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Last night ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) belladonna93 got stuck in a massive anti-prop-8-ruling protest on her way home. It took her more than an hour and a great deal of frustration and anxiety to work her way through blocked-off-streets, crowds of protesters, and jammed traffic. The same thing happened to me twice in the week following the passage of Proposition 8. I'm all for civil disobedience and nonviolent protest. But may I point out that the communities where these protests have been happening -- Westwood, West Hollywood, and Hollywood -- are precisely the communities with the strongest support for (and largest population of) GLBT people in Southern California? I would be extremely surprised if more than 5% of those inconvenienced by these protests favored Proposition 8. So what we had here was a bunch of protesters disrupting the lives of their own community members, and of their most ardent supporters, to protest a decision made by a small group of judges who live in and around Sacramento, 400 miles to the north. The net outcome for me was that I had a brief urge to support Proposition 8 just to avoid rewarding stupid and rude behavior. Is that really the PR result the community wants? Some days I really don't get people at all.
I can't believe I'm about to write this, but I find myself agreeing with the Republicans on the stimulus package. It's filled with funding which has no credible link to immediate economic stimulus. I mean, sure, virtually any money the government spends will create jobs, but that argument is disingenuous. Programs like alternative energy research, however much I may support them, belong in a different bill. The tactic of cramming pet programs into a "must pass" mega-bill disgusted me when Republicans were doing it, and it's only fair to be disgusted now that the Democrats are doing it. Sometimes I hate politics. Those times being days with Y in them. :P
Wed, Nov. 5th, 2008, 11:05 am
Tea leaves
I'm quite happy that Obama won the election. But I'm a bit perplexed by observers trying to make this out as some great national political shift. Every presidential election of the past decade has been won by a thin margin. Is a 49/51 split turning into a 51/49 split really a "sea change"? It doesn't seem that way to me. Our electoral system reminds me of chaos theory, where tiny changes in a system's inputs produce huge (and often unpredictable) changes in the outputs. Consider that a difference of a few percentage points in the popular vote resulted in a more than 2:1 difference in electoral votes. It's nice that the tiny margin swung my way this time...but it's still a tiny margin, and hence fragile. The people who thought McCain would make a better president are still out there, and there is roughly one of them for each and every person like me. It's not a stable situation at all. And I worry that liberals (in the broad and classical sense) will let their guard down. Of course, we have reminders like the apparent passage of California's Proposition 8 (also by a tiny margin) that the war isn't won. Perhaps that is the silver lining on that otherwise dark cloud. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and of liberalism.
Tue, Nov. 4th, 2008, 09:08 am
Summing it up
At work late yesterday, a group of us were discussing the election, with particular attention to the way both sides have demonized the other (even more than in previous elections, which is saying something). I remarked "No matter who wins tomorrow, half the country will think we're going straight to hell in a handbasket." A coworker replied, "And they'll be right."
Fri, Sep. 26th, 2008, 03:47 pm
Scale
Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose you had a machine that printed $100 bills, one bill per second. In a minute you'd have $6,000; in an hour, $360,000. In less than three hours you'd be a millionaire. Now, suppose you wanted to use your magic machine to solve the toxic debt crisis, which famously is expected to require about $700 billion up front. How long would you have to run your machine? ( Make a guess before looking... )
Fri, Sep. 26th, 2008, 10:05 am
Scammers
This showed up in my inbox this morning... Dear Mr. Berry: I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude. I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion USD. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you. I am working with Mr. Phil Gramm, lobbyist for UBS, who (God willing) will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a former U.S. congressional leader and the architect of the PALIN / McCain Financial Doctrine, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. As such, you can be assured that this transaction is 100% safe. This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred. Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds. Yours Faithfully, Minister of Treasury Paulson
I just received yet another email from the Obama campaign. I get around three emails like this a day, since I have occasionally donated money to one or another Democratic fund. So I get treated to faux-personal notes from my good friends Barack, Howard, Barbara, and the like. Gah. Today's Obama note was about raising money. No, wait, they saved that until the end of the email. Most of it was about the current financial crisis, and the Obama plan to address it. One of the bullet points was: Main Street, Not Just Wall Street -- Any bailout plan must include a payback strategy for taxpayers who are footing the bill and aid to innocent homeowners who are facing foreclosure.
Exactly who are these "innocent homeowners"? Listening to rhetoric like this, you'd think people had been forced at gunpoint to buy homes they couldn't afford. They weren't; these people had the same facts available as I did, and made different decisions based on those facts. Or they chose to ignore the facts, which seems extremely unwise, but they're adults and they were thus gloriously free to act stupidly if they wanted to. In any case, they gambled on a superheated market staying that way long enough for them to cash in, and lost the gamble. That happens, when you gamble.
I will be exceedingly and permanently pissed off at any politician or political party that uses my tax money to pay for other peoples' mistakes. This extends to Wall Street, too; I agree with Paulson and Bernanke that taxpayer purchase of toxic debt is necessary to our continued economic health, but we (the taxpayers) need to get something of comparable value in return, preferably equity in the companies involved.
Not that this will happen; Congress is once again being stampeded by the Bush administration. Some people never learn.
Mon, Sep. 8th, 2008, 02:10 pm
Framing
Sometimes the distorted way people frame debates drives me nuts. Apparently some pastors want to be able to endorse political candidates from the pulpit while retaining tax-exempt status. Nothing wrong with that as a political position, though I oppose it. But they are arguing that the present situation limits their right to free speech. Um, no, they are free to say whatever they like if they are willing to stop being subsidized by taxpayers. Sometimes I believe there's no hope for rational debate about anything anymore.
