Set flame to fire, light up the Latewire.
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Obama to Iran: You Jerks Can't Come to Our Birthday Party
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:58 pm
 In a bold move, the White House announced today that there would be harsh repercussions for the brutality of the Iranian government against the protesters. Because the US is already sanctioning Iran, and military intervention is basically off the table, Obama was forced to go for the jugular.
"He made clear that one recent overture to Iran — the authorization for U.S. embassies to invite Iranian officials to Independence Day parties — was likely to disappear without changes."*
"That's a choice the Iranians are going to have to make," Obama said.
*[Article Link]
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Keywords: Iran Obama |
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Ignite Phoenix presentation : Urban Agronomy / Food Security
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:49 pm
Here's Nicholas DiBiase from Hepnova (@Hepnova) laying down th' rap on urban agronomy and food security at Ignite Phoenix 4 :
Transcript :
Food security : what does it mean?
Food security is regular, reliable, daily access to sufficient quantities of
nutritious food.
It affects everybody, and it has to do with income, access, and
information.
Let me tell you a story about access. In the late 90s when I was at ASU and
they shut down Stabler's Market, suddenly I was left without a grocery store within a
mile of where I lived. So, I started eating a lot of ramen and fast food --
how many students hear that?
Now, at the grocery store, you can get produce, but a lot of
the stuff we find there is grown with chemicals that we don't necessarily
want to put in our body.
Now, we can look for food that's labeled by the USDA as "Organic." But there are a couple of
problems there, too : 1) it's hella expensive, right? And 2) there are over 2 dozen chemical approved by the USDA for use in foods labeled as organic.
On top of that, most of this stuff comes from far away, other states or
other countries, so it spends a lot of time on container ships, in planes, and in trucks,
using up a lot of energy and fuel just to get to our supermarket and losing
nutritional value every day it's on the road.
The solution is urban agronomy : the scientific approach to gardening in
the urban environment. It's efficient,
because we get a lot for what we put in, there's little waste, and we save
on all those transportation costs. It's edible : we get the food at the
peak of its perfection and the peak of its nutritive value.
It's all about community -- this is what makes it work. This is a grassroots movement that's growing every day. Here's
Ryan and Ericka Cero Wood showing 70 interested people around their house
and garden.
As much as this is about nutrition and supply security, it's also about
taste. Fresh food tastes amazing! I never liked squash until I had one that
was raised here in Phoenix. It was like I was eating wax before. It's a revolutionary experience to taste food as it's really meant to taste.
We can do this stuff without changing our lifestyle tat much -- we can keep our urban identity. This is a simple approach that yields real results.
For the apartment dweller and those living in small spaces, we use
containers to grow delicious leafy greens, and other good
stuff.
Those who have some yardspace can design sunken planting beds with raised
paths that conserve our precious water and conserve resources.
Vital to success is the use of native plants. We live in the desert, we exist in the desert, and so we eat in the desert. Foods that we eat in the desert should grow naturally in the desert.
Native foods like corn, beans, and squash are designed by nature to thrive
and be easy to grow in the desert -- and I don't know about you, but I don't like to work any harder than I have to -- especially when it comes to food!
You can enhance your system by using biodegradeable soaps and recapturing
the water you use for washing at home -- this is called greywater, and it
can be as simple as a bucket!
You can also add chickens to the setup, I love these guys! They're
cute as all-get-out, they're great at controlling pests, they eat scorpions - that's true --, and
they give us eggs at a fraction of the cost of organic eggs from the store!
The most important thing here is to share your surplus! This is what makes this work at a scale that's a the community level. When you produce
more than you can eat fresh during the season, share it with someone who has
something you want! Or better yet, share it with someone who may not
have anything.
Food insecurity is disturbingly prevalent in America and in our
community. If we use some of our extra space and resources to grow some
food for these folks, everybody will benefit.
The inspiration and the information that brought me here here came from the Phoenix Permaculture
Guild. These folks are full of energy, have a wealth of knowledge and are eager to help
anyone interested in exploring this stuff.
We can shred up a guitar neck; we can rev an engine -- I wanna grow up
this landscape, take back our food supply, and have a rockin' fun time doing
it!
Thank you!
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Keywords: Food Food Security Security Urban Farming |
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Technical Update - Feeds & Filters
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Sun Jun 14, 2009 10:52 pm
I woke up this morning just a bit too hungover to write anything, so instead I spent all day upgrading the site (sorry for the downtime, I have to debug live on account of being too lazy to setup a MySQL server on my home computer).
We've got some pretty gnarly shit here that'll help you sort through these articles.
First off, we've now got keywords. Rather than leave it as lame as just "having them," I made it so each keyword has its own content filter and RSS feed.
On the back-end it uses AJAX and all manner of awesomeness that took me just about 5 hours to get up and running.
 On the front-end, we have the Filters & Feeds page, where you can filter by keyword or even by user... of course, you've been able to do most of this for a while now, but I finally got around to making a centralized location for the links.
Each user has their own RSS (also available in Filters & Feeds).
Also, I FUCKING FINALLY fixed HTML in RSS. Seems to be working great now, even in Firefox.
Due to popular demand, you will no longer get a close-up of a vaginal prolapse surgery when you hot-link images from latewire. Instead, you'll get the same image you requested, just with a watermark at the bottom (seen to the right). I think we're all sad to see that mutilated vag go, but what can you do.
In other news, 1m1w is a sodomite and a communist. I've lost contact with him and refuse to believe it's just the alcohol this time. We're working on getting him back on here to continue his latest series, ASAP.
Hank and I are working on putting keywords into some of the old articles--that and, of course, writing some new stuff.
Stay tuned.
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Bailouts Making Things Worse; Stymies Hairless Policy-Makers
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Sun Jun 07, 2009 6:11 pm
What it needs is more chunk in the budonkadunk! | 
Why must I fail at everything I do?! |
In a totally unlikely and unforseen turn of events, markets are not responding favorably to government bailouts and inflation.
NEW YORK (AP) - The Federal Reserve announced a $1.2 trillion plan three months ago designed to push down mortgage rates and breathe life into the housing market.
But this and other big government spending programs are turning out to have the opposite effect. Rates for mortgages and U.S. Treasury debt are now marching higher as nervous bond investors fret about a resurgence of inflation.
That's the Catch-22 threatening to make an awful housing market potentially worse and keep the economy stuck in a funk. Kick-starting the economy requires higher spending, but rising rates mean fewer Americans will be able to refinance their home loans. And some potential buyers will be shut out of the market by higher monthly payments they won't be able to afford.
