To Boldly Go…

May 15th, 2013 by Tim 2 comments »

Star Trek Captains

Original Series (Shatner), Next Generation (Patrick Stewart), Deep Space Nine (Avery Brooks), Voyager (Kate Mulgrew), Enterprise (Scott Bakula), new movies (Chris Pine) From left to right, top to bottom: NBC/Paramount; Paramount; Paramount Television; Braga Productions/Paramount Network Television; Paramount Pictures/Skydance Productions

Matt Yglesias provides a delightful, yet long winded, romp through the history of the Star Trek franchise. It’s a must-read for any serious Trekkie. For the rest of you, suffice it to say that what made Star Trek great was its vision of a somewhat utopian future.

Trek envisioned a world not based on economics and acquisition of stuff, but a world where people were motivated by a desire to learn more, to better themselves. It was more about cooperation than competition.

This didn’t mean the Star Trek universe didn’t have its share of bad guys, but success was often about diplomacy and respect of alien culture. Blowing stuff up was a last resort.  Granted, it wasn’t an uncommon last resort, but it wasn’t the primary point of the show.

Yglesias also observes that the new rebooted movie franchise, while great fun, has sort of lost this vision. It’s become more a series of sci-fi adventure flicks than the morality tales that defined the 5 TV series.  It’s great popcorn entertainment, but it’s not really what Trek was all about. Yglesias blames this on the medium—that feature length films don’t lend themselves to the same type of storytelling as the small screen.  Maybe he’s right.

All this got me to thinking about why I’ve always preferred Star Trek to Star Wars. While I’ve enjoyed the Star Wars movies, they simply aren’t as personally compelling to me. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says for him it’s because Trek stays more true to science as we understand it. Phasers just seem hard to build, while light sabers seem to require different laws of physics. As a science geek myself, I like the bad science explanation, but I don’t think that’s it.

In the end it’s rather simple. The universe of Star Trek is a place I’d like to live.  Star Wars? …not so much.   And it’s not even that Star Wars is always centered on, well, wars… and frankly, war zones aren’t appealing places to live. But the overall culture is maybe too familiar.  In some ways it’s too similar to the world we live in. Governments are corrupt. Power struggles and armed conflict are rampant. Everyone is constantly angling for an advantage. Thanks, I can turn on CNN and see that.

Yet in the Trek world, I can explore, learn, grow, and I still occasionally get to blow something up. It may still have dangers, but it’s an inviting and appealing culture. It emphasizes the best in humanity while recognizing that the worst still lurks.

It’s not clear this difference is because Star Wars was spawned from feature films rather than television.  Each writer built their universe to suit their vision and the story they wanted to tell. Roddenberry was an optimist. He believed the best in people would always prevail and projected a future where it truly blossomed. Lucas was more of a realist. He reprojected the culture of man onto a different galaxy and gave them hyperdrives and blasters.

Bottom line: If the Enterprise (any of them, NX, NCC, A, B, C, D, E, or Q for that matter) drops into orbit and offers to take me on as a crewman, I’ll be texting Kim from space that I will be out of town for awhile. I will be boldly gone. Hell, I’ll even agree to wear a red shirt. But if the Millennium Falcon  drops by, I may well go for a joy ride, but I’ll be home for dinner.

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You Can’t Get There From Here

February 26th, 2013 by Tim 1 comment »

Tight BudgetKudos to David Brooks for writing a second column on the Sequester, and opening with a sincere apology for the first one. Brooks initially and erroneously claimed that Obama had no plan on the table to avoid the imminent Sequester, but then corrected himself to admit that, rather, he simply didn’t like the plan Obama had. That’s never an easy haul for anyone.

But then he goes on to lay out his 3-point plan that he would like to see Obama push to resolve the current impasse.

  1. Take entitlement spending that currently goes to the affluent elderly and redirect it to invest in the young and the struggling.
  2. Enact a value-added tax, use money from that tax to finance an income tax exemption.
  3. Talk obsessively about family structure and social repair to restitch the social fabric.

None of these are bad ideas, but none of them remotely address the current threat of Sequestration. Number 1 simply redirects funds, and so has a net neutral budget impact. Number 2 is not only budget-neutral, but requires a substantial retooling of the tax code. The details of this sort of reform take years to work out. There’s no way this would have any impact on the budget crisis du jour. And number 3 has no direct budget impact at all.

This also doesn’t address the unfortunate reality that the GOP base simply isn’t interested in solving this problem.  As Ezra Klien points out, the available deal is a far bigger gain for the Republican agenda than Sequestration. The White House is willing to cut the deficit, cut entitlements, protect defense spending, and eliminate tax loopholes as part of a settlement plan. While this does nothing to lower tax rates, it still rings the bell on 4 of the 5 major budget policy objectives on the right.

Doing nothing only cuts the deficit, and then by not as much as Obama’s current proposal. It does nothing about entitlements, tax loopholes, or tax rates. Not to mention, it significantly cuts defense. So what does the GOP win by standing firm on their plan to sit idly by?

Obviously they don’t win on achieving their stated policy agenda. They don’t win on popularity either. A plurality (49%) of Americans say the Sequester will be Republicans’ fault if it happens, while only 31% will blame Obama.

The only possible win here is personal and political. Each of the obstinate Congressmen and Senators will be able to return home and claim they denied Obama everything he ever wanted, and refused to budge even an inch in compromise. And while I’m forced to accept that there exist districts where this message plays well, I worry about the state of our society that it does.

Nonetheless, it further dooms Brooks’ plan. As a pundit on the right, he surely must realize that getting the GOP base to support something, and having the President advocate for something, are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Two things are clear. First, the Sequester is exactly what the GOP base wants to happen. Second, no deal Obama could put on the table would change that. Food for thought as you decide who gets the blame. Yet small comfort as you settle in for the Sequester induced economic recession.

