DPRK talks

“I think he will do these things. I may be wrong. I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong. I don’t know I’ll ever admit that. I’ll find some excuse.” If Narang and Panda are right, and Kim Jong-un proves as unwilling to follow through on his vague promises as his predecessors given the credibility and legitimacy they now provide him, the president finding some excuse to cover up what will then be a failed summit will likely be the best case scenario.

I've been trying to figure out what to make of all of this for a few weeks now.

I find the idea that no talks should occur, ever, a bit strange. It's very clear there are reasons to engage with DPRK along with South Korea and probably China to resolve the issues involved non-militarily if possible. The danger to US allies is substantial, as is the probability of the regime collapsing and a massive humanitarian and economic crisis emerging in a very rich corner of the world, a corner which would be largely demolished. The bar should be set pretty low that anything could happen for such talks. But talking is preferable to threatening words being exchanged or destructive warfare.

I do think the idea that any talks involving Trump would be productive, particularly for the US and our allies, is correct to bring up as a serious problem. This was never very likely. Trump is a terrible negotiator as but one obvious problem. And there did not even appear to be agreement over what the terms of the deal could even be. Spiking the football when you're at the two yard line is an interesting game plan for conducting diplomacy. I would not call it a winning one.

It's really strange to think talks will be productive after nuclear deals to prevent proliferation with Iran are being scrapped. This should put a very low ceiling on the prospect of what "denuclearization" actually means to the North's regime. Many Trump decisions on foreign policy have this quality of own-goals being scored rather than forward progress being made toward these goals. (This is before considering if those goals are worthwhile, which they are often not).

The most self-aware admission is the quote above. This is correct he will find someone else to blame rather than admit fault if these talks go nowhere or produce no tangible result. As we should expect for the time being.

The amount of praise heaped upon Kim is disgusting and unnecessary. This is not the only authoritarian regime Trump has obsequiously complimented and admired for little or no diplomatic benefit, effectively unprompted gushing and fawning swoons over some of the most terrible people on the planet. This is probably the most disturbing trend that continued.

The most optimistic reading is that talks and relations between North and South Korea improve or are able to have productive outcomes without the added attention of the US nuclear demands for a time. Presumably those US centered talks will continue, but without Trump's attention, they are less likely to be important to anyone in the region, allowing for attention to be spent on more productive things. This would be a net boon. The nuclear deal itself is unlikely to materialize in any practical sense, but relative peace in Korea and the possibility of trade or economic freedoms offered through reform of the North's authoritarian system of repression and starvation would be welcome (basically a smaller version of what happened in China in the 1980s and 90s).

This is to keep in mind, again, that Trump's Iran policy purportedly offered as a framework here is not helpful. That policy will ultimately destabilize the region and made it more likely Iran, and Saudi Arabia if not others, would become a nuclear power, all while achieving no humanitarian aims or diplomatic advantages and weakening relations with the US's European allies necessary to achieve any harsher goals on nuclear powers (including North Korea).

Not so Open Borders

Observing immigration debates, particularly with the border issues over asylees currently. Something that occurs to me is there's a very poor public understanding of what "open borders" actually means and the propensity of any Americans to think it to be a good idea or ideal (there are few who do).

This is a typical canard faced by people who oppose nativist restrictionist policies intended to reduce legal immigration from current low levels, not just illegal immigration is this claim they favor an open borders policy. Sanders complained about this too, so it's not just Trump types that do it. The actual debate is something more like the following: We don't have open borders, or very open borders, and what we are mostly arguing about as a country is the level of how closed we wish them to be, whether it is closed or open enough and how or whether to adjust that. Not whether it should be thrown open entirely to allow for the most possible free movement of people.

The US has fairly restrictive immigration policies by comparison to the rest of the globe and has had them in place for a long time, going back at least a century, which make it difficult to move here and become a legal citizen or worker/resident, particularly from non-favored places on the globe. This restrictive approach didn't start with Trump or Obama, and wasn't undone by Reagan (or Obama). It started during the Arthur administration (if we don't want to go back further to restrictions on the Transatlantic slave trade as a means of reducing "immigrants" from certain places on the globe). Anti-immigrant fervor was for a time a major political movement of its own during the antebellum period, and existed throughout the early days of the American republic, but did not succeed in surging into broad and major legislative restrictions until the early 20th century.

We were explicit back in the Wilson administration when some of the first major and broad immigration restrictions were instituted that a significant goal was to severely reduce and strictly control immigration from, say, Poland or Russia or Japan, just as it is now sought to reduce and control it from Honduras or Nigeria or Syria. There is and was little reason to do any of this for the benefit of our residents and citizens, to keep people out from any particular nations or regions. It solely benefits nativist demands to reduce the need for their own assimilation to a more dynamic culture. Immigrants themselves tend to assimilate fine to the American system and ways of life; it's the nativists who don't keep up. This is evident by examining places with more dynamic economic growth (mostly places with more immigrants living there), or places that more strongly oppose immigration (mostly places with very few immigrants).

There are advantages to the overall US system, such as jus soli, that make it easier in certain ways for immigrants to get and stay here legally. But we actually receive fewer families as immigrants than even the supposed high-skilled worker-based immigration systems of Canada and Australia that (some) Trump type conservatives seem to want to emulate (other than Trump himself or Stephen Miller types). Those supposed advantages are being washed out by all the difficulties and impediments we throw up instead.

What seems needed to reform the situation in a more constructive manner, as a non-expert observing the issue.

- Understanding that the "illegal" immigration issue, such as this even matters, largely is one of people overstaying legally issued visas or coming in from Asia or Africa or Eastern Europe, and not anymore from Central America. Many people coming in from Central America at present getting much of the news attention are attempting to apply for asylum status. Almost none of this is anything like someone storming across the border with malevolent intent that it should require a harsh legal or military response as is being demanded.

- Walls are pointless to deal with those problems even if they are considered as seriously as issues related to these problems. Walls are a poor symbolism for a free democratic nation to use to boot as an additional reason to avoid them.

- Policies adopted by less democratic or less free nations with the intention of reducing the cultural, intellectual, ideological, and ethnic diversity of that nation are not to be emulated or considered a valid comparison as something we should wish to do. The very idea any number of Americans think it is a good idea to see what North Korea or Afghanistan or China does with people trying to cross their borders illegally and copy any elements of that, or to take a more representative example of actual policy, to look at what we did with Japanese Americans during WW2 and see that as an instructive and successful policy, is horrifying from a civic perspective.

- There should be a massive expansion of work visas in amounts and availability. These visas should be controlled by the workers themselves as much as possible so that companies can decide whether or not to employ someone without worrying about national origins or needing to apply and somehow justify that they need to hire someone from another country, and so workers can go from job to job relatively easily or start a company of their own if they wish/are able. Companies could sponsor specially talented workers as a means of generating loyalty among highly skilled employees, but otherwise should have to pay normal wages to everyone.

- Significant expansion of refugee/asylum programs should be undertaken. The global refugee population is at an all time high in the last decade. This is in part because of American policies; such as in Yemen or parts of Central America. Regardless of the blame we may ascribe to our policies abroad or domestically as they negatively impact other nations and people, we have a moral obligation as a rich country and people to help those in dire need. And we tend as a nation to benefit considerably by taking in refugees historically as a selfish reason to do this. There are no significant downsides to doing this. Other than that it annoys nativists who may elect more immigrant-restrictive public officials.

- Significantly easier citizenship applications and processes should be created. The cost and time involved is a significant impediment to making it easier for people to immigrate legally and become a permanent resident, if they wish. If it is easier to immigrate legally via citizenship or work status, it would be much easier to concentrate enforcement resources on those who continue to come with more dangerous and thereby illegal purposes than finding work or being with family and friends.

- As such, we should see reduced deportations of non-criminal immigrants, whether or "illegal" or not. If someone is not a terrorist, spy, or murderer/rapist, I'm not sure why it would be a useful exercise of the federal government's priorities or resources to deport them. Concurrent with that, abolishing checkpoints for immigration within a border zone, not at the border would be useful for US residents. Immigrants are not required to live in and are not necessarily concentrated in these zones anyway that monitoring visa status would be useful to do in this way. Such checkpoints appear to be mostly used for other dubiously legal purposes, such as checks on narcotics smuggling rather than arresting or detaining immigrants with dubious residential status

Random thoughts

1- Suicide Squad was pretty fucking bad. Like terrible. Possibly one of the dumbest movies I've ever seen. Non-existent plot which basically consisted of "and now things are happening, and here more things are happening that are almost entirely unrelated to the things that just happened, with no explanation". Poor script or dialogue. Mostly bad casting. Robbie and Smith were wasted on this garbage, and Leto sucks. Years of unfortunately having seen Michael Bay films did not prepare me for how stupid a movie could be.

2- Dick pics. I don't get the premise. Even as a form of sexting, I'm not aware of women who want to receive them. I have a hard time understanding what the basis of thought involved in it is. "Okay. That's my bulge in the groin area. Or the full extent of my erections. Enjoy ladies." This is rather dull as an expression of perspective or understanding what it is that women will tend to enjoy. Almost no woman I can think of is going to be suitably impressed by a photo of a penis on a tiny screen. I'm pretty sure she's going to be a little more impressed if you have any idea what good that penis may be for. Which is not for show and tell. As a hint.