To understand how this is all connected, you have to think like a bond trader. Inflation is their enemy because it means the purchasing power of the dollars they receive when bonds eventually are paid off will be diminished. The only question is by how much.
Full article...
This is a prelude to Hank's upcoming article on inflation.
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Keywords: Bailouts Bernanke Economics Paulson Snakes |
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Twenty Years After: Tienanmen Square Massacre
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Bill
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Poster: Bill @ Wed Jun 03, 2009 4:24 pm
 | On May 4, 1989 a peaceful protest marched on Tienanmen Square demanding democratic reform. There they gave speeches on freedom and love of country, reaching numbers in excess of 300,000. On May 20th martial law was declared and the protesters ordered to disperse, and a fair number of them refused.
On June 3, elements of the 27th and 28th Armies of the PLA began the crackdown, killing 1000-7000 and wounding tens of thousands with small arms and tank treads. The bust would culminate with a bayonet and bullet sweep of the Square itself ending early in the morning of June 4.
The CCP had the event expunged from their history books, and we here in the free world have in large part expunged it from our collective memory. |
  
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Keywords: History Tienanmen Square |
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How To Screencapture USMLEWorld In Mac OS X
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Thu May 28, 2009 4:09 pm
So I'm cramming for my Step-1 boards and it turns out drinking, sleeping, and gambling my way though Biochemistry class my first year didn't pay off.
Luckily my study-aid, "USMLEWorld" explains it all perfectly (better than FirstAid or my textbook, for that matter). However, the program is also a total pain in the balls.
USMLEWorld uses a variety of annoying measures to keep you from saving or printing their tutorials. This means that whenever you're studying and you want to look something up, you have to go locate the test with the question on it, find that particular question, and read it all through the USMLEWorld program.
The program (the mac version, at least) does this by unbinding the screen-capture button, continuously dumping shit to your clipboard (to prevent copy/paste), and disabling the Grab utility. While attempting to use Grab, USMLEWorld threw an error stating that it was "contacting an administrator" about my misdeeds and that I should feel very ashamed about it.
It's time these people are taught not to fuck with a bored, tired, hungry, and slightly annoyed medical student.
I realized the only way it could be stopping Grab from opening was by watching the open processes and shutting down when it saw the "grab" process. One way to deal with this is rename the process, but a simpler way is to just use a different program which is also included with OS X.
First, open up Utilities/Terminal.app
Then, when you have the test question displayed EXACTLY as you want to save it, type the following into the terminal:
screencapture -iw ~/Desktop/gayasstestquestion.jpg
That will immediately change your cursor to a little camera, then just click on the USMLEWorld window. Bingo! Question saved. To crop, just open the file in Preview.app, select the area, and hit command+K.
This is a quick and dirty way around the DRM, and I have no doubt that they'll catch on to this eventually. In that instance, you could probably just rename "screencapture" or use another, better, program you get off the web. For the current incarnation however, this works great!
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Momentary Lapse in News Boycott
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Thu May 28, 2009 9:29 am
 Nancy Pelosi:
"We have so much room for improvement, every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."
Somewhere in Argentina, there's a German war criminal clicking his heels.
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Food security : what does it mean? Part 1
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat May 23, 2009 9:31 pm
You hear a lot of chatter these days about "food security" and "nutritional security". What th' hoot, you may well ask, does that ish mean?
The crisp answer is that one is considered to be food secure if one has regular access to sufficient food and does not live in fear of going hungry. One is considered nutritionally secure when the food one is able to get contains the nutrients needed to remain healthy and active. [DeadCowX touched upon this topic in his last post, in fact -- a food supply filled with pathogens is not secure.]
These ideas are usually talked about in the context of the 'developing world'. In what we used to call 'third world countries,' extreme poverty is commonplace, famines due to lack of modern farming practices and infrastructure are frequent, and political instability often interrupts the food supply with wars and outright institutionalized theft. These supply interruptions and lack of money result in food insecurity. Available food is often incomplete in nutrition -- as with the millions who live on only rice for weeks at a time -- or marginally nutritive at best, as in the heartbreaking mud-and-shortening cakes consumed by Haiti's poorest. This is nutritional insecurity, and malnourishment creates a host of health problems that make quality of life worse for those who suffer it, as these illnesses greatly sap productivity.
A representative case study on these issues in Ghana can be found here :
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/ABSTRACT/ABSTR112.HTM
Fact is, though, that folks in urban America have to struggle with food and nutritional security as well. Not only do lack of quality education and blighted neighborhoods create poverty, which itself causes 11% of US households to be food insecure at least part of the year (see http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/FoodSecurity ), but long, inefficient delivery supply chains can cause supply interruption and in fact, many economically-disadvantaged in urban areas (a cohort that is less likely than others by a long shot to have a car) do not live within walking distance of a grocery store or other source of fresh food. This often results in folks who are technically food-secure (that is, they have the means / scrilla to buy enough food) being nutritionally insecure as a result of having only prepackaged convenience-store poison and 'fast food' available within their transport radius. This can lead to the same types of nutritional problems that result from poverty, with added risks from unhealthy ingredients often included in these food categories.
Think I'm jiving around here? Wrong, kid! Sit back and think it through. Check this out :
-As anyone who suffered through ASU in the 90s will attest, Stabler's Market on Mill Avenue was the only place within reasonable walking distance of the university (and surrounding jects / housing clusters) where one could get fresh food and produce. When they closed that place down to make way for more ugly engineering buildings, suddenly, the closest grocery store was well over a mile away. As a result, I spent more years than I care to remember living on Chick-Fil-A from the M.U. and peanut butter crackers, Sun Chips, and 40s of OE "800" from Circle K. Anyone who knows me personally, especially my pancreas, will testify that this is the truth. The cold fact is that though I made enough money at my $6.25 / hour ASU job to afford to eat, I was still nutritionally insecure because fresh, nutritive food was not available in my immediate area.
Is this just another pathetic collegiate sob story? Chea it is. But it's one that's shared by a whole grip of folks who've lived in high-density urban areas with no grocery stores around. How many Latewires have eaten ramen and / or Jumbo Jacks three or more times a week because the only places you can walk to are 7-11 or Snake in the Box? This is real. We pay a high price for living like this -- how many times have those same Latewires been sick this year? Before I stopped living like an animal and got a girlfriend with a car, I used to miss about a day of work every month because my body was mounting an insurrection against the Dorito-and-hot-dog diet that I was telling it to build itself with.
