Snap Judgements! Co-Signing the Health Bill??

So, uh, what do you think of this?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hccosign?source=20100322_FB

Matt Lindeboom
I think it's cheesy as hell. And yes, I did sign up to co-sign health care with President Obama.

Ozkirbas
That's dumber than bumper stickers. And bumper stickers are pretty dumb. Doesn't an idea have to work first before people are supposed to be proud of it? Doesn't the Democratic National Committee realize that getting healthcare reform enacted is just the first step in a long, arduous campaign to make sure it keeps itself and America afloat? Or, to make sure it practically works in a real world sense? Or, to ensure that it's well written so that admin judges don't tear it apart? Really? Good job? Pack it in? A good day was had by all? Seriously? Party, party, party - everybody get wasted?


If you promoted the healthcare reform, by all means be happy. You've come a long way. Your dream has been realized. We, as a people, will get to see this idea come into action. But, SERIOUSLY?

David Pratt
I've read over the amendments proposed and the people they would affect, and by and large this seems like a step in the right direction for the country. It's something Presidents have been bemoaning since Teddy Roosevelt was in office, and Obama finally got the job at least partially done.

However, this bill is bereft of the teeth that would have made it something to honestly be proud of. A President says he wants to work to make health care available to every American and it seriously takes 14 months of haggling, dealing, and debating for something which barely resembles the original proposal to pass? This entire fiasco has exposed a great deal of the weaknesses of our current Congress. I hope Democrats realize it's now incumbent upon them to make sure this legislation actually does what it's supposed to do, and I hope Republicans realize their antics have made it seem more than anything like they just flat-out hate America.

Max Nova
I don't really need to sign this. I vote in primaries and local elections, that's my civic duty right there. Voters should stay informed and vote for the best candidate available and let representatives pass the legislation. Sure, call and write letters, donate to a PAC but for me the important thing is to see my Senator and Rep's names on the legislation. Let's not turn every law into a chain letter.

ali d
I feel like we're on the playground.


"I support it more than you!"
"Nuh-uh! I signed it! It's archived!"
"Well I signed it FIRST."
"You didn't sign it?! Well you can't sit at our lunch table anymore! WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN THINK?!"


My gosh, kids, let's let the damn legislation make it all the way through the system before we start aligning our names with it. Talk to me in 2014.

B.Graham
Why would I sign this? I didn’t get a vote in the bill process, I’ve never read it, and half of the things I wanted in it were cut out, so why would I put my name next to something I had nothing to do with, even if I was rooting for it? Just so my name is near the President's? Okay, that's pretty cool, but I'm going to stand my ground! Because this looks like just another attempt at making our facebook generation feel like we are Important and Do Things for doing nothing and having no voice, which I consider an affront to my intelligence as a twentysomething.

Snap Judgements! - Joseph Stack

Should Joseph Stack, the Austin pilot who left a rambling political manifesto on his personal website before flying his plane into an IRS building on February 18, killing himself and one office worker in the building, be considered a terrorist?

David Pratt
I have a lot of trouble categorizing this one. On the one hand, it was an attack against a government agency, not a civilian target. It was also done for the purpose of making a statement about the tax system in America, however misguided. There's a disconnect in my mind that tells me that's not what we strictly define as terrorism. On the other hand, the man flew a plane into a building.

Can we define one guy snapping as terrorism due to the nature of the attack rather than the intent? That's what I can't answer quite yet.

Daniel
I've heard people cry racism here because this plane crash isn't being classified as terrorism. As I define it, terrorism is the use of violence and fear to force political change. Did Stack have a political agenda? To a certain degree, yes. If you go through his "suicide note," and I put that in quotes because it's more of a suicide thesis, he rails against the government and "the system," if you will, for repeatedly working against him and keeping him on the bottom. So, if Stack is acting on political conviction, are his actions terrorism? I don't think so. It seems to me that Stack's motivation is almost entirely personal, and while I'm sure he would have liked to change the system, his actions seem too self indulgent to me to really be true terrorism. I'd file this one under "destructive suicide."

Max Nova
isn't this a question with only one answer if you're not craaaazy?

(Replies to Max Nova)
Daniel - i think there are certainly 2 sides to this question.
Damo - I think there are about 12 sides to the answer.

Ozkirbas
Short answer: It's arguable. But, I kinda feel like saying that Joe Stack is a terrorist is the equivalent of saying that, because I happen to be pissed off and decide to burn down (or crash a private airplane into, if you'd rather) a building that happens to be owned by a government agency, I have committed an act of terrorism and treason. Just a little hard to swallow.

