Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Abbreviated “power outage during usual blogging time” edition.

To the extent that Barack Obama is expanding the nature and scope of America’s use of violence he is a much, much more lawless and bellicose president than his predecessor.

Marcy also linked to this by Jeremy Scahill on our ever expanding wars, while Justin Elliott had some additional links to news on the drone program.

I try to keep my focus on America because there’s more than enough to worry about here without having to look abroad. I’ve been keeping track of Israel’s flotilla raid just like everyone else, though, so I’ll pass along a couple of excellent posts from Glenn Greenwald, this from Spencer Ackerman, and from Tbogg’s place I saw this from Gilad Atzmon, which is one of the more provocative things I’ve read this year:

The fate of my great-grandmother was not any different from hundreds of thousands of German civilians who died in an orchestrated indiscriminate bombing, because they were Germans. Similarly, people in Hiroshima died just because they were Japanese. 1 million Vietnamese died just because they were Vietnamese and 1.3 million Iraqis died because they were Iraqis. In short the tragic circumstances of my great grandmother wasn’t that special after all.

Bob Goodwin would like you to default on your mortgage if it makes sense:

In many states mortgage loans are non-recourse. Never make another mortgage payment. Turn over the keys after foreclosure. You will lose all of your down payment, but the lender can never get another penny from you. Your credit score will fall. But you do not want any more credit. Right? If you are trying to quit crack, how would feel about your pusher reducing your crack score?

Prairie Weather pointed me to this post on the poor, poor mega rich.

Robert Stacy McCain (all emph. in orig.):

Certainly, I’m the last person on the planet to be screaming “raaaaacist” at other people, but it’s shocking enough that a Republican would use such language to describe President Obama. For a Republican to use it against a fellow Republican — Nikki Haley is a Christian of Sikh ancestry — is so wrong as to defy comprehension.

[snip]

Knotts has apologized and I don’t see any point in demonizing him, but I’m honestly shocked that any politician would go there. It’s unfathomably ignorant. Sikhs are not Muslim and they’re not Hindu.

[snip]

Which is to say that, while I don’t recommend use of “raghead” in political discourse, neither do I think it is always necessarily grounds for expulsion from polite society. Context matters.

• On the right, racism against a Republican is worse than racism against a Democrat. Its outrageousness is modified by the political orientation of the target.
• The revulsion towards unfathomable ignorance, if real, is definitely a recent development.
• Substitute “nigger” or “kike” for “raghead” in that last quote and ask yourself if either would be acceptable even among conservatives. Anti-Arab bigotry is entirely acceptable for reactionaries.
• Wingnuts have taken to spelling “racist” with lots of extra a’s, presumably as a way of ridiculing the perceived overuse of the word.
• Funny how much energy they spend talking about how racist they really aren’t. Do they not realize the “protests too much” quality of that?

Charles II on libertarians from the comments in one of Avedon’s posts:

Why is it surprising that we should agree with certain things that opponents believe? In the America I was raised in, it was possible for stalwart Republicans and die-hard Democrats to agree on the NEA, the NIH, PBS, the EPA, and so on. That’s how these things came to be!

So, I am not surprised to agree with Ron Paul on a number of things. He is still a loon. I am not surprised to disagree with Democrats on a number of things. With some exceptions, they are still non-loons. This loon v. non-loon has not changed from the days when Barry Goldwater, a far better civil libertarian than Lyndon Johnson, was still obviously not fit to be president. Why? Because he was a loon. Even if he did happen to agree with me on some things.

I WISH I COULD WRITE LIKE HTML Mencken:

Some wingnuts have principles enough to object to all welfare in the abstract sense. But the wild fluctuations in their blargometers is the giveaway to the fact that what they might find objectionable when given to rich people (for whom, by the way, it is never a necessity) is outright intolerable and deeply offensive when given to poor people (for whom it almost always is a necessity).