Tag: politics

The Math I Should Not Have Done

There have been more than 60 bomb threats targeting U.S. Jewish Community Centers in the past month, more than 30 of them since the inauguration alone (i.e., in the last twelve days).  Most of these have been domestic in origin (I have that from several sources, include a JCC security head who was told this at an info session with the Detroit FBI office this week).

just another funny little joke, i guess
just another funny little joke, i guess

That number sounds bad—but you don’t really have a benchmark for this, right?  I mean, you ask yourself “Well, how often do folks call bomb threats into YMCAs or non-Jewish daycares?”, and the answer is “Basically zero”—so that sounds bad.  But then you poke around online, and find that U.S. schools get over a thousand bomb threats every year (in fact, I used to teach at an alternative school, and one of my students—a very sweet and peaceful kid when I knew him—had been kicked out of his last school for making a bomb threat).  And how often do schools get bombed?  (Actually, bombs are placed at schools more than you think: According to some old ATF numbers, nearly 100 devces are placed each year in schools).

So I started poking around the FBI UCR (Universal Crime Reporting) Hate Crime stats.  Here’s a representative sample of annual anti-Jewish “intimidation” crime tallies (“intimidation” is the UCR category that includes, but is not limited to, bomb threats).  You’ll note a predominantly downward trend:

  • 1996 had 363 such offenses 
  • 1997: 387
  • 1998: 380
  • 1999: 420
  • 2007: 201
  • 2008: 201
  • 2010: 201
  • 2011: 187
  • 2012: 87
  • 2013: 152
  • 2014: 93
  • 2015: 114

(My numbers above are spotty, owing both to gaps in the FBI stats and because I just can’t dedicate too much time to picking around UCR reports tonight.)

I’ve emphasized 1999 for three reasons:

  1. It is the peak of the available numbers by a significant margin.
  2. It’s the year of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Center shooting committed by Buford O. Furrow
  3. If January 2017 is indicative, then we can expect 600 bomb threats this year.  And if bomb threats generally correlate to the volume and volatility of anti-Semitic hate floating around out there . . . well, you can do the math.

“Won’t Somebody Think of the Children!!1!” (Yemen Edition)

“On the campaign trail, Trump endorsed killing relatives of terrorist suspects, which is a war crime. “The other thing with the terrorists is you have to take out their families, when you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he told Fox News in December 2015.” (source)

If your position is “Trump said we should kill the families of ‘terrorists’—an abominable, authoritarian war crime—and now he’s doing just that!” well, way back in 2016, when we had a President with a Noble Peace Prize on his mantle, we dropped thousands of bombs on Yemen (google it), and it isn’t like those somehow magically only killed sworn soldiers of AQAP.  A bomb dropped from a drone isn’t somehow more accurate than a highly trained SEAL with an excellent rifle standing in the same room as someone.  But, man oh man, do we suddenly give a fuck about Yemen, and military operations in Yemen, and civilian casualties in Yemen!  Better late than never, amiright?

Nawar al-Awlaki was 8 years old. Now she's dead. Don't forget to pay your taxes on April 18!
Nawar al-Awlaki was 8 years old. Now she’s dead. Don’t forget to pay your taxes on April 18!

I’m once again reminded of Penn & Teller’s Fishes and Loaves:

Penn and Teller were scheduled to appear on Letterman, and so they prepared a new twist on a classic “broken and restored watch” routine. In their improved version, they’d borrow Letterman’s watch, smash it, then wheel out a big aquarium and sprinkle the parts in the water, where they’d dissolve and the fish would eat them. Letterman would then freely select one of the fish, Teller would scoop it out with a net, they’d gut and and ta-da!, there would be the whole, ticking watch in the fish’s guts!

But the network standards and practices lawyers wouldn’t let them do that trick; it’d be too brutal to have an animal killed on screen. So Penn and Teller re-jiggered the routine: Instead of an aquarium full of live fish, they’d wheel out a fishmonger’s ice table with six dead fish on it. They’d take the host’s watch, smash it, sprinkle the bits in the ice, the bits would dissolve, the host would freely select a dead fish, and Teller’d fillet it to reveal the watch. Standards loved it, the host loved it, and that’s what went on live TV.