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A Drone to a Kill

February 8th, 2013 by Tim 1 comment »

DroneStrikeThere’s been a lot of buzz lately about the Obama administration memo justifying the killing of pretty much anyone overseas who is plotting against us, including U.S. citizens.  And the new weapon of choice for carrying out such assassinations is the armed aerial drone.

This is creating conflicting feelings on the part of many. No one wants to let the bad guys carry out their nefarious plots, or put American lives at risk unnecessarily to keep them from doing so.  But it also conjures up images of a man in a darkened room adding names to his enemy kill list, and dispatching his robot minions to carryout his lethal whims.

I think it’s helpful to realize we are actually struggling with two different conundrums here. The ethics of covert government assassination, and the ethics of automated warfare. More importantly, neither of these are new. There’s lessons to be learned in the history, and maybe in that light, the seemingly intractable issues become a bit easier to chew.

Let’s start with automated warfare. Drones are not something new as much as they are the next step in a long line of military technical advances. When guns were first introduced, there was concern that you could now kill an enemy without looking him in the eye. Was their honor in that? Was it making it too easy to kill? The advent of tanks, artillery, aerial bombing runs, and missiles all heralded the same concerns about whether or not killing was becoming too easy and too impersonal. Drones are no different. The goal of warfare is simple. Inflict maximum damage on your enemy while incurring minimal damage to yourself. Weapons are developed with this in mind, and that trend is going to continue.

There’s really no point in worrying about drones per se, or even military applications of technology. As a society, we are not going to give up the benefits of technology, and as long as the need to wage war exists, technology will also be applied to that end. The key being the existence of the need to wage war.  But that issue is ageless, and the nature of man is such that it’s likely your great-grandchildren will still be struggling with it in the next century. There’s no reason it should be keeping you up tonight.

In a similar vein, covert assassinations have been going on since the dawn of governments. From the ancient halls of the Roman Senate to the castles of medieval royals, to the lairs of banana republic dictators, come shadowy tales of the handiwork of spies, assassins, and “special operations” units. Fictional tales of the exploits of Seal teams, Delta Force, MI6, the CIA, and other covert groups working for the good guys are wildly popular.  Think about it. Did your family ever follow-up a Saturday night viewing of Jim Phelps and his Impossible Missions team with a discussion of whether or not the mission was ethical?  Did the bad guy get due process?

All except the most ardent pacifist are pretty comfortable with the notion that the bad guys get what’s coming to them, and few lose any sleep over whether or not they were tried by a jury of their peers. Did you really have any angst that Osama bin Laden was shot rather than tried? The difference is that in bin Laden’s case, and in the case of most James Bond stories, you know to a certainty the bad guys had it coming.

In the real world, the lines are much greyer. When is a guy bad enough? When is a threat imminent enough?  And we are haunted by real world examples from the USSR, Cambodia, Germany, and other countries where state enemy lists were abused to as a way to control and oppress the populace.

The upshot on covert assassinations is that by and large we have no ethical issue with bad guys not getting due process. We have a trust issue with the people making decisions about who the bad guys are. And while there’s a new memo out indicating Obama’s lawyers may be doing some unprecedented legal butt covering, it’s naive to think Obama is the first President with the power to sanction a covert assassination. They all have had such power. Those self-destructing Mission Impossible tapes didn’t record themselves. So it all comes down to deciding if there’s something particularly untrustworthy about Obama or his administration that would make him more likely to abuse that power than his predecessors. That seems a more answerable question, or at least a less anxiety inducing one.

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Guns and Tyranny

January 10th, 2013 by Tim 8 comments »

Disarm the NationIt’s rather naive to think fear of an armed citizenry is all that’s standing between democracy and tyranny. That is simply not the world we live in anymore.

Yet wall posts, like the one at the right, from the ironically named Facebook page Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children, attempt to link gun control to the rise of a second Hitler. Never mind that the Europeans have had much stricter gun control laws during our lifetimes, and democracy hasn’t fallen there.

However, the gun control debate aside, the notion that in this modern world we live in, tyranny would come via militaristic control is a complete failure to understand our country, and moreover, the goals of those who would seek to control it.

Guns are messy solutions what with all the noise, and the bleeding, and the dying. Marketing is the key to power. You need to sell people on the idea they must give up their freedoms to ensure their safety, and even pay for the privilege. How much better is it when citizens willingly yield their power and their wealth as opposed to having to take it at gun point?

Consider that the people being whipped into a frenzy over the relationship between guns and tyranny are largely the same people who have been sold on the ideas:

  • There’s no reason to worry about the government monitoring you if you have nothing to hide.
  • Net Neutrality is anti-capitalist, and Internet censorship is essential to protect the children.
  • Torture is effective, and detainment without due process is warranted when our safety is at stake.
  • Additional funding for the largest military the world has ever known is essential.
  • Hobbling or dismantling social safety net and insurance programs is the key to prosperity.
  • Making the rich richer will ultimately benefit us all.
  • Government subsidies of exiting corporations like Hollywood, big oil, and pharmaceuticals is essential to the economy.
  • Government investment in new technology like green energy, genetic research, and other “disruptive” advancements is wasted money.
  • Government regulation should never impede profit.
  • Unionized workers are the reason manufacturing jobs went to China.

Desperate people are far more compliant and easy to control. If you are scared, broke, hungry, and/or sick, getting you to trade your long term interests for satisfaction of your short term needs becomes child’s play. Snake oil salesmen enrich themselves by playing on your fears, your needs, and your hopes. And you thank them for the privilege of buying into the illusion.

