June 05, 2008

A Recommendation to the Presumptive Nominees for President

Ahem.

TAKE THE FREAKIN' SUMMER OFF!

In case that wasn't clear enough, let me explain my thinking. You people have been bombarding the American public with your political campaigning for over a year now. I don't think I'm out of line when I claim to speak for the majority of people who are SICK TO EFFIN' DEATH of your incessant campaigning. We are tired of entire newscasts being devoted to breathless reporting on whatever campaign-related faux pas video appeared on YouTube today while real news that's happening elsewhere gets short shrift. We are weary of rumors that float around the campaigns being reported as fact. We are just plain freakin' exhausted with all of this crap. WE CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

This, of course, says nothing of the fact that most of us are appalled at how much money candidates need to raise to keep on BUGGING US! Do us a favor, please, just take the summer off, would you? Let us sit on the front porch with an ice cream cone without having to dodge your volunteers, who get a bit testy if you tell them you don't want to talk to them. Have your private fundraisers, where no media is allowed, so we don't have to hear about it. Stop with the stump speeches---no one's listening anyway. Just leave us ALONE for a few months. You'll save money because you won't be running a campaign no one's paying attention to anyway. Stop with the blabbering, and take a vacation. Your vocal chords could undoubtedly use the rest.

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June 02, 2008

How Badly Do You Want to Live?

Courtesy of Gabriel over at Ace's we have an atrocious story of the "wonders" of socialized medicine coming out of the UK.

{...}Mrs O'Boyle, 64, had been receiving state-funded treatment - including chemotherapy - for colon cancer.

But when she took cetuximab, a drug which promised to extend her life but is not available on the NHS, her health trust made her start paying for her care.

{...}Mrs O'Boyle, an NHS occupational therapist, is believed to be the first person to die after being denied free care because of 'co-payment', where a patient tops up treatment by paying privately for extra drugs.

Co-payment was blocked last year by Health Secretary Alan Johnson because he claimed it would create a two-tier Health Service.

{...}Mrs O'Boyle was operated on in January last year for colon cancer and the doctors found it had spread to her stomach lining.

The former NHS assistant occupational therapist, who has three sons, twins Gerald and Anthony, 37, and Mark, 33, as well as grandchildren Luke, four, Finn, three, Jemima, two and Darcey, two, then had six weeks of chemotherapy.

She continued with this until September last year when she and her husband were told the devastating news there was little more doctors could do.

However, her consultant recommended-Cetuximab, which could extend her life. But it is available on the NHS only in Scotland, not in England and Wales.

It is one of many medicines the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence denies to some patients because of cost.

Mrs O'Boyle's decision to take it meant she and her husband had to spend £11,000 over two months for care from Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. {...}

Nice, huh? A lifetime of taxes to pay for a health care system that actually employed this woman and her husband, only to be betrayed in the end because she was willing to pay out of pocket for a few more months on this Earth. She wasn't looking for a cure. She knew that was beyond her. She was simply looking for a palliative treatment which could extend her life a bit. Just a bit.

She was asked, "How badly do you want to live?" And she replied that she wanted just a few more months with her family. She paid the price for a drug that wasn't available under universal healthcare, and she did it gladly, only to be smacked with a frozen mackerel in the end. Her actions would create a "two tier" health care system, and that, apparently, cannot be allowed, because that would mean she wasn't receiving lowest common denominator health care, like everyone else does with the NHS, and the NHS cannot stand that. She thought she had the right to choose what her healthcare was worth to her, and that she wasn't going to be penalized for her decision. One would suspect, with universal healthcare, that that would be a reasonable assumption. Unfortunately, it wasn't.

And yet this atrocious system is what some people would have us install here in the US. This is what some people want because their health insurance premiums are too high, and they would prefer not to have to pay them, but would rather let the government run things. It's tidier in theory, but absolutely disgusting in practice.

Again, how badly do you want to live?

Governments with nationalized healthcare systems don't want to give their citizens a choice. Patients are blackmailed, ultimately, into going with the lowest common denominator treatment if the the choice is between that or nothing at all because they don't have spare millions on hand to pay for private care.

I know I harp on rather a lot about my cancer experience, but I don't think I've ever mentioned what Dr. Academic told me one time, about what my treatment would have been if I lived in Italy. During the course of the staging controversy, we were told by my original oncologist that I would have to undergo three treatments of chemotherapy, instead of the six I'd been told originally. The reason for this was that a new study had come out, advocating three treatments for women with my stage of ovarian cancer, instead of six, because they hadn't been able to find any added benefit, when contrasted with the risks, to the extra three treatments. However, when I was transferred over to Dr. Academic, he said, if I had to have treatment (which he wasn't sure about at that point in time because of the evidence he had in front of him) I would have to have the dreaded six treatments, because he didn't think the study the original oncologist had quoted was a very good study on the whole---and he would know, as he was on the board of the organization which published the study. He said that the group members had been polled and over ninety percent of them hadn't thought it a good study, either---and weren't going to use it as a treatment recommendation. He said that the reason for this disconnect was that to make the study's results all the more powerful, they had let in to the statistical pool ovarian cancer diagnoses from places like Italy and Japan, for example, and Dr. Academic scoffed at their inclusion. He said their participation had ruined the study---because they hadn't followed the protocol precisely, as in, the surgeries hadn't been completed in the proscribed manner and as a result, had skewed the results. He said, after he'd dropped this bomb, that if I'd been living in Italy, with my cancer, all they would have done was the surgery. After all, that meant I would have a 70% survival rate for five years, which is nothing to sneeze at, particularly if you look at the statistics for things like pancreatic cancer, which has a 2% survival rate. But with a round of "precaution" chemo, just to make sure everything was cleaned out, my five year survival rate was boosted to 93%.

Which would you rather have?

Pretty easy choice, isn't it, even with the knowledge that you'd have to go through the extended hell that is chemo to get those extra percentage points.

The reason for this move by the Italians, Dr. Academic explained, was that the national healthcare system had deemed the chemo was too expensive in light of the "limited" benefit it brought about in cases like mine. That's what we're talking about in terms of nationalized healthcare systems. A world where twenty-three whole survival percentage points are a benefit that's not worth the costs incurred. Quite frankly, this is the difference between recurring and not---and if ovarian cancer recurs, well, that's what the cause of death will be. It's sad, but it's true. So the goal, for women like me, is to make sure at the start that we have the best chances possible NOT to recur. That means a standardized protocol of precaution chemo. This is the standard of care here in the US. But not in Italy. How many Italian women, who were diagnosed with my stage of ovarian cancer, have recurred, and received, ultimately, a death sentence, because their government was too cheap to give them precautionary treatment in the first place?

Your life in a nationalized health care system has a fixed price attached to it, and if your cost of treatment exceeds that fixed price you're out of luck. Which, if you ask me, is the equivalent of a state-run eugenics program.

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May 27, 2008

American Neighbor

For once, someone is interested in what's right with this country, rather than solely what's wrong with it---and why CHANGE is so important.

Why am I not surprised that this is a GOP sponsored contest?

Hmmmm?

For more information, go here.

