Brains: The Politics of Revenge, and the Revenge of Politics

[elfs]

Thought for the day:

After the recent death-by-trampling at a Wal-Mart, can we finally forgive the Who for the 1970 Ohio incident?

Stuart Taylor advises Obama to keep on wiretappin'

Stuart Taylor writes:

Civil libertarians are rightly outraged by the brutality of some Bush administration interrogation methods; by Bush's denial of fair hearings to hundreds of suspects at Guantanamo and elsewhere who claim that they are not terrorists; and by his years of secretly and perhaps illegally defying -- rather than asking Congress to amend -- the badly outdated Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

But the civil libertarians' outrage does not stop there. Indeed, the prospect of anyone in the U.S. being inappropriately wiretapped, surveilled, or data-mined seems to stir the viscera of many Bush critics more than the prospect of thousands of people being murdered by terrorists.

This is a false dichotomy. Stuart does not provide-- because he cannot provide-- an example where surveillance has prevented the tragedy he describes, or one where it might have prevented such. There are other ways, ways within the purview of traditional law enforcement, that do not depend upon the government illegally (Taylor says "inappropriately") listening in on your private life.

The distinction between privacy and secrecy in an important one: As Cory Doctorow wrote recently, the dimensions of your body aren't a secret, but you'd be pretty outraged if your government was hoarding naked pictures of you, wouldn't you?

The Fourth (and the Third, although nobody ever talks about it) Amendments to the Constitution of the United States are about privacy: both are responses to the way King George's men invaded the privacy of colonists for the purposes of intimidation and data collection. Let's take them seriously.

The Neo-Hooverite Movement

Herbert Hoover, now that we've learned a lot about his financial woes first-hand, famously fought to cut the goverment's deficit, putting the federal budget into balance in a way that, everyone agrees, deepened the great pain of the depression even further.

We're now seeing the Republicans in the Senate putting out the same exact policy proposals, opposing any stimulus or rescue package of any kind whatsoever. This is despite the fact that the vast majority of academic economists say it's exactly the wrong thing to do.

Benen proposes five explanations: The Moral Explanation, that economic pain would be "good for us," the Benefactor Explanation, that the Republican party opposes any attempt to move money to "the wrong people," namely the poor and lower middle classes, the Illiterate Explanation that these Republicans just don't understand economics, the Strategic Explanation, that a horrible economic era under Obama would benefit them in 2010 or 2012, and the Manchurian Explanation, that they hate America and want to hurt it.

Benen thinks the last explanation is unlikely. If you think of it as the Revenge Explanation, though, it works: they were trounced in the last election. We now know that revenge is pleasureable in the short term, even when our rational self knows the long-term consequences will include a painful personal cost. I would not at all be surprised if some of their motivation came from a deep resentment against the current anti-Republican mood.

Is Clarence Thomas giving aid and comfort to the paranoid?

Are you sick and tired of the whore birth certificate thing yet? Because Clarence Thomas has asked his colleagues on the Supreme Court consider one of many birth certificate lawsuits floating around the country.

I can only hope that he's not so much giving aid and comfort to these wackaloons as giving them enough rope so they can go hang themselves.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Hoover didn't just sit back and advise that we "take the pain." Hoover actively intervened in the recession, and in the process made it much worse. Most of FDR's mistakes were committed first by Hoover, on a smaller scale.

"Mister, we could use a man like Cal Coolidge again," might have worked out better!

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The thing I don't get is why Obama doesn't just produce the evidence of his birth in Hawaii and end this whole issue. I don't think that the critics are right in their claim that he is ineligible for the Presidency, but given that I find his behavior mystifying.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

There's no point in him proving his citizenship.

Sure there is -- it would end that whole avenue of challenge to his legitimacy. Assuming that Obama is a natural-born US citizen (and I assume that he is) the only gain I see to him by not producing the evidence is that he hopes to trick some people into focusing on this, then produce the evidence at a future date to make them look silly.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

And if so, I'm totally for that. It's about time that if you give a racist enough rope, he lynches himself instead of a bunch of black people.


