My slightly contrarian take here is that there's work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a 'moral' argument against animal consumption.
I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one 'moral' thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become 'immoral' some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.
Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here... and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms... in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming - having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).
The more interesting science, is around energy consumption... and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse... but GW isn't the point here... it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There's a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces... sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.
There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume...
My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem... and the moment we solve for energy, we've solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless... the point isn't really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.
In which case... dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)... is missing the moral intuition that it signals.
Yes. There's something predatory about providing a marketplace then scouring your marketplace for poachable items based on data/sales and then skewing the marketplace search to your poached items - harming your erstwhile partners/clients as competitors.
If the argument is that Amazon offers such a lucrative market that poaching is a cost of business... ok, I suppose. But if the argument is that Amazon is the only real market and going to business there is an open invitation to anti-competitive poaching which puts you out of business? Then it's a capitalism problem that capitalism warns us about.
The Amazon Marketplace model in these scenarios bears a slight resemblance to the practices CCP employs for access to their markets. I find it odd that we're all good with both.
Hard to say, really... when the sizable majority of your Profits come from a line of business delivering cloud services... it really isn't about being a Data Aggregator and Seller.
"Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant led by the now-future Amazon CEO, closed out 2020 with more than $13.5 billion in annual operating profits, responsible for more than 63% of the entire company's operating profits for the year, on annual AWS revenue of $45.3 billion, up nearly 30% year-over-year"
All the other low margin non-profitable stuff? Loss leads and market positioning.
Honestly, there's no earthly reason why Whole Foods and AWS are the same company... not even 'vertical integration' is in play. If we wanted to look at non-punitive 'trust-busting' we should break up Amazon into multiple wildly successful companies. Viva capitalism.
For Democrats, it's nice to pick-up increasing numbers of ex-Republican voters; it is less nice when those voters influence the Democrats in directions that make them look like ex-Republicans who switched Soc-Con platitudes for Soc-Lib platitudes.
We don't have a Middle political identity, we have a Middle anti-identity.
I don't know what comes next either; Rubio is interesting to watch because he's so beholden to the old-regime (money) that whenever he tries to straddle a normie/next-gen position he does so with such transparent strings being pulled that you can see how the rhetoric won't result in new policies... just a gloss on the old.
Sure... the GOP is dead, long live the GOP... that's the reality of a two-party Duopoly. I'm not making any sort of grand theory claim - certainly not for something so petty as a political party.
I do think it curious if someone were to think that belonging to the party of Goldwater was the same thing as the party of Trump... I'd say it's more like standing in a river... you can say your are in the Republican River, but the issues, people, and flow are totally different.
Some? Many? Most? don't necessarily notice the difference one year over the next... but after a while, all that's left is party affiliation and Some? Many? Most? realize the Party is or isn't what they think it ought to be.
Which is why I'm not predicting the end of the Republican Party... just that the shift is more likely to leave the Normies behind than bring them to the front in a 'corrective' move - because what's the Normie platform that ends the 'retaliation' (to borrow your term)?
In what way is 2021 Romney not another retaliation against Normies? Plus, there aren't slates of Normies lining up to contest the takeover... is Eric Cantor lining up to take back the seat he lost to Brat who lost it to a Democrat? I'd suggest that the defections against the normies pre-dates Trump... but Trump as the manifestation of the symptom doesn't make the symptoms go away when he leaves.
The Normies were the original problem... Trump is just a bad outcome.
I see this as the negative side of not being able to have 3rd parties.
The problem (as I see it) is that the 'normies' of the republican party a'la Romney are, in fact, the biggest losers... there's no returning to Romney. In fact, Romney has remade himself into an anti-Bain-anti-Capital-Romney.
New Romney wouldn't vote for Old Romney... but New Romney isn't a 'normie' Republican, but a New-as-yet-undisclosed-party Romney.
Does that make sense? The 'normie' Republicans really don't have a home because there isn't a party for them. And going back to the aughts would put them in the political wilderness of a head with no body. There isn't a slate of normies that would stem the tide... a slate of 'Chamber-of-Commerce" normies would probably escalate the rout.
Yeah... if it continues, it's the birth of a third party. What's weird and confusing is that the 'new' party is called Republican and the old party is 'other' or 'not-Republican' - so far, at least.
Otherwise it is following similar patterns where the new party poaches chunks of the old party while old party struggles to re-define or re-align.
