Egypt

 
 28 Jan 2011 @ 1:50 PM 

Hosni Mubarak has run unopposed in all but one “election” due to the Egyptian constitution making any other candidates ineligible. Finally, after 24 years in office, he permitted a multi-candidate election in 2005. During that election, there was widespread election fraud and intimidation by Mubarak, abetted by the state-run media being completely filled with pro-Mubarak propaganda. After the election, the runner-up (and possibly the actual winner if a real count could have been taken) was arrested and imprisoned for the next four years. Egypt has been operating under emergency law that suspends most of the constitution since 1967, under the guise of protecting the people from terrorists. Under that emergency law, the government can imprison people for essentially no reason for any length of time, parliamentary elections are suspended, and assets can be seized on the word of the President with no recourse.

And VP Biden says Mubarak is not a dictator. Right. Biden’s just jealous.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 28 Jan 2011 @ 01:53 PM

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 04 Jan 2011 @ 12:58 PM 

I think this recent court precedent really shows the importance of personal encryption.  As in so many of these civil liberties cases, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for the person, as he’s an obvious drug dealer.  But, since it’s possible for police to do a pat-down of anyone at a traffic stop, and if “anything in your pockets” is free game for them to search through… Most of us don’t do a lot of illegal things, but we almost all do embarassing things.  As smartphones proliferate, many people are carrying the equivalent of a large filing cabinet of personal documents and photos and videos with them at all times.  Although the police have the obligation to do their utmost within the law to uphold the law, it’s possible that you may want to think about what you keep in your smartphone that you might not want a random stranger to see.  This goes double at border crossings or customs stations at airports – there is a solid precedent that customs agents can pretty much just take all your personal electronics and never give them back whenever you enter the USA.  It seems messed up, because it is.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 04 Jan 2011 @ 12:58 PM

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 27 Dec 2010 @ 9:49 AM 


Back in January 2009, right after the inauguration, I posted a quick summary of views from economists about the expected effect of the stimulus.  The stimulus was expected to be about 20% bigger than it ended up, but the basic gist was that doing nothing would mean high unemployment rates (9%) through 2010, and beginning to drop in 2011, finally returning to historical norms by 2014.  Enacting the stimulus as it was planned was expected to lead to unemployment rates peaking at 8% in mid-2009, and dropping steadily through 2013.  The recovery plan was supposed to lessen the worst and shorten the duration of the employment loss.

In January of 2010, I posted the followup, which was cautiously optimistic, while pointing out that unemployment was actually at 10%, but did appear to be declining slightly.  Sadly, this trend was not borne out by the end of 2010.  Here we are, over two years after the Bush administration began the economic recovery plan, nearly two years since the Obama administration compromised its way to a smaller stimulus devoted largely to shoring up banks with no guarantees of lending to actual citizens, and it seems the results are actually worse than what was expected from doing nothing at all.  That’s just sad.

Here’s the latest unemployment figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  I sincerely hope you’re not one of the 10%.  Happy New Year.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 27 Dec 2010 @ 09:50 AM

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 20 Dec 2010 @ 9:56 AM 

John McCain mentioned this weekend that most of the people on talk shows have never served in the military.  He said this in the context of condemning them for being out of touch with the needs of the military vis a vis Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  It made me curious.  What talk show hosts, if any, have served in the military?  I wandered through a truly stupendous number of reference articles and was completely unsurprised to find that the only current talk show host veteran is Regis Philbin, who was in the Navy.  Montel Williams, although not currently on television, had the most interesting military career – he was an enlisted Marine and went to Annapolis to become a Navy officer, eventually learning Russian at DLI and serving on submarines.  The only other surprise (because I was not at all surprised that Rush Limbaugh got a draft deferrment from Vietnam) was that Anderson Cooper spent a couple summers as an intern at the CIA.  Not military service, but did you know that Anderson Cooper worked for the intelligence community, even part-time?  Weird.

Senator McCain is correct that the talk shows are populated by people who have never served in the military.  But, they don’t make decisions about the military – Congress does.  I find it much more illustrative that 75% of the members of both houses are non-veterans.  Chickenhawks and bleeding hearts alike – odds are that they didn’t serve a day before spouting about what is best for the military.  As someone who generally finds the current GOP reprehensible, it annoys me further that only one of the freshman class of Democratic Senators is a vet, and none of the freshman Representatives.  Have liberal veterans simply given up on elected office?  One more data point added to my tally of “Reasons the Democratic Party is Spineless.”

