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Obama v. Obama
Candidate Obama in 2007:
As President, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act and adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Our Constitution and our Uniform Code of Military Justice provide a framework for dealing with the terrorists.
President Obama in 2011: Gitmo is back in business and KSM will be tried in a military court.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/07/obama-guantanamo.html
Candidate Obama promised to protect whistleblowers, saying
Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled.
http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/
President Obama took Bush’s war on whistleblowers and ran with it. He may become the first president to ever imprison two whistlblowers in one term.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/05/25/whistleblowers
Obama’s war on whistleblowers has culminated in President Obama approving of the torture of an American citizen, Bradley Manning, for whistleblowing on illegal wars, war crimes, coverups, and other immoral government behavior.
Manning has not yet been convicted of any crime, but has been treated in a manner that experts say is torture and legal experts say is torture and illegal.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/04/11/manning/index.html
Candidate Obama on presidential war mongering:
The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
President Obama launches a secret war in Yemen without congressional approval and a public war against Libya without congressional approval.
In other areas:
Candidate Obama campaigned on a Public Option for health care reform. He called it a “Health Care Exchange”:
“any American will have the opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or an approved private plan, and income-based sliding scale tax credits will be provided for people and families who need it.”
President Obama secretly met with industry lobbyists and promised them there would be no Public Option. Two months later, President Obama is telling America that the Public Option is still on the table.
President Obama goes on to MOCK people who wanted the public option.
http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/09/17/obama-mocks-public-option-supporters/
Peace
Peace on Earth.
Good will to all.
Most days, this wish is something I try not to think about too much because it feels like we are so far away from it that it’s just too painful to think about.
But not today. Today I feel a little more hope than usual. Christmas makes peace feel possible.
Merry Christmas everyone.
May we all feel a little peace today.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repealed
On 18 December 2010, the US Senate passed a measure which would repeal the Don’t Ask,Don’t Tell policy in the military. The Secretary of Defense said the Pentagon will begin implementing the repeal immediately.
Prior to the repeal, the Pentagon did a study to predict what impact repeal would have. In a survey of nearly half a million servicemembers, 70% said repeal would be positive, mixed, or no consequences.
I think its a good thing to get rid of bigotry. I dont know if it was worth the 500 billion dollar tax cut for millionaires the Obama gave away in trade to win this. I think it shoukd have been possible to repeal this a lot cheaper. But if Obama has shown us anything about his presidency, he has made abundantly clear that he is no horse trader.
I get the impression that he would see an item at a yard sale for $1 and demand to pay $3 for it just on principle. But only if the seller also allows him to provide free advertising and a ride on air force one.
When I Use a Word Definitions Dont Matter
I ran across a blog discussing privilege. The thread started by. someone asking how to explain the concept of white male privilege to their white male boyfriend. I replied that privilege means a lot of different things to different people. And I said the strict definition would be a benefit the dominant class gets as a result of djscrimination that raises them above the equality waterline. The response?
“You’re boring.”
I guess diving into the nitty gritty of vocabulary can get boring. But they were asking for help for explaining a term to someone, so I sort of assumed that an exploration of meaning might occur at some point. But OK.
They also posted a thread here:
The thread talks about how a scene in Dr Who is ‘sexual assault’. I disagreed and pointed out the definition of assault and sexual assault didn’t match what was in the scene. Their response?
“The legal definition of anything is wholly irrelevant to this discussion”
I am not sure what ‘sexual assault’ means to a person if they think the legal meaning of the term is ‘wholly irrelevant’, but I assume discussing the issues of the world are a whole lot easier when you get to throw around words and phrases and ignore any rigid definition of your words.
And call any attempt to discuss those terms ‘boring’. And then ban anyone from commenting who posts a definiton you don’t like.
I really shouldn’t be surprised. There is no possible way for the idea of ‘privilege’ to evolve into an all things to all people definition without people like that. People who call definitions boring, who use terms with legal meanings but say the legal meaning is irrelevent, and who ban folks who post links to dictionary definitions of words.
There is no other way to have humpty dumpty usages of a phrase without individual humpty dumpties running around in the world.
I don’t why it surprises me every time I run into a real live Humpty Dumpty. But it does.
Bias Failure Modes
Many discussions of bias and discrimination fail because of a lack of awareness of the distiction between being and doing. Jay Smooth pointed out long ago to focus on the bias reflected on what a person says and does rather than attempting to say that the person IS a bigot. Focus on what they say/do, avoid commenting on who they ARE.
There has been a little bit of a flap on the internet because Charlie Stross ranted about a bunch of things he doesn’t lime about SteamPunk as a genre. This was essentially a behavior based complaint, in the form of ‘I don’t like steampunk stories that do this or do that.’ One complaint was that a lot of steampunk glosses over how brutal the world was during the industrial evolution, his much discrimination there was, and how steampunk glosses over that brutality. Basically the way i complain about how military fiction glossed over the realities of war, Stross was complaining about how a lot of steampunk glosses over the realities of the time era it places its stories in.
Stross’s rant generated somewhat of a kerfuffle. I am not going to attempt to categorize all the reasons people were disagreeing with Stross, but I do want to point out anecdotal evidence about one complaint I saw. Someone accused Charlie Stross of secretly writing his rant agai.st steampunk because the accuser assumed steampunk had more female authors than science fiction, and Stross was really trying to squeeze out female competition.
Stross wrote a rant saying he didn’t like what steampunk stories DO. Someone turned around and accused him of BEING sexist.
The flip side of this is that while it has become less socially acceptable to prejudge someone based on who they are (black, female, gay), there seems to be more social acceptance to judge a person on what they do.
Bigots might try to take their prejudice about who people ARE and attempt to repackage it as if it’s purely based on behavior. A racist might try to say that blacks are statistically more likely to be stopped by police as an attempt to say clacks behave differently (completely disregarding the existence of systemic racial profiling by police). Misogynysts might try to repackage their prejudice against who women ARE and try to cast it under the shadow of something women DO. Homophobed might try to claim their resistance to gay marriage has moving to do with who gay people are, but rather try to cast it in terms of something behavioral based. I recently saw someone attempt to justify opposition to gay marriage by attempting to redefine marriage as something really only for people intending to procreate children, and since gays can’t procreate in what would be their spouse, then they shouldn’t be allowed to marry.
And it occurred to me that this is two different sides of the same failure coin.
People fighting discrimination sometimes mistakenly takes what some does and turns it into a pro.ouncement of the kind of person they are.
And sometimes people try to take their discrimination based on who people ARE and try to camoflage or justify it as judging someone on what they DO.
In both situations, it’s a problem of failing to distinguish the fundamental difference between doing and being.
Rand Paul Supporter Stomps on Head of Woman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/25/rand-paul-supporter-stomps-head_n_773857.html
A supporter of the party whose slogan is essentially “Don’t Tread on Me” stomps on the head of a woman.
Visualizing empires decline
Happy Veterans Day
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To the veterans and their families, thank you.