But seriously. Consider it from the practical side. Do you think the democratic party would have thrown millions of dollars behind Obama without making absolutely sure he could be the president? It's absurd. Major power players just don't make those kinds of mistakes.

Anyhow, except for wingnuts seeing this as a possible loop-hole to once again take the presidency on a technicality, when has this ever mattered in the past? There is no birth certificate for born-in-a-log-cabin Abraham Lincoln.

These guys are trying to break our governmental system and overthrow our democracy because they know they can't win in a fair fight. They're a far bigger threat to our nation than a man who had no more power over where he was born than the color of his skin.

[drewkitty.livejournal.com]

>> Major power players just don't make those kinds of mistakes.

Sarah Palin?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

The issue isn't whether Obama's a "citizen." It's whether he's a natural-born citizen. If you don't like that distinction, you have a beef with Messers Madison and Jefferson.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I guess the question is, what constitutes evidence? The State of Hawaii has produced a certificate of live birth, and the newspaper in Honolulu found a birth notice for him in its archives.

What more would we need? This is 1961; it's not like they blogged about it.

Has anyone certified that John "Born on Panamanian soil" McCain is actually an American citizen?

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I guess the question is, what constitutes evidence?

Hospital records? A witness that his mother actually was in Hawaii at the time? It wouldn't be that hard, 1961 was only 47 years ago. People who knew his mother back then might still be alive.

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

Why do you think a hospital has 47 year old birth records? I mean, they might have them, they might be rats' nests, they might be melted microfiche, or they might have been purged to provide space for an intern lounge.

As for "people who knew his mother back then", you're assuming that Obama knows of anyone who knew his mother at the time. I'm a 30 year old Army brat, and the only people I know who knew my parents at the time of my birth are my relatives, none of whom were in the state of my birth when I was born. Tracking down "that girl Sue who was in an econ class with Mom" to disprove something only believed by the sort of people who believe the Clintons murdered Vince Foster is, to my mind, not worth the time and money, and, I hope, not worth the President-Elect's attention time and attention either, since he's sort of busy leading the country, since W is hiding in his room a very lame duck, indeed.

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

A better way to phrase the question, perhaps, is, what constitutes conclusive evidence? Unless that is defined--if it's left as a moving target--then any piece of evidence he provides can be deemed insufficient and he can be accused of still not providing proof of his citizenship, keeping the challenge to his legitimacy open.

McCain citizenship

[(Anonymous)]

Actually, the Senate proposed and adopted a resolution literally stating that McCain's birth on an American military base should be considered as being a "natural-born citizen." The resolution was sponsored by two Democrats: Patrick Leahy (VT) and Claire McCaskill (MO).

The text of the resolution is at: http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200804/041008c.html

The report of the adoption of the resolution appeared in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/us/politics/01citizen.html

So I think this answers your question, "Has anyone certified that John "Born on Panamanian soil" McCain is actually an American citizen?"

Joshua C. Sasmor

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

If you read that article, it has been proven, repeatedly. These guys are just smoking a ton of crack. It's like trying to convince them that the Loch Ness Monster isn't real.

[icebluenothing.livejournal.com]

The Loch Ness monster *is* real. I've seen it's Hawaiian birth certificate.

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

Well sure. He even came back from the dead three days after he was buried in a cave full of WMDs.

[tagryn]

You've still got Truthers out there who think 9-11 was an Israeli plot, and people who still think the 2000 election was stolen. At some point, it just becomes pointless to try and argue it out anymore.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

It has been proven, though. Besides, it doesn't really matter if he was, anyways. Is his mother an American citizen? Yes. Then by those same laws that make my step-niece a citizen, Obama is also an American.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Besides, it doesn't really matter if he was, anyways. Is his mother an American citizen? Yes. Then by those same laws that make my step-niece a citizen, Obama is also an American.

