Category: Stupidity

The definition of “semantics” mentions political propaganda.

Here’s a headline from yesterday’s New York Times:

Waterboarding Not Legal Now, Justice Dept. Lawyer Says

I opened the article with a twinge of optimism.

Steven G. Bradbury, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, seemed set to shake up one of the fiercest debates in Washington today by offering a clear and concise statement about the controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

‘’There has been no determination by the Justice Department that the use of waterboarding, under any circumstances, would be lawful under current law,’’ he says in prepared remarks for a House hearing today that were obtained in advance by The Associated Press.

Bradbury proffered all the words necessary to reach the conclusion stated in the headline, but only if you’re anxious to accept the assurance you’re looking for at any hint of its existence. Sadly, Bradbury is not stating that waterboarding, or any other torture technique, is illegal. He left open the government’s option to later make the determination of whether or not current law permits torture. (I weep for my country that I must write that sentence.)

Non-answers like this are a fundamental aspect of politics. The Bush administration is only the current, flagrant example. It is why rules restricting government should be as specific and as clear as possible. Such rules should be as extensive as necessary to prevent any uncertainty.

Only waterboarding three detainees is still three human beings too many. The Bush administration is populated by war criminals. They must be prosecuted. And every excuse-peddler in government who helps to support such crimes must be shown the door.

A hard-hitting question or twenty from journalists wouldn’t hurt, either. Lapping up the Bush administration’s persistent line of crap is damaging.

Mirrors create pornographic images. Ban mirrors!

Police in Virginia Beach, after pursuing obscenity charges against the manager of an Abercrombie & Fitch store for two in-store displays, have reacted to public ridicule come to their senses:

Deputy City Attorney Mark Stiles said that, while the images might be technically in breach of the nudity section of the city’s local code, they were in line with the other standards upheld by the law. For prosecution the images would have to appeal to “prurient interests”, lack any redeeming artistic merit and be offensive to “prevailing community standards”.

First, allow me to remind you that the First Amendment states that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. (There are limited exceptions that do not apply here, as Kip explains in his analysis of the case before today’s announcement.) But within Stiles’ convoluted excuse for the city’s nudity clause, consider the actual images:

And:

Like, OMG! The bottom of a female breast! The top of a male butt! My eyes, my eyes! And OMG! The Children!

Rather than admit that the officer(s) screwed up, Stiles crouched:

“So Abercrombie and Fitch, part of their marketing plans is to get as close to the line as they can get and then make it a judgement call for the officer on the street. I think that’s what’s happened here,” he said.

IF Abercrombie & Fitch planned this, it still requires an idiot with a badge and a gun to ignore the law. It’s probably safe to assume that one would arrive on the scene somewhere, but the officer’s central role as the deciding factor in the success of this (allegedly) orchestrated marketing campaign is key. Without that public servant’s lack of judgment, the whole idea is a waste of money. Thanks to the officer’s incompetence, this campaign is money well spent.

Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t need any more discretion, because it’s nowhere close to the limited exceptions to the First Amendment that require conflicting rights. There is no conflicting right to press charges because you’re offended.

He’s a Knight? He should only be allowed to ride a horse.

The article says this idea won’t go anywhere, but it’s a suggestion to the EU, so I wouldn’t quite discount it so quickly:

The former head of Royal Dutch Shell has gone way out on a limb and urged the European Union to ban all vehicles that get less than 35 mpg, saying it is the only way to significantly address global climate change and force the auto industry to build more efficient vehicles.
…

Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, who spent his career working for the giant oil company, says an outright ban is needed because so-called “gas-guzzler” taxes do not work – and aren’t fair because they let those with the means to pay them skirt responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Gas guzzler taxes are only ineffective – permitting “those with the means to pay skirt responsibility for reducing greenhouse gas emissions – to the extent that politicians direct those gas guzzler taxes to the general fund to pay for expenditures not related to reducing the effects of greenhouse gases. The fault does not rest with those who pay the tax.

“‘It is a social thing,” he explained. “We mustn’t say the wealthy can avoid doing what is needed by society. When we eliminated coal fires in London we didn’t say to people in Chelsea you can pay a bit more and toast your crumpets in front of an open fire. We we [sic] nobody, but nobody, could have an open fire.”
…

Moody-Stuart, who is currently chairman of the mining group Anglo American, says he is a great fan of the free market, “but like most things, they have a failing. Without regulation to channel their power, markets will not deliver things which are of no immediate benefit to the individual making his or her choice, even though they may be beneficial to society.”

