Wednesday, December 26, 2007

top 10 movies of 2007

It's a relief to come back from the Christmas break to high-speed internet. I didn't realize how much I rely on it until I only had intermittent access to it for about a week.

To celebrate my personal gratitude for cable internet, here are my top 10 Movies of 2007 (in no particular order):

  • Hot Fuzz
  • American Gangster
  • Lust, Caution
  • Superbad
  • Eastern Promises
  • No Country for Old Men
  • Ratatouille
  • King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
  • Knocked Up
  • Tears of the Black Tiger (U.S. release)

Honorable Mention:

  • Grindhouse
  • Sicko
  • Killer of Sheep (re-release)
  • Taste of Tea

Haven’t yet seen, but want to:

  • The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  • Once
  • Rescue Dawn
  • Fido
  • There Will Be Blood
  • Redacted
  • National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Also, unrelatedly, I'll remark that Daft Punk's recent live album, fittingly titled "Alive," came into my possession yesterday and it's pretty freakin' cool. It replicates the concert at Coney Island I attended this summer, which was a mind-altering, religious experience of the sort that makes you feel like a teenager again, but in a good way. I hope they turn out to be the kind of band that stays around for decades, milking their glory days to sold-out crowds of balding middle managers, accountants, and attorneys. If they are that band, I will certainly be there, jiggling my paunch and waving my hands in the air with abandon.

Adding that I'll outsource the top albums of 2007 to my wife, who has probably already forgotten more about pop/rock music than I will ever manage to learn.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

"shoot me in the head"

The best case for libertarianism I’ve seen so far, aside from the existence of Ioz’s blog, comes from the thread to this Dave Weigel Reason post on immigration and the GOP (via Immigration Prof Blog):

Taktix® | December 11, 2007, 6:51pm |

A Republican who pledges to put proximity mines on the border

No no no. Anyone who's played GoldenEye knows you have to put the mines on the bottom of platforms so the other players can't see them.

Duh!

No wonder Tancredo's polling so badly. He has no deathmatch skillz!

----------------------

Anonymo the Anonymous | December 11, 2007, 6:58pm |

Taktix, even that won't help us if the illegals find that grenade launcher hidden in the middle of the temple. That's why America must redouble our efforts to develop the Golden Gun.

----------------------

Taktix® | December 11, 2007, 7:00pm |

Taktix, even that won't help us if the illegals find that grenade launcher hidden in the middle of the temple. That's why America must redouble our efforts to develop the Golden Gun.

If only the government had invested in the Klobb, we'd all be better off...

Woe to the sad sap who got stuck with the Klobb against the RC-Pro or the laser. Every group of friends probably had one player who dominated the game. So did we—his name was Evan. He would hone his skills on his brothers. Around the house, he called the game “Shoot ‘em in the head,” while his brothers referred to it as “Shoot me in the head.” I played the game from the brothers’ perspective and spent most of my game time trying to avoid my friend and shoot the weaker players before he did (assuming there were any weaker than me, which wasn't always a valid assumption). Good times . . . I still remember the time my brother called in sick to work so we could play Goldeneye all afternoon.

Monday, December 10, 2007

hi, my name is Elder Jensen, and this is my companion, Elder Christensen

The missionaries came to my workplace the other day. They had heard through the grapevine that I had roots in Utah or was possibly an inactive member or whatever. They showed up at reception prepared to reestablish contact and bring me back into the fold. Or maybe they just had run out of more promising referrals for the week.

They were pitifully young—just babies, really. All my young life, I had thought of the missionaries as the pinnacle of manhood, full-fledged adults. Once you had completed a mission, nothing fazed you anymore, you could do anything. But the other day talking with them in my cubicle, I realized how young they are—just 19 or 20—barely out of high school. Hardly prepared for what they had been thrust into.

After they left, I told my coworker I felt like I’d been living the last ten years in the witness protection program, always looking over my shoulder for the mob, wondering if this would be the place they’d find me. In a way, I was relieved that they had finally caught up to me, and part of me wondered why it had taken so long. Was I really that easy to let go? I can see how having someone pay attention to you can be a powerful attraction. It’s like that guy everybody knows who hits on every woman he sees and 1 out of 20 responds favorably just because someone—anyone—is paying attention for once, and he’s so persistent, and he’s not that bad looking, it’s easier just to say yes …

Of course there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to their Christmas party. But it was nice of them to ask, if a bit creepy. I even turned the tables and made a pitch to them, handing them a bunch of my cards to give to their contacts and ward members. If I’m not mistaken, I thought as they left they might have been as relieved as I that our encounter was as brief as it was.

And apropos of nothing in particular, check out these RMs (“returned missionaries”) fully half-naked—it’s the Mormons Exposed pin-up calendar. My wife loves it! (Seriously, she bought one.)

Sunday, December 09, 2007

evil yave

Well, I thought I'd put my email address up on the sidebar so people could email me if they wanted to. But now some numbnut has decided to use it to impersonate me to leave comments on other blogs. So down it comes until I figure out some other approach.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Q: Is there anything more frightening . . .

. . . than the four-foot tall animatronic Santa currently stationed in front of the olive bar at my grocery store?


Scary Santa
Originally uploaded by Jo Salmon

A: No, but the children seem to love it. When you walk by, he starts wobbling lecherously from side to side and singing “Up on the Rooftop,” in a terrifying basso profondo. Then any children within earshot stand transfixed while their parents remark how creepy Santa is this year.

I’ve seen the Pied Piper, and its name is Animatronic Santa.

Romney as Nephi

Here is a Romney "Mormon speech" react from a jaded Mormon who isn't me.

He's got some good points, but I'm more inclined towards Ezra's take. There should be no religious test for public office, full stop. I don't care what faith my elected officials belong to and I don't want to hear them talking about it on the job.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

they can have my Eagle Scout medal back now


Boy Scout Memorial
Originally uploaded by jparakilas
The city of Philadelphia has terminated the Boy Scouts’ taxpayer-subsidized lease because of the group’s odious prohibition on gay members and atheists.

My advice to any Scout leaders in Philly who are contemplating litigation against the city: make sure you haven’t been touching your Scouts’ little soldiers, or you may achieve notoriety of the sort you may wish to avoid.

faithless

Another project born from Bush's mythical compassionate conservatism is struggling:

The Millennium Challenge Corporation, a federal agency set up almost four years ago to reinvent foreign aid, has taken far longer to help poor, well-governed countries than its supporters expected or its critics say is reasonable.

The agency, a rare Bush administration proposal to be enacted with bipartisan support, has spent only $155 million of the $4.8 billion it has approved for ambitious projects in 15 countries in Africa, Central America and other regions.

Since the project has been so slow to get off the ground, the Senate is having second thoughts about approving funds that have already been promised to poor countries to encourage them to reform stagnant and corrupt oligarchic economies (qualifier: more stagnant, corrupt, and oligarchic than our own). It’s all about incentives, you see.

