jrtom: (Default)
So apparently I missed this story first time around: it appears that US veterans are committing suicide at about 2x the rate of the rest of the population:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/13/earlyshow/main3494261.shtml

to the point where there have been more suicides than combat fatalities--possibly several times more. It's been publicized again recently:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/06/cbsnews_investigates/main4076241.shtml

Now, as a scientist of sorts, I recognize that there are several unanswered questions:

(1) How has the US veteran suicide rate changed over time? (Stats prior to our invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan would be useful here, as a point of departure. Stats before and after the Gulf War, Viet Nam War, would also be handy.)
(2) How many of those veterans that are suiciding are doing so after having had a tour in Iraq or Afghanistan?
(3) How many are doing so shortly before being (re)sent to Iraq or Afghanistan?

A brief search hasn't turned up any studies, or data. If anyone has any (pointers to) such, I'd really like to see it.

However, as a political activist of sorts, even without answers to those questions...I'd really like to see one of the Democratic candidates bring up the fact that N times as many US service members have committed suicide since 2003 as have died in combat: that is, the true casualty rate appears to be considerably higher than the combat death stats suggest.

(This leaves out the injury rates here: part of the reason why there have been fewer deaths than in some previous conflicts is simply that medical technology is now capable of saving some of those that would have died. For an SFnal take on this, see http://www.bestsf.net/reviews/dozois5.html for a reference to the short story "The Million-Dollar Wound".

...and now I'm wondering how many US veteran _suicide attempts_ there have been, and how _that's_ changed...although I'd also bet that the 'success rate' of veteran suicides is considerably higher.)
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/sometimes-honor-is-wrong-_b_94524.html

Of interest both because of the subject matter and because of the author's background:

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of "Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back"

I'm not sure that I agree with all of it, but it's worth reading.
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I've been really annoyed recently by the abuse of the phrase "mathematically impossible" in the popular press to describe the likelihood of either of the following:

(a) either candidate gaining the support of at least 2025 delegates (pledged or super)...
(b) Senator Clinton gaining the support of more pledged delegates than Senator Obama...

...by the time the primaries are over (but before the convention).

In short: neither of these are "impossible". Highly unlikely, maybe. But calling it "mathematically impossible" is simply ridiculous.

math geeking )
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-oped0314obamamar14,0,7185898.story

...[Obama] had an important topic to discuss: the controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists. I had written a short essay suggesting that the surveillance might be lawful. Before taking a public position, Obama wanted to talk the problem through.

In about 20 minutes, he and I investigated the legal details. He asked me to explore all sorts of issues: the president's power as commander in chief, the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Authorization for Use of Military Force and more.

Obama wanted to consider the best possible defense of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counterargument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said he thought the program was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides.


That's...impressive. Not many people I know go to that much trouble to make sure that they understand all sides of an issue before taking a stand on it, and I'm not aware of any politicians that behave so.

Of course the author of this article is biased...but if even half of what he says is accurate, he's got the potential to be a kickass President, by my standards at least.
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http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/03/21/the-full-story-behind-rev-jeremiah-wrights-911-sermon/

Apparently he was quoting someone else, although it's hard to know where that quote left off and his own words began again.

Anyone got a link to the sermon in which Wright said "God damn America?"

(My personal take on this is that Wright is getting a lot of flak for what is primarily what one might call "preaching while black". That is to say, there really are a lot of extant injustices being done to blacks, and historically there have been many, many more...so one can hardly blame them for being pissed off about it. Not to say that I agree with everything he says, or consider his comments to be constructive...but I don't necessarily condemn him, either.)
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Wow.

link to YouTube video of speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWe7wTVbLUU

Reading this speech almost brought tears to my eyes.

Tears of a different sort--disbelief, rage--may be found in some of the comments to the WSJ's posting of this transcript:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/03/18/text-of-obamas-speech-a-more-perfect-union/?mod=googlenews_wsj

As the man says, his candidacy--even his Presidency, should he achieve it, which I now fervently hope--won't solve this problem. As some of those comments clearly demonstrate.

But _damn_, I admire his straightforward approach to actually hauling this out in the open.
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http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/03/14/fisa/index.html


The House just now approved a new FISA bill that denies retroactive immunity to lawbreaking telecoms and which refuses to grant most of the new powers for the President to spy on Americans without warrants. It passed comfortably, by a 213-197 margin.
...
As impressive as the House vote itself was, more impressive still was the floor debate which preceded it. I can't recall ever watching a debate on the floor of either House of Congress that I found even remotely impressive -- until today. One Democrat after the next -- of all stripes -- delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.


Lots more good coverage in this story.

