^^^ I'm not sure where the hate for LBJ comes from. who cares if he had a mistress and engaged in political maneuvering?

BUT....It would be remiss of Boingboing to link to her talk without at least mentioning her....indiscretion in ~2000. She lifted passaged for her book on Lincoln almost completely (and w/o attribution) from another historian's book on the same subject.

Just FYI.

"What do I tell my investors?"

"tell them you fucked up"

"fuck you"

"fuck you!"

riotous laughter. :)

Suddenly, single men in the area all 'forgot' to return their recently checked out copies of Pride and Prejudice.

Maybe her name is Marian?

#82 I couldn't be more proud that the house is fighting the administration on telecom immunity. I can only hope that the fight lasts longer.

As for your ridiculous claim that you are somehow imperiled by this fight.......WOW. You do understand that the only reason this lapsed legislation exists is because the White House got caught spying ILLEGALY on americans and had to come up with a bill rubber stamping it as a compromise, right? You realize that? Please tell me that you do.

@ 74/75 It isn't an "anti-government" agenda. This is simple common sense. Policies should exist that allow the free movement and assembly of people. Policies which impede this in a blanket fashion belong in history books telling tales of Soviet Republics, not in a country that was founded on the notion that government owes a debt to the governed.

The article is pretty clear. The kid would have been in an ambulance at the very least by about midway through their detention. From the Honolulu airport it is about 6-7 minutes to the ER entry of the nearest hospital, at most. at that point (and even while on the ambulance), the kid would have had access to telemetry, oxygen and porfessional help.

And let's not descend into wild accusations and silly reasoning. the plane didn't get delayed, the cab wasn't delayed, etc. And even if those did happen, they fall into the category of unavoidable unpleasant outcomes in life. Locking a woman and child in a room who need to get to a hospital and have already been approved for entry is not an unavoidable outcome.

So this turned into a debate about abortion, eh....

I guess I should just call someone a fascist to end this puppy.

#38

You've never won an argument in your life, I'll bet on it. You don't convince people that a policy is bad because it results in X dollars in lost productivity over the course of four financial quarters. You convince people that a policy is bad by showing harmful impacts of that policy and then suggesting an alternative without those impacts.

Decisions made by the numbers are for public policy analysis where no such gut argument exists. If your treatment plan for diabetes causes a higher number of deaths per thousand while in the testing stage than the null group, you discontinue the test. If your new product costs the company 0.02/lb more than the old product and doesn't net any savings in the future, you don't make the switch. Those aren't arguments. Those are policy decisions where strict cost-benefit analysis determines the outcome.

Cost-benefit analysis doesn't win over converts. You don't convince someone that abortion is a viable medical alternative to unwanted pregnancies by showing aggregate expected social surplus to communities with lax abortion law versus higher rates of depression/suicide/etc in states with more restrictive abortion laws. You don't do that because you aren't using the same framework to evaluate the issue.

The same is true here. The people who support and run the TSA aren't using strict cost-benefit analysis (and even if they were, they could easily show that even 10-100 accidental deaths per year is worth what they estimate as prevention of possible terrorist attacks). they are arguing for the TSA due to personal belief about the nature of government and its purpose in protecting us. You aren't going to convince a populace that believes that the governments primary role is to safeguard the lives of its citizens that they should abandon a security programe because of numbers. It won't work. You will run into the iraq war block.

Tell supporters of the iraq war that there were no WMD's (there weren't), they will reply that there might have been and it is better that we erred on the side of caution. Tell them that we didn't 'err', that we knew the truth and ignored it in order to go to war with a country we didn't need to and they will tell you that we got rid of saddam who was a blah, blah, blah. Tell them that saddam wasn't really a threat, and besides, most of his crimes against humanity were committed with the tacit approval of the US and they will tell you that we had to......

You will get into a loop. Facts don't beat mindsets. Shock to the concience beats mindsets.

Statistics about police brutality didn't change how we viewed the NYPD. Having the nation see that Police officers shot an unarmed man on his own porch 40+ times changed that. Seeing that polic officers tortured a man in custody because he was black changed that. Complaints/1000 households didn't change that.

And besides, we aren't advocating eliminating border security and airline security completely. We just want policies that make sense.

@ #23.

Get out. Out. Out out out out.

WE have the numbers. We've shown the numbers. We continue to show links to strong and solid argumentation that DHS/TSA is doing little substantive to help us be more secure and yet is infringing heavily on our freedom to assemble.

We showed that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake, terrifying in concept, bungled in reality. We showed that US surveilance of americans illegally affects thousands who have done nothing wrong.

The problem is we don't own the debate. We don't own the figures. We can't produce a study on how effective liquid bans are on reducing terror attacks authoritatively because we are denied basic information on 'security' reasons. We can't debate intelligently about NSA wiretaps or torture or secret prisons or any of that horrible shit because the people who own the facts are the ones we are fighting against. We need to show that these policies impact lives. We need to show that these policies piss people off, that these policies do not thwart terror, that these policies may kill innocents.

And don't give me that crap about using numbers. Numbers don't win arguments, never have. Stories connect people and win arguments.

but if you want a fucking number, here's one. This is one fucking person who FUCKING DIED because our customs/security system is run by autocrats. One person who didn't have to die. Who did. That's one too many.