Psychopolitik 2.0

Right accusation, wrong drug. Smokes are getting stronger — the legal kind, that is:

Even as measures to discourage smoking grew more stringent in recent years, a new report indicates that the nicotine content of cigarettes rose, making it tougher for smokers to quit.

From 1998 to 2004, the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent, the study by the state Department of Public Health found. Nicotine is the chemical that causes cigarettes to be addictive, and the study, released yesterday, found higher levels in all classes of cigarettes, including those branded “light.”

During the past decade, aggressive campaigns across the nation have aimed to curb smoking, the leading cause of preventable deaths. Cities and states, including Massachusetts, have banned smoking in public places, and the price of cigarettes has soared. Still, smoking rates among US adults stubbornly persist above 20 percent.

Hmm. As the taxes on tobacco have shot up, in attempts to punish people for smoking, the amount of nicotine has been increased so people stay hooked. Now, this may sound a bit tinfoilhat-ish, but does it seem to anyone else that the combination of higher nicotine & higher taxes on cigarettes could be intentional? Smoking is disproportionately a poverty-level & working-class thing, so morally you could say that the net effect of punative taxes on tobacco is a tax increase on the poor.
Why am I going off on cigarettes, you ask? Simple: the things that health-nazi types complain about with regards to tobacco are not an issue with marijuana. No one has ever gotten lung cancer from smoking only weed, it is not addictive, it even has demonstrated health uses. Yet it’s illegal. The reason it’s illegal is because it is too easy to grow yourself, thus corporatizing the distribution of it would be pretty much impossible; if it were legal to have a few pot plants then most people who smoked weed would grow their own. The government doesn’t like it when you cut out the middle man.
Call me crazy, but I personally believe that marijuana should be promoted as a substitute. The research is in favor of weed, if enough of the right people knew the truth then that’d make legalization that much easier.
As always, your thoughts are welcome. Yell at me, people…

Indescribably dumb:

An Arab human rights activist was prevented from boarding a plane at Kennedy Airport while wearing a T-shirt that read, “We will not be silent,” in English and Arabic.

Raed Jarrar was at the gate to board a JetBlue Airways flight to Oakland, Calif., on Aug. 12 when four officials from the airline or a government agency stopped him and told him he could not board with the shirt on, he said Wednesday.

One official told him, “Going to an airport with a T-shirt in Arabic script is like going to a bank and wearing a T-shirt that says, ‘I’m a robber,”’ he said. […] In the end, officials gave Jarrar another shirt to wear over his, and he put it on rather than miss his flight.

Jarrar said he was forced to give up his seat near the front of the plane and was issued a new boarding pass for a seat in the rear. (emphasis mine)

You have got to be kidding me. Please, tell me we aren’t so deeply racist a society that we assume an arab wearing a shirt w/ arabic on it is going to blow up our plane. Tell me this is a joke. Please…someone? Anyone? Damn…

Not only is this atrociously bigoted, it’s illogical: When’s the last time a terrorist has boarded a plane wearing a shirt that said “I am a terrorist” (which his shirt did not say)? Hell, I’d say if someone had a shirt with that on it they’d be the LEAST likely to do something, it’d probably be some punk that thinks being dryly ironic on purpose makes them a rebel.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there already were T-shirts that said “I am a terrorist”. If not, then maybe I should make that shirt. Not to be funny, but to make a point about how nonsensical our assumptions about people are, and as a protest of how over the past few years this society has grown scared of its own shadow.

Brad Spangler, April 2005:

Let’s postulate two sorts of robbery scenarios.

In one, a lone robber points a gun at you and takes your cash. All libertarians would recognize this as a micro-example of any kind of government at work, resembling most closely State Socialism.

In the second, depicting State Capitalism, one robber (the literal apparatus of government) keeps you covered with a pistol while the second (representing State-allied corporations) just holds the bag that you have to drop your wristwatch, wallet and car keys in. To say that your interaction with the bagman was a “voluntary transaction” is an absurdity.

Matt Jenny, recently:

Imagine a diabetic who needs a shot of insulin each day. Because her supplier lives far away from her, she always stores enough insulin for one month.