I don't really understand the concept of flashing either. Male strippers, maybe makes sense (I don't really understand strip clubs either, but to each their own there). The rest does not, even as a form of exhibitionism. It's creepy and strange. And does not work even for the base purpose of attracting or enticing women for sex. It doesn't communicate desire or sensuality. It mostly communicates this is a fairly normal human male who believes women should admire his penis, but probably would not care much about the rest of him.

So. I'm a little confused as to why, besides an unfortunate last name, Anthony Weiner keeps sending them, many years after he was caught doing so and destroyed his political career by leaving a photographic trail indicating just how often he thinks only with his penis. You would think this would be a learned behavior that could be amended. "Hmm. This got me into trouble before. Perhaps I should try some other means of attracting women, one with less of a photographic trail at least."

I am really confused as to what possible attraction there is for taking a photo of one's genitals or even a bulge created thereof mostly concealed by clothing, but also having a child in the photo. This does not seem like a reasonable fetish to advertise. Or a legal one. And it should not increase one's sex appeal to have a child prop in a photo intending to demonstrate that you may indeed have a functioning penis.

A few notes on the elections, next year

1) Walker and Perry bombing out wasn't a very big surprise. Perry probably wasn't to almost any observer. For some reason Walker was. I was surprised at how fast he flamed out (he was leading polls all the way back in July for some reason), but that he did so at all was not that disturbing or unpredictable and I was suggesting as much months ago. He was not a very skilled politician and very clearly did not have good instincts for national politics or foreign policy questions of the sort that do not trouble a Governor's campaign but will bedevil a Presidential campaign.

What he always reminded me of was Tim Pawlenty's failed run in 2012: he was a conservative governor from a state neighbouring Iowa. That's it. That was his selling point. That did not work out so well for Pawlenty. There was never much reason to think it would with Walker. Union-busting is a state issue. It doesn't have much relevance or resonance at the national level, even among conservative politicians and voters. Since that seems to be the only significant campaign story Walker felt he could run on, that isn't going to get him very far. Not surprisingly it flamed out and did not work.

2) Rubio still looks to me like the most likely GOP nominee. I would feel pretty confident betting on it at least. There is still a significant "anybody but a Bush" attitude that pervades the GOP base, in a strong way that was not the case with Romney 4 years ago. There is still ambiguity about the direction of the party and its ideological positioning on issues like immigration that I think there are risks. But those risks won't end up with Trump or Cruz or some such at the head of the class instead either. Unlike those two, Rubio actually has establishment support and will probably rally more of it with Walker out of the way. He also hasn't shriveled up, been incapable of answering questions, or seemed like a blithering idiot like most of his rivals (in particular Bush and Walker). I don't agree with very much of any of his policy agenda. But if I had to guess, that's still the guy I would bet would be the nominee next year.

3) Sanders percolates up now and again in my feed of social media still, in part because I know a lot of liberals it seems. I think I have identified why I just don't get him as being all that interesting.

a) a Presidential campaign that all but ignores foreign policy, to the point of being pretty actively dismissive of it as a topic in interviews, to me is really not a serious campaign. This is on top of Sanders' positions on trade being very retrograde (like dismissed 250 years ago, even though they keep popping up in far left political talks). I'd like to think Sanders has somewhat agreeable views on IR, but given how dismissive his campaign tends to be of the topic, I'm ambivalent that this is actually the case enough. A domestic centered agenda, particularly an economic one, just doesn't interest me as a voter because most of that will require action of Congress or the Supreme Court. And it seems extremely unlikely that Congress or the Supreme Court will be radically altered sufficiently to enact most or even any significant portion of a Sanders agenda. By contrast, US Presidents can do a lot on the foreign policy scene. I wish more Senators or voters took this as something worth considering, but if Sanders wants to run on a domestic agenda, he should really stay in the Senate. That's where he can do the most damage.

b) The biggest primary election problem Sanders has had is that non-white voters, which account for about half of the Democratic electorate nationally, aren't all that interested in him. It has always been possible he could fix this, but I do not think he's capable of it based on his primary election positions and campaign fervor. The main problem, which I tend to agree with, is that Sanders' explicitly addresses questions of inequality as in and of itself a problem which results in racism. Rather than racism being in and of itself a cause of inequality. Police officers are not beating up or shooting unarmed black kids because of inequality. There's a case that kids from poor neighborhoods cannot get through college because of inequality, but that case isn't resolved by making college free, which for whatever reason remains a popular campaign talking point for Sanders. That case is resolved by improving the K-12 environments in which many minorities are living, and also by resolving or addressing strongly the issues of criminal justice reform more broadly on which police brutality is merely the tip of several icebergs of our country's problems on these questions. Sanders, and importantly, many Sanders supporters, seem to want to focus on questions of economic inequality first as they impact the white middle class rather than deal with the lower end of the pie and why those slices are distributing oddly. This sort of focus can carry states like Vermont, New Hampshire, or Iowa. States where Democratic politics and the state as a whole are dominated by white middle class voters. It will do him no credit in Nevada or Colorado or Florida or South Carolina. These are separable problems, and they are problems which demand distinct attention if someone is going to address them. Feeling like the problems of non-white voters are second class status is not a way to interest those voters.

More to the point, most of the agenda of a movement like BLM can get reasonably far with the support of only a President, rather than a Congressional action being required, as they pertain to DoJ authority and various executive branch programs and agencies in some way. A President cannot and will not solve racism (or for that matter, economic inequality), but can do some things to hammer state and local police forces to behave by siccing lawyers and federal authorities and judges on them, conducting investigations, requiring reforms, and tying those reforms to federal dollars and funding that some local forces may rely upon. All of which are things liable to help the lives of people much, much sooner than long-term economic reforms with the problems many minorities experience when dealing with police and law enforcement in general. The lack of focus on this as an immediate priority to eliminate easy sources of human suffering and brutality and misconduct is not lost on those who are suffering. There are sound political reasons not to focus on these issues (eg, white middle class voters tend not to care about them), but that only makes the division worse and more evident.

c) Inequality in general is the main theme on which Sanders seems to dominate his focus. I don't share this focus, but if I did, I'm not sure I would diagnose what he has as methods to resolve it. Min wage law doesn't seem to have a significant impact in the empirical literature and if anything might actually be harmful. It could be helpful too, but in general probably won't do very much about the problem of "fat cats on Wall Street" or "greedy CEOs", which is where almost all of the inequality disparity in the US stems from, and won't do very much about the plight of the poor, or the income traps of the structure of our existing welfare and social safety nets (where marginal tax rates can exceed 100% and people on net lose money by making more). It is not a very exciting policy change to demand as a result. College education is largely still reasonably affordable, even as the cost has grown substantially (in part because of federal subsidies). Reforms to make it free to the public are largely a give away to the fairly well off people who privately gain from attaining a college education already and do little about the basis on which a college education has grown in importance over a mere high school diploma in the first place, namely that too many jobs have become credentialized and licensed to require one for no apparent reason, and that a K-12 education isn't seen as satisfactory for many jobs. One reason it is not is that it is sometimes not seen as satisfactory for many colleges either. And then the another focal point seems to have been campaign finance laws, with the suggestion being that rich people are buying elections. This may be true that rich people can spend somewhat more on elections, but one reason rich people are "buying" elections is that richer people will vote. A lot more often than poorer people. There are a lot of reasons for that. Most of them do not have to do with "rich people can buy elections" in general. That is not going to fix American democracy or voter turnout if those are perceived to be imperiled by the amount of money now being spent on national politics.

A generally middle class populist campaign that focuses on these, as well as some of the protectionist themes, marginally anti-rich/anti-capitalist rhetoric, etc is not likely to attract much interest from me in the first place. But if it comes away from a putative problem like inequality with bad solutions, or the wrong solutions, or solutions to problems we don't have, and so on, it is really not going to get my attention in a good way.

A short legal primer. Sort of

So. Kim Davis is a trendy topic. Those probably were not words most of us would think to write a couple of months ago.

Some explanations for people who haven't followed this closely or imagine themselves to agree or disagree with her.

1) County clerks in Kentucky are elected officials. They're still public officials charged with doing public duties, like providing marriage licenses. One result of this elected status though is that they cannot be fired by another public official (a Governor for example). They have to be removed from office via an election or a process of impeachment that is typically complicated and time-consuming.

2) States could decide they don't want to issue marriage licenses, which to me seems like an idea likely to be less popular than is being imagined by some Christians or anarchists and some number of libertarians, but until or unless they do so, some city or county official will be charged with providing these licenses officially. In this case, a county clerk's office was tasked with this duty. There may be other public officials in the county that can perform this legal duty but they have other duties often (judges for example). Since the state gives out marriage licenses on a fairly regular basis, it is not productive to have this task on an ad hoc basis rather than an appointed office handle the regular business of the state.