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 20 Dec 2010 @ 08:49 PM

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 16 Dec 2010 @ 11:09 AM 

I understand the USAF’s web filters must be working overtime right now, as they attempt to keep the “disclosed but still classified” documents from Wikileaks away from anyone in the military, while they remain available to everyone else on the planet.  Just nod and smile.  What I find particularly amusing is that there seems to be one way to ensure any arbitrary URL is blocked: add the word “wikileaks” to the path. I open up a news site and some of the images are red Xs – they are all named some variant of xxahbr-wikileaks.jpg or something similar.  There are articles in mainstream websites which are not available, even though other articles on the same site are – the articles which are blocked all have “wikileaks” in the URL somewhere.  I can’t even get to the Wikipedia article about Wikileaks, while I can otherwise wander Wikipedia with impunity.  It’s bizarre, and entertaining, and yet… A Fox News article my boss emailed me the other day, pointing out the USAF blocking which the USAF has not seen fit to tell us about – that article I could access, even though it had the offending term in its URL.  I guess Fox News is on the USAF’s “always trust” list, while CBS isn’t.  Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 16 Dec 2010 @ 11:09 AM

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Taxes

 
 07 Dec 2010 @ 8:31 AM 

Repeat after me: “Taxes are lower than ever before in this generation. We are NOT being overtaxed.”

It’s interesting that we’re shifting the tax burden to employment taxes rather than income taxes, and we’ve completely gutted the wealth taxes. But, we must ensure that the uberwealthy get an extra 100,000 dollars in tax relief, rather than the mere $4000 they would have without this capitulation. Remember, even without an extension of the tax cuts for income above $250,000 – everyone was set to have lower income taxes than before the “temporary” cuts of 2002. Marginal tax rates are not effective tax rates. Oh, and when Eric Cantor says half of all small business owners would have faced higher taxes (and therefore fired people obviously), that’s just a lie. The average small businees income is $40,000/year. That’s far below $250,000 for those who are bad at math (GOP – I’m looking at you). Now, here’s where it gets fun. Only 2.5% of business owners would have faced higher taxes, but those businesses account for 44% of the business income. So, if you want to claim that half the income from businesses would be taxed higher, you’re not far off. But, to claim that half of all small businesses would have been hit – that’s just bull. Also, there’s no solid definition of “small business” so maybe Cantor is thinking that Walmart and Best Buy are small. After all, Eric Cantor’s wife makes millions per year – wonder where his loyalties lie.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 07 Dec 2010 @ 08:55 AM

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 07 Dec 2010 @ 7:43 AM 

Hey, look, the President compromised again.*

* – Where “compromise” is read to mean “capitulate” of course.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 07 Dec 2010 @ 07:43 AM

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 08 Nov 2010 @ 7:20 AM 

Dubya’s autobiography is out this week, so he’s finally come out of hiding to discuss his legacy. I thought that was something he was going to let historians do, but he just couldn’t wait or something.  You’ll never guess what he considers the worst moment of his presidency.  Maybe when the towers fell? Nope. How about when the banking industry just about ate the economy? Not that either. When the entire world found out that Rumsfeld has been supervising torture of random foreigners? Not even close. Oh, how about when one of the oldest cities in the country was erased by a flood which could have been prevented by decent maintenance and the people were forced to stay in the city at gunpoint while mercenaries roamed the streets looting people of their own firearms? Not that either.

Amazingly, George W. Bush believes the worst moment in a presidency filled with bad moments is when Kanye said he didn’t care about black people. He’s not tormented in his post-President retirement by the things he might have done differently or the thousands of people who died while he was in nominal charge, but by the fact that someone said something mean about him on television. WTF?

MATT LAUER: You say you told Laura at the time it was the worst moment of your Presidency?

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Yes. My record was strong I felt when it came to race relations and giving people a chance. And — it was a disgusting moment.

What an infantile and self-centered view of the most powerful office in the world.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 08 Nov 2010 @ 09:43 AM

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 03 Nov 2010 @ 9:58 AM 

Because we will now have two years of nothing getting accomplished in DC and both sides able to blame the other for being obstructionist, politics is going to be pretty much on reruns for a while.

