October roundup of links

GOP releases a tax plan outline summary thumbnail. In keeping with GOP inability to deal with reality including policy making, the tax plan is 5 pages stretched onto 9 pages. It doubles the standard deduction! Cheers! And quietly takes away exemptions. It's the usual cake for the wealthy with a bit of frosting for the middle class. A good list of misleading sales pitches.

Admitted fake news author dies.  He wasn't trying to be a con artist, but rather a satirist. But, according to him: "[Trump's] followers don't fact-check anything — they'll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."

Fake news generators on Facebook outed by Facebook. At some point, most reality-based GOPers will have to stop pretending that there wasn't Russian interference in the US election. Facebook announced more than 3000 fake ads were purchased by accounts that appear to be Russian.

The new world order that didn't happen. Interesting thought. The world was supposed to gradually accept American values by acclamation amid peace and prosperity. Ooops, it didn't happen. The inevitable wasn't inevitable.

Amazing short summary of Islamic terrorism. Maybe it's too simple, but it holds together in my opinion.

The media misreports probability. The problem includes how media reports weather predictions and the 2016 election predictions. The fact of uncertainty isn't clearly conveyed.

Critique of  The Bell Curve. The 1994 book contained the thesis that blacks were genetically cognitively inferior to other groups. The book caused an uproar. Cognitive scientist formed a committee and wrote this critique of what was wrong with the book and its handling of evidence. I've had to refer to this critique several times.

Image: fivethirtyeight.com

Where is the battle? Why is it there?

I've been very busy with work and reading a slew of interesting books. That prevents me from going hyperbolic over the terrorist attacks in Paris, but I wasn't likely to go hyperbolic anyway.

The attacks in Paris aren't surprising. There are a lot of Muslims there, and some are radicalized. Military-style weapons aren't readily available, but they can be smuggled easily enough from other places where they are readily available. Perhaps the surprising thing is that there aren't more attacks. And not just in France, but all over Europe, in the US, in Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Jordan. Why are all these places relatively quiet versus the level of bombings in Iraq or in much of northern Africa?

Of course I'm glad that we don't do have all out warfare over much of the globe. But wouldn't it be helpful to understand why some areas are fairly peaceful and others aren't? It is because the security and surveillance networks are working well in the US, but less well in France? Maybe there are other reasons.

Another question is how bombing more targets in Syria, which France has started to do, has anything to do with terrorists acts in France. The problem is in France, not in Syria, isn't that correct? That seems the obvious logic to me, and there would have to be quite an explanation for why the problem is in Syria, and not France. Of course, the French response could be a case of do-something-ism--making a show of a response.

I may be asking questions that don't take many words to express, but the answers aren't going to be simple. Some people, like too many commenters on this thread, want to wipe out all Muslims, or maybe just all violent Muslims, or all Muslims in the middle east. Ideas like that are fraught with difficulties--moral, ethical, operational, etc.

So when I ask a simple question, I'm not looking for a simple answer. I'm hoping for a greater understanding of very important, difficult, widespread, and deadly issues. Don't try to give me a quick fix. It's not going to work, and most of us know that.

Image: niagarafallsreporter.com

Extras. I googled 'terrorist killings in Egypt' and didn't find long lists. Well-known was the recent bombing of Russian plane. Not well-known was the killing of Mexican tourists.

Complaints that Obama isn't hyperbolic in his response. What part of "It's going to take time" is wrong?

Burn them out

I've been thinking lately that the fighting in the Middle East seems different in a vague way. A key here is the vagueness, If I can figure out more precisely what is different, I'll might have a new, important insight that I didn't have before. So let's try.

Al-Queda, ISIS, and Boko Harum seem amazingly cruel. They blow up mosques, they blow up markets, they gun down students, the latter two kidnap girls and boast about selling women as slaves. It's barbaric, and it's definitely not in the stream of 20th century Western European behavior.

So, does it seem strange just because it's cultural different? Maybe. I'm surrounded by a liberal-tinged expectation of civility, support for the unfortunate, fair competition rather than conquest, electoral democracy, freedom of speech and religion, and all that.

Perhaps the ISIS and Boko Harum practices seem strange because they are culturally different. However, that explanation doesn't really work well. Japan and China are cultural quite different without causing the distaste and fear that ISIS/Boko Harum do. Besides, Japan, China, Europe, South American, and the US manage to get along.

What's really horrifying about is how the extent of the rejection of modern, western civility. Even the Taliban, who dynamited a precious piece of history (a huge hillside carving of Buddha), didn't go this far in their rejection of modernity. They didn't try to bring back slavery.

I seriously wonder how this philosophy can appeal to many people, and whether it has much of a future. Certainly, modern life has its bad side. We live in crowded conditions, have cheap, unhealthy entertainments, cheap, unhealthy food, and lives with less meaning and purpose than we'd like. But it seems to me that slavery and beheadings aren't the antidote to modernity. Do some people really want to go back to the cruelty of the past? For some, it seems that the answer is 'Yes.'

