Category Archives: blogging

This Wacky World

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It’s a good news/bad news sort of day. For example, the Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty. Score one for civilization. On the other hand, the Arizona Senate is considering a bill that would eliminate programs that promote energy efficiency. Why? Because “clean energy programs in Arizona are a plot by the United Nations to create a single world government in order to control people’s lives.”

Maybe we could just sell Arizona to some other country. I’m thinking China would take it if Mexico won’t.

Coca-Cola announced it is withdrawing support from ALEC in the face of a threatened progressive boycott. I’m starting to think that if we’d had social media 30 years ago the right-wing coup would never have gotten off the ground.

On the other hand, Krugman sees ALEC influence in New Jersey.

John Cole has a long and thoughtful post about why he switched from being a wingnut to being a sane person. As he explains why he used to support the Bush Administration, key part to me is “I believed it. I identified with it. It was part of who I was for years. It was my deference to authoritarianism after years in the military. It was tribalism.”

This is why reason doesn’t work on wingnuts. They are a tribe, and wingnuttiness is part of their tribal, and hence personal, identity. Any disagreement with the tribe, any attempt to show that everything they stand for is nonsense and lies, is an existential threat that must be stamped out by any means necessary.

So no matter how patiently one might try to show them that whatever they believe is irrational and a pack of lies, they will simply retreat further into la-la land and retort with whatever non sequiturs and ad hominems they find handy.

Cole says that what finally got to him was the sheer meanness of the Right.

And while Republicans may very well have been crazy for decades, the outright ugliness, I think, has escalated beyond measure. The hideous treatment of Graeme Frost was the final straw, I guess. It was just the last, final, “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?” moment. You see the same thing from the same folks as they viciously attack Trayvon Martin for his horrible sin of being gunned down in cold blood.

Something like that seems to have happened to Charles Johnson back in 2009, which in many ways was a more remarkable conversion. I don’t remember that Balloon Juice was ever as hard, screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth Right as Little Green Footballs used to be. It’s like Johnson woke up from a bad dream.

Speaking of bad dreams — Item One —

A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were “a felony war crime.”

What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were “prohibited” under U.S. law — “even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.”

Item two — Curveball goes public —

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who openly admitted to fabricating intelligence about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is breaking his silence with appearances in a BBC documentary that began airing this past Sunday and will conclude next Sunday.

Not that I expect many people to notice …

Stuff to Read

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James Surowiecki, “Private Equity.” Yes, it’s as bad as we think it is. See also Krugman’s comment:

They make one especially keen point: if it were really about adding efficiency, why do the same people lead takeovers in many industries, instead of people with specific expertise in each industry doing the job? Their answer is that these specialists are specialists in deal-breaking, not value creation.

This takes me back to my theory of What’s Gone Wrong With American Business. I wrote awhile back:

In my experience, CEOs rarely come up through the ranks of production, manufacturing or engineering. They come from finance, advertising, marketing. They make decisions about money, sales, acquisitions. Often they have only a vague idea how the products their company sells actually get made. Nor do they care. As a rule they don’t deal with employees below the upper management level. Often they aren’t even that bright; they’re just really aggressive and narcissistic and intimidate everyone around them into obedience. Their success often depends on the quality of the staffs they assemble around them who take care of the details, like actually managing.

The money guys not only don’t care how the products get made; they have no respect for the processes and skills required to get products made. This means they honestly don’t see any difference between managing a fruit company or an automobile company or a toothpaste company. “Making things” is what the little faceless drones in the office cubicle hives do, and one office full of faceless drones is just like another to the big shots.

See also Steve Kornacki, “When a Party Flirts With Suicide.”

Update: Following up the Rand Son of Ron airport issue mentioned in the last post — Steve Benen says Rand was on his way to Washington to speak at the annual “March for Life,” also called the March to Criminalize Abortion and Turn Women Into Cows. Steve says,

Hmm. So, Rand Paul, always cautious about his privacy rights, balked at airport security measures. He was en route to a March for Life rally, where he’ll speak to activists who don’t believe there is a right to privacy.

Libertarians sure are an odd bunch.

Son of Ron was able to take another flight.

Day of Virtual Rage

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Today is official “shutdown SOPA and PIPA” day on the Web. You’ve probably heard that Wikipedia is down for the day, and even LOLcats has a protest popup.

The White House told Congress it’s the bills that need to be taken offline, so to speak, and to take another approach to curtail online piracy. Politico reports the bills are on “life support” and even some former sponsors are changing their minds.

I personally think dealing with online piracy is going to take big-time international cooperation among nations. I question whether there is anything the U.S. Congress can do unilaterally that will have any impact. Blocking sites? Hah. Hackers will always find a way.

That said, I really do wish someone would find a way to deal with jerks who steal other people’s intellectual property. I’m not making any money from this site any more, but people who steal and re-publish entire articles from my Buddhism site are depriving me of page views for my work, which really is money out of my pocket. But the worst offenders are in Asia, where even the mighty New York Times Company’s lawyers can’t get to them.

Anyway, if you want to weigh in, Tim F. suggests how.