, as channelled by Bush and Corporation.

Continuing Johno's environmental theme, you really need to read Robert Kennedy's piece detailing what Bush has done. It's pretty scary.

The question I always ask myself when reading these kinds of doom-and-gloom essays is, what motives do the "bad guys" have? In this case it's fairly clear that the motives are financial. Environmental protection is viewed as unnecessary, and stands in the way of profit.

The method of attack is something I've noted before. "We need to study it" is always the last position.

Rosemary (Dean's World) points out the following post, written from a "Christian" moral perspective, on gay issues. Here's my response...

You want someone to challenge your logic, or challenge your assumptions. I wonder if you have looked at what you've written, and have an understanding of the assumptions therein. My short list:

1. You assume some may view you as fascist. This is highly unlikely; by inserting this drastic word, you grant yourself immunity -- you can say, "I am not that bad. I am not that extreme".

2. You assume homosexuality is a choice. As others have pointed out, the act is a choice, but the feelings are not. Unless you have a mechanism for knowing what's inside someone else's head, you're just going to have to take their word for it. I certainly won't pretend to know what goes on in your head.

3. You assume concepts drive human beings. We are many parts logic and many parts emotion.

4. You state that there is a high correlation between drug use and homosexuality without providing a single serious source. Without an unbiased source this does not stand.

5. You provide no examples of "all sorts of unfortunate consequences", with which we might connect homosexuality. What consequences, exactly, are you speaking of?

6. You indicate that disagreement with the "choice" theory is in fact "denial". This is only true if the "choice" theory is in fact true. If the choice theory is wrong, then there is no denial. Support your choice theory with actual evidence, generalize it, and then perhaps you have a denial argument. Otherwise, nothing.

7. You indicate that the position holding that AIDS is not a homosexual disease is once again "denial"; denial is against your pattern of morality, therefore such denial is immoral. Homosexuality is emotion and a set of physical choices, made in the context of those emotions. Certain physical choices in the gay male community have resulted in increased rates of AIDS in that community. There are millions of heterosexual persons all over the world who've made certain physical choices, and AIDS has been the result. Statistically most AIDS victims in the world are heterosexual. There are numerous other sexually transmitted diseases, the very vast number of which are equally available to hetero- and homo-sexual persons. Is there some reason why you single out AIDS, as opposed to other diseases, as an indicator of lack of morality? Perhaps you intend that _any_ sexually transmitted disease is evidence of behavior that contradicts your moral pattern.

8. You state that the homosexual population "at large" should "accept responsibility". For what? What should they confess to? If you are referring to the "homosexual disease" notion, you need to back that up with some kind of statistical evidence. I don't see it. If you're referring to the "choice" argument, prove its a choice, and we can talk. You haven't proven it. You've _stated_ it.

9. I must confess that I do not know what a "bug-chaser" is. If I did, I would probably disagree with you.

10. You indicate that there are homosexual "demands". You make several assumptions: First, that homosexuals are the only ones who want these social changes to happen. I am happy to be your first counter-example. Second, you assume that the homosexual community is homogeneous in demanding, rather than supporting. It is highly unlikely that the gay community is sigificantly unlike any other community in this regard -- a minority of persons feel extremely strongly about an issue and press very hard, while most simply favor one side or the other and go about their lives. I am certain that within your Church community, you find a similar spectrum of activity with regards to gay issues.

11. You make the rather ridiculous assumption that 100,000 happy, lifelong monogramous gay couples do not presently exist. I'm just one guy who barely knows any gay people at all, and I know two couples like that. Come to think of it, that's 50% of the gay people I know. ;) Do that math on that.

12. You make the assumption that there is something that needs to be _proven_ to you, or to other people, at all. Why should gay people have to do _anything_ to convince you of the "correctness" of their lifestyle? At which point, exactly, did your particular brand of religion become a benchmark? The founders of this country were very explicit in their desire that religion be a fundamental freedom. The heart of that is the notion that personal religious choices _must_ be protected; to ensure that, the _public_ does not make such choices. Where possible, society usually chooses to engage in religious acts in circumstances that are _voluntary_, thus ensuring personal religious choice.