“Do we cut maternal health?” [Senator Leahy] asked. “AIDS? Malaria? Do we cut refugees? The only thing that’s got a blank check is the war in Iraq.”

One might almost draw the conclusion that the announcement of the formation of the MCC a few years ago with great fanfare and bipartisan acclaim was geared more towards eliciting great fanfare and bipartisan acclaim than improving the effectiveness of foreign aid.

But that’s silly, because Bush’s faith tells him to give to the poor, and he is a faithful man.

thank you, NRA . . .

[Image: AP Photo/Yearbook photo via KETV-TV and Philly.com]

. . . for making sure Robert Hawkins had access to an AK-47-style semi-automatic weapon with which to spread Christmas cheer at a mall in Omaha.

Mr. Hawkins fired about 30 shots from an AK-47-style semi-automatic weapon that the police said he stole from his stepfather. He had two magazines with 30 rounds each, the chief said, that “had the capacity to fire multiple rounds in a short period of time.”

. . .

Meanwhile, some customers and employees used cell phones to call their families and the authorities. The chief said the first call to 911 came at 1:43 p.m. local time, and the first officer arrived at the scene six minutes later. By the time the police descended on the mall in full force, the shooter had ended his rampage.

“It doesn’t appear there was an opportunity for mall security nor police officers to interrupt this incident,” he said.

If only each of the “retired ‘well-educated’ older women who worked at the well-appointed [Von Maur] store ‘for the discount’” had had an AK-47 of her own strapped inside her garter, one of them could have stopped this madman in his tracks.

More guns are exactly what we need to prevent further outbursts of senseless violence. It makes perfect sense. And how can we defend ourselves against the bad guys if we aren’t armed ourselves?

Thankfully, we’ve finally reached national consensus on this once contentious issue.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Michigan slapped down by DNC

The Democratic National Committee has taken action against Michigan for scheduling an early primary to try to have some say in who gets the Democratic nomination for president, instead of ceding the decision to a few citizens of Iowa and New Hampshire as normally happens. In the face of rising national discontent with politics as usual, The DNC seems committed to continuing disproportionate representation of rural, conservative voters vis-à-vis urban, progressive voters. The candidates with the best chances of doing well in Iowa and New Hampshire are following suit, trying to knock Clinton from the lead or at least secure a VP nomination.

Democratic leaders voted Saturday to strip Michigan of all its delegates to the national convention next year as punishment for scheduling an early presidential primary in violation of party rules.

In spite of the vote, some party leaders and officials said they believed the delegates would eventually be seated at the convention.

Michigan, with 156 delegates, has scheduled a Jan. 15 primary. Democratic Party rules prohibit states other than Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina from holding nominating contests before Feb. 5. Florida was hit with a similar penalty in August for scheduling a Jan. 29 primary.

. . .

Saturday's vote further diminishes the significance of Michigan's Democratic primary. All the major Democratic candidates have already agreed not to campaign in either Michigan or Florida because the states violated party rules. And in Michigan, most of the major candidates won't even be on the ballot.

Democratic candidates John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have withdrawn their names from the ballot to satisfy Iowa and New Hampshire, which were unhappy Michigan was challenging their leadoff status on the primary calendar.

. . .

Michigan officials defended their early primary, saying it helps provide geographic, racial and economic diversity early in the primary calendar. They also complained that other states that were allowed to hold early votes were receiving preferential treatment.

. . .

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement: ''The threat not to seat the delegates of Michigan and Florida at the Democratic convention is a hollow threat. They will be seated, and when they are, it will be plain for all to see that the privileged position that New Hampshire and Iowa have extracted through threats and pledges from candidates is on its last legs.''

. . .

With the DNC's work Saturday, the primary calendar appears to be set. The panel approved some final shifting of early contests, approving the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, and the South Carolina primary on Jan. 26.

The system as it exists privileges rural white voters—long framed in the media as more authentically American than urban voters or voters of color—and acts as a conservative shot in the arm at a crucial point in a heated presidential campaign to a party with purportedly progressive goals and values. But the risks of standing up to the Iowa/New Hampshire mafia and losing the nomination are apparently too great for anyone to challenge the status quo.

The only benefit I can see coming from Iowa/NH picking the nominee while the rest of us watch from the sidelines is a prediction I read in a post or comment thread the other day, I forget where. Given: (1) irrational hatred of godless communist/socialist/lesbian/feminazi Clinton among conservatives, (2) Iowa’s conservative bent, and (3) widespread belief that Clinton is far to the left of the other candidates, there is a good chance that Iowa will pick Edwards or Obama. This would give one of them a fighting chance at taking the nomination. Paradoxically, Iowa could give us a more progressive president than we would otherwise have.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

urban guerillaz

The kids are unhappy again in France:

Rampaging youths rioted overnight in Paris' suburbs, hurling Molotov cocktails and setting fire to dozens of cars. At least 77 officers were injured and officers were fired at, a senior police union official said Tuesday.

The violence was more intense than during three weeks of rioting in 2005, said the official, Patrice Ribeiro. Police were shot at and are facing ''genuine urban guerillas with conventional weapons and hunting weapons,'' Ribeiro said.

Who, nevertheless, didn't manage to kill a single officer. A prerequisite to attaining "genuine urban guerilla" status should be the ability to inflict at least one fatality. But it was scary business even so:

Some officers were hit by shotgun pellets, Interior Minister Michele Alliot-Marie said. She said there were six serious injuries, ''people who notably were struck in the face and close to the eyes."

Oh noes! This is why I keep saying you can't have that air rifle for Christmas--you'll shoot your eye out.

The riots were triggered by the deaths of two teens killed in a crash with a police patrol car on Sunday in Villiers-le-Bel, a town of public housing blocks home to a mix of Arab, black and white residents in Paris' northern suburbs.

Residents claimed that officers left the crash scene without helping the teens, whose motorbike collided with the car. Officials cast doubt on the claim, but the internal police oversight agency was investigating.

. . .

A recent study by the state auditor's office indicated that money poured into poor French suburbs in recent decades had done little to solve problems vividly exposed by the 2005 riots, including discrimination, unemployment and alienation from mainstream society.

While there's no excuse for shooting people, including the police, it seems official France is better at talking up threats than it is at solving problems in the banlieues.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

the Economist jumps the shark


Inside, the Economist's editors advance the Bush/pony plan for Palestine, in which Bush makes bold strides towards resolving one of the the most intractable political conflicts of the modern era. The newspaper seems determined, against all available evidence and common sense, to lash its fortunes to Bush's sinking ship. Like Paul Newman coming back against blow after blow from Paul Kennedy's meaty fists in the jailyard, refusing to stay down, the newspaper refuses to back down from its blind support of U.S. imperial ambitions. This is because its editors are heavily invested in the status quo and lack imagination.

Relatedly, Brad DeLong writes:

One thing worthy of note. Carlyle Group CEO David Rubenstein's reaction to George W. Bush:

David Rubenstein: you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn't have been in that category...

