Tuesday Miscellany!

[maxomai]

• The escalationsurge in Afghanistan hasn't delivered the promised results, so they're scaling back expectations for the post-surge peace. Whatever. The sooner we're out of there, the better.


• Syria's civil war currently consists of Assad and his backers (which include Russia, China, and Hezbollah) on the one hand, and a disunited cacophony of rebel groups on the other. Weighty humanitarian issues aside (2), there are serious concerns whether the United States getting involved will end up backfiring badly. Which is why our pledging humanitarian aid to the rebellion is a questionable move.


• In theory, 3D printing allows one to print one's own gun. In practice, if you try this, the printer manufacturer will revoke your lease and take the printer back. It probably didn't help that the leaser didn't have a federal license to manufacture firearms - BATF cracks down on gun manufacturing the way Wal-Mart cracks down on unions. Expect future lease agreements to include a "no firearms" clause.


• If Romney wins the election and enacts his health plan, 72 million will be left uninsured. Good thing he's currently losing.


• I use Eclipse for Java development all the time, because that's what my place of work uses. But I like NetBeans better. I don't know why; I just do. Unfortunately the UML designer seems to have been dropped. Hopefully its replacement is superior.

Comments

(sigh)

[arkham4269.livejournal.com]

Once again you have to wonder how much Democrats' foreign policy is driven simply to seem tough so as not to get attacked by the GOP for being weak.

I mean no matter what Obama does, some GOP types will liken it to either being wimpy or keeping us from being safe. Stop using drones to kill civilians with monotonous regularity? The fiend wants Al Qaeda to win. Stays out of Syria? Isn't doing enough for the Middle East Peace process. Pulls out of AFG? Dishonoring all our dead...and Hallibruton's bottomline.

Re: (sigh)

[maxomai.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, a foreign policy of imperial entanglement is squarely in the Overton Window, with only a few "radicals" such as the Pauls and Dennis Kucinich dissenting. My fear is that moving the Overton Window towards disentanglement is going to be much harder than similar efforts on other issues, such as marijuana legalization. In fact, I think we're going to see more Afghanistan and Iraq wars as equipment improves and women move into more combat roles, since both of these prima facie positive phenomena will increase our capacity to wage war.

It wouldn't be so bad if we could just have an adult conversation about why Muslims would be pissed off enough to besiege our embassies over a stupid video. Shit like that doesn't happen in a vacuum.