Reacharound.

I'm not sure I can, in good faith, continue to call this a moderate blog. In spite of the fact that I am in agreement with the House Republicans on /their/ version of the economic bailout package in general-- one which requires wallstreet use private capital to inject liquidity into the market. I'm wary about the tax law easing part of it, but I'd have to look more closely at the details.

But the thing of it is, my opinions are becoming a lot more socialist than I had expected would ever happen. I believe that a society which required debt to function is fundamentally flawed, and this kind of thing is pretty much bound to happen. And I'm rather not convinced that such a collapse is a bad thing. So I'm rather biased here.

Frankly, I'd rather slice my own damn bread.

Sometimes, there are certain restrictions which allow freedom. The Bill of Rights is this kind of restriction-- something which restricts the right of others to restrict.

Here is something which talks about this in the context of teh internets:



I believe this in the context of most things, and Religion in particular-- and I apologise if I'm harping on this one-- it is only in a secular state that the practise of religion is truly free. I can, in my very bizarre and personal-faithy way, not interfere with the practise of the Catholic mass or the Pentacostal anything or the Muslim prayers or any of those things, by law. And I love listening to the bells of the church across the street of a Sunday, as much as I'd like to hear the Muzzein call to prayer to mosques of a dusk, whilst reading my tarot cards on a café table. I realise that it is unthinkable to certain religions that anyone else might have answers, but it is imperative that that lack of ability to comprehend that kind of diversity not in fact squelch the same. Because while individuals may believe that They Know Truth, the segments that agree on said Truth are by far smaller than society as a whole, and are trumped thereby.

Rulebreaking: The Obvious.

What the shits is this?

Obviously, Barak Obama wants to lose now. Obviously, our government is now more corrupt than it was when Nixon was in office. Obviously, those sitting in government are behaving like the old Roman Senators, or the members of the First Republic, and they don't give a shit about what happens to this country a hundred years from now, as long as they save their asses now.

I hate the word 'obviously', and 'clearly' is just as bad. They're words that one uses to tell you that the emperor has clothes, really. But this... not only does the emperor have no clothes, he is shitting in the street.

But there are times, as our constitution says, when it is not only the right but the responsibility of the people to kick the ass of the administration. If that time isn't now, I fear it will be soon. And I'll tell you, I am being overcome by an urge I would never have had before-- the urge to buy a firearm and keep it in my house.

Because I can.

While I can.

Dichotomy

I would like to see an Obama/McCain ticket. A lot. If McCain weren't a social idiot, in a lot of ways. But what is necessary is a true bipartisan ticket, and a true bipartisan office.

That's all I have to say.

Semi-Absolutism

Hillary Clinton did not just refer to nuclear deterrence as, "What Worked During the Cold War."

I think that it is abundantly clear at this point-- and this is one of the few absolute-like statements I will make-- a State must be secular. Among sovereign states, the idea of state religion must be discarded, and a policy against respecting individual establishments of religion must be adopted-- the reason being that a secular state is the only state which can and must allow all religions to practice, freely and safely. The only religious freedom barred by the secular state is the freedom to oppress, or to murder. For religion must be held to the standards of humanity, and must not be permitted-- as a people-- to deny the rights of all humans to those they deem unworthy of them.

The exceptions being the city-state, such as Vatican City. Jerusalem must not be incorporated into external state; it must be given sovereign status like Vatican City, and ruled by a Jewish/Muslim/Christian triumvirate of a quasi-secular nature.

But I do think that the middle east will never truly experience peace until the rights of muslim arabs and jews both are respected, as all citizens living on the same damn land.

The Lorax Facepalmed

Part of...well, any political whatever ought to, at least, involve a goal, and, you know, doing things that get you closer to that goal.

Which is why the whole bit about allowances for pollutions for companies and things pisses me off so egregiously. If the goal is to reduce emissions, how exactly does telling companies the goal-- without telling them how to go about it, but that they can trade pollution allowances with cleaner companies-- accomplish this? We're talking real reality, not a Sim City type, where the friendly AI could pop up a message, "sorry, you can't make any more Thneeds, you have reached your Emissions Limit for this quarter :)"

One must always keep in mind the oft forgotten fact that government does not exist to ensure that companies continually turn a profit. And while forced shut-downs of non-essential businesses who fail to live up to responsibility standards may be extreme, it is a more serious solution to the stated problem than what is on the table thusfar.

This all, of course, assumes that the stated goal is desirable. But if it is, let's bloody well take it seriously, by cracky.

Assuming positions.

I realise I have quite a bit to lay out in the way of both my philosophy in terms of how to actually come to conclusions, given the positions and attitudes of those around. And I have some good illustrative anecdotes as regards that, that I will go over later, as I have a ginormous headache right now.

But I did wish to make the point that being a moderate does not mean rejecting extreme policies-- in some ways, the moderate stance involves the most extreme measures. It means doing things in such a way that, while both sides may bitch and moan because it is not /exactly/ what they wanted (and it doesn't undercut the other guy totally), actually gives them as much of what they really want/need as possible.

Anyway. See Joseph Andrew's Speech on why he switched from Clinton to Obama. You can argue all you want about this particular guy and whether he is honest, whether he's right about Obama, whatever. It doesn't matter. What he is saying in this speech, and his reasons for doing what he is doing now, are Right.

