Thoughts and Rants

U.N. racism investigator to visit U.S. from Monday

A special U.N. human rights investigator will visit the United States this month to probe racism, an issue that has forced its way into the race to secure the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

The United Nations said Doudou Diene would meet federal and local officials, as well as lawmakers and judicial authorities during the May 19-June 6 visit.

"The special rapporteur will...gather first-hand information on issues related to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," a U.N. statement said on Friday.

Excuse me, but this is bullshit.

The real reason why the U.N. is sending a special investigator to look at racism in the United States is (a) to reinforce the complete lie that the United Nations is a legitimate world government rather than an odious little treaty organization (no different than NATO or ANZUS) which is starting to look like it has outlived its actual usefulness, and (b) in order to find the little warts in the public face of the United States in order to distract the world from the large festering soars on the body politic of most other countries.

Let's take Japan, where in the mindset of most Japanese, you are either Japanese (meaning you are born from a Japanese family) or you are gaijin--even if you move to Japan and apply for citizenship. And while in Japan, some in the media have started to regard gaijin as an offensive word not to be broadcast, the attitude permeates Japan that the Japanese are one culture, one race and one nation which cannot be penetrated by outsiders.

Let's take France, who could teach the Japanese a thing or two about xenophobia. Many in France will pretend that they cannot understand a non-French person speaking French with an accent. Foreign tourists in France may make the wheels of France's economy turn round and round, but even other Europeans think the French are obnoxious in their xenophobia and in their belief that French born, French speaking French nationals are the chosen people who, once those damned working-class cowboy Americans get off the world stage, the French can resume their rightful place as the arbitrators and ambassadors to the World.

Let's take Saudi Arabia, who make the French seem absolutely cosmopolitan in their outlook. Yes, that same Saudi Arabia which discriminates against anyone who is not muslim, which has signs on their highways leading towards the city of Mecca which outlaw non-muslims from traveling on them, which has tossed non-muslims in jail for the crime of carrying non-islamic scripture. (And while Islam considers Christians and Jews "co-religionists", that is, of believing in the same Bible, Islam makes it an item of faith that Christians and Jews conspired in the distant past to rewrite and re-edit the bible to be inherently islamophobic by striking all mention of prophesies foretelling the arrival of Mohammed. Thus carrying a Bible (which is considered in Islam a corrupted and evil little book) is a crime in Saudi Arabia.)

And this doesn't even hit upon places like Zimbabwe, where farmers and farms are being destroyed (and food production capacity being wiped out in a day and age where food shortages are triggering riots in the Middle East) because the farmers are white, or Darfur, where black Africans are being slaughtered wholesale by Muslim militias.

While in most of English speaking world we take it as a matter of fact that if someone comes to a country like America, if they become a citizen here they'll automatically become part of the fabric and culture here: we have French-Americans and Japanese-Americans and Arab-Americans: a hyphenation which indicates their country of origin (and an aspect of the culture they're introducing into the fabric of our lives), followed by who we consider them to actually be: Americans. But in most of the world, if you are foreign born and you come to that country, you will never truly become a member of that country--at best, you're tolerated. And if you are one of the millions of Arabs who moved to countries like France, you're not even that: Arabs are segregated in France to a handful of ghettos and never casually accepted with the same degree we casually tolerate illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The United States is seen by the rest of the world--and we tend to see ourselves--as uncouth, foul-mouthed, partying cowboys who all own guns and shoot first before asking questions. The rest of the world sees us as racist--and they prove it by replaying old news footage from four decades ago--and homophobic and otherwise an angry and spiteful and stupid uncultured people.