The snake oil salesman doesn’t care that you have a gun. In fact, he may be glad that you do. Because he knows he controls your mind. And won’t it be handy for him to have armed minions at his call when the rational people finally try to run him out of town?

 

 

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Mutual Assured Destruction

December 21st, 2012 by Tim No comments »

From the 1981 Sci-Fi Classic "Scanners"

From the 1981 Sci-Fi Classic “Scanners”

Humor me for a bit and engage in a little Sci-Fi thought experiment. Just suppose a technology was invented in the near future that allowed you to kill with your mind.

Let’s put some constraints on this. No exploding heads (ala “Scanners“), but maybe something subtle like stopping the heart. No mess, no fuss, they just drop over dead. Let’s further say that this cannot be by accident. It requires a brief but sustained and specific intent toward a specific individual, and this person must be within 25 yards.  Let’s also add in that during the attack, the attacker will have glowy eyes so that anyone around can see who is acting, and that the attack will leave an unmistakable fingerprint on the victim so that the attacker will be known. Only one person can be attacked at a time, but there is no “recharge” time so multiple people could be taken out serially. Also, any action is immediate and final.  No second thoughts, no “Do you really want to delete this life?” confirmation screens. Once started, the deed is done.

Now, let’s say this is all available via a $200 implant to anyone of age. The implants are injectable by any competent tattoo artist, and most shops carry them.  As a result, the vast majority of the adult population is armed within a year. Full accountability. No accidents. No one is out-gunned. Everyone is equally lethal.

The question is, in this world, do you feel safe?

Is quite likely that rampage killings like Sandy Hook, Columbine, or Ft. Hood would be almost non-existent. If someone walked into a school and started taking out children, one of the adults would likely respond quickly and the damage would be contained.  There might be one or two deaths, but not dozens.

But what of the rest of your life? How many coeds would be killed for sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend? How many bar fights would end in dead patrons? How many divorces would actually see both parties survive to sign the final papers?

Did we learn nothing from the Cold War? Yes, the MAD strategy (Mutual Assured Destruction) was effective at deterring violence, but worked only because both sides took extensive precautions to prevent lone rash actors from initiating an attack.  At the individual level, mutual assured destruction does not have the same deterrent effect.  Yes, MAD may stop someone acting willfully and who is concerned about their own life. But people are not rational 24×7, and the means to act lethally on impulse is simply a power greater than the average person is responsible enough to wield.

This is the essential fallacy behind the NRA’s woefully misguided announcement today that the only solution to tragedies like Newtown are to put more guns in schools. That it is the lack of ubiquitous arms that is causing violence. That the solution is MAD.

The NRA is also right that the problem isn’t guns per se. It’s people. But there’s no good fix for “people”. Human nature has an inherent volatility and impulsiveness to it that will not be readily contained.

So I ask again, would you feel safer knowing that every teenager and old lady you meet on the street has the means to end your life, but is deterred by MAD? Or is that madness?

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What if it were terrorists at the school?

December 17th, 2012 by Tim No comments »

Newtown's AngelsAs a nation, we mourn for the losses in the senseless Newtown, Connecticut school rampage last week. In the wake of that horrible tragedy we’ve seen many calls for action—calls for improved mental health services and screenings; calls for re-instituting the assault weapons ban; calls to change our culture of glorifying violence; and even calls like President Obama made last night to just do something to make this better.

On the flip side have been many voices shouting that this is not the time for discussion of solutions. They try to counsel that there is simply evil in the world and there’s nothing to be done about it beyond the coping, the grief, and the prayers that such things don’t happen again.

But I can’t escape the glaring hypocrisy of the position that now is not the time to act. Consider for a moment what those same voices would be saying if a Muslim terrorist cell had raided that school and killed those children instead of a local white man.

As a country we have been all too eager to spend money and lives as well as sacrifice all manner of personal freedoms in the interest of keeping our families safe from the statistically small threat of foreign terrorism. And we sacrifice these things in almost knee-jerk reaction to events or near-events—consider 9-11, the underwear bomber, etc. We’ll let the government screen our calls and read our emails. We’ll let them illegally and indefinitely detain suspects, and perform so-called “renditions”. We’ll let them use torture as an interrogation technique. We’ll let them grope our wives and daughters prior to boarding a plane.  But hey, better safe than sorry, right?

But should the government want to provide medical services or restrict the ability for your neighbor to grocery shop while packing a semi-automatic pistol with a high capacity clip? Well, let’s not get crazy here. After all, this was just a troubled kid who went off the deep end. Shit happens.

But if that troubled kid looked Pakistani instead of like the guy next door? Well, shit would happen then too, but it would be different shit. And we wouldn’t be arguing about whether or not to act. This is America dammit. And overreaction to a threat is what we do best.

 

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Firefox v17 Upgrade Causes Desktop Icon Problems in Win XP

December 12th, 2012 by Tim No comments »

FixFFiconThis is one of those annoying but minor problems that can spoil an otherwise good day. It seems that the most recent Firefox release (v17) added some support for using a website’s favicons when creating desktop shortcuts.

This supports the new Windows 8 live tiles, and also means that when Windows 7 and Vista users drag a URL from the top bar in Firefox to their desktop, they’ll get a shortcut that uses the tiny little favicon supplied by the website, rather than the traditional default Firefox file icon.

However, for anyone still running Windows XP, your desktop shortcut is assigned to an incompatible image file and hence you get the very ugly default Windows icon instead.  The shortcut will look like it’s not assigned to an application, but it still works and will open in Firefox just fine. But it’s butt ugly and not how it’s supposed to work.

There’s a current thread on the Mozilla forum on this problem and there are a couple of workarounds offered up. Ultimately, the hope is that Mozilla will fix this and not just abandon the 40% of users still on XP. But in the meantime, I developed my own workaround, which I like better.