That was the reaction of everybody not on Bush's payroll who has met Bush I have talked to--everybody except our elite Beltway press, that is.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

immigrant innovators: the Chinatown bus

I saw this article in the Economist a few weeks ago about the impact of the Chinatown bus on travel prices on the Eastern seaboard:

The Chinatown bus business developed in the 1990s to offer recent immigrants an inexpensive van ride around town and, later on, between cities. By the end of the decade, the Fung Wah bus company had begun shuttling college students and other cash-strapped Americans between New York's Chinatown and Boston's for $10 each way.

Competition soon became so intense that it prompted the 2004 “bus wars” in New York's Chinatown, in which buses were rammed and torched and a decapitated torso was left near a passenger loading zone. Spotty safety records—in 2005 one Chinatown bus caught fire on the road—and reports of drivers working excessive hours also raised concerns about safety. But with prices so low, the buses still left packed.

Greyhound, America's biggest passenger bus line, dropped its prices, offering a name-brand alternative to the Chinatown coaches. Dozens of new competitors also emerged. Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn founded the Washington Deluxe and Vamoose Bus. Most recently, a Marriott executive founded DC2NY, a service between Washington and New York that guarantees customers seats if booked online and charges only slightly more than the Chinatown buses (a $40 round-trip versus $35). It also offers free bottles of water and Wi-Fi internet access. The “luxury” bus carrier has more than doubled its operation since its inaugural trip this summer. Watch as its older rivals start copying its perks.

I’m typing this right now from the DC2NY bus on my way from NYC to DC. Wireless has been a little touch and go, but it’s pretty nice to be able to access the internet at all while traveling.

The Economist story covers the main points. Chinese immigrants needed an affordable way to make short-hop trips on the East Coast and nothing in the existing market was suitable. So immigrant entrepreneurs created a new product that soon caught on outside the Chinese community by dramatically undercutting the competition. A Greyhound bus is no more comfortable than a Chinatown bus, although perhaps less likely to catch fire or trigger gangland killings. For what it’s worth, no Chinatown bus I’ve ridden has ignited. Perhaps the cachet of momentarily escaping sanitized modern life is another draw for the bohemian set.

There’s also a minibus company that primarily serves Latino immigrants commuting from the New Jersey suburbs to New York City—or at least it did 5 years or so ago when I used the service from time to time. $3 from Passaic to Port Authority can’t be beat. Again, an immigrant community was not being served by existing transportation alternatives, so somebody stepped into the breach and created a new product.

This pattern is nothing new—it constitutes the history of New York City and, more broadly, of the United States.

Monday, November 19, 2007

she's crafty

Matt Yglesias uses Dave Roberts' LBJ/Clinton analogy as an opening to explain why the prospect of a Clinton presidency makes him uneasy on foreign policy grounds.

The basic reality is that each and every time the candidates stake out a position on something, Clinton takes a less-liberal line. Then each and every time Obama starts getting traction with the argument that Clinton is too hawkish, she backtracks and makes the argument that there's no real difference here. And it's true that if you look at any one thing with a microscope, the "no difference" argument can be made to stick. But it's the pattern that matters -- the initial support for Iraq, the more hawkish caste to her advisory team, the "naive and irresponsible" line, the meager carrots she's prepared to offer Iran, her weird position on nuclear disarmament, her campaign's courting of CANF and AIPAC, her vote for Kyl-Lieberman -- all point in the same direction and it's a frightening one.
Quite so. Going back to the LBJ analogy, LBJ's foreign policy woes stemmed in part from his basic lack of understanding of foreign affairs, aside from his flawed conception of the U.S. role in the world. Clinton seems to know what is going on, but shares the same flawed Albrightian view that LBJ held of the U.S. as the indispensable leader. We need someone who can walk us back from that cliff. Yglesias suspects, as do I, that someone may be Obama.

Or even if Yglesias and Obama both still cling to Albright's vision, perhaps an Obama presidency could be an intermediate stage in the U.S.'s evolution away from empire, like Australopithecus or Clement Atlee.

Sunday, November 18, 2007

an American dream deferred

Some long-time permanent residents are antsy because, although they’ve done all that was required of them to naturalize—waited the requisite number of years, filed the forms, paid their taxes and child support, paid the application fees, been fingerprinted, passed the English and civics exams, and passed an in-person screening interview with an immigration officer—they are still waiting months or years for the government to approve them for citizenship. From CNN:

Manny Barajas was eagerly awaiting his first taste of American democracy. Instead, he is learning a frustrating lesson in government bureaucracy.

. . .

"I was hoping that I could be ready to go in '08," Barajas said.

Barajas came to the United States from Mexico nearly 40 years ago and has raised a family in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he works as a waiter. For years, he said, family and friends have urged him to apply for citizenship; the decision to hold a Democratic presidential caucus next January was the clincher.

"The American dream brings me to Las Vegas," Barajas told us when we first met nine months ago. "And the last thing for me to do is become a citizen and make my vote count."

. . .

He filed his paperwork more than six months ago but hasn't heard a word from the government. His union says it knows of at least 1,000 in similar limbo.

. . .

Barajas is at the beginning of the process. Felipe Lopez at the end [so he thinks -Ed.]-- but also in limbo.

"I am waiting almost two years -- it is a long time," said Lopez, who came to the United States from Mexico 14 years ago and drives a truck for a seafood distributor.

Lopez showed us the paper trail of his frustration. He first applied in January 2006. He passed the citizenship test 16 months ago. The last step is a background check -- and three times Lopez says he has been called in for the required fingerprinting. The last time was four months ago. Still no word on if and when he will be approved to take the oath of citizenship.

. . .

The Department of Homeland Security says the process should take seven months -- start to finish. But it acknowledges a growing backlog; there are nearly 900,000 pending applications now -- almost twice as many as a year ago.

The government says it is a simple case of increased demand and limited resources.

This is partly true. But the increased demand is largely of the government’s own making: first, in response to increased federal enforcement and failure to resolve issues on the national level, leading to punitive local and state enforcement initiatives, many long-time permanent residents have applied for citizenship out of fear of what might happen to them if they don’t. Second, the government, after ignoring contradictory input from community-based organizations and religious groups predicting increased hardship on those least able to bear it, increased its naturalization fees by about 70 percent. Many immigrants took the opportunity to apply before the fee increase. This is something the government should have seen coming and prepared for. Instead, the applicants must bear the consequences for the stresses put on the system for which the system was not prepared.

"I think it is a little discrimination, because they focus on the bad part of immigration." Barajas said. "What about all these people who have been in the country legally and paying their taxes?"

Unions are a major force behind the citizenship drive and some labor leaders here wonder aloud if a Republican administration is perhaps dragging its feet processing the applications of people it believes are likely to become Democratic voters.

The administration says that is not the case, that the backlog is simply a question of resources.

I suppose that is possible. There are many things the government really wishes it could do, but there’s just not enough federal money to go around, or logistical bumps in the road take time to smooth over.

