Twitter Roundup for July 31st

From my daily tweets. Ugh, did I actually just say that?

Burmese generals can't contain the democracy movement.

Organic farming is a load of crap.

Some Blue on Blue violence regarding healthcare.

7 countries mad at Obama.

North Korean government purges undesirable officials.

Fast food introduced to North Korea.

Afghanistan, what are we going to do with you?

Scary cults out of New York.

Why a dog isn't this man's best friend.

Speaking of Burma.

Why human rights are not a joke.

Organic foodists respond to "load of crap" comment.

Birtherism: Understanding these crazy people.

I think I just wasted my whole day.

The Case for Israel Documentary

For the Israeli perspective.


I don't know when I'll get around to seeing it, being that I have to buy it, yet it looks very interesting.

Natan Sharansky makes an appearance in the documentary, author of such books as the refusenik memoir Fear No Evil and The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. Both are great books (though The Case for Democracy is a bit dated for 2009). He recently came out with a new book called Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy, a book which I have not read.

Living Wage?

John Stossel has an article on the living wage and its flaws.

The media are never better at displaying their economic illiteracy than when they report on the minimum wage.

"Workers got a raise on Friday when the federal minimum wage was hiked 70 cents to $7.25 an hour," the Christian Science Monitor reported last week. "They'll be shouting, "Olé!"

They assume that if politicians declare that workers should get a raise, they will actually get it. But the idea that government can increase wages by decree with only good consequences rests on a serious economic fallacy: that employers set wages arbitrarily. If wages are very low, it must be that employers are stingy.

Actually, employers are stingy; they want to pay workers as little as possible, just as workers want to be paid as much as possible. But in a market—even a government-hampered market like ours—employers' wishes are tempered by the reality of competition. So even if an employer wants to pay workers who produce, say, $4 worth of value an hour only $2 an hour, he won't be able to. Someone else will hire them away for $3 or more.

I've actually been in favor of the living wage for quite sometime (not a major advocate or anything)*. It is hard to live on a wage that is too low. There are many people who are working minimum wage who aren't entry-level, the job they are working is permanent for them. So how about using age to determine the wage? For people under 21 (or 18 if you want to go lower) there is no minimum wage, for those over the age of 21, there is an appropriate wage. Seems like a good compromise to me. No?

*Update: For raising the minimum wage more so than getting a living wage.

Dead Weather Again

The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother

Bringing back cool.

Interventionism Dead?

Slate article on the end of interventionism.

Consider the failure in Darfur—which I have already written about here twice. Consider Zimbabwe, where dictator Robert Mugabe has made a mockery of international disapproval, demands, and even assistance. Consider Iran, a country where election fraud was condemned and people took to the streets, all to no avail. In these three cases—and many others—the international community has offered little more than soothing words and hollow statements. What's more, it has not even felt the need to mourn its inability to turn words into action. President Barack Obama was hailed for being opaque in the case of Iran, and his liberal supporters, who care intensely about Darfur, stayed mum when the new president made no detectable progress on this issue.

In this new world, caution is more important than intervention. What some have described as Obama's "cult of pragmatism" is really a nice way of saying that Americans no longer have a taste for intervention. And without American leadership, there will be none.

There needs to be hesitance with using force, yet when force is needed, where will we stand? How will we be judged on Darfur a decade from now? If genocide is not worth an intervention anymore, what is? Are we back to solely intervening for national interest? The world is not our "playground," yet our military can still be a force for good.

Interventionism: Sleeping for now, or dead for good?

Update 1: Be sure to check out But I am a Liberal! He came across the same article. You might also like this post by Roland on Iraq and interventionism.

Update 2: Be sure to also read TNC and his take on this subject.

A Serious Man Trailer

Coen Brothers.

Takes place in St. Louis Park, MN. A city I lived in for a couple of years.

I just hope it's better than Burn After Reading, a movie I really disliked.

Russia: The Human Rights Situation

Article on the human rights situation in Russia.

Russia's new president is trying to show the world a more liberal face, but the body count of murdered human rights activists keeps rising. Being a political critic in Russia is getting more dangerous by the day, and now one prominent human rights organization in Chechnya has decided to close its office.

