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Incremental Progress&|&Free Range Talk

Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:57:26 -0800

Throughout the blogosphere today, the criticisms of the House bill passed last night are coming through loud and clear. The right, of course, is apoplectic at the thought of any reform passing. "Socialist, power grabbing, blah blah blah." It is not the conservative criticism I wish to address. The criticism I wish to address comes from the left.

Many on the left are critical of the bill because it does not go far enough fast enough. Kucinich is a case in point. He voted against the bill. Must be nice to live in an ideologically pure world. Also explains why Kucinich didn't do any better in the Democratic primaries for the race for President in 2008. The ideologically pure, while well intentioned, always suffer the same fate: Goldwater 1964 or McGovern 1972

Terrorism: Its Time to Get a Grip | World | AlterNet

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:05:12 -0800

From the page (Written in 2006): "The threat posed by terrorists -- like that of the Soviet menace during the Cold War -- has been massively exaggerated, and the public is understandably terrified. It's time for Americans to get a grip. "

Suddenly relevant again - not that it ever wasn't, actually.

Since You Asked - Salon.com

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:40:55 -0800

The human universe is filled with something I like to call Jerk-Weasel matter; and, as Planck's constant obtains in the world of physicists, a Jerk-Weasel constant obtains in the human moral universe. It is not possible to say whether Jerk-Weasel is indeed matter or a wave phenomenon. But the Jerk-Weasel force is constant and unrelenting.

You take your average concentration of Jerk-Weasel matter suspended in the population, it can be tolerated well. But Jerk-Weasel matter has attractive qualities such that it can nucleate around a dense aggregate, such as a Hitler, say, or a Pol Pot. So you have to try to keep the Jerk-Weasel matter in the universe in suspension, diluted, and not let it concentrate.

What tends to make it concentrate? In our time it seems to attach itself to large institutions of business.

There is its opposite, luckily, which you might call the Trinket-Granola force. The Trinket-Granola force seeks to weaken Jerk-Weasel matter by interpolating laughter and critical reasoning in the permeable membrane between particles of Jerk-Weasel matter. The Trinket-Granola force creates thin barriers that prevent Jerk-Weasel matter from concentrating in the kind of density that can reach critical mass and cause every credit card in the universe to explode.

Complicating all this is the Twinkies-Auschwitz continuum, in which gravely murderous multiples of Jerk-Weasel matter become indistinguishable from trivial and ridiculous particles of short-lived "Twinkie Matter," and the two live in symbiosis, feeding off each other. This is a dangerous combination, as people who encounter it in the dark don't know whether to laugh or draw knives.

Graphictruth: Fort Hood: Glenn Grenwald suggests you await developments.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:14:47 -0800

FTA:
Let us remember that much of this speculation had occurred prior to us knowing any of the Who, Where, When, Why or How, and even at the moment of writing, the entire body of public knowledge can be contained in two terse paragraphs, with room to spare.

So, set aside the Muslim thing. Refrain from hammering the PTSD thing. I resist the temptation to observe that psychiatry and sanity do not seem to go hand in hand. It is both cheap and has a high probablity of being irrelevant to the story.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Skipping Elections, Strategic Vision Has Not Polled Since Controversy Arose

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:38:32 -0800

FTA: "everal weeks ago, I ignited a controversy by pointing toward statistical evidence that Strategic Vision, LLC, a Blairsville, Georgia based public relations firm that until recently had issued political polls, may have been faking its results. Strategic Vision vehemently denied my interpretation of the evidence and made public threats to sue me. But no lawyer has contacted me, and in fact, Strategic Vision has not conducted any further public polling since that time."

The Washington Monthly

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:36:33 -0800

FTA: A tragic part of American life is that, from time to time, we learn of horrific shootings like the one at Fort Hood yesterday. There was, apparently, another shooting this morning, this time in Orlando, in which one was killed and seven were critically wounded. The gunman wasn't a Muslim.

Likewise, last year, 32 people were shot down in Virginia Tech. In March, 10 were killed in a shooting rampage in Alabama. In April, 13 were killed in upstate New York. In each instance, the gunmen weren't Muslim.

It's been 24 hours since the violence began at Fort Hood. Can we wait just a little while before jumping to conclusions and making baseless allegations about Americans who haven't done anything wrong?

Furious Seasons

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:53:11 -0800

With all due respect to the profession of psychiatry, I need to ask why the "world's most famous psychiatrist," E. Fuller Torrey, and his group the Treatment Advocacy Center are so far completely silent on the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas. That's where an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, shot up an Army building, killing 12 and wounding 31 before being captured. Maj. Hasan was wounded and is reportedly in the custody of the Army at a hospital.

A New Era for U.S. Drug Policy? - CBS News

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:37:35 -0800

From the page: ""We have 5 percent of the world's population. We have 25 percent of the world's known prison population," Webb said when he introduced the bill. "We have an incarceration rate in the United States - the world's greatest democracy - that is five times as high as the incarceration rate of the rest of the world."

"There's only two possibilities here," he continued. "Either we have the most evil people on earth living in the United States or we are doing something dramatically wrong in terms of how we approach the issue of criminal justice." "

Graphictruth: An Over the Counter approach to Seasonal Affective Disorder

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:00:29 -0700

"Seasonal Affective Disorder" is a syndrome that can trigger depression in people - such as myself - prone to that condition. It used to be that in order to combat it, your doctor would up your meds for the season, and perhaps suggest that you purchace a "light box."

Modern Love - When Madness is in the Wings, Connecting With a Troubled Stranger - NYTimes.com

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:15:59 -0700

THERE are two kinds of madness: the kind that strikes suddenly, like a startled bird, and the kind that stalks silently for years, circling round and round until you are fully gathered in its dark wings. Mine was the latter.