One day, a burglar steals all of her insulin. As a result, the diabetic’s marginal utility of one shot of insulin increases tremendously. She is willing to pay far more for one shot than she would be if she had a full stock. Fortunately, someone comes along and offers to sell her a shot—at an extremely high price though. She thankfully accepts the offer.

Now, how should we view the seller if we believe that the non-aggression principle should rule over human interactions? […] Let us assume that the seller is in no way affiliated with the burglar—neither did he pay or encourage the burglar to steal the insulin nor did he buy the insulin from him.

Brad has a response in progress, yet I felt the need to contribute my two cents due to what I see as an omission: Did the seller of the insulin know that the buyer was robbed, even if they weren’t personally involved?   Is the reason for the price premium the personally-judged worth of the insulin to the seller, or is it that someone happened to come along with a logical reason to pay that much?

Anti-war protesters to Bush: “Ok, you wanna mess with our lives?  Fine, we’ll mess with yours!”

At every wedding, it seems, something happens not according to plan. Expect the unexpected, planners warn. But how many brides and grooms expect a peace protest?

That is what happens when the president shows up for the ceremony in the midst of a polarizing war. About 700 demonstrators marched past the seaside church where President Bush’s second cousin was to be married Saturday and then up to the checkpoint guarding the family summer compound to protest the war in Iraq.

The protesters left a few hours before the service so as not to disrupt the event itself, but they took advantage of the president’s visit to make their point and showcase their opposition to a war that polls show has lost most of the public’s support. Just as Bush found himself trailed to Texas by war opponents last year, now he has been dogged to his parents’ getaway on the rocky shores of the Maine coast.

I can’t even begin to imagine the psychological effect this has to be having.  Being literally shadowed by people for whom you’re a mindless provocateur at best & morally equivalent to a murderer at worst, over a policy on which a majority think you’re wrong and thousands have died for it?  He may want a drink soon.

So, what do you do when confronted by this?  Why, send out a spokesperson to make a backhanded slap of a comment!

If Bush or the family was irked, they gave no public indication. “As the president has said, Americans are free to protest,” spokeswoman Dana Perino said. “Freedom of speech is a fundamental right in our country, which is fundamentally different to the terrorists’ plans for the world.” (emphasis mine)

This is like a two-for-one shot. She simultaneously reinforces the nonsensical claim that the war in Iraq is part of the “war on terror”, and insinuates that the only reason anyone is protesting is “they just don’t UNDERSTAND!!”, as if any actions other than blind support for Bush’s policies can only mean you think terrorism would be no issue if only we sat down for tea with Osama.  This woman has a gift for bullshit!  To get off such a huge smear in such short space, that takes skill, give her a raise.

For awhile at first I thought some of the crew gathering around Cindy Sheehan would’ve tainted the opposition effort as a stereotypically “leftyhippie” thing & doomed the arguement to fall on deaf ears.  I gotta say, I am damn glad I was wrong.

Kinda funny, kinda sad, all stupid: some dude going on a trip to Turkey with his mother packed a penis pump in his luggage.  Security stopped him thinking it looked “suspicious”, and depending on who you believe he either whispered to one of them that it was a pump or he jokingly said it was a bomb.  Either way, they heard “bomb”, and he’s facing a felony disorderly conduct charge w/ three years in prison if convicted.

Interesting enough, but there’s a twist there: the guys name is “Madin Azad Amin”.

Now, this is just speculation, but it sounds to me like regardless of what he actually said there could’ve been a prejudicial reason behind taking it so seriously.  If he said it was a pump then it’s conveivable the security guard objected to his discretion such that she warped it, and if he said it was a bomb then the line between “haha, piss off” & potentially going to prison for a joke rested on whether that particular guard had a bias against people that are, look like, or have names like muslims (there was no description of his appearance).
Props.

Some scientists in Massachusetts just may have brewed up a hot batch of STFU for the “stem cell research is MURDER!!!” crowd:

Massachusetts scientists announced yesterday that they have created the first human embryonic stem cells using a technique that does not require the destruction of an embryo — an advance they said could end the bitter political standoff over stem-cell research.

