Psychopolitik 2.0

Score one for the busybodies:

KFC Corp. said Monday it will start using zero trans fat soybean oil for its Original Recipe and Extra Crispy fried chicken, Potato Wedges and other menu items.

The news preceded the Board of Health’s first public hearing Monday on a plan to make New York the first U.S. city to ban restaurants from serving food containing artificial trans fats.

KFC’s systemwide rollout is to be completed by April 2007, but the company said many of its approximately 5,500 restaurants already have switched to low linolenic soybean oil, replacing partially hydrogenated soybean oil.

Some might be thinking “wait a minute, they change all their restaurants because of a new rule in one city?” Well, consider how large the food service industry there is. Functionally, NYC banning transfat is like if a small state banned it.

BTW: yes, despite the image of this being some yahoos against a conglomerate, there is a corporatist angle…

KFC isn’t the only business preparing for a trans-fat-free future.

Dow AgroScience, a maker of three types of zero-trans-fat canola and sunflower seed oils, said it has ramped up production capacity to 1.5 billion pounds a year enough to replace about a third of the 5 billion pounds of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil sold annually in the U.S.

Gee, ya think they provide backing to groups like CSPI?

Speaking of whom, those of you out there who respond to their criticism with something beyond “well damn, it’s fried chicken! It’s not supposed to be good for you!” have them to blame for transfat in the first place:

Invented in the early 1900s, partially hydrogenated vegetable oil was initially believed to be a healthy substitute for natural fats like butter or lard. It was also cheaper, performed better under high heat and had a longer shelf life. Today, the oil is used as a shortening in baked goods like cookies, crackers and doughnuts, as well as in deep frying.

Ironically, many big fast food companies only became dependent on hydrogenated oil a decade and a half ago when they were pressured by health groups to do something about saturated fat. (emphasis mine)

Here’s a suggestion: stop treating people like babies. The average person with a functioning brain knows that certain foods are worse than others, and either they avoid them, exercize to compensate for eating them, or they frankly don’t give a shit. This type of activism is painted as being in defense of “the little guy”, when in reality it’s an insult. KFC obviously has the resources to comply with something like this easily, the local restaurants probably don’t. Yet another disproportionate burden…

Text on a political campaign sign I passed by while walking in my neighborhood:

VOTE traditional values…or LOSE them!

CherokeeGOP.com

This is yet another reminder of how spineless folks are these days.  Enough people apparently believe that their way of life is constantly under siege & bound to die off if not for the valiant efforts of Big Brother that shitty little desperation pleas like this look reasonable enough to attempt.  We’ve gone from people with die-hard religious beliefs routinely rejecting the trappings of politics — and in many cases even rejecting the State entirely — to “vote republican or there will be mass public orgies & the streets will run red from random murder”.

Shame on you people.  Shame…

Wondering about Iran lately?

In an expected move nonetheless seen as a political signal to Washington, Iran said it stepped up its uranium enrichment program Friday, even as a divided UN Security Council became bogged down over a European draft resolution to impose sanctions on Tehran. […]

Iran’s injection of gas into a second network of 164 centrifuges, reported by the Iranian Students News Agency, marked the country’s first known uranium enrichment since February.

To hear the neos tell it, you’d think they were seconds away from a nuke.  Here come the facts…

Doubling Iran’s capacity would mean it still is nowhere close to churning out enough uranium to fuel a reactor. Tehran has said it plans to install 3,000 centrifuges at its pilot complex in Natanz by year’s end, but it would take 54,000 centrifuges to fuel a reactor.

In addition, Friday’s ISNA report said the second cascade, like the first, would produce enriched uranium at a 4.5 percent “research” level. Enrichment levels can be an indication of the use of the uranium. The usual level of enriched uranium fuel is 5 percent for reactors, but 90 percent enrichment is needed for a bomb. (emphasis mine)

According to this, Iran isn’t even close to having enough uranium for a nuclear reactor, let alone building bombs, and at this pace would need years to get to either point.  So why did Bush say this?

Asked about news accounts that Iran had taken a new step in uranium enrichment, Bush replied: “It says to me that we must double our effort to work with the international community to persuade the Iranians that there is only isolation from the world if they continue working forward on such a program.”