Long Answer:

The FBI defines "terrorism" as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives." Or, phrased otherwise, "the systematic use of fear to obtain a political or social objective." Often times, terrorism is employed in order to cripple a country's economy or dissuade politicians from performing their policies. For instance, when one straps a bomb to their chest and blows up a market place, the immediate effect is an economic vacuum - law enforcement is forced to scramble and people are now reluctant to go to said marketplaces to purchase food and goods or go outside in general, thereby putting a temporary kink in that area's local economic-hose. By doing so, whatever opposing political regime that may be in power has less resources, giving me an advantage to help push my ultimate goal. Truth be told - I haven't heard reports of anyone being less likely to file taxes or government employees quitting jobs because they're afraid to perform their duties as government agents because of Joe Stack.

Now, apparently Joe Stack was some member of an anti-tax movement in the good ol' US of A and his attack was politically motivated (He left a note or something). NOW, we're in "was he a terrorist?" territory. You could draw the comparison between his act and, say, an angry protestor blowing up an EPA building because he believes that power plants should be able to dump chemical waste wherever convenient. Honestly, I'm having a difficult time labeling either example as "terrorist act." I think the qualifying factor for terrorism here, maybe, isn't just political motivation tied to a violent act, but a systematic attempt to coerce the government to act (or not act) using violence - and I'm not seeing anything "systematic" about a man killing himself by driving a plane into an IRS building. I see an angry man, mad at the government, committing suicide as loud as possible. Was he negligent and reckless? Yes. Should Joe Stack be ridiculed and ostracized after his death? I think so. "Political Extremist" may be a more appropriate term. At this stage, from what I can see in front of me, "Domestic Terrorist," is a little reaching and a little hard to swallow. And, it smells a little like media sensationalism. Just sayin'.

Brett
The definition of terrorism is more of the issue here than the nature of Stack's act.

From the US code: "the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents"

From the Federal code:
(5) the term "domestic terrorism" means activities that -
(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation
of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;
(B) appear to be intended -
(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(ii) to influence the policy of a government by
intimidation or coercion; or
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass
destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and
(C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of
the United States.

So even the government doesn't agree with itself on the issue. The first definition says he was a terrorist, the second probably does not. Maybe.

Stack's purpose appears to have been informed by 1) vengeance (in a way not much different from the primary motives of the Columbine or UVA killers), 2) suicidal desperation, and 3) the desire to make a wake-up call for other Americans. The third purpose is the closest to a definition of terrorism, although he doesn't seem to have any particular desire to actually alter the government; merely to point out that it is flawed.

Of course, the tricky thing is that terrorism, in this way, is defined entirely by what the perpetrator hoped would happen. If he intended to alter policy, would that suddenly make it terrorism? If someone killed a bunch of people and happened to alter policy, would that make it terrorism even if the murderer was just plain psychopathic, or was trying to rob a bank?

I think, perhaps, that what makes terrorism worse than mass murder, theoretically, is the idea that it is systematic, and that innocents are being punished because someone wants to exert control over government policy. A random act of vengeance, while deplorable, doesn't imply that there will be more violence if demands are not met, or imply that it is possible to circumvent the rule of law through extortive violence. The real key phrase there is "rule of law" - mass murder alone is an act against innocents; but terrorism is an act against the rule of law itself.

Therefore, I think Stack's act - because he did it alone, and implies no connection to any movement, nor asks anyone else to repeat after him until thegovernment is fixed - is just narrowly outside the definition of terrorism.

(Let me be clear, though, that Stack is still definitely insane; killing innocent people is indefensible regardless the reason. "Terrorism" vs. "not terrorism" is a matter of policy moreso than morality.)
On a somewhat tangential note - a debate on this issue on one blog featured many comments suggesting that Stack's race is what keeps this from being defined as terrorism. I don't argue that if he was Muslim, even if every word of his manifesto was the same, it may have been defined as terrorism due to racism and prejudice. That was not my concern in this snap judgment. However, one commenter on that same post pointed out this interesting pie chart (which links to a Federal report) from an article entitled "All Terrorists Are Muslims... Except the 94% That Aren't." Enjoy:
http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/not-all-terrorists-are-muslims/

B.Graham
This guy, for all intents and purposes, was clearly a wingnut, but whether or not he was a terrorist is difficult. He flew a plane on a suicide mission into a government building after blogging a manifesto of sorts and setting fire to his (thankfully empty) home, which mainly to me reads murderous wingnut. Sounds like he wanted to be a terrorist, but because he didn’t seem to be in his right mind (extremely paranoid, obsessive, etc) and he had no following to speak of, I hesitate to call what he did terrorism because as much terror as I’m sure he caused the day of his suicide, there is no residual terror that is, has been, or will be struck in the hearts and minds of the many people, institutions and ideologies he attacked. Or does ever-increasing fear and paranoia of That Guy Who's Just Gonna Snap And Kill Everyone in our society count as terror?