The point of the story—which is the sort of thing that belongs in an atheist’s Bible—is that everyone was more comfortable with six fish dying instead of one, provided they didn’t have to watch.

Same here: Dozens, hundreds, thousands of Yemeni kids are killed by bombs Made-in-the-USA, and we’re fine with it—as long as we don’t have to see her fucking picture, as long as it’s done from 36,000 feet by a drone piloted by some dude drinking a Sprite in a cubicle at Creech AFB and there’s no chance of one of “our boys” having to come home in a box in order to git ‘er done!  God forbid we should look at what our tax dollars are buying. 

It’s harsh, but it’s an apt summation of American foreign policy: Killing people’s families is our business model.

It was our business model in 2016, it will continue to be in 2017, the party, skin color, generation, and gender of the president notwithstanding.  If you don’t like that—well, you’re in decent company, because I don’t like it either.  But let’s be honest with ourselves, and just take a damned second to sort out of we really don’t like being in the Murder Business, or if we simply dislike it when a mouthy, pudgy, tactless New Yorker is the one murdering on our behalf.

Finally, if you’re suddenly worried about Trump triggering “World War III,” then I invite you to consider something: Maybe—just maybe—WWIII has been going on for the last 15 years.  We just outsourced all the suffering to developing nations—the same way we do with all the rest of our dirty work.

Maybe this is something else to talk about tomorrow, when you call your reps. I dunno; that’s between you and them.

I kinda miss the good ole days . . .

. . . back when Groundhog Day was a IMG_7123time for bickering about which Bill Murray characters were the right amount of rapey, and to what degree your childhood was “raped” by a bunch of millionaires remaking a mediocre ’80s comedy.

Anyway, gotta jet: I need to get on hold to wait and ask my congressfolk to try and keep the Shadow President from deporting my neighbors, touch base with the head of security at my local Jewish Community Center, then walk to a meeting for some pro-bono legal advice. Busy day!🇺🇸🔥

Plz take 5mins RIGHT NOW and call your reps about this presidential violation of common decency and religious liberty

If you haven’t settled on what you’re calling your reps about today, may I suggest the Second Place President’s Friday executive order banning Muslim immigrants from seven war-torn nations?

Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

(Source: Trump Bars Refugees and Citizens of 7 Muslim Countries)

By Friday night that order was already being used to detain folks who had already been fully vetted, in addition to showing loyalty to the US for years in the global war in terror. We should be welcoming these guys as heros and ideal Americans, not sending them back to be tortured and murdered.

In any case, an executive order that “Christians be granted priority” should not rest easy with any American.

UPDATE: Was doing some research Sunday and found a phrase that might come in handy when you make those calls: “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” 

High crimes and misdemeanors

Clarification on Calling Your Reps, and Props to Senator Stabenow

Props to Senator Debbie Stabenow for Playing it Legit

First things first, I want to applaud my senator, Debbie Stabenow, for being hella legit. I just called her office for my daily check-in, and got a little insight on her process when it comes to the Second-Place President’s cabinet nominations:  Sen. Stabenow has been meeting with each nominee one-on-one, preferably face-to-face, to feel them out and attempt to get answers to the specific concerns being raised by her constituents.  None of the grand-standing or histrionics congressfolk are notorious for, just a straight-up, respectful Q&A.  This also means that when Stabenow announced that she would not support Jeff Sessions or Betsy DeVos, she had already told them this to their faces.  I respect the hell out of that, and knowing this bit about her process helps me feel less terrible.  Thank you, Sen. Stabenow!usa-american-flag-waving-animated-gif-26

Second, I want to clarify two things about calling your reps (which you should be doing daily.  Please!):

