So: Alien is the Great Depression.
Aliens is the Great Recession Repossession.*
Let’s see: The marines do what they need to, when given leave to do so. But are almost never properly informed. They are ultimately overwhelmed by the scope of the problem, despite their best efforts. Obviously they the are House Democrats.
Carter Burke? Dick Cheney. He knows how badly things went last time, but still wants to try it again. There’s money to be made.
The face huggers? Economists who argue against Keynesian economic policy prescriptions.
Ripley is Paul Krugman, obviously.
Newt would be the American public.
Nuke the Neo-Hooverites from Orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.
*Spell check took my original spelling of recession and turned it into Repossession. I like it so much that I’m keeping it.
Funny line of the day: A guy suggested that if any private company were run as badly as government, the CEO would be in jail. Dude, I haven’t noticed many wall street CEOs in prison. Perhaps I haven’t been reading the right newspapers, though.
Also: is there an implication in that statement that the government is run more poorly than Comcast? I have my doubts.
Once upon a time, a congressperson was asked about border security. The congressperson then made a comment to this questioner about the vigilante border security organization styling themselves as “minutemen”. Specifically, he called them “murderers”. This was not without some justification.
That’s when self described “rodeo clown” Glenn Beck gets involved.
Mr. Beck has a different point of view from myself, and from Congressperson Stark. This country was basically founded on trying to figure out how we could have a functional government, but still have wildly divergent ideas of what constitutes the good life. Some of Mr. Beck’s viewers, however, are not merely just a bit crazy. Rather they cross the line from crazy into violent. Yes, that last incident happened a few days ago, and in the backyard of Representative Stark.
Naturally, things were a bit on edge. The minutemen had activated their network, and the open carry people got their networks involved– and I naively thought that “open carry” was referring to a right to walk around with a bottle of beer. The Congressperson decided to go ahead with his regularly scheduled townhall meetings. Right after a minor terrorist attack* While the gun people got involved. With the vigilantes promising to be vigilant. And that’s when I got called in to volunteer.
I basically believe that one has a fundamental duty to be kind to those you hire– unless those people you hire are governmental representatives. In that case, they’re paid to take abuse, so flame on. This wasn’t shaping up to be the usual good natured “fix my potholes and my unemployment without raising taxes” sort of abuse, though. This was abuse by people advocating for the right to use guns to overthrow a government that proves itself incapable of fixing unemployment without raising taxes.
Not to sing my own praises here, but a large part of why you call me out is that you need someone capable of standing in front of an angry mob, smiling, and inviting them in for tea and cookies. It’s the smile that does it, really. People are wired to smile back. It works about 80% of the time**. I use this technique to ruthlessly cut down on hostility, and savagely force people into better moods.
It is possible to become a US Congressperson without being particularly savvy as a politician. I’ve met these people. Pete Stark is _not_ that guy. He knew that nothing he could say would cause these people to like him. He also knew that what they wanted more than anything else was the opportunity to be heard. So he sat there and took it.
Every insult and innuendo, every sling and arrow of outrageous rhetoric, he took it. And listened. And of the roughly 150 people who showed up to yell at him, about 20 were so disgusted by their fellow partisans, that they got up and left.
There are 3 incidents I’d like to relate.
The first one is just sort of funny. We had a simple policy: Signs are ok, signs on sticks are not. So this woman starts… she almost looked happy. She paused, messing up our line, and said “so I can’t bring in my flag? You’re saying I can’t bring in my flag?” Please, dear reader, remember that no one had said anything to her about her flag. We all paused for a moment, myself and a couple congressional staffers. After about a lifetime of thought, compressed into a heartbeat of actual time, I said “of course you can bring your flag into the meeting room!” She looked almost unhappy.
During the meeting, after we hit capacity (don’t tell the fire marshal, we might have gone over), a woman knocks on the door looking very distraught. She had been hoping to speak with the congressperson, you see– only he could help her. I flagged down one of his aids– looks like she had some work to do on this cheerful Saturday morning–an American citizen had issues with immigration. In my experience, congressional aides don’t complain about helping people with this stuff. It’s their basic function to do this shit and smile.
And that brings up incident number three. Some jackass decided to complain to me that the Representative isn’t very “accountable”. Excuse me? I didn’t say do you not see one of your fellow Americans out there crying because things in her life are so bad that only congress can help her? Do you not see the person out there being accountable to said fellow citizen by actually helping her at a time on Saturday morning when we’d all prefer to be in bed? I’m not there to judge the man, though, or lecture him. I’m there to listen to him.
I think more than anything else, the desire to be listened to is the the great human yearning. Plato called us “social animals”***, and I think most of that comes from wanting to be in close enough contact with other humans that we can yammer at them.
Anyway, this guy looks right at the security guard and said “I, a white guy, am going to say this to you, a black guy– and I think we’re all equal–” and that’s where he got unintelligible. I think he wanted white guys and black guys to make common cause against Mexicans. But I’m not really sure. I guess it’s progress that this white dude can look at a black guy and– even though he still sees all black guys reflected in this one black guy– see someone fundamentally the same as he is. I prefer racism the way I would any burn on the body politic: mild.
*stopped, by the way, by law enforcement. Seems that this can be an effective anti-terror tool. Despite what our friends across the isle will say
** I made up that number. But it really is extraordinarily high.
*** The word “politicon” can translate as “social”, as well as “political”
If there is a single fact about my existence, it’s books. I’ve planed vacations around hitting epic bookstores. I spent half a decade working at Barnes and Noble. Walking into my house can make one feel… overwhelmed by titles.
