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Okay, personal note: it’s an exaggeration to say my life has “turned inside-out” the past few weeks, but it’s been weird and let’s face it, I’m no Hunter Thompson. It  definitely can get too weird for me. So I’ve had little time or energy for the wider world of weirdness.

But I’ll jot down a few more thoughts on the expanding Occupy Wall Street protests.

First, on my non-participation. As noted the other day, any excuse feels like an excuse; Uncle Paul gives his own explanation today and it sounds flimsy though obviously I’m sympathetic, since my own absence from (more and more geographically distributed) protests is at least as flimsy.

That said, where to begin… The main action is still in New York, and I’m in Cleveland. I’ve been very busy. I’m a pussy; I’m pathetically non-confrontational. I’m an isolated, introverted single individual; I suspect that very few people join in demonstrations like this on their own.

The big reason, though, is probably that my brain just doesn’t work this way. I’m probably what one pop-psychology system has termed a “concrete sequential;” in any event my nature is overwhelmingly one of cautious, logical, ordered progression. Whereas protests generally, including in this case, just don’t match up with that approach. One of The Economist bloggers bucked the punditry trend, today, and suggested that “what [protesters] want is pretty clear: jobs, cheaper health care, cheaper education, and relief from suffocating debt.” And I’m for these things, really.

Yet, if I were at an Occupy Wall Street protest, I just don’t think I could satisfactorily get past the questions “what exactly do you hope to achieve, and how exactly do you hope to achieve it by standing here yelling and waving a sign?” (more…)

Another in a series of posts which I basically wrote and finished except for putting them in WordPress or actually, y’know, posting them, and then forgot about as weeks became months. In this instance, I examine the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, and maybe get a bit carried away (or maybe not?) in regards to the federal judiciary.

So, once again, America’s media have done a wonderful job of finding an inflammatory and attention-getting “storyline” while doing an inexcusably piss-poor job of actually informing people about reality.

The headline-narrative of their reporting, “health care reform ruled unconstitutional,” will undoubtedly prove effective in getting people riled up and generating a lot of clicks and forwards and comments and retweets and Facebook whatevers. So, presumably the fact that it creates a deeply misleading impression is considered irrelevant.

A fuller and more-accurate description of the situation, if anyone cares about such things and is willing to look for the buried lead (hint: try the end of the story) would actually take in the fact that rulings on challenges to the Affordable Care Act are thus far evenly split, 2-2, along effectively partisan lines.

What’s particularly dismal about journalism’s blithering idiocy, in this case, is that the partisan split in judicial rulings on health care reform is not merely important as context for the most recent ruling, but is also a rather significant and I would even say interesting story on its own. (more…)

In my continuing series of useful, simple, completely obvious and absolutely-without-a-chance ideas, may I suggest:

A free trade zone within the United States.

At this point most readers will be either preparing objections to naive libertarian dogma or, more likely, concluding that I’m drunk again. I assure you, however: I’ve had nothing to drink today stronger than green tea.

So why do I make the absurd suggestion of “a free trade zone within the United States?” Because that seems like the most effective way I can think of to express the idea of eliminating a stupid, regressive, ridiculous maze of what are for practical purposes barriers to either free or fair trade.

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