Critical Apprehensions & Intemperate Discourses

Kip Manley, proprietor

Ashcroft + tar + feathers.

You want to know why I passed a leisure hour with Eisenhower’s apocryphal bags of rice?

Because I’ve been trying not to think about this for the past six hours, that’s why. —Bill Moyers has been, though.

“In Georgia, New Jersey, and Connecticut,” notes this history of tarring and feathering in revolutionary America, “villagers were quick to feather any perceived ‘enemy to the rights of America.’”

Ladies and gentlemen Georgian, Jerseyite, Connecticutian, or otherwise, start your pots a-bubblin’. There’s a number of people in the Justice Department deserve the brush.

—Filed 8461 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [3].

Eisenhower + bags + rice.

For those of you breezing through from a Google search which contains one or more of the words Eisenhower, bags, rice, Quemoy, Matsu, Joint Chiefs, nuclear, David Albert, People Power, or nonviolence: another source purporting to verify what might or might not be the urban legend about Eisenhower deciding not to use nuclear weapons in a stand-off with China over the Taiwan Strait. (Not up to speed? Here, follow the links, don’t skip the comments. Catch up with us when you’re ready.) —The folks behind the current Rice for Peace—No War on Iraq campaign point us to a couple of interviews with Alfred Hassler, a conscientious objector during World War II who helped found the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who organized the original grain—not rice—campaign in 1954 – 55. In a 1974 interview, Hassler told this story:

There was a famine in China, extremely grave. We urged people to send President Eisenhower small sacks of grain with the message, “If thine enemy hunger, feed him. Send surplus food to China.” The surplus food, in fact, was never sent. On the surface, the project was an utter failure.

But then—quite by accident—we learned from someone on Eisenhower’s press staff that our campaign was discussed at three separate cabinet meetings. Also discussed at each of these meetings was a recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the United States bomb mainland China in response to the Quemoy-Matsu crisis.

At the third meeting the president turned to a cabinet member responsible for the Food for Peace program and asked, “How many of those grain bags have come in?” The answer was 45,000, plus tens of thousands of letters.

Eisenhower’s response was that if that many Americans were trying to find a conciliatory solution with China, it wasn’t the time to bomb China. The proposal was vetoed.

In a 1975 interview, he repeated the story in a different context:

No food was offered to China, of course, although a year later Eisenhower did give surplus grain to some East European countries. Except for one of the accidents of history, the Food-for-China campaign would have appeared to be an imaginative, colorful failure, like many another. But the “accident” was in the information, provided confidentially years later by a former colleague of Eisenhower’s, that the campaign had been discussed in cabinet meetings simultaneously with proposals from the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the bombing of mainland China. The President, said our informant, asked how many of the grain bags had been received. When he heard that there had been over 45,000 plus thousands of additional letters, he ruled against bombing—on the grounds that if so many Americans wanted reconciliation with China, it was hardly the time to start bombing it!

On the one hand, of course, we have that figure pervasive in what passes for modern journalism, the unnamed source. And in one account, he’s on Eisenhower’s press staff; in the other, he’s a former colleague. —Not necessarily a contradiction, mind, but it doesn’t fill one with confidence.

On the other hand, this is a much more creditable scenario than the sketchier (if more urgent, gripping, colorful) anecdote as written up by David Albert. No General Jack D. Rippers snarl and slaver at the situation room table in this one, determined to drop the A-bomb on those slant-eyed Chinks, while that steely-eyed un-Wolfowitz, Eisenhower, sagely gauges the American Zeitgeist by half-cup bags of grain, narrowly averting nuclear crisis twice in the Taiwan Strait. —Instead, we have a political weighing of options at one cabinet meeting; we have a course of action recommended by the Joint Chiefs perhaps contemplated (“In any combat where these things can be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes,” said Eisenhower, “I see no reason why they shouldn’t be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else”) but ultimately set aside—much as one might a bullet—due to the political ramifications. —Judged by the half-cup, yes, but.

Does this increased creditability make the story true?

