Over Two Million Served
That’s about 1.9 million more hits than I expected the blog to get. Thanks to all of our readers and to all the bloggers who have supported us.
Today in "WTF?"
Wow. Here’s what I stumbled across the other day while researching General John DeWitt’s infamous (and unoriginal) “a Jap is a Jap” remark from WWII. I really was stricken mute by this image, to say nothing of the shop’s name:
Because I was genuinely curious about the back story on this place, I actually called and spoke with the owner-manager for about five minutes this afternoon. It was one of the more unusual conversations I’ve had in quite some time. I introduced myself and explained what I do, and I contextualied the call by pointing out that I’ve been writing off and on about the use of World War II memory in American politics and culture. I was “interested,” I explained, in knowing why the Japanese imperial flag appeared as part of the shop’s logo — and why the name of the business would boast such an obvious racial pejorative.
Among other things, the chap clarified that the owners aren’t Japanese-American, nor do any “Orientals” work there. The shop has been called “Happy Jap’s” for 19 years now, and the name and the logo “just kind of happened, just seemed to fit” with the fact that the shop worked on Japanese cars. He added that his father — a World War II vet — has always hated the fact that his son works on Hondas and Subarus, because they remind him of “some hard times” that he prefers not to discuss. The father evidently bears some “resentment” toward the Japanese, sixty years after the fact.
After getting through the preliminaries, I gingerly wondered if the shop had ever received any complaints about the name or the logo (which I could imagine might be offensive to a variety of Asian-Americans who might not want to be reminded of Japan’s imperial — and also racially chauvinistic — expansion during the 1930s and 1940s). The owner insisted that the only people who were ever offended were “Anglo-Saxons,” never “Orientals.” Sure, he conceded, some people might raise an eyebrow or two, but once they saw the kind of work they do in the shop, they understood that the name was inconsequential. At that point, I resisted the urge to ask if he’d be equally comfortable owning a business called “The Happy Darkie” or “The Happy Redskin.”
He asked me if I found the name offensive, and I explained that yes, as a historian I see nothing redeemable about the term “Jap” and that I discovered his website while searching for information on the internment of 120,000 innocent people who had been scapegoated for the crimes of the Japanese government. I added that the epithet was once a casual feature of white conversation but that we rarely hear it used any more — and for good reason.
That was pretty much the end of the conversation right there. We exchanged our closing pleasantries and left it at that. He had cars to fix and “Orientals” not to offend, and I had some serious head-scratching to do.
What? I Thought Congress Was Full of Traitors…
Via Drum:
….”The debate in Congress … has been helpful in demonstrating to the Iraqis that American patience is limited,” Gates told Pentagon reporters traveling with him in Jordan. “The strong feelings expressed in the Congress about the timetable probably has had a positive impact … in terms of communicating to the Iraqis that this is not an open-ended commitment.”
Who knew that democracy could have a “positive impact”?
The Other 600
There are roughly 130,000 contractors in Iraq, said [Barry} McCaffrey; about 4,000 of them have been wounded and 600 have been killed, he said.
It’s unclear whether McCaffrey was talking specifically about American deaths or contractor deaths overall, but the comment highlights an oft-overlooked aspect of the chaos in Iraq. While most have focused on American military losses, civilian contractors (including both private security personnel and engineers, etc.) are also taking it on the chin. This has predictably awful consequences, as contractors have the expertise necessary to reconstruction, and a high death rate scares away most and makes the rest far, far more expensive.
Just another facet of the disaster, really.
Unhappy Anniversary
April 17, 1861:
An Ordinance to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United State of America by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution.The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, That the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying and adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare, That said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the voter of the people of this State cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Virginia’s voters cast their approval for the secession ordinance a month later. Meantime, the western counties of the state — which overwhelmingly disapproved of secession — prepared to organize their own separate, loyal government in Wheeling.
We often forget the importance of this particular act of secession. In the two months prior to the attack on Ft. Sumter, the debate over the ordinance was intense in the state that viewed itself as the “Mother of the Union.” While the usual nonsense was served up in favor of departure, many convention members and observers countered by arguing that secession would deprive Virginia of its leading role in the US, converting it instead into a “tail” of the cotton states. Those fears aside, Virginia was more than a mere appendage to the Confederacy, which would have been utterly helpless without the advantages Virginia provided — a large population, a major iron works in Richmond, and geographic proximity to Washingon, DC. In defense of a slave-owning society that had been diminishing in the state for about a century, Virginia’s secessionists squandered tens of thousands of lives and enabled the ruin of their own economy. Among the many poorly-conceived decisions made by my home state, secession surely outranks all challengers.
Projection
Glenn Reynolds: “If Bush and Cheney were really evil, they’d both resign and stick the Democrats with a Pelosi Presidency for the next two years. The Democratic Party would never recover.” After all, Congress is less popular than Bush.
v. reality: “So people like the Democratic congress better than they like the Republican one. 44/54 is also considerably better than the 35/62 approve/disapprove split Bush gets. Indeed, fully 49 percent of respondents say they strongly disapprove “of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president” — Bush Derangement Syndrome has gone mainstream. Nancy Pelosi, however, is much more popular than either Bush or Congress generically — earning a 53/35 approve/disapprove split. Ever since she became the top House Democrat, the DC press corps has been insisting that Pelosi is an unpopular figure whose bad for the Democrats. This because she’s the most robustly liberal person we’ve seen in high elected office in over ten years. The evidence, however, doesn’t bare this theory out. In the spring of 1995, Newt Gingrich’s approval numbers were in the thirties.”
