Dear Eric Staib

Dear Eric,

I read your article on Mises and I just wanted to thank you for writing it.

Here is my favorite part:
"As discussed earlier, from the very fact of their abstention from the purchase of healthcare services, we know a posteriori that millions of individuals in this country do not desire health insurance more than other goods or services."
--http://mises.org/story/3666

See? Amazing! I laugh with glee every time I read it. It's like you are reading the mind of the American citizen...how do you do it? I mean, I'm sure people DO prefer paying rent and buying groceries to buying health insurance. So, obviously, they don't want health care or health insurance as much as those things! Your insight has really floored me.

I see that you are studying economics. That's so cute! But it must hurt your head. You look very cute in your picture, so I recommend you look into modeling or acting instead. You will meet many people who will think you are just as smart as you think you are-- maybe even smarter!

Anyway, thank you again. You--and others like you--provide a consistency that I have come to depend on from the 'libertarian school of thought'. It's like having a cantankerous old grand-dad you can always count on to use the 'n-word' and I love it! Keep 'em coming!

--Your Biggest Fan

Astroturf

Facts of the Day

Depressing Fact of the Day:

Roughly as many Americans have a favorable (45%) as unfavorable opinion (44%) of Sarah Palin. http://tinyurl.com/ktenya

Uplifting Fact of the Day to Balance that Depressing, Unbelievable Fact:

USA Today published a great piece on AT&T, the iPhone and the big telecoms' hopefully impermanent but always incessant attempts to limit mobile users' freedom: http://bit.ly/1BvUD8 #freemyphone

Dear cnn

Open letter to the editor(s)

Dear cnn,

I understand that as a business, you "need" to include all sorts of infotainment and trashy celebrity stories to make ends meet, or to raise ratings and web hits for advertisers, but that is no excuse for the shockingly offensive story you ran on your homepage on March 31st, 2009 called "Man punches blond woman on bus." Clearly it was so striking that I am devoting an email and a blog post to it more than a month later. Maybe I need to get out more.

I'm not saying that KCPQ's James Lynch is not equally responsible, but I really was surprised cnn would run a story that was framed in that way, let alone feature it. Any responsible reporter would see that story for what it was-- a sad case of someone with mental illness who was not receiving the help he needed.

If anything, this was a chance to report national news that would raise awareness of an important issue in the U.S., such as the ever-diminishing funding for mental health services that is leaving so many in need without access to the care they need. In fact, you could even report on how the growing need for care is further exacerbated by the current economic crisis. Oooh, timeliness! And since you are apparently so fond of running homey, 'local' stories without doing any work of your own, I asked my friend google to help me and it turned up this lovely press release on America's Mental Health Care Crisis from the National Council for Community Behavioral Health Care-- it's written and ready to go!

Instead of educating voters on an important issue, however, Lynch made that story about yet another 'faceless black man' committing a random violent act on a defenseless white citizen. Really, cnn?

Your friend,

Rachel

P.S. yes, I heard the mumbled last line about "a man out there with a mental past.." in the last 3 seconds of the video. Bravo.

Sitt Marie Rose by Etel Adnan

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Possibly one of the most powerful, passionate works of fiction I have ever read. Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose is both an attack on and an interrogation of her own history, her own identity, just as much as it is an attack on the tribal and religious justifications for the violence and terror of the civil war in Lebanon. She rails against an Islam that forgets "the divine mercy affirmed by the first verse of the Koran... human mercy" and a Christianity in Lebanon that's "not in communion with any force other than the Dragon." It is these two forces that she sees at work in the conflict, supported by fear and tribalism, or as she puts it, "idolatry towards the group you belong to."

Genius and awesomeness :)

I kid you not

Where does a lot of that earmark money end up anyway? [...] You've heard about some of those pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to pet projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.

O discordia.

After months of neglect, I decided I couldn't let this board die.

Check out this revealing exhibit that Dialog:City had at the DNC in Denver.

An artist made 'sight test' charts out of words from Presidential State of the Union addresses by frequency of word usage. There was one from FDR, Lincoln, Dubya, etc. Kinda neat.

Can you guess which President this one was?

You Can Change Congress

Help Larry Lessig and friends Change Congress. Doesn't it make you sad that legislators can legally take campaign contributions from the industries they regulate? Look up some in your home state and see if they would like to take the pledge at Change-Congress.org.

Pardon Me, Congressman, but you dropped your crown...

In a timely pre-game show to the launch of Larry Lessig's Change Congress campaign, Ken Silverstein published a delightful piece in the March issue of Harper's, entitled Beltway Bacchanal: Congress lives high on the contributor's dime . Apparently, the only service our elected officials perform for the public anymore is creating "campaign" jobs for needy college grads, ahem, friends and relatives. Also, I just realized that you can't read the article unless you subscribe to Harper's, which I highly recommend! :)

Despite my post, which is the opposite of timely (March is now nearing an end and Lessig actually launched CC last week), you can still learn a lot about PAC Leadership funds and campaign treasuries from Silverstein's article.

For example, I learned how useful contributor's funds can be when one wants to spend

• $32,036 to golf at the Kiawah Island Golf Resort (Rep. James McCrery, R-LA), or say, slam down
  
• $66,146 on luxury hotels over the 2006 election cycle (Congressman Steny Hoyer, D-MD)

Where are our armbands?