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May 13, 2008

Teh Funny

The husband frequents certain gamer boards and on one of them, a friend, who, in turn, has some confused colleagues in Denmark, posted the following from his Danish colleagues.

“We in Denmark cannot figure out why you are even bothering to hold an election.

On one side, you have a witch who is a lawyer, married to a lawyer, and a lawyer who is married to a witch who is a lawyer.

On the other side, you have a true war hero married to a woman with a shapely body who owns a beer distributorship.

IS THERE A CONTEST HERE?!”

Heh.

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March 26, 2008

Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss

Yesterday, the FT published a rather lengthy interview/analysis piece focused on the new President-Elect of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. The man whom nobody (you know, other than Vlad the Impaler) knows had some rather choice things to say. It's a long piece, but it's good.

A few highlights of the article:

{...}Mr Medvedev’s inauguration on May 7 will mark a unique moment in Russian history. For the first time a Russian leader – whether tsar, Communist general secretary or post-communist president – will voluntarily leave office on time and at the height of his popularity. Yet it also heralds the start of a risky experiment. Mr Putin will leave the presidency but stay on as prime minister, in what some see as merely a ruse to remain in power. Others warn it could create a dual-headed power structure, which has spelt instability in Russia’s troubled past.

The president-elect insists the arrangement can work. He describes it as a “tandem”, in which both men understand the division of labour spelt out in the constitution. Mr Medvedev, as president, will set the priorities in domestic and foreign policy. He is commander-in-chief, makes the key decisions on forming the executive, and is guarantor of Russians’ rights and freedoms. The government, headed by Mr Putin, implements policy, especially in the economic arena.

He has much to prove, therefore, not just to the former military and security men nicknamed the siloviki or “men of power”, but to the outside world, where he remains an unknown quantity. Until two years ago, Mr Medvedev was largely a backroom operator, as Kremlin chief of staff. Two stints as chairman of Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant – a position he still holds – will have provided only a hint of the pressures he faces running a country where the political environment is as unforgiving as a Siberian winter.

So how does Mr Medvedev intend to assert his authority? In his first interview since the March 2 election, RussiaÂ’s next president outlined his priorities and offered an insight into his political philosophy. Speaking through an interpreter whose English he frequently corrected, he spelt out how he planned to continue Mr PutinÂ’s course while putting his own stamp on how the country is governed. He was clinical and dispassionate in his answers, without the folksy wit or earthy language of his mentor, scribbling occasional words and doodles on a Kremlin notepad.

His starting point is his legal background – he is, he says, “perhaps too much of a lawyer”. Meticulous and precise, he sees almost every issue through the prism of legal thinking. But behind the occasionally laboured language lies a deeper goal. Mr Medvedev says he wants to do what no Russian leader has done before: embed the rule of law in Russian society. “It is a monumental task,” he agrees, switching momentarily to English. “Russia is a country where people don’t like to observe the law. It is, as they say, a country of legal nihilism.”

{...}Mr Medvedev insists Russia can build the rule of law, outlining a three-point plan. The first step is to assert the law’s supremacy over executive power and individual actions. The second is to “create a new attitude to the law”.

“We need to make sure that every citizen understands not only the necessity and desirability of observing the law, but also understands that without [this] there cannot be normal development of our state or society,” he says.

Third is to create an effective courts system, above all by assuring independence of the judiciary. Judges must be paid more and their prestige enhanced so Russian law graduates, as elsewhere, see becoming a judge as the “summit of a legal career”.

Proper law enforcement is also fundamental to tackling another age-old problem that Mr Medvedev has made a priority – bribery. The president-elect is equally severe on the motorist paying off a policeman to avoid speeding fines as on the bureaucrat taking a cut on a business deal.

“When a citizen gives a bribe to the traffic police, it probably does not enter his head that he is committing a crime ... People should think about this,” he says. He also pays lip-service at least to the idea that those at the top of the “vertical of power” Mr Putin has created must set an example themselves. “The only way that Russia can count on having the supremacy of the law is in a situation where the powers-that-be respect the independence of courts and judges,” says Mr Medvedev.

When pressed, moreover, the president-elect signals a break with recent years by saying he will rein in any security and law enforcement services found to be engaged in illegal business. It seems a hint that he may be prepared to confront the siloviki clan – those most unhappy with his elevation to president. Viktor Cherkesov, head of Russia’s anti-narcotics service and a former KGB general, complained late last year that rival security services were fighting between themselves for wealth and influence.

{...}“I am a supporter of the values of democracy in the form that humanity has developed them over the last few centuries,” he says instead. “My definition of democracy as the power of the people is in no way different from classical definitions that exist in all countries.”

In what appears a veiled sideswipe at the US “freedom agenda”, he calls it a “dangerous extreme” to attempt to develop democracy in a country “outside its historic or territorial context”.

“Our democracy is very young,” he says. “It’s less than two decades old. Before this, there was no democracy, not in Tsarist times and not in Soviet times.”

But in words that may be welcomed in western capitals, Mr Medvedev makes clear he gives short shrift to those who say Russia is barren ground for democracy. “Russia is a European country and Russia is absolutely capable of developing together with other states that have chosen this democratic path of development," he says.{...}

Ok, enough with the theory, let's get down to business. Russian business, that is.

Mr MedvedevÂ’s overall thrust is that if RussiaÂ’s economy continues to expand, and it can build the rule of law so corruption can be overcome, its democracy will mature into something more closely resembling international models. His biggest priority, he says, is to translate RussiaÂ’s oil-fuelled economic recovery into social programmes that transform the lives of citizens.

{...}Mr Medvedev concedes the need for careful marshalling of the economy, but trumpets its strength. Russia’s financial and stock markets, he contends, are “islands of stability in the ocean of financial turmoil”.

“What makes us confident is that over the last eight years we have managed to create a stable macroeconomic system,” he says. “Our financial reserves ... are higher than ever before, reflecting the overall state [of] the Russian economy.”

The president-elect does not say specifically he will reduce the state companies that have proliferated under Mr Putin, which rivals and many economists charge with inefficiency and stifling competition. But he does say they should operate only in certain, limited sectors, for example where essential to the stateÂ’s economic security.

“The number of state companies ... should be exactly the number required to ensure the interests of all the country, but no more,” he says. Mr Medvedev also repeats campaign pledges to reduce the number of state representatives – often ministers or senior Kremlin officials – on state company boards and bring in more independent directors.{...}

So, basically, Gazprom and Rosneft will continue to operate as arms of Russian foreign policy, but they're not going to go into trade as haberdashers any time in the near future. Status quo, in other words.

As far as that foreign policy is concerned, well, let the man speak for himself:

“Any effective leader ... has to take care of defending the interests of his country. In foreign relations, you can’t be a liberal, a conservative or a democrat.”

On Russia’s most strained foreign relationship – with the UK – he says it is in Russia’s interests to see an improvement. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate him on his election victory, he adds. Economic relations remain “magnificent”, with British investment in Russia totalling $26bn. Bilateral relations, such as co-operation between intelligence services, have been largely “rolled up”, though this is “not a tragedy”. But Mr Medvedev does not shrink from repeating recent accusations that the British Council, the UK cultural body whose offices outside Moscow were forced to close, has been involved in spying.

