If I Were More Self-Deprecating...

...I would have a list of "People Who Make Me Feel Stupid and Inadequate." Luckily, I'm taking enough Zoloft (joke). But seriously, a friend of mine recently linked me to this guy's blog. Matthew Rognlie is an undergrad at Duke and a triple major in economics, math, and comp sci. I spent some time this morning perusing through his blog. Actually, perusing is not the right word because it implies a kind of ease. I almost had a brain aneurysm trying to dissect his guy's posts on cap & trade, inflation, and utilitarianism. Granted, I never got past Econ 1, but this is unbelievable. Rognlie takes on and, if I may, pwns some of the biggest named bloggers out there. Maybe I'll create a list of "People Who Will Rule the World Someday." Seriously. Props.

The Moral Hazard Argument Against Bailing Out Cali

From Megan McCardle:

I'm pretty sure that the feds can afford to bail out California. I'm pretty sure they can't afford to bail out fifty states who have learned that if they are just intransigent enough about spending more money than they make, Uncle Sugar will come in and pay the bill.

Presumably, the way you avoid this is by putting harsh conditions on the money. But what harsh conditions can the Feds impose? California has the largest and most powerful Congressional delegation. And I'm struggling to think of any penalty the Feds can hand down without alienating critical constituents like the public sector labor unions.

The Obama administration will most likely bail out Cali, primarily because moral hazard has not, thus far, deterred it from bailing out everything under the sun that it deemed "too big to fail." California has one of the ten largest economies in the world. Too big to fail? Dur. I am curious to see what kind of conditions the administration would put on the bailout money.

The Holocaust Museum Shooter

Who was he? From Jeffrey Goldberg, who linked to the ADL:

The suspect, identified as James Wennecke Brunn, is a long time white supremacist and anti-Semite who often uses the name James von Brunn. Born in 1920, Brunn is a veteran of World War II and retired Naval Reserve officer. Brunn worked in advertising and other professions until he retired. He now lives in Maryland and describes himself as an "artist" and "writer;" however, his magnum opus is a self-published anti-Semitic book, Tob Shebbe Goyim Harog ("Kill the Best Gentiles"). He has written many anti-Semitic essays as well. In recent years, he also created an anti-Semitic Web site, which he called "The Holy Western Empire." The museum shooting is not the first time Brunn has exhibited a willingness to use violence with regard to targets he considered connected to Jews.

In 1981, Brunn, then living in New Hampshire, was arrested at the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board after he tried to use a sawed-off shotgun to take board members hostage. Like many anti-Semites, Brunn believed that Jews control the nation's banking system. He was convicted of attempted armed kidnapping, second-degree burglary, assault with a dangerous weapon, carrying a pistol without a license and two counts of possession of a prohibited weapon. He was sentenced to four to eleven years in prison in 1983 and served over six. In 2004 Von Brunn posted on Fredrick Toben's Holocaust denial "Adelaide Institute" email group, "Time to FLUSH all "Holocaust" Memorials."

There's not really much to say about this. What can you? I've never personally paid much attention to Holocaust deniers (other than this prominent fellow) and White Supremacists. Maybe it's because I live in the bay area and I take for granted the generally liberal, tolerant, educated atmosphere that pervades here. Or maybe it's because I've always considered the notion of denying a tragedy whose horror, brutality, and unprecedented scale is so well documented so absurd that I naturally expect these kind of people to be ostracized simply because of their despicable views. This is a rather rude awakening to the reality that our country continues to be tarnished by the stain of all kinds of bigotry. As much as I would like to think that, particularly with the election of a black president, the United States has closed the racial parentheses in its history, this tragedy is a painful reminder of the opposite. Damn.

More on DADT

From The Daily Dish, a comparison between Truman and Obama. The article that he links make a point worth pondering regarding executive power:

In 1948, Truman issued an executive order integrating the armed forces. That same year Gallup found that only 13 percent of Americans supported "having Negro and white troops throughout the U.S. armed services live and work together."

Sullivan muses: Today, vast majorities of Americans support allowing gay servicemembers to serve openly. But the first black president does not have the civil rights conviction of his extraordinary predecessor.

Gay? Get Out.

