Read All About It In the Sunday Papers-BILL ‘This Is A Stupid Country’ MAHER Edition

The Beast Who Despairs of His Country’s Future is inspired this week by a  classic rant from Bill Maher in the Huffington Post.

Based on the mouthbreathers who have migrated here seemingly (could CRI or those phony industry health reform people have sent them?) to intentionally dumb down the quality of the discourse, El Somnambulo agrees with his every word, including these:

I’m the bad guy for saying it’s a stupid country, yet polls show that a majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than two-thirds of Americans don’t know what’s in Roe v. Wade. Two-thirds don’t know what the Food and Drug Administration does. Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up simply by being alive. You know, like the way the Slumdog kid knew about cricket.

Not here. Nearly half of Americans don’t know that states have two senators and more than half can’t name their congressman. And among Republican governors, only 30% got their wife’s name right on the first try.

Sarah Palin says she would never apologize for America. Even though a Gallup poll says 18% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth. No, they’re not stupid. They’re interplanetary mavericks. A third of Republicans believe Obama is not a citizen, and a third of Democrats believe that George Bush had prior knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, which is an absurd sentence because it contains the words “Bush” and “knowledge.”

And I haven’t even brought up America’s religious beliefs. But here’s one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That’s right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.

And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There’s a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. “Inside the beltway” thinking may be wrong, but at least it’s thinking, which is more than you can say for what’s going on outside the beltway.

Today’s stories are dedicated to those who actually may want to learn something. Everyone else can go back to burning your couches and/or screwing your cousins.

LEAD STORY-The (UK) Economist: Unintended Consequences of Sex Offenders’ Laws?

It is easy for politicians to push for tougher laws on sexual offenders. It is even easier to demagogue against anyone who would dare suggest that, in many cases, there is more than a little nuance that is never taken into consideration. Memo to all stupid people: There are tens of thousands of people on sex offenders registries all over the country from whom neanderthals like Saxby Chambliss does not have to  “protect my grandchildren”. Saxby’s home state of Georgia has many of the cases that illustrate the unthinking nature of a ‘one size fits all’ policy:

Georgia has more than 17,000 registered sex offenders. Some are highly dangerous. But many are not. And it is fiendishly hard for anyone browsing the registry to tell the one from the other. The Georgia Sex Offender Registration Review Board, an official body, assessed a sample of offenders on the registry last year and concluded that 65% of them posed little threat. Another 30% were potentially threatening, and 5% were clearly dangerous. The board recommended that the first group be allowed to live and work wherever they liked. The second group could reasonably be barred from living or working in certain places, said the board, and the third group should be subject to tight restrictions and a lifetime of monitoring. A very small number “just over 100” are classified as “predators”, which means they have a compulsion to commit sex offences. When not in jail, predators must wear ankle bracelets that track where they are.

Despite the board’s findings, non-violent offenders remain listed and subject to a giant cobweb of controls. One rule, championed by Georgia’s House majority leader, banned them from living within 1,000 feet of a school bus stop. This proved unworkable. Thomas Brown, the sheriff of DeKalb county near Atlanta, mapped the bus stops in his patch and realised that he would have to evict all 490 of the sex offenders living there. Other than the bottom of a lake or the middle of a forest, there was hardly anywhere in Georgia for them to live legally. In the end Georgia’s courts stepped in and suspended the bus-stop rule, along with another barring sex offenders from volunteering in churches. But most other restrictions remain.

 Sex-offender registries are popular. Rape and child molestation are terrible crimes that can traumatise their victims for life. All parents want to protect their children from sexual predators, so politicians can nearly always win votes by promising curbs on them. Those who object can be called soft on child-molesters, a label most politicians would rather avoid. This creates a ratchet effect. Every lawmaker who wants to sound tough on sex offenders has to propose a law tougher than the one enacted by the last politician who wanted to sound tough on sex offenders.

This is a brilliant and thought-provoking article. It provides case studies in how the most draconian aspects of sex offenders law have destroyed people and families for no demonstrated public purpose. The article even lays out the costs of the most ill-considered aspects of these laws. Any legislator who takes their job seriously should really read this article before they do the knee-jerk thing next time. While strong laws protecting the public from sex offenders who represent a public threat are essential, draconian laws like those described in this article can empirically be shown to be counterproductive. 