“The reports I get as one of the leaders of the country show that there is a problem with this,” he says. He deflects suggestions that last week’s detention of an employee of TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian oil joint venture, might be a bid by security services to sabotage any improvement in UK-Russian relations. In this case, too, he says, his information suggests there is a case of industrial espionage to investigate.

Russia’s next president gives little sign he will adopt a more conciliatory approach to the US, with whom relations have deteriorated sharply. But he says he told George W. Bush, during a call to congratulate Mr Medvedev on his election, that relations might have been even worse were it not for the personal chemistry between the US president and Mr Putin. He holds out some hope of a “legacy” deal with the US before Mr Putin steps down to resolve disputes over US plans to site elements of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe, and over how to replace the Start treaty limiting strategic nuclear missiles, which expires next year. But Mr Medvedev warns that offering Ukraine and Georgia the prospect of Nato membership at a summit next week could undermine attempts to mend transatlantic ties.

“We are not happy about the situation around Georgia and Ukraine,” he says. “We consider it extremely troublesome for the existing structure of European security. No state can be pleased about having representatives of a military bloc to which it does not belong coming close to its ­borders.”{...}

In other words, don't even think about offering Georgia and Ukraine Nato membership, otherwise we'll feel threatened, and you wouldn't like it when we feel threatened. BIG OIL AND GAS RICH HULK SCARED! HULK TURN OFF HEAT IN MIDDLE OF WINTER TO TEACH YOU A LESSON!

So, I suppose the question would be, do we know anything new about Mr. Medvedev? Perhaps. Although, I don't think so. My impression is that he simply told everyone what they wanted to hear. What do western leaders want to hear? That he's all about the rule of law and democracy. Did they get what they wanted? Yes. What does foreign business want to hear? That he'll put and end to corruption, and that the nationalization of industry would, in essence, be stopped in its tracks. (I'm sure Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi feel comforted.) Did they get what they wanted? Yes. What does the nationalist base who elected him want to hear? That he'll stick up for Russia against "western aggression." Did they get what they wanted? Yes.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I suspect we'll see what Mr. Medvedev is made of when the cost of a barrel of oil plunges. It will only be then, when he'll be able to cut the puppetmaster's strings, that he'll dare to dance to his own tune. Until that point in time, watch what dear old Vlad is up to, and not Mr Medvedev: it will be a waste of your time to do otherwise.

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March 17, 2008

Don't Be Evil

Google has bent itself over a barrel to do business in China. They're a bunch of 'yes' people when the PRC demands they do certain things to gain access to the massive Chinese market. They've felt secure in their relationship with the powers that be and have, indeed, gained access to that market not only through Google, but through investment in Baidu, the PRC approved search engine. They probably felt that they'd worked hard enough to please the people in charge that they wouldn't face the strict penalties levied on other Internet companies who haven't followed the party line.

Well, they were wrong.

Amid the recent protests and violent crackdown in Tibet, the Chinese government is closing off all media access to the region and censoring reports about Tibet inside China. That includes not just CNN, but YouTube and Google News. Both Google sites have been blocked from the Internet in China. News reports about the protests and images that appear to come from inside Tibet are available on YouTube (see the slide show embedded below—warning it shows graphic images of bodies in the streets—and a CNN report). To prevent its citizens from seeing these videos or reading about them, the Chinese government has taken down all of YouTube and Google News inside China.

{...}The question is: What will Google do to restore access to YouTube and Google News inside China? China is a big market that Google needs to be a player in. Will it voluntarily strip out all videos or news items about Tibet? Or will the Chinese government just figure out how to strip them out itself? There is a precedent here: in China you cannot find a lot of information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on the Web, including the famous image of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks. Most young Chinese have never seen that image.{...}

Yes, what will Google do? Their stock price is, in my humble opinion, overinflated and they need access to the Chinese market to keep the shareholders happy. They need China more than China needs them. So, will they kowtow to the PRC hacks, and allow the blocking to continue? Or will they start stripping out content related to the Tibetan uprising? It's not unlikely, at all, that they would do this. Hell, if Anonymous posts a video, a bajillion Scientologists scream in protest and the video is pulled. One can only imagine what Google would do if a big source of their lifeblood is taken away from them because someone posted a video of a newscast about what's happening in Tibet.

Google has a chance here to step up and do the right thing---and to gain hand with the Chinese government. If they're tempted to pull the videos, to get the feed, as it were, turned back on, they should think twice. What kind of a precedent would this set? Their negotiating power with the Chinese, master negotiators that they are, would be at ground zero. If, however, they refuse to do what their PRC masters have probably already asked them to do, well, they'll have the upper hand, and will have finally lived up to their "Don't Be Evil" motto. Of course, I'm simplifying the situation, because there are undoubtedly many other factors in play, the upcoming Summer Olympics being one of them, that would prevent them from such a move, but how long is Google going to stand being the PRC's bitch?

One would think that Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders, a Russian Jew who emigrated from the USSR, would have a little sympathy for the protestors in Tibet. Alas, however, I suppose with his billions at stake...

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March 15, 2008

In Re People's Republic of China and Human Rights

Typical for the PRC.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials have declared a "people's war" of security and propaganda against support for the Dalai Lama in Tibet after riots racked the regional capital Lhasa, and some sources claimed the turmoil killed dozens.

Residents of the remote city high in the Himalayas said on Sunday that anti-riot troops controlled the streets and were closely checking Tibetan homes after protests and looting shook the heavily Buddhist region.

Two days ago Tibetan protesters, some in Buddhist monks' robes and some yelling pro-independence slogans, trashed shops, attacked banks and government offices and wielded stones and knives against police.

China has said at least 10 "innocent civilians" died, mostly in fires lit by rioters.

But an outside Tibetan source with close ties in Lhasa said that number was far too low. He cited a contact who claimed to have counted many more corpses of people killed in the riots or subsequent crackdown.

"He said there were 67 bodies in one morgue alone," the source told Reuters. "He saw it with his own eyes."

The self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India has said some 30 people were killed in clashes with Chinese authorities. Beijing bans foreign reporters from freely reporting in Tibet, so the conflicting claims cannot be easily checked.

The convulsion of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region came after days of peaceful protests by monks and was a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympic Games in August, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity.{...}

Chinese authorities have now signaled a sweeping campaign to redouble security in the region and attack public support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after that year's failed uprising.

"This grave incident of fighting, wrecking, looting and burning was meticulously planned by reactionary separatist forces here and abroad, and its goal was Tibetan independence," a Saturday meeting of senior regional and security officials announced, according to the official Tibet Daily on Sunday.

"Fight a people's war to oppose separatism and protect stability ... expose and condemn the malicious actions of these forces and expose the hideous face of the Dalai clique to broad daylight."

The meeting was attended by Tibet's hardline Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, and senior central government security officials, and it strengthens signs that China has no patience with international calls for a lenient response to the riots.

Authorities have already set an ultimatum to rioters, urging them to hand themselves in to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment.

The government has mobilized officially favored Buddhist monks to denounce the protests and the Dalai Lama, the Tibet Daily reported.

"The Party's policies on religious freedom have been very well observed," one said, according to the paper.