Okay, a question for everyone, as I can't seem to resolve it myself. I don't think anyone would argue that the US is going through a bad period. Civil liberties are being eroded, billions of dollars (and thousands of lives) spent on unending wars, our economy teetering...things aren't good. But are we witnessing a fundamental change in the nature of our country? Or is this just another of those paroxysms that happen in the normal course of history? Yes, suspending the eight century old right of habaeus corpus is alarming -- but Lincoln did it during the Civil War, and was loudly criticized for it. Going to war under false pretenses and (quite likely) under the direction of corporate interests is bad, but anyone familiar with the Spanish-American War won't find the current situation all that surprising. Rampant greed, corruption, and cronyism dominate our politics, while shrill sloganeering replaces rational public discourse -- but is it any worse than the period around 1880-1900? The current period in American history scares the crap out of me, but I'm too close to it to decide if it's uniquely awful. Those of a historical-analytical bent, have at it.
Every now and then human behavior so astonishes me that I find myself entering a mental state I call "the anthropologist from Mars", a phrase I borrowed from Oliver Sacks. This happened most recently as I listened to an earnest debate on NPR about the effect of Obama's race on likely voting patterns in the November election. And suddenly I found myself thinking, with a bemused fascination, "Do you really mean to tell me that the choice of who gets hired to run the United States may hinge on relative melanin production levels?" What a weird, wonderful, tragic, exasperating, scary, exciting planet this is.
NASA funding cuts will cripple the Mars rovers.So, let me get this straight: We have two functioning scientific probes on the surface of Mars. We've already paid hundreds of millions of dollars to build them and to get them to Mars. We've gotten past the risk of losing them in transit or in the early stages of the mission. In fact, they've proven miraculously durable, lasting years rather than months on the surface. They're still doing incredibly valuable scientific work. And we're going to pull the plug because we won't spend a few million a year on ground support? Sometimes the shortsightedness of humanity is astonishing. I guess this adds a layer of meaning to my earlier "Martian sunset" post.
Can anyone out there explain to me how it is Congress's concern to manage baseball? It's a business, and unprescribed steroid use is already illegal. So what conceivable excuse is there for my employees in the federal government wasting valuable time on this when there are so many urgent problems which are legitimate government concerns? If it's simple grandstanding, why do people put up with their employees wasting time like this? Why won't the members of Congress all get fired next election day? It's times like this I realize just how far out of the cultural mainstream I am. And the gap just seems to keep widening, year by year.
My daughter madelineusher participated in the anti-Scientology demonstration in Hollywood last Sunday. You can see her in this video for a moment right around the 1:01 mark. I was a bit worried about her being involved in provoking a notoriously paranoid and retribution-prone organization, especially with the LAPD also in play, but everything went very well, and she had a wonderful time. Personally, I'm a little queasy about turning protest into performance art or a net "happening". I'm sure most of those involved didn't care one way or another about Scientology; it was all about an excuse to get together wearing V for Vendetta masks and make a lot of noise. Those who did care about Scientology were basically exploiting a lot of youthful geeky exuberance to push their own agenda, and I worry about how that kind of maneuver could play out in the future. After all, the Nuremberg rallies followed pretty much the same pattern -- the attraction was spectacle and civic pride, not the Nazi program per se, but the latter benefited. Then again, I suppose it's always been that way; in any uprising you have a few ideologues and a lot of people looking for excitement and group identity. The only difference now is that the net makes it very easy to organize quickly and on a global scale. We live in interesting times.
Thu, Feb. 7th, 2008, 05:36 pm
The Long Walk
A question for anyone familiar with Stephen King's story "The Long Walk", which he wrote as Richard Bachman: Have you ever noticed that the story can be read as an allegory of the presidential primary process? Discuss.
I've always kind of liked the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
But apparently King George doesn't share my fondness. Here's an excerpt from the scariest Presidential executive order I've ever read: Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
Go read the whole thing. And then ask yourself two questions. First, what the hell is happening to our country? And second, why isn't this the lead story on the news?
The City of LA is coming after me for some ludicrous business tax that I supposedly should have paid for doing about twenty hours of weekend consulting for a friend's company two years ago. I may need to get a business license, too, if I want to keep doing things like that now and then. Meanwhile, Congress is using my tax money to micromanage the pension practices of the NFL, which is rather weird, given that the NFL is a business and its players are adults...so why can't they handle their own contract negoatiations?It's times like this that social and economic aspects of Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy have a very strong appeal. I mean, the whole thing was clearly just a sexual kink for strong capitalist men that she retrofitted a philosophy onto, but still, some days it makes more sense than the status quo.
I thought the art of Congressional pulpit-pounding was dead. I was wrong. Watch the video; he's not a polished speaker, but he believes what he is saying. I didn't know they made politicians who could say what they really feel these days.
It's intriguing to learn that, while there seems to be an unlimited budget for no-bid contracts to "rebuild" Iraq, our farsighted and wise Federal government just can't scrape together the money to give us sufficient warning of a devastating asteroid impact. If we were to identify a dangerous rock more than a decade or so before its projected impact date, we have technologies right now that could be rushed into deployment to nudge it onto a safe course. But if we have less than a decade worth of lead time, we're S.O.L., and I don't mean the star. NASA's proposed program would have bought us that critical lead time required to avert catastrophe. Instead, we'll just keep crossing our fingers and trying not to think about it. I guess this is one of those Bush administration faith-based initiatives.
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