Snap Judgments: AOL/Time Warner

First, an apology to my quick-responding Gentlemen as to the tardiness of this latest post. It was supposed to go up the day after the news broke that AOL was breaking from Time Warner to once again become an independant organization. I then spent the next several days away from my computer and was not able to make this judgment quite as snappy as I'd hoped.

Regardless, here is our gentlemenly reaction to the final last gasp of the dot com explosion.

Dan Strauss

AOL: All Outta Luck. I'm not the first person to think of this, I'm sure, but it's funny, and I'm going to take credit for it, because I didn't hear anyone say it before me, and therefore, I'm going to say I made it up. If someone else did, they can contact me, and I'll print a retraction. Actually, I wont, because really, I thought of it myself, so if two people think of something independently of each other, I don't think that's copyright infringement. I mean, there's no way I could have known someone else thought of it. Listen, the bottom line here is, AOL is screwed, yo.

John Ozkirbas

The only thing that AOL makes me think of is the dial-up modem noise that computers used to make. When my father taught me how to use the internet for the first time, he told me that I'd know I was online when that noise was made because the computer and the internet were "shaking hands." To this day, I continue to call that iconic series of cacophonous screeches the "handshake noise," much to the confusion of anyone who hears me call it that. With that said, I lack any knowledge of what would possibly happen after AOL's split from Time Warner. In fact, my immediate reaction was "whoa, whoa, whoa... AOL still exists?" My best guess is that day-to-day living probably won't change much. I mean, it's sad that AOL and Time Warner won't be shaking hands anymore (and this probably is less an active "split" and more Time Warner casting AOL off like an infected, money-hemorrhaging appendix), but I don't need handshakes to get on the internet these days. I have cable now and, instead, must deal with Comcast until Fios is available in my area. But, really - what would this actually do? I have no idea.

Jason Heat

Does anyone still actually use aol?

I don't mean that in a snarky way, I'm being totally serious - does anyone actually still aol? I can't think of anyone offhand who does, and I'm wondering what aol really is at this point. I read somewhere recently (I think Business Week?) that aol has over a hundred pages of content to offer but I have no idea what they are. Maybe someone who uses them can tell me, because I really have NO idea. My last vestige of aol use in my life is AIM - which I still think is the best messaging software around in terms of functionality, but with less and less people using it facebook chat and g-chat are starting to become my defaults. I had no idea aol still had any relevancy left.

That said, I'm happy to see the end of the deal. Time Warner is a company I have a great deal of affinity for given the intellectual property they own (DC Comics, Warner Brothers) and I'd prefer to see them healthier.

David Pratt

All my earliest memories of the internet stem from AOL. I remember blitzing through chat rooms (do those even exist anymore?) the strange novelty of Instant Messenger. When they merged with Time Warner, I, like many, was erroneously enthralled at the possibilities of the focal point of the world wide web as I knew it. Then time went on and nothing seemed to materialize.

Time Warner is a good company that probably isn't going anywhere for awhile. AOL failed to live up to any of the expectations America had for it. That merger just was not destined to last, or even produce anything really that noteworthy. Now if Time Warner had the foresight to merge with a fledgling Google, who knows what might have happened?

I'm not sure how bright AOL's future is going to be without the Time Warner machine behind it, but maybe they'll use this opportunity to reinvent themselves and become relevant again. Or maybe the once all-encompassing America Online will go the way of the tech bubble and dot com explosion it represented.

Thus, like two friends parting ways after shaking hands, another Snap Judgment comes and goes.

Snap Judgments - Climategate

Snap Judgments - the newest sensation that's sweeping the nation!

These Gentlemen have decided upon a new segment to grace us semi-periodically, meaning whenever a topic of interest happens in current events that we want to stay on top of. From the time the request for answers goes out until the post goes up, no more than 24 hours shall pass (from this point on, I was a little late getting this up) so that you can get our most honest and unadulterated reactions to anything currently happening on the world stage.

This exercise is meant to be quick and to the point, so I will be, too! On to our first subject - Climategate.

Adam Winer

I fundamentally don't believe in any scandal or argument that ends with "gate" unless you're actually referring to the hotel or connected offices.

Brett Abelman

Climate-Gate: first impression: for heaven's sake can we stop using "-gate" as a suffix for "scandal."