How is it that people who live in dense areas can't get ahold of good food? It's because they're not sufficiently educated on the importance of nutrition to demand the right food access. A person can't live on Chee-Tos and vitamin pills alone, but try telling that to a stubborn Lit Crit major with a tallboy of Icehouse in his hand. If this aspect of our bleak urban food security picture is going to get fixed, folks need to be motivated enough to drive this change from the demand side. And face it, if everybody who walked into the Circle K on University and McCintock asked for fresh broccoli instead of a carton of Kools, we'd see some changes pretty fast. Hell, I'm not suggesting burning down th' WeinerSchnitzel or anything.
Part 2 of this overview will go over a few key points about the food supply chain and what it means for your food and nutritional security. We'll get real about "organic foods" and why your $4 Costa Rican pear is your enemy.
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Keywords: Food Food Security |
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National Beef Month
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DeadcowX
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Poster: DeadcowX @ Thu May 21, 2009 8:20 pm
Some of you may or may not know this but May is the month of the beef. That's right folks, National Beef Month. http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2009/05/19/features/farm/doc4a135ee2942d9477518007.txt As you can see from the link there are many fascinating statistics about the beef industry as it relates to Illinois. They sure take pride in their beef, we should have a big beef parade in their state.
Hurray for beef month! The children sing songs of praise and slap big beef in each others faces. You know all true Americans would partake in a festive beef burger with all the mouth-watering fixings. Sorry non-meat eaters you aren't American.
But there is a villain amongst the celebration...
http://www.kpho.com/health/19525483/detail.html
It looms over like a plague and sweeps its bacterium into the soft meaty tissue of the finest ground beefs. E. coli 0157:H7. Engineered in the future and sent to the past, E. coli 0157:H7 has infused nano machines that accelerated and enhance the normal strain of E. coli to cause the worst mass anal bleeding to those who consume it. The White House classifies this a "Class One" recall on all beef. Eating this beef means you will have some really terrible anal bleeding and also eventually look like this:
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Keywords: Beef Food Meatman |
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Notes on A. Romero, A. McCarthy, R. Posner re : Free Speech
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Wed May 20, 2009 6:39 am
Anthony Romero, et al, key points from "Freedom under Fire" :
-Jingoistic nationalism is the norm in attitudes; dissent draws oppression
-Lawmakers largely silent on issue
-War on terror is a war of ideas; if 'democracy' is a value that we strive for, then we must promote free speech and civil liberties
-Attempted suppression of dissent only increases dissent
-Cites historical precedents such as the Alien and Sedition Acts, Lincoln's habeas suspension, Wilson's Espionage Act, Red Scare
-Law enforcement using tactics ranging from pepper spray to denial of protest permits to asset seizure to squelch dissent
-Some tactics are subtler : long waiting periods stifle timely protests, investigations on campus; 'designated protest zones' during Prez appearances
Andrew McCarthy (real name!) key points from "Free Speech for Terrorists":
-In the hands of 'Islamofascism," speech is itself a weapon
-Moral relativism and the 'marketplace of ideas' cannot disguise the fact that advocacy of mass murder is wrong -- when murder advocates lose in the 'marketplace,' they simply kill more persons
-Speech that materially threatens national security (such as incitements to mass murder a la jihadi fatwas) can not be rationally considered as protected free speech
-In comparison to Sedition Act, Lincoln, Wilson, Red Scare, even the heaviest strictures currently proposed represent significant progression in speech rights
Richard Posner key points from "The Right of Free Speech with a Comment on Profling" :
-Terrorism is political, rather than commercial or personal in nature [ed. note : no ish, Sherlock]
-Terror advocacy raises three constitutional questions : Is terror advocacy acceptable as the basis for surveillance? Is it punishable? What level and methods of concealing sensitive information, including 'disatasteful elements' of our 'response,' is acceptable?
-Secrecy is essential for effectiveness of some aspects of the anti-terror effort; not all censorship is unconstitutional (CIA nondisclosure agreements)
-Lack of laws preventing the publication of leaked national security secrets shows USA's 'culture of nosiness' and 'distrust of government bordering on paranoia.'
-Injunction against (censorship of) disclosure of national security secrets can be justified -- it's arguably less onerous than jailing publishers after the fact, and the protective benefits of stopping such disclosure outweigh the drawback 'chilling effect' on free speech
-Government should be permitted to prevent publication of classified material, provided that it was classified according to valid criteria.
-What about publishing research that could provide instruction to terrorists, e.g., biological research on how to make supervirii?
-Bottom line : the press should not enjoy blanket immunity from sensible measures designed to protect national security
-It is reasonable and legal to surveil radical imams, but does this infringe on the First Amendment due to the chilling effect, even though speech itself is not being forcibly curtailed? This is the border between curtailment and infringement
-Civil libertarian's aversion to 'viewpoint discrimination' is 'too squeamish'
-Dennis 'imminent lawless action' test doesn't work for those preaching holy war
-Free speech laws that allow the preaching of violent holy war against America but prohibit false advertising of products are 'excessively lacking in nuance'
-On the other hand, especially considering the relative lack of radical imams in the USA, laws limiting the speech thereof may be 'needlessly provocative'
-Speaking of provocation, our doctrine should be 'flexible' enough to curtail hate speech against Muslims that may itself incite terrorism (cf. Muhammad cartoons) 0- legit Muslim community must not be alienated
-Lastly, just because something (i.e. forbidding terror advocacy) is unsound policy does not make it unconstitutional.
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Keywords: Free Speech Security Terrorism |
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NRA 2009 - Exhibitionist Impressions
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Bill
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Poster: Bill @ Sat May 16, 2009 12:47 pm
Latewire was represented at the 2009 NRA show in Phoenix, Arizona. Crowds for the convention where incredible, and getting heavier long before the heavy hitting speakers and authors where due to show. This author was there for one reason only, to see the manufacturer's displays and was not disappointed. So here is a brief list of what caught my eye (not necessarily new for the year):
- Ruger - The biggest news is the launch of their entry into the AR market, the SR-556. Whoopty do. It appears to be a quality product, but there are already many makers of quality ARs especially for the whopping $2000 MSRP. Why not get the Mini series to not take proprietary magazines or restart the XGI (.308 Mini) program? For those of you keeping score, that brings the number of established manufactures releasing a AR line for the last two years up to six.
- EAA - Gun bunnies! How best to sell a bunch of Italian value line pistols and rifles? Why with models in t-shits and short shorts! I wouldn't have noticed their newish AK offering otherwise.