Today, the Supreme Court refused to review the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, a relic of the Clinton administration (while campaigning for the 1992 election, Clinton had promised to eliminate any barriers to service for homosexuals). This really is outrageous. I had a chance to meet and talk to a gay Iraq veteran in one of my classes during fall semester. When he talked about DADT, it was visibly painful for him. Imagine putting your life on the line for your country, knowing full well that you could be dishonorably discharged at any given moment without compensation, benefits, and stripped of any merits you may have earned will serving. For the record, 14 countries have no barriers to miltary service for gays (blessed Netherlands was the first in 1974). The Obama administration seems content to let issues of equality take a back seat to running GM and our financial institutions.

Not to Steal Warderro's Thunder on the Finals Coverage

But does Orlando really think that they (or anyone else, for that matter) can stop a guy with this look on his face? I almost feel sorry for em.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

By now, probably everyone has seen this Max Blumenthal video of drunk American Jewish teenagers in Israel giving their obnoxious, profanity-laden opinions of Obama on the eve of his speech in Cairo. Two main points should be mentioned here. The first, obviously, is the disgusting and disgraceful nature of the remarks themselves.I shouldn't even have to say it, but you can never be too careful. I don't remember the last time I've been so embarrassed for my generation or for Jews everywhere. But equally disturbing, to me, is the insinuation that these punks in some way represent Jewish public opinion. The notion that they represent Israeli public opinion is even more absurd. I sincerely doubt (at least, I hope) that people who see this video aren't treating it as a groundbreaking work of serious investigative journalism. I don't even think Blumenthal is doing that. Give me any city on this planet and I'll show you a group of ignorant, tanked teenagers spouting the most offensive bile you could possibly imagine. Hell, they don't even have to be tanked...or teenagers, for that matter. No one race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or skin color has the monopoly on bigotry and ignorance.

...but damn, these kids are dumb.

Warderro on Obama's Speech in Cairo

My thoughts exactly. Oh, and please recognize the sarcasm when you see it.

Fundamentalism by any other name...

...is still fundamentalism. Some call it nationalism, some call it patriotism, and some even dare to label it Zionism. Regardless of the 'ism,' the prevailing of this kind of ideology will be as dangerous to Israeli citizens as any external threat.

MJ Has to Take Offense to This

Kanye West compares his supposed hegemony over the hip-hop genre to that of His Airness over the NBA...Wow. He clearly hasnt' heard this guy. Or this guy. Don't get me wrong, Kanye's beats are solid, but sometimes I get the feeling a 12-year-old could have written his lyrics...which I guess is fine if you're judging just based on aesthetics. But when it comes to the rhymes, Aesop's cooking up crème brûlée while Kanye's churning out cotton candy.

Rethinking Sotomayor

Tom Goldstein from the SCOTUS blog widened the scope of Sotomayor's rulings on issues of racial discrimination by reading all 50 of the cases having to do with the issue. This is what he found:

In those 50 cases, the panel accepted the claim of race discrimination only three times. In all three cases, the panel was unanimous; in all three, it included a Republican appointee. In roughly 45, the claim was rejected. (Two were procedural dispositions.) On the other hand, she twice was on panels reversing district court decisions agreeing with race-related claims - i.e., reversing a finding of impermissible race-based decisions. Both were criminal cases involving jury selection.

In the 50 cases, the panel was unanimous in every one. There was a Republican appointee in 38, and these panels were all obviously unanimous as well. Thus, in the roughly 45 panel opinions rejecting claims of discrimination, Judge Sotomayor never dissented.

It seems to me that these numbers decisively disprove the claim that she decides cases with any sort of racial bias.

I can't say much except that I'm happy to have been proven wrong. I still wonder about the New Haven case and the hasty manner in which the opinion was written, but in light of the evidence, it's clear that there are larger issues to address at the confirmation hearing.

Why Dick Cheney is Wrong

...and why Obama's tweaking (and it is just tweaking) of Bush's "War on Terror" policies betray his campaign rhetoric, from Clive Crook:

Critics in his own party and Republican opponents are attacking Barack Obama's emerging stance on national security with equal ferocity. Many Democrats are furious that the president has broken his promise to abandon the Bush administration's war-powers approach to fighting terrorism. Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, and other conservatives attack him for doing the opposite - for keeping his promise and emasculating the US anti-terror effort.