Okay. So. What it seems like to me: There is a lot of science in support of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. Science is messy. The world is huge. The weather is freakin' crazy. The scientists at Copenhagen, they believe that global warming is happening, and we as a human race must prevent it or we face disaster. What do they do when they come upon messes in the data? Announce to the world something complicated like, "we don't understand exactly how it works, and science isn't clean, but this is how we think this might fit in if this future experiment shows that..." snore. The cable channels have already started proclaiming the whole thing bunk.

So they - unwisely, though out of a place of conscience (and I'm sure quite a few were motivated by base concern for their reputations) - aim to keep quiet the controversial data. They are on a Mission to Save the Planet. The wee little dumb folk of the world, they don't have patience for subtlety and contradiction and risk assessment. The wee little dumb folk, they tell the politicians what to do, and the politicans tell the businesses what to do, and if the businesses don't stop polluting, we're gonna need more than Captain Planet. It's (assuming all this interpolation is accurate as to their intentions) haughty and unscientific and wrong. But when High Stakes are up, moral questions get gray.

As far as global warming itself, it's hard to argue that reducing pollution would be a bad thing in and of itself. The question of government controls is more economic than anything, and ridiculously complicated. The best thing, in my mind, is for the public to continue to "go green" in this recent trendy way (though hopefully to do so in smarter ways than just buying so-called 'organic'), and convince businesses to reduce their emissions for the sake of appealing to the well-off green customers. Market forces, that kind of thing. Very little bad can come of this.
The last question is just how much the anti-legislation, anti-green types will make of this. Will Fox commentators and bloggers all over blow this up so big that it constitutes a serious backlash against the green trend? Will people start spraying CFCs just to say "ha ha!" to their political enemies? With any luck, this will blow over pretty quickly - or actually have a positive effect as, in order to understand the controversy, people actually have to read about the real science, and learn about the vagaries, and make complex decisions based on complex facts. Time will tell!

Beaver Dam Graham

I have little to no impressions, because as of late I've been spending my days going to great lengths to avoid thinking about climate change. This is mainly because it scares the bejesus out of me and I don't need another reason to not sleep at night. Space existing is bad enough, now I have to think of my own world turning against me? No sirree, I'll just try to keep my carbon footprint as small as I can, and turn off NPR whenever they start talking about it.

Anyone who proports that climate change isn't real or a big deal is lazy and I'm going to go as far as to say a jerk, because even if climate change truly isn't "as big a deal" as scientists are (only just recently) saying, pollution is still bad news bears and something needs to be done about it. And I still won't listen to NPR talk about it on the radio.

ali d.

My first instinct upon considering ClimateGate is to wonder whether the ends might justify the means. Can we really claim that there's anything wrong with trying to be more Green as a nation? If the facts/fears surrounding global warming led to such an intense initiative toward cleaning up our personal and corporate practices in order to treat Mother Earth better, is that really so bad?

But of course, it's never that simple. Climate legislation will likely lead to the federal government spending more money and a tax hike (see: the cap and trade bill). Especially with the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference underway, it would be nice to know that we're combating legitimate data. In the end, though, it seems clear to me that humans really are mucking up the planet, global warming or not, and we should probably work to curtail that as much as we can. I just hope that legislation affecting our efforts to create clean energy will allow for U.S.-made research and implementation, so we can create jobs and boost our economic stance while helping the environment.

And really, let's look at it rationally - this is no Nannygate. Let's calm down, people.

David Pratt

First, let me say that I could go off on a rant all its own on the fascination with calling every scandal "Noun+gate." The Watergate scandal was named such because it was a scandal involving the Watergate, which is a hotel. It makes sense. There are no hotels or gates in this scenario. There's some research involving water, but that didn't make it into the name. Continuing down this line of thinking is just going to take us off-topic before we even get to it in the first place. So, the point is, there's no hotel, there's no gate, and, besides a massive invasion of privacy, there's not even a scandal.

Bottom line: Scientists still disagree about the extent of global warming. That was something we knew before the e-mails came out and something we still know now. The questionable material in the body of what was sent literally came from two out of over 1,000. In one of them it was requested work which ran counter to global warming theory not be included in a study. The reason, however, was that the paper itself was shoddy. After the material was published along with the rest of the study anyway, it came under attack by scientists not involved with the work because - surprise - it was shoddy.

And even if you're still not convinced that man can ever influence the weather or climate no matter how many tons of greenhouse gases we pump daily into our atmosphere, are you seriously going to argue with the idea that we shouldn't be poisoning the air we breathe and the water we drink? Because everybody being sick or dead is going to be a whole lot more harmful to the economy than cap-and-trade.



There you have it, our very first Snap Judgments. That's all for now, look forward for more, only on These Gentlemen.