perfidy

Folks, even Warren Buffett thinks the tax cut is a bad idea. Warren Buffett!! To wit:

Overall, it's hard to conceive of anything sillier than the schedule the Senate has laid out. Indeed, the first President Bush had a name for such activities: "voodoo economics." The manipulation of enactment and sunset dates of tax changes is Enron-style accounting, and a Congress that has recently demanded honest corporate numbers should now look hard at its own practices. 

Proponents of cutting tax rates on dividends argue that the move will stimulate the economy. A large amount of stimulus, of course, should already be on the way from the huge and growing deficit the government is now running. I have no strong views on whether more action on this front is warranted. But if it is, don't cut the taxes of people with huge portfolios of stocks held directly. (Small investors owning stock held through 401(k)s are already tax-favored.) Instead, give reductions to those who both need and will spend the money gained. Enact a Social Security tax "holiday" or give a flat-sum rebate to people with low incomes. Putting $1,000 in the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same $310 million in my pockets. 

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.

Zing! 

Y' know? Bush The Younger's presidency will in retrospect be defined for a few main issues. That's usually a good thing, unless you are Jimmy "Stagflation" Carter or Bill "Itchy-Pants" Clinton. In the sense that he sticks to his main themes of war and taxes, Bush has an astoundingly coherent and straightforward plan for the nation. They are, in fact, very important issues that deserve attention. However, overall coherence does not imply internal consistency. 

Just insisting that "this tax cut is for the good of all" over and over won't make it so, if at the end of the day it's going to benefit the country-club set while leaving Joe Sixpack watching Judge Judy because the day-labor center was full up again. After all, I'm not yet Wolverine, no matter how many "snickety-snick" sounds I make while dancing around the apartment. Platitudes may sound nice, but only results matter. And what happened to his "Education Plan?" Unfunded mandates are even worse than empty platitudes. 
 

Well, they did it. A theoretically well-meaning lawsuit has been filed in Belgian court against Tommy Franks, accusing him of war crimes in prosecuting the war in Iraq. The main body of the charges relate to the use of cluster bombs and their landmine-like ability to sit around until a kid blows his arm off. The story is here, and a longer debate is in Counterpunch. The hope is that, since the US is a NATO power, and NATO is based in Brussels, the charges against Franks will have some weight and heft. Fat chance.

And people think an international criminal court is a GOOD idea?

I realize that the world can no longer be easily divided up into discrete nations, if it ever could, and therefore, some see a compelling rationale for a world court. If anything, the multinational nature of terrorism may underscore that need. However, any international court would have to be very narrowly empowered, so as to minimize instances like the Franks Affair. The very last thing the world needs is American-style torts brought by nations against nations, or enclave against enclave, for the sake of publicity.

Moreover, accusing Tommy Franks of war crimes totally undermines the very concept. I will grant that there are many people in the world who object to the US's libervasion of Iraq, and I will even grant that, in the course of the war, people died. That's no shock. But so far, we have totally failed to find the bodies stacked like cordwood, the US-run death camps, the firing squads, the rape brigades, the engineered famines that would amount to actual war crimes. There's enough of that in the world. If Hussein had been doing these things to anybody but his own people, he would have been a war criminal himself. Perhaps then France and Germany would have chosen to act with us. As it stands, he was merely a distasteful dictator of a third-rate country that the international community needn't have bothered with (but I digress.. I'm being unnecessarily bitchy).

Which brings me to an interesting point. If war crimes, and "crimes against humanity" are such a big deal for the United Nations and related bodies, why aren't sickos like Mugabe, Hussein, and for that matter the entire government of North Korea busted every time they travel? I'm not sure I understand how such things are decided-- is it merely convenience?

Bottom line: Cluster bombs suck. Here's hoping they never use them again. But to argue that the same law can be used against Tommy Franks that could be used against perpetrators of wholesale genocide is missing the point of such laws.

nota bene: I repeat: I don't like cluster bombs, any more than I like landmines. I don't understand why the US chose not to sign the Landmine Ban, and I hope that the use of cluster bombs will be eschewed in future campaigns. They're horribly inefficient and in practice work against the US military goal of not killing bystanders. That being said, this suit is still horseshit.

also nota bene: tomorrow I'm going to disagree with myself, arguing that it is important that the campaign against cluster bombs gets all the exposure it can, by any means. Tune in to watch the fun!!