Using my method, you’ll just need to right-click the “broken” icon on your desktop and select the new Send To destination. It will repair the icon so the behavior of Firefox is the same as on Vista/Win7.

  • Simply download the FixFFicon.zip file from here.
  • Inside is a single FixFFicon.exe file. Move it to your Firefox profile\shortcutCache folder.
  • Next, right-click the FixFFicon.exe file and “Create Shortcut”
  • Then find your Windows “SendTo” folder (Help available here ) and add the new shortcut you just created to it.

Now, when you drag and drop a URL from Firefox and get the ugly default Windows icon, just right-click the icon and select FixFFicon from the Send To menu. Then, presto-chango, the icons look the same as they do in Win7. Which, IMHO, is still ugly, but it’s better than default Windows icons.

Note: on 1st execution this will extract 2 additional files to the shortcutCache folder (an image file and the image conversion utility). No other files are installed, no registry changes, or changes made to any other folder. The utility will perform image conversions on the Firefox favicons in the shortcutCache folder. No other files anywhere are modified. To remove, delete the 2 FixFFicon files and the nconvert.exe file from the shortcutCache folder, and delete the Send To shortcut from the SendTo folder. No other traces will be present.

If you have a problem with this, just post in the comments and I’ll try to help. Remember, we’re all in this together.

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Why Blubberella, Why?

November 25th, 2012 by Tim 2 comments »

Blubberella_CoverThe movie trailer sounded so promising. “A plus-sized superhero takes on Hitler’s Nazis.” “She’s half vampire and two and a half women.”  “She will kick ass with her big ass.”  This sounded like B-movie cinematic gold.I mean look at that movie poster!

It was Saturday evening. The fire was crackling, and the 6 months of free Showtime service we’d just received beckoned from the flatscreen. My baby, who usually is only willing to share watching such drivel with me if she’s asleep, actually suggested we watch together. She knows I’ve always had a fondness for so-bad-they’re-good movies—something she’s never shared, but she was up for a taste.

You see, this genre of flicks come in two flavors. The classics are the films that tried real hard to be serious movies. “Glen or Glenda” or pretty much anything by Ed Wood falls in this category, as do most of the vintage sci-fi creature features like “The Creeping Terror“. But there’s also a world of campy comfort to be found in films that never intended to take themselves too seriously. “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” or even the more recent “Mars Attacks!” are in this vein.  All are worthy of a couple hours on the couch calling out one-line quips at the TV in the finest tradition of “MST3K“.

Blubberella tries to be in the second category, but it doesn’t try real hard. And now, this is the point in the article where I should recap the plot for you… ummm… fat girl… Nazis… cotton candy… dead Nazis… fat joke… blood… hero sandwich… evil doctor… gay joke… look, I have a sword!… Jewish joke… hey, remember I’m a vampire, okay?… Holocaust joke…  It’s entirely possible there was some narrative thread that held these elements together, but that will have to be someone’s Film Appreciation class thesis to discern. I am not watching it again to try and figure it out. Although, in fairness, I didn’t watch it all the way through the first time. A half-hour in I voted to go back and watch Homeland on the On Demand channel instead.

I wonder if director Uwe Boll truly appreciates how monumentally bad a movie needs to be to get me to turn it off?  After all, I’ve watched “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” to the end, and I even enjoyed “Battlefield Earth“.  I can’t help but wonder what Ron Howard thought of his baby brother Clint’s featured role in the film. Did he call him afterward and remind him that he should never be too proud to call and ask for rent money? Or at least take him out on a Tranya-fueled weekend bender to forget the horror of the 36-hours it took to produce this mind-numbing waste of photons?

Worst of all, does Boll realize this has forever tainted my lady’s view of the genre? She may never again suggest we watch such a thing. And when I wish to, she will roll her eyes so far up she’ll actually be able to see how dumb she thinks the idea is.

It’s all ruined. Why Blubberella, why?

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Data Over Dogma

November 24th, 2012 by Tim 9 comments »

dataThis can’t be stated often or emphatically enough. If you are willing to dismiss, suppress, or reject evidence because it conflicts with what you want to (or have been told you should) believe, then you are acting irrationally—by definition. And your judgement should be discounted accordingly.

While this situation usually comes up with regard to a specific topic, it reflects a larger problem with mindset. Sen. Marco Rubio demonstrated this most recently when, in an interview with GQ magazine, he was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” Rubio danced with all his might, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.” (No Marco, it’s really not.) Rubio is previously on record as stating the “crux” of the disagreement is “whether what a parent teaches their children at home should be mocked and derided and undone at the public school level.”

It’s easy to dismiss this as being isolated to the topic of geology or evolution, something that doesn’t impact the lives of the vast majority of citizens.  Rubio asserts as much when defending his GQ statement.  He said this didn’t matter, pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States.”

Yet, as I’ve argued in this space before, and as Paul Krugman points out in his recent column, it matters greatly. It matters because we are hindering a crop of potential petrogeologists who are limited to guessing where God hid the oil.  But moreover, it matters because we are teaching kids that evidence can be ignored if it’s uncomfortable. And it is this mindset which is particularly damaging, and not just to the field of science, and as Rubio has demonstrated, not just to kids.

We have adults rejecting global warming and progressive tax codes, not because of evidence, but because of ideology.  We saw dismissal and rejection of pre-election poll data, not because it was inaccurate, but because it supported the wrong conclusion.

We live in an increasingly technological world with a complex multinational economy. Our success as a society, a country, and a culture depends on our ability to carefully and rationally understand and control that abstruse system.  Reliance on irrational explanations and positions in the face of evidence backed models of the world is simply dangerous.