Snopes doesn’t think so (vastly updated, so if you haven’t read it in the past couple of days, go, do so).

But! Snopes is hung up a little too much, methinks, on the idea that the original Food for China campaign was never intended by its participants to protest the possibility of war (no one ever said it did; as Jeanne d’Arc points out, the humanitarian concern is rather easily inferred and transferrable); that the original campaign was grain, not rice (which Hassler’s accounts make quite clear [despite Snopes’s protestations of their being “garbled”]—as they should, Hassler helped launch the campaign, after all; it’s only later, as the details of this progressive corner of the past have been forgotten, that the switch was rather tellingly made by those who too-enthusiastically rushed in: China, rice, get it?); and that Eisenhower was never forced to the crisis point of deciding whether or not to use the bomb, so bags of grain he’d never have seen could not have affected said decision (Hassler’s second-hand accounts are muddled, yes, but again they’re clearly about political ramifications discussed at a cabinet meeting. One can argue the nitty and the gritty of what was and was not discussed at cabinet meetings as regards the possibility of bombing mainland China in 1955, but what we manifestly have in Hassler’s accounts is not a crisis point defused, but a policy option publicly removed from play [if privately left in the chamber, under the hammer, just in case]).

In other words: because the statement “Bags of rice sent to President Eisenhower helped dissuade him from launching an attack against China” has been found false does not mean that what Hassler said isn’t true. —It’s also a somewhat less compelling and uplifting example of the discourses of the mighty shaken by the likes of thee and me, but there you are.

And whether you believe it or not—and honestly, I’m still on the side of not, albeit much more reluctantly—it has no bearing at all on your taking a half cup of rice, pouring it into a ziploc bag, squeezing all the air out of it and sealing it shut, writing “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. —Romans 12:20” on a slip of paper, putting the paper and the bag into a padded envelope and sealing it up, addressing it to President George Bush, White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC, 20500, pasting $1.29 in postage on the upper right corner, dropping the package into the mail, and emailing the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center to tell them you’ve done so.

Send rice.

—Heck, you might even make it into the papers.

—Filed 8461 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [5].

Filibuster baby.

Ampersand, quoting Ruminate This, tells you how to stiffen your Senator’s spine:

1. Pick up the phone—right now—and dial the toll-free congressional switchboard at 800.839.5276. Urge your Senator to filibuster the Estrada nomination. That’s it. You’ll be asked your name, address and phone. Simple and to the point.
2. Follow up that call with a visit to True Majority and send off their fax which calls for an Estrada filibuster. The fax is already written. If you agree with the verbage, just sign your name and move on. If you’d like to craft your own personal message, take the opportunity to do so.

Sam Heldman tells you why. In no uncertain terms.

Do True Majority tonight. Call bright and early tomorrow morning. Keep the pressure on.

—Filed 8464 days ago to Squawkbox; .

Romans 12:20.

(I’ve returned from APE. More on which later.)

Prentiss Riddle has found the original text of Ullman and Wade’s Shock and Awe on—where else?—line. From the introduction, the bit dealing with OOTW:

Given this reality that our military dominance can and will extend for some considerable time to come, provided we are prepared to use it, why then is a re-examination of American defense posture and doctrine important? The answers to this question involve

1. the changing nature of the domestic and international environments;
2. the complex nature of resolving inter and intra-state conflict that falls outside conventional war, including peacekeeping, and countering terrorism, crime, and the use of weapons of mass destruction;
3. resource constraints;
4. defense infrastructure and technical industrial bases raised on a large, continuous infusion of funding now facing a future of austerity; and
5. the vast uncertainties of the so-called social, economic, and information revolutions that could check or counter many of the nation’s assumptions as well as public support currently underwriting defense.

Let’s give ’em a taste of the ol’ Number 5, eh? From Body and Soul:

• Find a bag of rice.
• Measure out 1/2 cup.
• Pour it into a ziploc bag.
• Squeeze all the air out and seal it.
• Write the following on a piece of paper:
   
  “If your enemies are hungry, feed them.” —Romans 12:20
  Please send this rice to the people of Iraq; do not attack them.
   