- Sig Sauer - The entry of their Sig 556 rifle was a bit rough to say the least. It would appear from the models on display that a good number of issues where addressed and ironed out. Here's hoping they put a dent in the AR clone market.
- Mossberg - Mossberg enters the semi-auto shotgun market with the 930, and I am very impressed as it had a decent trigger pull and quality optics.
- Bushmaster - Bushmaster releases a .50BMG... it's for plinking, right?
- FN - The big thing out this year is their fantastic FN SCAR. Having played around with one, I'll give mad props to FN for bringing a new and quality product to the market.
- HK - HK had their full stable of small arms including their MP5 (stock,navy, and suppressed), PDW, UMP, and G36. Not that those where terribly new but they were fun to see.
- CZ - New polymer wonder nine this year! (Author goes cross-eyed.) In news that does not induce product-glut brain damage; CZ is trying to move their new manufacture Vz-58 as a competitor to the AK design. Good luck to them, but their price point at $950 seems a bit high.
- Patriot Ordnance Factory - How do you stand out as one of the thousand AR manufactures? With eXtreme displays. Seriously, they had carbines mock-ups mounted machinegun on a Hummer with full 411 eXtreme videos and literature. Easily the winner of the eXtreme marketing department. POF has brought a good number of products to the market that this author approves of, but come just because your major buyers are keyboard kommandos doesn't mean that you can't pretend to have some degree of decorum.
MIA: Kel-Tec - Kel-Tec didn't make the show, which is a shame as I was very much looking forward to fondling an RFB.
All in all the show was a blast, while I don't think that the NRA is the most competent of firearm advocacy groups, they are far away the largest. The one thing that I find bothersome about what's new is the standardization of firearm patterns, if trends continue there will be only 1911s, glock clones, and ARs.
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Keywords: Guns Nra |
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Holey Shit! (Rest in peices)
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1m1w
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Poster: 1m1w @ Thu May 14, 2009 10:59 pm
It was business as usual, my crew and I had just been buzzed into some ritzy gated community located far far away from the galaxy of drug abuse and wasted potential on the other side of town. The van rolled on and eventually we came to a coastal mansion the likes of which most people never see outside of really trashy high budget low interest Hollywood cinema. We got out of the van and suited up, a three person crew can usually tackle a single in about 3-7 hours depending on the foresight of the ex-bastard and the freshness of the tissues in question. Now when my anonymous collegue opened the door and started immediately yipping in the manner of an excitable rock drummer I couldn’t help but laugh as it was apparent that this was going to be an easy job. Sure enough the corpse was swinging from the golden banister of a double marble staircase gently spinning round and round. Well manicured and impeccably groomed, the very model of gross excess, there was symmetry between the natural beauty of the human form and the excessive mutilation of the corpse’s tissues. My best guess would be, and make no mistake I’m not a coroner, that an elated self mutilation session with a kitchen knife ended in a gasoline soaked swan dive off the balcony with a pre-tied double knotted noose for a necktie. The fact that whoever did this was able to not only open their abdomen but inflict two stab wounds directly to the heart made it evident just how far people will go to off themselves if given to such depressive fugues of suicidal thinking. A box of matches on the banister up top evidenced the futility of perfection but what really got me laughing was the immaculate handwriting on the suicide note we found after cutting down the body: (Part III coming the far side of soon)
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Notes on O. Gross, A. Dershowitz, E. Scarry re : torture
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Tue May 12, 2009 10:28 pm
Oren Gross main points from "Prohibition on Torture and the Limits of Law" :
-"Pragmatic absolutism" and "Official Disobedience" characterize Gross' view
-The torture debate is often viewed in absolutist terms; that torture is immoral (due to the debasement of the tortured and the depraving of the torturer; or else due to the corrupting effects on society) and therefore inexcusable regardless of the consequences of not torturing
-Arguments for the permissibility of torture are generally from a 'consequentialist' viewpoint, which is a cost/benefit perspective - "ticking bomb" logic, etc, supports a 'conditional prohibition
-Variations include "orders of magnitude' approach, which considers only threats of massive scale to outweigh long-term bad effects of torture
-Absolute prohibition is morally untenable when viewed in cases of imminent catastrophe -- suggests an absolute legal ban on torture that actors may circumvent by extralegal actions for which they'll be called to account ex post
-Crucial to distinguish between 'truly catastrophic' cases and 'artificial cases'; general policy vs. special cases
-Crucial to uphold the symbolism of the inviolability of human dignity and the human body -- cries of national security, etc, do not trump fundamental rights
-Absolute legal ban 'resists the less-inevitable but more-dangerous' - that is, it cannot prevent the extralegal use of torture in catastrophic cases, but checks against the spread of torture to less-catastrophic cases, etc
-Absolute legal ban rejects cost/benefit and avoids slippery slopes
-Torture will be used ("official disobedience") in extreme ticking-bomb cases, legal or not, so the question becomes what legal and other consequences result from its use
-In a constitutional society, extralegal acts will be done wit trepidation and will have to be accounted for (justified or condemned) ex post ('ex post ratification') -- these factors are powerfully limiting -- responsibility to 'moral judgments of history,' also international legal consequences for actor and state
-Extralegal actions, unlike bent laws, are unlikely to create dangerous legal or even moral precedents
-Also, the extralegal actor is an 'autonomous moral agent,' not an an agent of an institution -- this curbs institutional violence
Alan Dershowitz key points from "Tortured Reasoning" :
-Torture is currently in widespread use with no accountability -- this is not acceptable; use will expand without accountability -- 'pervasive torture with deniability'
-it is better to legalize torture in certain warranted cases than to de facto permit it in all by avoiding the issue -- as in current 'don't ask, don't tell' situation
-'necessity' arguments result in too much elasticity -- Abu Ghraib proves this
-The risk of ex post ratification or condemnation should rest with a judge called upon to issue a 'torture warrant,' not with the interrogator
-Since the courts' function is to finely balance liberty and security, it's appropriate that they do so in the case of catastrophic situations as regards torture
-If a democratic nation is to undertake any action, then that action must be subject to the rule of law.