In a way we have some degree of pride in this image: as a people we tend to believe in the axiom of the highest in the lowest, and we still cling to the American dream (and we even celebrate it in television shows like "American Idol") that even a lowly cab driver can rise to become a rich superstar. Further, while those in the press may use "cowboy" as a derogatory term to describe President Bush (and President Reagan before him), the reality is we're more comfortable with flawed "cowboy" Presidents than we would be with an Oxford-educated European-style elitist--which is why Bush emphasizes his own Texas "cowboy" image and glosses over his private prep school education in Massachusetts, his BA in History from Yale, or his Masters in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, making George W. Bush one of the best educated Presidents we have ever had serve in the Oval Office.

The cold and hard reality is that we are one of the least racist, sexist, and homophobic people on the planet. Yes, we have problems: black communities within the United States have, through the help of U.S. governmental programs, created self-destructive cultures of dependency (which you can also see in the Native American communities--tribal recognition is as much about the right to suck at the tit of the taxpayers as it is a point of pride) which create a disproportionate number of blacks in prison (and a disproportionate number of Native Americans who have engaged in similarly self-destructive acts). And it would be a lie to suggest that Obama and Clinton haven't face any racism or sexism on the trail as they've campaigned for President--even if 99% of the people in this country are completely free of racist or sexist attitudes, that still leaves 3 million with a problem.

And we broadcast our warts for all to see, on the presumption that public debate and discussion and airing of our dirty laundry is the only way for us to bring problems to light to resolve them.


For the United Nations to send an envoy to examine "racism" in the United States is insulting--and patently hypocritical, given the persecution of Christians in Saudi Arabia or the fact that, in the United States, we're far more accepting of outsiders than is nearly any non-English speaking country in the world. It's a witch-hunt, conducted by a pretender to World Government, pure and simple, in order to placate the rest of the world on the utter failure of Europe to integrate its Arabic immigrants to the same degree we have accepted illegals from Mexico (which, given the sorry state of illegal immigration here in the United States, is really saying a lot) and on the overt xenophobia and racism that the rest of the world takes as fundamental article of faith.

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" Matthews 7:3

One odd element of the left's attacks on Bush and on conservatism is that occasionally, in order to score points, someone ventures into an area without thinking that is--well, really off their fucking rocker, without even realizing it.

Take, for example, the following editorial opposing Bush's speech to the Knesset on the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary: Bush, and His Use of "Appeasement"

Democrats are rebuking President Bush for saying in his speech to the Knesset, here, that to “negotiate with terrorists and radicals” is “appeasement.” The Democrats took it as a slap at Barack Obama. What bothers me is the continual reference to Hitler and his National Socialists, particularly the British and French accommodation at the Munich Conference of 1938.

What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable. He wanted the German-speaking areas of Europe under German authority. He had just annexed Austria, which was German-speaking, without bloodshed. There were two more small pieces of Germanic territory: the free city of Danzig and the Sudetenland, a border area of what is now the Czech Republic.

Erm, what the fuck? "What Hitler was demanding was not unreasonable"?!? And before reading the essay and saying "well, he does have a point--from our perspective Hitler was dealing legitimately with the West right up to the invasion of Checkoslovakia in 1939, the author conveniently forgets two facts in his reinvention of Hitler as a German statesman. First, the first concentration camp in Dachau was opened in March of 1933. Second, the world knew that Jews were being put to death as part of a NAZI run "racial purity" program in the mid 1930's, but did little about it.

And what is really funny about this is that, in a several thousand paragraph speech expressing the United State's support for Israel and Bush's hope for a peaceful future in the Middle East that the Democrats were so damned quick to latch onto one particular sentence and make boatloads of hay over it: "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." Almost as if that one sentence, which in the context of the speech was a part of a larger assertion to stand strong militarily against those who would kill the citizens of Israel for the crime of being Jewish, hit a little too close to home within the ranks of the Democratic Party...

Oddly, Hypocrisy Rooted in High Morals

In the new study, detailed in the November issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers find that when this line between right and wrong is ambiguous among people who think of themselves as having high moral standards, the do-gooders can become the worst of cheaters.