3) Court rulings based around the 14th amendment have decided, I believe rightly, that these licenses should be issued regardless of gender in the couples involved. This means that any Kentucky law preventing such licenses between same-sex couples from being issued is invalidated and that such laws are to be enforced as amended. So the licenses must be issued and the court's interest is in gaining compliance with its orders that the state officials no longer be violating the Constitution.

The relevant factor here is that it is the state of Kentucky, not Kim Davis, which is seen to be acting when it refuses to issue a marriage license. Kim Davis does not make or decide state laws as a clerk. She carries them out and as such represents the state in that capacity.

4) The judge who issued the order to provide the licenses lawfully a) wrote in the 6th circuit opinion that was overturned that he effectively did not agree with same-sex marriages and b) gave Davis several avenues to lawfully comply.

Most significantly, she was to be allowed to turn over the duties to another clerk in the office rather than issue licenses she disagreed with herself. She refused to allow another clerk in her office to comply whether they wanted to or not or agreed with her beliefs or not. She imposed her beliefs upon others in her employ. This is not a power any elected official possesses, whether they imagine themselves to or not. This is ultimately why she was found in contempt of court and jailed, not for practicing her own religious beliefs but refusing to allow others to live in accordance with their own interpretations of faith and law and imposing upon them a required action that was deemed to be illegal by the federal court system and out of step with directives issued by the sitting governor of the state to comply with those rulings.

One of the apparently forgotten aspects of Jim Crow was that it was a binding legal obligation upon all citizens to segregate, not merely the beliefs of racists but the laws of racists as well were in force and on display. There were ways around this, but it was officially sanctioned by the state to require certain private behaviors, whether people agreed with those laws or not. If people do not agree with allowing same sex couples to marry, they are allowed to disagree with this, to voice opposition, to protest, to attend church services that reinforce these beliefs, and so on. What they are not allowed to do is prevent this from occurring legally and prevent others in their employ from executing the required public duties of issuing a license.

4a) (Update) It appears her dispute is that her name has to be on it as though this is constituting a personal endorsement. It is extremely unlikely that federal courts and judges will decide to amend a state law as to whether her name has to appear on a public form from a county clerk's office as a basis for official documentation being deemed valid. Their concern will be the relevant constitutional status of marriage law enforcement more broadly and not the precise mechanics that the Commonwealth of Kentucky decides to use to provide those marriage licenses, who has to sign where, etc. State laws may provide some protection if she were to sue in state court that some accommodation could be imposed or the state could act to amend the statute to provide such accommodations as allowing a deputy clerks name to be valid, etc, though that's not guaranteed of course. And she hasn't done that anyway. Suggesting her legal arguments are less about seeking accommodation and more about something else, or that her legal team is not very good (also plausible). (update to that part, it looks to me unlikely that the state courts would grant some variety of exemption either as the relevant forms only require the endorsement of the "office of", and not the "person of").

5) The absurdity of claiming that people could drive 30 minutes away for a public service required by state law seems to be a point of order as well. What this suggests in logical terms is that Davis does not agree with same sex marriage, but will abide by such marriages as endorsed legally by others in the same official capacity as herself as long as she has nothing to do with it. Except that she won't do that in her own county.

This is very different from say, abortion providers and distance traveled questions and constraints. The state is not in the business of providing abortions. It does not have to mandate that its officials provide them in a reasonable fashion within a legal jurisdiction of a county or major city. The state is in the business of providing marriage certificates. Since the state is in that business, it is required to do so in a non-discriminatory way (roughly speaking, since the state can prevent you from marrying your cousin or sister or father, or an under age child), and more significantly to this question here, the public and elected officials are tasked to do so as well. If they are unable or unwilling to do so, the effective response is that they should be removed from office in order to gain compliance with the legal environment.

Those public officials are free in their private capacity to complain all they want so long as they comply with the law in a non-discriminatory way or make reasonable accommodations to do so. Not issuing licenses at all in a county, without the approval of other city, county, or state officials, and thus requiring people to go to another county to receive a public service they are entitled to legally is not a reasonable accommodation.

6) The wisdom of jailing her to assure compliance with the law has been frequently called into question. I suspect that the intention of her or her lawyers was for her to go to jail for violating the law and that this is why she refused other methods of compliance. This made it unlikely that other forms of compliance would have worked in the interim to prevent violations of Constitutional law and the state's basic obligations from being ignored in the meantime.

As a form of civil disobedience, this is fine. She was willing to pay the consequences. As a form of protest intent on amending the legal environment, I'm less clear on how this would redound to anyone's benefit if they oppose gay marriage and the change in the legal environment. Some are claiming this makes her a martyr. A martyr to an already activated minority is still a losing opinion on this matter. Her actions would have to in some way change people's minds rather than just fire up people who still agree with her. She is not a church, whose practices were not changed by the legal framework of the 14th amendment requirements to civil institutions, and she was being allowed not to perform the ceremonial tasks personally as a requirement of her official duties. I don't see where that changes people's minds in a meaningful way. If anything, more people being aware that what she was actually doing was refusing to let anyone else operate in an official capacity under her charge should suggest that this is not likely to be a very inspiring case.

7) This question of the intersection of religious liberty with gay marriage (both in the public sphere and in the private business sphere) will come up again with a more presentable case. The Supreme Court refused to hear this one on appeal because it was a terrible case easily dismissed on the merits, most likely being used to fund raise by the legal team rather than attempt to actually reform or repeal the legal environment.

list of things I do not care about

That I heard a lot about this week.

1) Monica Lewinsky. If I am even hearing about this at all that is bullshit. That was almost 20 years ago. I do not need to be reminded I am getting older. At least not in this way.
2) Ebola in the US (and purported risk of epidemic). As distinguished from Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which is actually kind of a big deal.
3) Sarah Palin's family. If I am even hearing about this at all one year later (from 2008), that is bullshit.
4) Michael Brown shooting reports that do not alter general systemic problems of policing (for which the protests were largely spawned), or do not substantially alter what was already known or disputed (the shooting and circumstances leading up to it, or the circumstances of the fatal shots).

I've written mostly about the former problem and avoided pontificating on the latter (the circumstances of his death), in part because my general understanding is that it is quite likely the "shooting" itself may be deemed justified or legal in the same way that Zimmerman's shooting of Treyvon Martin was justifiable. Where the ethical/legal problem likely is residing isn't the procedures of "some sort of fight has broken out and I must defend myself". The actual ethical problem is that there was (possibly) a fight in the first place and that a series of events were escalated into a fatal scenario by an aggressor or agitator who is now rendered blameless despite (deliberately) creating a threatening scenario that another person may have felt obligated to react to with force. Police have established a pattern of other fatal incidents involving young black men (including not far from my residence) and escalating procedures of threats and force for what amounts to horribly trivial behavior (that should not rise to the level of criminality at all in most cases).

The preferred method should be de-escalation. Which is potentially less dangerous for the cops, less dangerous to bystanders, and less dangerous to ordinary citizens who may be shot at and killed deliberately by police.

Missouri

I have consumed a large quantity of analysis and footage and news concerning the protests, riots, looting, shooting(s), and on and on down the litany of civil libertarian woe. My main reaction, which is typical to me, is to summon my cynicism. Not much appears likely to change. The police don't appear ready to dial down their rhetoric, equipment, or tactics. Even or perhaps especially in front of media. The public appears broadly indifferent outside of groups that were already closely following these kinds of issues (police militarization, racial profiling, police brutality/aggressiveness) with what does not appear to be a major shift beyond the slow drift away from paranoia that dominated the previous three decades.

Some thoughts.

1) It is not relevant empirically that the police killed this person instead of some other person (or some other person who was killed by police elsewhere). People should be outraged and demand transparent methods of evaluating the actions where ever police are involved in the death of a "civilian". We, the public, should view that as a failure. Even if, and I wish this were more obvious than it appears to be, the person killed was accused of or witnessed committing a crime. It's possible that the death may be later justified in self-defence, but it should always be transparently investigated. Preferably by a third party agency rather than the police itself. I would also press for this in cases of non-lethal violence (assaults, tasings, deployment of tear gas or pepper spray). Police generally are poorly trained in marksmanship, use of non-lethal weapons and tactics, and in the de-escalation of force from the evidence of these cases of death and injury, and one reason for this is the lack of a proper and transparent accountability to the public that is served by policing.

2) People complaining about these actions in Ferguson and elsewhere are not being "anti-cop" or "anti-police". Most people making such complaints, even the civil libertarian wing who has monitored the growth of militarized police forces and the expansive use of procedures like no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, and stop and frisk searches, mostly upon disfavored minorities, would acknowledge a role for police to serve the community in the pursuit of justice and law and order. The complaint is that the tactics, strategies, training, and activities of police are often inappropriate, possibly unconstitutional and certainly not respective and protective of individual civilian rights regardless of whether they are violating those rights, often well beyond the minimum level of force required to carry out their duties, and have developed legal structures and protections that make them both individually and as a whole unaccountable to the communities involved. And all the while the victims of these actions have limited voice to make a strong defense of their innocence, or the disproportionate nature of such activities.

