Things People Blame the Jews for, Volume VI: Energy Speculation

One of my new practice groups at the firm (see my shiny new bio!) is energy, an area which is quite new to me. I spoke to a partner who described how you can appraise how senior someone is in the energy law field by asking them "where does electricity come from" -- my answer, as of now, is: "the wall."

This is a shame, though, because as a Jew, energy markets (and energy speculation) are apparently my reason for existence in Washington. Here's Texe Marrs (there's a name!) with the lowdown [http://www.texemarrs.com/042011/zionist_oil_speculators.htm]:

They’re doing it again! Three years ago, two Rothschild-owned Wall Street banks—Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley—artificially drove the price of oil up to $142 a barrel, and the American economy collapsed. One year later, the price had fallen to $32 per barrel—and the oil companies were still making money, (They bring it out of the ground for a puny $4 per barrel!)

Now, Rothschild's Wall Street manipulators are back in business. For weeks now, oil gasoline demand has actually decreased. Nevertheless, the Wall Street criminals are driving the price of oil up through the roof on the oil futures market—which they own! That’s right, they own the commodities future exchanges!

And here’s what else you need to know:

1. President Obama is colluding with these bums. His Fed Reserve (with Jewish chairman Bernanke) gave 73 billion dollars in “loans” to Libya and Gaddafi. But Gaddafi’s oil goes to France, not the U.S.A.!


2. Obama’s Treasury Secretary (the Jew Geithner) gave a two billion dollar “loan” to Petrobras, the Brazilian oil giant, to drill in the Atlantic, off the coast of Brazil. Surprise: Brazil’s oil goes primarily to Red China and India, not the U.S.A.!


3. Obama’s Marxist EPA and Energy Department hassles U.S. oil drillers with a blizzard of regulations—all to intentionally force Americans to buy foreign oil owned by Rothschild and other Israel and Jewish billionaires. This in spite of the fact that the U.S. oil reserves are greater than Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and all the rest of the world’s nations combined.

What the environmental crazies and Obama plan is for the price of gasoline to shoot up to $6.00, even to $10.00 per gallon. They think that Americans will be forced to drive less and thus their Global Warming scam will be enhanced.


4. Fidel’s Cuba and Red China are drilling new oil wells in international waters off of Florida, but Obama says “No!” to American drillers.


5. Iraq’s abundant oil is being shipped by oil pipeline through Israel to tankers sitting off the coasts of Gaza and Lebanon and is going directly to Red China. That’s right, Rothschild’s Israeli partners have been given—yes, given!—all of Iraq’s oil. They’re making a mint selling it to the Communists in Beijing. Remember when Dick Cheney promised us that the invasion and occupation of Iraq wouldn’t cost Americans a dime, because Iraq’s oil would pay for it? Well, now you and I see what rotten, filthy liars these politicians are!

If there's one thing a billionaire (Jewish or otherwise) loves, it's Marxism. And if there are two places Jews have infinite sway, they're Iraq and Saudi Arabia

UPDATE: Somebody must have forwarded this shocking hot take to Guatemalan activists protesting energy prices there.

Who Cares About Deficits?

I've been meaning to welcome my old debate teammate (and very, very technically, former co-blogger) Emily Mirengoff to the blogosphere. She's been writing an ongoing series on education that is well-worth your time.

Her blog is titled "A Moderate Mindset", and last month she put up a post entitled "A Moderate Solution to the Government Shutdown." I, too, have sometimes written on the moderate label, a characterization I'm sure Emily would find laughable (in my defense, see my "The Moderator's Voice" post, where I discuss how I reconcile my currente leftist beliefs with what I take to be the virtues of "moderation" -- I think she might view it with a surprising level of agreement).

In any event, here were the counters of her proposal:

On the Obamacare issue, the Republicans are dead wrong. The law passed; they were unable to overturn it; and they shouldn't be holding the budget hostage in retaliation.

On the debt ceiling issue, the Democrats have spiraled completely out of control. Below is a video of a Democrat who agrees with me. He may look familiar to you; he’s a political rising star named Senator Barack Obama.

[...]

So here’s the compromise: President Obama agrees to institute a real debt ceiling–and actually adheres to it by cutting down government spending–and in return, the Republicans abandon their doomed anti-Obamacare campaign. It would truly be an astounding day for the U.S. government: Both parties acting reasonably! Compromise! The government re-opening!

Okay, from one erstwhile moderate to another, let's rap.

On the one hand, we have Republicans unreasonably holding the country hostage while they engage in futile efforts to try to block the healthcare law. They should knock this off, and that would be their side of the compromise. Now, a substantial part of the "problem" here isn't that Republicans oppose the Affordable Care Act. That's their prerogative! It's that they're engaging in extreme levels of hostage taking to substitute for the fact that they are not, currently, in a position to repeal the ACA. I take it that Emily is not proposing that Republicans not try to overturn the ACA if in the future they happened to regain control of Congress and the Executive Branch (such a promise would be unreasonable and entirely unenforceable in any event). So the Republican side of the compromise would be "stop trying to repeal Obamacare until you actually are able to repeal Obamacare." That's not nothing, given that the ongoing GOP temper tantrum on this issue is doing real damage to the country, but you can imagine why Democrats wouldn't exactly be leaping for joy over it.

On the other side, Democrats are supposed to accede to spending cuts in order to bring the deficit under control. The "Democrats have spiraled completely out of control" on the debt, and the way to fix it is spending cuts. We might begin by quibbling with the notion that Democrats have not concerned themselves with deficits -- tough to swing, given that deficits have been slashed dramatically during Obama's tenure in office. But since we're still running a deficit, debts continue to accumulate, and the debt ceiling remains a problem. To the extent we care about reducing our debt load, more steps need to be taken.

The real question is, why is this a "Democratic" sacrifice? The answer is that, somewhat strangely, Emily says we should reduce our deficit level solely by reference to spending cuts. But that is only one way to skin the cat -- another way of reducing deficits, of course, is by raising additional revenue.

Put another way, let's say we posit that Republicans care about deficits and Democrats don't. Republicans would demand steps for deficits to be reduced. Democrats wouldn't be particularly interested because (per stipulation) they don't care about deficits. And they'd be concretely adverse to cutting spending on social programs they value. But Democrats don't really have any objection to raising taxes on the wealthy, or removing the privileged and distorted position capital gains enjoy vis-a-vis other forms of income in our tax code. So presumably, if what Republicans cared about was "deficits", this would be an easy agreement to hammer out: high-income taxes are raised, deficits go down, everyone is happy.

This, of course, is not the terms of the debate. As Jon Chait has noted, the Republican position on deficits is that they would do anything to reduce the debt load, except contemplate any increase in taxes whatsoever. It is a very impressive thing that the GOP has managed to stake out this position -- rejecting even 10:1 spending cut/tax increase propositions -- while still convincing people that their primary concern is with deficits, rather than with cutting spending. And not just any government spending, either: As we learned from the Farm Bill debacle, the real object is slashing government spending that helps poorer Americans, demanding slashes to food stamps while fighting bitterly to maintain subsidies to wealthy agricultural producers (even the National Review found this to be beyond the pale). Certain spending -- for example, defense spending, or corporate subsidies -- doesn't seem to be problematic to the Republican Party at all. Hell, the Affordable Care Act reduces deficits -- yet for some reason this does not endear it to supposedly deficit-conscious Republican congressfolk. Deficit reduction is, at most, a tertiary issue -- perhaps a happy side-effect of depriving impoverished Americans of food, but nowhere near as important as insuring that income earned via capital are taxed at half the rate of earnings won through labor.

I should say that while I obviously oppose these Republican policy priorities substantively, I'm not really bothered by the fact that these are their priorities as opposed to deficit-cutting. Republicans have policy objections to government spending money on healthcare, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and other programs that primarily benefit poorer Americans. If, as a consequence, deficits are also reduced, that's a nice benefit, but it is a bonus, not the primary motivator, and where there are available deficit-reduction opportunities that don't cohere to these priorities (such as raising taxes, or, for that matter, passing the Affordable Care Act), they'll oppose them. Democrats, for their part, support these sorts of programs and wish to expand them. While they'd probably be willing to mitigate their impact on the deficit by passing higher taxes on wealthy Americans, that isn't their priority either and if that avenue is unavailable they'd rather keep the programs and expand the deficit. All of that is perfectly fine, it just demonstrates that deficits and debt are not actually what's driving the current controversy between the parties, and so bootstrapping the debt ceiling to the argument doesn't make a lot of sense.

The real lesson we've learned, hopefully, from the past few months is that the debt ceiling isn't something to grandstand about (and I hope Barack Obama, looking back on his senatorial self, has been appropriately chastened). So my moderate proposal flowing out of the shutdown crisis is considerably simpler: abolish the debt ceiling outright.

Note I am not saying that Congress should rack up infinite deficits. But the amount of debt we incur in a given year is a product of the budget negotiated within Congress and approved by the President, and the presence of a debt ceiling doesn't change that. All the debt ceiling does is threaten a global economic meltdown whenever Congress, as is often, can't get its act together. In essence, what the debt ceiling does is say "we, Congress, cannot be trusted to pass budgets which reduce our debt load. As a consequence of that dysfunction, we will periodically put the entire world at the risk of an unnecessary massive economic calamity unless we decide to take an affirmative step to stop it." This is not sound policy, whether as a tool for reducing the debt or for anything else.