That is not to say that faith and ideology have no place in society. They add value to the lives of many. All the world is not explainable using logic and reason.  Faith and ideology help most fill the gaps. But where data and dogma collide… bet on data every time. All our futures depend on it.

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The Perils of Misremembering History

October 14th, 2012 by Tim 1 comment »

Kennedy-Khrushchev

Khrushchev and Kennedy go head-to-head over Soviet missiles in Cuba

On its 50th anniversary, the Cuban Missile Crisis lives large in the American psyche as a time of pride. President Kennedy stared down the great Russian bear, who went quivering back into his cave. For 13 days the nation waited, poised on the brink of nuclear war, for Khrushchev to blink. It was an unmitigated vindication of military might and brinksmanship.

Or was it?

In light of recently unsealed records, historians now say the resolution of the standoff was really a triumph of backdoor diplomacy. The real story of what happened five decades ago was a bit more nuanced, and involved much less bravado and intimidation.

Attorney General Robert Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador Oct. 27 and conveyed an olive branch from his brother: Washington would publicly reject any invasion of Cuba, and Khrushchev would withdraw the missiles from the island. The real sweetener was that Kennedy would withdraw Jupiter nuclear missiles from U.S. installations in Turkey, near the Soviet border. It was a secret pledge known only to a handful of advisers.

The reality vs. the mythology is important in light of the political hay currently being made over Obama’s alleged “weakness” in the Middle East. The meme from the far-right says that attacks on our ambassador in Benghazi and Iran’s nuclear ambitions will only be curtailed by a Cuban Missile Crisis like standoff—that the U.S.A. needs to draw lines and dare our opponents to cross.  Only then will America get the respect it deserves, and force our enemies to slink back to their caves.

The foreign policy being advocated from conservatives is similar to their approach to domestic policy. There will be no compromise as it shows weakness. There will be no apologies and no negotiations.

In 1962, Kennedy had the luxury of getting it both ways. He got to maintain the appearance of unyielding strength and intimidation at home, while granting concessions to the Soviets in an effort to avoid a devastating war nether side wanted. It’s not remotely clear Obama (or any modern President) could maintain that level of covert deal-making in the age of the Internet and 24-hour cable news.  If a President tried and was discovered, he would be accused of conspiracy and cover-ups.

If the Cuban Missile Crisis happened today and played out exactly as it did 50 years ago, the President would be eviscerated by conservatives for negotiating with the enemy, compromising U.S. security in Europe, and positioning America as weak and unwilling to fight.

The right-wing pundits are correct that the Kennedy/Khrushchev showdown has lessons for modern foreign policy. But the lessons are in the reality of what occurred, not the mythology.

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Obama’s Alleged Snub of Israel

September 18th, 2012 by Tim 1 comment »

Israel SnubThe photo message to the left has been making the rounds on Facebook and other sources. As of this writing, it had over 20k shares and over 130k likes.

It’s the latest right-wing outrage over a seemingly small Obama maneuver. According to Reuters:

(Reuters) – The White House has rejected a request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet President Barack Obama in the United States this month, an Israeli official said on Tuesday, after a row erupted between the allies over Iran’s nuclear programme.

An Israeli official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that Netanyahu’s aides had asked for a meeting when he visits the United Nations this month, and “the White House has got back to us and said it appears a meeting is not possible. It said that the president’s schedule will not permit that”.

Netanyahu has met with Obama on all the Israeli leader’s U.S. trips since 2009.

The White House has not confirmed the snub. But even assuming it’s an accurate recounting, I fail to see the rationale for reactions best summed up by the comment appearing on my Facebook news feed saying, “I think it is totally disgraceful!”

Granted, a meeting commits us to nothing, but neither does a refusal to meet mean a complete breakdown of a relationship. This is a standard negotiating tactic. By refusing the meet, the US is asserting its position of power and control in the situation. Basically indicating that Netanyahu needs to soften his stance and take a more conciliatory posture. That hardly seems an untenable position for the US political right-wing who are typically more than a little hawkish in their foreign policy, and often tout that America should assert its position as the global superpower.

The problem here is that Netanyahu clearly wants the US to draw “red lines” with the intent of forcing the US into military action with Iran. He’s been quite open about that, and about his ire that Obama won’t commit to irrevocable terms under which he will bomb Iran. He has also openly taken sides in our election, becoming almost the Israeli wing of the Republican party. This is something our allies rarely do, partly out of respect, but also out of the recognition that they ultimately have to deal with the next President, regardless of how the election comes out. If he wants the respectful attention of our President, and ultimately wants us to do him a significant favor, he’s got a funny way of going about it.

Forgetting this involves Obama for a minute, what is the right advocating for here? That the President is obliged to accept a visit from any foreign head of state on demand? I would think not. The President should meet when there is value to the US in doing so. In this case, Netanyahu wants something the US isn’t prepared to give (commitment to military action in Iran), nor is it clear the Israeli people are prepared for that. Their own defense minister cautions against Netanyahu’s plan. Further, Netanyahu’s reputation with pretty much every world leader is that of a petulant child, prone to tantrums when he doesn’t get his way. Moreover, his historical record is that he leaks details of confidential meetings where he doesn’t get his way to the press, spun to his own advantage. Where is the potential upside for the President, or for the country in taking this meeting? Presumably, you want a President who’s tough, and sometimes that means saying no. That clearly doesn’t mean the President is saying they will never meet. They’ve had numerous meetings in the past, and spoke on the phone just last week. We are the most powerful nation on the planet. You earn a meeting, you don’t demand one.

