Month: December 2010

"As drugs minister in the Home Office I saw how prohibition fails to reduce the harm that drugs cause in the UK, fuelling burglaries, gifting the trade to gangsters and increasing HIV infections. My experience as Defence Secretary, with specific responsibilities in Afghanistan, showed to me that the war on drugs creates the very conditions that perpetuate the illegal trade, while undermining international development and security. My departure from the front benches gives me the freedom to express my long held view that, whilst it was put in place with the best of intentions, the war on drugs has been nothing short of a disaster," – Bob Ainsworth, Britain's former drugs minister.

Literally.

Steve Benen dives into polling data and comes up empty:

When it comes to dealing with national challenges, the public prefers the president over congressional Republicans by five points. On the specific issues, the two are roughly tied on handling the economy, terrorism, and taxes; Republicans lead on deficit reduction; and Obama has a sizable advantage on health care and "helping the middle class."

It's impossible to deny the fact that Republicans had a very strong year electorally, but if the GOP thinks it has a strong national mandate to pursue a far-right agenda, the party is fundamentally confused about what happened last month.

But the talk radio right persists in telling its audience otherwise, so the confusion is bound to persist. Which will, of course, only help Obama. I will have to be forgiven for enjoying the sight of all the demons the GOP has unleashed these past two years finally turning around and biting them in the posterior.

An ode to the great American Jewish-Chinese Christmas – and its foodier new forms.

A Feministe reader sparks a helpful discussion in the comments section. Rita's advice:

I deal with this as well and I disagree with the “just don’t go” advice. I don’t get to see my family that often and they are VERY important to me, bigoted views or no. The older generation in particular just never learned any better (which I know is not an excuse for hatred, but I’m still not going to hate them back.) I want to see my family and when they are not being racist/sexist/generally awful, they are great – and they are my family . So when they make bigoted statements, I use the following techniques:

1. Pretend not to understand – make them explain the “joke” or “logic” and then everyone becomes uncomfortable.

2. Ignore – if they’re using something awful to get my attention, I completely ignore them and the whole conversation. If the conversation is about Obama being a terrorist, for instance, I’ll start inserting totally unrelated statements into the conversation as though that is what we are talking about: “I completely agree – Zimbabwe’s inflation rate is really a problem.” Throws people off enough to change the subject.

3. Start to cry. Go ahead and let them see how their statements upset me.

4. Challenge their theology (this will not be appropriate for everyone) – my family and I are all Christians, who hold the Bible in high regard. So I’ll pull out Biblical rebuttals: “That’s absolutely what Galatians means when it says, “You are all one in Christ Jesus” and when John writes about “every people, tribe, nation, and language.” This has actually been successful in making some family members reconsider – and change – their attitudes.

5. Ultimately realize that I can pick my friends but I can’t pick my family. It is not my responsibility to change them or educate them. When I am with them I just want to enjoy being with them, not start an anti-bigotry campaign in my living room. When I leave I always resolve to be even more conscious of my own remaining racism, even more active in promoting equality and civil rights, and even more eager to raise my own children to be open, loving people.  

And so the Senate tally reaches 61 on paper. The idea that the Senate should adjourn without passing this seminal piece of civil rights legislation – after a whopping majority in the House and a super-majority in the Senate and the backing of the Joint Chiefs and a president eager to sign – is insane.

That woke you up, didn't it? But Lieberman, who claims to have rounded up 62 votes in the Senate for DADT repeal, has, along with Susan Collins, been indispensable in keeping this fast-closing door ajar. What he seems to get is that this is not just some constituency measure, or some minor matter – but a moral matter. We ask young men and women to go into the line of chaos, hatred and murder in order to keep us safe. Many have gone places and seen things and done things this past decade few of us will ever understand, or be able to appreciate. They have lived with the stress of war and constant deployments that their predecessors never had to cope with. They have encountered enemies prepared to violate every rule of war, to hide among civilians, to exploit the accidental deaths of children and women, and to implement barbaric rule wherever they get a chance to hang their medieval hats.

These men and women deserve our support. Period. All of them. It's inconceivable that in wartime, we should be making any discriminatory exceptions among those who fight for us, that we should honor any of them less than the rest, allow any criterion or characteristic to distract from the simple fact that they are American servicemembers – not gay or straight ones or black or Hispanic or white ones, not male and female ones, but Americans, in the US uniform, whose identity as soldiers begins and ends there.

Some see the end of DADT as some kind of special gesture to a minority. I think they are beyond wrong. This is about moving past the notion of a minority, to a more perfect union, in which nothing irrelevant prevents a man or woman from serving his or her country. It is about attacking the endurance of the gay-straight division and replacing it with the unifying fibre of honor and patriotism. It's about gay Americans being able, finally, in some deep way known only to those who have previously been excluded from military service, to become merely Americans.

Let us lose that qualifying adjective in the service of something greater than ourselves. E pluribus unum.

(Photo: U.S. Army SFC Isaac Migli, 26, walks up a mountainside towards an American outpost in the Korengal Valley October 24, 2008 in the Kunar Province of eastern Afghanistan. The remote and isolated valley is the site of some of the heaviest fighting between U.S. forces and Taliban insurgents. By John Moore/Getty Images.)

Fallows asks why.

A reader writes:

One of the hottest toys this year in the U.S. is a pooping and peeing doll. Yep, a doll that poops. My niece has one, Baby Alive. And the commercial is just as insane. So I'm not sure the Germans have a monopoly on the love of poop.

Another writes:

God knows I love bashing the Krauts as much as the next, but the UK also has its odd toy or two. For example, Baby Pee Pee, when you uncover his nappy, raises his organ and pisses on you.

There was also the very odd 1997 UK baby rash doll, which developed an alarming scarlet rash on its bum until ministered to by a magic hanky. (Talk about your bleak, Dickensian Christmas. There you are in your damp, English flat, dragging around your red assed dolly, the magic hanky having been lost hours ago amidst the wrappings.)

But it begs the question: what goes on during these pitch meetings at toy manufacturers? How do the afflictions, albeit minor, of responsible adulthood (dog poop, diaper rash, errant willies) become the central entertainment value in a toy?

Ezra Klein separates deficit hawks from deficit frauds:

The deficit hawks … often get blamed for the actions and rhetoric of the deficit frauds. The deficit frauds are the folks who use deficits for short-term political gain: This year, they've mainly been Republicans who opposed unemployment benefits because they'd add $56 billion to the deficit but demanded tax cuts that would add $4 trillion to the deficit. And they've been empowered not by Peterson's money or even the climate in Washington, but by the fact that people get very anxious about the deficit when the economy slows, as it's a number that they think helps explain the economic problems even as it mainly tracks them, and because a misplaced analogy to the European debt crises has made our deficit look scarier than it actually is.