-The core debate isn't about whether torture can be justified, it's about accountability in the case that it is used in fact
-Requiring warrants adds an unfortunate degree of legitimation, but provides accountability
-Cool judicial heads > hot interrogator heads
-We want torture to be used if it'll save millions of lives, and we should never want our agents to do anything we deem wrong or illegal
-'Tragic decisions should be made at the top whenever feasible,' not by individual operators 00 cf decision on whether or not to shoot down passenger jets
-Judicial review / warrants would prevent another Abu Ghraib by eliminating deniability and 'necessity' arguments
Elaine Scarry key points from "Five Errors in the Reasoning of Alan Dershowitz" :
-The argument that those who argue for an absolute ban on torture are morally impaired or hypocritical is false
-Just because an act is necessary does not mean that it is no longer wrong and punishable; a 'savior of the city' is unlikely to be deterred by the spectre of possible legal culpability
-The act of torturing requires no courage if warranted, but much courage if possible consequences must be borne by torturer -- soldiers regularly give their lives to save others, so it's unclear why legal impunity is needed for the torturer (who might have to give up his liberty to save others)
-Warrants eliminate the 'how certain am I that this subject has the knowledge I need which would justify torture?" test
-Vast number of current detainees make it seem unlikely that, in the event of a 'ticking bomb,' we'd have only one person to interrogate - it'd be more like 5,000; it's ludicrous to suggest after our myriad intelligence failures that we can recognize the ticking bomb accomplice
-These assumptions -- lack of courage, that test is not necessary, intelligence omniscience -- make ticking bomb 'threshold' the inappropriate one through which to enter the torture debate
-The assumption that the judicial or executive officer confronted with a ticking-bomb warrant request will be able to effectively distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate scenarios is false
-Example : FISA has only declined one warrant request out of 25,000
-Warrants may actually limit legal review, as is the case with search warrants -- once the warrant is obtained, the requestor is free from further review
-Dershowitz repudiates, then employs, concepts that he admits are monstrous ('torture lite,' necessity') by giving them different names later ('nonlethal torture,' 'exceptional circumstance warrants') and making them into formal legal procedure
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Keywords: Security Terrorism Torture |
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Notes on David Cole's "In Case of Emergency"
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sun May 10, 2009 12:29 am
Notes on David Cole's "In Case Of Emergency"
*** This is Cole's rebuttal to Ackerman's revised 'Emergency Constitution' proposal ***
- the terror problem is fundamentally one of technological progress
- it'll never be known if or when Al-Qaeda is defeated, and other loose-knit groups may spring up as well
-Terror awareness is 'the new normal' (cf Cheney)
-Ackerman proposes a change in const system to address present inadequacy to address the "political emergency" caused by terror attacks (neither war not crimes)
-Ackerman's proposal has three basic flaws :
1) There is no reason to believe that suspicionless preventive detention will make us safer
2) This provision would "not forestall the abuse of civil liberties"
3) Inappropriate preference of legislative over judicial checks
-Preventive detention, as shown by Palmer, Korematsu, Ashcroft incidents, has not been shown to work.
-The "terribly thin hope" that such detention may one day be effective is inadequate to justify such an 'awesome' extension of power
-Ackerman's revised plan adds "reasonable suspicion" to the preventive detention, but since the detainees have no legal recourse while held and are not entitled to any additional compensation when released if their jailers did not use the 'reasonable suspicion' test, the addition of that test has zero effect or meaning.
-Ackerman's idea that his solution will prevent civil rights abuse is 'mere wishful thinking' and is contrary to the lessons of history
-Bush's declaration of emergency after 9/11 allowed him to arbitrarily freeze assets, etc, but the provision of these powers did not stop the government from 'radically infringing' civil liberties with other acts (wiretapping, torture, etc) under the aegis of war
-Emergency and war are not mutually exclusive, and neither are their powers-- 9/11 'gave rise to an emergency and was followed by a war'
-Ackerman himself says that terror is a permanent condition, so it's unclear why a temporary solution makes sense whatsoever
-Ackerman acknowledges that constitutional amendments are virtually impossible to pass, but his proposal would only work as such -- any other implementation would be insufficiently binding
-Ackerman's proposal betrays a 'fashionable' distrust of the courts
-Calls Ack's criticism of Hamdi 'overblown'
-The reliance on the legislature is clearly an invitation for panic and overemphasis on security to carry the day -- again, see history
-Bottom line : there are already ample measures both legal and appropriate that are available in times of emergency : tightening security in airports and chemical plants, co-ordinating intelligence efforts, etc
-These available measures have real preventive value without undermining Constitutional principles
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Keywords: Security Terrorism Torture |
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Beatnik Beach Blanket Bingo was his Name-O'Rielly Factor
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sat May 09, 2009 12:22 am
If this wasn't an exhausting, will-leaching demonic twister of a week, I'll be a monkey's uncle. And since none of my siblings are married to monkeys (insert Italian joke here), that's obviously not going to happen. Therefore, it was just such a week. [ed note : hey, at least sixguns.com is back on line!]
Sometimes, I like to briefly take my mind off the griddle of dread and concentrate on the few honest examples of true perfection that exist in our frail, tattered world. You know, things in which there is no element that could be removed or improved without corrupting the whole, where each minute part is as essential as a Maraschino cherry in a 'Shirley Temple'. Here's the short list :
- "Blazing Saddles"
- Guacamole
- Jesus
I want to talk about a few examples of real, actual perfection in my favorite entertainment medium, pop music. I'll start out with one that I think gets overlooked far too often : "The Rebirth Of Slick (Cool Like Dat)" by Digable Planets.
This track is so stoopid fresh that it kind of hurts. Sitting on top of a funky bass loop and crisp finger-popping are a def horn sample and some of the most architecturally-sound raps ever committed to tape. The cadence of the verses is simple, and the actual content of the lyrics just melts into the whole performance such that lines like "She innovates at the speed a cat naps" appear to be vital to the whole tune even though they don't make a whole lot of sense (note : this phenomenon is also seen with AC/DC tunes). Listening to this track is like watching a fast-motion video of cathedral being built. The pacing is tighter than 'Spanx' on a polar bear; rare is there a song at this relatively slow tempo that is so riveting and propulsive.
The whole insect schtick is a shade silly, but they are so assured in their delivery that it's hard to even get up enough psychological pluck to question or ridicule it, for fear that 'Ladybug' is going to poke her 'Cleopatra Jones' carbine right out of your iPod and lay waste to your poor hipster mug. One is even compelled to forgive 'Butterfly' for his dalliance in snooze-edge group Cherrywine by mere association with 'Doodlebug' when the latter utters the classic line : "Him? That's my man -- with the asteroid belt." Who among you isn't picturing his gesture from the immortal video when you hear that line?