I also wonder if we would even be having this discussion if the Prime Minister of Spain was demanding to be seen? It seems to me that Israel gets treated differently than any other foreign nation. Are they in a precarious geographic situation? Sure. so is South Korea. But in the end, Israel is still a foreign country and how we treat them should be based on what’s in our national interest. We are not obligated to treat them like a teenage child who has moved out of the house, but still needs Daddy to protect them.

And yes, I do recognize Israel’s exulted position among the religious right as the Holy Land and the location of many of the End Times prophecies.  But that is not a basis for making national policy. If their church’s would like to form their own militias and deploy them to the West Bank that’s fine by me. But the US federal government should not be making foreign policy decisions based on bible stories.

In another vein, during the ’08 election, many of the same folks who are apoplectic over snubbing Netanyahu now, were abhorred that Obama said that under the right conditions he’d meet with Iran or other hostile governments. The claim was that even meeting with Ahmadinejad showed weakness and meant we’d give in to them. Why are the rules different now? Why would this meeting not show weakness and a willingness to concede?

And as long as I’m on a roll here, let’s talk about Obama’s “terrible” support for Israel. So far he has provided full financing and technical assistance for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range anti-rocket defense system. In July, he provided an additional $70 million to extend the Iron Dome system across southern Israel. That’s in addition to the $3 billion in annual military assistance to Israel that the president requests and that Congress routinely approves. He has increased aid to Israel and given it access to the most advanced military equipment, including the latest fighter aircraft. Obama has given close coordination by intelligence agencies — including the deployment of cyberweapons — to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, said last year, “I can hardly remember a better period of American support and backing, and Israeli cooperation and similar strategic understanding of events around us than what we have right now.”

Obama persuaded Russia and China to support harsh sanctions on Iran, including an arms embargo and the cancellation of a Russian sale of advanced antiaircraft missiles that would have severely complicated any military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Obama secured European support for what even Ahmadinejad, called “the most severe and strictest sanctions ever imposed on a country.”

Obama has been steadfast against efforts to delegitimize Israel in international forums. He has blocked Palestinian attempts to bypass negotiations and achieve United Nations recognition as a member state, a move that would have opened the way to efforts by Israel’s foes to sanction and criminalize its policies. As a sign of its support, the Obama administration even vetoed a Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements.

In light of all this, it may be fair to say that Obama has an issue with Netanyahu, as does almost anyone who’s ever met him. But it’s pretty hard to claim he doesn’t care about or support Israel.

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Conservative: You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

September 15th, 2012 by Tim 6 comments »

Inigo-Montoya-SwordWhen it comes to civil liberties and personal freedoms, I’m a self-avowed flaming liberal. Marry whom you love, worship whom you will, or don’t. Smoke dope. Paint your house neon green. Dance naked in the street. As long as your actions don’t directly infringe someone else’s freedom, have at it.

But in the realm of economics, foreign policy, commercial regulation, etc. I consider myself fairly conservative.  That’s “conservative” with a lower case “c”. It’s “conservative” in the sense of the dictionary definition. Someone who favors existing proven pragmatic methods. Someone who likes to preserve. Someone not prone to extravagant new experimental ventures. Someone who is cautiously moderate, and fiscally responsible.

This is far away from what “Conservative” with a capital “C” has come to mean in America. When you capitalize the “C”, suddenly you become someone who advocates for hawkish foreign policy, unabashed capitalism, and socially Darwinian domestic policy. Someone who favors dogmatic inflexible situationally independent rules.

The bizarre reality of being a Conservative in America is that you aren’t really very conservative at all. On the other hand, being conservative now makes you politically Liberal (with a capital “L”). It’s all so confusing. Perhaps a couple of examples would help.

Let’s take healthcare. On a per capita basis, American healthcare costs double what is spent for care in every other industrialized western country. And no, the quality of care is not better here. Health care costs are a drain on businesses and wages because providing employee healthcare is so expensive and continues to grow at multiples of the inflation rate.

The Conservative answer is basically to stay the course. There is a conservative angle here in that conservatives are resistant to change. But this is being ignorant of the larger picture. Sure, you can be resistant to policy change, but that doesn’t stop the change in healthcare costs that is eating up the economy. This is like sitting on your roof, refusing to be evacuated while the flood waters rise around you. The myopic conservative position may be to stay the course, but the safe, pragmatic, less risky position is to get in the next boat that comes by.

Looking around the world, some form of government run universal healthcare is the norm. There are any number of varieties including true socialized healthcare ala Great Britain, Medicare for all ala Canada, or even regulated and compulsory private insurance ala Switzerland.  All deliver roughly equivalent results at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. system. Further, there are so many variations of this system all succeeding, it can’t be that tricky to implement. Given, the clear choice for true conservatives should always be to solve a problem using a cost effective, proven, and time tested technique, the answer to healthcare should be clear.

In a somewhat related vein, there is a vested conservative interest in having a healthy and well-educated citizenry, who are living in a country with a solid modern infrastructure. All of these are foundational elements to the capitalistic industrial success that ultimately drives the economic prowess that makes this country great. Collapsed bridges, flooded cities, unreliable communications or power networks, or unemployable and non-productive citizens are all largely preventable problems if the society as a whole is making persistent and solid investments in its long term future. A liberal might advocate for something similar because it was the humane thing to do or because everyone deserves a chance. But a conservative should advocate for these things because they are solid practical ways to enable a productive society and minimize the collective expense.

Think of it this way. A conservative would clearly buy insurance on his home and make every effort to keep it well maintained. In this way, it’s a safe reliable shelter that should meet the needs of his family for decades to come. What could be a more conservative position than that?