  1. Call your reps even if you know they already agree with you and are doing what you want done! Tell them “thank you!” If you feel even an iota safer knowing that they are going to bat for you, then say so.  This serves two purposes:
    1. It’s a numbers game.  They count calls, and those numbers mean something, not just in their office, but on the floor of the House and Senate. The Honorable Gentleman from BFE cares a helluva lot about 100 calls from folks in his district—at the very least, those people can fire him in a couple short years!—but he sure as hell doesn’t just ignore 10,000 calls in The Honorable Lady’s district over in Big City Metro Area, because he sure as hell doesn’t plan on representing BFE his whole damn life.  He wants to go places.  (This isn’t just my opinion; this is what Rep. Dingell’s office told me this morning:  The number one thing you can do as an individual citizen is keep calling.)
    2. Your reps have the worst job, and they need moral support.  They are going to get screamed at and threatened for sticking up for the things we want—that’s ludicrous, because you’d think all Americans should want well-funded schools, neighbors from all over the world, and safe drinking water, but here we are. Your reps have to get up every morning, put on uncomfortable shoes, and go get screamed at by weirdos.  It is a lot easier for them to hang tough if they can keep in mind how many hundreds of folks back home have their back.
  2. Making these calls is as much about your mental health as our nation’s stability.  Even when you’re on the losing end of an issue—and you will be, often—you are going to start feeling better if you take 10 minutes each day to talk to these staffers, to hear their confidence and enthusiasm and bravery and support of you, as a citizen and a fellow human.

So, go! Get out there!  Make your calls and then get on with your day!

Calling Your Reps: A Guide for the Timid (with “Quick Start” and “Power User” options!)

I am a for-real, diagnosed agoraphobe.  You may be “terrified” of calling usa-american-flag-waving-animated-gif-26folks on the phone, but I am legit terrified of calling strangers on the phone.  Like, panic attack terrified, sick-to-my stomach terrified, go to the doctor terrified, diagnosed with good ole “DSM-IV-TR 300.21: Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia” terrified.

If I can do this, you can do this.

Quick Start

This is so easy it should be a hoax:

  1. Goto the 5 Calls website.
  2. If it doesn’t auto-detect your location, then click “Change” in the big white “5 Calls” box on the top left and enter your zip code.
  3. Pick an issue from the menu that pops up and start calling.  They explain the issue, give you a script to use, and provide the phone number.  If you’re on your smartphone, then you can just tap the number to start the call.
  4. Repeat until you’ve made five calls; it’ll take you less than five minutes.

This is a great place to start: The folks at 5 Calls are highlighting important issues and their scripts look solid.  I really like that it goes beyond just calling Congress (for example, the first time I used the site it had me call the U.S. Army Core of Engineers about the Dakota Access pipeline; slick!)

But there are a couple things that I don’t like about this service:  1) it only gives your congressfolks’ D.C. phone numbers; 2) I don’t particularly like reading someone else’s script, because I worry that too many cookie-cutter calls lose impact; 3) I’m gonna level with you: I’ve started crying on these calls before, suddenly realizing how upset I am about these issues.  I don’t really like crying, I definitely don’t like crying on the phone with strangers, but I’ve got to believe that a grown man crying about Special Education and his kid’s school—that probably does indeed get relayed to your rep, and gets folks in that office fired up about the issue.

So, that brings us to …

Power User Mode

  1. Add your congressfolks’ numbers to your phone’s contact list.  Find out who your reps are and get both their D.C. numbers and their in-state numbers (most offices are easier to reach on one or the other; with my congressfolk I can always get through on their Michigan numbers, but rarely on the D.C. numbers). If you have no clue who your reps are, look it up by address or text your zip code to (520) 200-2223 and a robot will send you their numbers instantly (sadly, that service is mostly limited to D.C. contact info—but it’s so damn convenient, I can’t help but keep plugging it).
  2. Create a daily reminder in your calendar to call your reps.  Drive time is great for this, as is that dead zone just before or after lunch, or any time you know you’ll be sitting around waiting for your kid’s school bus or whatever.
  3. Take a glance at the front page of a reliable newspaper each day.  I like the New York Times and Washington Post.  The Wall Street Journal is fine for this, as are the Detroit News and Free Press (I’m a Michigander) or ugly-ass AP Wire homepage—even frikkin USA Today.  I’ve drawn away from Slate (their tone was too confident before the election, and is too panic-inducing now), but still think they get their facts right enough for these purposes.  The little NPR news-breaks are fine, too.  Avoid the op-ed pages of any of these papers, as well as polemical sites (e.g., HuffPo, Politico, etc.), Google News (which has proven too easily manipulated), and social media (where I’ve found—at least in my feed—items are frequently so compressed for character count and spun for impact that they come dangerously close to departing from fact).  The point here is that you want a pretty plain-vanilla factual account of what’s happened in the past day.
  4. Decide which thing on the front page bugs you most.  Today, for me, it’s this: “Sometime this week, Trump is expected to pause the flow of all refugees to the U.S. and indefinitely bar those fleeing war-torn Syria. The president’s upcoming order is also expected to suspend issuing visas for people from several predominantly Muslim countries – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen…”  This bugs me for several reasons, but I think the biggest is this: Five out of those seven Muslim countries are places that the U.S. bombed every 20 minutes, 24 hours per day, for all of 2016.  To my mind, if you drop 20,000 bombs on some people who are minding their own business, you owe them something—like maybe a non-bombed place to live.
  5. Call your reps about it and tell them how you feel.  You don’t have to tell them what to do—vote for this, against that, whatever—you don’t have to suggest how to fix anything.  Figuring that part out is their job.  You just call, identify yourself and the city where you live, and say “The president said this…” or “I read in the paper that…” or “This rich person is arguing that we should do this other stuff…” and it scares the shit out of me.  Please help us.