The results recall the seeming disconnect between the words and actions of folks like televangelist and fraud convict Jim Bakker or admitted meth-buyer Ted Haggard, former president of the National Evangelical Association, an umbrella group representing some 45,000 churches.

"The principle we uncovered is that when faced with a moral decision, those with a strong moral identity choose their fate (for good or for bad) and then the moral identity drives them to pursue that fate to the extreme," said researcher Scott Reynolds of the University of Washington Business School in Seattle. "So it makes sense that this principle would help explain what makes the greatest of saints and the foulest of hypocrites."

But it's not just the religious right that is infected by this saint/sinner dichotomy--just witness Al Gore's ginormous home.

And it doesn't even really require one to adhere to the morality of the dominant culture: to fit this "saint/sinner" model one only has to hold high in one's personal identity the belief that one is a good fill-in-the-blank, rather than identifying oneself by what one does or by one's relationships.

Does that sound familiar to anyone here who knows people who profess to be good Thelemites?...

Amputee swimmer qualifies for Olympics

Swimmer Natalie du Toit will make Olympic history in Beijing as the first amputee to compete at the Summer Olympic Games.

Du Toit, who lost her left leg in a motorcycle accident seven years ago, finished fourth in the 6.2-mile race at the open water world championships this month in Seville, Spain.

Crap.

I mean, crap! She qualified in the 10km, which uses your legs as well as your arms to propel yourself through the water. It's the marathon of swimming: six miles. And she placed 4th in the Olympic trials, which puts her in China this summer.

Another story and a picture: Dreams carry Natalie Du Toit to Beijing

Via Instapundit.com: Credit where it's due

THERE is a certain familiarity to the concomitant series of actions and reactions when disaster strikes in the world. The US stands ready, willing and able to offer assistance. It is often the first country to send in millions of dollars, navy strike groups loaded with food and medical supplies, and transport planes, helicopters and floating hospitals to help those devastated by natural disaster.

Then, just as swift and with equal predictability, those wedded to the Great Satan view of the US begin to carp, drawing on a potent mixture of cynicism and conspiracy theories to criticise the last remaining superpower. When the US keeps doing so much of the heavy lifting to alleviate suffering, you'd figure that the anti-Americans might eventually revise their view of the US. But they never do. And coming under constant attack even when helping others, you'd figure that Americans would eventually draw the curtains on world crises. But they haven't. At least not yet.

So it was last week. The US stood ready to help the cyclone-ravaged Burmese people. It did not matter that Burma's ruling junta was no friend of the Americans. With more than 100,000 people feared dead and many more hundreds of thousands left destitute, US Air Force cargo planes loaded with supplies and personnel started arriving in nearby Thailand to begin humanitarian operations in Burma.

A US Navy strike group in the Gulf of Thailand sent helicopters ashore, ready to arrive in Burma within hours. Alas, Burma's military leaders left their people to die for 10 days before finally accepting help from the evil empire. Even if the Yanks are allowed to boost their assistance to Burma, they can expect a groundswell of criticism.

...

The need to paint Americans as a greedy, selfish, war-mongering superpower cannot be disturbed by facts. It matters not that, in the year before the tsunami, the US provided $2.4 billion in humanitarian relief: 40% of all the relief aid given to the world in 2003. Never mind that development and emergency relief rose from $10 billion during the last year of Bill Clinton's administration to $24 billion under George W. Bush in 2003. Or that, according to a German study, Americans contribute to charities nearly seven times as much a head as Germans do. Or that, adjusted for population, American philanthropy is more than two-thirds more than British giving.

There is a teenaged immaturity about the rest of the world's relationship with the US. Whenever a serious crisis erupts somewhere, our dependence on the US becomes obvious, and many hate the US because of it. That the hatred is irrational is beside the point.

What's funny about all of this is that it's predictable and obvious why we got here.