The major change that makes this issue apparent, one hopes, isn't that our police have become more violent and hazardous to communities, but that our communities have more tools to realize and become aware that police are trying to avoid accountability and transparency (camera phones, video surveillance, body cameras on the cops themselves or in their squad cars, etc). The worry is that the problem is more endemic to the recruiting and training of police procedures, and that brutality and violence are as a result a preferred means of affecting law enforcement for some, if not many police officers. Removing such officers from the force will be increasingly difficult the more widespread the problem is. If it is cultural rather than "bad apples".

3) We do not have currently good transparent data to evaluate whether it is cultural or bad apples. Police do not generally disclose their use of aggressive search warrant tactics, the discharging of firearms, even the deaths or assaults of citizens or civilians caused by police actions (whether justified or not) are not well documented. No one keeps track of this data. Very few states require the collection and documentation of it and federal data collection is voluntary and relies upon self-reporting. Worse still, it is often difficult to document or track the "bad apples", if that is the problem, as they can shift between departments, or between districts and jurisdictions of large urban areas, without being disciplined, charged, or otherwise interfered with in the problems they are causing.

In Ferguson several years ago, there was a severe beating of an innocent man in police custody (arrested because his first and last name matched a warrant, but with a different middle name and social security number), evidence of a purported assault on an officer for which this beating supposedly occurred was destroyed or conveniently missing, and the police attempted to have him charged with "destruction of property" for bleeding on uniforms. A charge which they later retracted that had even occurred. No one was disciplined, and without there having been a legal deposition (during which they may have admitted to having offered false testimony to gain the charge in the first place), there would be no official record of who these officers were.

One possible option would be to start to use Yelp! style public reputation models for rating police interactions, such that "bad apples" who have a poor reputation in the community, whether from violence or other inappropriate actions, would be at least moderately easy to identify. I have myself mostly encountered police during traffic stops. And some of these were polite and efficient, if otherwise unpleasant, and others were unpleasant and borderline abusive. I would emphasize nothing as yet untoward has occurred to me (other than perhaps getting a ticket or two when I might have gotten off with a warning from a different cop). But there was a clear difference in the interactions that some were coming from a more authoritarian world than should be the case for police to seek to maintain while others recognized their duties to enforce the law with a minimum of disruption. If such a system were widely available, I would rate those second variety more highly and positively, and rate the former negatively.

4) One of the largest problems with policing isn't the heavy duty toys provided by the Pentagon. It is that the system of accountability makes it difficult to first recognize "bad apples" and second to properly or appropriately discipline them. The Pepper Spray cop, Lt John Pike, was found to be cleared of wrongful actions by the police's own investigation, which took months (during which time he was still being paid). Independent investigation documented insubordination (disobeying orders not to deploy with riot gear), lack of training on equipment selected for use (said riot gear, in particular the pepper spray, was not adequately trained with), escalation (showing up to a peaceful protest in riot gear), and brutal force (the actual spraying of pepper spray, incorrectly and indiscriminately), in much less time. He was only fired over the objections of the police investigation. Without the independent investigation and worldwide distribution of video documenting part of his activities, it is very likely he would still be an officer of the law today. Various other officers have committed similar actions, often on video, and remain employed and patrolling the streets of some city or town today. The FBI's internal investigations have found zero unjustified shootings out of the last 150, demonstrating that the problem of accountability may not be simply a local force and lower professional standards as causes.

These problems are not limited to use of force. Wrongful arrests, such as for people taking video or photographs of police activity, are a violation of basic civil rights. Such events typically can cost a city thousands of dollars in lawsuits and settlements. But most of the time nothing happens to the officers who actually created these violations.

5) Police militarization has occurred in large part through the war on drugs and war on terror formulations, whereupon large quantities of military hardware were gifted to police forces, large and small, urban and rural. The logic behind this is typically to proclaim a need for high value intervention forces, like SWAT teams. Most of the towns and cities which are receiving this, a) haven't had assaults, much less murders of police officers in decades if ever, and b) haven't even had many murders and shootings of "ordinary citizens" in decades. Violent crime rates have been falling, in some places fast, and in others barely, for over 20 years. You would not know this to hear it from police officers who speak of "war zones", and general danger and fear of the communities they police and work in. To be sure, they have a risky job which involves occasionally a very high danger to their personal safety. But the actual danger to police, the risk of death or injury, from assault or gunfire from suspected criminals, is extremely low. As is the actual danger in most instances of terrorism, or for mass shooting events and hostage scenarios. And almost none of these individual events requires that we arm police with sniper rifles, automatic machine guns, and armored personnel carriers. Very little of this equipment has been well trained with, or the personnel selected for advanced training rather than simply being a part of a small rural or suburban assault team.

6) The main use for these tactics and equipment is to conduct no-knock drug raids upon non-violent, mostly poor, mostly minority residents and property owners. The reason is fairly simple; in many cases the police can make seizures of a variety of assets during a drug bust, assuming the drug bust is of the correct home and finds drug paraphernalia. The incentives for doing what we would regard as ordinary police work are skewed by the "investigation" of vice crimes like drug distribution.

Taken altogether, as with many of my observations of the society around me I wonder something strange, one could wonder why there aren't people in the streets fighting with police more often in protest and/or riot formats. None of these are positive trends, and there is limited impetus to shift policy on virtually any of these designs (with the possible exception of legalizing marijuana).

One main reason: mostly these forms of mobile oppression are mostly imposed upon the poor and lower status minorities or immigrant communities. Middle class white people are then left mostly alone and see very little of these activities as commonplace. Further, they support these tactics even more when told who they are being used against. A large portion of the injustice of anti-terrorism surveillance is the singling out of Arab-American and Muslim-American communities and individuals. With little or nothing to show for it and at great expense to the taxpayer. People not only don't mind this, but prefer it. Ditto for criminal enforcement of African-American communities or their imprisonment, no matter how petty the legal infringements. Inconveniences of oppression are imagined to be much less inconvenient when they are imposed upon people "we" want oppressed anyway. Finally, most middle class white Americans do not know anyone who is of some minority, even to the extent of knowing few non-Christians. Which limits the knowledge and perspective such people might offer on the subject.

All of that means
1) Most Americans do not see a reason to be upset enough to demonstrate.
2) Most Americans see demonstrations as unusual and in need of repression rather than legitimate airing of grievances.
3) Which in turn means there's a social custom against demonstration, on this subject in particular.

It would be nice if there were more mainstream protests and movements to reform the conduct and supervision of police, or the legal incentives available to persecute, investigate, or detain and harass people for non-violent and especially consensual criminal acts like those involved in vice crime. But we're not there yet. I have been following these issues for several years with an increasing degree of annoyance. Posting about it feels at this point like a flat and useless "I told you so", but it seems no less important to keep talking about in the hope that there will be people listening.

Virginia, and why politics is often about things people tell you it is.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-07/republicans-haven-t-lost-women.html

I brought this up in a debate forum recently.

Basically the point is this: abortion is, for all intents and purposes, an irrelevant political topic in most elections. Republicans' problem with abortion has been they have recently run a disproportionate number of unskilled political figures who have said things on the subject, or tangentially related subjects like female anatomy and rape, that are well outside the political mainstream and treated harshly by voters (as they rightly should be). But their fundamental position on abortion, while disagreeable and in my view wrong, isn't a dead weight anchor that prevents them from winning or causes defeat in elections by annoying women in particular. They will not need to adjust it to "win back women" or to win elections overall. They will mostly need to shut up about it.

A closer case can be made for how Republican candidates talk about women (binders full of them!, or Romney's equally repulsive and stupid subsequent claim that women were bought off with free birth control) or have taken positions such as invasive ultrasounds being mandated for abortion procedures which are unpopular. But these issues are likely unpopular with men as well given that abortion politics are basically the same across gender, and at times that men have even evinced higher levels of pro-choice attitudes than women. In the superficial way in which most people, regardless of gender, consume political information and news, gaffes and extreme views are likely to attract attention and perhaps sway opinion when they are inevitably highlighted by press coverage and negative advertising. We could probably say that Cuccinelli's views on invasive ultrasounds or statements and record on sodomy and so on through the sexual panoply of political footballs for him to fumble created an overall attitude and perspective which a) annoyed many putative donors to his campaign and prevented him from raising money and enthusiasm outside of his base, b) annoyed a significant portion of voters into voting against him without regard for the opponent and c) allowed for easier attack advertising by his opponent by using his own words and record to attack him. Allowing a candidate to win an election without really providing a significant platform because they draw large numbers of voters who "hate you" instead should be a cardinal sin in politics. One can argue this is sort of what Obama did in 2008 by running against the Bush legacy and providing a lot of insubstantial promises about a proposed agenda, and that it is also what Romney attempted to do in 2012 but was far less skilled politically and charismatically to pull it off (and/or had poor political views). But the point is that saying dumb things or having a bad or unpopular record on a few issues is a bad idea if winning the election matters as it places a big handicap on your potential vote. This is true regardless of whether the subject is women, abortion, the environment (another issue that annoyed donors), homosexuals, or more simply, the damn roads and traffic.

Back to the abortion point.