13. You make the assumption that homosexuals are offended (and "adolescent") by your notion that morality be a part of marriage. My opinion is that they are not offended by the notion; they're offended by your definition of morality. You confuse the two. Of course "morality" can be part of the marriage discussion, but you've got to agree on what that is. You've made no argument as to the correctness of your "morality", other than your opinion that it is in fact the "best". History gives us a lot of examples within your religion and others of people saying it also. You might want to provide some evidence you're right.

14. You're not advocating responsbility and morality. You're advocating acceptance of a moral framework, then defining responsibility as the act of gauging oneself according to that framework. Can there be no responsibility outside that framework?

15. You assume that the teachings of today's Churches (or religions) do, in fact, represent a "combined wisdom of ages". Give the fact that historically most repression, violence, and hatred has had religion at the core, how do you presume this? Personally, I think organized religions have a hell of a long way to go before they can presume to tell anything to anybody about morality.

16. You state that you're not going to "give up and let homosexual advocates freely erode our standards". You assume that "your" standards are "our" standards. You also assume that something like gay marriage represents an "erosion" of standards. Feel free to give evidence for either one of these assumptions.

The point by point is over, but...I have to agree with Dean on how short the conversation _should_ be, ideally.

If we start with the notion that all persons are equal in this country, we note that the structural institution of marriage conveys with it a certain relationship with the state (taxation, granting of power of attorney, right to visit, etc). This particular state is granted to married persons. Is this special relationship a "reward" that the state provides to encourage marriage? It is not. The government provides a means with which we can define familial bonds, and thereby derive the answers to many other important questions, such as responsibilities of a person (parent to child, man to wife), inheritance, accessibility (next of kin for health purposes), genetic compatibility (cousins marryin') and so on.

You want to _deny_ this choice to two people who happen to be gay. You don't know these people and their lives have no intersection with yours. This falls squarely into the "telling other people what to do" category. Why should you be allowed to tell other people what to do?

Well, there might be some _direct_ effect on you, and there are _indirect_ effects. I am quite hard-pressed to think of a direct effect on you, Nathan, if two gay men in Iowa get married. So I assume that you are talking about indirect effects.

Which brings us back to the "consequences" argument above: You made the assumption that being gay brings a host of negative consequences without providing any examples that this is so. You could try to find some correlation between homosexuality and crime rates, or homosexuality and tax evasion, or homosexuality and any other generally agreed _secular_ negative phenomenon, I guess. Maybe you can dig something up that shows a "decay" of that type. If so, bring it on. You have a path to legitimacy there. Contravening your personal moral code doesn't count.

You do have a right to educate your kids as you see fit, and it seems you have taken that path. The generally agreed-upon standard that we have in society is that we favor tolerance. If someone is gay, let them be gay. If someone is X, let them be X. But we also teach that if someone swings their fist and impacts your nose, you don't need to let them swing their fist.

Are you saying that you believe tolerance towards gays (and other groups) should not be taught in schools? Or do you believe that intolerance should actively be taught? You are unclear on this point. The consensus within society is, at the moment, that being homosexual is no big deal. You don't have a right to punch someone in the face for being gay. Teaching kids that it's not OK to punch someone in the face for being gay is not the same as encouraging them to be gay. I remain perplexed as to why certain religious conservatives cannot make this distinction.

So the core of this argument becomes: How does this affect you at all? What logic or justification provides you with the right to control the definition of marriage and grant or deny a relationship with the state as a result? What justification do you provide for imposing your will on other people by creating inequity with respect to the state?

I haven't seen any yet.

Later...