NYTimes: Government Attacking National Security Implications of Global Warming:

While the  looney-tunes continue to argue that there is no such thing as global warming (can’t wait to see how the lobbyists and the brain-dead intend to disrupt town meetings on that), the adults charged with  addressing the crisis are taking stock of the scope of the crisis:

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Recent war games and intelligence studies conclude that over the next 20 to 30 years, vulnerable regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South and Southeast Asia, will face the prospect of food shortages, water crises and catastrophic flooding driven by climate change that could demand an American humanitarian relief or military response.

Climate change even provides a direct threat to American military installations:

A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.

Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.

Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition.

Read the whole damn article and help prove Bill Maher wrong, at least as far as you’re concerned.

It goes without saying that this issue has only received the required attention since Obama took office. Meanwhile, Bush is back in his gated (and hopefully padded) community hiding out from Gog and Magog.

BTW, just wondering, has anybody seen Gog & Magog and Harry & Louise in the same place at the same time?

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Rethugs Use Intimidation to Stifle Intelligent Discussion

Kinda akin to the ‘astrostupid’ operation the well-paid corporate shills are using over here to roust the Great Unwashed from their trailer parks:

Heckling a political big shot is as American as apple pie. It can tickle the funny bone and shatter the self-importance.

The health care protests are different. They are organized, manipulated by national conservative groups, and reveal a new level of viciousness in America’s political dialogue. As well, there are inciters.

“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate,” Rush Limbaugh told listeners Thursday. A few moments later, he intoned: “(The) Obama health care logo is damn close to a swastika logo.”

On the Fox News Channel, meanwhile, Glenn Beck was doing a skit with a joke about “put(ting) poison in Nancy Pelosi’s wine.” Beck recently called our 44th president a “racist” and charged that Obama has a “deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Delaware Liberal has seen an alarming increase in this type of incitement to violence masquerading as free speech over here, as well as ‘outing’ as a means of quelling legitimate political discourse. To the thugs (paid or unpaid, literate or illiterate) who are doing this: There is no point in responding to El Somnambulo. He does not write for you. Please return to your think-tanks and/or oxycontin labs. Thank you.

The (UK) Observer: US Vulture Fund to Congo-Bleep the Starving, Give Us $100 Mill

They call ’em vulture funds for a reason: they prey on the most vulnerable. In this case, one of the most-impoverished countries in the world facing a pandemic of war, starvation and disease:

Vulture funds are so called because they prey on the world’s poorest countries, buying up their sovereign debt cheaply on capital markets and then going to courts, often in Britain or the United States, to enforce payment of the full value of the debt.

The fine is the latest twist in the long-running effort by investment fund FG Hemisphere to collect a debt first incurred 20 years ago, when the notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was in power in the DRC. The debt now amounts to $100m, including interest and penalties.

“Eight million people have died in the Congo for lack of healthcare… and the last thing they can do is find $100m for a vulture fund,”  (attorney Stephen) Cundra said.

FG Hemisphere, which was unavailable for comment, describes itself as “a New York-based investment company specialising in uncovering, investigating and managing alternative investment opportunities and special situations within the emerging markets.”

Of course, what’s really sickening is that U. S. law permits vultures like this to tie up distressed countries like the DRC in United States courts packed with Bush-era judges. These ‘non-activist’ judges somehow are running interference for vulture capitalists against sovereign nations, just like the Founding Fathers envisioned.

The good news is that there is something you can do:

Tamara Gaw, in-house counsel at campaign group TransAfrica Forum, said the case underlined the urgent need for legislation to prevent vulture funds pursuing developing countries’ debts on American soil.

The Stop Vultures Act is on its way through the U. S. House of Representatives. Britain announced last month that it would also consult on bringing in a law to cap the amounts an institution could claim against a poor country.

By now, you know the usual suspects’ office numbers by heart. You know what to do. Bill Maher would approve.

San Francisco Chronicle: How to Think For Yourself-Read the Entire CBO Report

It’s all so simply really. The Congressional Budget Office does not advocate for certain pieces of legislation or policies. It evaluates the potential cost-savings and benefits analysis for a myriad of programs. In a non-partisan manner, the CBO lays out its analysis in clear and understandable prose. And, you don’t have to read the whole thing, just choose the programs and issues that intrigue the most. You can do it all from this link.  

Since serious DL readers are already smart, this won’t make you smarter, just better informed.