The issue isn't whether or not he's a "citizen," the issue is whether or not he's a "natural-born" citizen. Read the Constiuttion.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

My favorite response to the Stuart Taylor sorts has been:

"okay, fine then... Can i see your wallet?"
"Why?"
"i want to look through it, maybe copy some things down, perhaps make a photocopy of your license, but i'll put it all back, honest, and then give it back to you."
"F*CK NO!"
"Oh, come on, we might stop a terrorist, you never know!"

That kind of mindset always thinks that it's just fine to intrude on the privacy of Other People, but tend to balk when it's pointed at them. They can wrap it up in all the logical fallacies they like, but at some level, they know it's not something that they are the one under a microscope that has little or no oversight, accountability, or logical justification.

[sirfox.livejournal.com]

er, that last line got garbled.

They can wrap it up in all the logical fallacies they like, but at some level, they know that *THEY* don't want to the one under a microscope that has little or no oversight, accountability, or logical justification.

Several points about the birth certificate matter

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

First of all, having something referred to conference does not guarantee that it will be heard. Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA, has calculated that over the past eight years the court has considered in conference 842 cases that sought a stay. Only 60 of them were actually heard. Seven hundred and eighty-two were denied.

I suspect that Thomas has done the sane people of the US a favor in taking this action. When the case is denied as having no merit, or just denied without comment, there's no damned appeal. The Supremes are the highest court, folks. Oh, and did you know that this version of the suit is the one that also contends that John McCain, born in the former Panama Canal Zone, does not meet the Constitution's requirements to hold the presidency?

In my present temp job in the legal department of Enormous Nameless Multinational Conglomerate (I'll tell you if you really think it's pertinent, but it isn't), I've handled a big fat whacking pile of official documents from Secretary of State's offices. I've even found errors in them and had to have them corrected.

It seems that in Hawaii, birth records are handled by the Department of Health, whose director has testified that Obama's certificate are on record. When a public document gets altered, a lot of people who work in such a document would notice, and they speak up, believe me. At least four people have to handle every single business document (name changes, errors in name registration, etc.) that goes through the SoS offices with which I've dealt. In the case of a famous birth certificate, do you think you could silence all four without someone noticing?

In all of this foofaraw, I haven't heard the voice of even one employee of the Hawaii Secretary of State's office saying that the certificate is a forgery.

Nothing will ever satisfy these people. The only thing that would have done so would be perpetual suffering for us under one Bush clone after another. They don't want to accept that a Republican can ever lose the White House.

[tagryn]

Counterpoint to your pro-stimulus argument, from Easterbrook:

The speed with which government is giving away money is breathtaking. In less than a year, the United States has casually added to the deficit -- with virtually no public accountability and in most cases without a vote of Congress -- at least $1.4 trillion, an amount equal to almost three times annual Social Security benefits. Anyone who a year ago had proposed doubling Social Security benefits would have been hooted down as fiscally irresponsible, even by senior citizen advocates. Last week, White House officials casually announced that an extra $800 billion -- more than the fiscal 2009 defense budget -- was being spent, without a congressional vote, without public accountability, sometimes without even knowing what the money is being spent on! (Treasury officials have said they do not know what AIG is doing with its billions in tax funds.)

Continuing to throw money at the problem without sorting out the accountability issues for what's already been spent is just irresponsible. Hence, that's probably what will happen.

Given that the vote against Bush was also a vote against the free-wheeling spending that marked his Administration, the GOP is just responding to the message the voters sent them. Doesn't really matter, though: the power, and responsibility, is now entirely with the Democrats, since they already have control of the Legislature and will have the Executive branch as well in a few weeks.

[amythis.livejournal.com]

Are you sick and tired of the whore birth certificate thing yet?

Whore birth certificate? Now I'm actually intrigued.

[phred1973.livejournal.com]

Me too - thought I was the only one who noticed.

The Patriot act needs to be slain.