There are several reasons it is irrelevant politically.
- Most people do not care, or hold relatively vague positions (that sometimes contradict each other). This is why I consider many Democrats to be effectively pro-life/anti-choice simply because they end up not opposing or even backing many restrictions on accessibility which to the uninterested or uninformed voter seem "reasonable", but which offer limited utility at best (and are unambiguously dumb in most cases). The vast majority of the public holds these squishy mentalities about abortion, with it existing in an uncomfortable moral and political space that they would rather pretend isn't there. When most people do not want to care about an issue in the first place, it is easy to ignore it altogether or say as little as possible or necessary about it and move on.
- The people who do care already have their minds made up, and are generally informed activists who vote on the issue in a more concerted way. They will enter an election cycle already knowing who they will vote for or against based on party heuristics or actual political attention and knowledge. Even extreme statements are unlikely to move their positions because those statements will simply confirm what they already know about the candidates.
- Political opinion on abortion isn't moving or trending significantly and doesn't demonstrate many demographic splits moving forward from age and generational shift. This distinguishes it from other social issues like the drug war (sort of) or gay marriage, where there are huge generational gaps politically that political figures must address or navigate, and requires some amount of attention in more elections because the shifts overall are large and positive in one direction (or another I suppose if one is less favorable to either than I am).
- Extreme statements are rare, that's why they are "newsworthy". Most politicians know not to say that they might consider rape/incest exemptions to be a problem. I personally consider these politicians who violate this third rail commandment of politics to be at least morally consistent, though I disagree with their moral basis and would oppose them for reason #2. Most voters do not and will not give them this credit. Most politicians know which abortion restrictions can be presented with some level of acceptability to a given population (parental notification, sometimes waiting periods, late term restrictions or bans), and which cannot (invasive ultrasounds, complete bans shuttering all or many abortion clinics). Polling data on these issues is readily available and has been relatively consistent for a couple of decades now. Political figures who wish to advance among conservatives can advertise their pro-life concerns but know they can accomplish nothing. This is what the previous GOP gubernatorial candidate in Virginia did (McDonnell), and what various candidates did not do (Cuccinelli, Akin, Mourdock, etc).
- If an extreme statement is not made, abortion will probably not surface as a political issue in any given election. It will surface if it is on a ballot, or if there have been more extreme laws passed (and usually overturned in courts), but it will probably not rise above more serious voter concerns like the economy, health care, crime, war, etc. I do not recall abortion being a serious issue in 2012 for example.
- My general contention would be to agree with a thesis that any actual success in overturning Roe-Wade by conservatives would be a death knell to their position. I think the political/policy elite knows this and knows that they benefit far more in activism and funding from being perceived as a somewhat extreme position that can be more vaguely expressed as "abortion is bad" rather than having to defend other positions like "these women are bad for needing/wanting abortions", or more likely "these women are dead, or suffered some other lesser grievous injustice, from an inability to get a safe and legal abortion", arguments on which the general public does not share the pro-life attitude, or opposes it openly. This means that the general Republican party attitude is to express public support for pro-life causes, perhaps pass a few laws that can restrict access without much opposition, or perhaps pass a few token harsher laws to be overturned in court, complain loudly about the courts and their activism either way, and move on to other things leaving this issue in more or less the status quo that it has been in since the Clinton years.

I find the general thesis that women are motivated to vote on the basis of "lady parts" to be rather disturbing and incorrect. Or it at least should suggest there's some plausible theory that men are voting based on their penis, which seems more likely honestly. Women are just as likely, if not more so, to be confronted with economic challenges in a mixed economy such as finding a job, holding a job, or even starting a business, and likely have grave concerns about the quality of education for children (or themselves), the safety and accessibility of public roads, and so on. To assess the probability of voting on the basis of abortion alone as a significant "women's issue" is first to fail to recognize that women are not distinguished in their views on abortion and the accompanying moral and legal frameworks we have from men, and second to demean women as incapable of having significant political views on a broad range of issues.

At the state level, these politics on abortion are somewhat more or less aggressive, but Virginia is a pretty moderate state thanks to expanding DC suburbs, relative to say, South Dakota or Nebraska or Kansas or Texas or Mississippi. We could say that in this case, Republicans ran someone who offended this status quo, and women perhaps correctly recognized this and voted accordingly, and good for them. Or we could also point out that there were a bunch of transportation and economic issues in the state (along with health care) that still overshadowed public opinion on abortion, and that on these issues, Cuccinelli also seemed out of step to his state's voters. Which is not altogether unlikely either since women still identified these as more pressing issues for their vote.

And this is also not altogether unlikely since Republicans have had a great deal of trouble articulating their economic views or plans for development of infrastructure, or in general a governing philosophy rather than a rhetorical opposition to governing in the first place. I consider this their far greater problem for women and for all voters; that they don't relate on economic grounds what their proposed policies would do or could do for voters at a personal level. Obama, of all people the supposed socialist by their reckoning, was far better at this than Romney at explaining how markets could work for example in a practical way. It's far too much "we need to keep taxes low" without recognizing that for most Americans, taxes are quite low historically (and the main exception is people near the poverty line who can have incredibly high marginal rates on increased earnings). And voters in their infinite wisdom, reject this as an insufficient platform and an insufficient solution to their problems.

A series of complaints and grievances

I've been following the various scandals and revelations and developments in our government with a dual experience of almost triumphant "I told you so" moments followed by the enormous disappointment that whomever I told in the first place probably still isn't listening.

As a general rule, libertarians are ignored, at best tolerated, and at worst decried as traitors or heartless bastards and their concerns, even when shared, become publicly as easily dismissed as those of claims for moon landing conspirators. This attitude becomes worse for wear when it appears as though some of these concerns and claims are shared, however rhetorically or for naked political ends, by the major mainstream political figures and the polities that back them. Democrats, in some part due to overreach by the Bush administration and in large part to due to backlash against the Iraq War, had shown promising signs of wanting to push back against the security state and the security theater measures we installed in the panicked days of post 9-11. This was promising enough as a platform that they even nominated an anti-Iraq War constitutional lawyer who had made sympathetic noises about the need for proper due process and oversight for the actions of the executive in the conduct of "keeping America safe", with the notion most clearly expressed that there was no need to trade liberty for security in a false effort.

It was not surprising that not all of this promise was delivered upon. What was surprising is how little, and how much more expansive rather than contracting, the security state has become.

As a general rule, I vote for Presidents on several issues that the general public ignores.
1) Foreign policy. I found Obama's presentation at least preferable to the distasteful overtures of Romney and McCain, but I disagreed strongly with his plans for Afghanistan during the 08 campaign. And subsequent actions in Libya, an apparently haphazardly expanded drone programme in Pakistan and elsewhere, mixed results with Russia and Iran, general failures with Israel (from whatever perspective you want to apply to it), have to be counter-balanced with the death of bin Laden, dealings with Somali pirates, and a partial success in securing offshoring alliances with regional players in East Asia (Myanmar, Japan, Indonesia, Australia, India, Vietnam), helped largely by China's antagonizing postures or existing relationships with many of these nations. In general, the promising but mixed overtones of his election and campaign did not meet up with a) the absurdity of his Nobel Peace Prize award, b) the general Clintonian nature of his foreign policy as an extension of liberal internationalism/hawkishness. This might overall be preferrable to neoconservative hawkishness and the apparent need for endless foreign adventures, conquests and defence funding, but it offered little to assuage my concerns over the endless security state brought on through the war on terror, even if it was now no longer to be called that, and still did only marginal work to remove some of our needless and costly adventures abroad. (Note: I am a realist, not an isolationist. Give me a war worth fighting, and I'll help pay for the bombs and talk strategy and tactics. We haven't had one of those in a while except for the initial incursions into Afghanistan back in 2002, and possibly the First Gulf War. Pretty much everywhere else in my lifetime we've sent rockets, bombs, and troops has been a bloody mess or a waste of effort in my view, and one could go back further still and see pointless waste in Vietnam, potentially Korea, and definitely WW1 in the last century).
2) The protection of civil liberties and the appointment of judges to carry this out. Obama's had all kinds of problems appointing federal judges, and some of that isn't entirely his fault. Republicans have blocked or delayed numerous appointments, but he also hasn't appointed at a rapid enough pace to fill vacancies. Sotomayor on the Supreme Court has mostly been a pleasant surprise in defending criminal rights for trials and detentions to his credit (though she's often been in dissent sadly rather than in the majority), but the overall character of civil liberties as an issue has taken a severe beating over the last decade and has shown limited signs of improving. The government now maintains, expands, or defends powers to a) use drug dog searches as probable cause despite substantial evidence that they are heavily flawed (eg, racist) if not useless, b) stop and frisk people with no probable cause in major cities, c) stop and frisk pretty much anyone getting on an airplane with no probable cause, and to seize a considerable quantity of non-lethal property from those persons, d) deploy deadly force against US citizens abroad without trial or due process, e) prevent people from even getting aboard airplanes with minimal due process f) claim and scan through the records of media companies, credit card companies, and telecommunications companies as to the activities of their consumers and clients, with minimal oversight and a limited due process (that is, that these searches may violate the 4th amendment by the decision of the courts required to oversee them, but we don't know for sure because we can't read the secret decisions of that court), g) places overbroad secrecy claims upon the activities of government agencies and officials, to the point of prosecuting leaks by whistleblowers concerned about the legality or efficacy or cost of such agencies and officials, as treasonous actions of espionage, h) potentially tortures said whistleblowers while in detention. i) detain, interrogate, torture, and force-feed people, even who are declared to pose no threat to national security by our own government, indefinitely with minimal recourse to the judicial system to overturn these determinations, j) seize the DNA of arrested persons without need for a warrant.