"But monks in a few monasteries don't study the scriptures well ... and coordinate from afar with the Dalai clique." {...}

The PRC invaded Tibet in 1950. They have taken over the practice of Bhuddism there, even going so far as to put a fake Panchen Lama on the throne, much like they put "state approved" Catholic Bishops in place in Beijing. There is no freedom of the press ANYWHERE in China, let alone in Tibet, where, currently, the death count is unknowable because they won't let the information out, or the reporters in.

When is the West going to stop pretending that these are people we want to do business with? They invaded Tibet, and if the US Navy wasn't currently patrolling the Taiwanese Strait, they'd invade Taiwan, too. Make no doubts about it, ideology rules in the People's Republic, and no matter how many skyscrapers they build in Shanghai or Beijing, or how many deals they cut with companies desperate to reduce their manufacturing costs, they are still the party of Mao. They are still the party of Li Peng, who murdered God only knows how many in Tianemen Square. their ideology demands repression of anyone who rejects it.

Et tu, Google? Et tu, Yahoo? Et tu, IBM? Et tu, Mattel?

I could go on, but I think you get the gist. They are murdering people right now in Tibet. The sad thing is that this situation is hardly unique in the PRC's history: they apparently enjoy murdering people. The PRC's higher ups think no one's going to mind a little enforced repression dressed up as a "People's War." They want to portray this as an "internal matter" so the west won't get their panties in a bunch over it, and the summer olympics will go off without a hitch. They're counting on our western greed, because they believe we're more interested in money than a few dead Bhuddist monks. Just how many of them have to die before we'll realize that we don't want access to the Chinese market so badly that they think they have carte blanche to commit murder?

The only decent thing Jimmy Carter did during his administration was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan. It was wholesale slaughter in Kabul and elsewhere in that country that got him to act. And despite the fact that many hopes and dreams were slashed by bringing foreign policy into the Olympics, it was, morally speaking, the right call. The Moscow Olympics were a failure without western money to prop it up, and the USSR suffered as a result. I'm sick of rewarding the PRC with business when they repress a billion people on a daily basis. I'm sick of Google's investment and development in Baidu despite its "Don't be Evil" campaign. I hate that the CEO of Mattel had to go and publicly grovel in front of a PRC flack after criticizing Chinese production standards last summer. He had to do it, otherwise Barbies would cost considerably more than they already do. I hate that western companies that wouldn't exist without the free market in western society nonetheless, have to appease the stockholders and expand into the Chinese market, with nary a thought about how they're propping up a repressive dictatorship in their rush to make a buck. They think they can get away with this and it drives me nuts that we let them, time and again. It's time for this shit to stop.

And the only way is to teach them a lesson only the deprivation of western money and attention can provide. Boycott the Beijing Olympics. Screw 'em. They want us to think they've created a new modern, progressive, prosperous China? Well, they wouldn't be so damn prosperous if it wasn't for western money. Deny them that and they might straighten up and fly right. I don't think communism is going anywhere in China, but it's time for them to stop thinking they consistently have us bent over a barrel. They've got to learn that we can push back.

The question is, however, does anyone want to teach them that lesson, or are cheap Barbies and DVD players really more important than someone's life? Sadly, I would suspect that the answer is 'yes.'

I really wish someone would prove me wrong, though.

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He's Trying to Sell Me a Pre-Owned Lexus...Again

So, the great hope of America, Barack Obama has a virulently racist pastor. And now that said pastor's DVD footage of his sermons has hit the mainstream press, all hell's breaking loose and Obama has been forced to condemn his pastor's statements.

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.{...}

Oh, really? Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus? Point out the section to me in either Matthew, Mark, Luke or John where Jesus goes on about hating America, Americans getting what was coming to them on 9/11, and how "Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people{...} Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger." Pushing aside the issue as to whether or not they teach proper grammar at seminary, where, precisely, are these located? I'm not a literalist, but I, sure as hell exists, spent a goodly portion of time during my Catholic education on the New Testament, and I can tell you that, ahem, Jesus didn't spend a lot of time (read never) preaching hate. He did, however, spend plenty of time on forgiveness and taking care of the poor and the sick.

What is this guy preaching? Christianity With a Vengeance?

I'm not buying this particular pre-owned Lexus. I'm just not. Obama himself admits he knew about these inflammatory sermons from the beginning of his campaign, and "made it clear" that he strongly condemned Wright's statements, but since Wright was in the process of retiring, and because his church played a strong part in his life, he wasn't going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Bullshit.

If I'm remembering correctly, Obama and his family live in a house on the north side of Chicago. Yet, apparently, they packed it up every Sunday morning and schlepped down to the south side to go to church. If you're at all familiar with the ways and means of transportation issues in Chicago, you know that's quite a ways to go for a church service. Even the most dedicated of parishioners, at some point, when they move away, eventually put the kaibosh on a lengthy church commute and find somewhere closer to home, if they're able, if for no other reason than that it's Sunday and they'd like some time to spend with their family outside of church. The Obamas' dedication to this particular church meant, if I'm doing the math correctly on the commute, that they were probably spending an hour to get there, however long the service took, and an hour getting home---a minimum of three hours, but probably more, what with all the gladhanding that undoubtedly needed to be done. That's a pretty sizable time commitment for someone as busy as Senator Obama is. There's simply got to be more to it than just a fondness for the church community and the pastor. Obama isn't the type to expend energy on anything he doesn't think he'll get something more out of in the long run. I fully understand that Obama isn't the only person to cherry pick his pastor or his church---plenty of people do that---but the difference here is that, I'll betcha five bucks, Obama undoubtedly chose this church and this pastor, and schlepped his family out there every Sunday, because it would be good for his political career. That this was the church to attend, because it would put him on the correct side of certain chunks of the voting populace. And now we're supposed to believe that he wasn't in the pews when the good Reverend preached his words of hate? That he was only made aware of them when he started running for president? I'm just not buying it.

Going to that church was a conscious decision on Obama's part, and I doubt it had anything to do with his faith. If he really had a problem with what the pastor said, well, wouldn't he have gone through a crisis of conscience, like many of us have, when our pastors preached something that went over the line? I had a pastor at my parish in college who was a flaming hippie BIG on the liberation theology and who decided, carte blanche, that we didn't need to kneel during mass any more as recognition of the fact "that we've all been saved by God." If you understand Catholic theology at all, you know that that is a big boo boo. This wasn't a small deal for me. I went through some serious soul searching about this, and, despite the fact that it's technically against the rules, I started going to mass at the other Catholic church in town. It took me years to start going to mass at that parish again. It was only after I met up with this priest's replacement at, of all places, the bar (What can I say? The guy knew his parishioners.) and quizzed him about if he was of the same stock as the previous priest, and found out that he wasn't, that I started attending mass there again. Obama knew what Reverend Wright was preaching. He undoubtedly knew that it could be a liability when he ran for higher office. But I'm sure the benefits of attending church there probably far outweighed the negatives of being associated with a man who preached hate on a regular basis, and were, most likely, something he could easily disassociate himself from.

It's like he's trying to tell me that he didn't know the pre-owned Lexus had a salvage title, when, in fact, he did know, and rather than admitting he fibbed (and in the process admitting he had a weakness), he's instead counting on my good grace to let him off the hook.