ISIS in particular is using cruelty to provoke a response. It hopes to provoke a war between Christians and Muslims, and has lately been ramping up the killings and abductions of Christians. Evidently they would relish all-out war, but the western countries aren't going to give it to them.

It's a better strategy (for the West) to limit their involvement, and let the cruelty of these radicals lead to their isolation. Already Jordan and Egypt are taking a stronger stand against ISIS. If only Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates weren't so slow in denouncing ISIS and seriously fighting against them. Of course, that is part of the reason ISIS, Al Queda, and Boko Harum have grown--there is too much support for any Muslim fighters, and their cruelty has (up till now) been a selling point. I certainly hope that has finally tipped. Maybe the supporters, who used to cheer the occasional bombing in Israel or the West, are finally repulsed by the amount of blood. It's about time.

Image: barenakedislam.com

Extra. A fascinating description of the religious underpinnings of ISIS.

Short: ISIS is profitable terrorism

Here is a moderately long article about the financing of ISIS. Does that sound boring? To me it doesn't, but maybe to other people. I always wonder how it is that there seems to be bottomless funding for Islamic terrorist groups. At least for ISIS, this article contains some answers.

In Muslim countries, the problem with funding of terrorists groups isn't well addressed. It seems that enough wealthy people feel that their money is well-spent on armed thugs, as long as they have the right religious persuasion. I imagine that donors hold these views when they aren't personally subject to the thuggish behavior. So I'm left hoping that they either wise up or get a taste of their own medicine (preferably the former).

The financing of ISIS reminds me that some Somali pirates were also well-financed, but with the clear aim of turning a profit. Who would have known that the pirates would be replaced with an even bloodier threat. I hate to think about what's next.

Image:dw.de

Extra. Another article focuses on ground-level operations--extracting protection money and controlling financial hubs.

Tiptoe around the War Powers Act

The US is bombing quite a bit of Iraq these days, targeting the forces of the Islamic State, or whichever name they're using today. (It used to be ISIS for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, then changed to ISIL, referring to Levant in place of Syria.)

Obama sent a letter to Congress on August 8 in compliance with the War Powers Act, which requires the president to notify Congress of military intervention, and conduct it for no more than 60 days without congressional authorization. So if the US continues bombing beyond Oct. 7, Congress needs to authorize it.

Oh no! Bad timing...

But wait! That's less than a month before the election. Will Congress be willing to take such a vote then? According to this article (and observations of this Congress), Republicans won't want to vote for anything the president requests. But they don't want to vote against military action either when it's action against murderous fundamentalist Muslim forces who are conducting mass shootings, terrifying minority religious groups, beheading high-profile prisoners, and threatening to take over the world. If you're a Republican, you hate Obama, but you hate Muslim extremists more. That still doesn't make it an easy vote, so Republicans will probably want to avoid it.

Dems have their own reasons for wanting to avoid it. They don't like reminders of how many Democrats voted for Bush's Iraq war resolution. If that was a mistake, wouldn't this be a mistake too? That's the easiest way to look at it. They can try to lessen the unease by putting limits on the military actions, but it's unclear that will satisfy wary Dems who'll have to take that vote.

So both Dems and GOP fear making a mistake on this vote. Will Obama force them to take a vote? If history is a guide, he won't. He never forced a vote on Libya. He got a lot of pushback against a vote authorizing bombing of Syria, and the vote never materialized. There's a very good chance that this vote won't happen either.

A Law is a Law

That's not good. We don't need yet another military action where the Congress was too divided to discuss and vote on it. We don't want to add to the precedent of a president and a Congress being too cowardly to follow a perfectly reasonable law... do we?

Maybe we don't mind it. Skirting laws probably happens all the time. The president and Congress don't follow the law, but they get away with it because ... the law is a pain in the ass, and no one that important is going to complain about the breach. Breaking the law is less embarrassing than having to decide which way to vote, so it's tough noogies to the law. Hey, maybe we shouldn't bother having laws at all.

Well, on second thought, laws are generally good, and it's best to abide by them for the most part. The War Powers Act is a reasonable law, and should be followed. Obama shouldn't be such a wuss--he should go to Congress and ask for authorization, a definite yes or a definite no. Then it's on Congress to act. They can authorize, vote against the authorization, or they can wimp out and not vote at all. If the members of Congress can't get a vote, they are the ones who failed to express their will, and Obama should do what he thinks needs to be done. That's still not in compliance with the law, but at least he gave it a chance.

Shoulda, woulda, coulda, but didn't.

Image: cagle.com

Update 4/6/15. We now know how Congress will respond, and it's by wimping out. Obama sent a request to Congress on 2/11/15. For some, it's too limited a request, for some too much, and for some, it's the hated prez asking for something, so the answer is easy.