We all know who gets to decide what is (allegedly) needed by society.

And of course Moody-Stuart is a “great fan of the free market”, but it’s just not quite right. Some human needs to be the guiding hand rather than the invisible hand. The PC? When that showed up, Altair IBM sold 70 billion PCs the first year because they knew it would sere an immediate benefit. The iPod? When that showed up, Apple sold 98 billion of them in the first 3 weeks. The incandescent fluorescent light bulb? Don’t even get me started on those ridiculous sales when the government regulator gave Edison the idea.

Every time one of these imbeciles opens his mouth, I wonder if he’s ever opened a book.

Four commas times three is madness.

Check in on any political blog today and you’ll see mention of President Bush’s proposed budget for FY2009 (which starts Oct. 1st). Much of the attack has already been made in better detail, so, other than pointing out that 3 trillion dollars is $3,000,000,000,000, the only budgetary point I’m going to mention is this:

The document also assumes $70 billion in costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars next year, a fraction of the true costs, which could reach $200 billion in 2008. Beyond 2009, the budget includes no war costs at all.

Lying, in addition to not being very Christian, is an interesting way of “supporting the troops”. I wonder if he’s trying to be snarky to indicate what he expects will happen if Obama or Clinton wins in November. That would require more foresight and less middle-finger-waving than the Bush administration has shown in the last seven years, so I doubt it. Regardless, it’s a significant political abuse of our money to ignore what will eventually be taken from us.

However, as awful as that is, this poor reporting from the article is embarrassing (emphasis mine).

Budget analysts and Democrats say the good news in later year is likely illusory. The Bush budget plan makes room for $61 billion in 2009 to stop the growth of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to make sure the rich pay income tax that is increasingly squeezing the middle class. The cost of an AMT fix will continue to grow each year, but the budget makes no more allowances for the cost of that fix.

This is simply devoid of any historical accuracy.

Why Was the AMT Enacted?
Congress enacted the AMT in 1969 following testimony by the Secretary of the Treasury that 155 people with adjusted gross income above $200,000 had paid zero federal income tax on their 1967 tax returns. … In inflation-adjusted terms, those 1967 incomes would be roughly $1.17 million in today’s [ed. note: the article is from May 2005] dollars.

The Washington Post article can’t believe that 155 people in 1969 constituted “the rich”. Details matter with the AMT because its egregiousness becomes more apparent to the typical voter who doesn’t dwell on such details. The goal in reporting is not to convince him that it is egregious, but omitting specifics deprives him of a relevant fact necessary for him to reach an informed conclusion. Omitting specifics becomes a method for endorsing the policy. Maybe we can’t expect the average voter to seek out The Tax Foundation, but presumably he does read a mass-market source of information.

Also, while I agree with concern that the AMT is “squeezing” the middle class, it’s irrational to believe that we should fix “middle class” rather than “squeezing”. See here.

I don’t know which post I like better.

Two excellent posts from Cato@Liberty. First, Michael Tanner provides an update on how well RomneyCare is working in Massachusetts.

Faced with rising costs that threaten to put the program $150–400 million per year over budget, the Massachusetts Connector Authority is now adopting a number of changes to RomneyCare. They include:

  1. Pressuring insurers not to increase premiums (ie. premium caps).
  2. Ordering insurers to cut reimbursements to hospitals and physicians by 3–5 percent.
  3. Reduce the choices available to consumers.

It seems that in the fight between economics and political dreams, economics wins. <sarcasm>How shocking.</sarcasm>

Second, Jim Harper discusses an issue separating Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with implications far beyond the purported scope of what’s barely been discussed.

Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) disagree quite starkly on whether illegal immigrants should be licensed — or, more accurately, on whether driver licensing and proof of immigration status should be linked.
…

The right answer here isn’t obvious, but it is important.

Many people believe that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be “rewarded” with drivers’ licenses. Fair enough: the rule of law is important. There’s also a theory that denying illegal immigrants “benefits” like driver licensing will make the country inhospitable enough that they will leave. This has not borne out, however. Denying illegal immigrants licenses has merely caused unlicensed and untrained driving, with the hit-and-run accidents and higher insurance rates that flow from that.

The major reason, though, why I agree with Senator Obama is because the linking of driver licensing and immigration status is part of the move to convert the driver’s license into a national ID card. Mission-creep at the country’s DMVs is not just causing growth in one of the least-liked bureaucracies. It’s creating the infrastructure for direct regulatory control of individuals by the federal government.