I don't think so.

Obama is trying to get away with something here. I don't really know that a person should be held accountable for what their pastor says, but it's his easy disavowal and instant condemnation of someone, who, by all accounts, was influential in their personal beliefs and played a large part of their life that bothers me. That this, apparently, was the plan in case anyone started sniffing around, bothers me even more. If x happens, we'll do this. If x never happens, then we won't bother. Obama is, undoubtedly, happy right now that this was raised in the primary process, rather than in the general election, when more people would be paying attention. I'm sure he hopes he's dodged this particular bullet. The negatives of attending a church helmed by Reverend Wright have become greater than the perceived advantages, hence Obama did what he thought was necessary and threw the Reverend under the bus. It's political survival at its finest. It was a deliberate calculation that a man who claims his faith is as important to him as Obama regularly does, wouldn't have completed, no matter what the consequences.

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March 14, 2008

And We All Fall Down

So, the government bailed out investment bank Bear Stearns today, with a healthy assist from JPMorgan.

NEW YORK - Bear Stearns Cos., one of the most venerable names on Wall Street, turned to a rival bank and the federal government for a last-minute bailout Friday to prevent it from collapsing.

The Federal Reserve responded swiftly to pleas from Bear Stearns that its coffers had "significantly deteriorated" within a 24-hour period as rumors about the bank's situation fueled the Wall Street version of a run on the bank. Central bankers tapped a rarely used Depression-era provision to provide loans, and said they were ready to provide extra resources to combat an erosion of confidence in America's biggest financial institutions.

Nearly half the value of Bear Stearns, or about $5.7 billion, was wiped out in a matter of minutes as investors felt the bailout signaled that the credit crisis has reached a more serious stage, and now threatens to undermine the broader financial system — and the U.S. economy.

"My guess is by next week, there will be rumors of other large, familiar institutions" that might be in financial trouble similar to Bear Stearns, said Anil Kashyap, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, made its fortune dealing in opaque mortgage-backed securities — a strategy that backfired amid the worst housing slump in a quarter century. The bank has racked up $2.75 billion in write-downs since last year, and releases first-quarter results on Monday that could show more losses.{...}

Ok, so riddle me this, joker: a business listed on the stock exchange, made some faulty gambles by buying up mortgage-backed securities and is now in trouble, so they go running to the government to bail them out. And guess what? The government helps them out by floating them some cash.

I have one question: how does this help anyone out in the long run?

I am not an economist. I don't claim to have a good grasp on the wheel-running hamster that is "the market," but I don't see how funding a business which made bad decisions should be bailed out by the taxpayers of this country. Particularly not when, undoubtedly, despite already having written off $2.8 BILLION in losses, the fat cats at the top were undoubtedly well-compensated with bonuses and dividends.

I understand about keeping our financial system working, but, and let's face it kids, it's time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps Bear Stearns needs to crash, so that the market can be come healthier? Perhaps this might, when the dust has settled, boost the dollar out of the basement and get speculators out of the oil market, so the cost of living can go down and I can stop paying through the nose for things like eggs and milk. I don't know. Again, I'm not an economist. But I do know this much: I'm getting tired, as a taxpayer, of funding businesses who bought securities that were faulty in the first place. Anyone with half a brain knows that ARM-interest only mortgages were a bad idea. Why, gee willikers, sir, you're trying to sell me a loan where I only pay the interest on said loan, and that rate is adjustable, meaning it's just as likely to go up as well as down, in an overinflated real estate market? Why, thank you, sir, but no. If people didn't figure it out, well, sorry, kids. That's just the way the ball bounces. {Insert Mr. Brady explaining the Latin phrase 'Caveat Emptor' here} Why didn't the MBA geniuses on Wall Street figure out that buying securities based, in part, on these mortgages was a bad idea?

I guess it comes down to this: I'm tired of bailing out stupid people. Whether they be your average subprime mortgage customer who got in over their head, or fat cat MBA's on Wall Street, who should have known better than to bet the farm on these securities. I've got the feeling that all this government intervention is just putting off the inevitable.

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March 12, 2008

Worth Your Time

I know seemingly everyone is posting this, but it's worth your while to hop on over and read about David Mamet's conversion on the Road to Damascus.

Apparently, the Village Voice's servers are run by aerosol huffing hamsters who are, indeed, out of cans of Ready Whip, but it's the Voice after all: if they manage to do nothing else, they'll keep their junkies afloat, so keep trying.

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February 29, 2008

Putin's Putative Lackey

A little background on Russia's putative president, Dmitry Medvedev.

Go read the whole thing. It's long, but it's worth it.

If you can't be bothered, the upshot is that Medvedev is strikingly low key, and has generally been discharged in the past with seeing to it that Vlad's desires have been fulfilled, that it seems likely he'll do the same when he's elected President. However, there are some clues from his past that, perhaps, just perhaps, he'll follow a more pro-western, pro-economic reform line, and could, possibly, at some point in the future, come into conflict with his mentor. He's a poodle plodder, who's kept his head down, and his opinions to himself, and this is where the trouble lies: no one really knows what he's going to do.

We're just going to have to wait and see how thing shake out. But his visit to Serbia, earlier this week, to play a part in the rabble rousing, in my humble opinion, doesn't leave much to doubt about where his loyalties lie. If I had to put money on it, I'd say he knows better than to bite the hand that feeds him.

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February 28, 2008

Hey, Ron Erhardt

Yes, you. My district's representative in the Minnesota house, who've I've voted for any number of times since I moved to Cake Eater land almost ten years ago.

Ahem.

YOU'VE JUST LOST MY VOTE.

Jagoff.

People come to Minnesota from all over the region to buy clothing, in large part because the state charges no sales tax on clothes.

But now two state lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle at the Capitol have introduced bills that would repeal that exemption. In exchange for that unpopular move, they would cut the sales tax rate for all taxable items.

"Monies from the sales tax are shrinking," State Representative Ron Erhardt, a Republican from Edina, told KARE 11.

"This would be a way to broaden the base we tax on and reduce the rate as a matter of fact."

Erhardt's bill would repeal the sales tax exemption clothing currently enjoys, and at the same time reduce the rate on all items from 6.5 percent to 5.96.

The competing sales tax reform bill from Brooklyn Park Democrat Melissa Hortman would lower the state sales tax rate to 4.5 percent. It would tax clothing, plus a long list of services and some food products.

Both Erhardt's and Hortman's plans offer income tax credits to lower income Minnesotans, to help offset the expected blow. The thinking behind the original exemption is that clothing, like food, isn't a discretionary expense.

{...}Representative Erhardt says he realizes it won't happen soon, but he wants to get the conversation going in the Legislature to bring some fiscal stability.

"I don't know if mine's a good idea," said Erhardt, "But that was the lowest we could come in at and the biggest pot of money readily available. So let's start here and start talking about it. ...

"I certainly don't want to be tagged with raising taxes!" Erhardt laughed, "After this last mess with the transportation bill."

Erhardt was one of six Republicans who crossed party lines to support the highways bill which increased gas taxes, license tab fees on new cars, and sales taxes in the Metro area.