The left's complaints make far more sense than Mr Cheney's. Mr Obama is adjusting the Bush administration's policies here and there and seeks to put them on a sounder legal footing. This recalibration is significant and wise, but it is by no means the entirely new approach that he led everybody to expect.

Mr Obama is in the right, in my view, but he owes his supporters an apology for misleading them. He also owes George W. Bush an apology for saying that the last administration's thinking was an affront to US values, whereas his own policies would be entirely consonant with them. In office he has found that the issue is more complicated. If he was surprised, he should not have been.

McArdle's Provocative Post on Abortion

I take issue with a few of the claims she makes in this post, but one of them is undeniably true and very insightful:

Listening to the debates about abortion, it seems to me that really broad swathes of the pro-choice movement seem to genuinely not understand that this is a debate about personhood, which is why you get moronic statements like "If you think abortions are wrong, don't have one!" If you think a fetus is a person, it is not useful to be told that you, personally, are not required to commit murder, as long as you leave the neighbors alone while they do it.

Frequently within the article, McArdle analogizes the abortion debate to the slavery debate, something which may, at first, seem absurd. But at the heart of the debate lies the issue of personhood and human rights. I believe that African Americans are people, and so it doesn't matter that I don't own African slaves. The act itself is immoral so I condemn it, regardless of who is performing it. If you believe that a fetus is a person, regardless of whether this belief is a religious one or based on a scientific understanding of fetal development (something to which we are becoming more and more privvy), then aborting a fetus is murder. Now, just because I understand the logic of whackos like Tiller's murderer doesn't mean I condone it, or any other violent manifestations of religious fanaticism, for that matter. This guy deserves to go to prison for a long time.

But I can't ignore the fact that the issue of personhood is a fundamental one when it comes to the abortion debate. I am against abortions being made illegal primarily because, like McArdle, I believe doing so what impede upon a woman's autonomy and a couple's autonomy, in cases like this and this. A woman should have the right to terminate a fetus when the woman's health is in danger or when a fetus is the result of a rape. Likewise, a woman / couple should be able to practice that same right if the prospects for the fetus reaching maturity or surviving past birth are extremely low, or if the fetus's condition is such that its short life will be one filled with pain and suffering. It's an agonizing decision, but it is not one that a court should make on someone's behalf. Of course, the latter scenario spills over into a euthanasia-type debate, in which I would put forth similar arguments.

The underlying point here is that both sides of the debate have valid points, but we should recognize that a (note, not the) central issue in this debate is that of personhood and the rights associated with it. As we gain a better understanding through scientific advancements of fetal development (e.g., when a fetus begins to feel pain, make memories, etc.), I see support for abortion decreasing nationwide. But I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Another nomination...

...for Warderro's Yehuda HaKohen Award. For anyone who still recalls the Eshleman Hall fiasco (for the record, this is a poorly written article) in November, Yehuda HaKohen is a founding member of the Zionist Freedom Alliance, a bay area organization devoted to the fundamentalist Greater Israel ideology, but which cloaks itself in a kind of Fanonian, revolutionary rhetoric of self-determination and aims to mobilize students on college campuses for its cause. But enough with the background. Goldblog just posted another condemnation of the settler movement, which is enraged over Obama's courageous call for a halt to all settlement construction in the West Bank. I'd say these kind of extremist comments are deserving of Warderro's nomination:

"The demand to prevent natural growth in settlements is unreasonable and is akin to Pharaoh's demand that all firstborn sons be thrown into the Nile River," said Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz ahead of Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting.

I'll let Goldberg dissect the ludicrousy of that statement. Another important point that Jeffrey makes and that many hardline US and Israeli Jews need to come to terms with:

Since the United States partially underwrites Israel, it has the right to make certain demands.

YES. Any government (including the Palestinian Authority) that the US gives foreign aid to should expect there to be strings attached. If the government doesn't like the conditions, they don't have to take the money. End of story.

Incarceration Rates vis-a-vis the Labor Market

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle dissects and ultimately refutes the idea that our incarceration rate is correlated with the job market. The points I found most convincing:

Even if crime were a labor market outcome, incarceration is a policy outcome, not a labor market outcome, because incarceration has increased even as crime has fallen. Furthermore, what correlation there is between crime and the economy is to property crimes--burglary, etc. Violent crime, which accounts for more than half of America's incarceration rate, and virtually all of the change in our incarceration rate since 1980, isn't clearly related to the economy. In theory, being laid off might make you more prone to bar fights or beating on your girlfriend. In practice, it doesn't seem to show up in the numbers.