If Congress wants to incur less debt, it should achieve that through the budgetary process. We should incur as much debt (or not) as results from the negotiated balance of revenues to spending that Congress approves in its budget. If that results in too-high debt levels, then the budget should be rerenegotiated to either lower spending or increase revenues. Periodically arming, defusing, and then rearming a ticking time bomb is neither helpful nor sensible. And that lesson, hopefully, has become quite clear.

Law, Law, Everywhere There's Law

Anytime a lawyer looks at a new industry, he or she is immediately struck by just how much law there is about it. It can be quite intimidating. In order to, say, build a water treatment plant, it isn't enough to simply know how to build the plant. One has to be aware of a massive buffet of rules and regulations that govern the field -- zoning, building codes, environmental approvals, laws governing any financing -- the list goes on and on. The amount of effort it takes just to know what you need to know, let alone to actually know it, let alone to actually do it, is daunting. Good for me professionally, but daunting.

So in that sense I can be sympathetic to complaints that there is too much red tape stifling businesses. But then I think about it a little more, and I can't help but think my complaint boils down to crying that filling important social functions takes hard work. Poor us -- we'd like to be able to plan the development of a major public utility in an afternoon and then golf for the next three weeks, but we can't (thanks, Obama). And phrased that way, it feels a little ridiculous.

Things People Blame The Jews For, Volume V: Law (Schools)

I have begun my trek into the world of legal practice, but it is important to remember my roots as a legal academic. Specifically,, a Jewish legal academic. Oh, does that rub some people the wrong way [http://vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=78280]:

They’re barely two percent of the population, but research indicates that jews occupy slightly more than half of the teaching slots at America’s top ten law schools. (By ranking of U.S. News & World Report, these are: 1. Yale; 2. Stanford; 3. Harvard; 4. Columbia; 5. NYU; 6. Chicago; 7. Berkeley; 7. Michigan; 7. Pennsylvania; 7. Virginia.) The same people who give you the endless song and dance about overrepresentation of white males in every sector they haven’t yet commandeered for themselves have nepotistically positioned their racial crime syndicate to decide who becomes a power player in 21st-century AmeriKwa -- and they breathe not a word of this prodigious legal enormity to the mass public. The simple fact is, jews and people trained to think like them exercise an effective monopoly over the legal profession. In a country in which you can hardly pick your nose without counsel, that fact is grounds for some very serious thought about where we’re headed, and what’s going to be left of normal whites like you and me when we get there.

VNN researched the matter online (you can verify all the findings, the names and pictures, online at vnnforum.com ). This was easy to do, since all these schools list their professors by name. It is clear from the very look and feel of these sites that the attitude of the folks training our top lawyers is the same as the jewish business owner who said, “I only hire jews, women, and gays.” Normal white males need not apply, and the ones who do attend these schools, are either self-hating liberals to start with, or bent that way after Prof. Selznik’s “words mean what they have to” course. Simply look at the graphics used by these top ten schools to see the future this type envisions: women and coloreds and jews, with nary a white male to be found. This is the utopia the jew prepares for our race. When they say “abolish,” they mean it. White genocide is very plainly the agenda of the jews who control our law schools.

Of course, this raises tantalizing questions about my own exit from an academy that was apparently built for my own personal pleasure. Was I expelled as a dissident from the Elders' orthodoxy? One would think my anti-discrimination law focus would have kept me safe from charges of apostasy. Maybe the problem was the opposite, my lack of subtlety? Or perhaps it was random caprice -- sometimes, a random zag is the best way to throw folks off the trail. Regardless of the explanation, one can be sure it is nefarious.

Tantrum Ad

If I were a Democratic strategist tasked with running ads right now (or really, right after the shutdown), this is the one I would have run:

SCENE: Two PARENTS, a MOM and DAD stand outside a closed door. Inside, a TODDLER can be heard screaming and throwing a tantrum. The parents look at each other.

MOM: Should we say something?

DAD: I think we have to.

They enter the room. Inside, is a child's bedroom with toys reflective of Washington (e.g., a miniature Washington Monument. The toddler is revealed to be an older white man in a baby outfit featuring an elephhant -- a CONGRESSMAN.

MOM: Do you know why you're in here?

CONGRESSMAN (sullenly): No.

MOM: Yes you do. The government shut down, the debt ceiling, the constant obstruction ...

DAD: I know you oppose expanded health care access, but that's not appropriate behavior.

CONGRESSMAN [screaming]: But I hate it! I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT!

[He throws the toy Washington Monument, which bounces off of MOM's chest. She closes her eyes in exasperation.]

MOM: You're in timeout until you learn how to behave yourself.

[The CONGRESSMAN resumes screaming, and both parents leave the room]

MOM: That hard.

DAD: I know, but if he's not punished, he won't learn.

Scene ends, splash screen comes up asking people to send Republicans in Washington a message

Call me any time, DCCC.

Pope Fraud!

Allegations of widespread "voter fraud" is a story I've followed with some interest over the past few years, despite the fact that "voter fraud" in the United States is virtually non-existent. This factoid seems not to discourage anyone, and certain themes stand out in the attempts to stir up a panic about it:

1) Voter fraud is an organized part of a vast conspiracy to bring America under the dominion of scary Marxist brown people, probably at the orchestration of ACORN.

2) Voter fraud is epidemic, despite its empirical rarity.

3) Relatively minor instances of voter irregularities will be drummed up and exaggerated beyond all reason as proof of said epidemic.

Following these conclusions gives a rather different spin on this report about the circumstances of Cardinal Bergoglio (now Pope Francis') election to the papacy:

What happened? After the fifth ballot was cast and the ballot box containing the votes of the 115 cardinal electors opened, the ballots were counted as always before being scrutinised and the resulting number was 116. There was one extra ballot. One of the cardinals had mistakenly placed two ballots in the box without realising it: one contained the name of his preferred candidate and the other was blank.

The mistake meant the whole voting session had to be cancelled, without the ballots even being scrutinised. If they had, Bergoglio would probably have probably come out on top. It was decided that another vote should be cast immediately. The mishap would not have influenced the cardinals in any way as none of them knew what name (in this case none) was on the extra ballot. On the sixth ballot and after the fifth scrutiny, the Archbishop of Buenos Aires won a clear majority: way above the expected quorum of 77 votes. Then the white smoke billowed out of the Sistine Chapel chimney and Pope Francis greeted the crowds for the first time.

Seems an amusing if innocuous story. But translated into the American fever swamp coverage of voter fraud, and we'd get something like this:

Catholics were shocked when Hispanic Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was elected to the Papacy. His radical views and known ties to Latin American Marxists have already manifested in a papacy that has at every turn eviscerated traditional Catholic values. But the mystery may have been solved: A Breitbart exclusive reveals that his "election" may have actually been the result of widespread fraud in the sacrosanct election proceeding. Sources inside the Vatican have confirmed that one of the election rounds simply wasn't counted after an unrevealed Cardinal was caught trying to stuff the ballot box. Despite evidence of a potential corruption scandal, allies to Cardinal Bergoglio not only refused to tabulate the ballots, they forced a highly irregular immediate revote where their preferred candidate surged to a shocking victory .....

And so on and so forth.

We Are ... The Resistance

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I wanted to become a lawyer.

The government has moved to ban the [defense from using the] word “government” [to refer to the prosecution]. The State of Tennessee offers precisely zero legal authority for its rather nitpicky position, and the defense can find none. The Plaintiff has failed to carry its burden on this motion. Moreover, the Plaintiff’s proposed ban on speech would violate the First Amendment. The motion should be denied.

Should this Court disagree, and feel inclined to let the parties basically pick their own designations and ban words, then the defense has a few additional suggestions for amending the speech code. First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called “the Defendant.” This rather archaic term of art, obviously has a fairly negative connotation. It unfairly demeans, and dehumanizes Mr. D.P. The word “defendant” should be banned. At trial, Mr. P. hereby demands to be addressed only by his full name, preceded by the title “Mister.”

Alternatively, he may be called simply “the Citizen Accused.” This latter title sounds more respectable than the criminal “Defendant.” The designation “That innocent man” would also be acceptable.

Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a “lawyer,” or a “defense attorney.” Those terms are substantially more prejudicial than probative. See Tenn. R. Evid. 403. Rather, counsel for the Citizen Accused should be referred to primarily as the “Defender of the Innocent.” This title seems particularly appropriate, because every Citizen Accused is presumed innocent.

Alternatively, counsel would also accept the designation “Guardian of the Realm.”

Further, the Citizen Accused humbly requests an appropriate military title for his own representative, to match that of the opposing counsel. Whenever addressed by name, the name ”Captain Justice” will be appropriate. While less impressive than “General,” still, the more humble term seems suitable. After all, the Captain represents only a Citizen Accused, whereas the General represents an entire State.