When it comes to the environment, how can you be conservative and yet oppose environmental conservatism? No, I don’t think preserving every last species of minnow or song bird is vital. Species have been going extinct since the dawn of time. That’s the circle of life. But preserving and protecting the larger ecosystem we live in and depend on is about as conservative an idea as I can imagine. From deep sea oil drilling and fracking to carbon emissions, acid rain, and nuclear waste, the capital “C” Conservative position is diametrically opposed to the lower cased conservative one. I don’t get it.

On foreign policy, I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s conservative about the kick ass and take names approach to the world. There are absolutely national interests that lie outside our borders, but diplomacy and economic power are far more cost effective, with less risk to domestic lives and treasure, than military action. It’s important to carry a big stick, but that doesn’t mean you never bother to speak softly.

On economics, Conservatives have the equation completely backwards. A conservative approach would be to take on some debt when times were bad and investment was needed. But then to be responsible and pay that debt off when things were going well.  Instead, we see Conservatives opt for austerity in bad times, in essence compounding the downturn, and then claiming deficits don’t matter during prosperous times, thereby compounding the recovery. A conservative should favor a nice even economy, not one that slingshots about like a roller-coaster.

In a very real way, the current capital “C” Conservative movement has become radical. Meanwhile the Liberal movement has morphed into something downright lower case conservative. Minimally, this means that hanging your identity on a label rather than a solid ideology may lead you to a point where you are unintentionally advocating for outcomes you would very much oppose. Modern marketing means you have to be a very intelligent consumer; and not just when you are shopping for margarine, but when you are shopping for politicians.

My ideology makes me politically conservative. But the current state of politics means I align most closely with the Liberals. Clearly, in today’s world, words don’t mean what you think they mean. Vote wisely.

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Smile! You’re Not On Candid Camera

September 13th, 2012 by Tim 9 comments »

old-coupleI’ve spent two long weeks taking my Dad to the doctor’s every day for radiation treatments. Today was the last day, and following the treatment we celebrated by going to see his cardiologist. This man knows how to party.

We had a rather long wait in the waiting room, and while we sat patiently, a made-for-TV scene unfolded around us. An older Italian couple sitting to our right were clearly the actors on the Candid Camera payroll, but Allen Funt never made an appearance.

He was clearly hard of hearing, and she was clearly used to compensating by speaking at a volume I’m pretty sure OSHA should have required ear protection for.  As they were recounting their respective ailments and medications in preparation for their appointment, a rather large African-American woman came in the room and sat across from them.  Her smile lit up the room, and probably a few of the adjacent offices. She was followed shortly by a woman pushing her 90+ year old somewhat frail looking mother in her customized rad-looking plaid wheelchair.  They set up camp across from us.

Following standard waiting room protocol, three of the four groups promptly buried their noses in magazines or cell phones.  Even Plaid-Grandma was intently studying an old issue of Family Circle.  The remaining room occupants did not get the memo.

I quickly learned that the loud couple’s granddaughter had a new boyfriend. There was a certain oddness to the description of him though.  They seemed to be making a big deal about the kid being a perfect gentleman, holding down a job, and being good in school. At that point I was assuming that maybe their granddaughter had a history of dating deadbeats and miscreants… but no.  He was… wait for it… “so nice for a black boy.”

Facepalm.

But it didn’t stop there. They went on to self-justify their open-mindedness by recounting other black people they had known throughout their lives who had apparently made extraordinary impressions on them by being perfectly normal and acceptable human beings. I smiled weakly toward the lady on my left. Her beam was unabated as she shook her head so slightly. It seemed like I was more offended than she was.

Gratefully, they finally ran out of black people they knew. Unfortunately, this didn’t exhaust their will to speak. The woman looked over toward Plaid Grandma’s daughter and asked how old the woman was. “96″, the daughter replied politely as she went back to her magazine.

“She looks like she was quite a pip back in her day. I’ll just bet she was,” came the unnecessarily loud response from the woman who apparently assumed everyone was deaf. The daughter feigned a polite smile in response, as Plaid Grandma looked toward her child. Her expression clearly asking, “Why the hell are they talking about me like I’m already dead?”

Loud and Louder returned their attention to each other, and the conversation switched to airplanes. The whole room seemed to relax a bit. What could possibly go wrong with that topic?  Which is just about when Hubby launched into a rant about how fat people should have to buy two tickets. He didn’t get far before his wife, now using her indoor voice which was still clearly audible in the next room, hushed him saying this was not the right place for a topic like that.

He was undeterred. This was a man on a mission to reform the airline industry, one seat belt extender at a time. And his wife had no choice but to talk over him. She explained to him in no uncertain terms that there was a large woman sitting across from them, and that it was not appropriate for him to talk about this now.  She then pointed across the room to make her case clear.

The flagrant finger hung in the air while the now bickering couple inadvertently made their case for why they should be sacrificed in the spirit of social Darwinism. On the other side of the room (and the finger) the smiling woman was now shaking her head in disbelief… but still smiling. It was a genuine, pleasant, happy-to-be-alive and nobody’s-gonna-ruin-my-day smile.

This woman has mastered a level of serenity I find hard to glimpse, much less to hold.  She taught me that people may suck, but they don’t have to suck the life out of you… But let’s be clear. They still suck.

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Aborted Reasoning

August 29th, 2012 by Tim 4 comments »

God_is_pro-LifeYesterday, I had the questionable pleasure of driving by a small abortion protest in front of a local medical building. Two men and a woman were each holding signs while one of the men used a bull horn to shout something from the sidewalk. One of the signs in particular, caught my attention.  It read, “God Chose That Baby“.

In the wake of the recent Todd Akin debacle, I’ve heard a number of so-called Pro-Life advocates claim that abortion is always wrong. This troubles me. I agree that life is precious, but the mother has a life too. And life is much more than being physically not dead. I would never advocate for abortion as a casual form of birth control, but drawing hard lines around exactly when pregnancy is too much for the mother to bear is beyond my pay grade.  Choose life? Sure. But whose? And at what quality of life? I’m not qualified to make that decision, and frankly neither are you… or the government.

