Those crazy libertarians are always saying we don’t need the FDA. But of course they never have an answer to this question: without the FDA, who would protect us from the sex cults?
Wasn’t there a chapter in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle where Jurgis joined a sex cult because the government hadn’t banned morning-after pills?
Redistricting through algorithms:
A truly neutral apportionment system would be good if didn’t compromise any leftist goals.
Atrios thanks Italian-born Canadians for helping to vote out Berlusconi. I’m happy about the election’s outcome, but I don’t know how I feel about this process.
The United States allows citizens to vote from anywhere with absentee ballots. Ireland specifically disallows it. In my wishy-washy way, I agree with both.
Irish-Americans can be pretty ignorant of politics back home, to the point of supporting terrorism. If an Irish political party - of any ideology - mounted a mass citizenship registration drive among these folks, they could in theory skew the entire Irish election system. There are a lot of us. (Based on the ignorance on display in this post, do you really think I’m qualified to make judgments on Irish politics?)
Foreigners eligible for US citizenship aren’t nearly as formidable a group relative to the US population, so there’s a limit to the electoral damage they can do. Their biggest effect is probably to turn the reddish states on the Canadian border (Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, New Hampshire, and Maine) a little bluer. Plus (and I’m not being rational here) I’m an American, I might like to live abroad someday, and dammit I want my vote.
But returning to Italy, my concern is that the people cheering this latest result might not be so happy if the populations of South Philly, Bensonhurst, and Little Italy all became a force in Italian politics.
Go see Why We Fight. It’s better than Fahrenheit 9/11 (which I also liked.)
The first half of the film returns repeatedly to Dwight Eisenhower’s farewell address. That speech is well known for coining the phrase “military-industrial complex", but when read in full it’s amazing how relevant it remains today, especially coming from one of the main architects of The Good War.
Indeed, the film talks about Eisenhower’s love of peace so much that it borders on hagiography. I was all set to come home and criticize it for this, but then it takes an abrupt but logical turn to show the other side of Eisenhower’s legacy. Quickly but convincingly, the filmmakers draw the connection from the Eisenhower-endorsed coup in Iran in 1954 to the 1979 revolution, US support for Saddam Hussein, US support for Saudi Arabia, and the rise of al-Qaeda.
Noam Chomsky was on Democracy Now today (it should be archived here but I’m having trouble with the site) and he said something brilliantly hilarious: a majority of Bush supporters support the Kyoto protocols, but they continue to support Bush because they have been led to believe by advertising that Bush also supports Kyoto.
I swear, he said that.
On my way to this fiasco on Monday, I met Chuck Pennacchio, who is running for Rick Santorum’s seat in the US Senate. I don’t think he wanted to post for a photo, but in Philly you don’t say no to a geek with a digital camera, because it could be Atrios.
Yes, I do look an awful lot like the Greek capital and lower-case Digamma. That’s where I got my nickname. Kids can be so cruel.
After this brush with greatness, I went and looked up what he actually stands for. His anti-Bob Casey Jr page makes him sound a lot better than most congressional Democrats. Alan Sandals is running too, but I can’t be bothered to compare them.
So, digamma.net hereby endorses Chuck Pennacchio for US Senate from Pennsylvania.
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