Along these same lines, even the term “defense” does not sound very likeable. The whole idea of being defensive, comes across to most people as suspicious. So to prevent the jury from being unfairly misled by this ancient English terminology, the opposition to the Plaintiff hereby names itself “the Resistance.” Obviously, this terminology need only extend throughout the duration of the trial — not to any pre-trial motions. During its heroic struggle against the State, the Resistance goes on the attack, not just the defense.

WHEREFORE, Captain Justice, Guardian of the Realm and Leader of the Resistance, primarily asks that the Court deny the State’s motion, as lacking legal basis. Alternatively, the Citizen Accused moves for an order in limine modifying the speech code as aforementioned, and requiring any other euphemisms and feel-good terms as the Court finds appropriate.

The government's motion was denied.

The Importance of Being Earnest

There is a widespread consensus that the attorney who argued for the plaintiffs in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action (regarding the constitutionality of Michigan's anti-affirmative action constitutional amendment) did a poor job. The chatter about her performance is amplified because she was not originally scheduled to argue the case, instead substituting at the last minute. There's been a lot of speculation about why that happened, but Tony Mauro may have uncovered the answer:

Detroit civil rights lawyer Shanta Driver made a last-minute decision to argue in a high-profile Supreme Court affirmative action case on Oct. 15 in part, she said, because so few African-American lawyers appear before the justices.

Speaking at a rally of affirmative action supporters in front of the court after the argument, Driver said that only one black lawyer—who spoke for 11 minutes—appeared last term before the justices. It was important, she added, for her as a black woman to argue in Schuette v., Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action to show the justices that someone “who really could speak for the movement” was making the case to save affirmative action.

Her comments, which have gone unreported, help solve the mystery surrounding Driver’s surprise appearance before the court in one of its most important cases of the term. Until the morning of the Supreme Court arguments, Driver’s law firm partner George Washington, who is white, was listed by the court as the one who would make the case for state programs that give a boost to minorities.

Josh Blackman declares this to be "startling" and "patronizing to the Justices." But I'm not sure that's fair.

I should preface by saying that I don't have an opinion on whether the attorney's performance was in fact good or bad -- both because I haven't listened to the argument and, more importantly, because I agree with the also-generally-agreed-upon consensus that she was drawing dead to begin with. And we will never truly know whether the decision to swap in Driver would have made any difference. Counterfactuals are of course impossible and most people are skeptical that the quality of oral argument really impacts the Supreme Court's decisions, particularly in high-profile cases like this.

All that being said, I do want to make the simple observation that the way in which the race of an advocate or interlocutor affects the way we make decisions is an empirical and psychological one, and shouldn't be waved away on the grounds that it is "patronizing." There are many people affiliated with the Court in the early 90s who are convinced that the presence of Thurgood Marshall deterred his colleagues from being as aggressive as they would have liked in rolling back Warren Court race precedents, and that it made a significant difference when he was replaced by Justice Thomas. Driver seemed to think that it was important for liberal judges to see her, and perhaps her presence would impact how hard they'd dig in their heels in writing their dissent (or whether to dissent at all).

The point is that the impact on race in modern society is often framed in terms of politeness -- it's impolitic or rude to speculate that something like race might matter. But the impact of race on perception exists independently of how we would like polite society to operate, and we shouldn't be short-changing inquiry into the question by framing the entire question as ill-mannered.

Energizer Bunnies

I had my first day of work today. Obviously, I've had quite a few "first days of work" before, but this one was different because unlike all of my previous jobs, this one is of indefinite duration. Summer jobs end with the summer ends, my clerkship and my teaching position were both for defined one-year stints. But my tenure at a law firm can continue on and on, until one of us decides to cut the cord. In the words of Community's Mr. Radison:

This is forever. This is what we do now. This is who we are.

But God willing, someday I will win regionals.

Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume IV: Sex

"Every generation," the saying goes, "thinks it invented sex." Wrong. The Jews invented sex -- at least, the dirty, perverted, sexy sex whose kinky hotness is erotically destroying civilization as we know it. From "The Secret Sex Life of the Jews" [http://www.veteranstoday.com/2013/10/19/secret-sex-life-of-the-jews/]:

No class of men appears to be quite as sex-obsessed as the Orthodox Jews and the rabbinate. If you compare the religious texts of the various world religions, you will find that all of them—with the single exception of Judaism—maintain a high moral tone throughout. They don’t keep harping on about breasts and penises, prostitutes and semen. Judaism does.
[...]
Jews certainly have sex on the brain. And they have transmitted their obsession to the rest of society. We have all become infected, to a certain degree, with the sex virus.
[...]
Of one thing we can be reasonably certain: any society that attracts large numbers of Jews can expect within a few years to enter a spiral of decadence. Moral anarchy sets in. Sexual promiscuity throws open its Pandora’s box of evils. We saw it in Weimar Germany.

We see it gathering pace in America today. We see it above all in Israel, a society of fanatical settlers and rabid right-wing rabbis: a country surely doomed to implode from within, sooner or later, under the pressure of its own moral and military excesses.

I cannot help feeling that a great storm is brewing and that only a military coup or revolution can now save America. Save it from what? From the spiritual cancer that is consuming it from within, and from the iniquitous wars into which it is being lured— Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and soon perhaps Iran—on behalf of a foreign nation and its disinfo agents in America.

Unless a miracle soon occurs and some charismatic leader comes to our rescue, an unimaginably bleak future surely awaits us: a future in which the only consolations left to us will be mindless entertainment, drugs, alcohol, sexual intoxication — and suicide.

This is ridiculous of course -- anyone who thinks suicide will save them from the endless march of Jewish sexy sex obviously has never heard of autoerotic asphyxiation (thanks Hebrew school!).

That being said, you can't deny that she has a point. Jews are overwhelmingly liberal on issues of sex and sexuality. Seventy percent support gay marriage. Ninety percent support legalized abortion in most cases. Ninety four percent of Jews reported having premarital sex. Shameful, I know. And as this exclusive behind the scenes footage of a typical Bar Mitzvah demonstrates, dirty, filthy sex lies at the very center of what it means to be a Jew:

Citicare

Citibank just emailed me to let me know that I have some rewards points expiring at the end of the year. Since I am mandated to use them or lose them, I dutifully logged onto the Citibank "Thank You" website to see what my ~6000 points could buy me.

The website is a disaster. Every page has failed to load at least once if not multiple times that I've clicked on it, making it virtually impossible to browse for items (let alone filter my searches). Once it spontaneously logged me out of my account, causing me to have to start everything over. I finally found a product that I wanted (a cast iron skillet), but I had to enter a new shipping address, and I can't do that because each time I click "submit" the page times out and I have to reinput the information.

In conclusion, clearly Citibank is a failure and must be repealed, and the entire project of private capitalist enterprise has been discredited.

Project Runway All-Stars 3: Initial Thoughts

They don't give us any time to relax, do they? The week after Season 11 of Project Runway ends (and immediately following the reunion special), we begin a new season of all-stars! Some first thoughts:

* When they started to announce the designers' mentor, Jill and I squealed with excitement in anticipation of Joanna Coles. And then it was Zanna Roberts Rassi. Such a quick mutual high-to-low is a rare thing.

* I can't believe there's already been three seasons of all-stars (and that doesn't include the special one episode all-stars challenge they did when the show moved to Lifetime. Everyone forgets about that).

* Andy South changes gender and becomes Ari South, and she still isn't the designer whose look has altered the most. That honor goes to Jeffrey Sebelia, who now looks like an extra from a Jeff Foxworthy routine. Elena doesn't count because Elena looks like a completely new person every single episode, thanks to an infinite array of hairstyles.

* I'm glad Viktor didn't go home. I liked his look and generally like his aesthetic, and think he has more to show. I think Melissa was the clear loser of the challenge though (Korto was a bit lucky to be safe, I thought, and Daniel's usual insanity coin-flipped the wrong way).

* I'm not Seth Aaron fan, but that outfit rocked. Also, his vibe is now more "L'oreal executive vice president" than his previous "hyperactive clown." It's an improvement.

* Elena wins her first ever challenge! No complaints by me -- the look was very cool and very her. I have no doubt, however, that she will still bring the crazy this season.

* Also, I understand she meant well, but greeting the guest judge/theme with "my dad will be so psyched" is probably not the preferred reaction.

* Irena's dress! Va-va-voom! Definitely could have seen that on top.

Currency Manipulation

The Washington Post issues its endorsements for local Virginia House of Delegate seats. All four are currently occupied by Republicans, and there discussion of each race begins by observing that, in essence, the incumbent is a lunatic. There's the one who was one "of a handful of lawmakers to speak out against an otherwise highly qualified judicial nominee who happened to be gay." There's the one who "voted to study whether Virginia should develop its own currency as a hedge against financial chaos." There's the one whose "contempt for homosexuals is surpassed only by his disregard for women who have abortions; he suggested that God exacts vengeance on women who abort their fetuses by assuring that their next pregnancy will produce a disabled child." And finally there's the one "who has tormented gays, immigrants and women with his right-wing views."