I have long tired of the supposition that these are defensible requirements necessary for our safety and well-being. The risk of terrorism in a modern democratic nation-state is very low. This allows public officials to claim reasonably that xyz policies have kept us safe. This is akin to saying that xyz policies keep away evil spirits or giants. And since we haven't seen any evil spirits or giants, then obviously they must be working.

Terrorism is exceptional as a criminal or military tactic. It is exceedingly rare to experience outside of a regional conflict between uneven powers as a deployment of asymmetric warfare. It is reasonable to take steps to make it far less common still in stable environments of far-away nation-states, as the tactics often involve significant loss of life and grief to those who suffer for lost loved ones, substantial debilitating injuries, and significant damage to property and commerce in the disruption of daily life for others, just as other major crimes can do (murder, rape, assault, theft, riots, etc). It could be considered quite foolish to presume that a nation-state should do nothing in the face of such action to respond, investigate, and hopefully deter violent acts of terror and mayhem. But it is equally foolish to accept at face-value the claims of that nation-state and its officials that its tactics and stratagems in response are necessary and effective. If our tactics are ineffective, we are expending valuable effort and money and time upon fruitless endeavours for security in an action of inscrutable theater rather than the transparently fair provision of law and order. If our tactics are unnecessary we may tread upon the private affairs of citizens and residents and the wants of potential allies here or abroad for no purposeful gain. A common libertarian refrain in viewing government policy is to say "We need to do something, this is something, therefore we should do it" is a method used to considerable effect by public officials. The wake of national or local public tragedies is easily exploited to do meaningless symbolic things or, worse, damaging things to our liberties and well-being with no benefit at all to our security, prosperity or happiness as a people. "We" thus advise caution in such moments to ask for careful analysis of what things will be necessary, who will be effected, and what benefits we will all be provided, and if these things do not come to pass, that we reform, and change course to do other things (or even nothing) instead.

There are several common attempts to defend the responses of our authorities and appointed representatives to these problems. Most of these defences are unsuccessful. The most foremost in the wake of the revelations of broad surveillance programmes is that "I have nothing to hide". But there are a number of problems with that yawning response. Significant among them is the false belief that what the government actually uses these powers for is the prevention and detention of terrorists. PATRIOT act powers and NSA wiretaps have been used for anything from counter-terrorism as intended, to essentially entrapment of "terrorism" by the FBI, to anti-drug investigations, to more mundane local criminal activities. It is not sufficient to simply not be a terrorist to not attract undue attention in this way. A second problem is the lack of understanding of how broad and inclusive our criminal codes at the federal, state, and local level have become. All manner of even commonly engaged activity is punishable by law, with often absurdly high maximum penalties of prison terms. All that is required is a petty functionary in public service to view your activities with suspicion or any personally annoyed prosecutor or judge to carry out these penalties upon anyone they wish. What this claim of "I have nothing to hide" really means is: "I have no enemies in power willing to punish me". And we see immediately that the trust belied by this claim will shift when the party in power shifts to suggest that people quickly see (delusionally or accurately or not) that they may indeed have enemies in office willing to punish them for being "liberal" or "conservative" and outspoken in those views through whatever means available to them.

A further problem with the security provisions is the expansion of military power upon the civilian sector. It was common during the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing to see military gear clad and equipped Boston PD roaming around. In fairness to the city of Boston, Boston is a large metropolitan area with historical significance easily accessible to various groups who might wish to attack or make a political statement via terrorism, as might be the case in Washington DC or New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Philadelphia say. It might thus have been reasonable to apportion some funds to that purpose (I do not necessarily agree, but this is at least an argument worth having). But how likely is a similarly low but modest risk to apply to any random town in Alabama or Ohio or Wisconsin or Oregon? And how much funding has been disposed upon those random towns to ostensibly fight terrorism (or more likely, unarmed drug dealers and consumers) and make available heavy equipment, often with minimal training, to local police forces who will have essentially zero risk of terrorism. Is this an effective use of our efforts, to blanket our country with military equipment to chase down terrorist suspects? Likewise, a similar question could apply to the distribution of funds and equipment to other agencies of the federal government, other than our armies and FBI/CIA/Homeland Security style agencies.

Of all the things that developed over the last few weeks, the overbroad surveillance disclosures of data mining by the government, the IRS scandals, the needless involvement into the Syrian conflict, the Supreme Court ruling that police interrogations (of a non-arrest manner) need not require proper Mirandizing, the most disturbing to me was the idea that the government can, upon arrest, compel DNA from a arrested suspect. Supposedly this is to be limited to the most violent actions and suspicions, but we are likely to see this to be a push for a very broad use as an investigative tool by governments and already an arrest is commonly enough an abuse of authority by police to take in people who annoyed or displeased them, failed to comply with "commands", and that there are any number of relatively harmless things that are criminalized and arrest-able (drug possession in many states for example, prostitution, etc). It isn't necessary that people will only be arrested for murder and rape and general mayhem, and it will likely not remain necessary that DNA will only be taken for those arrests. The claims that this is somehow an identification tool are rendered as a challenging argument to make where the processing of DNA still takes weeks and months versus fingerprints or facial recognition of drivers licenses and so on. It already seems a dangerous slope to permit it without a warrant and simply upon arrest even in the case of supposedly dangerous criminals as it would be simple enough to compel DNA as part of any written warrant for arrest in such cases. I have trouble seeing what legal use it has beyond that. It appears it's primary use is not identity, but rather to say, we have this person in custody, let's find out if maybe they are guilty of something. Usually something else, and not the crimes that we have detained them for. This is not a sensible way to investigate individuals for their crimes, even if the investigation of serious crimes (like rape or murder) is a pressing and serious matter worth the investment in DNA testing.

General reactions to the defining moment of our times...

Which for me boiled down to a choice between flavors of ice cream rather than anything momentous and important. And probably will come down to it as equally bland in historical terms years from now also.

1) I think conservative skepticism of polling had some merit to the general arguments, but the problem was that they seemed interested in rejecting the entire trend line of polls, conducted by different agencies with different methodologies, etc, and accepting only information which conformed to the "Romney is going to win! Woot!" narrative rather than information which could be used to describe the political landscape as it existed in 2012. Liberals and Democrats have learned how to analyze polling data after Kerry was defeated in 2004 (and Gore in 2000), and then to use it to inform ways to motivate their base, or to target groups of swing votes. At some point conservatives may do the same. I'm not sure yet if that means most Republicans will.

2) From following various conservative pundits reactions, the likely step is going to be a double down strategy on the idea that Mitt wasn't conservative enough. I think this is politically stupid, but I also have nothing invested in Republicans per se either (the idea of conservativism is sensible enough in forming a basis for a governing party, but we seem to have lots of reactionaries rather than conservatives at the moment), so go right ahead. The basis of this presumption appears to be the maintenance of the House as somehow legitimatizing the Tea Party style operations. There are huge logical gaps in this. First, I don't think anyone thought Democrats could win the House back, perhaps even many who thought there would even be substantial gains. So predicating a victory on voters maintaining the status quo is rather faulty logic (I think the same applies to Obama's win also, though less in the Senate). Voters usually maintain the status quo as that's part of the voting bias. Second, from the information I am seeing, the Tea Party style operations seem to have cost Republicans the Senate, both in this election and in 2010. Running ridiculously unqualified people who say insane things (O'Donnell, Akin, Angle, Mourdock, Buck) is not an encouraging electoral strategy for achieving long-run victories. Democrats had some of the same painful lessons in the wake of the Iraq War (trying to get rid of Lieberman for example), but Republicans are having a lot of trouble absorbing the lessons and adjusting their electoral strategies.

Most of the Tea Party styled victors for Senate seats were in relatively safe states for Republicans (Utah, Kentucky, etc). So the effect has been to move the Republican caucus to the right (in some ways, not in others). There's a few contrasting cases (Wisconsin?) where they managed to find saner or competent seeming candidates that still had high base appeal. I'm not at all convinced this is a sustainable trend wherein the Republican establishment manages to find tame enough people capable of winning elections but also who can win over Tea Party voters in primaries. This plan might work okay in the House, but not for President or Senate. As a correlated problem, moving the caucus to the right allows liberals to paint mostly moderate Republicans with the same right-wing extremist brushes and cast them aside in more liberal states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, etc) where they may otherwise stand a chance of winning. It assures that Republicans become less competitive in those states.