The United States was founded on an ideal of rugged individualism: one which, given the push west in the 1800's, evolved to an understanding that to those small towns dotting various trading paths, if you got into trouble, either your neighbor helped you or you died. That Puritan Christian ethic combined with Irish/Scottish individualism translated into a culture where today, when you or I hear about a disaster half a world away, we subconsciously tap into that meme that God and the government only helps those who help themselves, and we reach for our checkbooks. So it makes sense that as a people, culturally speaking, if some natural disaster happens, without any command from any central authority or any demands from a governmental figure, everyone in the United States from bureaucrats to military folks to civilian NGOs to individuals all leap into action and do our part.

It is something which, quite frankly, we should be proud of as a nation.

But there is also the rub: continental Europe did not develop with the same pattern as the United States: while our individualistic westward expansion happened early enough that some of our older generation today remembers stories from their grandparents of western settlement, Europe was settled thousands of years before. They had no memories of relatively recent terrible events which cause many Mormons living in Utah to keep on hand two years of food and water for emergencies. Instead, government has always been there and governments and Kings and Princes have always lead things. (In the West, the Federal Government is a vague thing three thousand miles away, a thing that has only within the last hundred years made its presence felt in ways that didn't involve sending troops to protect us against Indians and censor takers to survey the land.)

So to Europe, when you hear of a disaster in Burma and you reach for your checkbook, that doesn't count. When that money goes to the International Red Cross, that doesn't count. When the supplies are carried by our military to a foreign land and gets distributed by our troops, that doesn't count. None of it counts because none of it was routed through an "official" international governmental organization devoted to aid and assistance, coordinated and governed by an "official" trans-national organization.

It would only count if George Bush went on television and "activated" the official Federal assistance organization (of which the Red Cross was a governmental entity like the U.S. Post Office) and automatically your taxes were adjusted this month to represent your "donation" for aid. And it would only count if a separate non-military U.S. "aid" organization with its own fleet of helicopters and ships and logistics officials moved the aid overseas. And it would only count if this organization (call it "USFAO") were to place itself under the oversight of the UN.

Laugh, but that's what the U.N. wants.

It would fit into the understanding of those Europeans who are generally the voice of outrage at U.S. stinginess--regardless of the fact that, in the past half century, the United States was often the only country in the world capable of serving as a "second responder" to any disaster around the world, and--if it weren't for local conditions on the ground--has consistently shown a history of invading an area with food and blankets and--if left to our own devices--reconstruction engineers and building materials to rebuild--and, sacra bleu! leaving the area without leaving behind a military invasion force or taking control of the government of that country.

(Footnote: Before anyone points out the disaster that is New Orleans, keep in mind that a similar disaster in California that displaced a hell of a lot more people, happened even more recently--and because California's disaster mechanism was well organized while Louisiana's was fucked up, no-one remembers that a million people were displaced by the wildfires that destroyed more than a dozen towns. If New Orleans is still fucked up, it's because Louisiana is more like Burma than California...)

From Dark Roasted Blend: Giant snail!

Yes, it's a snail that is the size of a house cat.

From NBC-Vista copy-protection snafu reminds us why DRM stinks we get this picture: NBC recording canceled: not allowed.

Between NBC time shifting its programming by one minute so that DVRs fail to record the show because it overlaps by one minute to another show on another network to yanking its programming off of iTunes to "accidently" setting a "do not record" broadcast flag that shut down Vista from recording the monday night lineup, I'm starting to think NBC believes its programming lineup is so solid it will force people to abandon technologies that makes it convenient to watch NBC's shows.

And I don't get it. Wouldn't you think NBC would want to make its programming more convenient to watch, instead of less convenient?

I've noticed a pattern, one which greatly amuses me, one which I suspect (and I believe I've noted years ago) is one of the fatal flaws of Thelema.
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"Reasonableness" is in the eye of the beholder.

I think Barack Obama's position on the war in Iraq is dangerous. I think his position on Darfur (especially when seen in light of the war in Iraq) is hypocritical. His position on tax rebates and on the S-CHIP program are absurd in my opinion, and his economic isolationism would roll back the clock 50 years.