It happens all the time:

According to UN estimates, more than 4 million Iraqis have been displaced since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Refugee advocates call it the fastest-growing humanitarian crisis on the planet, deteriorating more quickly than Myanmar (also known as Burma) or Darfur.

More than 2 million people have fled the country, with most finding temporary asylum in the Middle East while they apply for permanent status in nations such as the U.S.

But while people are flooding out of Iraq, arrivals in the U.S. are more a trickle.

In February, the Bush administration pledged to resettle 7,000 Iraqi refugees to the U.S. in fiscal 2007. But by its close on Sept. 30, fewer than a quarter -- only 1,608 -- had arrived.

Government officials blame setbacks in creating and staffing on-site offices needed to conduct background checks, essential procedures they say have just recently been put into place, allowing them to process more refugees.

"There was nothing set up ... and we didn't have clearance from governments to bring in the organizations that are needed, to establish office and computer systems, and all the things that go with it," said Gina Wells, spokesperson for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the State Department. "It's kind of like the start-up of a business. It doesn't happen in an hour."

But refugee advocates suggest the administration has simply been dragging its feet, perhaps in an effort to downplay the scope of the crisis and the U.S.'s role in creating it.

. . .

Others argue that the U.S. has a moral obligation to those seeking asylum.

"Many are former translators and interpreters who have already been through a [security] clearance and have demonstrated loyalty to the U.S.," Kocher said. "Historically, there is precedent: we took a million Vietnamese since 1975. We took over 600,000 Russian Jews from the Soviet Union, over 150,000 Bosnian refugees since 1993, and 15,000 Kosovo refugees in the spring of 1999 over just a few months. We have a noble history as a country of responding with generosity during refugee crises. But we haven't done it here yet."

In recent months, the government appeared to pick up the pace of admissions. More than 1,400 Iraqi refugees arrived in August and September. And for fiscal year 2008, the government pledged to accept up to 12,000.

Iraqis should know by now what the pledges of the U.S. government are worth. But this isn’t the first interaction we’ve had with Iraq—there was a small affair in 1990-91 that created a lot of Iraqi refugees. But back then, the red tape was a lot less impenetrable:

The numbers appear especially small when compared to average arrivals during the presidencies of Bill Clinton -- about 90,000 a year -- and George H.W. Bush -- about 120,000 a year.

What happened since then? Well, 9/11, combined with the inability of the government to tell brown people apart from one another and a national propensity for bed-wetting.

"What we have to remind folks of is that there's a war going on," Homeland Security spokesperson Laura Keehner said. "We have to make sure we do not inadvertently welcome a refugee who wishes to do us harm or has ties to terrorism."

What we have to remind folks is that we started a war that has ripped apart a country, and that perhaps not all of its citizens will have warm, happy feelings towards us, no matter what Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz told us beforehand.

If the government were so confident our actions in Iraq are in the best interests of Iraqis, why would they be nervous to let in Iraqi refugees? Wouldn’t those refugees be eternally grateful to the government that liberated them? What could we have to fear from such people?

Perhaps we’re not really in Iraq to help Iraqis achieve better lives. Perhaps someone should notify the American people.

And when Bush-appointed bureaucrats tell constituents that they are doing their best, but the resources are too little and the obstacles too great, perhaps we should think twice before accepting that explanation at face value.

your daily dose of Americana

Where else but America could you find a squirrel dressed up as Lady Liberty:

Sandra Day O’Connor

Or my favorite, Saddam Hussein.

This is one versatile squirrel, as she also dresses as a U.S. soldier tasked with preparing the gallows for Saddam’s execution (causing me to wonder how many Americans believed it was the U.S. that hanged Saddam rather than the Iraqis. Perhaps the squirrel, if not the president, realized there wasn’t much daylight between American directives and supposed impartial and independent Iraqi judicial procedures.)

I suspect this is the sort of thing people will be looking at in museums 500 years from now, not the modern art hanging in galleries today.

[Sugar Bush Squirrel, via somepowers]

And, to get back to my roots, my wife found a website dedicated to Utah names. The site creators insist the names are all legit (click “What’s in a (Utah) Name?”), but some of them make me wonder.

I can see R'lene, Desereta, Xione, Brighaminie, or Najestica—those don’t seem so far fetched. Utahns don’t seem to feel bound to the same social conventions as the rest of the country. And living physically and socially isolated as Utahns did for 100 years or so, a society is bound to develop some unique cultural characteristics.

But Chinchilla Zest, Desdedididawn, Luvit, or Treasure Cocaine? Wow. Just wow.

Also, I watched the first Left Behind movie yesterday. But that’ll have to be a post for another day.

Friday, November 16, 2007

in case you had forgotten . . .

IOZ has recapitulated the story of the Iraq war in a single blog post. It's worth a read. Here's an excerpt:

Now the Americans are largely incapable of telling a Sunni from a Shi'ite from a Maharashtran Hindu from an Ecuadorian day-laborer toiling away under the heavenly aegis of the Holy Mother and the many candle-bearing saints. Iraqis, meanwhile, appear to be able to tell each other apart, and so, among a thousand other reasons for the parties to the Iraqi "government" not to agree on anything, not the least of which is the fact that they are powerless agents of a government with no force monopoly who may as well use their sinecures to save up in case they have to flee for an expatriate's life in London, there is the fact that the Shi'ite majority seems to remember that these were the very fuckers who were trying to bring them down in the first place, and are therefore understandably skeptical about inviting them into the henhouse for a chat.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

anything available out there?

Well-qualified MSW with a concentration in Macro Social Work and Community Development seeks position in community development/program management. Can be contacted here.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Spitzer backs down on license plan

Bad news from the NY Times today:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer is abandoning his plan to issue driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, saying that opposition is just too overwhelming to move forward with such a policy.

. . .

“You have perhaps seen me struggle with it because I thought we had a principled decision, and it’s not necessarily easy to back away from trying to move a debate forward,” he said.

But he came to believe the proposal would ultimately be blocked, he said, either by legal challenges, a vote by the Legislature to deny financing for the Department of Motor Vehicles or a refusal by upstate county clerks to carry it out.

“I am not willing to fight to the bitter end on something that will not ultimately be implemented,” the governor said, “and we also have an enormous agenda on other issues of great importance to New York State that was being stymied by the constant and almost singular focus on this issue.”

. . .

Opposition to the proposal sent his poll numbers plunging and stalled his broader agenda.

The decision is likely to be a relief to many of his fellow Democrats in Albany and in Washington, who feared the issue could haunt them into next year’s election season.

The primary reason immigration might stem Democratic gains in New York would be if the NY Times predicted this in its pages every day as it has done since the proposal was mooted.

To me, this represents a failure of the progressive community to identify and promote convincing arguments on immigration. Progressives failed on this issue because the other side has laid the groundwork for success in the public debate and we have not.

The outcome in New York represents the future of immigration policy at every level of government: acrimony, deadlock, and, ultimately, perpetuation of the status quo. The restrictionist lobby can’t produce the votes to implement significant new policies; it can only obstruct action intended to resolve the situation.