Well, that makes life easy doesn't it? Not so fast! Two of these four somehow managed to get the Post's endorsement anyway. That's because it appears that the Post's only criteria for its endorsement was a vote for a transportation bill the paper thought was important. Two of the incumbents voted for the bill and garnered an endorsement, two opposed it and saw the nod go to their challenger. Simple as that.

In case you're curious, the lucky duo who got the endorsement were Mr. Won't Vote for the Gay and Mr. Create our own Currency (incredibly, the Post managed to call both "pragmatists" for their transportation vote in the same paragraph that they opened by detailing their extremism).

And They Never Saw a Latte Again

Some folks are buzzing about the fact that Conde Nast is ending its internship program after being sued for not paying its workers. This has led to some gloating from libertarian sorts, who are elated to inform us that when government forbids for-profit employees from working for free (or for pennies), sometimes the opportunity to work at starvation wages goes away!

Color me unconvinced. I'm truly unconvinced that nobody at Conde Nast will now be doing ... whatever it is that the interns did that allegedly kept them in the office 12 hours at day at $12 a day. The difference is now the person (a) won't be called an "intern" and (b) will get something approximating an entry-level worker's salary. This is not a bad thing. Indeed, it is kind of the point. Whatever wonderful experiences one gets by being one's own Devil Wears Prada extra is now available to people who actually need their jobs to pay money.

The 47%, Redux

Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) takes a page out of Mitt Romney's book (via):

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) took a page from the Mitt Romney playbook when he told a conservative audience at an event last week that 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state don't work, the Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday.

[...]

"Number two, when you talk about workforce development, it really means that the people that -- about 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don't work," LePage said. A woman can then be heard on the recording reacting to that figure, to which LePage reiterated "About 47 percent. It's really bad."

Politifact rates this statement "mostly true" because the real figure undoubtedly contains two digits followed by a percent symbol.

Sweet Home Alabamacare

One of the interesting points about Obamacare's supposed unpopularity is that it combines the people who don't like it because it's liberal socialist communist overreach, and the people who don't like it because they're holding out for single-payer. The GOP, naturally, really represents only the latter constituency. And while such persons do represent the majority of the loyal Obamacare opposition, breaking the numbers out is rather revealing. 41% of Americans support Obamacare, and another 12% oppose it because they wish it was more liberal. Only 38% of Americans oppose it on conservative grounds. To put that in perspective, 38% is roughly the vote share President Obama managed to win in Alabama in 2012.

Now this does raise the question of who exactly these 12% not-liberal-enoughers are. I, for example, might wish Obamacare was more liberal than it is, but I still won't say I oppose it. There are some Americans who really are left-wing enough so they oppose, on substance, mainstream liberal policy objectives, but I don't think they total 12%. There's probably some remnants of the firebagger wing of the party mixed in here. And there are probably some people who, unlike me, will vote "opposed" in a poll question of this sort of they can conceive of any policy they'd prefer to Obamacare, even if they don't find the law itself to be particularly objectionable.

In all cases, to say such people won't vote Republican is not to say they will vote Democratic, but obviously to the extent that 12% has a lean, it will lean in favor of the Democratic Party.

Quote of the Weekend

Talk radio host and far-right extremist Alex Jones hosted a gun rights rally at The Alamo, which concluded by raffling off various high powered firearms. Scott Eric Kauffman remarks:

Because nothing says “America is a meritocracy!” more than a game of chance in which the winner obtains enough firepower to take out the losers.

Things People Blame Jews For, Volume III: Rudeness of the French

I had an idea for this week's "things people blame Jews for" edition. It was solid, and thematic around a life event of mine. But sometimes, things just fall into your lap, and you can't bear to let them pass. So it is with this week's entry, wherein we discover that Jews are to blame for ... the rudeness of the French [http://henrymakow.com/2013/10/French-Rudeness-Due-to-Occult-Attack%20.html].

In general, the French are rude because as a people, we are under attack.

Most of people just reflect back the aggression they are suffering themselves.

We are under an occult attack from the Masonic Jewish cabal that controls France. Although the majority of French cannot identify this source, we are reacting to the evil we are being fed by the media, politics and culture as a whole.

We've been uprooted as a Christian people, and the loss of Christianity as religion, ethic, moral values, communication, education and so on, is what's turning us into reckless maniacs.

We do not know how to interact with others nicely because evil is being forced down our throat daily. This creates a deep sense of moral discomfort and insecurity. And when you add the constant influx of foreigners into the country, inspired by the Masonic Jewish cabal, you end up with a people that feels (the word is not too strong) terrorized.

I have to admit this one surprised even me. Typically, Jews are blamed for grand social calamities or massive disasters. Being blamed for a bad attitude is distinctly small ball -- even if it does come tied to our supposed control of an entire nation-state. On the other hand, at some level it also is demonstrative of our limitless reach and zeal for control. Any tyrannical cabal can control a banking system -- it takes a true attention to detail to be responsible for individual mood swings as well.

While the hat tip goes to Adam Holland, this post had to be dedicated to Phoebe Maltz Bovy, given that it is basically the bizarro version of her own blog.

Norm Geras, RIP

Norm Geras, writer of the famous NormBlog, has passed away. He was a superb writer, an incisive thinker on topics of political philosophy generally and Jewish experience particularly, and a valued member of the blogosphere. Though I only interacted with him a few times, he was unfailingly courteous and thoughtful in all of my interactions.

Rest in Peace, Norm. You'll be missed.

Followers

One of the nice things about being a politics junkie in DC is that everyone else is a politics junkie too. Even the muggers:

An attempted mugging on Capitol Hill was thwarted Monday night by a quick-thinking victim — one who apparently keeps an eye on national security news.

The victim was walking home to her Capitol Hill townhouse when she was violently confronted by a man in the dark, grassy area between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Heritage Foundation.

The assailant grabbed the victim's arm and demanded her wallet and phone. "I said the first thing I could think of," the victim, who asked to remain nameless, told the Washington Examiner.

The victim, who weighs a petite 95 pounds, explained to the assailant she was an intern with the National Security Agency. As an intern, she said, she had no cash to fork over (she is actually a staffer at a D.C. nonprofit, and in fact did have cash on her).

[...]

The victim elaborated further, warning the would-be mugger that the phone she held in her hand — complete with a pink-and-blue Lilly Pulitzer case — would be tracked by the NSA if she were to turn it over.

"I told him that the NSA could track the phone within minutes, and it could cause possible problems for him," the victim recounted.

The NSA has been in the spotlight this year due to controversial and far-reaching intelligence-gathering programs it had kept hidden from public knowledge.

Perhaps wary of just how far the NSA would go to keep its assets safe, the assailant just "looked at me and ran away," the victim said.

Well played. And good on the criminal too, for staying abreast of the news.

Sticky Slopes on the California Law Review Website

Here's a link to a PDF of Sticky Slopes on the California Law Review's website, as well as the final abstract:

Legal literature is replete with references to the infamous "slippery slope"-situations in which a shift in policy lubricates the path towards further, perhaps more controversial, reforms or measures. Less discussed is the idea of a "sticky slope." Sticky slopes manifest when a social movement victory acts to block, instead of enable, further policy goals. Instead of greasing the slope down, they effectively make it "stickier." Despite the lack of scholarly attention, sticky slope arguments show up again and again in legal argument, particularly in areas focused on minority rights. Formal legal doctrine can create sticky slopes insofar as it reduces legal protections for marginalized groups as they gain political power. Informally, sticky slopes can also develop through backlash, through legal arguments whose valences drift from their original intention, or through society's exhaustion with attempting to address the problem of inequality to seemingly little effect.


I argue that attentiveness to sticky slopes is important for three reasons. First, awareness of the prospect of a sticky slope can be important in long-term social movement strategizing. Where social movements are in pursuit of a cluster of related political ends, they will want to choose their tactics carefully so as to minimize the degree that their past accomplishments can be turned against them. Second, when deployed by legal actors, sticky slope arguments sometimes do not play true causal roles, but instead act as a mask for other, less tolerable justifications. Unmasking sticky slope logic can force legal policymakers to be more explicit about the rationales and implications of their decision. Third, sticky slopes reveal how prior victories are themselves sites of social conflict and controversy over meaning, which social movements will want to turn to their preferred ends.

David Schraub, Sticky Slopes, 101 Calif. L. Rev. 1249 (2013).

Identifying the Problem

Seventh Circuit Judge and noted polymath Richard Posner has come out and stated that he was "absolutely" wrong to have voted to uphold voter ID laws. Posner authored a 2-1 opinion in Crawford v. Marion County, later upheld by the Supreme Court, which affirmed the constitutionality of Indiana's voter ID requirement.

Yes [I got the Crawford case wrong. Absolutely. And the problem is that there hadn't been that much activity with voter identification. And ... maybe we should have been more imaginative ... we ... weren't really given strong indications that requiring additional voter identification would actually disfranchise people entitled to vote. There was a dissenting judge, Judge Evans, since deceased, and I think he is right. But at the time I thought what we were doing was right.