In the end, the new-party causes the old party to lose and lose bigly until the realignment crosses over. It's sort-of why we don't get 3rd parties... which is the undertone of the post. A lament. I see it as nature healing.
Currently sitting #52,118 in the queue for Path of Exile 3.14 league... most of my work, work is done... almost time to get to work on my Arc league starter build and see what the gods of 'Ultimatum' drop.
Weekend is supposed to be 50's and overcast... boo... was hoping to sit outside a bit... will have to settle for pasture/woods work.
Speaking of reunions, we did finish planning a trip to visit my folks in FL in August... and it looks like the other siblings will all be able to join for a weekend... we're all getting adjacent VRBO condo's on the beach. So we've got that to look forward to. And just to spite twitter, I've booked travel by TRAIN. TRAIN I tell you!
Yes on the Bush campaign rhetoric, but no... the Neo-cons had a deathgrip on the foreign policy apparatus in the Republican Party since Bush I left office. They had a very strong presence during Reagan (and Bush I), but there were some dissenting players with juice. Not so much by 2000.
I realize after I hit post that it was much too long and rambling for a comment and much too short and ill-prepared for a post... so any failure to articulate what I was going after is my fault.
However, even though I post pseudonymously I really do have advanced degrees in Foreign Relations and in History... so my interest in this is, as I state, academic and not partisan. I think your comment suffers more for it than mine.
I fully acknowledge, and it's in the post clearly (I thought) that the Bush Doctrine is indistinguishable from a Cheney/Neo-Con doctrine right quick. There is, however an analysis gap between Afghanistan and Iraq - which you are quick to skip because you want to get to the Iraq blunder while I'm contemplating the fleeting moment when we entered Afghanistan as we exit Afghanistan (TBD) -- a moment where the Internationalist/Police model was being sundered and hadn't yet been replaced. You specifically state I'm justifying sentiments in 2003... but the period I'm talking about is 2001/2002 based on the original Ultimatum to Afghanistan (from wikipedia for reference) and prior to the first official formulation of the Bush Doctrine in Sept 2002 which set the stage for the Iraq invasion in 2003:
---
On 20 September 2001, the U.S. stated that Osama bin Laden was behind the 11 September attacks in 2001. The US made a five-point ultimatum to the Taliban:[41]
*Deliver to the U.S. all of the leaders of al-Qaeda
*Release all imprisoned foreign nationals
*Close immediately every terrorist training camp
*Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities
*Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection
On 21 September 2001, the Taliban rejected this ultimatum, stating there was no evidence in their possession linking bin Laden to the 11 September attacks.
---
There were boots on the ground and airstrikes in October 2001. Unanimous UN Security council Resolutions in Nov 2001 (#1378) and a UN/Nato Security presence (#1386) by Dec 2001.
The Bush Doctrine as we know it is what you say... it's what *I* say: "the more aggressive doctrine of Pre-Emption and Regime Change tied to Strategic Global interests." My point, perhaps not communicated well in a comment, or perhaps not well apprehended by you with your partisan dander up... is that the movement from one dominant framework to the next was not foreordained and was shaped on the fly. Ultimately the opportunity was maximalized by the Neo-Con faction into their image. They won.
I do guarantee, however, that dissertations will be written about that move... it's interesting... it's interesting to see how Bush is (mis-)remembering it, because he's remembering it more like Afghanistan than Iraq.
I honestly can't say whether the Ultimatum and whatever was happening between 2001 and 2003 would have been better than what we got because we never stopped and assessed... and whatever started in 2001 became 2003 and Iraq... which in turn became the new and enduring Afghanistan policy...which is what we're laboring under after various iterations 20-yrs later.
So you and I both agree (and have agreed here in the past) that what has been the dominant framework since 2003 is a bad framework...
Next up, we can wonder what would have happened if we hadn't ridden a boozy Yeltsin to Nato Expansion and Oligarchic Orgies.
There's a future PhD to earn his wings on the (swift) evolution of the Bush Doctrine under the influence of Cheney and the NeoCons. I remember the original formulation (being once a student of these things) and it was a pretty radical departure from the Clintonian Terrorists and Criminals structure. In Bush's own memoires, he articulates it thus:
"Make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them — and hold both to account."