Having read more on the original writer's site, I deeply regret having written a damn thing at all. I figured it was part of a serious conversation on the nature of the relationship between morality, majority, states, and individual rights. What I found was the rants of a guy who hasn't dealt with the shit in his life, and has a shiny new hammer called Belief, which apparently is good for screwing screws and sawing boards, in addition to pounding sand and carving turkeys.

I quoted "Christian" above 'cause I'm not sure who this guy thinks he represents. I know it isn't the serious, thoughtful, and tolerant Christians that I know, and am pleased to call friends.

TM Lutas: Islamists believe that there is one God, he sent prophets down to Earth and the last one was Muhammed. If you believe in this, you get to live a first class life. If you have some other interpretation and only believe in some of the prophets, you get to pay discriminatory taxes and live as 2nd class citizens. Everybody else converts or dies. That's their belief system. Nice pagans get killed, nice atheists get killed, nice hindus, nice buddhists, the whole nine yards. Whether or not you are a decent human being is irrelevant. Read their stuff and understand what they are saying. Combine that ideology with the simple technical fact that it's getting easier every year to build WMD and you have a ticking time bomb. One day, the people who believe in this ideology will have their own shiny red buttons and will be able to enact their dreams of mass genocide. If they die in the process, they get their 72 virgins so it's all ok in the end by their lights.

A practitioner of Islam is not an extremist. An extremist is an extremist. Every religion has them. The socio-cultural circumstances of the origin states of Islam have resulted in a surplus of extremism for that religion, unfortunately. Each of the major religions has some pretty crazy stuff in it.

Judaism has pretty much been able to characterize many of its quirks as "tradition"; for example, foods that are not eaten are not necessarily viewed as "commands from God", but rather as continuations of tradition, critical to cultural survival.

Christianity sits a little farther away from this, with some issues being stamped with "word of God" status.

Islam is, to its detriment, a more structured religion, with quite a few direct commands from God. As such they are less flexible, less able to bridge across change in society. Their culture has paid an enormous price for this inflexibility, over time.

The point is, we are not dealing with a universal whole. Do you truly believe that 99% of Arabs/Muslims in the world want people who are different to suffer? I do not. I believe in an absolute morality. I don't put very much into that category, but essential tolerance and goodwill towards your fellow man are definitely there.

My main point is this: I firmly believe that the only way to control extremism within a given target population is to bring the bulk of that population to our side. We will never be able to stamp out extremism within another culture. The members of that culture are capable of stamping it out themselves, though, which they will do if a positive cultural relationship is established. This is not a PollyAnna vision; the Nazis were decimated as a social entity, ultimately, through the changes the German people themselves enacted, over decades. They decided to be something different than they were.

We need an environment where the average citizen in a "muslim" country views extremists the way Germans view Nazis. As we move towards a future containing the "super-empowered angry man", we must rely on social means as our primary defense. We make it very difficult for an average person to come to our side when we casually discuss extreme solutions, like turning the Middle East into a glass ashtray, or "eliminating" the only religion they have ever practiced, from the world. It is the wrong starting point for the discussion.

You make in case, in the linked entry, that "spiritual warfare" should not be overlooked as a means of change in this asymmetric conflict. There are a number of problems with your approach.

• Are you really talking about forced conversion to another religion? How do you propose to accomplish this? What religions will be on the "list" of "bad" religions? Or do you propose that we simply forcibly convert everyone to Christianity?
• How do you suggest that the US project its power across the entire world to accomplish this? The Muslim population in the US is simply not a threat, and is in fact the most powerful weapon we have to counter prejudice in other countries. Our Muslim population is free to live their lives and worship their God in any way they see fit, and they choose to do so.
• What time scale do you see accomplishing this? Religions have been present, persectured, evolved, and cast aside for thousands of years. Pogroms have been remarkably ineffective at eliminating the fundamental cultural continuity of Judaism, in spite of thousands of years of trying. What factors make you believe that you can accomplish this, within your given risk time frame of a single lifetime?