It is interesting that the majority opinion was written by Justice Stevens, who is very liberal, more liberal than I was or am.... But I think we did not have enough information. And of course it illustrates the basic problem that I emphasize in book. We judges and lawyers, we don’t know enough about the subject matters that we regulate, right? And that if the lawyers had provided us with a lot of information about the abuse of voter identification laws, this case would have been decided differently.

I don't necessarily disagree that there were, in fact, plenty of people who had the knowledge and imagination to understand how voter ID laws would act primarily to disenfranchise selcted classes of voters while doing virtually nothing to staunch the voter fraud non-issue. Nonetheless, Judge Posner deserves a nod of approval for admitting that he was wrong on such a high-profile issue. Between this and A Failure of Capitalism, Judge Posner has shown an admirable willingness to revisit his positions when new facts warrant it, and that is laudable.

Things Jews Are Blamed For, Volume II: New York City

Greetings, blog readers! I'm in New York City for a wedding, and what better place to do the weekly "Things Jews Are Blamed For" series than the Big Apple? Now, I thought about just doing 9/11 for this entry but, come on, that's a gimme. The point of this series is to stretch our horizons a bit -- really reach down into that primordial id.

So instead of doing New York's greatest tragedy in living memory, I decided to go even bigger: New York. All of it. The entire city and state. Jews' are to blame. The site is "Incog Man" ("Sick of the BS" is the tag, right above a link to "The Rela Holocaust Deal"), the article is titled "Like They Say: It Really is 'JEW York City'" [link if you dare: http://incogman.net/2010/11/it-really-is-jew-york-city/]. Here's how it begins:

New York (City) is a place that is heavily influenced, and in the majority of instances, utterly controlled by the obscenely wealthy Zionist elite. The governorship is currently occupied by David Paterson, who replaced the disgraced Zionist Eliot Spitzer. Just two days after Spitzer stepped down, New York’s Zionist leaders fully endorsed Paterson, who had been well known for his charity activities in the Zionist community even prior to becoming governor (1). His lieutenant governor, who controls the state senate, is Richard Ravitch. Though his ascension to the position was ruled unlawful (2), he remains in power. Ravitch is a powerful Zionist whose construction company built Manhattan Plaza and Waterside Plaza and who has been involved in Zionist fund-raising for half of a century (3). The speaker of New York’s State Assembly is Zionist Sheldon Silver, and earlier this year, he made a request that Ravitch, and not Paterson, should take control of New York’s budget crisis (4).

New York’s US Senate members include the junior official, Kirsten Gillibrand, who stated that she will be an ‘unwavering supporter’ of the Zionist entity and ‘continue to assure Israel’s strategic military advantage in the region (5),’ and the senior official, long-familiar Zionist politician Chuck Schumer, who made it known that he thinks it makes sense to strangle Gaza economically (6). New York City’s representatives in the US House are entirely Zionist. Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Nita Lowey, Steven Israel, Eliot Engel, and Gary Ackerman all support Israel unabashedly. New York City’s mayor is 9/11 criminal, the Zionist billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who regularly donates to pro-Israel charities (7). New York’s Department of Education is headed by Zionist Joel Klein, selected to serve by Bloomberg. Klein and Bloomberg finalized an agreement with the United Federation of Teachers’ President, Zionist Randi Weingarten, to have total dominion over New York’s school system (8).

The diamond industry in New York has always been a ‘Jewish’ establishment since the city’s inception (9), and once the plot to create Israel was hatched, the diamond district began funneling dollars to the Zionist power brokers. The Diamonds Dealers Club (DDC), the elite ‘club’ within the diamond district that makes all of the important decisions, has a board of directors and an arbitrators’ committee comprised of several Israeli-born Zionists, and is owned and operated by Zionists Moshe Mosbacher, who serves as President, and Martin Hochbaum, who serves as Managing Director (10). The former president of DDC, Jacob Banda, who recently died, was a staunch Zionist who contributed substantial amounts to Hatzalah, a Jews-only ambulance service that is prominent in Israel (11). New York’s diamond district is going through a renovation process that will model it after Israel’s Diamond Exchange (12). All of Israel’s top diamond exporters have offices within the New York diamond district. The transactions being processed represent billions of dollars for the Zionist entity (13).

The most famous, and most influential New York city paper is the New York Times, owned by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, a wealthy Zionist creed that has donated to pro-Israel causes for more than 100 years despite outwardly opposing the usurping entity at times so the family appears ‘non-Zionist’ (14). To this very day, it operates with a strong bias for the Zionist state and reinforces the negative portrayal of Arabs and Muslims in accordance with the other mainstream media outlets (15). The NASDAQ is controlled by Zionist Robert Greifeld, who signed an agreement with Ester Levanon, the CEO of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange to formalize a ‘closer relationship’ between the two markets (16). The Dow Jones is controlled by the CME Group, owned by Christian Zionists Terrence Duffy and Craig Donohue. Duffy and Donohue purchased the stock exchange from News Corp, owned by infamous Zionist Rupert Murdoch. Duffy and Donohue were honored by Hebrew University earlier this year for their ‘strong support of the state of Israel,’ with Duffy receiving the Zionist school’s National Scopus Award (17). Hebrew University is built on illegally occupied land in Jerusalem. Wall Street is crawling with Zionists, and every company involved in the recent criminal bailout of the banking industry had deep loyalties to the illegitimate terror state. Several of the financial giants were also connected to the 9/11 false flag attack (18).

It goes on (and on and on), but the upshot is apparently this: "It is perfectly reasonable to hypothesize, considering how much financial clout and political power the Zionists possess, that any project, structure, or event going against their interest in New York wouldn't be able to come to fruition." I'd like to make a crack about the size of my hotel room, but I've actually been pleasantly surprised. Then again, I am Jewish, so presumably the Sheraton bent over backwards to give me this 6th floor masterpiece.

In any event, the verdict is clear: If it happens in New York, it's the Jews' fault. Tune in next week, for more exciting adventures in "Things Jews Are Blamed For"!

Quote of the Day

Johann Gottlieb Fichte previously gained mentioned on this blog for advocating that, as a prerequisite for their getting civil rights, Jewish "heads should be cut off in one night and replaced with others not containing a single Jewish idea." This quote, while equally revealing, is somewhat less revolting:

"What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of [person] one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we accept or reject as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it."

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, The Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) 16 (Heath and Lachs, trans., Appleton-Century Crofts 1970) (1797).

To some extent, our philosophies act as constraints on what sorts of behaviors we're willing to engage in, but to a much larger extent what behaviors we feel are important or valuable or worthwhile constrain the philosophies we are willing to accept. When last I made this point (with respect to our judicial interpretative philosophies), I illustrated it by a conversation in Firefly between River Tam and the bounty hunter Jubal Early:

River: You hurt people.

Early: Only when the job requires it.

River: Wrong. You're a bad liar. [...] You like to hurt folk.

Early: It's part of the job.

River: It's why you took the job.

Sometimes the fruits of our philosophical positions are just "part of the job." More often though, I suspect, they're why we adapted the philosophy in the first place.

Get This

Here's something you don't see everyday:

Two Orthodox rabbis and two others were arrested for allegedly kidnapping and beating men in order to force them to grant their wives religious Jewish divorces.

The men were arrested Wednesday night in a monthlong sting operation in which a female FBI agent posed as an Orthodox woman trying to get a religious divorce, or “get,” from her husband.

The problem whereby Jewish men do not give their wives a get, and thus prevent them from remarrying, is a well-known issue in the Orthodox Jewish community. They've come up with a variety of different responses, most of which are variations on social shaming techniques. This is the first I've heard of vigilante beatings, though.

The simple solution, of course, is to allow either party to file a get. Gender egalitarianism -- is there any problem it can't solve?

Private Eyes, Public Lies

A Texas high school teacher was discovered to have had nude photos of her taken while she was in college. Some parents are calling for her to be fired. Students, by contrast, are reallying to save her job (via). At the Texas Monthly, Dan Solomon asks if we're entering a new era where having some old naked photos crop up isn't a big deal. Naked selfies are becoming so common, he argues, that people will soon no longer be able to muster up any outrage about them.

This is something I've thought of a lot -- less from the naked selfie perspective than from the more general fact that far more of our lives (and particularly our young lives) are documented for posterity than ever before. As a society, we are forgetting how to forget -- everything you do is part of your permanent profile. Young people are constantly warned that those Facebook pictures of themselves at the kegger in high school could have serious consequences when they try to apply for jobs. Old transgressions can come back to shame people years later with a few well-placed google searches.

And that may be true, in the short-term. But in the long-term, I suspect it's more likely that we will systematically recalibrate our expectations. The shock value of a picture showing a guy passed out on the couch surrounded by PBR cans is dramatically diminished when the HR director has the same photos floating around. If everyone has embarrassing photos, dumb teen angsty poetry, and nude self-portraits scattered throughout the internet, then nobody does.

This has more profound consequences than I think are typically acknowledged. We talk about the dangers of the internet's limitless memory as if I current conceptions of shame, guilt, condemnation, and even personal continuity will survive intact. But it's at least as likely that the fact that a documented past is now the norm rather than the exception will cause significant alterations to all of these things. The regulation of underage drinking, for example, occurs now even though it is exceptionally likely that virtually every state and federal politician drank while underage. We know that, but we don't know that, and if a picture surfaced of Congressman John Doe drunk while in college would still be news. It's a different thing when the existence of these photos is commonplace and mainstream -- it prevents us from even maintaining the facade to shield ourselves from charges of hypocrisy -- or so I think.