To be sure, this is a significant departure (and much debatable, if desired), but in itself might have provided a good framework to pressure some states with financial, economic, and ultimately military sanctions lest they themselves participated in the suppression of the organizations waging asymmetcial war from within their borders. Doubtless the reaction of the state itself would drive responses... it isn't simply carte blanche for pre-emptive war/invasion.
It hinges too on the challenges/restraint of identifying the right organizations (and the proliferation post-9/11 suggests we were going to fail in this area) and the targeted deterrence of costly military or economic actions directed at the state until it agreed that the sub-group was not worth the cost.
Afghanistan could have been a test-case and possible triumph of demonstrating the dangers of hiding groups that it could not control and/or quickly disabusing the legal fiction that a state could hide behind a pretense of criminal proceedings against individuals as per the prevailing international opinion at the time.
Not without legitimate criticisms and concerns... but, possibly a framework to navigate out of the 'Criminal Mastermind / State Plausible Deniability' framework that international law was operating under. And to be sure, opening up new risks of operating under the dangers posed by 'collective guilt' and 'lack of proportionality' in any potential response.
However, it would have had baked into it a minimal requirement for self-defence in that absent an actual action, it wasn't simple Pre-emptive justification for anything based on prefabricated nonsense. In theory. If, say, the Powel/Rice faction had prevailed and adapted.
The Powel/Rice faction did not prevail (I'm not sure if they adapted... that would be the role of the PhD candidate to suss out once all the documents are available)... and we know that the initial 'doctrine' became the much more aggressive doctrine of Pre-Emption and Regime Change tied to Strategic Global interests -- which (pre-)determined the targets rather than responding to actual threats or actual provocations.
Afghanistan, therefore, is not the test-case of the original Bush Doctrine, but of the Bush Doctrine his administration evolved into. And we can judge it to have failed in all of it's stated objectives.
The way forward shouldn't be the Neo-Con Bush Doctrine, I'm not sure its a return to the (mere) criminalization of terrorism, I doubt we've the stomach for true imperialism, but sometimes I wonder if a restrained realism that co-opted or opted-in certain states might not be a better starting point.
So now we exit, having 'won' in the short term by inflicting substantial costs on the Taliban for prevaricating and harboring bin Laden, but having 'lost' for failing in regime change and providing a foil against which the Taliban could rebuild. Does a destabilized Taliban rebuild? Perhaps. Does it seek revenge knowing that plausible deniability is no shield? I suspect not. Is it in a position to execute any frontal retribution? No. Power has its own rewards... and destroying those rewards and forcing a rebuild carries its own rhetorical power. Just ask Gaddafi.
Sure, I could be persuaded to support proportional at the state level... especially with appropriate openings for lower threshold third parties.
A possible downside I'd consider real would be disassociating representatives from any particular constituency (other than state)... possibly a hybrid geography plus at large (for smoothing and 3rd parties -- for states with enough districts) might assuage my concerns.
But my point remains that 'bespoke' gerrymandering by commission is still gerrymandering (who picks the pickers?)... it's the rules, the algorithm, that needs general agreement. Which is why I keep linking to 538 because it visually illustrates that the order of our preference for the rules will determine the outcome.
Cards on the table, I'm in favor of redistricting changes... preferably starting with the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929... but ultimately we have to build consensus around one particular algorithmic standard that is applied consistently... not the "its not gerrymandering if we have a select committee gerrymander one way in this state, but another way in that state."
The fact that the 538 tool hasn't been updated since 2018 seems to me to be a signal that coming up with an agreed upon framework for *not* gerrymandering is probably not a very high concern for 538 policy influencers.
I kinda like Highly competitive... but we all know that's a dead-letter since the last thing congress wants is competition.
My second favorite would be Compact (I could go either with or without counties, but would start with counties)
Pretty much ends majority minority districts... unless that's your specific pick. Then, well, we're making a particular case in *favor* of gerrymandering.
Sure, but I think that's more of a discussion around what to do when most, if not all, adults are vaccinated. Another area where the CDC/FDA seem to be failing the 'psychology' test.
My guess is that the Biden-Harris administration has already signaled that it will curb-stomp the CDC come July 4 no matter where we are on vaccinations... or put another way, with approx 50% of the 18+ adult population already receiving 1-dose we're already at the point where Biden will declare victory on July 4. The interesting question is where the final 18+ number lands... and whether it gets extended to 16+ or 12+.