Are my opposition to his positions based on the fact that, as a thinking human being, I have a set of underlying principles which translate into a set of political positions which happen to disagree with Barack Obama?

No: according to a commentary in CNN, it's because I'm actually a bigoted racist: Commentary: No racism in the presidential election?

Meh.

How cool is this? Eight Rooms, Well, Nine, but That’s Their Secret

ON a recent Saturday morning Cami Beghou, 13, pushed the right side of the tall, white bookcase that is built into one of the powder-pink walls in her bedroom. The bookcase, holding rows of books, a stuffed dachshund and a volleyball, silently swung outward, revealing a tiny, well-lighted room. Containing a desk, a chair and a laptop computer, it serves as her study area.

Cami, an eighth grader, considers the hidden room the best thing about her family’s five-month-old French colonial-style house in this Chicago suburb. “When I heard that I could have a secret room, it sounded like so much fun,” she said, noting that the room initially conjured images of secret passages from Scooby-Doo cartoons. “My parents told me, ‘You could just put curtains over the doorway,’ but that wasn’t nearly as cool.”

Since March, when the Beghous moved into the house, Cami estimates that she has had about 30 friends over. Not one was able to detect the bookcase’s secret without guidance. “Most people don’t even recognize that it’s there,” said her father, Eric Beghou, who owns a consulting company with his wife, Beth. “When the home inspector came by to examine the house, our builder shut the bookcase, hiding the room. The inspector went up and down the stairs a couple times — he knew that something was unusual — but he couldn’t figure out what was there.”

Soon, however, inspectors and other guests may get wise to hidden rooms like the Beghous’. Although hard data is not available, architects report an increase over the last five years in the number of clients installing concealed rooms.

Read it all, and it's complete with pictures.

So cool! I want a secret room!

Magic trick costs teacher job

Land 'O Lakes, Florida -- The stories in the news about inappropriate relationships between teachers and students have been overwhelming. There was even a substitute teacher in New Port Richey who got in trouble after investigators say she had a relationship with an underage student.

Well, another Pasco County substitute teacher's job is on the line, but this time it's because of a magic trick.

The charge from the school district — Wizardry!

Substitute teacher Jim Piculas does a 30-second magic trick where a toothpick disappears then reappears.

But after performing it in front of a classroom at Rushe Middle School in Land 'O Lakes, Piculas said his job did a disappearing act of its own.

"I get a call the middle of the day from the supervisor of substitute teachers. He says, 'Jim, we have a huge issue. You can't take any more assignments. You need to come in right away,'" he said.

When Piculas went in, he learned his little magic trick cast a spell that went much farther than he'd hoped.

"I said, 'Well Pat, can you explain this to me?' 'You've been accused of wizardry,' [he said]. Wizardry?" he asked.

No joke.

Suspended term for blind driver

A blind man convicted of dangerous driving, after police spotted his car on the wrong side of the road, has been given a suspended jail sentence.

Omed Aziz, 31, from Darlaston, West Midlands, who was being directed by an allegedly banned driver, was given 12 weeks in prison suspended for a year.

He has also been banned from driving for three years and ordered to take an extended driving test.

Let's put my cards on the table before I get into this one.

First, I believe many strains of Liberation Theology is a butchering of the spiritual message that underlies Christianity. By casting Christ as a revolutionary rather than as a spiritual saviour, many strands of Liberation Theology have become essentially a political movement cast as a religious theology.

Second, I believe that the root of Black Liberation Theology is essentially a racist political movement cast as a religious belief system whose underlying message may bring hope to tens of thousands, but whose underlying message is repugnant in the extreme. One could also argue that the Klu Klux Klan are also practicing a form of liberation theology and their cross burnings and "nigger lynchin's" of forty years ago were a form of religious practice--however, if you did make that argument, the very least I will do is try to have you shunned from polite society. Push the argument, and I'll call the cops.