I respect the fact that you are trying to solve the problem, and reaching for any solution you can. To me, what you are doing is advocating that it is better to do something, anything...than to do nothing, even if that action means that the situation will become worse.

As with virtually every complex endeavor, we need to really think about the consequences of what we do and choose, in a sober manner, those paths with the highest probability of success.

What sociological implications, world-wide, do you see for your religious suppression? How controllable are those implications? Remember that the US military cannot suppress this kind of behavior in one small country. The military can defend against almost any threat, but they cannot change hearts and minds. They're not set up to do it.

Islam in this country is not the problem. Followers here are, with virtually complete agreement, quite aware that they have far more freedom and potential in their lives than practitioners in the old world.

My solution is a combination of "Good Samaritan", principled stands, true ethics in international relations at the economic level, and decentralization within the US. I will write another time about decentralization...it is a key defense concept.

Dear AL,

Must be great to be you, what with the keeper-of-the-truth T-Shirt you got from God, or wherever. I lost mine a while back. Or, I think I used to own one. I'm not sure.

Let's assume that we're both reasonably intelligent people, capable of figurin' on our own.

We reach our opinions through a combination of experience, trusted facts/sources, logic, and emotional inclination. Is there a category I missed? Some kind of green misty field that warps truth?

What dismays me about most right-wing debate is the lack of specificity. You use loose words to describe nebulous concepts; you use sweeping generalizations to juxtapose an opinion you don't like with an evil that is unquestioned.

I asked if I'm "Idiotarian" or not. Nobody seems to be answering. Are you just being nice? Or, given a moment to think about it, does the term just seem a little unclear?

Where are the tripwires? What are your issue tests to qualify/disqualify?

Generalizing can be fun. I can start by picking a few groups, like terrorists, anti-abortion militants, Bush's economic advisors, and street drug dealers. A bad lot, all around.

I think I'll call them "Purples", and then I'll wax all axiomatic about how there's a big Purple love-fest going on, with plenty of winking and solidary and people-eating for all. See how it's all part of the same conspiracy?

Which is all ridiculous, of course. And so is...the I-Word. If you can't define it.

Diversity is a beautiful thing.

And to all, a good night...

Joe Katzman cheerfully avoids the discomfort of actually having to answer the question I posed: exactly how big is the "big tent" of Idiotarianism?

"Leftists" in universities wink at Jihadists in the same way that "Rightists" at CCC meetings wink at cross burners.

You (the collective you) draw connections where they don't exist. Can a female university student believe that Palestinians have a legitimate cause, as a people? Not in Katzman's world: her belief structure means she is a "feminazi", an "islamofascist", an "anti-semite", an "animal rights nazi"... you get the idea. But there's more! She's also "hostile to rational thought", "winking at jihadists", an an apologist for murder, to boot!

Wow, that's a lot of evil in one little girl. Who knew?

All I say is she thinks the Palestinians might have a point. But your dots become fully connected, defensively, instantly...

And yes, Joe, filling a few paragraphs fifty percent full of insult and bluster cheapens discourse.

I believe in national health care. Did that qualify me for "radical left"? I think we need more regulation on corporations. Did that qualify me? Taxes don't really bother me all that much, although they should, given what I pay. I can keep going, if I haven't qualified yet.

Maybe I can take a brief time-out, and refer to you as a McVeigh Republican. Makes sense to me; if I have only one brush. You like guns and shootin' stuff and smaller government and blowin' stuff up, and so did he. But I won't, because it's just stupid. You're a more complex individual than that, and because you share one characteristic (smaller government) with a real bad guy, doesn't mean you share the entire belief system.

A system of belief is a complex, evolving entity. Simplification of this is a very bad idea because over-simplicity creates conflict. We need to have room to move. Diplomacy needs to be able to maneuver. Tolerance is based in flexibility. Viewing social issues as members of a class of NP-complete problems renders the whole unsolvable.

