Relaxed Focus: "The triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

"You owe it to yourself to have that element of irreducible rascality."

Clever.

Always re-post: "The triumph of intellect and romance over brute force and cynicism."

Don't Blame Libertarians for Bipartisan Failures in Iraq and Afghanistan - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Have you heard the news? American foreign policy is in tatters BECAUSE LIBERTARIANS! Seriously, GOP blowhards are attacking folks such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for his foreign policy failures (Paul is slow to invade and occupy countries). Funny thing is, the Republican Party's preferred strategy of stupid goals topped off by terrible execution isn't working so well. And don't expect any help from a Democratic Party and a president that hasn't met a country they don't want to invade or drone...

All large-scale and long-term military engagements should actually be put to a specific congressional vote as dictated both by the Constitution and by common sense. The use of military force should be governed not by a set of infinitely expandable terms such as ensuring human rights and expanding democracy, but far narrower and less grandiose ideals of national defense. As Rand Paul wrote recently in a response to criticisms from Rick Perry and other Republicans, “Anytime someone advocates sending our sons and daughters to war, questions about precise objectives, effective methods and an exit strategy must be thoughtfully answered.” Most importantly, foreign policy should not be reduced to a synonym for military action and covert operations. The most powerful weapon the United States has for expanding peace and enlarging prosperity has nothing to do with guns and bullets and everything to do with the way in which we have created a nation of 300 million-plus people who generally get along peacefully while pursuing radically different visions of the good life."

After Bipartisan Bush-Obama Blundering, Let’s Try a Libertarian Foreign Policy - The Daily Beast: "Libertarians, says Gov. Rick Perry, are just nouveau isolationists and “isolationist policies make the threat of terrorism even greater.”

...You got that? It’s not our go-it-alone crusaderism and robust military presence all over the world that has managed to lower America’s “favorability” in the eyes of longtime allies and client states such as Britain, Germany, Japan, and Egypt. It’s our hypothetical willingness to stop being globo-cop that’s the issue, not our very real attempts to nation-build and even region-sculpt in parts of the world that have asked us to leave...

Obama’s foreign policy certainly hasn’t lacked for the use of force. It has, however, lacked for successes, as became clear during an unintentionally hilarious yet telling State Department press conference in May. State’s Jen Psaki said that, in her view, “the president doesn’t give himself enough credit for what he’s done around the world.” “Credit for what?” one reporter interrupted. “I’m sorry, credit for what?” The others in the room started laughing. Around the same time, NBC’s Richard Engel, who is not known as a staunch critic for the administration, was asked to name a few countries with which relations have improved under Obama. His reply? “I think you would be hard pressed to find that...I think the reason is our allies have become confused." First under Bush and now under Obama, the one constant in American foreign policy is a lack of any conceivable constraint on whatever the president deems expedient at any moment in time. This is disastrous, especially when it comes to military and covert actions, because it precludes any serious public discussion and prioritization...

That’s not just bad for the U.S. It’s also bad for our allies, who have no framework by which to structure their own actions and expectations. The president is allowed to both declare red lines and then to ignore them when they are crossed, to dispatch troops or planes or supplies according to whim. In all of this, Obama in no way represents a break from Bush, but perfect continuity...

For the entirety of the 21st century, leading Democrats and Republicans have shown their inability to conduct foreign policy as anything other than unmitigated disaster. If a libertarian alternative—one that emphasizes cultural and economic exchange and uses military intervention as a limited, last-best-option that should be explicitly sanctioned by Congress—strikes you as immature and unlikely to succeed, that says more about your powers of self-delusion than you’ll ever understand."

Climatologist John Christy: "The Science Is Not Settled" - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "Dr. Christy is an outlier on what the vast majority of his colleagues consider to be a matter of consensus: that global warming is both settled science and a dire threat. He regards it as neither. Not that the earth is not heating up. It is, he says, and carbon dioxide spewed from power plants, automobiles and other sources is at least partly responsible. But in speeches, congressional testimony and peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, he argues that predictions of future warming have been greatly overstated and that humans have weathered warmer stretches without perishing...

“I detest words like ‘contrarian’ and ‘denier,’ ” he said. “I’m a data-driven climate scientist. Every time I hear that phrase, ‘The science is settled,’ I say I can easily demonstrate that that is false, because this is the climate — right here. The science is not settled.”

Dr. Christy was pointing to a chart comparing seven computer projections of global atmospheric temperatures based on measurements taken by satellites and weather balloons. The projections traced a sharp upward slope; the actual measurements, however, ticked up only slightly. Such charts — there are others, sometimes less dramatic but more or less accepted by the large majority of climate scientists — are the essence of the divide between that group on one side and Dr. Christy and a handful of other respected scientists on the other...

...charts showing the divergence between actual global temperature trends and computer model projections. Here's one such:

Yet another TSA screener doesn't know that DC is part of America - Boing Boing: "An Orlando TSA screener told a DC-based reporter that he'd need a passport to fly, because DC isn't a state, so a DC driver's license wasn't valid ID. This isn't the first time we've written about this here, and it's not an isolated incident, according to the TSA. The real problem with this kind of dunderheadedness is that it makes it clear that the whole TSA rigmarole is just a pointless, humiliating, expensive dumbshow. If a TSA screener doesn't have the basic smarts to know that DC is part of the USA, it calls into question his ability to make good judgments about anything. Either terrorism is an existential threat to America, in which case the TSA checkpoints should be staffed by highly skilled crackerjacks, or it's not a big deal, in which case, we should be keeping our shoes on and flying with as much hair gel as we can carry. But saying that a single aviation attack is the end of America as we know it, and acting like it's a small enough risk that we can staff checkpoints with dimbulbs makes you wonder if this isn't about civil service empire-building, government contractor pork, and a general contempt for the American public, and not about terrorism at all."