Heh. Indeed!
You Got a Problem With That?
I shall henceforth be known only by my Mafia Nickname, “Knuckles”. Via Slate.
The High Cost of Drug Treatment
I was a little worried when I saw the headline in today’s NY Times article: Revolving Door for Addicts Adds to Medicaid Cost. Often when I write about my opposition to the drug war, I encourage more widespread use of state-funded treatment programs (though NY is somewhat generous, most states are not). Was this article going to make that argument even less popular than it currently is?
Well, yes and no, and for the most part, the no’s win.
The Times article details the great expense of treating the 500 people in the state who most use and abuse the revolving door of Medicaid-funded treatment in the state. According to the article, those 500 alone cost the system $50 million annually. And that’s certainly a problem, particularly when that money could be spread out to help more people receive badly needed treatment. Those 500 are a drain on resources because they use drug treatment not as a way toward actually kicking their addictions, but rather as a break — a time to lower their resistance so they can get high on a lesser amount of expensive opiates and narcotics, a getaway even. As one former user puts it to the Times:
“I would tell myself I was just a brother who needed a rest, not somebody who had a problem,” he said. “I could mimic what they said with such grace and conviction, they would swear I was cured.”
But while this attitude is part of the reason for the system’s high cost, it’s neither the most central nor the most under state control to change. The real problem, it turns out, is the lack of homeless services which could treat the many needs that drive these 500 – and thousands of others – to seek expensive, inpatient addiction treatment:
The system suits the most frequent patients — most of them homeless, mentally ill, or both — who see the programs as a source of shelter and food. And the most expensive treatment, which usually involves some sedation, can reduce the discomfort of withdrawal better than other methods. [...]
But at its core, experts say, the overuse of costly inpatient programs is connected to the lack of housing for homeless people. People are less likely to admit themselves to hospitals, and more likely to adhere to treatment programs, when they are not living on the streets. For more than a decade, the city and state have invested in such housing, including some that accept residents who are not yet drug-free, but demand for housing still far exceeds supply.
Sure, the programs are expensive, but their cost can be controlled not through cutting badly needed treatment services, but through increasing funding for services that meet lower level needs, including temporary housing and food.
Another part of the problem is the structure of federal Medicaid, which in its infinite wisdom, will pay for in-hospital detox (the most expensive) but not inpatient treatment programs, which cost about the same as outpatient medically managed detox (which is explained in the article), and which are more effective long term. It’s a backwards policy that is having a disastrous impact not only on the state’s budget but also on the lives of the many people who could benefit from inpatient, community-based treatment. It seems like a common thread in American social policy, no? Plug a hole with your thumb but don’t figure out what caused the hole or how it might permanently be closed.
(Also at AB&B)
This didn’t take long, either
The Wikipedia entry is already quite massive — around 600 edits today. Scanning the progress on this one is depressing. The original stub began with the announcement of one person killed. Within a few hours, as the news got progressively worse, the title of the event had crossed various thresholds, from “Virginia Tech shooting” (lower case) to “Virginia Tech Shooting” (upper case) to “Virginia Tech Massacre.” By 6:00 EST, the conversation had <turned to whether this was the deadliest shooting or merely the deadliest school shooting in US history. “I’m sure there have been deadlier shootings,” one editor surmised.
I’m not sure the appropriate response to that remark is “I wish,” but — horrifyingly enough — that was the first thing that came to mind.
That didn’t take long
TBogg’s nickname for Bob Owens — usually known around these parts as Treason-in-Defense-of-Slavery Yankee — is especially apt today.
Gun Counter Gomer believes that Virginia Tech and other college campuses would be a lot safer if everyone were packing heat:
Would the number of students shot at Virginia Tech today have been lower if student there were allowed to take a training class, get a permit, and carry a concealed weapon on campus? There is of course not way to be sure. I do think it is obvious that an armed student or faculty member could have at least made taking their lives a far more difficult.I’d urge a far more somber Virginia General Assembly, and the General Assembly of other states, to consider letting student who have satisfied their state requirements to carry concealed weapons also carry those weapons on campus. The lives saved may belong to someone dear to them.
Gomer also highlights the possibility that the shooter was “Asian.”
Jagoff.
. . . TBogg himself has more for the dumpster diver.
Selective Outrage
To follow up on Matt and Atrios, Radley Balko asks his readers if they’ve heard of James Giles. Giles, like the three men in the Duke rape case, was falsely accused of rape. Unlike the Duke men, however, he didn’t have the money to hire top-flight legal counsel and didn’t benefit from attracting opportunistic attention from powerful conservative statists with a strong commitment to opposing “political correctness.” As a result, Giles “served 10 years in prison, as well as an additional 14 years on probation and as a registered sex offender” before being exonerated by DNA evidence. Despite having faced much more dire consequences, Giles’ case has attracted a fraction of the attention.
The point is not that the Duke case was not an injustice, or that it didn’t merit attention. Privileged white guys also deserve equal treatment under the law, and prosecutorial abuse is always bad. But despite the attempts of people like Walter Olson to draw grossly inappropriate analogies between these defendants and the Scottsboro boys, it’s also worth noting that there are cases of prosecutorial abuse that, because they happen to people with fewer resources and less social status, have much worse consequences and yet somehow fail to interest many people screaming about the Duke case because there’s no chance to rail against left-wing academics. It would be nice if the people upset about the Duke case will start contributing to the ACLU, supporting increased funding for public defenders offices, loosening recent restrictions on habeas suits, looking carefully at the drug war, etc. But I’m not holding my breath.
[Also at TAPPED.]
