Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

That would be the number of people murdered in Philadelphia so far this year. There will probably be one or two more by the time the clock strikes midnight, setting the counter back to zero, however briefly. That’s an astonishing total isn’t it? Considering years past, when the number was routinely well over four hundred, it’s not actually all that many for this town. Three hundred twenty seven homicides and Philadelphia isn’t even all that violent when compared to other U.S. cities. What a fine distinction that one is.

It amazes me to hear that news commentators have compared the level of violence in Iraq to domestic crime and homicide rates. The fact that they can even make a comparison between America’s cities and a war, however ugly and misguided that comparison may be, tells me that we are seriously deranged, and have been for so long, that we can’t even see it. Can you imagine getting on TV and saying that the casualties of major war really aren’t so bad because they compare quite favorably with the death and destruction occurring in our own cities and towns? Good lord!

When we discuss murder in the United States, we to often focus solely on the issues of law enforcement and gun policy, to little avail. While these are both issues that do need to be addressed, they scratch at the surface of the problem. If we are to have any hope of ever crawling our way out of this disaster, fundamental problems with our education policy, narcotics policy and mental health policy will all need to be addressed seriously.

In a country that wasn’t half off its nut, the blood bath would matter.

It only took two and a half years and untold embarrassment for the U.S. but the Justice Department has finally replaced the infamous August 2002 memorandum approving all but the most severe methods of torture. Say what you will, but you can’t say the administration moves too quickly on everything.

While there isn’t as much of Fallujah as there once was, it appears that what’s left is full of rotting corpses and sewage. What was gained? The insurgents continue to fight from their burned out city and those who don’t, have moved on to other cities. They too, will continue to fight and to train new insurgents. Now 200,000 former Fallujah residents are homeless and angry and have little left to lose – a bad combination if ever there was one. There are no words.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he’d sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallouja than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.

Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents.

Bigotry becomes no more appealing when a vocal proponent on its behalf is resting in a casket.

-James Capozzola, on Reggie White.

I’ve always been curious about the tendency to quickly forget or dismiss all that is negative about a person as soon as that person’s life is over. The phenomenon is certainly not limited to the public square, as we’ve surely all had the experience of listening to warm, glowing eulogies of rather unpleasant people whose actions in life left much to be desired. I’m not saying that we should be indiscriminant in airing our grievances, or cause further pain to those who are suffering over the loss of a loved one. We should, however, look at a person’s life and actions realistically and honestly and not be indiscriminant in our lionization.

That brings us to Reggie White. White surely was a great defensive end, likely the best of all time, and he did some fine work in the community, but that doesn’t make his views or his advocacy of bigotry and discrimination any less rotten — even now that he’s dead. The media tributes to White have been so one dimensional as to be silly. Nearly all have neglected to mention the speech which is partially quoted by James and is quite vile. It’s worth a read.

[Update] The Aggressive Progressive has a very different take on this. I hope I didn’t come off as vile as the person he quotes does, but if I did, that certainly wasn’t my intention.

This Washington Post article, on the dangers of teenagers driving sport utility vehicles, focuses almost exclusively on the rollover issue, but I think there is a much bigger problem on the horizon.

With the proliferation of Sport Utility Vehicles over the last decade, there are a huge number of used SUVs, which are about to be turned over to suburban teenagers for use as their very first car. As we all know, teenage drivers, especially males, are more aggressive and more reckless than older drivers. The combination of heavy trucks with big engines and equiped with high bumpers that impact at the windshield level of passenger cars with teenaged boys whose veins course with testosterone should disturb everybody.

I don’t drive much anymore, probably a good thing since I’m an awful driver and I don’t have a driver’s license, but I recall being 17 and driving around like an angry speed freak and having more than my fair share of minor accidents. Taking into account public welfare, I probably shouldn’t have been driving at all and the results may well have been deadly had I not been driving a small, slow Chevy. Obviously, not all 17-year-old boys are as reckless as I was, but I’d bet that a sizable minority is. I foresee many weepy 20/20 segments on this issue in the coming years.

How am I supposed to make overly obvious observations about current events if I’m not smoking? I hate quitting. I really, really do. I quit about six times a year, using every ill advised strategy conceivable, and I’ve gotten pretty damn good at it. It’s just that I wouldn’t expect much from me until I start smoking again. Should be soon. Real soon.