• Put the note and the bag of rice in a padded envelope or a small box and write on the outside of the package:
   
  Rice for Peace—No War on Iraq
   
• Address it to:
   
  President George Bush
  White House
  1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
  Washington DC 20500
   
• Put $1.29 in postage on the outside.
• Drop it in the mail.
• Write about it and link it on your blog or journal or email list and spread the word.

“So-called” revolutions my ass.

Oh, and if, like Jeanne, you tend to suspect that our President’s compassionate, Christian conservatism is little more than a cynical vote-dredging scam, you might want to quote the entirety of Romans 12:20. He might like the bit about the coals.

Though I don’t mention the Eisenhower connection in this post, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center does. Patrick Nielsen Hayden notes rather pungently in the comments section that said Eisenhower connection is “all nonsense”; Jeanne d’Arc has a rather interesting take on why it isn’t. —In the interests of strict factuality, it should probably be noted that the original source of the anecdote (which I should probably summarize, for those who don’t follow links: supposedly, when the Joint Chiefs twice recommended the use of nukes against China in conflicts over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu [the First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises], President Eisenhower turned to an aide both times and asked, “How many little bags of rice came in?” referring to little bags of rice sent to the White House to urge the Eisenhower administration to act to alleviate famine on mainland China), David H. Albert’s People Power: Applying Non-violence Theory, includes no indication of how, exactly, he or anyone else learned that Eisenhower’s thinking was in any way influenced by that earlier “Feed thy Enemy” campaign.

That said.

The Instapundits of the world may try to belittle the movement because it’s been inspired by an urban legend. Let ’em—the war in question, after all, is itself based on distortions, dissemblings, and outright lies. Their Fiskings and self-satisfied chortlings amount to nothing more than a hill of hot air (much as do ours, to deflate my ugly moment of us-and-them), and will look rather foolish when you and me and everyone else sends a hill of rice like hot coals to the White House, one half-cup at a time.

—Filed 8465 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [8].

There but for the grace of God.

Thirty to forty days out—

The conversations turn quickly, from the health of friends, to the state of Jordanian politics to the impending war against Iraq. It is a race to catch up for lost time. A race everyone runs because no one know when the bombs will start falling and people won’t have time to talk. Mr. Mozen believes it will be soon, right after the New Year. Nassim agrees but thinks it will be thirty to forty days after the New Year. He doesn’t give a reason. Everyone has predictions, which I confuse with premonitions.

Celine and Jackie—

After a visit to an Iraqi family’s home, which usually lasts four to five hours, with the obligatory meal made from the food rations given out by the government and several rounds of sweet tea, they no longer look like the wretched of the earth. They are the eleven-year-old twins, He’be and Du’a, who loves Jackie Chan (Baghdad television broadcasts a movie every night at 11:30PM). And Shouruk, the twenty-two-year-old student who believes sadness is the primary value in music, and thinks Celine Dion is the pinnacle of this value.

My tax dollars at work—

The US government doesn’t help either. They have fined Voices in the Wilderness over $163,000 and have threatened members with twelve years of prison and fines of up to one million dollars for bringing toys and medicines into the country.

Here on the ground, Wolf—

I remember now the party last night at Farouk’s house. Members of the Iraq Peace Team were invited to a private party of musicians, journalists, and poets. Farouk dressed in casual black. He had sleepy eyes. He was gracious and demanding, ordering drinks to be constantly filled, especially for the women. The Socialist Baath Party banned public drinking in 1995. Ever since, Iraqis have taken their drink underground and at each other’s homes. Farouk’s second daughter is named Reem, which means one who is as graceful as a deer running. She doesn’t have her father’s eyes.

A droll pianist and a veteran of the Iran/Iraq war in the early ’80s played Bach and a jazzy funeral march. Earlier in the evening the pianist told me he killed six men in the war and that the men and women of Iraq are all trained in combat, and will take to arms and stones if need be to stop the Americans from entering Baghdad. I ask him if his experience in killing shaped in any way his piano playing. No response.