God knows, with my luck, I'd end up with degenerate mouth-breathing hellspawn like this one:

"Kelley Marie Ferguson never wanted to take a stupid cruise. A week at sea with her parents? Away from her boyfriend? How boring. As soon as the ship set sail, she felt trapped and miserable.

Then she had an idea.

Ship stewards found the poorly worded notes in two bathrooms. One threatened to "kill all Americanos abord" if the ocean liner made its scheduled stop in Hawaii. "Give this warning to El Capt ion to save all lives," another said. "Do take this serious he sent me from far away land for mission I will complete if port on American soil."

It was only a prank. But it has become another parable of life in a time of terrorist fear."

Rather than return to land, Kelley's notes created a panic and resulted in a $300,000, 100-person total search of the ship. All crew and guests were interrogated at length.

Unsurprisingly, the 20-year-old is now in prison. The best part? Tired of ongoing antics like this one, mom refused to post bail (haw)!

"She promises not to do it again -- but yeah, right," her mother, Debra Ferguson, a nurse, told the Los Angeles Times earlier this month. She said the family felt terrible that so many vacationers on board the cruise ship had been frightened and delayed. She also called her daughter a "brat."

And of course, there's more..."Ferguson had another surprise for them when she pleaded guilty. She said she was pregnant."

That's right. NEVER having kids.

A day late and a dollar short, I want to remark on the passing of one of the greats. June Carter Cash died last Friday after complications from heart surgery. I always though that Johnny would go first, what with his Parkinson's and related infirmities, not to mention that pills-and-booze phase he had back in the 50's and 60's. I always think the good ones will last forever. Guess I was wrong. We'll all miss you, June. 

I need a minute. *choking up* 

I swear to God, I don't know what I'll do when Johnny Cash and George Jones pass on. I'll be a wreck. I loved those two before I even knew how to talk, and their music has been a constant companion in my life. Some of my first memories involve a Fisher-Price record player, an LP that contained "There Ain't No Good Chain Gang" and "I Would Like To See You Again" by JC, and another one that had the Chet Atkins track, "Cloudy And Cool." I listened to those songs for hours. My dad's favorite song in those days was "He Stopped Loving Her Today" so that would place me at about four years old. The themes and lessons of country music were present during my formative years, and every so often something happens to remind me of that fact. It's no mistake that, on the worst day of the worst year of my life (thank you, New York City!), I got drunk on bourbon and listened to Johnny Cash. 

More than religion, more than community, more than anything else days besides my family, those songs were the bedrock pleasures and signposts of my four-year-old life, and they retain power over me. The United Methodist church could fall into a hole and I wouldn't care. The great state of Ohio could disappear, leaving Lake Erie the largest of the Great Lakes and making Wheeling a port city, and I wouldn't care, except to be happy for the citizens of Wheeling. But every time George Jones wraps his car around a tree, and every time Johnny Cash goes back in the hospital because his traitor body is wasting away, my heart sinks as I fear the worst. It's like fearing for an infinitely wise yet mortally flawed twin brother. 

In the sleeve of the "Love" disc from his box set "Murder/God/Love" is a picture of June in Johnny's arms. It's a beautiful photo which captures utterly the deep love they had. But what the picture can only show, the music proved. Johnny Cash has written thousands of beautiful words, and a score of beautiful songs, about his wife. June wrote "Ring of Fire" about him. Not even Shakespeare has been so eloquent about the daily pleasures and hurts of love. I and millions of others grieve with him today. We'll miss you, June. 
 

Stranger things have happened, after all. Not that he's going to win the Presidency, and not that he should, but John Kerry recently unveiled a plan by which high-school students could do community service in exchange for college tuition. Two years would get you four years' worth of state-college tuition. The Boston Globe's detail-feeble coverage is here.

As much as this is an Uber-Democratic plan, in that it purports to improve society through well-meaning massive expenditures of cash, I can find a lot to like in it. In, fact, I would go farther. Kids these days (kids these days!! haw!) seem more cynical yet more pampered than ever before (perhaps the two are connected), and a program that allows young people to donate time in exchange for a concrete open-ended reward seems like a good idea on principle. Hopefully it would force a connection between duty and citizenship.

Mind you, I'm not asking for a program like they have in Germany, where all citizens must serve in the armed forces or emergency response squads, but maybe something close wouldn't hurt.