Sorry for the lame personal post, I’m having a hard time getting back into the swing of things.

In an effort to try to get myself back into writing I thought I would share a story about my lovely town. I was reminded of it while I was watching the sorry excuse for a football game that was the Rams victory over the Eagles last night. Actually, is it a victory if one of the teams doesn’t try to win?

Anyway, last New Years Eve or maybe the one before, I was at the annual Philadelphia/Camden New Years fireworks display on the Delaware River, which is something I’ve been doing for years (yes my New Years traditions are lame). When the fireworks display ended and the crowd began to walk away from the river a peculiar thing happened. It began quietly enough, with a few murmurs, but within a few minutes the entire mass of people was chanting “Fuck St. Louis!” in unison. It carried on for quite some twenty minutes or so and even the elderly and small children got involved.

Now do Philadelphians typically display this level of animosity towards St. Louis? Not usually. At the time, you see, everybody in Philadelphia was convinced that the Eagles would be playing the Rams in the NFC Championship game. The playoffs hadn’t even begun but Philadelphians, being Philadelphians, were thinking ahead. That particular game, sadly, didn’t happen, but it’s the thought that counts.

I wonder if the denizens of St. Louis had a similar chant for Philadelphia that New Years? And what about this year? My guess is that I’ll be hearing “Fuck Atlanta” on Friday night. A sentiment I wholeheartedly endorse.

Make that a few more than a few days. I should be back to normal by Tuesday or Thursday or the day that comes between the two.

First of all, what sort of fool doesn’t know he has the day off and spends five hours at work before he realizes he shouldn’t even be there? In case you didn’t guess, the fool in question is me. Feel free to snicker. Secondly, I’m going to be busy with Christmas stuff with my wife, assorted family members and in-laws for the next day or two so I won’t be posting much. I hope all goes well for you and please remember to check your schedule as you may well have a day off.

From the BBC:
American military officials have acknowledged that returning residents will be shocked by the state of their city.

Seventy percent of Fallujah destroyed, 250,000 people displaced and what has it accomplished? Has the insurgency been broken? No it hasn’t - Not even in Fallujah.

U.S. Marines clashed with insurgents in the battered city of Fallujah on Thursday with warplanes dropping bombs and tanks shelling suspected guerrilla positions on a day when a first group of residents displaced by fighting were scheduled to return.

According to this Washington Post \ ABC News poll, 74% of those polled believe that the Social Security program is in crisis or has major problems. Given that level of concern, it will clearly be difficulty to convince a sizable portion of the population that there is, in fact, no crisis. As has been pointed out in numerous places recently, most of us have been told for so long that insolvency is looming that even a clear recitation of the facts is greeted with skepticism. For that reason I’m doubtful that simply proclaiming that there is no Social Security crisis and pressuring wavering Democrats will stave off the President’s attempt destroy the program.

I think that in order to be successful we do need to acknowledge a crisis in the Social Security program and start hammering away at it, just not the crisis Mr. Bush has in mind. The average monthly Social Security payout at $922 is woefully inadequate. That’s the crisis. I think that figure needs to be doubled, at the very least, in order to afford retirees even a modest standard of living in most of our large metropolitan areas.

The obvious question is how we would pay for this. I think the answer is simple, although it would be highly unpopular in some quarters. Repeal the Social Security tax cap, which currently stands at $87,000, and make all income taxable. Additionally, increasing the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax to a more significant percentage for earned income over $250,000 would provide a nice cushion. This would obviously constitute a significant change in the very nature of the Social Security program, but would represent social progress in lifting many of America’s elderly out of poverty or near poverty.

Would something like that ever get passed into law? Of course not. Is it even a good idea? I’m not convinced. The point is this; the problem with the current strategy (if there is one) is that it involves overcoming serious misconceptions in order to defend the status quo. This administration has proven itself adept at kicking the ball forwards, or backwards as the case may be, and letting others run and catch it. They are doing it again and, in this case, the public is already primed to hear solutions to a perceived crisis. If Social Security is to be saved a mere defense of the status quo will not be enough. I believe the ball needs to be kicked in another, more progressive direction.

People like ideas, even bad ones.

