I like to joke about Slate running articles with titles like “Why Genocide Is Good For Real Estate Values”, but this is from a real article from Time Magazine:

Want Peace? Give a Nuke the Nobel

As long as a nukeless world remains wishful thinking and pastoral rhetoric, we’ll be all right. But if the Nobel committee truly cares about peace, they will think a little harder about actually trying to make it a reality. Open a history book and you’ll see what the modern world looks like without nuclear weapons. It is horrible beyond description.

During the 31 years leading up to the first atomic bomb, the world without nuclear weapons engaged in two global wars resulting in the deaths of an estimated 78 million to 95 million people, uniformed and civilian. The world wars were the hideous expression of what happens when the human tendency toward conflict hooks up with the violent possibilities of the industrial age. The version of this story we are most familiar with today is the Nazi death machinery, and so we are often tempted to think that if Hitler had not happened, we would never have encountered assembly line murder.

The truth is that industrial killing was practiced by many nations in the old world without nuclear weapons. Soldiers were gassed and machine-gunned by the hundreds of thousands in the trenches of World War I, when Hitler was just another corporal in the Kaiser’s army. By World War II, countries on both sides of the war used airplanes and artillery to rain death on battlefields as well as cities, until the number killed around the world was so huge the best estimates of the total number lost diverge by some 16 million souls. The dead numbered 62 million, or 78 million — somewhere in there.

Look, a huge number of the people who died in wars in the 31 years prior to the invention of the nuclear bomb died in wars that originated in western Europe. Is he really claiming that he can say with a high degree of certainty that German would invaded France again if not for the nuclear bomb? What about the Marshall Plan? What about the European Union?

And, obviously, tell the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki what a lifesaver nuclear bombs have been.

I used to think the most annoying people to argue with were Clinton supporters during the primary last year. I may have to re-eavulate that assessment. At any rate, back to my earlier post on the bizarre freak-out from the online gay activists to Obama’s speech at the HRC. Some times I don’t think people read what I say at all. For example:

I love this blog but I have a genuine problem with someone who is straight telling gay people to relax regarding DADT and DOM. We just don’t have the luxury of waiting. Sully is a self-righteous tool sometimes and definitely does not speak for the gay community, but honestly John. What we are asking for is so simple and quite small. I would rather not be lectured.

Precisely where did I say to be patient? To state it again, since you all apparently did not read it the first time:

Yes, you have every right to be pissed at the current state of affairs, because I sure would be pissed at being treated as a second class citizen if I were gay, and yes, if I had my way these things would already have been taken care of, and yes, you may have heard parts of his speech a year ago.

If I were gay and being treated like a second-class citizen, denied the rights straight people have, I would be blowing shit up, so I am not telling you to shut up or be patient. What I am telling you, however, is that the response from last night is completely and totally unproductive. In fact, it could actually be destructive to the cause.

The past eight years the Bush administration declared open war on the gay community. Now, you have a President who has openly declared his support for the causes, and not only that, campaigned in support of those issues, and then just took to the microphone and gave a long speech in support of those issues. And the response? This is typical:

He has not even remotely tried to use the bully pulpit. He has not expended one iota of his capital to move anything through Congress…and DADT is rejected by something like 60% plus of the American people!

As I noted in the comments, what exactly do you think the bully pulpit is? When the President takes to the podium at the HRC dinner, and openly, publicly, and I think, passionately supports your cause, that is using the bully pulpit. There isn’t some magic podium with a sign that says “Bully” on it from which a speech can be given and all the wrongs in the world are righted.

And despite the fact that Obama’s position is a 180 degree turn from the previous administration, which declared open war with the FMA, he is greeted with catcalls of “what have you done for me lately” or “just words,” feeding the right-wing narrative that Obama is all talk. Well played.

Nothing constructive is ever built with negativity. Period. So instead of blowing up at the first President in my lifetime to openly advocate for gay rights, why don’t you do something constructive? Why don’t you embrace his message? How about an ad campaign that has Obama speaking from the HRC declaring support for your goals, and asking Congress whether they want to join you and the President in achieving those goals? How about going to Harry Reid, who is in a tight election as it is, and asking him whether or not he will join with the President and the gay community to end DADT and DOMA? How about stating that you stand in unison with the President, that you intend to work with him to achieve those goals.

I understand that may not be as cathartic as knee-capping your own guy while chanting “just words,” but it might be more productive. And it isn’t settling. It isn’t telling you to shut up or relax or be patient. It is telling you that working to change the status quo is more productive than hurting your own team, even though throwing eggs and making farty sounds with your armpit is more fun.

And by the way, while you all are weakening your own team, Maggie Gallagher and Focus on the Family are all raising money to turn things back to the way they were on January 19th 2009. While you may not realize things are a lot different now, trust me, those guys do.

