Category: Uncategorized

The Gay Blade

Clearly some rampant judicial activism going on when it falls to the judge to finally point out the blazingly obvious logical flaws in a case:

The unusual exchange between U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker and Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, came during a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the measure as discriminatory under the U.S. Constitution.

Cooper had asked Walker to throw out the suit or make it more difficult for those civil rights claims to prevail. The judge not only refused but signaled that when the case goes to trial in January, he expects Cooper and his legal team to present evidence showing that male-female marriages would be undermined if same-sex marriages were legal.

Some of the specific exchanges went like this:

“What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?” Walker asked.

“My answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Cooper answered.

and this:

“Since when do Constitutional rights rest on the proof of no harm?” Walker parried, adding the First Amendment right to free speech protects activities that many find offensive, “but we tolerate those in a free society.”

all one can say to that is: “Yep. And Yep.”

Follow up on this post: It’s just remarkable that, in the midst of a largely “fortified bunker” style reaction to 9/11, people’s notion of crime has become utterly unmoored from reality. If you constantly confront people with the seeming need for Fort Knox security at every moment, they’ll begin to think that things are far worse than they are. And that opinion has real consequences. None of which are very productive…

Macintosh IIsi

Huh, Bukowski and I were using the same computer in the early 90s…

Charles Bukowski received a Macintosh IIsi computer and a laser printer from his wife, Linda. The computer utilized the 6.0.7 operating system and was installed with the MacWrite II word processing program. By January 18 of the next year, the computer was up and running and so, after a brief period of fumbling and stumbling, was Bukowski. His output of poems doubled in 1991.

Good old 6.0.7. The classic with just a splash of color. Huzzah! What a step up that computer felt like on moving from my old Macintosh SE. The “si” part of the name, by the by, stood for “small integrated” if my memory serves me correctly: smaller case (than a standard Macintosh II, which had dual disk drives, an HD, and lots of slots for cards), integrated video (the II line had, up to that point, required a separate video card purchase which, at the time, seemed vaguely insane). The magnificent follow-on to it, the IIci, was merely “compact.” The later IIfx went blue…

Macintosh IIsi

Tiki Laphroaig?

The winning cocktail (…) had a lot of tiki elements to it: It was made with Laphroaig 10 year-old, Tia Maria, lime juice, falernum, and orange bitters, and had a foam on top made of orgeat and chocolate bitters with a Chartreuse spray and grated nutmeg.

Unclear why the words “police are seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the team of European super-criminals responsible for this concoction; if seen, do not approach, call authorities immediately” are in the press release. Must have been edited.

Tiki Laphroaig?

Security Theater

Matt Yglesias notes that we ‘Mericans have to pass through magnetometers to visit a museum or enter City Hall…and wonders:

It really strikes me as worth wondering exactly how much time and resources we’re wasting on all this. Just think about all the completely soft targets that exist even in the United States of America. If you assume the existence of a person with a functioning explosive device and a desire to massacre innocent people, there’s nothing stopping that person from detonating it on a crowded Chinatown bus or a packed subway platform. […] That indicates that the money and time spent doing security screening is basically 100 percent wasted. Even if you could just walk through the door at the State Department and blow up a bomb, it wouldn’t happen any more often than people walk into the Gallery Place Metro Station and blow up bombs.

It is 100% wasted. It’s 100% wasted at airports too. The attackers on 9/11 strolled right on through these same checks. Teams that specifically attempt to defeat checkpoints by smuggling weapons of various kinds through inevitably succeeded, so they just stopped trying rather than make everyone nervous. If a determined hijacker makes it to the checkpoint: game over. This is why we secured cockpit doors. The checkpoint isn’t there to stop anybody.

But then, Yglesias (seemingly inadvertently) gets at the real point of all this:

Having all the metal detectors everywhere, however, makes it seem as if there’s some vast quantity of terrorists at the gate being held back by our X-Ray machines.

Indeed it does. That is precisely the point. The program was initiated to instill fear in the general population, and is maintained because of institutional inertia. Full stop.

Wish in One Hand…

Nice dream:

Activists on the left have long insisted that insurance companies aren’t to be trusted. But up until now, it’s been hard to make the charge stick, since the insurance lobby–a.k.a., America’s Health Insurance Plans–has been cooperating with the White House and its allies.

AHIP’s new paper, though, may have changed things. In the last day, the specious claim that reform would raise premiums has provoked a fast and furious response, uniting everybody from the White House to AARP against a common foe. And that unity could have policy implications.

Let’s face it, the insurance companies own reform. They will, in large part, write the final bill in which they will create an individual mandate (and most definitely not an employer mandate) to buy whatever they deign to sell you, the ‘Merican consumer. And, no, there will be zero competition if they have their druthers. Only subsidies such as may be allowed by some made up number in Olympia Snow’s head will affect the final price to the most imperiled future consumers of this insurance, folks earning at ~300% of poverty.

To the extent that rampant dishonesty (like this AHIP report) helps create some wedge-room to make the previous paragraph less expensive to the end-user, it’s for the good. But I think we all need to start adjusting ourselves for the major screwing over that will only be, uh, rectified once the policies are in place and people are pissed off and demanding some major readjustments or, at the very least, some spittle.  But this:

“Ironically with AHIP’s report today may make it more likely that such a windfall profits tax would be included in the final legislation.“

is totally nonsensical. The insurance companies (which stand to make, at a minimum, billions on this or any health reforms package that passes) will pay not one dime of new tax. They may well end up with a tax exemption. Mark my words, children. It will be so.

Funniest of all:

“In a strange way, and look, obviously they didn’t mean this, the health insurance lobby today fired the most important salvo in weeks for the public option,” Rep. Anthony Weiner wrote today on his website, as Daily Kos noted. “Left to their own devices, according to their own number crunchers, they’re going to raise rates 111%.”

Yes they are. And no, there won’t be a robust public option. Best we can hope for is a states-opt-in option that, over time, might actually begin to work. But: there will be significant and extended consumer pain. Get ready. Mostly, I wonder what color the sky is in Anthony Weiner’s world…