Yet another Russian human rights activist has been silenced in yet another brutal attack. This week unknown gunmen shot anti-corruption activist Albert Pchelintsev in the mouth with rubber bullets, in front of his apartment in the Moscow suburb of Khimki. The 38 year old was seriously wounded in the lower face and jaw but survived the attack.
...
In May, Amnesty International released a study, "Rule without Law: Human Rights Violations in the Northern Caucasus," which said that freedom of the press and freedom of opinion were restricted in the region. Minorities, such as the gay and lesbian community, were oppressed and ethnic minorities were being harassed by right-wing extremists. And rather than being independent, the justice system -- which was perilous and untrustworthy anyway -- was simply an adjunct of state power. Arbitrary killings, torture and "disappearances" were everday occurrences.

Not good.

Attack of the Killer Robots

Here is a roundup of robot related articles by Reason's Hit & Run.

The scariest/funniest one.

Sign The First: We learn that the gub'mint is developing a robot capable of refueling by eating human corpse "biomass" scattered on the battlefield. Then, the robot's designer issues a non-denial denial, failing to show that the robots aren't capable of eating flesh and simply claiming that they aren't intended to do so:

RTI’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips—small, plant-based items for which RTI’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.

Does anyone believe that, once the robots gain sentience, the Geneva Conventions will even be worth the consumable biomass upon which they are printed?

Damn human flesh eating robots! Ha.

I Already Feel Old

100 Things Your Kids May Never Know by Wired.com

Some highlights of those that apply to me:

Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.

Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo.

Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.

Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.

Rotary-dial telephones.

That there was a time before ‘reality TV.’

Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.

Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.

Pay phones.

Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.

Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.

Finding books in a card catalog at the library.

The rotary-dial telephone is something I really remember when I was a kid. I loved playing with the phone, listening to the noise it made while I spinned the dial.

I also saw the evolution of video games from NES to whatever we have now. One of my favorite games when I was younger was Jurassic Park for Sega Genesis.


Source: Instapundit

Music for Monday

Mando Diao - Gloria



Awesome song. Awesome music video.

When Evil Means Evil

What is evil anyways? During the Bush years, this term was thrown around a lot and often mocked by, well, nearly everyone. It produces an image of a bogeyman, Satan personified, something so wicked you couldn't attach it to any state or person. So when the “Axis of Evil” list came out, I laughed. The list had “bogeymen” on it that were supposed to be feared and despised. Yet it didn't work. To me at the time, it was equivalent to the James Bond organization SPECTRE, something that could easily be made into a caricature. The media scorned Bush and Jon Stewart of The Daily Show made fun of the description. Hitler was dead, people responded, the “true” evil figure, and these were just people and states the U.S. hated.

Yet is the term not accurate in describing the actions committed by these “Axis of Evil” members? Are acts of genocide not evil? Is mass murder not evil? Whether the term “evil” is appropriate or not does not take away from the fact that state sponsored killing is wrong.

This brings me to this article on North Korea, where mentally and physically disabled people are being horrifically murdered in the name of Kim Jong-Il’s biological and chemical weapons program.

But among the accounts they carried with them is one of the most shocking yet to emerge -- namely the use of humans, specifically mentally or physically handicapped children, to test North Korea's biological and chemical weapons.

"If you are born mentally or physically deficient, says Im, the government says your best contribution to society... is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing."

Even after settling into the relative safety of South Korea, for 10 years Im held on to this secret, saying it was too horrific to recount.

What are we to draw from this? Is this not…evil?

I recently watched a speech by Christopher Hitchens on this subject, which got me thinking about descriptions of “Evil” and whether or not the term should be used to describe state and non-state actors.
Here is an excerpt:

What do you think?

Source for North Korean article: Hot Air

Seven Things I Love

I've been tagged by The New Centrist.