Upstairs, downstairs—

Most of the upper echelons of Iraqi society think that Baghdad will be ablaze with street fighters beating back the Americans. The middle class (if you can call it that) have largely left it to the fates, having had little to no history of political self-determination. The poor of Iraq wants to see the invasion over with. The sanctions have made their life already impossible, why not a war to shake things up a bit: what’s there to lose? A young poor Iraqi teenage girl summed it up nicely when she said that she can’t wait for the invasion so she can marry an American soldier.

There but for the grace of God—

The wild dogs of Baghdad have more dignity and sense than you. You travel in packs and think the same way. You mistake quotes with facts and facts with meaning. You lack historical imagination and intellectual empathy. Your sentences are short and puritanical. In Baghdad you step over children and knock over speakers, reduce subtleties and ignore contexts. An American newspaper journalist in Baghdad told me with a gleeful sense of pride that journalists are lazy and under pressure to write, so issues and ideas have to be reduced into sound bites in order to function as media. Pathetic.

History rarely reads like a press release. And history is being made right now by those who have no time to issue statements. Get complex and get curious or get out of the way.

I think we are going to stop this one without you.

There is more; there is so much more. And yet—

Perhaps we ought not invade; perhaps we ought to. But to badmouth America and imply that Saddam and his cronies are just plain nice folks and innocent is at best silly.

—MetaFilter comments on National Philistine

You’re sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.

—Harlan Ullman, architect of Shock and Awe

There but for the grace of God.

Despite the differences on how one will survive a war and how a war will be waged in the country, they all agree that if there is a war, it won’t begin until after the invasion. It is incandescently clear that Iraq does not have the capabilities to fight the American military juggernaut. The real story of Iraq’s survival will begin after the Americans come (if they come, yes there is still time and the means to stop the war, there is always time because tomorrow is today) and set up their puppet regime. A media escort and veteran of the Iran/Iraq war said, “They will have an occupation in hell.”

—Filed 8469 days ago to Squawkbox; .

Pith and pathos.

The Buffalo Beast has a wrap-up of the 18 January march on Washington, DC (and when someone from Buffalo says it’s cold, it’s cold), and in and amongst the wonderfully snarky gonzo metamedia coverage, we get this piercing insight:

The second thing that was striking about this crowd was that, despite the fact that it was comprised of largely middle- to upper-middle class whites, there was no name politician from either major party there to address it. Given that a Pew survey taken this week showed that a majority of Americans (52%) felt that President Bush had not yet made a convincing case that war was necessary, one would have thought that at least some opportunistic politician from the Democratic party would have decided to attach his name to the anti-war effort. But the only politician of any stature at the event was the Reverend Al Sharpton, a doomed candidate for president with too much political baggage to really be an effective champion for anything.

Put two and two together and what you get is the amazing realization that this crowd, perhaps the largest to gather in Washington in the last thirty years, has no political representation whatsoever in today’s America. Almost certainly representing a vastly larger number of people in the general population, the anti-war crowd has simply been excluded from the process. The 80 nitwits at the MOVE-OUT event could reasonably claim one sympathetic US Senator per demonstrator: the 200,000+ at the ANSWER event couldn’t claim even one between them. The only real clout it could claim was its own physical presence at that particular moment.

If you still demand to know why the anti-war folks don’t seem to you to be quibbling overly (but they do, you know, quibble) about marching in a protest organized in at least some small part by what might or might not be a WWP front, well. There you go.

(The rest of you might also want to remember this pith, when 2004 rolls around and you’re scratching your head trying to figure out how the Democrats could have fucked it up again. —I’m just sayin.’)

In other news: Oregon is officially gung ho about the brave new world of massively overmandated states with pathetically underfunded budgets. We are so screwed.

—Filed 8471 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [3].

Hell.

War is. Is for children. In a handbasket. Freezing over. Fire and damnation. Damn you all to. Fuck it. Maybe it’s the bourbon and maybe it’s my hot head, the one that yells at the television set, and maybe it’s my snarky anti-authoritarian nature and maybe it’s just that I’m a self-hating anti-American objectively Ba’athist Stalinist stooge whose good intentions are greasing the skids down the slippery slope straight to.