Oh, really? You don't want to be "tagged with raising taxes" ? Bite me, asshole. Your idea of fiscal responsibility is not to cut spending---which, I hesitate to mention is regularly one of your campaign promises---but rather raising taxes. I'm not going to vote for you anymore. Christ. Like it doesn't already cost an arm and a leg to live in this friggin' state, you want to nickel and dime us some more? CUT SPENDING, JERKWEED. That's your solution to the problem.

I don't really care about a sales tax on clothes, because I know it won't happen. The Mall of Gomorrah is located in the Twin Cities for a reason, people, and they won't let it happen. To this day, I am still surprised every time I purchase an article of clothing and don't have to pay sales tax on it. This comes in handy when you're buying things like, say, suits for the husband, as you will have saved yourself $30 (or thereabouts) in sales tax. That may not be much overall, but that's money that can be spent elsewhere, like on, say, gasoline, which is over $3.00 a gallon these days. But the fact that this won't happen isn't so important as the whopping omissions Erhardt makes. He's telling us that, if his proposed legislation is passed, the overall effective rate would drop across the board to 5.65%, hence we'd be paying sales tax on a broader range of products, but we'd be paying less in sales taxes. That's his "fiscal responsibility" argument. But what dear old Ron is leaving out is this: the state's effective rate may drop to 5.65%, but he completely neglects to mention that many counties, like Hennepin, have added on a percentage point here or there to pay for things like, oh, I don't know, a state, county, and municipality subsidized ballpark for a BILLIONAIRE OWNER, as have local municipalities, who aren't so bold as to add on a full percentage point, but stick with halves and quarters, to pay for essential services the state won't cough up for. Like police and fire.

The husband is a retailer: he sells computer parts to people and he has to charge sales tax on these items. Wanna know how much sales tax is if you're running a business in the City of Minneapolis, already? 7.15%. 6.5% goes to the state; .5% goes to the City of Minneapolis; and .15% is levied by the county for the new new NEW Twinkie ballpark.

"But, Kath," you say, "if the state rate goes down, you'll be paying LESS in taxes." Uh, yeah, maybe on one item. But go to the mall, to buy clothes, and you'll be paying more. Go to purchase a service that perhaps didn't have to charge sales tax, but now does, and you'll be paying more. And you'll still have to pay for the municipal and county sales tax levies, which won't have gone down, but I'll betcha five bucks will go up, because they'll see the opportunity to keep sales tax at the same rate it's always been at, thinking no one will notice.

Fortunately, this won't happen. The state says "Bless you. Do you need a tissue?" every time the Mall of Gomorrah sneezes, so if this goes through, I'll be highly surprised. But the overall point is clear: Erhardt doesn't want to bother with the tedious business of cutting spending. He's all for raising taxes, and even if he claims that's the fiscally responsible thing to do, I'm not buying it.

I'm done with you, Erhardt.

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February 27, 2008

Gracious

I didn't think it was possible.

William F. Buckley, dead at age 82.

You can find the NY Times obituary here.

I honestly thought he'd outlive us all. A man with a brain as big as his, it would seem, would figure out a way to cheat death. Unfortunately, he was as mortal as the rest of us.

I remember, way back in the day, watching Firing Line and wondering how his brain worked. He would seemingly go off on tangents in any debate he partook, but the glorious thing about Buckley is that he could always make the digressions and tangential arguments relevant to the debate in which he was participating. In other words, he could bring it back, and it made his argument all the more compelling. He's like a boxer, looping around the ring, hitting here and there, perhaps taking a few punches himself, but ultimately winning the match in the end. Very few people have the presence of mind to be able to do that. To consistently have one line of thinking, of belief, but to be able to explore other areas without losing part of what brought them there in the first place? That's rare.

Don't believe me? Go on and watch him debate Noam Chomsky in 1969. It's long, but it's absolutely riveting and completely worth it.

While I will forever be cursed to listen to that odd mishmash of an accent in my head whenever I read anything he's written, I'm nonetheless very sad he's passed on. Moreover, conservative bloggers owe Mr. Buckley a untold debt of gratitude for starting the ball rolling, way back in 1955, when National Review was launched. There was nothing like it at the time, and it was his willingness to yell, "Stop! When no one else was inclined to do so," that, in part, gives us our mandate to do what we do, even if our contribution will never be as meaningful and long-lasting as his was.

RIP, dear sir.

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February 26, 2008

Purposefully Empty Rhetoric

While the last three paragraphs are crap, I agreewith everything Gideon Rachman has to say in his column this week.

Even his most bitter opponents grant Barack Obama one thing – he makes great speeches. The senator from Illinois is generally held to be a competent debater and an electrifying orator.

The notion that Mr Obama is the new Demosthenes has even made it across the Atlantic. On BBC radio the other day, there was a long discussion of the art of rhetoric, illustrated with clips of the best of Barack. William Rees-Mogg, a venerable former editor of The Times, asserts that Mr Obama is the most inspirational presidential candidate since John F. Kennedy and that “he is, in my view, a better speaker than Kennedy”.

All this leaves me baffled. I have watched Mr Obama speak live; I have watched him speak on television; I have even watched his speeches set to music on a video made by celebrity supporters. But I find myself strangely unmoved – and this is disconcerting. It feels like admitting to falling asleep during Winston Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches” speech.

I will admit one thing. Mr Obama has a nice, gravelly voice – which is perhaps a legacy of his days as a heavy smoker. But his most famous phrases are vacuous. The “audacity of hope”? It would be genuinely audacious to run for the White House on a platform of despair. Promising hope is simply good sense. “The fierce urgency of now”? It is hard to see what Mr Obama means when he says this – other than that some inner voice has told him to run for president.

{...}And then there is “Yes we can” – the phrase that was so inspirational that it inspired Will.i.am of hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas to make his infamous video, backed up by film stars and musicians such as Scarlett Johansson and Herbie Hancock.

The strumming of guitars and crooning drowns out Mr Obama on the musical version. So I had to consult the text to find out what exactly it is that we can do. “Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.”

This sounds to me like a man doing an impression of what he thinks a great speech might be like. It is the kind of empty exhortation that usually gives politicians a bad name. Peter Sellers, a British comedian of the 1960s, caught the genre nicely in a parody speech: “Let us assume a bold thrust and go forward together. Let us carry the fight against ignorance to the four corners of the earth, because it is a fight that concerns us all.” Mr Obama might easily give a speech like that – although he would probably strip out some of the detail.

{...}And while Mr Obama’s most “inspirational” phrases are vague to the point of vacuity, he has shown in a series of television debates that he is more than capable of serious discussion. You do not get to be president of the Harvard Law Review if you cannot cope with detail.

So Mr Obama is not relying on empty exhortation because that is all he is capable of. It is a deliberate political strategy. And it makes sense. The more a candidate gets stuck into the detail, the more likely he is to bore or antagonise voters. Appealing to peopleÂ’s emotions is less dangerous and more effective.{...}

Hits it right on the head (before Rachman subsequently goes off the rails entirely, saying, in essence, that just because Obama's speeches are empty and vacuous, he wouldn't be as president.)