We all know the answer…

As you know, recently I’ve been looking at comments on libertarianism by statist-progressives. My reaction to the ones missing the point has largely hovered between taking offense & WTF-are-they-smoking giggles.

This one I spotted is different though: It’s actually quite saddening. All emphasis is mine…

True Democratic values are undermined, not advanced, by libertarianism. Government is absolutely necessary to both create the equality of opportunity that is essential for individuals to truly have free choices and chart their own life courses. […]

Some are attracted to libertarianism on social issues. But it was liberalism that created all the freedoms we enjoy today. From the ACLU to a woman’s right to choose and any number of things in between, liberalism was responsible for their existence. The liberal heritage is good and strong, despite libertarian efforts to steal that heritage for themselves. […]

More democracy, not less government, should be the goal. And our goal should not be to tailor the Democratic Party to libertarians, but convince them of liberalism’s inherent power to deliver both freedom and equality - because those two things cannot exist without the other.

-Eugene, from Daily Kos

Uh, Eugene?  I have news for you: libertarianism is part of the liberal heritage.  In fact, libertarianism used to be called “liberalism”.  The activism of the ACLU comes from the same philosophical base that you’re treating as an ideological boogeyman come to “steal” liberalism.  Libertarianism doesn’t inherently mean anarchy, although many of the biggest names in liberalism throughout history (Henry David Thoreau ring a bell?) actually did go that far, for rather principled reasons I might add.  Anyone that has sat through an even remotely decent American History and/or Poli Sci class should know this.

“More democracy, not less government”.  Think about that line.  It’s where liberalism has been brought by the embrace of force as a tool of societal progress.  Somehow, the idea was accepted that the only problem with the State was the people in charge of it, and if the proper types were chosen all would be well.  The thing is, in practice the larger the scope of political power the closer representation gets towards an impossibility, as so much becomes a matter for politicians that only other politicians can understand what is being done — and as a result, the only ones served by politics are politicians & their friends.  In a system where the average person is ignorant of what their government is doing, it is irrelevant whether the officers of it are elected or not, “democracy” turns into little more than a meaningless catchphrase.

In the long run, for any semblance of democracy as is commonly understood to survive, it must be deliberately broken down to its literal root of the demos — the people — ruling themselves in a decentralized, local manner.  That inherently requires less government, if not no government.

Democrats do not need to convince libertarians of the rightness of liberalism, libertarians need to convince Democrats — and anyone else — to rediscover what it actually means.

Fun with deliberate contradiction:

U.S. officials in Iraq said Tuesday that government leaders there have agreed to develop a timeline by the end of the year for progress in stabilizing Iraq and reducing violence that has killed 300 Iraqi troops during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan alone.

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander who appeared at a news conference with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, said Iraqi forces should be able to take control of security in the next 12 to 18 months with minimal American support.

Casey also said he felt the United States should continue to focus on drawing down the number of American forces in the country, adding that he would not hesitate to ask for more troops if he felt they were necessary. (emphasis mine)

Sounds to me like a certain someone told this guy to find a way to suggest withdrawal without actually saying it, while leaving open the possibility of diving even further into the muck so as to not confuse the tiny %age that’s nutty enough to think “stay the course” makes sense. Desperation, anyone?

***updated 102506 @ 4:53 EST*** Even the PM of Iraq knows the real purpose of this kind of talk…

[Prime Minister Nouri] al-Maliki […] slammed the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying his government needed to set a timetable to curb violence in the country. At a news conference Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said al-Maliki had agreed.

“I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it,” al-Maliki said at a news conference.

The prime minister dismissed U.S. talk of timelines as driven by the upcoming midterm elections in the United States. “I am positive that this is not the official policy of the American government but rather a result of the ongoing election campaign. And that does not concern us much,” he said. (emphasis mine)

LOL…

Another entry in what looks to be an ongoing “how statist-progressives think” series, this one from a comment by Fran on the Anonymous Liberal blog:

To me, a Libertarian philosophy is very enlightened, until it confronts reality.

Example: Libertarians oppose zoning, because it restricts a property owners rights.

Pro zoning: It allows people to purchase property with the expectation that they will not be overwhelmed by other property owners.