I don’t care.

Forget the shameless politicization of an unprecedented terrorist attack. Forget that every informed opinion says that an invasion will trigger reprisals here at home that we are not ready for. Forget the broken promises to firefighters and cops, forget the unnecessary, clumsy, and disruptive invasion of civil rights by the largest and most expensive government ever, forget the staggering arrogance and sobering ineptitude on the international stage. Wipe it all off the table and send it smashing to the floor. I don’t care. Sit down across the now-empty table from me and tell me how on earth I can live with an administration that proposes to do this in my name—

The US intends to shatter Iraq “physically, emotionally and psychologically” by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise missiles in two days.

The Pentagon battle plan aims not only to crush Iraqi troops, but also wipe out power and water supplies in the capital, Baghdad.

It is based on a strategy known as “Shock and Awe,” conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 Gulf War. [...]

“You’re sitting in Baghdad and, all of a sudden, you’re the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out,” [architect of “Shock and Awe”, military strategist Harlan Ullman,] said. “You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power and water. In two, three, four, five days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted.”

Even as they reach out with their other hand to do this—

Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.

If you use the word “realpolitik” in your explanation, I will hit you.

This doesn’t come as a shock. I almost wish it did. Shock (even awe) would be better than this feeling like I hit a funny bone in the back of my head. I am not surprised by this; and that is almost what I’m angriest about right now.

Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied.

Roast in. Burn in. Rot in. See you in.

—Filed 8472 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [15].

Stella.

I work in an office that deals with among other things other people’s litigation, so this has been making the email rounds:

It’s time once again to consider the candidates for the annual Stella Awards. The Stellas are named after 81-year-old Stella Liebeck who spilled coffee on herself and successfully sued McDonalds. That case inspired the Stella Awards for the most frivolous successful lawsuits in the United States.

This year’s candidates:

1. Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas, was awarded $780,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The owners of the store were understandably surprised at the verdict, considering the misbehaving little toddler was Ms. Robertson’s son.
2. A 19-year-old Carl Truman of Los Angeles won $74,000 and medical expenses when his neighbor ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Mr.Truman apparently didn’t notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbor’s hub caps.
3. Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania, was leaving a house he had just finished robbing by way of the garage. He was not able to get the garage door to go up since the automatic door opener was malfunctioning. He couldn’t re-enter the house because the door connecting the house and garage locked when he pulled it shut. The family was on vacation, and Mr. Dickson found himself locked in the garage for eight days. He subsisted on a case of Pepsi he found, and a large bag of dry dog food. He sued the homeowner’s insurance claiming the situation caused him undue mental anguish. The jury agreed to the tune of $500,000.
4. Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 and medical expenses after being bitten on the buttocks by his next door neighbor’s beagle. The beagle was on a chain in its owner’s fenced yard. The award was less than sought because the jury felt the dog might have been just a little provoked at the time by Mr. Williams who was shooting it repeatedly with a pellet gun.
5. A Philadelphia restaurant was ordered to pay Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, $113,500 after she slipped on a soft drink and broke her coccyx (tailbone). The beverage was on the floor because Ms Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.
6. Kara Walton of Claymont, Delaware, successfully sued the owner of night club in a neighboring city when she fell from the bathroom window to the floor and knocked out her two front teeth. This occurred while Ms.Walton was trying to sneak through the window in the ladies room to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge. She was awarded $12,000 and dental expenses.
7. This year’s favorite could easily be Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On his first trip home having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mr. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him in the owner’s manual that he couldn’t actually do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit, just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

There’s only one problem—or rather, seven: they’re all utter fabrications.

Beyond, of course, the fact that Stella Liebeck’s being maligned yet again.

If you’ve hung out on any internet forum anywhere, you know how firmly “that lady who spilled the coffee and sued McDonald’s” is entrenched in the popular imagination. A lie, after all, can get halfway around the world while the truth is putting its shoes on, so let’s give that laggard truth a push.