Athenae says:

Looking at those approval numbers at first gave me the same feeling, like, “Man, a syphillitic hamster could have beaten Bush.” But these numbers don’t measure anything except the utter irrelevancy of whatever candidate the Republicans put forward because clearly, with numbers like these, a syphillitic hamster could get elected president if he ran as a Republican.

But not today:

“Robert Novak’s arrogance — its origin and staying power combine to create a legend that common folk can’t begin to comprehend.”

- ESPN’s Tim Keown

…for broken fibulas, torn ligaments and metal screws. And so a city waits for another ugly end.

P.S. If the end isn’t so ugly, could I ask all of you kids from South Jersey for a favor? Would you please hold your riot on your side of the river? Thanks.

[Update] And inevitably, there is this.

To lay blame for prisoner abuse in Iraq and Cuba on anybody other than Mr. Bush is a mistake. Naturally, those who committed the acts and their commanding officers and so forth should not go without punishment, but the ultimate responsibility must always be placed at the top. These latest revelations, if proven, make the question of responsibility something more than academic:

A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as “torture” and a June 2004 “Urgent Report” to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

“These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers.”

Even without these revelations, I’m quite confident where the blame lies. More from the New York Times:

The documents, released Monday in connection with a lawsuit accusing the government of being complicit in torture, also include accounts by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who said they had seen detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, being chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours and left to urinate and defecate on themselves. An agent wrote that in one case a detainee who was nearly unconscious had pulled out much of his hair during the night.

One of the memorandums released Monday was addressed to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and other senior bureau officials, and it provided the account of someone “who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees” in Iraq. The memorandum, dated June 24 this year, was an “Urgent Report,” meaning that the sender regarded it as a priority. It said the witness “described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees’ ear openings and unauthorized interrogations.”

Herbert takes on the psychiatric toll of the war in his latest piece. Here’s a little:

Through the end of September, nearly 900 troops had been evacuated from Iraq by the Army for psychiatric reasons, included attempts or threatened attempts at suicide. Dr. Stephen C. Joseph, an assistant secretary of defense for health affairs from 1994 to 1997, said, “I have a very strong sense that the mental health consequences are going to be the medical story of this war.”

From the earliest planning stages until now, the war in Iraq has been a tragic exercise in official incompetence. The original rationale for the war was wrong. The intelligence was wrong. The estimates of required troop strength were wrong. The war hawks’ guesses about the response of the Iraqi people were wrong. The cost estimates were wrong, and on and on.

Over the last month or so, I’ve become a pretty big fan of the Aggressive Progressive. While I’m certain that I’m a bit fonder of DailyKos than he is, and I kind of like that whole ‘reality based’ thing, even though I don’t employ it myself, I think this post is well worth a read. Here’s a little:

Okay, Mr. and Mrs. Reality-Based (and isn’t that pretty damn arrogant?): while we fight tooth and nail with people who agree with us 85 percent of the time, the bad guys are winning. By that I mean: people are dying on the streets of Baghdad, and let’s be frank, they don’t give a fuck about NAFTA. Somewhere in the county you live, a child will go to sleep tonight hungry (far, far too many of them) and they could less if the Tooth Fairy is the next chair of the Democratic National Committee, but they could really use a hot meal. There’s an unemployed steelworker who just found out he’s being laid off from his crappy McJob at Wal-Mart who is way less worried about tort reform then how the hell he is going to pay his rent.

If you think the current Republican regime is evil, does it matter whether you think Howard Dean is a saint or a jerk? Does it matter what you think about Joe Lieberman? Neither of them are the bad guy, but once again, we’re ready to kick the hell out of each other. Regardless of what you think, both guys are on our side, they’re both good guys in the big picture.

This is as good a time as any to remind those who are so kind as to take the time to read this site, that I don’t always agree with everything my guest posters might decide to write. A case in point would be David’s most recent post, which can be found directly beneath this one.

I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning and was quite horrified to watch the slow motion train wreck that was its build up and authorization. The discussion, if that’s what it was, leading up to the Senate’s vote to authorize force in Iraq, was the most pathetic display of public discourse I can imagine. The failure of the Democratic leadership to even raise pertinent questions, let alone actually muster the courage to oppose an unjustified, ill-advise and poorly planned invasion fills me with the urge to defecate.