And, of course, an appropriate shot at the ineffective war on drugs:

That is not to defend American incarceration policies, which are lunatic, as is the drug war which contributes to them. Mark Kleiman has some very good ideas on how we might lower those rates by using targeted intensive surveillance of those on probation and parole. I'd like to lower it even more by legalizing drugs and eliminating the black market profits that fund today's gangs. But a preference for fewer prisons doesn't require me to believe that someone who rapes a stranger is just a victim of a weak job market.

The Sotomayor nomination ends my blogging hiatus.

The twice-yearly finals plague has ended and I'm back in the mind-numbingly boring city of San Jose for a while, doing work that is equally and appropriately mind-numbing. It's hard to believe that I've been absent from the blogosphere for almost a month and a half. So what has compelled me to return? Barack Obama's Supreme Court nomination, of course! Let's talk judiciary.

Sotomayor is a liberal judge, whose most recent judicial exploit involved supporting a ruling in the 2nd Circuit - one that will most likely be overturned when brought to the Supreme Court. The ruling ordered a fire department in New Haven, Connecticut to revoke a set of promotions because the eligibility test that determined said promotions produced an unsatisfactory pool of would-be promotees. Namely, 17 out of 18 candidates selected from the 118 individuals who took the test (27 of whom were black) happened to be white. The remaining candidate was Hispanic.

Thus arises once again the affirmative action issue, one that is hotly debated across the nation and even moreso on my university campus. George Will summarizes the position of affirmative action advocates succinctly and correctly in his article on the nomination, outlining the concept of identity politics as predicated upon one simple conjecture:

A person is what his or her race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual preference is, and members of a particular category can be represented -- understood, empathized with -- only by persons of the same identity.

If this position sounds like blatant stereotyping, that's because it is. Nevermind that Frank Ricci, one of the firefighters selected as a candidate for promotion (who also happened to be white) was dyslexic and had to quit his second job in order to accomodate the 13 hours of daily studying and taking of practice tests and interviews necessary to earn the sixth-highest test score in the entire applicant pool. He is white, and this fact alone was enough to deny him a hard-earned promotion.

The ruling itself is disturbing, but it is made moreso by the way in which it contradicts an important statement that Barack Obama made on the campaign trail, proclaiming that we must "eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white." In this statement, Obama seemed to reject the racial rhetoric and stereotyping of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. Yet in her support for the New Haven case ruling, Sotomayor affirmed both. So, in nominating Sotomayor it appears that Obama has changed his mind regarding racial "slander."

Or (and this seems to me the more likely explanation) the nomination is simply a shrewd political move. Obama has alienated a good portion of Democrats with his foreign policy, which, apart from the quick closing of Gitmo, is almost identical to that of his predecessor. But Democrats love this nomination because it would add to the Supreme Court someone who is both "race-conscious" and a Hispanic woman. Meanwhile, the Republican Senators can't afford to oppose the nomination too strongly as they must preserve their own significant socially conservative Hispanic constituency. So, Sotomayor's confirmation is almost a sure thing.

Touché, salesman.

Substantial change...

Barack Obama has decided to reconsider America's embargo on Cuba, a relic of the Cold War which only intensified under the Bush administration. Amending or ending the embargo, altogether, has always been a topic of debate, but the case for such a course of action seems particularly strong now for the following reasons:

• The embargo doesn't hurt the Cuban bureaucrats; it hurts the Cuban populace. This is a country in which the average monthly income runs between $10 and $15. Does an embargo that lowers the standard of living even further really make sense if the American government's goal is to popularize capitalism and representative democracy?
• Cuba is a dictatorship - there's no doubt about that. Reporters without borders has called the country "the second biggest prison in the world for journalists." Coincidentally, the NGO awarded the the first place title to China. Foreign policy double standard, anyone? Can the American government single out Cuba for embargo while cooperating and trading freely with repressive regimes like China, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and still claim the moral high ground?
• A warming of relations might make for some cheap Cuban cigars. Who doesn't want that?