"The Rebirth of Slick" is like a gun. It's powerful, and every piece in it is plum necessary. It can even protect you from harm by hostile folk and 'goblins.' Truly! Next time you feel threatened, just say "The rebirth of the slick like my gangsta stroll," and see if they don't turn tail.
Next time of "Hank Presents : Reasons to Live," we'll talk about the best music video of all time : "Mama Said Knock You Out." (Sorry, kids, it beats 'Thriller' by a country mile.)
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If you are reading this, you will not get Swine Flu
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:01 am
The Infamous IHGN1 Pandemic
I have just created a new virus. All it does is erect one skin wart on your left eyebrow, and 1 in 100 people who get it suddenly drop dead. It is contagious, like the common cold. I'm going to call it "Infectious Headline-Grabbing Neurosis"
Now, this disease was just created (by me), so therefore it's a "new" illness as far as any particular population is concerned.
So I kidnap 7 people--one from each continent--and I infect them with this disease. They go on to infect 5 other people, so now the total infected worldwide is 12. One dies, the rest recover, and my virus is kaput.
Technically, this is a "pandemic."
A pandemic is simply a "potentially serious" infectious disease that is "new" to the populations of or more continents. It does not imply any particular disease incidence.
Malaria
Now, another example: Malaria
Malaria infects 350 million people a year!! That's 5% of the world's population, give or take. Most malaria is concentrated into certain 3rd world populations in Africa, South America, and Southern Asia. Malaria is a shitty disease that will seriously fuck you up. Now, with tons of support to problem areas, we've got the yearly deaths down to a mere 1 million.
Compare my virus to Malaria: 12 infections Vs 350 million; 1 death vs 1 million. By any particular measure, malaria is at least 1 million times worse than the IHGN1 virus.
So naturally, malaria is a "pandemic", right? No!! Since Malaria is endemic (common) to all the areas it's currently seen in, it's not "new" and therefore not technically a pandemic.
This upsets me, so being a Mad Scientist, I find 5 people in Europe and inject them with Malaria. I release a million "Anopheles" mosquitos in the area to make it transmissible. Before all those mosquitos die, they infect 5 more people. So now 10 people in Europe have Malaria. They all get over it, none die. Now, Malaria is a pandemic.
The "Malaria Pandemic" spreads across the news media like it's the upcoming apocalypse, even though it's no worse than it was last year.
H3N2 Will Kill 10,000+ Americans This Year! Close the Airports!
 H3N2 was one of the prominent influenza strains in the 2007-2008 flu season. The regular, every-day influenza virus kills 36,000 Americans per year. It is in the top 15 most likely causes of death in the USA. Hank (a fellow writer here at Latewire) just came down with the flu yesterday!
Is it a pandemic? No because the Flu is not new.
So if swine flu hasn't even killed 200 people worldwide, and we already have problems getting people vaccinated for this known killer of tens of thousands, where should our focus lie?
Obviously swine flu has to be contained as its death rate is significantly higher than the regular flu, but there's no reason to be afraid of getting out of bed and going to work. You're far more likely to crash your car and die on the way there then to even personally know anybody who got swine flu. Not to mention that if by some fucked up perturbation of mathematics you actually get swine flu, there are plenty of anti-viral medications to boost your chances of survival from around 93/100 to in the ball-park of 975/1,000.*
Don't be a ignorant tool of the sensationalist media, just go to work, live your life, and STFU.
*UPDATE: New numbers show swine flu isn't any more deadly than the regular flu.
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Calling all latewires : sixguns.com is down?
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Sun Apr 26, 2009 10:06 pm
Attention all pistol-packing latewires : John Taffin's indispensable hangunning resource Sixguns.com is offline. What gives? Taffin had brilliant insights and crucial reloading data posted there. Any latewires with information : please let the wire know what's going on -- before we put too many grains of 2400 into our next post!
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In the Gravest Extreme : Emo Trends Update 2009
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Hank
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Poster: Hank @ Fri Apr 24, 2009 6:38 pm
The state of the emo art has continued to mutate in the time since Latewire published the breakthrough enthnography "Emolution" last year. When we last reported on our observations of the North American emo in its wild habitat, the pinnacle of sartorial emeosis in the male of the subspecies was typified by the display of colored briefs beneath sagging girl jeans.
This year, the plumage of the dominant emo male has shortened somewhat. Those who recall the blistering popularity of tight "clamdigger" trousers amongst mainstream human females circa 1997-2001 will undoubtedly be little surprised to learn that clamdiggers are back. Except this time, they're seen on the haunches of the emo male.
Multiple independent field sightings in the metro Phoenix habitat confirm that the emo male is sporting tight clamdiggers, generally in black, with alarming frequency. These have been recorded with and without accompanying stripey knee-high "wicked witch of the West" socks. One particularly thrifty emo specimen was observed at a Costco warehouse store in the 85284 zip code on 04-22-2009, buying bulk quantities of trail mix and lint rollers wearing the following uniform :
-Black Army-style cap
-Dyed black hair worn longish, reminiscent of the wimpy guy character in "Doom Generation"
-Very large ear-'gauges,' approximately the diameter of a typical woman's bracelet
-Several other facial piercings; all piercings filled with black acrylic jewelry
-Grey "ironic / non-associative logo" T-shirt
-Copious tattooing
-Black clamdiggers, very tight
-No socks
-Black skate shoes, laced
This latest development -- the male clamdigger -- can certainly be seen as the natural evolution of the girl-trouser phenomenon. One possibly significant difference, however, is that whereas the girl-trouser look has been observed across the entire morphological spectrum of the emo male, the male-clamdigger plumage has only been observed on the most extreme ectomorphic specimens. Whether this is attributable to the fact that the ectomorphs tend to spearhead the evolution in general (due, it has been hypothesized, to the need to augment the scant corporal appearance with impressive plumage), or whether this represents a true "silliness floor" for emo appearance remains to be determined. If any readers of this publication observe fat emos wearing clamdiggers in the field, please email sightings@latewire.com with geographic and other specifics of the sighting, along with photographs or field sketches if available.
Interestingly, the mate of this particular emo was also observed, and displayed an appearance that took the "looking old is cool" aesthetic to new edges. In fact, our man in the field reports that for the first several minutes of observation, he believed the mate to be in fact the subject's mother, until a "Ferris Beuller" style embrace persuaded him that this was the mate. Large amounts of hairspray held wiglike masses of dry hair high in the air, and 80s-style huge sunglasses complemented the shapeless-yet-revealing black clothing that showed off enough of the emo torso to confirm that the typical 'traditional' tattoos covered most of her upper body skin. This specimen, determined after intense observation to be not more than 30 years old, appeared at first glance to be at least a decade older. This may represent an emerging trend for camouflage among the female population, possibly to facilitate the purchase of alcoholic beverages, or possibly to evade the greasy, limp sexual attempts of the young of the species.