With that said, I don't believe that many of its followers realize that they've been duped. Most people's relationship with religion tends to be like most people's relationship with their shampoo products: something they smear their heads with occasionally, but are willing to switch brands at a moment's notice if it suits them. For most people, religion makes them feel good, gives them a community, and allows them to participate in (to them) otherwise meaningless rituals and superficial rites of passage that allows them to feel part of a greater whole. So to the followers of black liberation theology, their world view may have been altered--and they may see a lot of things through the eyes of racist anger while feeling good about themselves for being self-created "victims" because of their history--but otherwise they're undoubtedly like most people: good folk, as long as you don't put a quarter into that particular slot machine.


So, how does one defend the indefensible?

Simple. By creating an "other", reframing the "other" within the framework of your sick viewpoint, and making sure everyone knows that what you're doing is no worse than what the "other" is doing.

Case in point: Washington Post writer Sally Quinn: Excusing Wright, Part II: 'Latent Racism' Is Ruining An 'Incredible' Man

So for Obama to have to be forced to distance himself in this way has got to be extremely painful for both of them. But I think because we are still a racist country, that there are so many white Americans who have absolutely no idea what goes on inside of black churches on Sunday morning. I think it was Obama who said, certainly Reverend Wright said, that the most segregated hour in this country every week is on Sunday morning, because that`s when blacks go to their churches and whites go to their churches. And I think that so many white people who had never been inside a black church were absolutely shocked by the tone and language that they heard, and it was so unfamiliar to them, it was like a different culture. And I think it brought out a lot of latent racism.

See, the problem is not the message, but the messenger. And if you don't understand Black Liberation Theology, it's not because you find the underlying message extremely distasteful--that one particular class are the chosen people because of their skin color and circumstance of their birth--but because you hate niggers.

(And yes, I'm going to continue using that shock word for it's shock value, because that's the underlying message here: if we don't understand the message of Black Liberation Theology or if we find it repugnant, it's because we are subconsciously no better than the Grand Kleagles who led the lynchings of blacks in the 40's and 50's.)

And, in order to assert the message that the "other" is no better than you, and actually worse:

And a message of black liberation theology is basically Confucius` message of do unto others as you would have others do unto you. We are our brother`s keepers. Obama has said that many times. But you look at a lot of the white Christians, and we`re 90 percent religious in this country. Most people in this country are Christians, and you look at the Christians and they go to their white churches. And you wonder how they can call themselves Christians and still look at other people as though they are inferior.

In other words, if you don't attend a black liberation theological church, you attend a white church.

Black Liberation Theology sustains itself through a radical racial message which defines blacks against everyone else. Black people hold a special position in this society by being children of slaves and prejudiced against, a special position that makes them closer to a (revolutionary) Christ. Lose the victimhood status, and you loose the "sacredness."

But not only is BLT a bad theology, it's even bad history: one can essentially mark regions and eras in our history by which immigrant group was biased against. While black slavery is the poster child of the abuse of our fellow man in our historic past, you cannot ignore the Chinese forced labor camps which built the railroads, the second-class status of Irish immigrants or the near extermination and forced labor (and forced prostitution) of Native Americans.

So, you will excuse me if I don't buy the bullshit spewed by the defenders of Reverend Wright who are insisting on defending the indefensible. And you'll also excuse me if I consider the continuation of this particular defense of Reverend Wright as being perpetrated by racists who, only by virtue of a few misplaced genes, aren't walking around in white sheets carrying burning crosses.

Book me the next flight to Tokyo, no wait, the second flight

I know someone who has a brother who works in Taipei, Taiwan. He travels to Japan often on business, and one day he needed to fly to Tokyo on short notice. He instructed his assistant to book the next flight from Taipei to Tokyo.

This is what he got. (Warning: Contains strange music.)