Democratic politicians cannot be relied upon to act on principle; they have to be shown that they have more to fear from pursuing a Rahm Emanuel/James Carville-approved “restrictionist lite” policy than from working towards sensible, humane immigration reform. This requires educating progressives about why immigration matters and how to combat misinformation from restrictionists. But first, progressives must not buy into the restrictionist point of view, as so many have done.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds

I attended a panel on Jobs, Trade, and American Votes at the NYU Stern School of Business last night. The panel was jointly sponsored by the Economist magazine and the Council on Foreign Relations website. I was hoping to hear more about immigration, but the panelists stuck primarily to trade issues. The moderator noted more than once the lack of disagreement on fundamentals among the panelists: free trade is a net good for the U.S. and its trading partners and efforts to stymie free trade are usually attributable to the inability of the political system to balance diffuse benefits against concentrated costs.

While agreeing myself with some of their assumptions, I became convinced that they must inhabit some fantasy world where the median American voter reads the Economist every week and laughs knowingly at Lou Dobbs over pinot noir on the next expensed Maxjet flight to London.

Matthew Bishop of the Economist thought that recent anti-trade noises from Congress are just so much puffery. Despite expressing antagonism to trade, no significant political faction has passed the Wal-Mart Test, which is to pass policies that would raise prices at Wal-Mart. Democrats perceive they have a lot to gain by “pandering” to interest groups, but when it comes time to vote, they will vote for open trade as they always have.

Amity Shlaes, a fellow at CFR, raised the specter of Chavez, Venezuela’s “Castro with oil,” to argue that the U.S. needs to increase its influence in the region [!] by passing a trade deal with Colombia over protests that trade unionists have been murdered there at an alarming rate.

Stern dean Thomas Cooley expressed concern that the current Doha round of international trade negotiations has been sidelined and wondered why corporate leaders don’t make more public appeals in favor of free trade. The answer that comes to mind is that they are not stupid—business leaders know they are unpopular at the moment and that free trade is relatively unpopular. Also, public appeals of this sort are not how corporations typically operate in the political sphere, instead working behind the scenes to advance their preferred policies.

Bishop lamented the failure of political leaders in the rich countries to stand up for free trade, causing me to wonder whether he has heard any public speech by any politician in the U.S. at any point in the past 50 years. Bishop worried about anti-trade rhetoric he anticipates will be forthcoming from the left during the 2008 campaign, ignoring the recent popularity of Lou Dobbs, Tom Tancredo, and Ron Paul on the right.

Cooley stated matter-of-factly that increased trade inevitably brings increased inequality due to greater rewards to human capital. He argued that this is why we need to invest in education to take advantage of this trend so as not to end up with the short end of the stick. Trade adjustment assistance was mooted as a necessary sop to voters, but the panelists seemed not to place much importance on it.

Bishop pointed out that the U.S. is by far the biggest beneficiary of globalization in the world—its businesses are profit leaders, U.S. corporations are benefiting from outsourcing trends, and there is little evidence of U.S. jobs being lost. Since America is doing fine economically, the problems must lie elsewhere, perhaps in failings in the education, healthcare, and pension systems, as well as post-9/11 angst and fear of outsiders who don’t like us. These factors explain the current malaise and shouldn’t cause us to give up the thing that’s working so well: trade. Bishop stressed that politicians may disparage trade but ultimately won’t mess with it. Bishop's line of argument here was about the most persuasive thing I heard from the panel, but he failed to explore further how policy-makers might implement his prescription with an anxious public. This argument also fails to consider inequality outside the U.S. One might also speculate that the comparatively one-sided benefits from trade accruing to the U.S. might have something to do with low opinion of Americans abroad, and that the narrowly extractive business model the U.S. government and corporations have pursued around the world might have something to do with failings in education and health care inside the U.S.

Shlaes asserted that you don’t see old immigrants fighting against new immigrants as they have during past periods of tension, causing me once again to wonder what country she has been living in lately. According to Shlaes, you don’t hear racial hatred like you used to in the bad old days—things are great now. This was apparently ridiculous enough to give Cooley momentary pause, as he asked, What about Lou Dobbs? before going on to predict that, absent a significant financial meltdown, trade will largely be absent from the campaign next year.

To the panelists, the gains from trade to the American public are so massive and self-evident, that only those blindly opposed to progress or selfish workers with vested interests in outdated sectors would stand in their way.

The long-standing problems of global inequality that the Washington Consensus has systematically failed to address, the rising sense of economic insecurity in the American middle class, the unmitigated migration flows stemming from the pressures of globalization—these issues went largely unaddressed.

Overall this was a remarkably unaware and blinkered assessment of U.S. public opinion on trade. If these are the people charged with explaining the benefits of trade to the American public and convincing politicians that increased trade is a political winner, if these are the people tasked with figuring how to address the very real problems caused by Washington-style globalization, we have much to fear. It would be hard to imagine a less convincing set of arguments less convincingly presented than those I heard last night. I hope they don't next turn to the subject of immigration, or we'll really be in trouble.

state-assisted suicide in Brooklyn

Contrary to popular opinion, the government will help you kill yourself at taxpayer expense, as long as you are young, black, and can brandish a hairbrush in a sufficiently threatening manner.

What’s perhaps most disturbing is that the “assisted suicide” version of events is the one that the NYPD itself is pushing, so confident are they that the public will come down on the side of the God-given right of law enforcement to shoot an 18-year-old for threatening them with a hairbrush.

No Country for Old Men

It is as good as they are saying. Except for those who aren’t—but they should be ignored in this case.

After watching the movie myself, I read the tortured attempts by some critics to explain the film to their readers, and a simpler theme came to mind: Death comes to us all, implacable, emotionless, resolute. We can avoid it as we can avoid gravity.

And I couldn’t help but think of Monsieur IOZ in one scene, where a West Texas driver is stopped by Javier Bardem’s psycho character, who has commandeered a police car, and the driver trustingly and unsuspectingly offers himself up for the slaughter. In a sense, a person who would wait so patiently to be killed was already dead.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

"the time is always right to do right"

John Lewis encourages his colleagues to pass ENDA:



Via Andrew Sullivan.

the great Virginia immigration fizzle

The wave of anti-immigration sentiment that Republicans were planning to ride to victory in this year's state and local elections never quite materialized. Duke from Migra Matters has a couple of follow up posts on the topic here and here.

Rather than repeat Duke, I'll repeat myself with an earlier comment:

Patterning its national strategy after Virginia would be a mistake for the GOP for the simple reason that the country is not Virginia. Treating the country as an extension of the South may have worked for the GOP in the past, but is unlikely to work next year. I think Republicans are grasping at straws, and immigration happens to be the closest straw at hand, but it won't stop the party from the approaching free fall.