Finally, what seems to me the most significant source of power to maintain many House seats was the 2010 elections that granted Republicans considerable control over redistricting from the 2010 census changes. Ohio in particular has a cadre of pretty safe hard R seats out there now surrounding the liberal bastions of Columbus or Cleveland that are effectively conceded. While this may allow for some Republican control over relatively safe seats for another decade and hence insure some divided government gridlock, it doesn't say much about winning over the rest of the country to their agenda. And if last night's results were any indicator, it doesn't say much about assuring that those are safe seats. Allen West looks to have lost, Bachmann nearly so, and so on.

* A note: I consider the "tea party" to consist not just of a set of fiscal priorities. This is largely because conservatives tend not to agree on how best to resolve those priorities, or what they in fact are. Other than a general sense that deficits are bad, at least when run by Democrats or not caused by defense spending, and that the debt climbing is bad, I do not see much progress here on how to address these as problems. Where there is broader agreement among conservatives is on social policies. Which is precisely where they have made progress at the state level enacting their agenda. Moving away from these types of candidates, the types likely to say expansive and stupid things about female biology when discussing rape victims or to admit their come-to-Jesus moment involving witchcraft, or to include chickens as a viable form of currency, would be a big start. I do not think this is a likely result if they were to double down on the political figures involved in order to say, focus on Rand Paul or Tom Coburn or even Paul Ryan styled conservatives, with their intensity on budget matters and the tough choices involved therein. They're more likely to get DeMint or Bachmann styled conservatives in less safe districts and states who insist that social and fiscal conservativism are melded as one.

3) I don't think Republicans need to abandon a message of smaller government or conservative principles to win over voters to their cause. But they should be aware there's a lot of people who no longer resonate as clearly to mixing a message of fiscal restraint with expansionist foreign policy or moralising social policies, and that when they go off message and discuss these things or try to pass agendas based on them, many voters will find them unpalatable. Not just liberals. Keep in mind that while Romney lost, he didn't lose by very much (some tens of thousands of votes in various states). It would not take very much adaptation and moderation on some issues to go back to winning national elections moving forward. The question is whether Republicans are interested in analysis or rage. I suspect the latter.

4) I also think it would help a great deal to have a saner approach to fiscal restraint. Reaganomics had what successes it had in the 1980s economy because it was part of a broad set of reforms, from monetary policy under Volcker, to neo-Keynesian spending increases, to tax simplification and flattening of the tax code, and as an offshoot of some successful de-regulatory moves made under the Carter administration. Most of those specifics do little to translate to the current environment. Tax simplification while desirable has a lot of embittered constituencies who would fight for some of the complexity. Spending cuts do likewise. And both sides seem willing to talk about culling the excessively broad quantity and reach of regulatory power, but do little to curtail it while in power, even in relatively sane arenas where there are competing and patchwork laws. Instead of tackling these with sensible proposals, for the most part Republicans have offered soft messages like "balanced budget amendments", which if they stood a chance of passage would be accompanied by a constituency willing to make hard cuts, or insane messages like flirting with debt defaults while mostly ignoring entitlement spending, risking both the safety of that spending and the financial stability of the nation as a whole. To be sure, the Romney plan eventually provided some hard choices in tax reform specifically, and the Ryan budget plan is a good starting point for talking about entitlement reforms. But these fledgling signs of fiscal prudence are balanced by Romney's desire for tax cuts more broadly when we're at historically low levels of taxation and an insistence on defence spending, all while demagoguing Obamacare in part because of cuts it makes to entitlement spending. It's hard to know which part of that message to take most seriously, and an honest assessment of our political structures would tell us that only parts of it would ever pass into law in the first place. And probably not the good parts.

Things to miss

I skipped (most of) the debate. I had a lot of reasons. First, I really don't care very much about domestic policy debates between Presidents. Some amount of agenda setting is useful, but I doubt very much that the various positions between these two add up to substantially distinct agendas worth listening to them debate. Since I missed it, I read up on it instead. These were good ones from the live-blogging/tweet world.

"Continue to burn clean coal." I would like America also to continue to use cold fusion."
In general, people who proclaim a desire for "energy independence" are as reliable to do so and just as reliable to fail to realize that desire. While I think coal is going to be around for a while yet, I don't think we should kid ourselves that the technology is very clean and sound environmentally. In any case, while coal is a big issue in Ohio/WVa/PA, it seems like a dead issue with all the natural gas and fracking coming online instead. 

"Romney argues it's immoral to pass the burden of debt to younger generations. He says he'll cut any programme it's not worth borrowing money from China to pay for. I'm afraid unfunding Big Bird and Jim Lehrer is not going to help much."

The pleasant fiction that cutting things can be accomplished without changing entitlements, keeping taxes low, leaving most loopholes intact, and raising military spending, is persistent. But somebody needs to call bullshit on it. Maybe there's an argument for cutting PBS or foreign aid or art, or whatever, but those are small potatoes that don't impress me when someone says they'll cut it. Romney wasn't even willing to cut Education funding. That's a much larger chunk of change. 

"I suppose the deduction for corporate jets ought to depend on whether they have windows that open." - That joke is going to get a lot of mileage it seems. "Not giving subsidies to Exxon: Good. Corporate jet tax: meaningless. Not giving tax breaks to ship jobs overseas: worse than meaningless." - I'm not sure what, if any, substance comes up in these debates usually. I seem to recall they offered something once in a while. I don't think the "borrowing money from China" or "sending jobs to China" lines are true, relate to anything either would do in office, but they persist because the public believes it seems that China bashing is more fun than taking responsibility for their own failings. 

"He has proposed a tax plan that would inevitably add to the deficit, but claimed he would never pass a tax plan that would add to the deficit. He says he wouldn't bring down the deficit by raising revenue, but attacks Obama for not supporting a plan that would bring down the deficit by raising revenue. And it all sounds rather convincing." - This was vintage Romney. The amusing (or perhaps disturbing, depending on your perspective) part of the debates seems to have been that Obama wasn't calling these bluffs on things like Medicare, defence spending, tax cuts, etc. 

"I'm not sure if I'm learning anything from this debate, but I expect to learn a lot from the fact-checks that will inevitably follow." - Pretty much. Some of the fact-checks preceded it even. 

Since I had already decided who I would vote for, and it wasn't either of those jokers. 
I have the following wonders
1) In baseball, someone (Cabrera) won the Triple Crown for the first time in 45 years. This doesn't appear to be a big deal (it also wasn't his best season, so maybe that's the issue). Given that baseball is actually making quite a lot of money still and therefore must have fans somewhere, I'm not sure why this is. Because he was playing in Detroit? Because he's Latino? Because he was a fairly predictable case to win a TC (Pujols being another)? 
2) I'm still undecided on whether Homeland is a pro-war-on-terror show or anti. It's hard to tell. 
3) The movie Looper was incredibly predictable. It did not meet my expectations but was possibly a decent film anyway. 

Wherefore a foreign policy debate? It ebbs and flows and then is heard no more.

Most people do not follow foreign relations. Fewer still follow these events abroad, and our interventions in them, with much serious interest. So for people who have the misfortune to follow me and see social network feeds jammed with IR related things (from time to time) during an election that's supposedly about economics (but isn't really), a word or two. 

I began writing in blog form back in 2006. At the time, I was disheartened by our international affairs, our conduct abroad, and to an extent our internal relations as they related to these. Dissent it seemed was not prized or debated but was viewed as treason. Dissent not merely from a foreign policy consensus that excluded pacific and realism perspectives, but also from the absurd lengths of our internal security measures and the expense paid in both blood and especially treasure to attain whatever it is we thought we were attaining. I titled a blog at that point after a famous IR realist (perhaps THE famous IR realist until Machiavelli and Clausewitz appear, and Bismarck puts much of it into practice) in part because I wanted to signal what views I felt needed airing. I have since had the disconcerting habit of butting my head in to think about other things, like economics or health care or anti-drug policy, but I am at heart greatly interested in how a nation plays the game of nations.These other matters, how it taxes, who it taxes, how it polices itself, what it polices, how it treats its poor, how it rewards its wealth, how it teaches its children, what it teaches, what infrastructure it has and wants, energy, climate policies, and so on. These are all concerns that can feed back into that "game" because they are ways we use our precise communal and individual resources and attentions, and how we may gain new resources for our collective and individual futures. Observing these trends may be helpful to gain insights into how a society and its people prepares for the mundane task of encouraging growth and prosperity, who it intends to grow and prosper (and who it does not), what sources of vibrancy in culture or innovation it seeks and which it condemns, how capably (or not) its government and officials disturb or cultivate these trends. By this we might hope to see how it might be prepared or not for larger tasks like major supply shocks, trade embargoes, unfriendly or aggressive actions by neighbours or rivals and so on.