That's right. His assistant booked him on Hello Kitty Air, initially a daily flight from Taipei to Fukuoka, but soon extended to a second run to Tokyo. Everything on this plane is Hello Kitty. The paint scheme, the flight attendants, the boarding passes, the luggage tags, the chopsticks, the sugar packets, the in-flight meals, even the barf bags. I'm told that most people who take this flight are women who are way too into this Hello Kitty thing.

I am SOOOOOO disturbed!

In Europe: Europe's Middle Class Stagnant

A study by the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin found that the broad middle of the German work force, defined as workers making from 70 to 150 percent of the median income, shrunk to 54 percent of the population last year, from 62 percent in 2000.
...
In Germany, Europe’s largest economy, the decline in purchasing power began in 2000, when employers started wresting wage concessions from unions, or simply shifting jobs to Eastern Europe and China. Inflation-adjusted incomes rose from 1 percent to 2 percent in the late 1990s, but more than one million Germans lost full-time jobs during and after a recession in 2000 and 2001. Subsequently, workweeks got longer without extra pay, and from 2004 through 2007, inflation outpaced income increases for the average family.

Here's the thing: the middle class, historically speaking, is an artificial creature hanging by a thread, created by a combination of plenty of work and plenty of low cost goods. Anything which threatens this: higher taxes or regulatory schemes which distort incomes can all choke the middle class. And the socialism of Europe will do more to separate the 'has' from the 'has nots' than any sort of tax rebate plan by the Bush administration.

In fact, my biggest gripe about California is that a regulatory scheme which has essentially told people "you must make do with less"--the same message, by the way, of the politicized arm of the environmental movement--has contributed more to destroying the middle class than anything else. By making housing expensive--by making it impossible to develop land to keep up with the current demand--we've reached a situation that only the old and the wealthy can afford to buy a house. And all that because of a failure of local municipalities to keep up with their responsibility of managing infrastructure growth in a sensible way.

The Myth of the Racist Republicans

In effect, these critics want to have it both ways: they acknowledge that these views could in principle be non-racist (otherwise they wouldn't be a "code" for racism) but suggest they never are in practice (and so can be reliably treated as proxies for racism). The result is that their claims are non-falsifiable because they are tautological: these views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. This amounts to saying that opposition to the policies favored by today's civil rights establishment is a valid indicator of racism. One suspects these theorists would, quite correctly, insist that people can disagree with the Israeli government without being in any way anti-Semitic. But they do not extend the same distinction to this issue. This is partisanship posturing as social science.

Interesting essay if you're into that sort of stuff: this is a book review which demolishes a number of books which supposedly demonstrates that the rise of the GOP in the 1980's was done on the back of southern racism--which then, by extension, demonstrates that the Republican Party of Lincoln and MLK Jr. is racist.

Global warming may 'stop', scientists predict

Global warming will stop until at least 2015 because of natural variations in the climate, scientists have said.

In other words, things will continue being colder on average until 2015.

Combine this with the fact that the Earth has been cooling since 1998, and the fact that highly sensitive temperature buoys deployed in the oceans have detected a temperature drop, which completely contradicts computer models--and the evidence is pretty clear: the Earth has been cooling for the past 10 years, and will continue cooling for at least the next 7.

Now I don't care if this artificial dampening will then reverse--and all that pent up global warming will then cause 2015 to 2020 to be so hot that you can fry an egg on the sidewalk in December. The linked news article indicates that this may happen: that the average 1°F to 4°F average increase will all unleash itself in 2015 in addition to the bounce we will experience from the reversal of the cooling trend--and I will even grant, for the purposes of this post, that this is a distinct possibility: that global warming is happening, and we're only being granted a short-term reprieve before world-wide temperatures jump as much as 8°F in 2015.

No, the first question that crosses my mind is this: we have been barraged by the press over the past 10 years about all sorts of anecdotal stories about the horrible effects of global warming, from drowning polar bears to collapsing ice shelves to melting glaciers to constantly rising sea levels. Mount Fuji's iconic ice cap is melting because of global warming.