See, here's the thing. I can't stand Obama any more than I can stand Bubba Clinton. They're both con men. They're both slimy. All you need to do is watch them on tee vee for thirty seconds or so and you get the overpowering whiff of used car salesmen. Now, while I'm fairly certain Bubba would have been selling used Pintos, and Obama "pre-owned" Lexus' (Lexii?), they're both cut of the same cloth. They are salesmen, and they both damn well know it. Obama is selling a dream of an America where everyone can, really and truly, get along; where no one will have any partisan leanings after he's elected president; where everyone will unite hands and sing Kumbaya at sunset every day, across all the time zones of this country. Do you really think he's going to be able to deliver it?

Moreover, how dumb are you if you think he can actually do it?

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February 21, 2008

Balkanization c. 2008

Ok, so while I may have been a little off in the timing, it appears I was somewhat right in predicting that it was going to go to hell when Kosovo declared independence from Serbia.

In case you hadn't seen, the US Embassy in Belgrade is currently en fuego.

BELGRADE (Reuters) - Smoke billowed from the American embassy in Belgrade after scores of protesters broke into the building on Thursday, cheered on by crowds outside, in a protest at U.S. support for Kosovo's independence.

One protester climbed up to the first floor of the building, located on one of the Serbian capital's main boulevards, ripped the Stars and Stripes off its pole and briefly put up a Serbian flag in its place.

Protesters jumped up and down on the embassy balcony, holding up a Serbian flag as the crowd below of about 1,000 people cheered them on, shouting "Serbia, Serbia."

Some 200 riot police finally arrived about half an hour later, beating and arresting some of the rioters and driving the rest away. Some protesters sat on the ground, bleeding.

The storming of the building came during a largely peaceful state-backed rally attended by around 200,000 people to protest at Kosovo's secession on Sunday.

"As long as we live, Kosovo is Serbia," Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told the crowd from a stage in front of the old Yugoslav parliament building in Belgrade, to applause.

"We'll never give up Kosovo, never!" protesters chanted back, as they waved national flags. A huge banner reading "Kosovo is Serbia" draped the front of the building.

"We're not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us," Kostunica said, paying tribute to the Russian leader who has opposed U.S. and European states' recognition of Kosovo.{...}

Mmmm. Nationalistic hyperbole? Saber rattling---even if it's not your saber you're rattling, but one of your friends' instead? Fire? Busting into an American Embassy and treating it like it's your own personal kaibo? What more could you ask for?

Mark my words: this thing is not going to end peacefully. We're just ramping up. The UN, for all its posturing, can't do a damn thing about Russia and its veto. And if Russia didn't veto any resolutions put forth, then China would. The EU is completely hamstrung, because, apparently Serbia doesn't want the carrot they've offered, and they're pretty sure they can get around the stick. All the Kosovars have going for them right now is NATO---and while that's a pretty big and good organization to have on your side, they really didn't solve the problem in 1999, did they? All they'll be able to do is keep things from going from bad to worse. While that may be a lot, it's not going to end this conflict, once and for all. It'll just put it on the back burner, again, for it to simmer, again.

Furthermore, I suppose this could actually be considered, well, somewhat opportunistic for the Russians. Presidential elections are on the slate for Russia next month, and if Vlad the Impaler wants to make sure his lackey Medvedev replaces him, and is willing to show some muscle to guarantee it (even though polling data suggests Medvedev already is going to win by a landslide) how handy is it that the Kosovars declared independence with such perfect timing and obliged him. I can almost see Vlad rubbing his hands together with glee, can't you? It remains to be seen whether Vlad can put his money where his mouth is in terms of the supposedly new and improved Russian Armed Forces, but, rampant speculation aside, there's just one thing that really needs to be said about all of this: hold onto your diapies, babies! This is going to be a bumpy ride.

UPDATE: According to Fox, the fire at the Embassy has been put out and the embassy has now been secured.

Also, according to Fox, and a Reuters correspondent they're currently chatting with who was on the ground at the time, the police let the protesters into the Embassy to set it on fire/trash it. Then they came back about ninety minutes later and cleaned things up.

Niiiiice.

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January 30, 2008

Oops

I read this on Saturday, and meant to post about it, but, well, I kind of forgot all about it. Not that I should have, but you know me, Mrs. Chemo Brain (yes, it's getting better, but I'm still having issues with coming up with names and short term memory stuff), and if I can forget about it, I will. Anyway, without any further ado, I shall hand you over to Christopher Caldwell, from the FT.

The good bits:

The Netherlands has spent the past several weeks in a political crisis out of a novel by Borges. People are worried that a politician might say something he has already said. And they are divided over how to interpret a film that may not exist. Last August, the anti-immigration legislator, Geert Wilders, wrote in the daily De Volkskrant: “I’ve had enough of Islam in the Netherlands – not one more Muslim immigrant. I’ve had enough of Allah and Mohammed in the Netherlands – not one more mosque.” Mr Wilders, whose Freedom party controls nine of the 150 seats in the Dutch lower house, also urged banning the Koran, which he calls “the Islamic Mein Kampf.

But his announcement in late November that he would make a short film to that effect sent the government into a panic. The cabinet met in secret. It ordered foreign embassies to draw up evacuation plans in case of mob violence. It put the mayors of Dutch cities on alert. It arranged meetings with imams and other Muslim representatives, distancing itself from Mr WildersÂ’ positions. The interior, justice and foreign ministers summoned Mr Wilders to meetings, and the countryÂ’s terrorism co-ordinator warned him that he might have to leave the country for his own security. The government reportedly investigated whether it would be possible to block or delay Mr WildersÂ’s broadcast.

Not that there is anything illogical about taking precautions against radical Islam. ...Each time a gauntlet is thrown down, someone will credibly promise violence in the name of Islam. Mr WildersÂ’ film idea was no exception. At the European parliament in Strasbourg last week, Ahmad Badr al-Din Hassoun, Grand Mufti of Syria, warned that Mr Wilders would be responsible for any “violence and bloodshed” that resulted from his film – and that the Dutch people would, in turn, be responsible for reining him in. Noor Farida Ariffin, the departing  Malaysian ambassador, told De Volkskrant: “Compared to what IÂ’m expecting, the riots over the Danish cartoons will look like a picnic.”

{...}Mr Wilders wrote a triumphant op-ed in de Volkskrant this week asking people to imagine what would happen if he had made a film describing the Bible as “fascistic”: “Would Dutch embassies in countries where a lot of Christians live, like Germany and Belgium, have notified Dutch residents and dusted off their evacuation plans?”

Was Mr Wilders asserting a right to free speech? Or was he dressing up a gratuitous religious insult in constitutional language? He was doing both, of course. In their eagerness to keep Mr Wilders from airing his argument, the Dutch authorities helped make it for him. They were unable to admit that widespread worries about violence stem from a problem (extremism in the Muslim world) and not just from an approach to a problem (Mr Wilders’s brusqueness). At a speech in Madrid, Maxime Verhagen, the foreign minister, said: “It is difficult to anticipate the content of the film, but freedom of expression doesn’t mean the right to offend.” It doesn’t? Well, if it doesn’t, then freedom of expression is not much of a right.