This is about 30% of the non-hallway/kitchen/bathroom wall space in my house. It’s about 800 books– 80% of the story was lost. Yet the world adapted, and wonderful stories like Tristram Shandy emerged to take advantage of this new medium.
I don’t know what we’ll lose and gain when we switch from paper to epaper. I do feel confident that our species will find something fantastic to do with the new tools.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some Doctor Who to watch…
Sarah Vowel is a genius. I know. It’s sort of weird to invoke Sarah Vowel in connection with sports. Her genius is not in connection with sports, per se, but in having coined the term Partly Cloudy Patriot.
I am an American Patriot. I watch 1776 every July 4th. I vote in every election– even the off-cycle primaries. I pay my taxes and don’t complain. When I see construction crews building impressive works of infrastructure, I feel the warm tingly sense of pride.
Then there’s the other thing. I’m just a little bit competitive. Most humans are. And the senses of competition and civic pride are as inevitable as lust and kissing. When a scandal hit some nowhere state capitol, people will come out to preen for the cameras to tell the world that their state is the most corrupt state in the country Crazy. We San Franciscans are proud of our awesome our weather is.* People in Chicago are just as proud of how awful theirs is.
As an American, therefore, I’d like to brag about what our country does well– war– and what our country does poorly– non-militarized responses to international relations. But as a partly cloudy patriot, and a human being, I don’t want to root for high body counts. And I really don’t want to swagger to Greece about how we could have bailed them out if our Senate weren’t so dysfunctional**
If I want to feel that warm glow of national pride at kicking someone else’s ass… that leaves sports. Sports may have complicated rules, but the feelings they bring are not complicated at all. We root root root for the home team. If they don’t win it’s a shame. I watch Soccer every 4 years. I don’t know the rules. I watch curling every 4 years. I don’t know the rules to that, either. I do know that I will root for America at every chance.
Rooting for the home team is awesome. Doing it in a crowd is exhilarating.
*It’s perfect. Seriously. Not even joking.
** I let the Germans feel pride about that.
Friend – This does say “capture or kill”. Not sure about the legal precedent of first or last resort on this, but I assume they would tend toward “capture” over “kill” if they could.
I feel like there are extenuating circumstances when dealing with somebody who has gone over to foreign soil and is actively working with foreign agencies to commit violence against the United States (not just it’s citizens, but the country as a whole). I have to admit, though, that I would feel a lot better about this had he sought some kind of legislative action to try him for treason (or whatever is appropriate) first.
Punning Pundit- I do understand those extenuation circumstance, and I think we need laws or agreements covering them. If a president wants sole authority do decide matters of life and death, he’s going to need to put himself at some personal risk– just to prove good faith.
Your suggestion is not without merit– but would qualify as a “Bill of Attainder” under the US Constitution. (article 1, section 9) As such it’s flatly unconstitutional– our founders saw too many English abuses of it.
Instead what I might propose is that the President ask Congress to grant the judicial branch the authority to issue “capture or kill” warrants when dealing with Americans who are out of the country. Congress has this authority under Article 3 section 2.
Alternately under Article 3 section 3 the Congress itself could try and convict someone of treason. It could then order the President to “capture or kill” the individual so convicted.
None of this even remotely resemble the president acting under his own authority to murder Americans
So. It looks like the US President is in the business of ordering the assassination of US Citizens. You know what? I get this.
In the calculus of war– especially the sort of quasi war we’re fighting against “terror”, this is makes sense. The same pro-assassination arguments apply: we’re killing enemies without the bother of fighting actual battles and risking our soldiers. And the counter argument is equally persuasive: using the awesome power of a national government to mark a specific person for death makes war too personal, and invites reprisals.
A US president ordering the murders of US citizens without benefit of trial is both a natural evolution of this, and a terrifying development. A president has now decided he alone has the power to mark for death American citizens– and that no one has the authority to stop the machinery of death once it starts rolling.
US presidents have, in the past, used their police powers against domestic political opponents. Presidents are smart people. And if they weren’t arrogant, they wouldn’t ever have run for office. The temptation must always be there to use their powers for personal gain, rather than the national interest. More charitably, presidents must in some sense confuse their own personal good with the national interest. I’m unwilling to hand a president this sort of power.
Except. I’m a big boy. I understand that life is messier than the law allows for. I understand that warfare doesn’t really follow straight lines. This sort of thing might well be necessary from time to time.
How do we reconcile these things? I have a suggestion. If a president feels that someone must be murdered, or that there’s information so time critical that someone needs to be tortured, they need to go to jail.
There it is. Presidents who feel so strongly that they must violate the law and human rights that they are willing to order such a thing must pay a personal price. Resignation and jail time. If it turns out they’re right about their actions, we’ll make it a nice prison…
I’ve never really given much thought to Megan McArdle. Seriously. I don’t read the Atlantic, and she’s not often linked to by the stable of writers I have in my RSS reader. Her name comes up often enough– and the Atlantic is a prominent enough magazine– that I know she’s probably a big deal.
But reading this article, I think she’s either profoundly angry, profoundly disingenuous, or profoundly dumb.
Her article is complaining that somehow the Democrats have so streamlined the legislative process that they can ram anything through. She says that they should be wary of Republicans dismantling the entire social fabric that the Democrats have created– the social fabric that the Republicans have spent the last 30 years campaigning to destroy.
What struck me as bizarre was this line, though: ” Are we now in a world where there is absolutely no recourse to the tyranny of the majority?”
Obviously McArdle has never heard of Jim Crow, or Prop 8. When the majority creates second-class citizens, we hear nary a peep. When a majority lifts 32 million citizens from the bare edge of existence, McArdle dares call it tyranny.