How about a two-tiered plan, in which all teens must log 400 hours of community service (perhaps sponsored through local high schools) and others may apply for the right to do two years of public service in exchange for a college education? As long as any plan, whether Kerry's or mine, is flexible enough to allow for a wide range of possible services-- such as Habitat For Humanity, Amigos de las Americas, Americorps, and local church groups, homeless shelters, and charity initiatives-- and as long as the bureaucracy could be kept to a minimum, I'm in favor of such a system.

When I was 16, my parents paid a bundle for me to spend two months in Mexico, building latrines and doing basic public health in an extremely poor area, and the experience changed my life. If I'd have stayed in Ohio for those two months, playing Dungeons and Dragons and sneaking Budweisers out in the woods next to the Pee Rock, I would have missed out on one of the most educational, transformative, and important experiences of my life. The time I spent there was the first exposure I had to life outside Ohio, not to mention life outside "Western" Civilization, and it has been the main impetus behind my interest in politics, history, and world affairs. I tell ya, there's nothing better than waiting for the repairs to the brand-new power line to your remote village in the highlands so you can watch Knight Rider in dubbed Spanish ("El Auto Increible") to show a teenager that there's more in the world than you ever imagined.

Of course, not everybody needs such an experience, or wants it. But, not everyone needs to go to college for free, either. A plan like Kerry's, or *heh* better yet, mine, intelligently implemented and run, could add a lot to the quality of life in this country, not to mention the quality of the teenagers.

Now... enough blue-sky theorizing...where the heck is that money gonna come from, John-boy, and how much is this plan gonna cost?

Not that it's anything new, but as I hurtle on into my future as a professional curmudgeon, college kids are really starting to bug me. Don't get me wrong - by and large, they're a great bunch, all shiny-eyed and eager. I especially love the way each new generation rediscovers nifty funtime ideas like Marxism, Eco-Feminism, and Not Bathing and latches on to them like they were their own. 

But I worry. I'm a partial alum of the University of Massachusetts (in that I got my Masters' there), where they just had that ridiculous flap over changing mascots from the evil, bad, gendered and violent Minutemen to the gentle, majestic Gray Wolves (see previous posts). That incident is part of a grand tradition of colleges and universities trying too hard to protect the student body from opinions that may be alien or offensive to them. That's a huge mistake.

The Boston Phoenix, which I pick up from time to time when we're low on cat litter at home, had a decent article this week on this topic. You can read it here. The article argues there is a single

. . . assumption underlying most speech codes: namely, that there is a serious conflict between civil rights and civil liberties, and that members of diverse groups will never have full civil rights to an equal education without muzzling ideas that might make the campus feel less welcoming. 

This "civil rights vs. civil liberties" paradigm rests on the belief that when a person feels discomfort as a result of exposure to racist, sexist, homophobic, or other unpleasant words and ideas, such discomfort is, in and of itself, a civil-rights injury equivalent to being turned away from the lunch counter for being black, denied a job for being a woman, or beaten up for being gay. In this view, emotional discomfort is the essential element of a civil-rights injury. Thus, students have a right not to be offended or hurt by exposure to ideas that could diminish their feelings of self-esteem; they are - as a matter of civil rights - entitled to a comfortable and "safe" emotional environment free of such ideas. 

This bizarre and dangerous expansion of commonly accepted notions of civil rights distorts the debate over free speech on campus. What is at stake here is not, properly speaking, a conflict between civil rights and civil liberties: rather, it is a question of whether protection from emotional discomfort deserves independent status as a "right"  and, if so, whether it is a fundamental right that should compete with or (as has happened at Shippensburg and the vast majority of colleges and universities today) supersede a university's core intellectual mission. When college administrators say that students are entitled to a "safe" environment, they mean something very different from what people in the world outside the ivy walls mean by "safe." Indeed, for at least two decades now, it has been permissible to say things in Harvard Square that would be punishable if said in Harvard Yard. . . .

I'm not yet thirty, and I already feel like I don't understand what kids these days are about. I worry that we are raising a crop of college students who will finish their education without ever having to question or defend their basic assumptions about life. Isn't debate, and the interplay between conflicting points of view, an integral part of education? If so, the current crop American college students run the risk of ending up less educated than any students in recent history. How do you know you hate Republicans, if you've never met one, much less debated them? There is nothing worse than untested beliefs, and nothing more obnoxious and arrogant than a college student who has never had to defend themselves. Except the Norwegians. 