1. Being alive. Because if I was dead, that would be pretty shitty.

2. Living in a liberal democracy. If I was born in Iran, I know I would be severely depressed.

3. Film. I love it. I wish I had money and time to not only write screenplays but to direct films.

4. Music. The Black Keys, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Duke Spirit. Talk about awesome.

5. Politics.

6. Debate.

7. Family. This should not be last on the list. I am just going to claim no particular order.

Seven Others:
E. M. Zanotti (who I doubt reads my blog).
My list is very short.

The Wanted: A Service to Humanity? ...Or Not?*

I came across a new show, and I think everyone should watch it.

Cheers to NBC.

*Update 7/25/09: Maybe I should take that "Cheers" back. Here is one take of the show, that it is "dangerous."

Service, disservice, you decide.

Shock: Obama is Acting Like a Politician

President Obama won't reveal a list of health-care industry executives he met in private.

Well, at least it's bipartisan.

The still sort-of-new Barack Obama Democratic administration has again adopted another policy straight out of the administration of his much-criticized Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

Obama administration officials have rejected a watchdog group's request for a list of healthcare industry executives who've been meeting secretly in the White House with Obama staffers to discuss healthcare changes being drafted there and in Congress.

According to the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which is suspicious of the influence of health industry lobbyists and company officers, it received a letter from the Secret Service citing an Obama Justice Department directive and denying access to visitor logs under the "presidential communications privilege."

This is something I talked about in the past, before he was elected. This is how politicians operate.

Should Obama release the names? Sure, why not. Should we be worried about health-care industry executives meeting Obama? No. They have a voice in this health-care debate too.

Update 7/23/09: Hey, pressure works. Some still say it doesn't go far enough.

Chavez and Kin

Article on the power of the Chavez family in Venezuela.

Barinas offers a unique microcosm of Mr. Chávez’s rule. Many poor residents still revere the president, born here into poverty in 1954. But polarization in Barinas is growing more severe, with others chafing at his newly prosperous parents and siblings, who have governed the state since the 1990s. While Barinas is a laboratory for projects like land reform, urgent problems like violent crime go unmentioned in the many billboards here extolling the Chávez family’s ascendancy.

While nepotism is nothing new to Latin America, where it is rampant, this article reminds me of the Castro family, who unsurprisingly have a large stake in the political affairs of Cuba.

Source: Hot Air

Will Protectionism Save Us?

No.

A Reminder to All

Foreign Policy Magazine looks at the most repressive places to live in the world.

North Korea

North Koreans enjoy the lowest level of freedom in the world, according to Freedom House. All power is held by Kim Jong Il, who assumed power in 1994 upon the death of his father, North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung, whose statue in Pyongyang is shown above. The regime maintains a network of prison camps in which thousands of political prisoners are subjected to brutal conditions. All facets of a person's life -- including employment, education, place of residence, access to medical facilities, and access to stores -- are determined by a semihereditary system of social discrimination that classifies citizens into 53 subgroups under broad security ratings (from "core" to "wavering" to "hostile") based on their family's perceived loyalty to the regime.

It's sadly a long list.

Source: Reason's Hit & Run

Errol Morris on McNamara

Errol Morris talks about Robert McNamara, who recently died.

HOW should we remember Robert McNamara? As an engaged public servant who participated in some of the most important decisions of the 20th century? A hawk who served as the chief architect of the war in Vietnam? A technocrat who never fully understood the moral implications of his policies? A hero who steadfastly worked to prevent the escalation of conventional war into thermonuclear conflict? All of the above?

It’s impossible to mention his name without starting an argument. Mr. McNamara engendered strong opinions, particularly among those who came of age in the 1960s. People have wanted to know, “Did he ever say he was sorry?” They wanted an apology for his role in Vietnam. The publication of his memoir “In Retrospect” (in 1995) only seemed to make people angrier with him.

He was a very interesting character.

I suggest everyone check out Morris' great documentary on McNamara, The Fog of War.

Repost from Last Year: 4th of July

Some videos for the occasion:

"Kate Smith - God Bless America"


"US National Anthem drowned out by cheers at 91 NHL ASG"


Everyone have a great day.

Photo from:
LIBERTAS

Bill of Rights: What Liberals and Conservatives Think of It

Pretty funny. It's true for those on the fringes of the left and right. It's a caricature of those that lean left or right though.