My political bet is that Biden ignores the Covid-Hawks starting July 4.
If I'm following you correctly, it seems we are nearing a point at which the risk of 'overwhelming' the health system is or nearly is past. That's a thing, but not the only thing.
My point (below) is that the FDA and CDC have publicly stated that they are attempting to navigate the 'psychology' of vaccinations, and honestly, they aren't really that good at it... and that aspect of Public Health leadership is political not strictly bureaucratic in nature.
The fact that you are using the term 'questionable vaccine' based on this data is sort of the point. Unless we want to start using the term 'questionable birth control' too. Or questionable every drug on TV that quite literally posts all of the nasty and potentially fatal side-effects on the screen.
On “A Beef: No, Joe Biden Is Not Going To Take Away Your Burgers”
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.5b01614
"
double link mod situation, if you will.
"
My slightly contrarian take here is that there's work being done under the cover of Global Warming to prepare the ground for a 'moral' argument against animal consumption.
I remember eons ago there was a thread here where everyone was asked to state what the one 'moral' thing we believe now (at an individual participatory level) will become 'immoral' some time in the future. For comity (and because we all know it to be true) no-one was allowed to moot Abortion.
Eating Meat is (IMO) the obvious choice here... and these are the opening moves for framing it in moral terms... in this case, the higher morality of Global Warming - having failed to move our moral intuitions grounded in our appetites (which otherwise reign supreme).
The more interesting science, is around energy consumption... and the full impact of heating water, creating sugars, digesting them, distributing them, fighting the bacteria, etc. that would go into this process. Initial reviews suggest that the costs vis-a-vis Global Warming may be worse... but GW isn't the point here... it really is the moral argument. And attaching a desired goal, reduced (or no) animal slaughter to a moral imperative that is already accepted by a certain tribe. There's a chance that our pursuit of this goal requires far more energy than it replaces... sort of like Bitcoin offsetting the gains of solar power.
There are, of course, secondary and tertiary issues like the benefits of pasture, animals in the ecosystem, the unknown unknowns of micro nutrients (good and bad) and how they are delivered via cultured meat. The thing we overlook is that ruminants translate sunlight miraculously via inedible cellulose into energy we consume...
My deeply held contrarian position is that cultured meat is an Energy problem... and the moment we solve for energy, we've solved for greenhouse gasses making the matter irrelevant. Unless... the point isn't really about solving the energy problem or Green House Gasses at all.
In which case... dragging a silly Republican Response (but I repeat myself)... is missing the moral intuition that it signals.
"
Rare, these days.
On “Anti-Capitalism Never Made Much Sense”
Yes. There's something predatory about providing a marketplace then scouring your marketplace for poachable items based on data/sales and then skewing the marketplace search to your poached items - harming your erstwhile partners/clients as competitors.
If the argument is that Amazon offers such a lucrative market that poaching is a cost of business... ok, I suppose. But if the argument is that Amazon is the only real market and going to business there is an open invitation to anti-competitive poaching which puts you out of business? Then it's a capitalism problem that capitalism warns us about.
The Amazon Marketplace model in these scenarios bears a slight resemblance to the practices CCP employs for access to their markets. I find it odd that we're all good with both.
"
Hard to say, really... when the sizable majority of your Profits come from a line of business delivering cloud services... it really isn't about being a Data Aggregator and Seller.
"Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing giant led by the now-future Amazon CEO, closed out 2020 with more than $13.5 billion in annual operating profits, responsible for more than 63% of the entire company's operating profits for the year, on annual AWS revenue of $45.3 billion, up nearly 30% year-over-year"
All the other low margin non-profitable stuff? Loss leads and market positioning.
Honestly, there's no earthly reason why Whole Foods and AWS are the same company... not even 'vertical integration' is in play. If we wanted to look at non-punitive 'trust-busting' we should break up Amazon into multiple wildly successful companies. Viva capitalism.
On “MAGA Civil War Breaks Out In Georgia”
For Democrats, it's nice to pick-up increasing numbers of ex-Republican voters; it is less nice when those voters influence the Democrats in directions that make them look like ex-Republicans who switched Soc-Con platitudes for Soc-Lib platitudes.
We don't have a Middle political identity, we have a Middle anti-identity.