The new research, performed at the Worcester laboratories of the biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology , shows that a single cell from an early embryo can be used to generate embryonic stem cells. Fertility clinics can already remove a single cell from an embryo to test for genetic defects, and the ACT team suggests this procedure could be adapted to create embryonic stem cells. Such cells now are created by destroying embryos. […]

“My hope is that this will jump-start this field,” said Dr. Robert Lanza , a scientist at Advanced Cell Technology who oversaw the research. “We really need to get past all of this politics.”

Now, we’ve already established that fertility clinics routinely destroy embryos anyway.  The opposition to embryonic stem-cell research rarely ever factors that into their barking.  With this we get that a single cell can be removed without destroying the embryo — which fertility clinics are already doing for other purposes.  If this pans out & the “culture of life” lobby continues to scream, then one can only conclude they are a) viewing everything from a religious stance & have no business arguing science, & b)  hypocrites for not yelling about fertility clinics*.
(* - I’ve heard of devout catholics doing this, but they don’t make up much of the crowd.  Most are what I’d call “identity christians”, when it comes down to it they care more about being angry at something than about what they claim to follow — or consistency.)

“Fannie Mae”, that gigantic mortage company with the goofy name, has got off the hook…

Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance company, said today it has been informed by the Department of Justice that no charges will be filed in connection with billions of dollars in accounting irregularities. […]

Fannie Mae was notified in October, 2004, that a federal probe was underway into accounting policies and practices. In September, 2004, regulators accused it of massive violations of accounting rules. That set off an exhaustive and expensive re-audit of three years of its financial operations that produced steady revelations of new accounting errors.

Federal officials also had accused Fannie Mae of “extensive financial fraud” over six years by doctoring earnings so executives could collect hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses.

Why?

Fannie, chartered by Congress to provide a ready source of cash for home mortgages, finances about 20 percent of the U.S. home-mortgage industry.  (emphasis mine)

So it’s a corporation of the old school, openly created by the State rather than encouraged by convenient legal loopholes.  It’s also quite the player, to the point that most folks assume it goes even further beyond this kind of symbiotic relationship into being no different than, say, FEMA.  Is it any wonder that they got off?

The artificial propping up of home ownership, especially the interpretation of it as an investment (this makes no sense unless you own a ton of them and only stay in one), is just one of the pieces to the puzzle of the gradual cluster-fucking of the US economy.  Congress chartered it, they can — and should — un-charter it.

Bush, responding to a question at a press conference about gas prices:

I’ve been talking about gas prices ever since they got high, starting with this — look, I understand gas prices are like a hidden tax. Not a hidden tax, it’s a tax — it’s taking money out of people’s pockets. I know that. (emphasis mine)

Wow…President Dumbass agrees with me on something. Somewhat. If he had the mental capacity to flesh it out & the courage to admit error, then he’d put it the following way:

“I know the dollar is a fiat currency, but you could say in a way it’s pegged to oil. The part of rising fuel costs that isn’t directly attributable to my policy of war for no reason is a result of decreases in buying power. Watering down our currency means US citizens have to work more just to stay in place, making it have the same effect as raising taxes, which the next president will end up having to do barring a miraculous libertarian revolt — either figuratively or literally. Since gas prices are reflecting american purchasing power, this makes the increases, as an effect of true inflation, akin to having raised taxes.”

Following this, the guy in charge of the Stupid switch must’ve woke up, because after that line he made the all-too-common political mistake of thinking a weaning off of crude oil & attempts to lower the price of oil were non-contradictory goals. Again: the problem with gas prices is not the price itself, it’s that it is outpacing our pay. Also, if the true cost of gas were reflected at the pump then there’d be none of this talk about subsidizing ethanol or the purchase of hybrid cars, the market would be unambiguously telling people “dump oil, ASAP” and we’d do it without force involved at all.

Props go to Cunning Realist for sparing me from having to watch that damn thing.

John Lopez of No-Treason.com has a unique criticism of the TSA.  When it comes to handling your fluids, they answer Bush’s “Holy Shit!” with a “yeah whatever…”.

If you’re reading this, Iran did not trigger Armaggeddon yesterday, despite the whisperings of the neos.  That is all.