Since we’ve spent so long now disagreeing with each other about seeming everything, here’s a story I think everyone can agree is a feel-good piece of news. An 18-month old girl in France was playing by a window six stories up. She fell out the window (this is not the feel good part yet, wait for it). Against all odds, she bounced off the awning of the cafe on the ground floor, which slowed her fall to non-fatal levels (still not the end). Against more odds, she landed in the arms of a passing stranger. The stranger happened to be a doctor.

Doesn’t that make you feel good about the world? You’re welcome.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 03 Nov 2010 @ 10:00 AM

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 29 Oct 2010 @ 1:35 PM 

Halloween is this weekend, and with it come all the various modern changes to the traditional Trick or Treat. We have “Trunk or Treat” where kids wander a parking lot. We have “Safe Trick or Treat” where kids make a lethargic loop of the mall, behind a veritable conga-line of hundreds of other children. We have a bunch of sanctioned, known-safe haunted houses. We don’t have the near-universal Trick-or-Treat participation that most of us adults remember from our own childhoods, though. Although to watch any evening news broadcast would lead you to believe we live in a ridiculously dangerous time, the opposite is really true.

The rate of violent crimes is the lowest it has been since 1973, the rate of property crimes the lowest since 1968. Children are almost never kidnapped by anyone, and when they are it’s almost always by a non-custodial parent (about evenly split between women and men). The only time a child has been poisoned by Halloween candy, it was his own father who gave it to him to collect the life insurance money (father of the year was executed in 1984).

If you’re avoiding taking your rugrats out to beg for candy because you think your neighbors are going to try to kill them, don’t worry.  Have fun, try not to eat so much sugar in one sitting, and have a great weekend!

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 29 Oct 2010 @ 01:35 PM

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 27 Oct 2010 @ 9:19 AM 

I’m sure that none of our elected representatives are unduly influenced by the truly stupendous amount of money lavished on them by corporate contributors.  But just in case you’re curious about where that money comes from, how about a cool interactive political whore influence tracker?

Interestingly, here in Texas, the two US Senators have vastly different records on this issue: John Cornyn has received nearly 3 million dollars, while Kay Bailey Hutchison has only raked in 15 thousand. I disagree with Senator Hutchison on many (most?) issues of substance, but she does appear to keep above the money-grubbing fray.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 27 Oct 2010 @ 09:20 AM

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 18 Oct 2010 @ 8:28 AM 

Another in the list of strange things from Alaskan politics – Joe Miller’s security guards think they can arrest people. At a public event in a public school, private security guards handcuffed and detained a journalist because he had the audacity to ask the candidate questions. The Anchorage police were called, and told the security detail to uncuff the journalist (and hopefully to stop thinking they were cops). The guards even threatened to arrest other journalists for trespassing.  At a public school. During a “town hall” meeting. Open to the public.  WTF?

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 18 Oct 2010 @ 08:28 AM

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 06 Oct 2010 @ 12:15 PM 

Faisal Shahzad has been sentenced to life in prison this week by a federal judge in the United States.  Shahzad, if you don’t recall, was the Times Square Bomber back in May of this year. Total time from event to sentence in federal court: 5 months.

Omar Khadr remains in Guantanamo Prison, where he’s been since throwing a grenade at a U.S. soldier in 2002 (Khadr was 15 at the time). His trial started in August but was put on hold due to an ill attorney.  He has spent 8 years in prison, tortured and abused and threatened with gang rape by an interrogator, all waiting for his military tribunal for charges which were only levied after some ex post facto legislation was written four years after his detention began.

Which of these systems provides swift and efficient justice again?

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 06 Oct 2010 @ 12:16 PM

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 14 Sep 2010 @ 7:16 AM 

I found it disturbing when people would defend some of our mistakes in Iraq by claiming we were better than Saddam, as if our goal was merely to be somewhat less evil than an authoritarian dictator who gassed his own people and ran rape rooms in his torture prison.  It appears the Democrats are using a similar strategy going into November: at least we’re not as bad as the GOP, right?

When DNC chair Tim Kaine was on the Daily Show a week or two back, Jon Stewart rightly lambasted him for the absurdity of their “Don’t give them the keys” approach.  Kaine had no real retort other than the tired statements of GOP perfidy.  Sure, the GOP did a lot of stupid venal petty shit during their years in power.  So, Dems, what are you doing different? They don’t seem to have a very compelling argument in their favor.