Immigration matters most to people already voting for the GOP, an ever-diminishing number. For many of the rest, it is less important than health care, Iraq, wage stagnation, or global warming, for instance. The current media overload on immigration is calculated, not organic. The GOP should understand the risk of putting all its eggs in one basket, especially when the strategy could so easily backfire and destroy Hispanic support for the GOP for the next 50 years. The Virginia strategy is a sign of desperation, not of careful political manoeuvreing.

Given that the “Virginia strategy” didn’t even work in Virginia, its chances for success elsewhere seem limited.

And via Kevin Drum (via Ezra) , Tom Tancredo explains why he’s always going around making ridiculous statements:

Why is Tom Tancredo such a monomaniac on the subject of illegal immigration? In an interview on our radio show with Markos Kounalakis and Peter Laufer, he explains that a lot of it isn't about winning, it's about redefining the playing field:

What happens is, you provide people with some space to get into where they can say, "That guy is a racist xenophobe. That guy is just so crazy that we can take a more moderate stance."

....I have to set the bar as high as I can. I'm being completely candid with you. If I had actually set out to become president, then of course it would be ludicrous for me to do it in the way I'm doing it. I don't have that as my goal; I never have. The only way I can get on that plane and go to Iowa or New Hampshire and spend night after night in hotels in places you've never even heard of is by saying, "Think about why you're doing this, Tom. It is because the issue is important. You are the person that is advancing it." I have the luxury of saying, "I will set the goalposts as far as I can down the field because then I will have a better chance of getting the game played on my side."

So: Politics 101. Stake out an ultra-extreme position so that when the rest of your party endorses a merely extreme position it looks like it's a moderate compromise.

Also, Tancredo notes the effect of leveraging a core of motivated people through talk radio and the internet to flood Senators with calls and push a debate rightward on a subject that most people are ambivalent about. It’s the same pattern as any other interest pressure group—the sugar lobby, the Cuba lobby, agricultural subsidies, for instance—where a small number of people highly invested in an issue can drown out the diffuse interests of the diffident majority.

There is a group of people highly invested in the issue on the other side—immigrants themselves—who can't provide an effective counterweight because they are largely voiceless, either because they are not citizens or are otherwise marginalized, not having learned to navigate the political process as well as long-time residents have. When they try to make their voices heard, the government acts quickly to silence them.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

watch it crystallize

This is how conventional wisdom is formed in Bizarro World, circa 2007:

Step 1: Purportedly savvy centrist Democratic strategists reheat standard right-wing talking points on immigration and circulate them to Democratchiks eager for something to fill the void of center-left policy discussion on immigration. A great sense of relief permeates the Force as a “sure thing”—Democratic triumph in 2008—is saved from the ruinous error of ignoring the electorally crucial Reago-Dobbs-Limbaughbwian Democrat, a rare creature not seen in its natural habitat since late 2003.

Step 2: Self-proclaimed sensible immigration moderate approvingly cites the above-mentioned “shrewd Democratic strategists” in an article asserting that immigration will be the deciding factor in 2008, conveniently omitting the assumption underlying this conclusion: that the electorate will generously and inexplicably experience temporary selective amnesia at the voting booth about Iraq, health care, rising inequality, global warming, loose nukes, and near-universal anti-Americanism.

Step 3: Intrepid contrarian academic picks up on the sensible immigration moderate’s reference to the purportedly savvy centrist Democrat recirculation of standard restrictionist fare, completing the wingnut circle of life, in which every member of the chain plays a key role in regurgitating the godfather’s nativist bullet points. Rule, Wingnuttia! Wingnuttia rules the waves …

And thus, everyone to the right of James Carville (including James Carville, who is definitionally always to the right of himself) is in agreement. Next up: a Washington Post editorial to fix the “illegalz R teh scary” meme in the firmament for all time and space.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

you never call, you never visit

Via Atrios, it seems that our plan to build a Berlin Wall-style border fence, arbitrarily lock up and deport unskilled laborers, and probe, prod, and generally hassle everyone who wants to set foot on American soil is impacting travel patterns in predictable ways:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The number of foreign visitors to the United States has plummeted since the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington because foreigners don't feel welcome, tourism professionals said Thursday.

"Since September 11, 2001, the United States has experienced a 17 percent decline in overseas travel, costing America 94 billion dollars in lost visitor spending, nearly 200,000 jobs and 16 billion dollars in lost tax revenue," the Discover America advocacy campaign said in a statement.

It’s good to see the business-friendly Bush administration working its trademark administrative magic to improve the competitiveness of American corporations in an ever-more connected world.

Chairman Stevan Porter lamented the "extraordinary decline" in the number of overseas visitors to the United States, while the advocacy group's executive director, Geoff Freeman, blamed the slump on the shabby welcome many foreigners feel they get in the United States.

"It's clear what's keeping people away in the post-9/11 environment: it is the perception around the world that travelers aren't welcome," Freeman told AFP.

"Travelers around the world feel the US entry experience is among the world's worst," Freeman said, calling on the US government to work with the private sector to make visa acquisition more efficient, the entry process traveler-friendly, and to improve communication.

Traveling to a place, meeting the people who live there, and experiencing their hospitality in person typically improves a traveler’s perceptions of the place, perceptions that would otherwise be premised on abstraction and rumor. We’ve removed that option for many, and made travel difficult and sometimes humiliating for those for whom the option remains. We’ve even stopped our own leaders from traveling freely, showing that our entry policies long ago lost touch with reality.

Last year, only 56 percent of Britons had a positive opinion of the United States compared with 83 percent in 2000, the Pew Global Attitudes report for 2006 shows.

Thirty-nine percent of French people saw the United States in a positive light last year, compared with 62 percent in 2000.

In Turkey 12 percent had good things to say about the United States last year -- 40 percentage points down on 2000.

These are our ostensible allies.

The cycle we’ve been stuck in for most of my lifetime, but especially since 9/11, of distrust and alienation is not sustainable. It’s up to us to change this country in which we live.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

religious freedom: immigrants need not apply


Kevin Johnson summarizes this Daily Tar Heel article, and asks, “What have we come to as a nation?”

The pastor of the María, Reina de las Américas parish in Mt. Olive, North Carolina has a majority Latina/o congregation, including many of undocumented immigrants. The church is less than two miles from al slaughterhouse, where many parishioners work. Several months ago, local law enforcement officials set up roadblocks three weekends in a row on the two roads that provide access to the church. Parishioners were stopped and asked to show their driver's licenses on the way to and from services. Attendance at Mass eventually began to drop as the roadblocks increased in frequency.

The contradictions of this story are heightened when you consider the history each American learns in grade-school about immigrants escaping religious persecution to begin a new experiment in government. Now new immigrants can expect to encounter religious persecution in the country founded on the principle of free expression of faith.

Religious freedom, like any other kind, depends on the legal status of the individual. Without meaningful access to the courts, the ballot box, or law enforcement, the Bill of Rights is essentially worthless to these individuals, though technically, it applies to them, too. The restrictionist vision of the world is one where American values and freedoms are tightly restricted to citizens, but are more broadly transmitted to the outside world primarily by example. It’s an incoherent, indefensible view that, unfortunately, makes some sense in the context of the existing state-based international legal/political system. That system is gradually and painfully changing, but traditionalists (excepting those out-of-status traditionalist immigrants trying to get to mass on Sunday) will fight these changes tooth and nail. They always have.