IMHO.

The Teal Deer of Iraq.

I admire and somewhat envy David Petraeus. I really do: He's getting to do something on a large scale and with enormous resources that few people get to do-- Fix Things.

No, I'm serious. He gets to go somewhere profoundly broken (let's leave aside, for the moment as immaterial, the question of who broke it) and make a concerted effort to make it less broken.

Now, this is very distinct from fighting a war, although what he has are soldiers (and National Guardsmen, another element of distinction), and there is some fighting. This is, in effect, what the establishment called Vietnam: a police action. But I digress.

The point is, here is a man who has the ability to ignore the questions of shouldn't and should, ignore the controversies, bend his head, and do-- not /precisely/ what he has been told to do ('win the war' is at this point an abstract that has no meaning; there is no victory against insurgents. You can't kill an idea, and a faith that encourages martyrdom gains strength everytime you do it physical damage, something that implies that the Military Heads should learn more strategy from Japanese video games), but rather, what is the best thing to do in the context of his given mission. I am hardly trying to draw a comparison between him and the 'Just Following Orders' school of Godwin. No, he's turning this whole thing into a humanitarian mission, and basing his reports on the assumption that the Primary Objective is to make Iraq a successful state. In his behavior, (because I am not going to escape a Third Reich comparison, but in this instance, it isn't wholly negative I swear), he is more a Gaulieter, of the school that wished to look after their respective regions like, well, like Murat or Bernadotte did the areas over which they were given Kingship. And you can have respect for that, know where he's coming from, if you think of it that way.

That said.

He /is/ coming to the table with the assumption that... well a) that we ultimately care about whether or not Iraq is a thriving, successful state and b) assuming that yes, on some level we care, that Iraq's success trumps any number of other possible priorities at this time. Given this, of course he will say that we need to keep troops there. It's in order to preserve stability.

And there are those that say he's right, to allude to the point I ignored earlier, if for no other reason than the fact that we broke it, and so ought to fix it. Although some others will argue that it was broken in the first place.

However, there's a wide and possibly growing segment who disagree with the General on the basic assumption-- they simply have decided that stability in Iraq is not a priority. Sorry, Dave. Your mission doesn't matter.

Barak Obama, I think, was saying this clearly when he made the statements about how he was certain that the military establishment would carry out the missions he gave them. He, I gather, understood where Petraeus was coming from-- he was giving the best report he knew, in light of his set goals as he understood them. Great. As far as Obama's concerned, he'd probably do just as well (and his methods have been rather ingenious and creative, or else not unlike the US Army's in The Last Samurai)if he were sent to Zimbabwe, (to mention an international travesty in which the US definitely won't intervene), or Darfur, or Lhasa. And there are those who might be of the opinion that those would be worthier missions, myself included.

Because on the other end of the responsibility spectrum, the real war is, and always should have been, in Afghanistan. And we've got to pay for that one already. While not having to suffer from the usual problems of fighting a war on two fronts-- i.e., exposure to being sliced apart, although we've definitely got some troops being stretched thin, we're really being hit in the cost department, that way. And at the moment, for numerous reasons, the American people can't afford a war. The gas prices hiked with the invasion of Iraq, and the Oil companies want to keep them right where they are, because it seems that a prerequisite of being an Oil baron is short-sightedness (except in the arena of strict market futures), and narrow field of vision. Tl;dr: they want to make money NOW and don't give a toss about the future in general. But that's another, and painfully obvious rant, and perhaps, if I were in a doomed industry, I might decide that hastening its demise by jacking up prices to the point where consumption will necessarily shift to other forms of energy, to make as much as possible while I still can would be a great idea. After all, maybe one day, oil will be like coal now, the fallback position for developing nations who have to use dirty energy because they can't do anything else. And I would bleed those economies happily. Perhaps.

But I was talking about David Petraeus. And sympathizing. Sir: I feel your pain, I really do.

And yes, I have something of an idea as to what one might do to /actually/ stabilize the middle east as a whole. But Jimmy Carter's gone and tried to do a lot of it, so... yeah.

i r srs politiks-wank.

The Problem of the moderate political philosophy is that it is, by necessity, tl;dr. That is to say, the moderate position cannot (or can rarely) be reduced to a soundbite or catchphrase-- you can't sum up, in two lines, a position which has to take into account the positions of both sides, extract the best, discard the worst, qualify where appropriate, define one's warrants (and possibly those of the Others), and then explain where it all came from and why one arranged it as one did-- provide context, as it were-- before one ever comes to a conclusion. And the moderate conclusion is, to paraphrase the poet, rarely neat, and never simple.

Which is why no one ever wants to listen to us. We ramble, we rant-- but we go on too long and half of the listeners don't understand a damn thing that was said.

Nonetheless, that is the purpose here. It is I, das Kainenchen, and my wankish, rambling, tl;dr politiksish opinions for the world to skip over and not actually read. Sometimes extreme sounding, always-- so I hope-- at least somewhat considered. But imho, being a moderate is not always about being a wishy-washy, middling compromiser. It is about also bending both ends around to where they meet at the extremes and get themselves tied in nasty-fun knots.

That's what I like to do.