Examples:
1. Your suburban neighbor wants to start a nightclub on his legally owned property. Unwanted traffic, pedestrian and vehicles.
2. Your urban neighbor wants to delve into the science of genetic cloning. Something leaks.
3. Your suburban neighbor converts his house into a McDonalds…fast food traffic.

Zoning to me is the compromise that we all make to live in a ‘relatively organized society’. No, it’s not perfect, but just like Democracy, it’s the worst form of govt except all the rest.

Never mind the microscopic likelihood of your neighbor turning his house into a McDonalds — for one thing, the cost of remodeling it to match the other locations is prohibitive.  For sake of arguement, assume that this actually happens often enough to bother mentioning: so traffic increases, big whoop.  Many other things happen that increase traffic, including there simply being a population increase.  I don’t see anyone clamoring for local population-limit ordinances, despite the “problem” being the same — a matter of personal taste.

That’s beside the point though.  The moral assumption behind this is that initiation of force is an acceptable response to a disagreement on aesthetics.  If something so frivilous and — yeah, I’mma say it — elitist is fair game, what isn’t?  And why?
I personally disapprove of similar interference in the name of propping up perceived property value, but at least that’s something tangible, sheesh…

Me, a couple months ago in response to Raed getting hassled at an airport for having “we will not be silent” on his shirt in arabic:

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.

I just found out in the span of a minute that 1) Tim Murtaugh made a shirt that says “I am NOT a terrorist” in arabic a few days before I’d posted this & 2) someone made a T-shirt designed to make it look like the person wearing it look like a suicide bomber from a distance (CNN was showing someone wearing one).  So depending on what reaction you get from the shirts, either I was ever so slightly behind the curve (Tim got the gist of what I meant despite the difference in phrasing) or I Called It (the “suicide bomber” shirt is more literal)…

In case anyone was wondering where I’ve been the past few days, I was trying to install a bunch of computer upgrades.  It didn’t go so well, being frustrated at every corner only to find out that I did everything pretty much correctly, the real culprit being a faulty motherboard.  Specifically, this one…

Another entry to the “You cannot possibly make this up” file:

Upset by the war in Iraq, Julia Wilson vented her frustrations with President Bush last spring on her Web page on MySpace.com. She posted a picture of the president, scrawled “Kill Bush” across the top and drew a dagger stabbing his outstretched hand. She later replaced her page on the social-networking site after learning in her eighth-grade history class that such threats are a federal offense.

It was too late.

Federal authorities had found the page and placed Wilson on their checklist. They finally reached her this week in her molecular biology class. The 14-year-old freshman was taken out of class Wednesday and questioned for about 15 minutes by two Secret Service agents.

The Secret Service interpreted a drawing on some teenage girl’s MySpace as a credible threat to the president. Great. I wonder who pointed this out to them?
Oh yeah, there’s a policy angle to this…

Assistant Principal Paul Belluomini said the agents gave him the impression the girl’s mother knew they were planning to question her daughter at school. There is no legal requirement that parents be notified.

“This has been an ongoing problem,” said Ann Brick, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco.

Former Govs. Pete Wilson and Gray Davis vetoed bills that would have required that parents give consent or be present when their children are questioned at school by law enforcement officers. A similar bill this year cleared the state Senate but died in the Assembly. (emphasis mine)

Yes, all part of the ongoing trend in The New America: More restraints on the people, fewer on officers of the State. Eventually it’ll be considered an accomplishment when something like this happens and the SS agents don’t beat the hell out of the kid.

I swear, it’s enough to make you (this Unpatriotic Remark has been deleted by Echelon. God Bless America )

Bush, a few minutes ago, on Iraq:

This is different from the usual war in that if we leave this one early the enemy will follow us home. […] The Democrats don’t think Iraq is part of the War on Terror, but you don’t have to take my word for it.  Listen to Osama, listen to Zawahiri, they say it’s a central battle.

They don’t say that as “oh no!  If we lose Iraq then it’s curtains for us!” like some cartoon characters, they mean “Heh, stupid infidels bogged down fighting off angry Iraqis while we roam free…”.  Anyone that’s actually paid ATTENTION to what they’ve said knows that we did Osama a favor when we invaded Iraq.

Bush isn’t saying this out of some actual strategic concern though.   For him, Osama is a political boogeyman: he says “boo!”, & people vote Republican.  So in his eyes it’s no loss to be so far off the mark.