weinraub’s words

Looking through some old mail and found a link I had sent around. It was a NY Times Op-Ed piece about the troubling use of illegal as a noun.

Every last bit of the article is right on, and despite being nearly two years old, it’s is still just as relevant today. For example:

Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.

Right on.

Read the whole article.

So, USA bails out AIG which uses the funds to pay GS which has connections to senior USA officials. Now a USA bailout of GM is complicated by objections from GM bondholders, some of whom would prefer GM default so they could collect AIG-supplied credit default swaps, swaps which are claimable because USA bailed out AIG.

What a mess…

This is why the government really shouldn’t be in this at all.

But this isn’t the should-world, it’s the real-world. Sigh…

With recent Thailand’s political situation making such international news, a lot of folks back home have been checking in. We are all fine, thanks to everyone for thinking of us.

As most of you know, we are down in Phuket and the vast majority of this political silliness takes place up in Bangkok, approx 1,000 miles away. So, in terms of violence or even traffic jams, there is absolutely no impact on us.

Last year’s Phuket airport blockade and the subsequent blockade of Bangkok’s airports are examples of the relatively rare kind of political protest that could have direct impact on us. In fact, I did get caught up in the Phuket airport closure on my way back from NY. That was no fun.

But except for those rare instances, there is never any direct impact of this political stuff. In that sense, it is easy to draw the conclusion that Thai politics is irrelevant to us.

Of course, that would not be true. [...read more...]

Just a quick update on the coup here in Thailand.

First and foremost, we are all ok.

Actually, for us down here in Phuket, it’s a non-event, at least in the short-term. All the activity is up in Bangkok and while it might make for interesting – or perhaps, not so interesting – speculation about what is to come, the impact on us down here, if any, is indirect and spread out over a longer term.

Political instability is almost always undesirable. The political statemate of the last few months may have gradually weighed on the economy overall, but it probably did not have a major impact on tourist arrivals or real-estate investments by foreigners, the two areas that most affect Phuket. But while parliamentary inertia and the prospect of institutional political gridlock are not likely to dissuade someone from taking their vacation here, it is noteworthy that the words “military coup”, let alone the presumably more desirable variation “bloodless coup”, are hardly ever used in promotional packages for tropical resort holidays. So it remains to be seen what will happen.

Anyway, just wanted to update friends and family that we are all ok.