The result, I hope, is a more forgiving society. If everyone's dirty laundry is out there for the rest to see, there's no sense preserving its status as reputation-annihilating. Reputation is a collective action problem, and the share-everything mentality of the internet helps resolve it. Or so I think.

A War of All Against All

Some gamers usee Scribblenauts to answer the ultimate question: Who would win a fight (everybody edition)? The ultimate champion may be a surprise.

Better Than Newt

This strikes me as a reach:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told his Republican colleagues that the shutdown has improved the GOP's position in a closed-door lunch on Wednesday, according to the Washington Examiner.

Cruz paid for a poll conducted by Chris Perkins, of Republican polling firm Wilson Perkins Allen. The poll found results similar to those run by national firms this week, which showed Republicans taking the majority of blame for the shutdown. Only 28 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, according to findings from Gallup released Wednesday.

However, Cruz argued that because the shutdown resulted from a disagreement over Obamacare, not spending in general, Republicans are in a better position now than they were in 1995, according to the Examiner.

Cruz's poll found that 46 percent blame the 2013 shutdown on Republicans, while 51 percent blamed the 1995 shutdown on Republicans, according to the Examiner.

The public hates us, but not as much as they hated Newt Gingrich does not an effective rallying cry make.

Roadspierre

Well this will certainly brighten the grim DC mood:

On October 11th, a group of right-wing truckers is planning to drive to DC to shut down the major commuter highway that circles the city. They’ll continue to block traffic, they say, until they see the arrest of elected officials who have “violated their oath of office.”

Organizers of the event, which is titled “Truckers Ride for the Constitution,” say they are fed up with a variety of headaches caused by the government: Fuel efficiency standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, Obamacare, state and local laws over idling their trucks, and “insurance companies purportedly requiring technological updates,” according to US News and World Report.

They say that to demonstrate against violations of the constitution, they plan to circle interstate 495 — known widely as the beltway — and not allow through any traffic. If police try to stop them, they’ll park their trucks right on the highway.

Originally, reports from US News and World Report indicated the truckers were looking to impeach President Obama. But Earl Conlon, an organizer of the event, told US News, “We’re not asking for impeachment, we’re asking for the arrest of everyone in government who has violated their oath of office.” These include House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), both for purportedly arming al Qaeda linked Syrian rebels.

Oh joy. But wait! I take the Communist Socialist Metro for my commute! Joke's on them!

When Friends Get Too Close

Poor Ken Cuccinelli -- his friends are his worst enemy. First one of his supporters makes an anti-Semitic joke while introducing him at a rally (to Cuccinelli's credit he immediately condemned the remark). Now he's taking great steps to avoid being associated with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) -- a goal with which Cruz is not exactly cooperating:

In the clearest sign yet of the potent effect of the government shutdown on the Virginia governor’s race, Republican Ken Cuccinelli avoided being photographed with Ted Cruz at a gala they headlined here Saturday night—even leaving before the Texas senator rose to speak.
[...]
For his part, Cruz heaped praise on his “friend” Cuccinelli and argued passionately in a 54-minute speech that their party can still win the messaging fight over the shutdown if the people just speak out loudly enough.

“Ken is smart, he’s principled and he’s fearless,” said Cruz, in a line that may give the left fodder for attack ads, given how the campaign has gone. “And that last characteristic in particular is a rare, rare commodity in elected life. There are so many elected officials in both parties that desperately crave the adulation of the media and the intelligentsia.”

That sequence honestly made me laugh out loud -- I can just imagine Cooch backstage muttering "shutupshutupshutup!"

Cruz, of course, does not shut up.

Things Jews Are Blamed For: Inaugural Fukushima Edition

I'm tempted to start an ongoing weekly series entitled "things Jews are blamed for" (it could be daily or hourly content-wise, but I have my sanity to think). It will feature various things going on the world and how somebody, somewhere, is convinced the Jews are at fault.

Today's entrant: Jews caused the Fukushima disaster. [http://firstlightforum.wordpress.com/2011/10/31/jews-sabotage-fukushima-power-plant-as-payback-for-japans-support-of-an-independent-palestinian-state/ -- in general I won't be directly linking to the sites in question for obvious reasons].

The Only Thing We Have To Fear....

Kevin Drum links to an interesting study (summarized here; full-text is here for people who, unlike me, have access to these sorts of things) about why people listen to talk radio. The answer is it provides an affirming space where they can express their political opinions in a welcoming environment without fear of social sanction. And the reason conservative talk radio is so much more popular than its liberal counterpart is that conservatives are far more fearful of a particular type of social sanction: being called a racist.

In conversation with conservatives, liberals risk being called naïve or willfully blind to potential threats—not very pleasant labels, but not especially damaging ones, either. In contrast, conservatives risk accusations of racism—and “being called a racist carries a particular cultural force,” the researchers write.

“The experience of being perceived as racist loomed large in the mind of conservative fans (we interviewed),” they report. Every single conservative respondent raised the issue of being called racist, and did so without even being asked.

“What makes accusations of racism so upsetting for respondents is that racism is socially stigmatized, but also that they feel powerless to defend themselves once the specter is raised,” the researchers add. “We suspect that this heightened social risk increases the appeal of the safe political environs provided by outrage-based programs, and may partially explain the overwhelming conservative dominance of outrage-based political talk media.”

I think any White person at least feels a ping of recognition here. I didn't always have the views of race and racism that I do now, and I remember when I viewed the charge of "racism" in much the same way -- a bolt of lightening, wanton and capricious, impossible to predict, and terribly destructive. I try to remember that outlook because I remember who I was then: I wasn't some monster or Klansman in training, and (obviously) I was still in a position where I could eventually be persuaded to think more critically about the role of racism in contemporary American life.

That being said, one thing that I think often gets lost in these discussions is who is benefitted by viewing racism this way. Let's use Drum's discussion as an example:

It's obvious that race infuses a tremendous amount of American discourse. It affects our politics, our culture, and our history. Racial resentment is at the core of many common attitudes toward social welfare programs; our levels of taxation; and the current occupant of the White House. There's no way to write honestly about politics in America without acknowledging all this on a regular basis.

At the same time, it's also obvious that, in many ways, a liberal focus on race and racism is just flatly counterproductive. When I write about, say, the racial obsessions displayed by Fox News (or Drudge or Rush Limbaugh), it's little more than a plain recitation of obvious facts, and liberals applaud. Ditto for posts about the self-described racial attitudes of tea partiers. But conservatives see it as an attack. And why wouldn't they? I'm basically saying that these outlets are engaged in various levels of race-mongering, and by implication, that anyone who listens to them is condoning racism. That's such a uniquely toxic accusation that it makes any real conversation hopeless. Cognitively, the only way to respond is to deny everything, and that in turn forces you to believe that liberals are obviously just lying for their own partisan ends. This feeds the vicious media-dittohead circle, and everyone withdraws one step more.

Drum identifies a paradox: We have to talk about racism, but talking about racism renders conversation impossible. Racism is a "such a uniquely toxic accusation that it makes any real conversation hopeless."

But here's the thing: there's no reason why that has to be true. When we talk about homelessness, for example, and I argue that a particular political position is unfair to the homeless, it doesn't have this effect. Racism is different: to talk about racial justice at all is automatically translated into a personal attack on the target's moral character. And once that's the terrain of the discussion, we've insulated the underlying policy differences from critical review. All conversations about racism are converted into inquisitions into whether or not someone is a conscious bigot. Since they know they're nothing of the sort, the "accusation" is dismissed and the "accuser" is labeled a race-baiter. One may have noticed that even if one takes great pains to frame an argument such that it does not call anybody a racist, the stock response nevertheless will be "are you calling me a racist?!!?" Why are they so eager to make the debate about something so "toxic"? It's because that's actually very easy terrain to deal with.

Framing racism as a "toxic" accusation benefits the status quo racial hierarchy. Most obviously, it does so by insulating policies which have racial impacts from meaningful scrutiny. More subtly, it allows proponents of maintaining racial hierarchy to maintain their self-perception as anti-racist. This whole gambit depends on asserting the exceptional moral seriousness of racism (else how could it be so "toxic"?). One often hears the claim that a given charge of racism is spurious coupled with the assertion that such frivolous accusations "make it harder to oppose real racism" -- a reassertion of racism as something that is serious and does need to be opposed. The net result is that racism is so serious that nothing ever actually can be racist -- a neat equilibrium, for those who want to identify as non-racist but don't want to actually change anything about themselves.

For this reason, in Sticky Slopes I warn that ratcheting up the moral condemnation associated with "racism" isn't necessarily a good thing -- as we increase the seriousness of the norm, we decrease the range of behaviors people are willing to accept may be in violation of it. Racial liberals probably had a great role to play in giving "racism" its toxic reputation; but racial conservatives have powerful cognitive incentives to continue perceiving it this way.