Turn up your volume. It'll make you feel more patriotic.

http://www.unsubscribe-me.org/waitingfortheguards.php?

How is this worth it?

Tens of thousands of US troops killed or wounded. Millions of Iraqis displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed or wounded.

And now we conclude it is costing us $12 billion a month.

Can anyone please explain to me why you think this is worth it? How is this benefiting me and you?

Trade

Hey everyone,

So I'm new to posting, although I've tried to keep up with what you all have written since Rachel invited me contribute. Here's an opinion article I just read called "The Pain of Globalisation."

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_pain_of_globalisation

It talks about the negative impact of trade on American worker's wages and why that's happening. Globalization is inevitable, and potentially also beneficial, but there are certain considerations that have to be made. Like demanding that the people who contribute the labor used to produce the goods we ultimately buy here are ensured basic rights. I also think government supported (at least partially) training for people who find their jobs shipped oversees so they can become employed again is a good idea.

Any thoughts?

The Prez: Torture and Tapping, Power and Privilege

Power and the Presidency: A PBS interview with Charles Fried and Frederick Schwarz.

Intro
Part 1 of the interview
Part 2 of the interview

Charles Fried served as Solicitor General of the United States under President Reagan from 1985-1988. After Reagan left office, Fried returned to Harvard Law School as a distinguished lecturer. From 1995 until 1999, while teaching constitutional law at Harvard, Charles Fried was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, "the oldest appellate court in continuous existence in the Western Hemisphere."

Frederick (Fritz) A. O. Schwarz, Jr. is the senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School. He had been a partner with the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore since 1969. Schwarz was the lead counsel for the Church Committee, a Senate committee formed in 1975 in reaction to the Watergate scandal that investigated executive overreach stretching back to the FDR administration, eventually issuing 14 reports over three years.

Everyone should definitely check this interview out when you get a spare moment. It's so nice to hear reasonable people (both conservative and liberal) who have the experience and knowledge to speak intelligently about these issues. And you can read the transcript if you miss something. 

Disclaimer: I do realize it's Bill Moyers, guys (F and T, you know who you are), but Fried was Reagan's boyeeeee! And get this-- I learned so much about secret wire-tapping from him that I have had a total turnaround and am all for it, with the proper Congressional oversight. To deter 'Mission creep.' I love that phrase. That's right. Secret wiretapping: FOR. 

Iraqi Army

Here is a nice view of the Iraqi Army in training. I know I feel good about 'em.



Yes, that's real.

my friend steve is an iraq vet, so when he sends something i look at it. more of what you've seen, but interesting to see it spliced together this way.

3 Quotes

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

- James Madison

My God! The whole country has turned BLUE!

Interesting article

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bstephens/?id=110010827

From the Wall Street Journal. What do you guys think?

Time-out

Justin,

Hold on a freaking second. I'm sorry that you feel that I've insulted you. Let me at the very least try and address the things that have hurt your sensibilities.

First you're upset because I find it hard to take what you say seriously sometimes. Now, I didn't say that I don't taking you seriously.... What I meant was that the integrity of your comments (in my own mind) are in jeopardy because you offer up a great deal of criticism, but not much in the way of alternatives. For example, how should we conduct interrogations? Or what kinds of policies do you want to see from a future administration in regards to interrogations (or rendition, or wiretapping)?

Now I don't know why you care so much about my opinions, but maybe I shouldn't have used that phrase. I wouldn't have done so if I knew it was going to cause this result. And I am sorry.

You also said I insulted you because I claimed you are political and because you blame Bush for everything. I don't think that it is a stretch to say that you engage in political conversations with me, Rachel, and others. In doing so you invoke common political themes in some cases, and in others you create your own political stances. So in my mind you are being political, and that is not a negative thing. In fact I admire people who understand not only the issue, but also the politics that revolves around the issue.

Now you also use examples of people who use politics to advance themselves or their party or the people they represent. If you use a person's comments to make a point and I suggest that that same person's comments were used to advance themselves politically then I don't understand why you have to get mad at me. Just argue your point.

Now you said this: "since it seems to be beyond your ability to process as a list of obviously fucked up examples of things that ARE DIRECTLY HIS FAULT"

You then went on to list 7 things, which I assumed you meant were 'directly his (Bush's) fault". Maybe you don't blame everything on Bush, but in that list you included the melting of the ice among others. So I assumed that you were blaming the melting Artic ice on Bush because you said it was "directly his fault." And I responded accordingly.

---

Now let me show you some of your recent comments directed at me:

"since it seems to be beyond your ability to process..."

"maybe you can keep up..."

"Do you think before you write that kind of crap?"

These all could be considered insulting. I guessing that you think that I am stupid or slow. But that's OK, I didn't take offense. I understand when you get upset you like to go on about these things. However I do find it amusing that you have issue with me as being insulting.

---

Why do you get so upset when I use a historical reference? It's not like what I'm saying isn't relevant to the conversation. And if you don't like the reference then I'm not opposed to you forcing me to defend it. But, getting angry just because I mention something historical? Me doing so is not meant to point out something you don't know, it's just meant to add to the conversation. If you don't want me to make historical references in the future then I'll stop. But I really don't see why it's a problem.

T

Off Topic - But I had to share this one