Just a thought.

3 more reasons to take the recent UNHRC resolution seriously

And they all involve dead Pakistani children.

More globalization

Better than the original, I think.

If you thought the UN couldn't lose any more credibility...

...you were wrong. Wielding the power of a 57-country voting bloc, Muslim countries led by Pakistan introduced and passed a non-binding resolution through the UN Human Rights Council (note the irony) aimed at protecting religion, in particular, Islam, from criticism. It's fairly obvious why totalitarian Islamic theocracies would want to proscribe freedom of speech within their borders. Attempting to extend such repressive measures toward secular, pluralist democracies, however, should sound an alarm. The resolution states that "Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with terrorism." Meanwhile, a suicide bomber killed 50 people praying in mosque in Pakistan today. Fun.

Mexico's Drug War (and Ours)

Mexico's drug war - The Big Picture - Boston.com

Marijuana-smuggling shoes? Now that's innovation.

Harry Potter and the Ziono-Hollywoodists

From Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic:



JK Rowling is soon scheduled to announce the title of the secret 8th book: Harry Potter and the Elders of Zion.

Keeping things in perspective

Since words have by now lost the capacity to describe the amount of money the government is going to inject into the economy, here's a little visual.

The lighter side of totalitarianism!

We all know that Kim Jong-Il looks like a troll, but here are some more reasons to chuckle whenever North Korea is in the headlines.

Is the IDF ignorant or stupid?

Hard to tell. This Ha'aretz article exposes the seamy underbelly of IDF camaraderie, which (and this is painful to say) is more reminiscent of something in a Hamas training camp. A preview from "IDF Fashion 2009":

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it.

Netanyahu will pave the way toward peace?

From Ha'aretz; I'm going to have to chew this one over.

McArdle says "Fix the banks!"

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle weighs in on the stimulus package:

Having defended Obama's candidacy largely on his economic team, I'm having serious buyer's remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration has clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I'm not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that's, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

Much of the justification for the $800 billion TARP was that our national economy hinges on the ability and willingness of banks to lend. Paralyzed banks = paralyzed economy. Fair enough. So why do we still have no idea how this money is being spent and which toxic assets from which banks are being (or will be) internalized? Shouldn't this project override the spending bill in terms of importance? More from McArdle:

Given that the standard model of the Great Depression has the FDIC and the fixes to the banking system playing a vastly more important role than any FDR spending program, I'd say that the liberal econobloggers bear the burden of proof that fixing the banks is NOT vastly more important than whizzing through green energy spending at the lowest possible level of scrutiny.

The road to hell...

is "Paved with Magnificent Intentions." At least that's the Willster's view of the Obama administration's efforts to stimulate the economy. The crux of his argument in this column is that Obama has carried over the confidence-laden rhetoric which helped propel him to the presidency into the field of actual policy-making. Confidence is important, but it is hazardous when gone unchecked by realism. Here are two paragraphs that best illustrate the point:

Improvisation is understandable when confronting the unprecedented, but protracted improvisation precludes a prerequisite for recovery -- investors' certainty about the relationship between the government and the economy. One year ago this weekend, that relationship began changing when the Bush administration decided that Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, was too big, or too connected -- too something -- to be allowed to fail. Seven months later, with the financial system frozen, Congress passed the Troubled Assets Relief Program, fresh proof that the titles of legislation, like the titles of Marx Brothers movies ("Duck Soup," "Horse Feathers"), are uninformative about the contents.

If we are really going to sipphone off $800 billion for TARP, shouldn't we expect some transparency? Where is this money going? Timothy Geithner has been relatively silent on this issue.

Quicker than you can say "toxic assets," which TARP was supposedly designed to quarantine, TARP was subsidizing the manufacture of automobiles partially designed by Washington. Which recent government adventure in enterprise justifies such government confidence? Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac? Amtrak? Ethanol? (my italics) The government has subsidized ethanol, protected it with tariffs, mandated levels of production and authorized 10 percent ethanol in gasoline blends, and now the shrinking ethanol industry wants government to authorize 15 percent.