Pieces of the Pie

The latest Republican gambit to extract themselves out of their own self-destructive shutdown technique (other than blaming federal employees for the GOP's own decision to refuse to pass a clean budget bill) is to pass piecemeal bills that fund certain high profile federal programs, like national parks and cancer research on sick kids. It is of course breathtakingly cynical, and Democrats are right not to take the bait.

But my question is this: why can't Democrats volley this back the same way they've done to the House "defund Obamacare" packages? Take the House bill which funds just parks and research and veterans programs, amend it to add back every other program, pass that, and then send it right back to the House? It seems like that would neutralize the gambit pretty effectively. Hell, add back in some money to food stamps and leave out farm subsidies. If we're going to fund the government "piecemeal", well, an entire pie is technically a "piece"; especially if you shave off a few crumbs of corporate welfare.

Be Bold!

When I first posted Sticky Slopes onto SSRN (way back in 2009), Larry Solum gave it his coveted blue stamp of approval. It was the pale blue version, and as every reader of the Legal Theory blog knows, his endorsement comes in levels. Today, Unsuspecting made its appearance on Solum's blog, and it got the bold blue seal of approval. Ladies and gentlemen, I am moving up in the world!

(And of course, my thanks to Larry for the recommendation and kind words! He really is one of a kind in the legal marketplace, and his Legal Theory blog is an indispensable resource for anyone working in ... well, any area of law, really. It's really quite amazing).

I'm a Bad Man

I believe it was PG who complained that characterizing the Republican gambits regarding the debt ceiling and government shutdown as "hostage taking" was unfair and hyperbolic -- akin to the famed "Bushitler" extremism we'd all do better without. In rebuttal, here's former Bush speechwriter Marc Theissen, embracing the label:

Obama has accused Republicans of hostage taking. Let’s be clear: I’m all for taking hostages. Both sides do it all the time. But one of the first things they teach you in Hostage Taking 101 is that you have to choose a hostage the other side cares about saving.

Hence, Theissen argues for swapping the government shutdown hostage for the debt ceiling hostage. The former doesn't hurt the country enough, and people are blaming Republicans for it anyway. Not raising the debt ceiling, by contrast, now that will do some damage!

There's this weird trend whereby the media seems intent on characterizing Republican tactics in language far milder than do the Republicans themselves. So while the media is intent on "can't we all just get along" whines, Republicans are gleefully characterizing themselves a curled-mustached villains demanding we reverse the 2012 election lest they put two in the head of that pretty little economy of ours.

In Praise of Miserable Judges

Senior United States District Judge (D. Neb.) Richard Kopf talks about what it means to be a judge in today's criminal law environment:

The best way to think about it [becoming a federal judge] is to ask yourself this question: “Am I a willing judicial executioner, a person who consciously does great harm to other human beings by faithfully executing the extraordinarily harsh national criminal laws?” Those who covet a federal trial judgeship should think hard about this truth before pursuing the job.

I doubt they will. Instead, they will say to themselves, “I’m different. I am not weak. I am strong-minded.” Or, “I’m just doing what the law requires.” Or, “They did it to themselves. They deserve it.” Or, “Someone has to do it, and maybe I can improve things.” The rationalizations are endless.

But stripped of the BS that allows good people to do bad things, here is the essential truth: When sentencing people, federal trial judges literally and consciously destroy lives and most do so on a daily basis. So, I have a bit of advice for those who wish to replace Judge Bataillon. Be careful what you ask for. You have no idea what the hell you’re getting into.

Will Baude and I had the exact same instinct, which was that this sounds a lot like Robert Cover's famous declaration that "judges deal pain and death." I doubt Judge Kopf, a Reagan appointee, has typically been mistaken for Professor Cover, which makes this all the more striking.

Judge Kopf's sense is one I shared when I was clerking. For the most part during my clerkship, I did not feel like I was "doing justice" in any real sense, particularly in criminal law. This was not a knock on my judge or co-clerks, or anybody else on the Eighth Circuit. But doing law the way law is done, I felt like I was ruining far more lives than I was validating. At many times, it felt to me like I was making the world a worse place. It was not a good feeling.

On the other hand, I also cringe at Judge Kopf's suggestion that candidates for judgeships "think hard" about the truth of federal sentencing. Not because I oppose hard thought, but because however hard it is to be a judge who is miserable in her role as a "judicial executioner," I think it would be far worse if the only judges we had are those who ask themselves if they're willing to take on that role, and answer with a hearty "hell yeah, I am!"

Could Be!

Anita Perry, wife of Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), doesn't appear to share his view on abortion:

Speaking to Evan Smith at the 2013 Texas Tribune Festival, Perry said that abortion, an issue that Governor Rick Perry has made the cornerstone of his entire reign as Texas’s most important ten-gallon hat wearer, “could be a women’s right.” ....

In front of a visibly surprised Smith, Perry tried to elaborate her opinion about why abortion in particular is a uniquely women’s rights issue, saying, “That's really difficult for me, Evan, because I see it as a women's right. If they want to do that, that is their decision; they have to live with that decision.”

Smith then asked the blunt (and exceedingly generous) follow-up everyone else was probably itching to ask: “Mrs. Perry, I want to be sure you didn't just inadvertently make news. Are you saying that you believe abortion is a women's right, to make that choice?"

... [Perry responded:] “Yeah, that could be a women's right. Just like it's a man's right if he wants to have some kind of procedure. But I don't agree with it, and that's not my view."

Republicans will no doubt be appalled at this gross breach of party orthodoxy -- specifically, a woman who has an opinion different from that of her husband.

Generation Grift

Jill and I blundered into a fair today while walking to the Post Office (side note: Jill and I have wandered into many fairs in our day, and I don't think we've ever done so intentionally). It was fun -- there was a chili cook off and we registered to vote. And as we were walking, we saw a booth for an outfit called "Generation Opportunity." It rang a very faint bell, but it sounded like one of those neat non-profits that helps empower underprivileged high school students, so we decided to check it out.

They described their mission as surveying young people to find out what their priorities were, then advocating for those values. They gave an example of a proposed sales tax which I didn't know much about, then suggested we fill out one of their surveys. Jill, good quantitative researcher that she is, immediately asked what methods they had for ensuring that their surveys were actually representative of our generation by including low-income young people and people of color. The mumbled response about how there were other people who did that might have served as a red flag.

But then we took the survey, and it took one question for me to say "This is a push poll!" ("uhh ... yeah, the questions are worded terribly, I've talked to them about that."). "Do you think jobs are created by lowered taxes or bigger government?" "Do you think we should improve the economy and lower the debt by increasing government spending or decreasing it?" "Do you want to exercise your right to opt out of Obamacare?"

That last one was a subject near and dear to the staffer's heart -- he was very keen on informing us that we could decide not to participate in the Affordable Care Act. "I thought if I didn't participate Obama would, like, throw me in jail, but it's really just a fee you pay." I wanted to ask him if, given that his old sources were so terrible he thought he'd be imprisoned if he didn't get health insurance, if maybe he had thought about turning elsewhere for information on Obamacare, but I didn't. After turning down the offer of various swag emblazened with "opt out" (surely, a slogan our generation will get behind), I walked away.

Jill was actually a pretty happy camper -- she says she enjoys push polls because you know exactly what answers will piss the pollsters off ("why yes, I think larger government is the key to a healthy economy"). But I found myself very annoyed. These guys were basically grifters. The "opt out" movement is terrible -- it encourages people to go without health insurance to prove a political point, but you can bet dollars to donuts that if any of these kids actually get sick their erstwhile allies will do nothing but encourage them to die quickly. And even if they stay healthy, the goal of the program -- to deprive the health insurance market of healthy people to make it unaffordable for sick people -- is unspeakably evil. Frankly, I found it quite disgusting.

Standing Against the Tide

Ted Cruz's filibuster of futility has come to a close, but his office claims that the people are behind him: nearly 3,000 phone calls, as of late last night, mostly supportive.

I'm not saying I doubt the figure or the distribution, but I'm curious if a Senate office has ever released figures that said their boss got "almost 3,000 phone calls, mostly calling for his head on a spike."

In related news, just 14% of Americans support defunding Obamacare via government shutdown, versus 65% opposed.

Auto-Filibuster

On Friday, Kevin Drum stated that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was in a bit of pickle due to the particular procedural posture of the government funding bill. Cruz, of course, wants to stop the funding of the Affordable Care Act. Now, the normal Republican tool to stop anything they don't like is a filibuster. But procedurally Cruz can only filibuster the bill before cloture is called, and before cloture is called the bill is still the House bill -- which is to say, still defunds Obamacare. Once cloture passes, then Harry Reid will offer an amendment restoring funding to the ACA, but both the amendment and the final bill itself will only require 50 votes to pass. Oh no! Whatever will Cruz do?

I wish I had the foresight to put this on paper, because I promise I predicted the right answer: he'll filibuster his own bill, the one that actually does defund Obamacare. This may mark the first time a Senator has filibustered a bill that he fervently supports, but many things about this debate have been unprecedented.