Political Quickie: Take 5mins to Call yr Senators about Betsy DeVos NOW! Thx!

Six astonishing things Betsy DeVos said — and refused to say — at her confirmation hearing

This article is just one example, but the gist of it is this: Betsy DeVos is not qualified to be the U.S.Secretary of Education. She is actively antagonistic to the project of public education, and has been for decades. Based on her performance in this hearing, she knows next to nothing about modern educational theory and practice, or the legal framework surrounding these.

I’m a lifelong Michigander – just like DeVos – and let me tell you, as far as we can tell her entire project is to shuffle public dollars out of public schools and into private religious (i.e., Christian) schools (which are not obliged to accept all comers, accommodate all students, respect religious or philosophical differences, or meet most accountability standards).

Skim the article, find whichever pobit is most offensive to you, then call your senators. Please.

Don’t have their numbers handy (or know their names even)?  Look it up by address or text your zip code to (520) 200-2223 and a robot will send you their numbers instantly.

My son is one of the 6.5 million U.S. school kids who receives special services from the public education system. That’s ~13% of all school kids. Please take 5 minutes, leave a couple messages, and make sure my boy can keep getting the very mild accommodations he needs.

A Grab Bag of Human Music Technologies

Girl totally rocks the original “Super Mario” medley (complete with coins and power-ups!) on a sheng, sounds like she totally belongs in the Mos Eisley Catina Band:

A robot plays a pop hit (I love the rhythmic element that the robot’s motors and gears bring to the song):

Props to Arthur Lacomme for pointing me to this one featuring “Mr. Curly” (which is the instrument, not the dude playing it).  I love that watering-can clarinet Pollack demos around 1:45! 

(Arthur also recommends the open-source Rakarrack software package, which he uses when he rocks his Mr. Curley.)

This one is pretty interesting if you stick with it; what you no doubt initially take to be a precursor to the 8-track is playing cartridges loaded with ribbon-based analog records(!!!).  The macro-lens bit at around 5:20 gives you an example of both the sound (pretty damn solid) and the mechanism (OMFG! Wünderbar!)  Hilarious remote control, too.

And then there’s this guy:

chordophone-lyre-plucked
My beautiful picture

(FYI, that caption was Wordpress’s suggested—and I love it!!!)

o_O  The thing that makes this one, for me, is how the strings are anchored in the eye sockets(!!!)  The Met has several of these—from different generous donors and almost certainly different artisans—and they all use the eye sockets and brow ridge as a saddle and bridge.  Humans, amiright?

N.B. that, according to current expert opinion, this thing—which is indeed from Central Africa, where it was crafted in the 19th C by a native artisan—was produced for no other purpose than to sell something fantastically “primitive” and “savage” to European tourists/anthropologists (and thus inform European opinions of these nations and, in all likelihood, form the foundation of the moral justifications for brutal colonialism).  I invite the reader to meditate on their own how this might mirror our current situation with imported polarizing/fake news, and who the greater savage might be: The supplier who makes the ersatz evidence, or the customer who furnishes the demand and shells out the cash?