But the sign started the wheels turning in my mind. A Pro-Life friend recently explained that when God conceives a baby, He has a plan. If the mother dies, or is physically or mentally traumatized or disabled in the process, that’s tragic. But it’s still part of the plan. If God means for the mother to survive, she will. It is not for us to intervene. Hmmm… And then, the apparent worldview of these folks clicked into place for me… and then quickly went all askew.

While I don’t agree with the position, I can at least respect a position that says God plays an active role in our everyday lives. He chooses the key events of our lives, and we are not to meddle in His affairs.  He has a plan.  It’s not possible to know what it is, but He has one. At least I can respect the position if the person actually lives their life by that philosophy.  But I can’t see how that’s so.

According to this philosophy, there’s no reason to seek medical intervention on anything, not just pregnancy. If you have a heart attack, God meant that for you. If you were meant to survive it, you will. To expect that God’s plan included a paramedic with a defibrillator makes no sense. It would then be equally reasonable to assume God’s plan included a pharmacist with a morning-after pill.

If, in fact, God did choose that baby, who among us can say what for? God sent his own son to die for us—to teach us something. Is it so farfetched that he might send an embryo to die for a person or a family to teach them something?  There are several references in the bible to men being called to a destiny from the womb. Who is to say fulfilling that destiny requires reaching adulthood? The simple reality is, you can’t say there is a plan; no one knows what it is; but that thing there is definitely not part of it.

The only rational counter argument is that there is something special and sacred about the life of a child. That the value of a child’s life is always above and beyond the value of anyone else’s life. But (since we can’t know the plan) this valuation would have to be supported by the bible, and that’s not at all clear.  Jesus may have loved the little children, but Abraham was told to kill his own son, and Deuteronomy instructs fathers to have their non-virginal daughters stoned to death. Further, the bible says nothing about abortions. The closest it comes is in Exodus when it is stated that if you strike a pregnant woman and cause a miscarriage, you must pay a fine to the woman’s husband.  God’s plan for the life of children is a bit cloudy at best. Clearly, “Thou shalt not kill,” is not quite the black and white rule you might assume.

Perhaps you believe that God chose that baby. But it seems that unless you’re purporting to know God’s unknowable plan for it, you’re a hypocrite.

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One of these things is not like the other

August 8th, 2012 by Tim 3 comments »

GOPvsDemThis week has provided for an interesting micro-study on a key difference between our two political parties.

Harry Reid proclaimed that Mitt Romney did not pay any taxes for years. Meanwhile, Romney released a new ad asserting that Obama was gutting welfare reform. These were not tit-for-tat events. They are relatively unrelated. But the parties’ and pundits respective reactions to each are instructive.

First, a recap of the facts: Reid’s claim is a baseless accusation. The public has no knowledge of whether or not it’s actually true, and little reason to believe Reid actually knows. It’s a distasteful attempt to put a political opponent on the defensive. To make him guilty until he proves himself innocent.  Romney’s claim is different. While it is also intended to put his opponent on the defensive, it is flat-out, demonstrably, unquestionably, factually false.

How were these two events reported? The New York Times is generally considered a left-leaning news source. You might presume they’d defend Reid while hanging Romney out to dry. You’d be wrong.

Compare the opening of a story on Reid:

Senator Harry Reid’s decision this week to hurl a taunting, unsubstantiated accusation at Mitt Romney is hardly out of character for the cantankerous Democratic leader of the Senate, who revels in provocative comments and once called Mr. Romney “kind of a joke.”

To the opening of a story on Romney:

Seven years ago, Mitt Romney joined other governors to urge the federal government to grant “increased waiver authority” to states to experiment with implementation of the federal welfare-to-work program.

But as he runs for president, Mr. Romney and his Republican allies are now accusing President Obama of “gutting” the welfare program by saying it will consider waivers to states.

These are not cherry picked stories, nor is the NYT unique in this regard. The major media outlets and pundits are pulling no punches in calling Reid out on his baseless accusation.  Meanwhile, Romney’s lie is treated as a topic of reasonable debate.

My initial reaction to this was that the “mainstream media” was now so in fear of being labeled as having a liberal bias, they had become afraid to expose even outright falsehoods on the conservative side. And I do think this is at least part of it.  The right’s efforts to play up their victimization by a lefty lamestream media have assuredly had an effect on the way news gets reported.

Yet I think that’s not the whole story. I think a part of the media reaction also relates to how far the parties get from their behavioral norms. The GOP has key figures claiming Obama’s birth certificate was faked, and that there is a Muslim conspiracy brewing in the State department. In the greater scheme of outrageous claims, “Obama guts welfare reform” barely nudges the needle. On the Democratic side, unsubstantiated claims of filing perfectly legal tax returns that play the IRS for every penny are treated as scandalous.

There’s a lesson here. Both sides may “play the game”, but not to the same degree. It’s kind of like claiming the USA and Tunisia were both playing Olympic basketball the other night. While technically true, they weren’t playing in the same league.

Still, I know many of you out there are completely frustrated with the whole thing. You claim to hate what both sides do, and that’s more than fair. There are no angels in politics.Some of you are determined to check out of the political process by not voting, or you intend to make a statement by voting for a 3rd party candidate.

But the simple reality is this. Come 2013, one of these two parties will take the White House. And one of these two parties will control each of the houses of Congress. With four short months to go until the election, no other party has a remote chance in hell of altering that reality.

One of these things is not like the other. As the Templar Knight told Indiana Jones, “Choose wisely.” And as the band Rush reminds us in their song Freewill, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

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