Keep your eye on this publication for more arresting, unprecedented observations from the field. The only way we can successfully control this invasive population is by understanding it.
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Frustrations and Castrations
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DeadcowX
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Poster: DeadcowX @ Thu Apr 23, 2009 7:40 pm
There is only a time that we can spend sharing our misfortunes in the safety of the local witch doctor at present. Gibberish and nonsense plagues our daily lives and causes a build up of residue. Residue, that has some citizens worried.
Plug some wires into your brain.
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The Great Depression II, The Making of
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Daniel Roe
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Poster: Daniel Roe @ Thu Apr 23, 2009 1:31 pm
I hate politics. I happen to believe that whenever someone writes about political issues they actually care about, their IQ drops at least 35 points before they put the first word on the page. This is why most comments on political YouTube videos are fragmented and incoherent: Someone with an IQ of 110 decided to jot down a thoughtful political opinion, and was temporarily deprived of the ability to form sentences. This is simple emotion clouding over reason and intellect. It's just human nature.
 To therefore write effectively about politics, you've got to either not care at all, or just not have human emotion to begin with. This is why most professional political pundits are actually sociopaths. The pundit's ability to look apocalypse in the face and say "Fuck it." is the secret to readable copy. It's not that these people are especially smart, it's that they're emotionally distant enough to keep their heads on straight when writing about the metaphorical rape of all their espoused beliefs.
I, on the other hand, can't even be in the same room with a TV with a talking head on it without getting acid reflux and foaming at the mouth. I had to stop watching televised news years ago for the sake of my physical health. And that is the reason why this article is going to suck. I did it anyway though, and I may never know the reason why.
The problem with the vast majority of voters is that they know a sum total of "dick" about history. This is one of the many reasons it's totally pointless for any intelligent person to vote (less intelligent people may enjoy the free stickers, so it's a good deal for them). In the case of economics, the US has made so many ridiculously idiotic mistakes that we have plenty of past experiences to draw wisdom from, provided we look at history through the right lens. The Great Depression should have been the end of economic intervention. Unfortunately it's apparently become the beginning. Part of this stems from the total distortion of the history of the Great Depression, which is what will be addressed here.
Popular History
The popular view of the Great Depression is as follows: It started with the crash of 1929 and lasted up until World War II. According to the history books, our economy was "unequally distributed" to rich people and the crash of 1929 was the culmination of the inequity of the "bubble" in markets such as luxury goods (think dot com era). Moreover, our president at the time, Herbert Hoover, was against interference in the markets and therefore passed up his opportunity to save the day through intervention, which lead to the deep depression that lasted "over a decade." After Hoover's beleaguered term ended, idle government gave way to FDR's promises of interventionism and reform. FDR's activities, combined with that of the Federal Reserve and the seemingly fortuitous entrance of the US into WWII lead to the end of the depression.
To be clear: The above paragraph is total bullshit, with a few spacklings of horseshit and "WTF".
Pseudo-Austrian Theory on What Went Wrong
First of all, the Great Depression didn't start in 1929, it started in the credit bubble of the 1920's. A "credit bubble" is where lenders, on a massive scale, lend too much money without taking proper care to see that the borrower can pay it back. Giving more money to people who are going to waste it means that the useless goods that these people buy are going to have an "increase in demand" (DEMAND = more will be sold, and they will be sold at a higher price). Investors will see this rise in prices (caused by the artificially-inflated demand) and think this is an exploding market and haphazardly stuff their money in as fast as they can, maybe even borrowing to do so. This will further drive up demand until such time as the supply of credit goes away.
1) Lower supply of (inflated) credit
-> 2) Higher interest rates
---> 3) less borrowing
-----> 4) less money for buying (overvalued) crap
-------> 5) less demand for crap
---------> 6) price of crap declines
-----------> 7) investors cash-in to avoid losses
-------------> 8) Go to 5 and repeat for a while
---------------> 9) investors go bankrupt, can't pay back loans
-----------------> 10) Lenders lose money
-------------------> 11) Go to 1 and repeat until prices are normalized.
This violent return to normalcy is referred to as a "crash." As you can see, interest rates are a key component of normalization, and that's exactly what the Fed messes with.
The stock market crash of 1929 was not what started the Great Depression, it simply signaled the start of a market correction. The crash of 1929 was the solution to the bubble. The falling prices and the deflation were necessary forces in stabilization of the economy. These forces were fought tooth and nail by the Hoover and FDR administrations (I'll talk about this later), because they meant a decline in economic activity over the short term.
Where did this credit bubble come from? Well something happened during the 1920's that had never happened before in American history. A massive, mismanaged lending force came into play that would haunt the American economy the next 90 years (and counting). Of course I'm talking about the Federal Reserve. Though the Federal Reserve was founded in 1913, they did not participate in open market operations until 1922. The stated objective of "The Fed" is to stabilize the economy by injecting money when markets are down, and deflating when markets are up. They do this by printing money that doesn't exist and loaning it to banks, which it trickles down in a massive, cascading manner (through loan after loan after loan) to consumers who use it to buy crap with. This sounds simple enough, except that in doing this, they flatten out the market corrections which are necessary for normalization. It also makes the arrogant assumption that a handful overeducated academics can make God-like pontifications based on whatever criteria they feel like. All The Fed seems to be able to do is create credit bubbles, which lead to bubbles in everything else. This is exactly what happened in the years prior to the market crash of 1929.
Think about it: It's true, by 1929, the US had seen a few depressions and recessions over its ~150 year history. However, just 7 short years after the Fed starts tinkering with the money supply, we see the largest and deepest depression ever...?? That's coincidence in the same sense that 90% of lung cancers being found in the bodies of smokers is coincidence. What's also not coincidental is the biggest economic intervention in US history (at the time) occurred right at the beginning of this--the longest depression in US history. [Did you see that segue? Was that not awesome?]