I agree with this. As a libertarian concern about unintended consequences drives some of my disdain for anything more than limited government. But as a libertarian who understands a little about history and tyrants, concern about intended consequences drives me more. Stupidity in government is bad. Evil in government is worse. Any politician who supports a national ID system is evil and must be stopped from enacting his or her plans.

All Your Problems Are Belong To Us

A sane person barely trusts politicians to perform their limited, legitimate duties. No sane person could possibly believe that expanding their power beyond that small scope is anything but a terrible idea.

With that in mind, Sen. Arlen Specter has a stunning belief in the government’s boundaries, even by politician standards. He wants an explanation from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on why the NFL destroyed the Spygate tapes.

“That requires an explanation,” Specter told The [New York] Times. “The NFL has a very preferred status in our country with their antitrust exemption. The American people are entitled to be sure about the integrity of the game. It’s analogous to the CIA destruction of tapes, or any time you have records destroyed.”

The destruction of tapes proving that a football team cheated against another football team is analogous to the government’s destruction of tapes proving that it tortures prisoners. I can’t possibly give that any further boost. Sen. Specter forced the fullest possible amount of grotesqueness into this conversation.

He went on to say:

“I don’t think you have to have a law broken to have a legitimate interest by the Congress on the integrity of the game … What if there was something on the tapes we might want to be subpoenaed, for example? You can’t destroy it. That would be obstruction of justice,” Specter said to The Times.

If violation of the law (even illegitimate laws) need not be the criteria, is it reasonable to assume that we’ll soon have an anti-tape destruction bill zipping through Congress to prevent Joe in Milwaukee from destroying his tapes of that night in Tijuana where he got just a wee bit tipsy and took pictures of himself giggling at the window displays advertising drugs that aren’t legally sold over the counter in the United States. I imagine such a bill would garner 97 votes¹ in the Senate and 434 votes² in the House, just as soon as the economic stimulus package passes.

Anyone else think this is grounds to remove Specter from office? He hasn’t broken any law, but he’s clearly not mentally capable of carrying out the duties of a United States Senator.

¹ Senators McCain, Obama, and Clinton are too busy to do their jobs vote.

² Ron Paul will vote against it, although he will stuff it full of pork for his constituents. But he’ll vote against it, so that makes it okay.

Don’t believe everything you hear.

Listening to Howard Stern this morning, he briefly discussed the upcoming New York primary. One his listeners e-mailed to say that he hadn’t decided who to vote for between Clinton and Obama. The listener said he ultimately decided on Clinton because he liked Gary Dell’Abate’s reasoning that she was in the White House with Bill when he balanced the budget in the ’90s, so she probably knows how to do it again.

I fear for our country sometimes often.

She doesn’t know the difference between carnivore and omnivore.

From various sources, I’d seen this article on Kansas City Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez, titled “The 247 lb. Vegan”. Now that I’ve read it, one fact is clear: Tony Gonzalez is not a vegan. I’m not sure that he specifically calls himself a vegan now, although the article makes clear that he has in the past. But the presence of meat in his diet demonstrates that he is an omnivore, however limited his consumption of animal products may be.

Contrary to what some want to believe, I don’t care. So we “lost” one. I don’t judge the worth of my veganism on its popular acceptance. Having celebrities among our numbers is momentarily fascinating but ultimately irrelevant. Save the glee over Tony Gonzalez.

And the excuses for meat. From Debbie Schlussel:

Lots of vegan, vegetarian, and animal rights sites around the Net are buzzing about today’s Wall Street Journal feature, “The 247 Lb. Vegan*”. They’re claiming that this article, about the diet of 247 lb. Kansas City Chiefs Tight End Tony Gonzalez, proves that an animal products-free diet is sustainable for anyone regardless of the lifestyle, physique, or profession.

But it’s a lie. There’s a reason there is an asterisk in the title of the article. Gonzalez’s diet includes 1,120 calories of broiled salmon for dinner. …

Ooooooh, we are so busted. Or as Schlussel points out with the title of her entry:

Weekend Read: Can a 247 lb. NFL Lineman Be a Vegan?
(Subtitle: Vegans Are Lying)

Presumably she’s referring to the “lots of vegan, vegetarian, and animal rights sites around the Net” that are “buzzing” about the article’s claim. Strangely, she doesn’t link to a single site – vegan, vegetarian, animal rights, or otherwise – that discusses this article. She merely makes her unsupported statement, excerpts a bit from the article from one expert about the non-viability of a vegan diet for an elite athlete, and offers a “suck it” to vegans because we’re allegedly too stupid to realize that chicken is meat and fish oil is an animal-based product. They are? For real? Wow, I learn something new every day.