I could list all the ways in which I’m disappointed in the current administration and the Democrats in Congress, but Glenn Greenwald has a great piece today which has many nice links and great points to make.  Unlike some of his articles, this one is not biased against the GOP.  Greenwald is very clearly documenting the failures of the Democratic party, and even if you’re happy to see the Dems fail, it’s interesting to see in one place all the many ways in which they are using fearmongering and low expectations to try to hold onto power (power they haven’t really taken advantage of while they had it).

Change you can…definitely not see.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 06 Dec 2010 @ 12:25 PM

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 10 Sep 2010 @ 6:54 AM 

In case there’s any doubt that the terrorists have “won” the war for hearts and minds, here we have a bomb squad blowing up a “suspicious” $300 toy pony.

Yep, we’ve given up and are now paranoid police state wackjobs.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 10 Sep 2010 @ 06:54 AM

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 26 Aug 2010 @ 2:04 PM 

It turns out that the unenumerated rights that we have inherent to us as human beings don’t really exist.  If you don’t keep your car in a garage and you don’t live in a gated community, the Ninth Circuit has determined that you have no reasonable expectation that the police will stay off your property to put a covert GPS tracking device on your car.  Sure, it’s your driveway and they’re trespassing if they walk on it, but since the mailman walks on your driveway to deliver mail, it’s okay for the government to walk on your driveway to spy on your vehicular movements.

Amazingly, if you park in a garage or live behind a wall in a gated community, the court thinks you’ve still got some rights.  Is this going to be a selling point for new community developers?  “Live here, the Fourth Amendment still applies.”

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 26 Aug 2010 @ 02:07 PM

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 23 Aug 2010 @ 11:52 AM 

It’s a few weeks old, but I just noticed this story from the Associated Press (permalink via Wired), which sounds like something you’d have expected from the Bush administration:

Political Appointees Vetted FOIA Requests

Seriously, President Obama? This is what you consider change we can believe in? Yes we can?  We can filter FOIA requests through political advisers so they can keep track of the political party asking for the information? We can filter requests to keep track of whether the requester is a journalist?

When this president was just taking office, he said, “For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city.” He cited abuse of the Freedom of Information Act, in particular. And, to be fair, the administration has reduced the backlog of FOIA requests and there is no indication they’ve denied requests inappropriately. But, it’s actually rather obviously unethical to pass requests that are required to be handled expediently through a layer of bureaucracy which is unnecessary to the process.

Yay for Changeâ„¢.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 06 Dec 2010 @ 12:24 PM

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 30 Jul 2010 @ 3:42 PM 

I think what the Oregon Tea Party has learned is “don’t steal slogans from vindictive anonymous geeks” but I may be mistaken.  I’ve seen precious little evidence that most Tea Party folks are capable of learning.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 30 Jul 2010 @ 03:42 PM

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 14 Jun 2010 @ 9:45 AM 

This photo essay provides an interesting look into the country Afghanistan was starting to become before the Soviets started the seemingly never-ending wars that have plagued the nation for forty years. Textile plants and women college students and cabinet meetings where the members actually had higher educations…sad to contrast that with today.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 14 Jun 2010 @ 09:45 AM

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 22 May 2010 @ 2:26 PM 

Senator Barack Obama, 2006:

Most of us have been willing to make some sacrifices because we know that, in the end, it helps to make us safer.  But restricting somebody’s right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe.

Of course, as President in 2010, Obama has now won the right (based on a DC Circuit Court of Appeals) to do just that. His administration has decided that detaining arbitrary people at Guantanamo was beyond the pale and not to be perpetuated, but detaining arbitrary people at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan is perfectly reasonable. And, the Circuit Court has said that, unlike the decision in Boumediene v. Bush (2008), no habeas appeals are needed for detainees in what any administration defines as a war zone. This ignores that Congress is the only organization allowed to declare war and they haven’t done so since 1941. So, war zones are arbitrarily defined by the executive branch, and any prison or detention facility they put there is out of the reach of all US justice, including the incredibly simple right to just have the judicial branch confirm that the executive branch has indeed detained someone with reason rather than without reason.

Change you can believe in.

Posted By: Gary
Last Edit: 06 Dec 2010 @ 12:23 PM

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