Once he heard about that possibility, Drum thought it would come off as "ridiculous". I'm not exactly sure that's true -- the niceties of Senate procedure won't interest the average tv viewer, who will generally view the matter as Cruz trying to stop Obamacare from being refunded. The wonky procedural posture that leads Cruz to be filibustering what is essentially his own bill will be chalked up to that strange institution the Senate, just as Harry Reid often is seen voting against his own bills in order to preserve a later motion for reconsideration.

Of course, that doesn't mean the ploy will work -- it still would result in a government shutdown for which Republicans would assuredly be blamed, and they do not want that (and resent Cruz for foisting it upon them). But that Cruz was nutty enough to try this gambit I had no doubt about.

UPDATE: And now he just voted to consider the bill he just spent 20 hours railing against.

Clarity of Rescue

Israeli security forces have reportedly been on the scene in Nairobi, possibly because some of the businesses at the targeted mall may have been Israeli-owned. Thus we get this story:

Two Kenyans who survived and escaped the terror attack at the partially Israeli-owned Westgate Mall, in Nairobi, told the Guardian they were rescued by “a man they believed was an Israeli security officer,” according to live postings on the Guardian website.

The extent of Israeli involvement in the rescue operation remained unclear on Sunday, as official sources in Jerusalem declined to comment beyond saying that Israel is advising the Kenyan government on rescue initiatives.

If you're feeling a bit of cognitive dissonance, just chant "this proves it was a Zionist plot all along!" over and over until it goes away.

He Said She Said

UC-Irvine Law Dean and noted constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky critiques originalism, and several prominent originalists including Ilya Somin, Michael Ramsey, and Mike Rappaport respond. The argument they are most disdainful of is Chemerinsky's assertion that the constitution's exclusive use of "he" to refer to the President and Vice President indicates that only men can hold those positions under the original meaning of the document. "Uncharacteristically weak," declares Somin, while Ramsey labels the claim "preposterous," an argument "so poor I wonder if someone else wrote it and attached his name to it." They both contend that until quite recently "he" was used as a gender-neutral pronoun, so it is impossible to infer that its usage in the constitution was meant to render the executive branch gender exclusive.

While they may ultimately be correct, I think Chemerinsky's argument has more heft to it than they admit. It was of course common practice to use "he" as a general pronoun, though whether that was because it was understood to include women or because it was understood that women were not relevant to the conversation is less obvious. "He" in relation to political positions could just as easily stem from a widely shared understanding that women were not political subjects. Ramsey musters some intertextual evidence to support his position -- that when Article II, Section 1 delineates the necessary qualifications for a President it speaks of a "person" rather than a "man." And that has some persuasive force, but the problem is that the same archaic convention which allowed "he" to stand in for men and women also allowed for "person" to refer only to men. There are plenty of occasions where dead white men spoke of humanity or people with the assumption and understanding that it was only men about which they spoke.

More broadly, while it may be true that "he" could at the time have been understood to include both men and women, it also certainly could be used to refer only to men (how else would one do it?). Whether or not it was taking the former meaning or the latter is an exercise in interpretation, and one that depends on context. "Men" was similarly generic in character to "he" at the dawn of our nation, yet it is hard seriously contend that the phrase "all men are created equal" was meant to include women. Would citizens during the framing era have understood "he", in the context of who the Constitution contemplated could be President, to be inclusive of men and women alike, or just men? I would wager the latter.

Now arguably this doesn't close the door on originalist analysis of the clause's meaning. Arguably, the popular belief that "he" in this context referred to men and men alone was only the original expected application of the clause, not its original semantic meaning. This is a distinction Jack Balkin draws, and not all originalists accept his typology. But working off it for a moment, it's unclear. Words and phrases often can have very different semantic meanings at the same time period (for example, "hot dog" can mean either a tubular meat or a show-off). Where multiple meanings exist at a given time, is a generally understood consensus that one particular definition attaches in a particular context a case of "expected application" or "semantics"? Not an easy question, in my view.

This is not to say that Chemerinsky is necessarily right and his critics wrong. I'm not an originalist, so I hesitate to make definitive pronouncement on what results originalism yields (in part because I think they're often more indeterminate than its proponents would care to admit). But I think his point has more gravity than its given credit for, and citing the linguistic convention that "he" could have been in that era a gender-neutral pronoun does not actually get us that far.

UPDATE: Relevant to this discussion is an interesting history of gendered pronouns in the English language. Apparently the use of "he" as a gender neutral pronoun was first proposed in 1745, so it was certainly accepted by the time of the Constitution's drafting and probably understood as a possible meaning in the abstract, though again not necessarily in the context of who could serve as president.

YOLO?

I have a question for my readers: Do you feel a sense of continuity in your life, or do you feel disconnected from your self of 5 or 10 or 15 years past? As for me, I don't feel any strong disconnect between my 15-year old self and my 27-year old self. I think I think the same way, I have many of the same interests, and similar shortcomings (whether that means I was a very mature 15-year old or am a very immature 27-year old I leave to others). It's not that nothing has changed at all, but it feels like change within a single continuity, not like the younger me was a different person at altogether.

But I often hear people talk about how they were "a totally different person at 15," how that apparently separate human was "such an idiot." Sometimes it comes in the form of supporting more paternalistic protections for younger persons -- "when I was 15, I thought I was an adult and in control, but I actually had no idea what I was doing." When I hear someone say that at 25, I always assume they will say the same thing about their 25 year old self at 35. Somewhere I imagine an eighty-year old woman telling others at a nursing home how at 70 she was such an ignorant little tart.

In any event, that's my vantage point, but I gather it's not the only one. So -- do you feel a sense of continuity with your younger self, or do you view him or her as a distinct and separate entity from who you are today?

More Than One Star

Governor Rick Perry (R-TX) has been doing a nationwide swing to promote the virtues of his policies in the Lone Star state. Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) reminds him that being 49th in high school graduation rates and 50th in health insurance coverage is nothing to brag about.

[W]hile Perry likes to promote the job creation in Texas during his time in office, he leaves out a critical point: The jobs “miracle” he touts is driven by low-paying, non-sustainable jobs. This year, Texas — tied with Mississippi — leads the nation for the percentage of hourly paid workers earning equal to or less than the minimum wage. More than one in 10 workers nationwide earning at or below the minimum wage works in Texas.

The fallacies of his argument don’t end there. Even on Perry’s preferred metric for comparison — taxes — businesses fare quite well in Maryland. According to the Anderson Economic Group, Maryland’s businesses have the seventh-lowest business tax burden, while Texas ranks 17th. Additionally, both established firms and new investments do well in Maryland. The conservative Tax Foundation ranks Maryland as having the eighth-lowest tax burden on mature firms, while Texas ranks 12th. Ernst and Young ranks Maryland as having the 12th-lowest tax burden on new investment; Texas has the 20th-lowest burden.

My administration has made Maryland a better place to do business by focusing on middle-class and sustainable jobs. In addition to being No. 1 in median income, the median wage for hourly workers in Maryland is $14.17 vs. $12.00 in Texas, which lags the national median of $12.80. And while Texas leads the nation in minimum-wage workers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ranks Maryland first in the nation in innovation and entrepreneurship, second in concentration of science, technology, engineering and math jobs and third for its “talent pipeline.”

How did we make this possible? By investing in our schools, which Education Week has ranked No. 1 in the nation since 2007. Maryland did more than any other state to hold down rising college tuition costs. We modernized infrastructure and invested in growing sectors such as biotechnology and life science, green technology and clean energy, aerospace and advanced manufacturing.

These investments didn’t come without a price. First, my administration cut more in state spending than any governor in Maryland history. We also had to ask the wealthiest Marylanders to pay a bit more by making income taxes progressive for the first time in state history.

Even though I now live in Virginia, I'm still a Marylander at heart (and a product of those top-ranked public schools, to boot). Governor Perry might not want to be so eager to put his state side-by-side with mine. Some states deserve more than a single, lone star.

Song of Songs

I've often joked that the Cantor is my ultimate synagogue nemesis -- were it not for Cantors showing off, the service would end in half the time and I'd be that much closer to the delicious bagels at the reception. To be fair, I'm a tough critic to please -- were it up to me, every song would be sung exactly as it was when I was growing up, with no alterations whatsoever. This may run in the family -- at my old synagogue, I distinctly recall that anytime the Cantor experimented with a new melody, my dad would start loudly singing the old one in reprimand. It never caused the tune to be changed, but perhaps it served as a deterrent.

Whenever I go to a new synagogue, I'd always grouse about how I preferred the singing at my home congregation. As I grow older, even the tunes at my home synagogue grow more unfamiliar, which I don't like. Our new Aleinu sounds like a funeral dirge, for example. But hearing that new tune (and others) made me wonder -- just how old are the songs we sing? Not the words, but the music? Are they hundreds of years old, recognizable in the Shetls of Europe or the villages of the Middle East? Or are they all reinvented anew by each generation of Hazzans? Do we have any way of knowing? I doubt songs such as these were ever committed to a score. It seems like one of those mysteries that may be unknowable. But maybe not -- historians have sussed out stranger facts.