N.B.: Critical Mass (linked in my blogroll to the left) is a great clearinghouse for issues of this kind.

Of the two matrices, the first was clearly the better. Nevertheless, the second installment was well worth the $18.50 ticket price. My only real quibbles, aside from having to wait half a year before seeing the next one, is that the art direction for the zion city scenes was a little, well, over the top; and that at a couple points the change between live action Neo and cgi Neo was too obvious. (And even so, the cgi human characters in Matrix were much better than last year's spiderman.)

The real surprise in the movie is the sense of humor that Agent Smith has developed. In many respects, the new Agent Smith is the most engaging character in the movie. As our cast of heroes soldier through with grim seriousness, the formerly dour Smith is almost whimsical. A+ on that.

But the thing that was most intriguing was the new philosophical underpinning of the movie. This is what kept my friends and I in the parking lot for an hour after the movie talking. The first Matrix had, at its center, the question of reality and perception. At the time, I found the idea of an action adventure movie centered on a question of rather abtruse phenomenology to be delicious. But now, we have an action adventure movie centered on serious questions of free will and predestination. Imagine a Hong Kong style sf action flic starring Cotton Mather and Erasmus, Abelard and Heloise, with a supporting cast of hundreds of genetically engineered Ignatius Loyola/Steven Wright hybrids. This movie is as close as you'll get to that ideal.

The original meaning of the greek root aristoi.

There are many reasons why the House of Lords is groovier than Congress*. First among them is the utter loopiness of many of the exchanges, such as this one, posted yesterday on Slashdot: 

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I totally agree. These statistics on accidents are extremely fascinating; they prove that the British public can use practically anything in this world to hurt themselves with. It is understandable that there are an estimated 55 accidents a year from putty, while toothpaste accounts for 73. However, it is rather bizarre that 823 accidents are estimated to be the result of letters and envelopes. It is difficult to understand how they can be the cause of such serious plight. I agree with the noble Baroness that it would be helpful if people paid careful attention. 

Baroness Strange: My Lords, does the Minister agree that sardine tins and anchovy tins are also very difficult to open with their tin-openers? 

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I think I will just agree with the noble Baroness on that question. . . . . Lord Mitchell asked Her Majesty's Government: What are their plans to reduce the growth in spam (unsolicited e-mails). 

Lord Renton: My Lords, will the Minister explain how it is that an inedible tinned food that lasted for ever and was supplied to those on active service can become an unsolicited e-mail, bearing in mind that some of us wish to be protected from having an e-mail? 

Lord Sainsbury of Turville: My Lords, I am afraid that I have not been able to find out why the term "spam" is used, but that is the meaning it now has. It is a matter that should be taken very seriously because it not only clutters up computers but involves a great deal of very unpleasant advertising to do with easy credit, pornography and miracle diets. That is offensive to people, and we should try to reduce it. 

Lord Faulkner of Worcester: My Lords, I can help the Minister with the origin of the word. It comes from aficionados of Monty Python, and the famous song, "Spam, spam, spam, spam". It has been picked up by the Internet community and is used as a description of rubbish on the Internet. . . .

If you read the whole thing, you get the distinct impression that the entire House knows Monty Python, and what's more, the song. *Not better—I'm not one of those who assumes that just because it comes from Engalind, it must be superior. This fallacy is responsible for Dr. Who, Burberry, and Liz Hurley, who, though she is hot as a thousand suns, still can't act her way out of an open phone booth.

According to CNN.com, a lawsuit against Kraft Foods for devilishly marketing Oreo cookies containing trans fats has been dropped, article here. Good grief. The helmet advocates nearly went off the deep end with this one. People who previously thought that mass produced cookies, fast food, or any food high in saturated fats are healthy, and are now shocked, shocked to find that they are not, are definitely fooling themselves. If you want healthy foods, eat a fucking vegetable. It's the green stuff available at your local grocer; either fresh, canned or frozen. I like fresh asparagus the best. Give it a try. Maybe you'll like it too.

It's also called personal responsibility, people. Start taking some. I think that Stephen Joseph, who brought the suit, had his helmet on a little too tight and it cut off the flow of blood to his brain.