"
I don't know what comes next either; Rubio is interesting to watch because he's so beholden to the old-regime (money) that whenever he tries to straddle a normie/next-gen position he does so with such transparent strings being pulled that you can see how the rhetoric won't result in new policies... just a gloss on the old.
"
Sure... the GOP is dead, long live the GOP... that's the reality of a two-party Duopoly. I'm not making any sort of grand theory claim - certainly not for something so petty as a political party.
I do think it curious if someone were to think that belonging to the party of Goldwater was the same thing as the party of Trump... I'd say it's more like standing in a river... you can say your are in the Republican River, but the issues, people, and flow are totally different.
Some? Many? Most? don't necessarily notice the difference one year over the next... but after a while, all that's left is party affiliation and Some? Many? Most? realize the Party is or isn't what they think it ought to be.
Which is why I'm not predicting the end of the Republican Party... just that the shift is more likely to leave the Normies behind than bring them to the front in a 'corrective' move - because what's the Normie platform that ends the 'retaliation' (to borrow your term)?
In what way is 2021 Romney not another retaliation against Normies? Plus, there aren't slates of Normies lining up to contest the takeover... is Eric Cantor lining up to take back the seat he lost to Brat who lost it to a Democrat? I'd suggest that the defections against the normies pre-dates Trump... but Trump as the manifestation of the symptom doesn't make the symptoms go away when he leaves.
The Normies were the original problem... Trump is just a bad outcome.
"
I see this as the negative side of not being able to have 3rd parties.
The problem (as I see it) is that the 'normies' of the republican party a'la Romney are, in fact, the biggest losers... there's no returning to Romney. In fact, Romney has remade himself into an anti-Bain-anti-Capital-Romney.
New Romney wouldn't vote for Old Romney... but New Romney isn't a 'normie' Republican, but a New-as-yet-undisclosed-party Romney.
Does that make sense? The 'normie' Republicans really don't have a home because there isn't a party for them. And going back to the aughts would put them in the political wilderness of a head with no body. There isn't a slate of normies that would stem the tide... a slate of 'Chamber-of-Commerce" normies would probably escalate the rout.
"
Yeah... if it continues, it's the birth of a third party. What's weird and confusing is that the 'new' party is called Republican and the old party is 'other' or 'not-Republican' - so far, at least.
Otherwise it is following similar patterns where the new party poaches chunks of the old party while old party struggles to re-define or re-align.
In the end, the new-party causes the old party to lose and lose bigly until the realignment crosses over. It's sort-of why we don't get 3rd parties... which is the undertone of the post. A lament. I see it as nature healing.
On “Weekend Plans Post: The High School Reunion (Invite Version)”
Currently sitting #52,118 in the queue for Path of Exile 3.14 league... most of my work, work is done... almost time to get to work on my Arc league starter build and see what the gods of 'Ultimatum' drop.
Weekend is supposed to be 50's and overcast... boo... was hoping to sit outside a bit... will have to settle for pasture/woods work.
Speaking of reunions, we did finish planning a trip to visit my folks in FL in August... and it looks like the other siblings will all be able to join for a weekend... we're all getting adjacent VRBO condo's on the beach. So we've got that to look forward to. And just to spite twitter, I've booked travel by TRAIN. TRAIN I tell you!
On “President Biden Sets Date For Afghanistan Exit, For Real This Time, Supposedly”
Hey, you have your dissertation fantasies and I have mine.
"
Yes on the Bush campaign rhetoric, but no... the Neo-cons had a deathgrip on the foreign policy apparatus in the Republican Party since Bush I left office. They had a very strong presence during Reagan (and Bush I), but there were some dissenting players with juice. Not so much by 2000.
"
I realize after I hit post that it was much too long and rambling for a comment and much too short and ill-prepared for a post... so any failure to articulate what I was going after is my fault.
However, even though I post pseudonymously I really do have advanced degrees in Foreign Relations and in History... so my interest in this is, as I state, academic and not partisan. I think your comment suffers more for it than mine.