The "anti-idiotarian", nose in the air, close-minded, take no shit, f-you-and-the-horse-you-rode-in-on, superiority complex delivered by the average invoker of the word seems, to many of us, to be a great way to create enemies unnecessarily. And that's how my family gets endangered.

Tolerance starts with respect, which is apparently in short supply these days.

So am I or ain't I the big "I"?

Do you want a label, or a discourse? The last line I hear from the right wingers I argue with (sorry, "debate with") in person is almost always "I can't respond to that, but you just have to respect the fact that I believe something different from you".

So I do. It's a start, because they're never going to change their minds if you don't.

I bow down to all you badass motherf@#$@rs. The kick'em in the teeth crowd; the take-no-shit crowd; the make-me-a-sandwich boys. You own the playground. You can tape signs on the backs of the nerds.

Then you grow up. You work in a gas station. And the nerd working in corporate fires your ass.

Den Beste gives us a marvelous example of true extremism -- the casual contemplation of nuclear genocide to rid ourselves of a tiny, nasty minority within a population with which we are currently somewhat adversarial. I find his words to be a smooth, oily kind of evil. This rush to judgement, rush to the end-game...it's an unnecessary exercise of brinksmanship and absolutism.

Is this the point at which I need to reassert myself as a card-carrying citizen of whatever democracy? Say a few things to earn respect? Boo-ya. Capitalism kicks ass. Taxes suck! I support the troops! I like pancakes and Samurai Jack. That's the limit of rote platitudes I can muster, in this moment.

I have said repeatedly that what the Arabs need to fear the most is that we begin to think about them the way they (or their extremes) think about us. But what do they really think about us? Would you kill Savas, the generous and kind Arab who showed me Istanbul? Because when you guys talk about your armies and your shiny red buttons, and how very much you'd like to push them, but only if somebody absolutely makes you do it.

Exactly how close do you all think we are, to the brink? Are we one step removed from annihilation?

We've been there for forty years, and the extremists had nothing to do with it. We put ourselves there. We built the technology; we built it, and now they've come, in the night. But we can't put the jack back in the box. It doesn't work that way.

There are two essential positions vis-a-vis the terrorists/extremists in this world. You can either do something to get'em to love us, or you can try to get'em to fear us.

Den Beste and rest of the button pushers sure do definitely want them to fear us. Never mind the cost of such an action to our souls, the very heart of what makes our countries fundamentally better. We try to do the right thing.

Is there not a 40 year object lesson in Israel right now that teaches us about this particular endgame? It leads nowhere. If we are unwilling to engage a final (read: death to them all) solution, a population cannot be suppressed through fear and violence. It only incites more violence and hatred. Like a bully in a playground, the blows rain down on someone who can't fight back, won't fight back. And then a gun shows up in the hands of the victim, and someone dies, and then the cycle starts again...the history of the world is written in these small cycles, and expanded to the larger canvas of civilizations.

I refuse to accept the playground. There are other ways. We can grow up, grow out of this. Hatred can be eased, when we recognize it on both sides for what it is.

Those in the center must find the strength to reject attempts at domination by the extremists.

This has been a circuitous route to "Idiotarianism"...but here's the point: You cannot eliminate terrorism through force. If you think it can be done through force, you are an idiot. Thousands of years of human history tell us, with exacting clarity that in any population there are misfits, there are malcontents, and there are those who are insane. The only defense we have against these sad souls is a population that doesn't want them around. People are the early warning system.

If America had ten Timothy McVeighs, and they went to Moscow, they rented ten white vans, bought twenty tons of fertilizer, and blew holes in buildings, killing a few thousand Russians, we'd have a number of people in this country who'd say "good riddance". A Russian Den Beste might push his button at that point, which would be idiotic.

Technology is dangerous. I get that, deeply and fundamentally. It places more and more power into the hands of fewer and fewer people, as every year goes by. There is no way to stop it. Suitcase nukes, an aerosol of death, radioactive dust...and in the future, we may have nuclear-powered nanites carrying tiny bladders of vile poison deep into the heart of the enemy, whoever that is.