Their fear was that, with the pending mid-term congressional elections, they would be murdered at the polls. They cowered before the specter of an unforgiving public whose blood lust was stoked by fabrication, lies and paranoia. They rushed the vote to authorize, hoping the whole mess would go away and they could conduct their campaigns on more friendly terms. They lost anyway. They were cowards and they deserved to lose. The problem, of course, is that the victors in those elections were, and are, bloodthirsty thugs.

And my opposition to the war, since the beginning, is worth what? Nothing. What’s done is done. What’s done is a catastrophe. Nothing to celebrate here. There was never any chance of that.

Listen, depending on the day you can find me on either side of the argument that it’s justifiable to use military force to keep murderous despots from murdering. That, however, is not the argument that was presented. The argument presented had nothing, whatever, to do with that. Tens of thousands of civilians dead, whole cities in ruins, over ten thousand of our own military wounded and well over one thousand dead — for what?

I should add that I do agree with David on many of his points. Like David, I do not care for sanctions as they inevitably wound the innocent and further empower those they were intended to weaken. I’m also certain that our country’s military is overburdened and likely incapable of dealing with a real, as opposed to a concocted, crisis.

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.”
The Art of War, Chapter II, Verse 6

Okay. I’m gonna make a confession.

I used to think that maybe this little Iraqi excursion wasn’t a bad idea.

Now, before you flay me in a flame war, hear me out.

I’m not a big fan of extended police actions, no-fly zones, and long-term troop commitments.

When I heard that we were going back to Iraq, I thought it might be a step in the right direction. After all, we were doing this embargo/sanctions/no-fly zone crap that wasn’t working, and Saddam is a bad dude, yadda yadda yadda and truth be told, we should have taken him out the first time. Don’t tell me about some coalition that woulda gotten spooked — they would have gotten over it.

Problem is, we did it wrong. And that’s wrong as in the past tense. And now, it doesn’t look as though we will get the chance to get it right.

We didn’t get world opinion on our side this time. We didn’t give the inspectors time to report back (and who knows what they might have found.) And now we’re in a good ol’ fashioned Texas-sized boondoggle.

Our political capitol is spent. Our military is overextended. And all indications show that we’re going to be doing this for awhile. Truth be told, if we had gotten in and won the peace, Bush and co. would look like geniuses, and we’d be celebrating.

If nothing else, our generals should know better than to allow themselves to get involved in protracted, prolonged warfare. They should tell the politicians (including the commander in chief) that this kind of exercise is a bad idea — by resigning if necessary, instead of carrying out policies that are doomed to failure.

Because of this, we are overextended and vulnerable. At the risk of giving aid to our enemies, please allow me to state the obvious:

This is a great time for North Korea (or any other country, like Iran) to kick-start it’s nuclear program. Maybe they could even mass troops on the border of the demilitarized zone. I imagine that they would be willing to back down if we shipped them boatloads of USDA overstock that should be feeding starving kids in America.

If I were India and Pakistan, I would be going at it toe-to-toe in Kashmir. Who’s going to stop them?

If I were Iran or Syria, I would be stirring up all sorts of anti-American rhetoric (and worse) and would be willing to stop only for all sorts of concessions.

What could we do? Send the marines? Which marines? The ones that aren’t in Iraq? Not many of those left.

Meanwhile, Europe is hanging us out to dry while the neo-cons are renaming French Fries in protest (my, how effective!)

Maybe we should start a draft. I hear that our commander-in-chief has two daughters of draft age. If they are willing to be the first two to go, I’m all for it. They can drive some of our non-up-armored Humvees up and down the road to the Baghdad airport.

History is always written by the victors, and at the moment, it looks as though the history of the Iraq conflict is going to be written by a bunch of rag-tag Islamic militants who are currently planting roadside bombs and beheading international aid workers on satellite TV.

Continuing with the holiday ale theme, this is Affligem Noël, brewed by Brouwerij Affligem in Opwijk, Belgium. Pretty good - not great. A very clean flavor and aftertaste which is slightly spicy with strong brown sugar overtones. At 9% alcohol by volume, Affligem Noel make for a good antidote to tree trimming, or watching the New Jersey Football Giants on TV.

As always, the cat is in the picture.