Confidence in the government's ability to solve problems, again, needs to be met with a great deal of honest, sober thinking. Rhetorical treats like "We are the one's we've been waiting for!" and "Yes, we can!" sound nice on the campaign trail, but are substantively hollow when injected into the debate about the government's role in addressing the current economic crisis.

Overkill...

...brought to you by the Saudi Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

How much "intolerance" are we willing to tolerate?

It has been common practice for some time to treat the topic of religion with kid gloves. Whenever a discussion of that particular flavor arises, it brings with it a certain air of unease and overwhelming cautiousness. Since grade school, the key words have been "respect," "tolerance," and "conscientiousness." Intellectuals like biologist Richard Dawkins and author Christopher Hitchens have long been at the forefront of the campaign against faith and their respective books have sent shock waves throughout America in recent years. Not surprisingly, the books were lauded in Europe. Yet with the exception of a few university campuses (such as Berkeley, where I had the opportunity to hear Dawkins speak), Americans, by and large, have taken offense to such unapologetic repudiation of their religious beliefs.

When it comes to defending religion, there are several different strains of thinking. Conservative Americans, particularly of the FoxNews inclination, believe not that religion is inherently problematic. Rather, they see all current global conflict as a clash between Islamic society and Western, Judeo-Christian values - a conflict in which the West will eventually triumph because of its moral superiority and devotion to democracy. This neoconversative worldview was a major driving force behind the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Those from the Left who defend religion do so on different grounds. Again, there is a hesitation to indict religion as inherently problematic. Instead, the Left often clings to the idea that when religious extremism, (particularly in the Muslim world) manifests itself, it is generally a lasting effect of European imperialism or a current response to economic, cultural, or military "neo-imperialism." This view, that past colonialism and current Western aggression galvanizes religious violence in the rest of the world is somewhat helpful in understanding the 9/11 attacks, for example (which mosts experts attribute mainly to the stationing of American troops on Saudi soil), but it leaves unexplained troubling elements of Islamic society such as honor killings, which occur in Muslim communities around the world.

Intellectuals like Hitchens and Dawkins go much further in their condemnation of religion. They believe that faith is not only irrational and delusory, but that is has been detrimental to humanity. Dawkins summarizes his assessment of religion in a 2001 Guardian interview:

"Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!"

Dawkins makes an insightful point - why do we generally consider religion to be a sphere immune from normal criticism? We don't give a second thought about challenging our friends' political views, fashion choices, or even sports team affiliations. Yet when it comes to discussing religion, we suddenly hesitate. It seems that principles of respect, tolerance, and conscientiousness apply only to this particular topic. And yet there is a gray area.

Religious "moderates" seem to concede that instances of fundamentalism and extremism are acceptable for criticism and condemnation. Almost everyone agrees that Baruch Goldstein's shooting spree in Hebron, Hamas' suicide bombings in Tel Aviv, and al-Qaeda's attacks on 9/11 are inexcusable because the perpetrators of these actions killed in the name of god. This seems like a reasonable compromise. But why is this the only instance in which we free ourselves from the restraint that we are taught to practice? Why can't we bring ourselves to sit down with another religious person - be he/she Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Wiccan - and engage in an objective, frank discussion of his/her beliefs? Certainly, there is no shortage of criticism to draw from. Encapsulated in our right to freedom of speech is the right to openly object to the following:

- Muslim sheiks in countries such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia who condone honor killings, sentence female rape victims to flogging, and condemn homosexuals to death by stoning, citing the Koran as basis.
- Messianic nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank who believe that God promised every last inch of the Holy Land to the Jewish people, regardless of how inconvenient such a belief is to the almost 4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who happen not to believe in the Jewish God or any God, for that matter.
- Evangelical Christians such as the late Jerry Falwell who proclaim that AIDS and Hurricane Katrina are part of God's retribution for homosexuality.
- Ultra-religious families in Israel in which the parents do not work, which raise families with 8 - 10 children, and which expect their fellow citizens to completely subsidize their livelihood through the Israeli government's redistribution of tax dollars.
- Members of Hezbollah and Hamas who use Israeli occupation as an excuse to launch rockets into Israeli kindergardens and blow up discotheques and cafes.
- Religious parents who are willing to watch their children die, while praying for divine intervention, rather than call for medical attention.
- The Catholic Church's willingness to tolerate millions of African victims of pediatric AIDS and its simultaneous devotion to banning contraceptives and outlawing abortion ("pro-life"?)
- The Catholic Church's exoneration of sex-offender priests and its refusal to admit that, perhaps, the life-long vow of celibacy may be problematically connected to the molestation of choir boys