When the next destructive wonder comes along, will you play the same risk analysis game? Will you decide that the newest technology wonder is too dangerous for others to have, and that it requires a pre-emptive strike? If we don't push our button, maybe we won't get the chance...and God won't give us 50 points at the Pearly Gates for having "smited enemies when we had the damn chance."

Holy Christ, I'm one of the pansy peaceniks, or something. I mean, why would God have given the US an Army if he didn't intend for it to be used?

Commenter Ben informs us: So the left will become more frustrated, radicalized, and dangerous. You shoot mad dogs. You may not like it, but you really have no choice. Either shoot the mad dogs, or let them destroy you and your family, your friends, and your nation.

With that paragraph I think we've arrived at the reason why "Idiotarian" bothers me so much. It's a big, obvious hook on which the narrow-minded, vicious hard right can hang anything or anyone they don't understand or don't like. It's a parrot-talk word. It cheapens the intellectual underpinnings of the true conservative and re-renders genuine argument into lead-based pablum. It's a single-color paintbrush in a multi-color world.

Right now there are tens of thousands of relatives of thousands of newly dead Iraqis who have developed a permanent hatred of the US. A significant chunk of that emotion is generated by the right-wing rhetorical chaining of 9/11 to Iraq; the perception is that they're being killed in retribution for something that they didn't do. I can't think of a better way to piss people off than that.

I know how the average American would react if he was convicted of something he didn't do. He'd scream bloody murder, vow revenge, and find a way to get back at whoever put him there. Why expect people in other countries to be any different?

Maybe they're on 3/5 of a person, per person, over there. Maybe it's less.

Yes, the rambling needs to stop. Here's one last bit of nasty perspective:

Den Beste says that "what we're trying to do in Iraq seems to be the only way to keep the body count in this war from making WWII look small". Let's go horrible, terrible-case and assume a nuke in terrorist hands...a crude suitcase model will do.

Deaths in Hiroshima: 65,000 in the first four months. That's about what would happen in a modern city, too, with a nuke of comparable size, within a factor of two or three.

Deaths in World War II: Around 50 MILLION.

Why don't we lay off on the comparisons between Al Qaeda and WWII, ok? It's BS. The only thing that could possibly generate truly high and horrific deaths are biologicals, which are going to be substantially easier to work with in the future than nukes. It's probably a bad time to "accidentally" kill an Arab microbiologist's son.

Al Qaeda are criminals. You don't nuke a neighborhood because it produces criminals. You don't walk into the neighborhood and shoot randomly, unless you don't think humans live in the neighborhood. Don't be suprised if the feeling is mutual, then..

This would be a great time for Buckethead to get a word in edgewise, and demonstrate to me just how far out of my tree I have managed to get myself.

Just like so many other things. Here is my new crazy idea. The primary Palestinian objection to The Fence is the economic implications thereof: They're dependent on Israel for their economy. Of course, a pretty good chunk of Israel is dependent on cheap Palestinian labor too, but that's life. There are land issues (farmers' farms being split up), but let's set those issues aside as solvable and part of the "where is the fence" problem, rather than the "should there be a fence problem".

If the US and certain other countries (like Europe) were to agree to set up factories and so forth in the new Palestine, this could jumpstart a new economy. First, it's a cheap way to buy peace. Second, it gives Palestinians jobs; a pretty good chunk of the political resistance is due to the desperation and free time created by a destroyed economy.

It might just be the cheapest way to solve much of the problem. At the end of the day, you'd have two states, relative peace, and a decent Palestinian economic infrastructure. You'd also have the US sitting as the agency that made it happen.

So I wonder...what would it cost to do something like this? Life and materials are cheap in the West Bank...what kinds of industries could be created, with international support?

And Then?