Stella Liebeck of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was in the passenger seat of her grandson’s car when she was severely burned by McDonalds’ coffee in February 1992. Liebeck, 79 at the time, ordered coffee that was served in a styrofoam cup at the drivethrough window of a local McDonalds.

After receiving the order, the grandson pulled his car forward and stopped momentarily so that Liebeck could add cream and sugar to her coffee. (Critics of civil justice, who have pounced on this case, often charge that Liebeck was driving the car or that the vehicle was in motion when she spilled the coffee; neither is true.) Liebeck placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup. As she removed the lid, the entire contents of the cup spilled into her lap.

The sweatpants Liebeck was wearing absorbed the coffee and held it next to her skin. A vascular surgeon determined that Liebeck suffered full thickness burns (or third-degree burns) over 6 percent of her body, including her inner thighs, perineum, buttocks, and genital and groin areas. She was hospitalized for eight days, during which time she underwent skin grafting. Liebeck, who also underwent debridement treatments, sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonalds refused.

During discovery, McDonalds produced documents showing more than 700 claims by people burned by its coffee between 1982 and 1992. Some claims involved third-degree burns substantially similar to Liebecks. This history documented McDonalds’ knowledge about the extent and nature of this hazard.

McDonalds also said during discovery that, based on a consultant’s advice, it held its coffee at between 180 and 190 degrees fahrenheit to maintain optimum taste. He admitted that he had not evaluated the safety ramifications at this temperature. Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures, and coffee served at home is generally 135 to 140 degrees.

Further, McDonalds’ quality assurance manager testified that the company actively enforces a requirement that coffee be held in the pot at 185 degrees, plus or minus five degrees. He also testified that a burn hazard exists with any food substance served at 140 degrees or above, and that McDonalds coffee, at the temperature at which it was poured into styrofoam cups, was not fit for consumption because it would burn the mouth and throat. The quality assurance manager admitted that burns would occur, but testified that McDonalds had no intention of reducing the “holding temperature” of its coffee.

Sorry to dump the whole mess in your laps like that, but it’s necessary to go through this in some detail so it all sinks in. This was 40 to 50 degrees hotter than what you normally think of as “hot” coffee; just 20 degrees shy of boiling. McDonald’s knew that this practice caused hundreds of injuries. They had no intention of stopping. They offered to pay off Stella Liebeck much as they’d paid off earlier injuries; she said no. A jury awarded her $200,000, reduced to $160,000 because they judged her to be 20% at fault for the accident—and then they added on $2.7 million in punitive damages, a monetary hit designed to convince McDonald’s to stop burning hundreds of people with dangerously, illogically hot coffee. (And guess what? After the verdict, the temperature of coffee served in Albuquerque McDonald’s was around a much more sane 150 degrees.) And even though the punitive damages were reduced to $480,000, less than a fifth the original amount, McDonald’s—rather than accept a judgment which found their conduct reckless, callous, and willful—negotiated a secret settlement with Liebeck.

And yet she’s still the stupid dumbass crazy lady who got millions from McDonald’s for spilling some coffee. —Hell, even the real Stella Awards (an entertaining enough read, which focusses out of necessity on suits filed rather than insane amounts rewarded—you go where the material is, after all) admits her treatment has been grossly unfair. (But: the name doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon.)

This, then, is the atmosphere in which the debate over tort reform swirls. Quite literally: if you go back to the Snopes takedown, you’ll see that the New York Daily News printed a copy of that original, utterly fabricated email back in June of 2002. —Which, I suppose, is funnier to read over coffee than the Center for Economic Justice’s breakdown of exactly how much insurance companies made right after Texas instituted tort reform.

No one likes the idea of (someone else) getting something for nothing. Nor am I trying to deny that there aren’t excesses, fuck-ups, and egregious mistakes. (Though one should always keep Meredith’s Question in mind.) But to impose from the top down a one-size-fits-all solution like this is—leaving aside for the moment the fact that it’s a crooked solution rigged in favor of those with more money and more power—foolish and short-sighted (at best): sending an engineer to fix a problem of bricolage. I’m reminded of another attempt to impose via legislative fiat pre-ordained, one-size-fits-all solutions to complex judicial problems.