{...}We have more religious pluralism than the western liberal system was designed to cope with. This does not necessarily mean that liberalism cannot handle pluralism, but certainly we are in the midst of an experiment. Mr Wilders aims to show that the experiment has failed and that one of the ingredients in our system of freedom of religion – either the liberalism or the pluralism – is going to have to go.{...}

Exactly. Go read the whole thing.

Should be interesting to see if this wild haired man's film actually exists, or if rather, as I suspect, this is a stunt.

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January 21, 2008

The Unlikely Disenfranchisers

Bleeping Unions:

{...}About 114,000 registered Democrats – a record for Nevada - turned out to caucus in the state. With Barack Obama securing the endorsement of the powerful Culinary Workers Union, which represents 60,000 casino workers, members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team had gone into Saturday’s vote fearing their candidate would be outgunned.

They need not have worried. Mrs ClintonÂ’s supporters, particularly Latino voters, were out in force in Nevada and helped their candidate win the state. At the New York, New York, many union members openly defied CWU instructions to support Mr Obama and instead backed Mrs Clinton.

Some, such as Qumar Faridi, a union shop steward at the nearby Monte Carlo casino, voted with the union and supported Mr Obama. “We have to stick together…we can’t break away,” he said. Mrs Clinton, he added, was “not union-friendly”.

But Santiago Espinoza and Maria Abiles, CWU members who also work at the Monte Carlo, said they had come to support Mrs Clinton. “It’s a private decision…I will back whoever I like,” said Mr Espinoza. Mrs Clinton, he added, was “the best person to become president…she has the most experience”.

About 80 per cent of the 2,800 employees at the New York, New York are members of the CWU, which in the days leading up to the vote was accused of voter intimidation by the Clinton camp. In the Staten Island room before the caucus, Toni Mitchels, who also works at the Monte Carlo, said union officials had spread misinformation about the voting process.

“A lot of the union representatives were lying to the employees in the cafeteria,” she said. “They were telling them they could only come to this caucus if they voted for Obama.”

Ms Mitchels, who said she decided to back Mr Obama before the Illinois senator was endorsed by the union, said the tactics “bothered me…[the union] didn’t need to bully anyone”.

{my emphasis}

I'm seriously beginning to wonder, if Obama gets the nomination, how many spontaneous resurrections will happen in Cook County come late October-early November.

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January 15, 2008

Slouching Toward Theocracy?

Disturbing. Very, very disturbing.

"[Some of my opponents] do not want to change the Constitution, but I believe it's a lot easier to change the constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God, and that's what we need to do is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards,"{...}

Can you guess who said it? Yes, that's right. It's the Huckajesus.

Ace sez:

I don't have much of a problem with religion-based policy impulses. All of our impulses come from somewhere, after all, and I don't see why a religious person's core beliefs should affect his worldview less than my own secularist/humanist worldview. The left's insistence that only secular beliefs should impel policy stances is inconsistent but convenient in that it would, if accepted, lead to a secularist-only public polity.

However, I prefer such prescriptions to be couched in secularist terms. There are numerous reasons to be pro-life or pro-traditional-marriage that don't have much to do with religion. It's not deceptive, I don't think, to argue in terms of sound policy, without mention of God, even if, at root, it is a belief in God's will that ultimately leads one to embrace those non-religious rationales for one's positions.

I have little doubt that most pro-lifers believe as they do because God, they think, and not 18th century Jeffersonian political thinking, supports the pro-life position. And yet when arguing about this I strongly prefer arguments which do not explicitly invoke an appeal to the ultimate authority, God Himself. {...}

I don't know that I could say it much better than that. While I'm absolutely sure Huckabee was pandering to some Evangelical Christian group in terms of passing a human life amendment and one defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, think about what he said for a moment in broader terms of what he claims to believe in. It's been well established that as Governor of Arkansas, he signed a statement at a Baptist convention in the late-90's stating that women should be submissive to their husbands. So, taking this statement into account, is he now going to try to repeal the nineteenth amendment, which gave women the right to vote? It's a logical jump, even though it may sound (and admittedly is) farfetched?

Like Ace, I don't have any issues with people getting their morality from whatever religion they choose to practice. Religion, for whatever else it might be, is simply a morality delivery system. That's nothing new in the scheme of things, but anyone who tries to argue that this sort of crap is what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution has lost it entirely. You can try and argue otherwise, but the history is clear: the Founding Fathers might have been Christian and had their morals developed by their respective religions, but they also sure as hell knew what a divisive thing religion could be, and hence they said, in effect, no state religion in this country...ever. Huckabee seems to want to ignore that bit. He seems to be stating that religious morality is the only type of morality that should inform public policy, ergo the only person who can safely, and morally, guide public policy is someone of staunch religious beliefs. Like, perhaps, a former Baptist minister?

I am sick and tired of this crap. When did "secular" become such a dirty word, eh? I don't find it wholly incompatible that you can be a religious person, yet be for a secular government as well. Why do so many people think otherwise, and in Huckabee's case, seem to think that the only way to go is to create a de facto theocracy? What is the matter with wanting to keep your church out of my government, and vice versa? This country was founded on the principle of religious freedom. It was also founded on the principle that there would be no state sponsored religion---even of the de facto variety. You can argue that a return to God would do this country some good, but I would simply challenge you to try and shove that genie back in is bottle. It's not going to happen. This is where we are at in the early 21st Century. Deal with it. Go to church if you want. I don't have an issue with it. I don't have an issue with your morality, either. But when people argue that the only person that can lead this country out of the pit of moral decrepitude it finds itself in is an ex-minister of a religion I don't much care for, you can be pretty sure I'm going to vote for the other guy.

After all, I already have found my religious savior---and I don't need Him in the oval office.

Posted by: Kathy at 05:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 812 words, total size 5 kb.

January 13, 2008

Yes, Fred, Even Non-Politically Correct Speech Is Free Speech

Ezra Levant, publisher of The Western Standard, a magazine in Alberta that printed the Mohammed Cartoons two years ago, has been brought up in front of the Canadian Human Rights Council because, by publishing the cartoons, he offended some Islamofascists.

Check out his testimony in front of a representative of said Human Rights Council---and watch her body language morph during his opening statement. She goes from politely crossed hands to full-on crossed arms---which, as my mother will tell you, repeatedly, (particularly when you're a teenager with bad posture) puts people off.

Amazingly enough, it's still on YouTube, but the sound is way down low, so you'll have to use headphones to actually hear what he has to say. Coincidence? Given YouTube's past history in these things, sadly, I think not.

You can find the rest of his testimony here. I would highly recommend going and checking it out. Before YouTube yanks the things entirely. Because you know that will happen sooner rather than later.

{ht: Ace---or one of his open blog evil minions}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:54 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 191 words, total size 2 kb.

January 10, 2008

Mitt: The Soul-Glo Days

romneysoulglo.jpg

The question remains: will the Minnesotans for Romney bastards (who spammed me THREE times on Tuesday, and who, apparently, are confused as to just what state we live in. Because, let me give ya a hint kids, it ain't New Hampshire.) get a freakin' clue or will they keep spamming me?

Should we start a pool?

{previous entries here and here}

Posted by: Kathy at 12:15 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 69 words, total size 1 kb.

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