You can already see it coming.

The Obama administration is considering outbidding the Taliban to persuade Afghan villagers to lay down arms as it struggles to find a new approach to a war that is fast losing public and congressional support.

This, of course, is precisely how the Bush administration fostered the Anbar Awakening. If we had an adopt-a-moron program going, I would volunteer to watch Ace of Spades for the most historically ignorant shit-losing, but obviously the field is wide open.

What really bothers me about the Hiatt/Sully Nobel for Neda campaign, beyond the fact that Nobel prizes cannot be awarded posthumously, is that it seems disrespectful of Neda’s humanity. This courageous young Iranian woman was a human being, who can no longer speak for herself. Sully and Hiatt don’t know anything about Neda, and they certainly don’t know exactly what she would say, what she would she advocate for, if she were still alive. To use her dead body as a symbol for their own political beliefs is deeply wrong.

I’ve always had the same problem with Christianity. You would like to think that if you spent your life preaching a message of peace and tolerance and were eventually executed for doing so, that people wouldn’t spend the next 2000 years waging wars and torturing people in your name.

I understand the impulse to use the dead bodies of people who died for their beliefs as tools to advance your own agenda. But it’s a temptation that should be resisted, out of respect. It’s one thing to be inspired, it’s quite another to put words in the mouths of the dead .

I’m still sick as a dog, hacking shit up and feeling miserable, but I have to get this off my chest.

Could someone please tell Andrew Sullivan and the rest of the crowd that the last President, a fellow named Bush, dedicated his administration to openly persecuting homosexuals through the FMA and through ballot initiatives in tight races in 2004 all while his Justice department refused to hire and even fired gays and lesbians or anyone who had any ties to organizations that might associate with gays and lesbians.

The President before him, a Democrat by the name of Clinton, passed DADT and signed DOMA.

Now, you have a President who not only campaigned on and has stated repeatedly that he will work to end DADT, DOMA, and any number of other issues important the cause, but who went to the HRC, proudly took the podium, and advocated his support for their cause in front of the entire nation.

And the result? He’s getting shit on for not doing things fast enough. It is almost like they think the speech to the HRC was a policy meeting that was supposed to unleash the new steps the administration is taking to achieve these goals. It wasn’t. This was a speech to the HRC, but this was also a speech to the entire country. Yes, you have every right to be pissed at the current state of affairs, because I sure would be pissed at being treated as a second class citizen if I were gay, and yes, if I had my way these things would already have been taken care of, and yes, you may have heard parts of his speech a year ago.

Big difference though. Then, it was Candidate Obama. Now, it is President Obama. And while you may be too shortsighted to recognize it right now, it was a pretty damned big deal what happened last night. So some perspective would be nice.

/rant

Pittsburgh will probably go on playing down to its competition, just like they did last year. I hope that Lily has some defibrillator training.

***Update***

John Cole, please answer your pager.

I was more disturbed by the tv news style sensationalism of suggesting Neda for the Nobel Prize, but, no, the prize cannot be awarded posthumously. Also. How hard would it have been for Fred Hiatt to look this up?

Like your usual open thread, but more pithy and reassuring.

Coming home from the theater the other day, it occurred to me that Ayn Rand was Russian and presumably literate, and yet she never acknowledged that Fyodor Dostoyevsky laughed at her juvenile philosophy a hundred years before she wrote it. Doesn’t everyone who reads Crime and Punishment or sees it performed have the same reaction? Just wondering.

Took a walk around Highland Park reservoir with the camera tonight. I needed a tripod for some stuff as the night got darker, but most of it was done handheld.

The next two were done with ISO 800. Loving the 4/3 image sensor.

If you are getting a slightly saturated feel, yeah, I still haven’t gotten over Velvia 36.

What are you up to?

Been watching a couple episodes of Season One of the Sopranos, and I had forgotten how good Nancy Marchand’s character was (Tony’s mom).

Ron Radosh at PJ Media reacts to the Nobel prize news to… insist Bill Ayers will write Obama’s acceptance speech, just as he did his books.

Is it too much to hope that one day, beltway wankers like Chip Reid will realize that Bush Derangement Syndrome was just projection, and that they will begin to understand that the Republican party is not filled with rational actors.

I’m worse off than I was yesterday. Thank god for fisherman’s friend and Vicks vaporizers.

The nutters have now had 24 hours to react to the Nobel Prize. Will they pull themselves together and stop acting like jerks? Will one of the elder statesmen in the party tell them they can’t turn it up to 11 all the time without looking insane? Has anyone figured out in the GOP that while Obama may not deserve the Nobel (and I happen to be one who thinks it was premature and he definitely did not deserve it), the only person you can’t blame for getting the award is Obama?

We shall see.

Thank you, Jezebel, for a much-needed LOL…

Happy weekend, y’all!