I sure do think simple sometimes. Too simple... :)

Glenn Reynolds thinks it's just fine to do it. If the victim of a crime talks to the press afterwards, well, there's no crime to be had! Remember that if a reporter walks up to you after you've been mugged and the cops have the guy held on the ground. In Glenn Reynolds' American, you could be giving the guy a perfect defense!

Let's see...she's photographed, but is hiding her face to avoid being recognized.

Glenn doesn't like the fact that Wilson is pissed, and is using every tool at his disposal to get back at those who went after his wife.

I can only hope that there are sober, ethical individuals running the investigation, and that they do the right thing. You have to trust in that.

Here's the question, Glenn: Given that you've just declared the scandal "bogus", do you call off the investigation?

I heard an interesting discussion this morning on NPR...the topic was the prisoners down in Cuba. The Supreme Court is hearing the Hamdi case soon, I think...the case will decide the question of whether the US Government is allowed to hold a US citizen without a trial or any other recourse, by declaring that person an "unlawful combatant".

Common sense tells us that the government can't do this. I don't even know why this has gotten as far as the Supreme Court. Sure, the guy was picked up on a battlefield. Yeah, there were enemies in the area. At least, that's what the government says. Our system of justice says that crimes (like this one) need to be proven by the government. We don't just throw people in jail because a prosecutor says they've done this or that. We already know what happens when you have a system of justice that works that way -- take a look at the waning days of the Soviet Empire, or what purports to be justice in China, today.

There are a couple of standard excuses that are trotted out by Bush supporters, to justify this. First is the "just trust us" line. Since when does this country "just trust" its elected representatives? At the heart of democracy is the free and unfettered flow of information. Yes, we "trust" our representatives, and if we don't like what they do, we can throw them out in the next election. Our ability to know whether or not we should toss them out depends on the flow of information. If the government is coming after citizens secretly, other citizens don't have access to the information they need to make voting decisions.

At a bare minimum, the government should be required to publish aggregate statistics on the numbers of secretly held captives. Substantial judicial oversight needs to be in place, and periodic reviews must be in place, with members from each branch of government, who must all be in agreement. Is this a lot of work? Yeah, but if we want to do the right thing, it's important.

On the status of the boys in Cuba: It all hinges on status of an individual. We can probably do a significant amount of sorting with one simple principle. Give each prisoner a chance to declare his citizenship, and then ask that government to acknowledge that the prisoner is one of their citizens. That government can then confer status to the prisoner. If the government declares that person to be a soldier in their army, then the person is a prisoner of war and must be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. If they do not acknowledge that person as a soldier, then they are officially an unlawful combatant.

Once someone is in the "unlawful combatant" classification, we must then determine if they were, in fact, fighting. This appears to be one of the key problems: How do we know what a given person was doing? The Administration's attitude towards this is that we should err on the side of safety, and simply keep these people indefinitely until we are sure that it's OK to let them go. To be sure, a small number of people have been released -- their is no overt desire to hold people that don't need holding.

The question is, why should this process be secret? The only sensible reason is that there may be matters of intelligence that could be compromised. While this is a valid reason, it is applied with a very broad brush. It does not make any sense that virtually all of the Gitmo Happy Campers are in this category. Once again, even if secrecy is necessary, convene a simple tribunal with military, judicial, and executive branch members. Have congressional oversight on these tribunals, which can operate in secrecy if the case is made for it. Otherwise, they're open. Why should they be any other way?

Ultimately it's about deciding whether or not the Constitution and its principles apply universally, or whether American citizens are in some sort of special class or people. Americans don't often consider how they'd like to be treated in other countries. If an American citizen is locked up in China on bogus charges, they'd expect their government to come rushing to their aid, because it just ain't right.

Two wrongs don't make a right. We need a simple mechanism to provide oversight and effectively deal with these people, and a universal mechanism is the American way to do it.

Want to get educated on Proportional Representation, which just might be able to fix a lot of the problems we face as a society? Start here:

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