[Image: Daily Tar Heel/Julie Turkewitz]

history lesson

Atrios recounts a crucial bit of blogospheric history:

Beating back George Bush's plan to kill social security was probably the first major victory for the broadly defined netroots movement. I say that not really knowing if things would have been different if blogs and the like didn't exist, but it seemed like a victory. And while we never got together in a dark smoky room to plot our strategy, it basically ended up being a two-pronged one. The first was to beat back against the "social security crisis" frame much beloved by every very serious pundit in Washington. The second was to beat back against the idea that since George Bush had a "plan" (which he never actually did in any form until very near the end of the whole debate) the Democrats needed to have a "plan" of their own. The first part of this is a perpetual game of whack a mole, necessary on just about every day the Washington Post is still publishing. And the second was a very necessary emergency tourniquet which needed to be applied very quickly.

Beating back the steady stream of misinformation about the nonexistent crisis was done throughout the blogs, on Media Matters, etc. And trying to stop the Democrats from coming up with their own crackpot plan was done through a combination of bloggers trying to explain repeatedly that people like social security, they don't want to change it, opposing changing it is a political winner, and most importantly that once the minority party proposes their own plan they've guaranteed that something will happen. And that something would have been very bad. In addition, Josh Marshall especially kept an eager eye out for any wavering Democrat in Congress who decided that his/her awesome social security plan must be unveiled to the grateful public in order to beat them back with phone calls and whatever bad press could be created.

Tt worked. Again, absent blogs it may have played out just like that anyway. Nancy Pelosi realized at some point that the "no plan" plan was indeed the best one, and she likely doesn't spend much of her time looking at my pictures of ponies. In any case, somehow George Bush's social security monster was driven back into its cave and it was done in just the way the liberal blogosphere and netroots more broadly orchestrated it to happen, in a very decentralized way of course. We're not members of any organized political party, remember.

As Atrios points out more than once, it’s hard to know what would have happened absent involvement by liberal bloggers, but the psychological impact of the “save social security” meme was profound. In early 2005, Bush was apparently invincible, and I felt more or less resigned to living in a country that had permanently lost its mind. Then, as we know now, things all went to shit for the president. But it started with a technical, wonkish debate on which there was “bipartisan consensus” among the D.C. elite that some sort of change had to happen. (I’ll admit to wavering a bit myself early on due to a couple of seemingly reasonable Tierney op-eds about the Chilean “miracle.” Then the Times did me and the world a favor by yanking their columnists from public view.) Well, nothing happened except that, for the first time, the Democrats held firm and Bush didn’t get his way. Without the TPM-directed collective effort to gather key information about public positions of individual Democrats and leverage it to apply selective pressure on them, one by one, I doubt there would have been nearly as favorable an outcome.

DNA evidence points to innocence of West Memphis Three

American justice means locking up teenagers for crimes they didn’t commit. Two of them are 13 years into life sentences; one is on death row.

In 1994, three teenagers in the small city of West Memphis, Ark., were convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in what prosecutors portrayed as a satanic sacrifice involving sexual abuse and genital mutilation. So shocking were the crimes that when the teenagers were led from the courthouse after their arrest, they were met by 200 local residents yelling, “Burn in hell.”

But according to long-awaited new evidence filed by the defense in federal court on Monday, there was no DNA from the three defendants found at the scene, the mutilation was actually the work of animals and at least one person other than the defendants may have been present at the crime scene.

Supporters of the defendants hope the legal filing will provide the defense with a breakthrough. Two of the men, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, are serving life in prison, while one, Damien W. Echols, is on death row. There was no physical evidence linking the teenagers, now known as the West Memphis 3, to the crime.

“This is the first time that the evidence has ever really been tested,” said Gerald Skahan, a member of the defense team. “The first trial was pretty much a witch hunt.”

. . .

The story the defendants’ supporters have presented — of three misfits whose fondness for heavy-metal music made them police targets — has won the men the support of celebrities like Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson and the creators of “South Park.” Many learned of the case through an HBO documentary, “Paradise Lost,” and a sequel.

The prosecution hinged on a confession riddled with factual errors and a Satanic cult expert with a mail-order degree. Mr. Echols’s own lawyer called him “weird” and “not the all-American boy.”

. . .

The three victims — Christopher, Steve Branch and James Michael Moore — were last seen riding their bikes on May 5, 1993. They were found the next day in a drainage ditch in Robin Hood Hills, near West Memphis, a low-rent town across the Mississippi River from Memphis. The boys were naked and hogtied with shoelaces.

The police quickly zeroed in on Mr. Echols, then 18, who was familiar to them because he was on probation for trying to run away with his girlfriend. They also believed he was involved in cult activities.

But they could find little evidence against him until Mr. Misskelley, mildly retarded and with a history of substance abuse, came in to speak with them. At the time there was a $30,000 reward.

After hours of questioning, Mr. Misskelley, 17, gave the police a taped statement that implicated himself, Mr. Baldwin, then 16, and Mr. Echols, then 19. Despite coaching by the investigators, Mr. Misskelley was incorrect in several significant details, including the time of the crime, the way the victims were tied and the manner of death. He said the children had been sodomized, an assertion that even the state medical examiner’s testimony appears to refute.

The team of forensic experts assembled by Mr. Echols’s lawyers, which included Dr. Michael Baden, the former medical examiner of New York City, also said there was no evidence of sexual abuse. Many of the wounds sustained by the victims were caused by animals, they said, including the castration of Christopher.

Here’s the documentary on the case, Paradise Lost, and the sequel.

[Image: Creative Thinking/NY Times]

Sunday, October 28, 2007

slow news day

Sometimes when George Bush, subway pole-hoggers, or hidden kitten puke have brought my spirits down, I think back to this modern classic, and feel better about life.