I don't anticipate much reasonable objection to criticism of religious doctrine. Often, the ludicrousness of religious doctrine is so apparent that only a superficial examination of it is necessary to raise eyebrows. It seems that most people draw the line when it comes to criticism of religious people. This is a curious line to draw for several reasons. First, religous people are religious people because of doctrine. Second, religious people, themselves, generally criticize other religious people, whether or not they are aware. A devout Catholic would probably chastise a Native American for performing a rain dance in the hopes of ending a drought (secretly, of course) and then proceed to a confessional in order to save his soul, without thinking twice. From an atheist's perspective, both actions are mere superstition. Just as the rain dance cannot be, in any way, causally connected to the next week's storm, there is no way to verify whether or not revealing one's sins in a booth to a man with a white collar earns the benevolence of an alleged deity. And yet, the rain dancer and confessor, alike, will view his respective superstition as legitimate while discrediting that of the other without a moment's hesitation. So, why can't we discredit or, at the very least, challenge both?

Why do we hold religious credence to a different standard than any other type of ideology, belief, or opinion? If we have seen, first-hand, the frightening consequences of action driven by unfettered religious self-righteousness, why can we not bring ourselves to probe, examine, and challenge it? Why are we so damned respectful?

"With our blood and soul, we defend you, al-Bashir."

Iran and Hamas express solidarity with Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir over war crimes charges from the International Criminal Court. I'm guessing that Darfur wasn't on the agenda at Durban II.

Are cigarettes preventing an economic depression?

1. Cigarettes are highly addictive.
2. Drug addicts continue to consume their drug of choice despite higher prices, lower income, or loss of job (i.e., cigarettes are an inelastic good).
3. Continuous consumption = uninterrupted profits for tobacco companies.
4. Profit-laden tobacco companies have no need to cut costs of labor.
5. Unlike the auto industry and, seemingly, every other major industry in America, big tobacco isn't contributing to the ever-growing unemployment rate.

A tangential note: Continuous consumption of cigarettes also = uninterrupted tax revenue for the government.

So...keep on puffing?

"Smokey, this isn't 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules."

I always knew that The Big Lebowski was a movie far ahead of its time in many aspects, but I never thought that Walter Sobchak's overzealous, self-righteous tirades would be applicable to America's current economic turbulence. In this scenario, Smokey is a fused Bush/Obama administration and the rules are those unwritten definitions of good and bad business decision-making - definitions that apparently don't seem to apply anymore. I guess I would be Sobchak, but instead of wildly wielding a pistol I've chosen to blog through my discontent.

Smokey has decided that by loaning millions of dollars to our domestic auto industries, the government will somehow be able to "unbankrupt" the already bankrupt Chrysler and GM, whose market-share has been steadily declining since the 1970's. Back when the rules mattered, the understanding had always been such: businesses that make bad management decisions should and will fail. From the graveyards of these failed enterprises will arise new and, hopefully, wiser ones. For some reason, Smokey is sure of the government's ability to loan the auto industry's way to economic solvency. In addition to the $17.4 billion that GM and Chrysler received as the Bush administration left the building, they are asking for a combined $22 billion from Obama and the Democratic Congress. This loan is meant to hold the companies over for a while - that is, until they ask for the next loan. Politicians on the hill are already aware of the alternative to the government as a life-line (remember the rules?). Those in opposition to the alternative stress the importance of "social responsibility;" after all, national unemployment at a 30-year high of 7.5% (the figures flirt with 10% on the coasts) and Detroit is already a ghost-town.

This is a curious argument. No one recalls GM and Chrysler, now wards of Washington, considering their "social responsibility" when they signed lucrative labor contracts at the behest of the all-powerful labor unions. Nevermind the ludicrousness of subsidizing the lives of employees who decide to retire at age 48. When the auto industries decided to sign these contracts, what crystal ball told them that they could not only sustain, but increase, their sales indefinitely? How could the crystal ball be sure that they would be able to honor the labor contracts they signed decades down the line?