Herbert Hoover: The Interventionist
 The next myth I'mbout-ta-bust about the Great Mf'ing Depression is that President Herbert Hoover was some kind of coward who refused to intervene. This is almost certainly a case of politics totally f'ing up history. Pay attention boys and girls: this is what it looks like. These 'Court Historians' [*cough* Paul Krugman *cough*] want to blame the "free market" for the Great Depression, and to do that, they have to paint Hoover as a slimy, good-for-nothing, free market Republican (to be fair, he was a Republican, and he looked pretty slimy). Presumably, they're distorting history so they can blame the depression on Hoover and also so they can attribute this country's salvation to FDR's "economic reform." This lends credence to the government power-grab ("bailout") that's going on right now, since conceptually FDR's stimulus was the same thing. Luckily, the claims about Hoover's "non-interventionism" are so ridiculously false that the debate ends in the 2 seconds it takes to load the Wikipedia article.
One thing the pop-historians like to point out (apparently to further this myth) is that the chairman of the fed at time (Andrew Mellon) was pushing to let the recession run its course. Can you imagine? After years of tinkering with the economy, the Fed acknowledges it had 'screwed the pooch' and clamors for natural free market correction. Amazingly, that's totally true. At first, the fed was quite reluctant to intervene. In fact, according to Hoover's memoirs, Mellon (Fed guy) strongly suggested to Hoover that he stay out of it. Not to be swayed by little things like reality, Hoover ignored Mellon and promptly embarked on the largest ever peacetime increase in government spending. He even brags about it in a speech he made near the end of his term:
We might have done nothing. That would have been utter ruin. Instead, we met the situation with proposals to private business and to Congress of the most gigantic program of economic defense and counterattack ever evolved in the history of the Republic. We put it into action.
- Herbert "Give Me a Kiss, Krugman" Hoover
Convinced yet? Too bad, I'm not done! To pay for this "fiscal stimulus," Hoover ran huge deficits until 1932, at which point he doubled the income tax (Revenue Act of 1932) and instituted a tax on checks (this is a lot worse than it sounds, by the way). He even pushed forward a bill to force the Fed to inflate the money supply. Finally, not content to leave it alone, Hoover rammed through congress the largest import tax of the 1900's, the infamous "Smoot-Hawley Tariff." Non-interventionist my ass! Hoover's plans were basically slightly less ambitious versions of "The New Deal" (which would occur later, under President Roosevelt).
If you want to place some blame on Hoover for the Great Depression, you can't blame him for doing too little.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt: The Non-Interventionist ... What?
Sort of a fun facet of the whole Hoover Vs FDR thing is that history remembers it as a standard run-of-the-mill socialist Vs free-market debate. The reality, of course, is slightly more complicated.
 By the end of Hoover's presidency, it seemed that voters were pretty fed up with all this progressive interventionist hogwash. They knew what Hoover did, they knew it didn't work, they wanted "change," and they wanted it in the form of economic freedom. It seems strange then that they elected FDR--probably the most "progressive" president of all time, according to the history books.
How we explain these ostensibly contradicting facts is not actually all that complicated: FDR was a liar.
FDR ran on a platform of economic non-interventionism. During his 1932 campaign, he berated Hoover for his stimulus actions. FDR's own running mate in 1932 (and later Veep), John Nance Garner said that Hoover was "taking the country down the path of socialism." In fact, the stated Democratic party platform of 1932 was to reduce federal spending by an astounding 25%. No wonder FDR won by such an enormous landslide (57% to 39%)!
Heck, I would've voted for him. Did you know FDR publicly referred to Hoover as a "fat, timid, capon" (a capon is a castrated rooster which is fattened up and raised for eating)? How awesome is that!?
Naturally, the first thing he did was ignore his campaign promises. Starting the very same year he was inaugurated (1933), FDR started creating hundreds of different massive government programs designed to 1) extend government's control over the economy and 2) stimulate it back to health at the same time. Only one of those goals ended up coming true, can you guess which? Hint: the depression continued for 13 years after that, so that leaves...
This package of economic clusterfuck is what is commonly referred to as "The New Deal."
As an aside: In a particularly despicable "dick move," a disproportionately larger amount of the New Deal money was poured into the swing states, which kept them relatively fat and happy while the depression trotted along. FDR effectively bought his first two re-elections this manner. As the New Deal raged on, FDR lost some control over it (legislators found their balls and got in on the money train), which directly correlated with a wider distribution among the other states. Funny how that all works.
Yeah, These Clowns Raped the Free Market, but... Did it Work?
Of course it worked! Why wouldn't it? It's so brilliant: I'm going to inflate the currency through printing, suck tons of money out of the economy through taxes, pour it into wealth-destroying projects, and I'm going to do it all while we're in the heat of a freakin depression!... I mean, where's the problem, am I right guys? WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
Well, what ended up going wrong is that our depression lasted roughly from 1929 to 1946. Popular history says our numbers were turned around at the start of WWII (1941), but that's totally ignoring the fact that you can't ship 11 million unemployed men out of the country and call the ensuing fall in the unemployment rate a "turn-around."
 By that notion, Obama could just wait until midnight tonight, use his Santa Claus magic, jump in his reindeer-driven Escalade, and do a drive-by on every unemployed household in America, killing at least half the unemployed in one fell swoop. Wouldn't it be great if it were just that easy? Too bad it isn't (though that may not stop him from trying...). Yeah, it'd make that particular economic indicator jump back into the green, but the smell would be horrendous after a few weeks, plus it wouldn't exactly restore consumer confidence.
No, by most relevant measures, our economy did not reach pre 1929 numbers again until 1946, and this was due to one reason and one reason only: Our shit didn't get fucked up during the war.
Imagine: all of europe and lots of Asia, even including some of the shitty little islands (England), had planes flying over it for YEARS bombing factories used to make war toys as well as necessary consumer goods. What happens after the war when trade barriers are lifted and everyone needs to buy shit? They turn to the one country who still has factories all clean and shiny with no unexploded munitions lodged in the roofs: America. We exploited the living crap out of these countries who needed stuff they couldn't build, it was awesome.
There's a reason why the US forgave most of the loans they made to Europe to rebuild: They made out like bandits.
The production capacity of Europe was shot to shit by the end of the war. By the time everyone had caught up to speed, the United States had become an economic superpower. They would remain that way until idiotic politicians of latter half of the 20th century (and 21st, it seems) could mess all that up. Way to go!
Good Thing This is All Ancient History... Right?
 If you accidently leave your TV on for any length of time these days, you probably know that what they did back then to try and "fix the problem" are the exact same types of things they're doing now. You hear about a new Bailout plan just about every month now, and every idea they have isn't exactly new.
You'd think that maybe they would've learned something.
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