I fully acknowledge, and it's in the post clearly (I thought) that the Bush Doctrine is indistinguishable from a Cheney/Neo-Con doctrine right quick. There is, however an analysis gap between Afghanistan and Iraq - which you are quick to skip because you want to get to the Iraq blunder while I'm contemplating the fleeting moment when we entered Afghanistan as we exit Afghanistan (TBD) -- a moment where the Internationalist/Police model was being sundered and hadn't yet been replaced. You specifically state I'm justifying sentiments in 2003... but the period I'm talking about is 2001/2002 based on the original Ultimatum to Afghanistan (from wikipedia for reference) and prior to the first official formulation of the Bush Doctrine in Sept 2002 which set the stage for the Iraq invasion in 2003:
---
On 20 September 2001, the U.S. stated that Osama bin Laden was behind the 11 September attacks in 2001. The US made a five-point ultimatum to the Taliban:[41]
*Deliver to the U.S. all of the leaders of al-Qaeda
*Release all imprisoned foreign nationals
*Close immediately every terrorist training camp
*Hand over every terrorist and their supporters to appropriate authorities
*Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps for inspection
On 21 September 2001, the Taliban rejected this ultimatum, stating there was no evidence in their possession linking bin Laden to the 11 September attacks.
---
There were boots on the ground and airstrikes in October 2001. Unanimous UN Security council Resolutions in Nov 2001 (#1378) and a UN/Nato Security presence (#1386) by Dec 2001.
The Bush Doctrine as we know it is what you say... it's what *I* say: "the more aggressive doctrine of Pre-Emption and Regime Change tied to Strategic Global interests." My point, perhaps not communicated well in a comment, or perhaps not well apprehended by you with your partisan dander up... is that the movement from one dominant framework to the next was not foreordained and was shaped on the fly. Ultimately the opportunity was maximalized by the Neo-Con faction into their image. They won.
I do guarantee, however, that dissertations will be written about that move... it's interesting... it's interesting to see how Bush is (mis-)remembering it, because he's remembering it more like Afghanistan than Iraq.
I honestly can't say whether the Ultimatum and whatever was happening between 2001 and 2003 would have been better than what we got because we never stopped and assessed... and whatever started in 2001 became 2003 and Iraq... which in turn became the new and enduring Afghanistan policy...which is what we're laboring under after various iterations 20-yrs later.
So you and I both agree (and have agreed here in the past) that what has been the dominant framework since 2003 is a bad framework...
Next up, we can wonder what would have happened if we hadn't ridden a boozy Yeltsin to Nato Expansion and Oligarchic Orgies.
On “Stacey Abrams’s Big Lie Has Real Consequences”
It would make it harder, sure. :-)
But my starting point would be lowest populated State as the baseline... so ~500k for Wyoming is the district sizing metric.
Approx 650 congressional districts plus 100 Sentate... so 750 (or 753 if we deal with DC as now).
377 to win is the new Presidential slogan.
On “President Biden Sets Date For Afghanistan Exit, For Real This Time, Supposedly”
There's a future PhD to earn his wings on the (swift) evolution of the Bush Doctrine under the influence of Cheney and the NeoCons. I remember the original formulation (being once a student of these things) and it was a pretty radical departure from the Clintonian Terrorists and Criminals structure. In Bush's own memoires, he articulates it thus:
"Make no distinction between terrorists and the nations that harbor them — and hold both to account."
To be sure, this is a significant departure (and much debatable, if desired), but in itself might have provided a good framework to pressure some states with financial, economic, and ultimately military sanctions lest they themselves participated in the suppression of the organizations waging asymmetcial war from within their borders. Doubtless the reaction of the state itself would drive responses... it isn't simply carte blanche for pre-emptive war/invasion.
It hinges too on the challenges/restraint of identifying the right organizations (and the proliferation post-9/11 suggests we were going to fail in this area) and the targeted deterrence of costly military or economic actions directed at the state until it agreed that the sub-group was not worth the cost.
Afghanistan could have been a test-case and possible triumph of demonstrating the dangers of hiding groups that it could not control and/or quickly disabusing the legal fiction that a state could hide behind a pretense of criminal proceedings against individuals as per the prevailing international opinion at the time.
Not without legitimate criticisms and concerns... but, possibly a framework to navigate out of the 'Criminal Mastermind / State Plausible Deniability' framework that international law was operating under. And to be sure, opening up new risks of operating under the dangers posed by 'collective guilt' and 'lack of proportionality' in any potential response.
However, it would have had baked into it a minimal requirement for self-defence in that absent an actual action, it wasn't simple Pre-emptive justification for anything based on prefabricated nonsense. In theory. If, say, the Powel/Rice faction had prevailed and adapted.