I mean—we all know what a great success mandatory minimum sentences have been.

—Filed 8478 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [7].

There they go again.

The long memory is the most radical idea in the country. It is the loss of that long memory which deprives our people of that connective flow of thoughts and events that clarifies our vision, not of where we’re going but where we want to go.

—Utah Phillips

Atrios proves once again that he doesn’t just shoot from the hip—he’s got a mean long memory, too. (What? Ten years is an eternity in politics.)

—Filed 8483 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [1].

Bold.

I’ve figured out where all this bold rhetoric is coming from. Everything this administration is doing, from boldly negotiating with North Korea just like Clinton did, to boldly addressing our tax code’s horribly progressive nature (whereby people who don’t make enough money to live actually get money from people who have enough to worry about stock dividends), is bold. Bold bold bold.

You ever look at the etymology of bold? It comes from the Indo-European root bhel:

bhel-²: To blow, swell; with derivatives referring to various round objects and to the notion of tumescent masculinity.

Keep blowing, Bush; keep swelling, pundits. Just beware: there’s only one place to go when bold’s used up.

—Filed 8485 days ago to Squawkbox; .

Billions of dollars in Big Content profits saved by courageous Supreme Court; Sonny Bono’s legacy is secure.

Well, shit.

Barry pretty much nailed it, last year.

Okay; so SCOTUS called it on the constitutional merits of which branch of government gets to decide what. Fine. Time for us to start lobbying our representatives to change the law to favor all of us, and not just corporate citizens with huge lobbying budgets—what? What’s so funny?

Of course, I should have included a link to the blog of Lawrence Lessig, who argued Eldred v. Ashcroft on behalf of the plaintiff. Also, his comments section, which is busy rallying the troops for round 2. And, the Creative Commons. Yay, team!

—Filed 8485 days ago to Squawkbox; .

The terrorists have already—oh, never mind.

The next time you’re in the neighborhood with someone who proclaims themselves an anti-idiotarian or some such similar designation and they mouth off about Marxist traitorous ivory-towered Stalinist elitist class-war-fightin’ Maoist revolutionary workers’-paradisical anarchist idiotarian liberal Berkeley, try to temper your disgust with a healthy dollop of rue when you point out that Berkeley is censoring Emma Goldman, dead for 62 years now:

In one of the quotations, from 1915, Goldman called on people “not yet overcome by war madness to raise their voice of protest, to call the attention of the people to the crime and outrage which are about to be perpetrated on them.” In the other, from 1902, she warned that free-speech advocates “shall soon be obliged to meet in cellars, or in darkened rooms with closed doors, and speak in whispers lest our next-door neighbors should hear that free-born citizens dare not speak in the open.”

Berkeley officials said the quotations could be construed as a political statement by the university in opposition to United States policy toward Iraq.

—the New York Times

If that be treason, count me a traitor. You don’t fuck with Emma Goldman.

—Filed 8485 days ago to Squawkbox; Comments [1].

How many times do we have to say no?

The RAVE act is back. TalkLeft has the skinny:

The RAVE Act unfairly punishes businessmen and women for the crimes of their customers. The federal government can’t even keep drugs out of its own schools and prisons, yet it seeks to punish business owners for failing to keep people from carrying drugs onto their property. It is a danger to innocent businessmen and women, especially restaurant and nightclub owners, concert promoters, landlords, and real estate managers. Section 4 of the bill goes so far as to allow the federal government to charge property owners civilly, thus allowing prosecutors to fine property owners $250,000 (and put them out of business) without having to meet the higher standard of proof in criminal cases that is needed to protect innocent people.

It was shut down once before. It’s being snuck through as provisions to Senator Daschle’s omnibus security bill, S.22. Fax him right now and tell him hell no. Again.

—Filed 8485 days ago to Squawkbox; .

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