There are only two imaginable possibilities: either the companies lacked the foresight to avoid this pitfall or they were aware of their imprudence and chose to keep their heads in the sand, confident that the government wouldn't abandon its track record of corporate welfare and come to their aid. Recall, the government came to Chrysler's rescue in 1979 with $1.5 million worth of loans (can you say PRECEDENT?) In either case, and the latter seems more likely, it is clear that the talk of "social responsibility" is a recent, ad-hoc phenomenon. Nobody - not GM, not Chrysler, and not the labor unions - thought of anybody but themselves when they reached their agreements. So the only question that remains is Sobchak's:

"Am I the only one who gives a f*** about the rules?"

Is Sasha Baron Cohen the most brilliant satirist of our generation?

Though I could see Stephen Colbert coming in at a very, very, very close second, no one can match Cohen's combination of unprecedented creativity and sheer audacity. Out of his three central characters, Bruno is easily the most underrated.

The Durban II Fiasco

Among the issues to be addressed at the conference: any "contemporary manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance." Apparently, included in the planners' definitions of the aforementioned terms is "freedom of expression" whenever such expression is critical of Islam or Islamic society. Two of the central planners of this conference are countries with exemplary human rights records: Iran and Libya. Shocking.

George Will vs. The New York Times

Syndicated conservative columnist George Will rarely mentions The New York Times in his writing without some expression of contempt. Will's track record of disdain for the publication continues in his February 15th Washington Post column, in which he voices his skepticism toward global warming. In addition to citing statistics from the University of Illinois' Artic Climate Research Center, he recalls that in the 1970s, the Times, along with pretty much every other major scientific publication, alarmed the American public with its predictions of certain, impending global cooling. By 1980, hysteria about a new ice age had faded, and Will expects a similar trend in regards to the current theories of climate catastrophe.

Andrew Revkin of the Times (which was, I imagine, irked at such an unflattering potrayal) published a news analysis in which he asserted that experts had called out Will on writing a column ridden with inaccuracies and exaggerations. According to Revkin, experts maintain that Al Gore is also guilty of sensationalsim and exaggeration in his affirmation of man-made global warming- he even had to pull a slide from his well-known powerpoint presentation. Revkin's conclusion, based, of course, on "the experts," is that both men are culpable of putting political agenda before indisputable scientific fact and are, thus, deceiving the public. But Will is not one to go down without a fight. Today he published a rebuttal column in the Post.

Note: In January 2005, the late Dr. Michael Crichton echoed an equally skeptical (and rather convincing) view on global warming in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Though he might try, Revkin would be hard-pressed to find anything resembling political bias in the analysis. Recall that Crichton was about as apolitical as it gets.

Who said globalization was bad?

Russian bard Zak May performs "Umbrella." Great success.

Change I can't really believe in.

Obama's new CIA chief Leon Panetta promises to show a little bit more respect for what should be the most important of our three branches of government - the Congress. This is all very comforting, seeing as the Bush administration got into the habit of treating our legislative branch more like a nuisance than a Constitutional provision. Meanwhile, it might do us well to remember that Panetta served as Clinton's Chief of Staff from 1994 and 1997, during which time he oversaw the enaction of extraordinary rendition, or "torture by proxy." I should think that this would complicate the plans of Congressional Democrats, who have proposed investigation of the Bush administration for engaging in the practice (among other things). The question of extraordinary rendition will no doubt reach Panetta's desk as the Obama administration considers what course of action should be taken in regards to ex-Guantanamo prisoners.

Less suprising, though still note-worthy, is Panetta's apparent willingness to continue prosecuting the "War on Terror" in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The only difference is that he might tweak the name, whose stigma is obviously a concern to him. Panetta's views seem to be consistent with those of Obama, who has talked openly about increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. In short, we have a new administration, but not, it seems, a new foreign policy in any distinct way.

News Flash: Israel is responsible for genocide in Darfur

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has proof that Israel is behind the crisis in Darfur. He refutes the absurd idea that the Sudanese government is in any way responsible for the 200,000 and 2.7 million citizens that have been killed and displaced, respectively, since 2003. When pressed about what evidence he had, Gaddafi did not elaborate...but I'm sure he has his reasons.

It's finally happened.

I've created a blog. Hide the women and children.