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.