US politics

Osama Bin Laden is killed: nothing changes

US politics, War on Afghanistan, War on Terror
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President Obama has announced that US forces have killed Osama Bin Laden:

“Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan,” Obama said. “A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”

If this is true –and it’s hard to imagine Obama announcing this without being absolutely sure about it — it will change little. Osama never was some sort of Blofeld and Al-Quida never was SPECTRE, useless without its leader. At Most Osama was an example, an inspiration for those who shared his ideology and with every nutter with a boxcutter able to call themselves Al-Quida, his death won’t be the end of it. That much is obvious.

So it’s good to see America celebrating this news with its usual good manners — groups of people inf ront of the White House with American flags chanting USA! USA! — because the war on Afghanistanwon’t end because of this. That long ago ceased to be about Al-Quida or Osama.

Meanwhile the most interesting thing about the news is that the American forces killed, rather than arrested Bin Laden. The president said this happened after a firefight, not during it, so it looks more like a gangland execution than a death in battle. Was this planned? It would’ve been interesting to see Osama Bin Laden in court but probably not very convenient for the US government…

Why do people keep paying attention to Andrew Breitbart?

US politics, Wingnuts
Published on 2 Comments on Why do people keep paying attention to Andrew Breitbart?

Andrew Breitbart is an internet asshole specialising in lying about political opponents and groups in an attempt to get people fired or the funding taken away from them, using video taken without their consent or knowledge and edited to make the victims look as bad as possible. Previous victims include Shirley Sherrod, where Breitbart took comments of her out of context to make her sound racist, which led to her sacking from her job at the United States Department of Agriculture, though afterwards the unedited video showed the truth. This is Breitbart whole stick, ginning up controversy to get easily panicked organisations to sack innocent people and frightened politicians to cut funding for organisations he dislikes. Time and again he has been shown to lie about his victims, time and again the truth has revealed them to be innocent of the charges he brings to them, yet people still keep falling for his tricks.

Case in point: The University of Missouri asking a self-styled communist adjunct faculty member to resign after Breitbart released a video supposedly showing him inciting violence:

After Mr. Breitbart’s Web site posted the videos on Monday, the university system initially responded with a statement distancing itself from the comments that the lecturers are depicted making. “Obviously, the comments on the video do not reflect the position of the University of Missouri,” said the statement from Jennifer Hollingshead, a system spokeswoman. Officials at the St. Louis and Kansas City campuses, where the lectures were delivered, “are looking into the situation,” her statement said.

On Thursday, however, Gail Hackett, provost of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, issued a statement denouncing how the videos are presented on Mr. Breitbart’s Web site, based on the campus’s continuing review of the raw classroom footage used to make them.

“From the review completed to date,” her statement said, “it is clear that edited videos posted on the Internet depict statements from the instructors in an inaccurate and distorted manner by taking their statements out of context and reordering the sequence in which those statements were actually made so as to change their meaning. Such selective editing is disturbing, and the release of students’ images without their permission is a violation of their privacy rights.”

[…]

Mr. Giljum said he had been told by his immediate supervisor at the St. Louis campus, Deborah Baldini, associate dean for continuing education, that both the campus’s chancellor and provost had called for him to resign, even though he had never been given a chance to discuss with them the allegations made in the video. Mr. Giljum said the only opportunity he has been given to defend himself was a brief conversation with Ms. Baldini in which, he said, he told her the statements he is shown making in the video “were taken totally out of context and completely edited. It is nothing but a hatchet job by this person who wants to destroy unions and destroy labor education.”

[…]

Regardless of what happens at St. Louis, Mr. Giljum, who politically identifies himself as a communist, has already lost one source of income because of the controversy over the videotapes. The St. Louis-based Local 148 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, for which he had worked as business manager, demanded his resignation on Wednesday. Mr. Giljum said he is worried that Southwestern Illinois College, where he teaches a class on labor relations, will ask for his resignation as well.

Shouldn’t the university and especially the union, which should know it itself is one of Breitbart’s targets, have rejected these claims out of hand rather than take them serious? Shouldn’t they know about Breitbart and his campaigns by now?