I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rinds
But the lack there of would leave me empty inside
Swallow my doubt
Turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Want to put my tender
Heart it in a blender
Watch it spin round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous then I'm through with you
Duuude, they like wrote this in high school. Pretty impressive, huh? Where did they find all those words . . .
I burn burn like a wicker cabinet
I love it!
Chalk white and oh so frail
I see our time has gotten stale
The tick tock of the clock is painful
All sane and logical
I want to tear it off the wall
Damn those sane, logical clocks, with their tick tocking and their logic and oh-so-precious sanity. Damn them!
I hear words in clips and phrases
That actually explains a lot. Maybe he never got the early educational assistance he desperately needed to overcome his hearing disability.
I think sick like ginger ale
My stomach turns and I exhale
I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rinds
But the lack there of would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt
Turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Want to put my tender
Heart it in a blender
Watch it spin round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous then I'm through with you

So Cal is where my mind states
But its not my state of mind
I'm not as ugly sad as you
Or am I origami
Oh, snap! Check it out--"or am I" sounds almost the same as "origami." This is some groundbreaking stuff.
Folded up and just pretend
Demented as the motives in your head

I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rinds
But the lack there of would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt
Turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Want to put my tender
Heart it in a blender
Watch it spin round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous then I'm through with you
Here comes the best part.
I alone
Am the one you don't
Know you need
Take heed feed your ego
Make me blind
When your eyes
Close sink when you get close
Tie me to the bedpost
I alone
Am the one you dont
Know you need no you don't
Make me blind
When your eyes close
Tie me to the bedpost
Tie me to the fucking bedpost!!
I would swallow my pride
I would choke on the rinds
But the lack there of would leave me empty inside
I would swallow my doubt
Turn it inside out
Find nothing but faith in nothing
Want to put my tender
Heart it in a blender
Watch it spin round to a beautiful oblivion
Rendezvous then I'm through with you
Now im through with you

Through with you
Rendezvous then I'm through with you
Indeed. Through. With. You. Words to live by.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

illegal immigration causes 'warming of the globe'

VDare's Brenda Walker, as usual breaking stories the corrupt Mexiphile MSM covers up for drug money, links to a story from the Boston Globe on the pending nationwide water crisis:

An epic drought in Georgia threatens the water supply for millions. Florida doesn’t have nearly enough water for its expected population boom. The Great Lakes are shrinking. Upstate New York’s reservoirs have dropped to record lows. And in the West, the Sierra Nevada snowpack is melting faster each year. Across America, the picture is critically clear — the nation’s freshwater supplies can no longer quench its thirst.

Out of a series of causal factors, Walker touts one in particular as the primary explanation. See if you can guess which it is:

The government projects that at least 36 states will face water shortages within five years because of a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl, waste and excess.

She has underlined it for the attentive reader.

So out of five factors (counting “waste and excess” together), all but one of which could be addressed by sensible environmental policies, it’s that other factor—population growth—that has been causing problems with the national water supply. Walker provides her analysis:

Droughts are a normal part of nature, and Georgia’s lack of rain has been severe. But the MSM tends to underplay any negative effects of population growth, particularly when it is diverse. As a result, we don’t read that the state has doubled in population since 1960, from 4 million then to over 8 million counted in the 2000 Census. In other words, there has been much attention paid to the dwindling supply of water but little to increased demand from immigration-fueled population growth.

And if hypocritical electricity-using Al Gore or the NY Times tells you it’s global warming that’s melting Western snowpack instead of illegal immigration, you know where to tell them to stick it!

Friday, October 26, 2007

attack at mexican consulate

An explosive device went off today at the Mexican Consulate in New York City:

Police and bomb squad units were called to the Mexican Consulate in Manhattan early Friday morning after some kind explosive device detonated at the building, WCBSTV.com first reported.

Sources say the device -- which initially was said to be some sort of hand grenade, but sources later confirmed it may have been something else -- exploded outside the building, located at 27 E. 39th Street and Fifth Avenue, shattering glass and sending debris into the building.

There are no reports of any injuries, but consulate employees were tense as the news spread. "Everybody got nervous when they heard something about this, but we can stay calm," said Alejandro Aquino.
We'll see whether law enforcement manages to track down the suspect and if they can determine his/her motives, but in the current antagonistic environment regarding immigration,
it's easy to speculate that this was an act intended to terrorize the Mexican community in the United States. There are a lot of crazy people in New York City--I ride the subway every day, so I know--so any motive or no motive is possible. But I hope we don't get to a place where legal services organizations and foreign consulates have to undertake the kinds of security measures that abortion clinics have been forced to take since they have been attacked so many times.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

won’t you be my neighbor

My wife told me today that there were three or four activists outside our subway stop when she came home earlier this evening. What were they protesting? Me! That is, white people moving into our historically (since WWII, anyway) black neighborhood. Apparently, one woman was standing in front of the grocery store handing out fliers yelling, “How many white people have to move onto your block before you say ENOUGH?! They’re pricing you out, and you’re not doing anything about it!”

[Image: from Do the Right Thing; source: Wikipedia]

I wonder what she wants to “do about it.” I was glad not to have been there, and not to have been there with my wife, who is black. That’s not a scenario I look forward to.

Last Sunday in the checkout line at the grocery store in Restoration Plaza, I heard a young woman talking on her cell phone speculating about how the neighborhood was going to turn out like Williamsburg, which she seemed to think was a good thing. She intended to hold on to her apartment to keep paying low rent as the neighborhood became safer and more prosperous.

A coworker told me the other day about how all her neighbors in Canarsie are picking up and going to the suburbs as even the outer portions of Brooklyn become too expensive for long-time residents. Of course, in New York, where neighborhoods seem to change with the weather, “long-time resident” might not be all that long. She said lots of houses are for sale in her neighborhood, and as commuting time and living expenses rise, she expects more people will leave New York City. Many neighborhoods are experiencing the pain of reverse white flight, as the grandchildren of whites who ran for the ‘burbs decide that suburbs suck and the city is the place to be. I have been a part of this gentrifying phenomenon, except that my family didn’t leave the city, but instead the desert farms and ranches of Utah.

Gentrification is a difficult issue to deal with, but as an advocate for immigrants, placing restrictions on where people can live based on race, income, or nationality is worrisome to me. Of course, in much of New York City now, there is a de facto income restriction in certain neighborhoods as housing becomes ever more expensive. This often breaks down along racial lines, but not always, for example in middle-class Fort Greene or Harlem or in the Caribbean-owned brownstones of Bed-Stuy. But freedom of movement is a universal human right—recognized most generally as freedom to stay or freedom to leave, if not yet absolute freedom to enter another country. (It helps to think of it in the sense of an East German in the GDR or a Cuban or North Korean imprisoned in her home country against her will.) Thinking in the context of international migration, surely freedom of movement ranks higher than maintaining the character of a neighborhood. Of course, I’m not the one getting priced out.

As one half of a mixed-race couple, I can’t see how racially segregating neighborhoods for any reason can be a good thing—at least not for us. According to the woman in front of the grocery store, my wife can stay but I have to leave? That doesn’t make sense. I think back to my high school in rural/suburban Utah. There was not a single black student in school of over a thousand. There were only a handful of students of color. That would be a difficult place for us to raise a family. Apparently others have come to the same conclusion and self-segregated themselves out of Utah.

There have also of late been some anti-immigrant scrawls in the stairwells at the subway stop in our neighborhood. This to me is utterly bewildering, since the neighborhood has a substantial settled population of first and second generation immigrants from the Caribbean. This nativist graffitist should voice his opinions at the annual West Indian Day Parade—he’d get a multinational boot to the ass. But even if the local solitary restrictionist and the anti-gentrication crusaders join to form some unholy coalition, I think they’ll mostly be ignored as the composition of the borough ebbs and flows, mirroring the changes in the lives of its constituent families.