August, 2011 archive

From the introduction:

With the economy flailing – there’s at least one industry – other than Wall Street and Big Oil – that’s booming! And that’s the business of locking up immigrants. Not because there’s more illegal immigration in America today – there’s actually less – but because private prison lobbyists – with the help of paid-off lawmakers who write strict immigration laws like Arizona’s SB1070 – are making sure more and more illegal – and sometimes legal – immigrants are rounded up and thrown in for-profit detention facilities . . . .

Shaun Mullen explains:

The last time a fringe group exerted substantial influence over a major political party was in 1972 when the anti-Vietnam War movement rallied beyond George McGovern over Hubert Humphrey, Henry M. Jackson and Edmund Muskie, all of whom could have beaten Richard Nixon.

I remember the 1972 campaign well and Election Night in particular. It was obvious early on that despite Nixon’s unpopularity — he had reneged on his promise to end the war and there were the first stirrings of the Watergate scandal that would abort his second term — that he would win in a landslide. I woke up the next morning and despite having a world-class hangover immediately understood why McGovern had been thrashed. Like the Tea Party, his supporters refused to dial back on their stridency and cool their rhetoric even if the face of probable defeat.

For you whippersnappers, here’s more about the SDS.

From a letter to the editor of the the Boston Globe.

Writing at Bloomberg, Nathan P. Myhrvold suggests that the wrong metaphors are often used to describe social dynamics. He argues this is why bad ideas don’t die and why persons hold on to falsities.

He argues that society is less like an organism (think Hobbes’s Leviathan) and more like a slime mold.

Granted, our species is very intelligent and has developed exquisite communication across the world and through the centuries. But while people are smart enough to anticipate problems, they are also smart enough to make counterarguments. Every good idea in history has had to fight against many bad ideas before winning broad acceptance.

Like the individual mold cells in a slime colony, most people mainly pursue their self-interest, influenced only partially by a concern for the common good. And our individual agendas often conflict. You can’t balance the federal budget, for example, without goring somebody’s ox. Do we raise taxes, cut spending, eliminate subsidies? Every option is resisted by some people.

What’s more, society as a whole isn’t rational. In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely.

Got a point. Worth a read.

You can’t make this stuff up.

In what appears to be an effort to avoid the free-for-all town halls that have plagued recent contentious congressional recesses, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other Republican members of Congress have chosen to charge admission to their home-district appearances.

At the Guardian, Hadley Freeman explores the confusing world of wingnut doublethink. A snippet:

Perhaps the most blatant use of doublethink was Mitt Romney’s self-serving claim last week that “corporations are people, my friend”, which managed to be both deeply Orwellian as well as sounding like an offcut from It’s a Wonderful Life. It doesn’t even require a tiptoe of imagination, let alone a leap, to envisage Lionel Barrymore as evil Mr Potter cackling to James Stewart as poor George Bailey: “Corporations are people, George!”

(Incidentally, a version of this self-entitled mentality was echoed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, the GOP mouthpiece, last week when she ferociously defended her right to maternity leave, despite having derided “entitled programmes” in the past. As Jon Stewart pointed out: “They’re really only entitlements when they’re something other people want. When it’s something you want, they’re a hallmark of a civilised society.”)

Jonathan Bernstein points out that a “traditional” Republican doesn’t have a chance as a Republican candidate. A snippet from the article:

The other thing I’d say to Republicans disappointed in the current choices (as Ross Douthat says he is today) is this: What you’re upset with isn’t the candidate — it’s the party.

Bernstein link via Balloon Juice.