Well…

It’s difficult for any administrator finding themselves in a situation where suddenly hundreds of people mail or phone you demanding you take action against an employee for doing something outrageous and you find yourself in a media storm where you need take action now in order to not be demonised yourself. It may not be clear to you who is behind these complaints, that this is a Breitbart operation; if you’re not a political junkie you may only have a vague knowledge of who he is, you may have some idea that he was the guy who helped out ACORN, not realising it was all a lie. Your first instincts therefore may be to placate the critics, sack or suspend the offending employee and then start an internal investigation, to show how concerned you are about those grave allegations. Which is all very understandable, but it’s this mentality that Breitbart counts on to win. Even if his victim is reinstated afterwards, he has won the propaganda war, showing both his power to get people fired and undermining the trust of the people on the recieving ends — if your employer threatens to sack you on the directions of an internet loon, would you trust them afterwards?

So what’s the solution? Raise awareness, counterattack Breitbart’s organisation itself, support the victims. Keep exposing him and his mission. Sue the bastard for defamation, ruin him like her ruined his victims.

S&P overreaches itself

Life under Capitalism, US politics
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Over at Crooked Timber, Dsquared put up a post laughing at the pathetic attempt of S&P to grab some publicity by downgrading America’s credit rating. Deep down in the ensuing comment thread he explains again why this is such a dumb move:

It needs to be emphasised, by the way, that the USA credit rating is an unsolicited rating. Since the USA doesn’t borrow material amounts on the international markets (other people come to the USA for the privilege of buying its debt), and since nobody in their right mind has any question of the creditworthiness of the USA, they’ve never really seen the value in paying S&P a fee to have their credit rated. S&P’s decision to issue a rating nevertheless is intended as a publicity stunt, to bolster their credibility by demonstrating their analytical prowess to the world.

Of course it only works if people care more about S&P’s opinion than their lying eyes (ie, if S&P moves the market, or if people regard S&P as having better information or analysis than the market in general). For that reason, the massive MBS/CDO failure, and the massive Ireland and Iceland failures, and the scandal of the muni/corporate rating inconsistency, do actually make a difference in assessing the credibility of the USA outlook change. This would have been a very questionable move even if it had some effect and the T-Bond yield had risen – given what actually happened it’s a painful embarrassment.

Doin’ the math

Life under Capitalism, US politics
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Or, yes Virginia, America can solve its budget problems soaking the rich [*]:

Medicare doesn’t require “tens of trillions,” unless your budget horizon is something like twenty years. This year, Medicare will cost $572 billion. In 2020, according to the CBO, it will cost $949 billion. Over the next ten years, it will cost $7.6 trillion, which isn’t even a ten of trillion, much less “tens of trillions.” (And that doesn’t include “offsetting receipts”—$80 billion this year, and $1.2 trillion over the next ten, which reduce those outlays significantly. Supporting spreadsheet is here.) Right now, the top 1% of the U.S. pop has something like $1.4 trillion in income. The next 4%, $1.3 trillion. The next 5% has almost a trillion. (Computed from Piketty and Saez data here.) In other words, you could entirely fund Medicare by hitting up the top 1% for about a third of its income. Yeah, I know that’s politically impossible, but they’ve got the money—we just can’t have any of it.

[*] Up to a point.

Getting a brain tumour is not a learning experience

Health, US politics
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Last year Sarah Pin had to deal with the little problem of a brain tumour which, quite obviously is scary and awful enough in the best of situations. But Sarah lives in the US and therefore had to deal with the third world medical system there. This did not make her happy:

If I have learned anything – and I have not – it is this: that people who talk about shitty things happening like they’re about gaining EXP or wisdom can go fuck themselves.

Unnecessary painful learning experiences suck. There is no fucking value to my having gotten a brain tumor, it is not something that god wanted to happen to me, I refuse to behave as if it has been some sort of goddamn privilege, and I decline ever do something like this again. I’m done with things sucking now. From now on I intend for everything that ever happens to awesome, and if it’s not I will bitch about it and, if someone else is at fault, I will make them feel it.

[…]

The doctor who finally sent me for the MRI wouldn’t have prescribed it to someone in my situation who didn’t have insurance. I know this because the first time I went in, I didn’t, and she didn’t. She told me to go home, get some rest and see if the dizziness got better. I did, it got better briefly and then came back, and I came back signed up for the Maryland pool two months later. She then suggested the MRI along with a battery of the other tests she thought more likely to turn something up. She was very restrainedly startled when it was the brain that turned out to be the problem.

It’s your right to decide that I should’ve had to either choose to pay full-price for the treatment or go without – I mean, I’m not you. But when people get angry with you for your politics, you need to understand that this is why. They’re not making something of nothing. My brain is not nothing to me. My stupid little pile of money is not nothing.