Apropos:
A sure way to tell if you’re listening to collective improvisation is if the music is so jaw-droppingly intricate and flexible that no single mind could think it all up in such detail.
Phil Lesh, Searching for the Sound, 114.
Take a good look around…
The Indiana Bureau of Motor vehicles is showing strong initiative when confronted by the market failure inherent to government operations:
In what has to join the list of Most Bizarre Government Policies Ever, BMV bosses have decided that hiding clocks is a great way to make long waits seem shorter. Without clocks to watch, people standing in long lines supposedly won’t be able to complain about just how long they’ve been waiting.
I wonder if they also confiscate employee and patron watches…
As Balko says: Beyond Parody.
This surely must be made up:
The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
Hopefully The American Conservative made this up just to sell subscriptions (and Yglesias now wants a comp sub).
If this is true it damned well better be about the 10 millionth option. But, the bushies know that their credibility is pretty well shot so if they are going to take out Iran they need something big on which to base their action, something that they can pretend requires a quick response not the long brainwashing that occurred prior to the invasion of Iraq.
But, WTF, We’ve got both the chinese government and possibly now the us government talking about using nukes??? And some of you think these governments as currently constituted are good things???
Via The Alternate Brain.
James Joyner finds this NYT article “interesting if somewhat chilling” and then goes on to say that he’s pretty much bought into the idea of feeding the maw of the information brokers:
I make all manner of similar choices. For example, I use credit cards rather than cash virtually everywhere that doing so is an option. Theoretically, this creates the ability for Big Brother to track my spending habits and movements. I take comfort in the ubiquity of such information and the belief that it’s incredibly unlikely that government resources will be allocated to track the purchase habits of 290-odd million citizens.
Well, James, its not for lack of desire. The Total Information Awareness project in its 1st bush term incarnation was squashed but there is no reason to believe that this work is not ongoing and that federal and state folks are not eager for more similar tools to accomplish their ends, for example, a database of all 16-18 year olds for military recruiting purposes.
You should take discomfort in the ubiquity of such information.
Use cash as often as you can. It is often but not always quicker and leaves no electronic tracks…though you are probably on the security cam anyway. Disrupt the flow of information about you whenever possible.
On a day that Americans celebrate Independence Lynn Kiesling reminds us that it is important to know our rights and that:
Governments are institutions that are human artifices that justly exist to protect these natural rights, and when governments fail to protect those natural rights, then citizens have a right to rebel against that government.
Are you ready to go to Arnold, Missouri or stand on Angel Raich’s doorstep to turn back the the minions of an illegitimate government?
If not in Missouri or California then in your own community. There are plenty of places to take a stand and turn back the tide.