I still think that almost all of the FISA extensions (IIRC) were a bad idea, so I sympathize with the 5 liberal Democrats that voted against this bill on the grounds that it didn't go far enough. But damn, it's nice to see even this much resistance to Bush's belated attempt to legitimize one of his power grabs.
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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/12/81339/4516/40/474909

Hmm. The gist of the argument appears to be that

(a) Republicans started voting in the Democratic primaries in much larger numbers after McCain secured the R nomination

(b) Rush Limbaugh has exhorted his audience to support Clinton (as a weaker opponent to McCain)

(c) exit polls suggest that Republicans voting for Clinton actually don't like her.

Now, I'd like to see stats on how much Republicans that voted for Clinton liked _Obama_...but this does seem to add up to shenanigans.

I feel as though this is all technically within the rules, but it does rather leave a bad taste in one's mouth.

Not sure how to fix this in a way that doesn't induce more problems, though. (Disallowing people from switching parties between the primary and the general election might be an interesting dodge, but there's a can of worms there, too.)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/08/washington/08cnd-policy.html?ex=1362718800&en=8f3ee954c2c17b14&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Senator John McCain, now the Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent of torture from his own experience as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case, however, he supported the administration’s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did on Saturday that legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s ability to gather intelligence.


Not so much, any more.

(This isn't really news. But it's a nice, concise, recent example.)
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"Waving Goodbye to Hegemony": http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/magazine/27world-t.html?ex=1359003600&en=8261f868401501b5&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Don't know that I necessarily agree with all of this, but the author is certainly more broadly traveled and experienced than I am; worth a read.
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The existing system is broken. If you don't believe that, I don't plan to convince you of this here, so move on.

Method 1: Divide the states into 10 groups of 5, either regionally or such that the number of voters involved in each group is as close to parity as possible. (Both criteria simultaneously would be ideal, but let's face it, California and New York--for example--make that impossible.) The primaries are then spread out over 10 weeks, one group of primaries per week. The ordering of the groups rotates (so in 2012 the ordering would be 1, 2, 3, ..., 10; in 2016: 2, 3, ..., 10, 1; etc.) so that no group is always early or always late.

This is a pretty straightforward proposal, and no doubt similar to things that have been proposed elsewhere. It could get passed.

(Iowa and NH will bitch. To them I say "Suck it up, there's nothing sacred about you getting to go early.")

Method 2: Assign (a maximum number of) delegates to each state in the usual way. Define an absolute earliest and absolute latest date during which primaries/caucuses can happen; states may schedule their contests at any point in this interval.
Now for the fun part: The earlier that a state holds its contest, the fewer delegates that it receives.
This sets up negative feedback: going early gets more attention but loses impact (which seems fair, because the impact of the early states on the national contest is disproportionate in the other direction anyway). Going late runs the risk of making your contest irrelevant, but gives you a bigger club to swing.
Now, I might modify this to give smaller states less of a penalty for going earlier, but I think that the basic concept would lead to some fascinating strategizing.

Sadly, this kind of proposal is probably too complicated to get passed (it need not be complex at all, really, but it would be presented as such), but I'd love to see it tried.

(This second method was suggested by a conversation I was having with Megan earlier today about our sense that while Florida and Michigan weren't playing by the rules, it still seemed harsh to the citizens (who had no direct voice in the decision to change the date) to make their primaries entirely irrelevant, at least on the D side.)
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in the first 4 minutes of the film "The Kingdom": http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/18/summarizing-saudi-hi.html#comments

For my money, one of the most fascinating factoids that this brings up is that bin Laden apparently offered to bring in his followers from Afghanistan to help throw out the Iraqis in 1991. One wonders what would have happened if this offer had been accepted, either instead of the American offer (which was accepted, of course), or in combination with it. (Certainly one can expect that (a) bin Laden might have been too busy to plan terrorist attacks on the US and possibly (b) both bin Laden and the US might have had a bit more trouble demonizing each other after fighting on the same side in aid of another. Yes, I know that we funded the Afghani mudjahedeen...but this would have been a more recent event, and one of explicit (and possibly even public) cooperation.)
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http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/11/26/the-open-source-party-proposal/

Hmm. This all seems a bit fuzzy, even for early stages...but it's an interesting idea.

What seems odd (to me) about it is that the proposed platform explicitly eschews addressing some pretty straightforward issues on which some useful progress has been made (several aspects of voting reform) and instead incorporates elements that seem sufficiently far out to ensure that the organization would be a splinter group at best (redesigning money).

But so far as the overall concept is concerned, I kind of like it.
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Because, you know, talk is cheap and all that.

But, damn:

http://stateoftheunion.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/jefferson-jackson-day-dinner/

It may be rhetoric, but it's at least rhetoric that I'm happy to be hearing right about now.
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http://politics.slashdot.org/politics/07/11/15/0520209.shtml
referencing
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1107/6892.html

Of course, if some are willing to sell their vote for an iPod, then the people who are willing to sell their lifetime vote for a million dollars may actually be on to something: they could buy as many votes as they wanted just on the income. *wry smile*

It seems likely to me that some of the answers to the survey would change if it were for real...but it's still somewhat disturbing.

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