The Powel/Rice faction did not prevail (I'm not sure if they adapted... that would be the role of the PhD candidate to suss out once all the documents are available)... and we know that the initial 'doctrine' became the much more aggressive doctrine of Pre-Emption and Regime Change tied to Strategic Global interests -- which (pre-)determined the targets rather than responding to actual threats or actual provocations.
Afghanistan, therefore, is not the test-case of the original Bush Doctrine, but of the Bush Doctrine his administration evolved into. And we can judge it to have failed in all of it's stated objectives.
The way forward shouldn't be the Neo-Con Bush Doctrine, I'm not sure its a return to the (mere) criminalization of terrorism, I doubt we've the stomach for true imperialism, but sometimes I wonder if a restrained realism that co-opted or opted-in certain states might not be a better starting point.
So now we exit, having 'won' in the short term by inflicting substantial costs on the Taliban for prevaricating and harboring bin Laden, but having 'lost' for failing in regime change and providing a foil against which the Taliban could rebuild. Does a destabilized Taliban rebuild? Perhaps. Does it seek revenge knowing that plausible deniability is no shield? I suspect not. Is it in a position to execute any frontal retribution? No. Power has its own rewards... and destroying those rewards and forcing a rebuild carries its own rhetorical power. Just ask Gaddafi.
On “Stacey Abrams’s Big Lie Has Real Consequences”
Sure, I could be persuaded to support proportional at the state level... especially with appropriate openings for lower threshold third parties.
A possible downside I'd consider real would be disassociating representatives from any particular constituency (other than state)... possibly a hybrid geography plus at large (for smoothing and 3rd parties -- for states with enough districts) might assuage my concerns.
But my point remains that 'bespoke' gerrymandering by commission is still gerrymandering (who picks the pickers?)... it's the rules, the algorithm, that needs general agreement. Which is why I keep linking to 538 because it visually illustrates that the order of our preference for the rules will determine the outcome.
On “The Caron Nazario Video: Watch It For Yourself”
decentralized fascism.
On “Stacey Abrams’s Big Lie Has Real Consequences”
Cards on the table, I'm in favor of redistricting changes... preferably starting with the Permanent Apportionment Act of 1929... but ultimately we have to build consensus around one particular algorithmic standard that is applied consistently... not the "its not gerrymandering if we have a select committee gerrymander one way in this state, but another way in that state."
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What does that even mean? Honest question.
What's the best way to build districts? Here's the 538 Tool from 2018.
The fact that the 538 tool hasn't been updated since 2018 seems to me to be a signal that coming up with an agreed upon framework for *not* gerrymandering is probably not a very high concern for 538 policy influencers.
I kinda like Highly competitive... but we all know that's a dead-letter since the last thing congress wants is competition.
My second favorite would be Compact (I could go either with or without counties, but would start with counties)
Pretty much ends majority minority districts... unless that's your specific pick. Then, well, we're making a particular case in *favor* of gerrymandering.
On “CDC and FDA Against Johnson & Johnson Vaccine”
Mostly social, I'd expect. Plus, signaling the end of political cover for Covid-Hawks.
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Sure, but I think that's more of a discussion around what to do when most, if not all, adults are vaccinated. Another area where the CDC/FDA seem to be failing the 'psychology' test.
My guess is that the Biden-Harris administration has already signaled that it will curb-stomp the CDC come July 4 no matter where we are on vaccinations... or put another way, with approx 50% of the 18+ adult population already receiving 1-dose we're already at the point where Biden will declare victory on July 4. The interesting question is where the final 18+ number lands... and whether it gets extended to 16+ or 12+.
My political bet is that Biden ignores the Covid-Hawks starting July 4.
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If I'm following you correctly, it seems we are nearing a point at which the risk of 'overwhelming' the health system is or nearly is past. That's a thing, but not the only thing.
My point (below) is that the FDA and CDC have publicly stated that they are attempting to navigate the 'psychology' of vaccinations, and honestly, they aren't really that good at it... and that aspect of Public Health leadership is political not strictly bureaucratic in nature.
The fact that you are using the term 'questionable vaccine' based on this data is sort of the point. Unless we want to start using the term 'questionable birth control' too. Or questionable every drug on TV that quite literally posts all of the nasty and potentially fatal side-effects on the screen.
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Our post-Liberal, post-Christian, post-Science future beckons. Once you get a taste for killing gods, there's no real stopping.