Allow me to demonstrate a little logic and honesty by going one step further. In the video associated with the article, Mr. Gonzalez makes a smoothie. He states (at 3:08):

You put, uh, your rice milk on there. Or almond milk or, or regular milk.

I think he means cow’s milk, which is not vegan. There is your definitive proof that I lie about my diet. Tony Gonzalez calls himself a vegan, but he eats meat and maybe milk. I call myself a vegan because I don’t eat meat or milk. The label matters; the action does not. We are both lying.

I’m not surprised by her thinking, having read Schlussel’s entry. She offers this in response to her question in her title:

So, the answer is no. One cannot be an NFL lineman and be a vegan. You need animal protein to maintain the weight. And looking at the photo of Gonzalez, he looks on the small and thin side for an NFL lineman. He’d probably be much bigger and stronge [sic]–a prized advantage in an NFL line–if he ate meat and protein and drank cow’s or goat’s milk. …

Before ridiculing her scientific method, it should be noted that 247 pounds is not an atypical size for an NFL tight end. A tight end is not a lineman in the traditional sense, so he is not as big as the guards, tackles, and center. For example, Redskins Pro Bowl tight end Chris Cooley is 6′ 3″ and 249 pounds. This year’s Pro Bowl starters at tight end are Jason Witten (6′ 5″, 266) and Antonio Gates (6′ 4″, 260). Schlussel’s reasoning, if it can be called that, is empty of any knowledge of her subject matter. But there’s no need to let that be an impediment, I suppose.

But to the proof of her thesis statement, the first reported attempt by an NFL player to be a vegan “failed”. There’s no question of whether he received incorrect advice from his nutritionists. There’s no examination of how an actual vegan might approach a dietary need for more than 3,000 calories per day. This one example of a player who may not actually self-identify (I think he does) as vegan is enough. This is definitive; it’s impossible to be a vegan lineman in the NFL. Next up, her proof that God exists.

If Mr. Gonzalez calls himself a vegan, he is mistaken. If Mr. Gonzalez does not call himself a vegan, the article is mistaken. One of those two statement is fact. The answer is not clear, so The Wall Street Journal reporter (and/or editor) botched the article by not clarifying this point. That, and maybe Debbie Schlussel’s disregard for facts, is the only takeaway from the article.

Hat tip to Elaine Vigneault for the heads up on Schlussel’s nonsense.

Every broadcast is indecent.

Free speech be damned darned:

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue.

The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. The scene depicted “multiple, close-up views” of the woman’s “nude buttocks” according to an agency order issued late Friday.

The FCC is only attempting to fine ABC stations in the Central and Mountain time zones because they aired the show before 10 p.m. Even that logic violates the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law”, but okay, fine, at least the FCC is following one rule limiting its reach. But allow me to play semantics for a moment.

The agency said the show was indecent because “it depicts sexual organs and excretory organs _ specifically an adult woman’s buttocks.”

Ahem:

Function of the skin

The skin has several important functions, including:
…

  • Waste disposal. The skin is a minor source of waste disposal. Sweat glands located in the skin excrete waste products such as urea (a byproduct of protein metabolism) therefore eliminating them from the body.

Every actor on television violates the letter of the law by revealing an excretory organ. And every athlete during the Super Bowl next Sunday will presumably cause Fox liability by sweating, thereby engaging in an excretory activity. I will be complaining.

I’m engaging in hyperbole, but I’m not joking.

In an obscene requirement, ABC defended the artistic merit of showing a woman’s buttock, generating this response:

“The law is simple,” FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate wrote in a statement yesterday. “If a broadcaster makes the decision to show indecent programming, it must air between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. This is neither difficult to understand nor burdensome to implement.”

But it is an unconstitutional burden. Apparently “Congress shall make no law…” is difficult to understand. I’m not sure how, since it’s only five words, and only the first has more than one syllable. Perhaps that’s the trouble. Our leaders representatives do not understand the word Congress because it is too complicated. Idiots, every one of them.

Take joy until Congress and the FCC catch on. Any time you flip on your television, you’re being exposed to indecent material. Naughty, naughty.