Infidel Links, Rainy Days and Mondays Edition

4,000 Show Up Sunday for Keystone XL Pipeline Protest in San Francisco (via Daily Kos)
People Skills (via Lawyers, Guns, and Money)

Now we learn of Yale’s plans to train soldiers in “people skills” on our campus only two months before the center is scheduled to open. There was no conversation with the city about how this might impact its immigrant community. There was no conversation with students and faculty about how it might impact campus culture. And there was no conversation at all about the ethics of a project like this. It’s hard to understand where this project came from; the university’s motivations are wholly opaque.

It seems the interrogators have schooled Yale already.

A Few Personal Notes on Pope Benedict’s Resignation (via The Volokh Conspiracy)

The Vatican would make an amazing museum as long as all those dead bodies in red robes are removed. But, all Lutheran humor aside, give the man some credit.

Benedict also seemed like an eminently holy and gentle man. But he is a Pope that I experienced through his words and intellect. And for that I’ll personally miss him and what he meant to the Church. As I understand it, he will continue to write. But I can say with certainty that had he never been Pope I would never have come across his writings. And that has made all the difference.

And, Brendan Michael Dougherty has some provocative, old school words I can appreciate – I prefer my foes to be honest.

If Korea Were to Unite… (via The Diplomat)

The primary threat to this policy remains nationalism, which will constantly push Korea to adopt a more assertive foreign policy. Maintenance of neutrality will require all the tact, restraint, and subtlety that Seoul can muster.

We’re all screwed.

…

This Is What Rightists Learn In High School?

Paul Krugman tries to treat conservative opponents of Federal legislation to raise the national minimum wage from the currently inadequate $7.25 to a water-treading $9 with respect.

Yet G.O.P. leaders in Congress are opposed to any rise. Why? They say that they’re concerned about the people who might lose their jobs, never mind the evidence that this won’t actually happen. But this isn’t credible.

For today’s Republican leaders clearly feel disdain for low-wage workers. Bear in mind that such workers, even if they work full time, by and large don’t pay income taxes (although they pay plenty in payroll and sales taxes), while they may receive benefits like Medicaid and food stamps. And you know what this makes them, in the eyes of the G.O.P.: “takers,” members of the contemptible 47 percent who, as Mitt Romney said to nods of approval, won’t take responsibility for their own lives.

That, it seems, is the polite form of the objection that takes on a less sophisticated hue (via Lawyers, Guns, and Money) when not translated into a mainstream vernacular.

The Bomb Myth

Aidan Foster-Carter spreads some myths about nuclear weapons in his latest article. One is that Japan in 1945 surrendered because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Every school kid—still, my daughter in her school, in private school, in good school, is still learning this: We dropped the bomb because we had to, because the Japanese resistance was fanatic, and we would have lost many American lives taking Japan. This is one—there’s no alternative to that story. And we are beginning the process in chapter one, two and three of saying the bomb did not have to be dropped for strategic reasons and also because it was morally reprehensible. But strategically, it made no sense.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Kuznick, why?

PETER KUZNICK: It made no sense because the Japanese were already defeated. They were looking for a way out of the war. United States knew they were defeated. Truman refers to the intercepted July 18th telegram as “the telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.” The United States—