Now. Back to this year. I've long since declared here and elsewhere that I'm essentially in the tank for Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico and libertarian candidate for President. I have many reasons where my views and his seem to align, often where his depart radically and preferrably in my view from the two party consensus on a number of important issues. Chief among these are foreign policy and civil liberties related issues. Johnson does not describe coherently an IR vision anymore than most candidates do, and perhaps less so than is typical owing to his third party status in a two party nation. But where he has opined about various matters international, he has expressed what seems to me like a liberal realist vision. If there can be such a thing, or neoliberal IR if not. The basic premise of a country in realist terms is to look to satisfy its interests. It can do so through aggression where it needs to and where that will succeed, but it often as not is possible to achieve desirable ends with diplomacy, both through cunning in the form of espionage and through allegiances and friendships of either value or convenience.  War is to be viewed as a non-trivial expense that can be avoided, with most conflicts to be won without ever having to fire a shot. This is also not the same as isolationism, nor an inherent desire for massive and extensive military cuts. A modestly powerful military with a defensive mindset in army and air power terms, and power projection in naval and air power terms with special operations branch for rapid global deployment would generally satisfy our needs below unlikely WW3 scenarios. Or the alien invasion/zombie apocalypse scenarios where our military usually gets to square off and triumph over in movies and books now days. 

It is perfectly possible for the American union to construct and maintain a powerful force for defensive purposes and to do things like combat international threats (like piracy or terrorism or aggressive foreign powers), while also doing things like nominally abide by international treaties we sign, cooperate with allies abroad in the satisfaction of their interests (where it is useful to us to assist or to maintain their allegiance) and so on. It is not, and was not, in the interests of this union to do things like expend valuable blood and treasure on matters of choice or where that expenditure served no interest and accomplished no valuable goals. Conquest and occupation of foreign countries that pose minimal international threats and through which we gain no value that isn't otherwise cheaply attained through trade and diplomacy are among the list of valueless goals for using force in my view.

I might be persuaded that we can deploy force abroad to stop people from aggression against their neighbours abroad. There are examples of such things, and it seems a prudent measure for our own long-term security to maintain a relative balancing of power on the globe, if not a hegemony of our own dominance. I might even, less likely, be persuaded that we can deploy force abroad successfully to stop people from aggression against their actual neighbours (the people living in the same country with them). I cannot be persuaded that either the post 2003 Afghanistan war or the invasion of Iraq occupied any of the above spheres of influence and interest to carry out and to extend and continue. I recognized this as a problem back in 2003, and was fed up with it by 2006. I saw little chance for the political figures involved from either major party to properly and rapidly extract themselves and indeed, observed their intentions to double down on these engagements with disdain.

Fast forwarding back to today. I have seen precious little debate and precious little evidence that Gov Romney even notices the rest of the world goes on. What evidence there is does little to suggest that either of our two party candidates have a firm grasp on a foreign policy vision, and disturbingly, little evidence emerges that they would do anything of substance with great distinction from the other. Running down the problems here.
1) Both have a very mixed, muddled strategy depicted in Afghanistan, alternately proposing that we keep troops there, diplomatically attempting to arrange such a status, and proposing that we leave or should have already left. These are incoherent visions mostly.
2) Both have a very mixed, muddled strategy depicted on Iraq. Again, alternately proposing we leave, we should have left, we should stay, we should have stayed, declaring that we have left when we haven't and so on.
3) Both have a strong pro-drug war stance which weakens and destablises at least one neighbouring country and causes some instability and danger directly on or very near our borders. Drug war deaths in Mexico alone are staggering over the past decade. Adding in Afghanistan or Colombia and the picture gets uglier. Currently also, both have advocated aggressive enforcement of immigration statutes, even if Mr Obama has recently decided for political purposes to stop prioritizing certain enforcement strategies, his administration is and was at a record pace for deporting people largely for the "crimes" of living and working. Mr Romney it seems endorses the idea that fixed fortifications would accelerate this process ignoring the obvious fact that the swiftness of voluntary deportations over the last 4-5 years has both made enforcement easier and pointed out that the principle motivation of migrants is employment and economic opportunities. Not the apparent laziness brought in by a too forgiving social welfare system, as he describes it. 
4) Both have advocated a mostly hostile approach toward Iran. Mr Obama took a more diplomatic tone in rhetoric but has still managed to walk through large-scale sanctions and penalties that his opposite endorsed (prior to them becoming policy). And both wink-nudge (our) approaches of espionage for sabotage and assassination of Iranian scientists and centrifuges. Neither has discarded the possibility or rhetoric of conflict despite an American public that is mostly arrayed against the idea of another open war.
5) Both have suggested and promoted defence budgets that grow. Gov Romney's proposal is larger than that of both his VP candidate (Rep Ryan) and President Obama's, but it is nonetheless bizarre that both parties want to increase defence spending. Neither is articulating a clear vision of what to do with those dollars, on what weapons systems we are apparently lacking, on what enemy we need be prepared to face. What little has emerged here is not encouraging, as it seems clear both parties want to be able to play whack-a-mole and drop bombs and drones and put some boots on the ground in mostly trivial countries for indefinite periods of time. This is a horribly expensive use of a military and a wasteful one for the things we expended vast sums of money on. Stealth aircraft and armored tanks are mostly useless for urban pacification. Pretending that we should perform both roles is likewise useless. We would have to train all service personnel for both roles (at least Army, National Guard units, and the Air Force, probably Marines as well). Which is wasteful use of specialisation gains and requires extended deployments in countries many troops will be scarcely more aware of as to the language and culture around them than we are. I will say it is more clear that Mr Obama has an interest in these as goals for liberal internationalist reasons. But that only calls into question for what uses Mr Romney might have in mind for his more extravagant military budget proposal and why he hasn't communicated such things.

What I'm left with in difference are generally only the most ridiculous and absurd statements made by either Messrs Obama or Romney, such as over this latest tragedy with the death of an ambassador in Libya and the apparent desire that this death be seen as part of a continuing right-wing trope about apologetics rather than recognizing that an ambassador in a foreign land which we helped to destabilise by bombing and weakening its previous ruler out of power (and to his death), is liable to be at least an unwelcoming environment requiring a modest attention to security of our personnel as they carry out their duties representing our interests. Or perhaps recognizing that it may not have been that wise or necessary to intercede when it produces a continuing level of violence and bloodshed both there and in the surrounding area (Mali), as Mr Obama did by committing our forces to assist in a civil war abroad alongside allies who had more compelling interests at stake and a more regional claim to do so.

It can be said that a large measure of the violence and demonstration over the last few days was no doubt affected by the attitudes of many foreigners to our stubborn (and well-intended) adherence to free speech codes that do not protect against offending religious displays nor against offending the views of those religious and thus permit the publication and distribution of ridiculous if not outright hateful statements and behavior on the part of some among us. Our first amendment is extremely hazardous to the sensibilities of others, including often enough ourselves (as in the recent cases like Citizens United or the WBC army funeral protests). We should neither apologize for this nor cease defending the capacity of some to say hideous things while exercising it. Instead, we can condemn and argue against such things said publicly and rebuke the attitudes that give rise to them. All without withdrawing the government's sanction to express feeling and opinion unrestrained. We can even do so with some amount of predictability as to the private sentiments and actions of our citizens most likely to draw offence abroad or from within, and design careful and thoughtful defences both of ourselves and appeals to our intentions and friendships among those offended, and indeed, even condemn and counsel against the response of violence taken up in the name of offence and insult. Nowhere in the condemnations and tin eared words of Mr Romney were these ideals cited and it was rare enough that the State Department and Mr Obama made any reference to it either as they burned the bridges with the local consulate who issued an ill-timed and poorly worded statement in a perhaps well-intentioned move to reduce local passions that obviously failed.

This is not the first time in this administration that I have seen the first amendment tested, and largely go undefended. The great Burlington Coat Factory Recreation Center fight in a meaningless series of talking points lo many months ago now only gave rise to Mayor Bloomberg of NYC, of all people, defending a free right of the people in the American tradition. No stirring defence or oration from the floor of the Senate, or from a White House press conference was to be heard. I take this, with the other great offences against protected rights (such as most TSA procedures, stop and frisk cop behavior, etc), to be a signal that such rights are not treated with dignity and confidence, and that they are no longer seen as the pillars of strength to be defended by either party that they should be. That they are of value for our abiding interest to create community out of diversity and thereby to offer a wealth of opinion, a wealth of conscience and viewpoint, and strengthen ourselves by the experience, and that we should abide by these limitations, recognize them, and offer up what value they generate to others that they may be drawn in and inspired if possible. It is not necessary to go in and bomb and maim to show our strength and dominance. It may be necessary to seek justice where others cannot or will not. But it is hardly our design to silence dissent and offence elsewhere any more than it would be here. And to expect and learn where that dissent is, to better understand it and learn to live with a certain reserved portion of it (non-violent expression) should be preferred to condemning it and denigrating others for their ill-conceived and directed anger and tempers. Nor is that a form of accommodating it, to be conceived as an assault on our values or as a formal expression of weakness. To recognize where we may err, to stray, and where others must abide us for our faults so that we may abide them theirs is a value worthy of some defence and recognition. It must be so not merely for ourselves, but that we may defend it in word or deed where needed abroad.

Do let us know when a political figure begins to seek or to strive to appeal to that, promises to strengthen rather than erode them in our policies and intentions here, and has shown a record and practised habit of doing so. This would also be someone likelier than not to be able to articulate a vision of the role we may take in the game of nations moving forward, and an understanding of both our strengths, as these may be conceived, and our limitations.