However, now that we know that the Earth has been cooling since 1998--doesn't mean all this anecdotal evidence was, well, to put it politely, a complete crock of crap?

Science Equals Murder.

It appears that Ben Stein has jumped the shark. Quite a feat when you realize that the high point of his public career (one that started as an economics professor, professional pundit and writer for Richard Nixon) was with the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off...

Dude, Where's My Recession?

Out: Recession. In: Expansion. That's my quick take on today's first-quarter gross domestic product number, which showed that the economy grew 0.6 percent in the first quarter. Now that's not a robust number by any means, but it's not so bad given all the worry out there that the economy is headed off a cliff. Before you declare a recession, as many economic pundits have, shouldn't the economy, well, actually recess a bit—if only for a quarter?

Remember, the shorthand rule for declaring a recession is back-to-back quarters of negative growth. The semiofficial recession judge, the National Bureau of Economic Research, has a more complex formula, but I am not sure it has ever declared a recession when the economy never actually shrank. And consider this: The Intrade online betting market now says there is a meager 25 percent chance of a recession—using the negative-back-to-back-quarters definition—in 2008.

It's one of the things that has boggled my own mind.

However, there is an interesting phenomenon at work here. If you ask people how they think the economy is going, you'll get an answer that is in part related to what they've read in the paper, and based on the constant drumbeat of negative reporting on everything from food inflation to the price of gasoline to all the talk about the dropping dollar, and today most people will say "well, the economy sucks."

But if you ask them how they are personally doing, generally you get a "not bad." And while the second question, surveyed over a large number of people, can give you a better idea of consumer confidence, we almost inevitably ask the former question instead. Because like lawyers, the press never asks a question they don't already know the answer to--or at least can manipulate for a good story: because otherwise they may waste an entire day and have nothing to write to fill those column inches.

Further, while everyone seems hyperconcerned with an unemployment rate of 5.1%, historically the unemployment rate is right inline with the past 10 years of unemployment data. And that spike in the data that climbed to 6%+ in 2003? Notice when it started? Hmmmm; I wonder what could have happened then that may have disrupted the economy? Anything? No?

There are four sectors of the economy which suck right now, and which, taken by themselves are in recession: (a) Housing, caused by overbuilding speculative properties where the demand was not there, (b) Banking, which helped to fuel the speculation in housing and got burned by it, (c) Newspapers and Magazines, which (unrelated to Housing) is getting its ass handed to it by the Internet, and (d) Logistics and Transportation, which is taking it on the chin by higher fuel prices. Ironically farming right now is making a killing, as are oil companies--both which, unless the Government completely fucks with them, will do what all businesses do when they have a good year: save what they can for a bad year, and invest the rest into expanding their offerings in order to fill the present opportunity to make more money, which will then help to drive prices down.

However, there are other press reports that I've read, like this one: Analyst Calls Apple 'Recession-Proof', which make me laugh: If there were an actual recession, do you think people would be buying more gadgets and toys? Or worrying about how they're going to put food on the table?

I can tell you for a fact that the computer industry is not in recession. In fact, right now the computer industry is red fucking hot--so red hot that if you're a talented computer programmer you can pretty much write your own ticket: I saw a job go by on a job board offering up to $200k/year to work at home for a major silicon valley employer if you have the right (somewhat obscure) skill set. (It was a legit offer, and not all that atypical for those who may have an obscure skill set, such as 10 years MacOS UI development and Java skills.)

Yes, the price of milk sucks, and I'm not happy taking out a second mortgage to put gas in the car. And a 20 piece bucket of KFC has gone up about 8 bucks in the past year: at this rate, KFC chicken at an Order event is going to be a luxury item and not a sign of white trashiness.

But the economy? Growth was weaker than some would like--2.4% annual GDP growth only makes our economy twice as strong as Europe's historic growth rate over the past decade, and for a good economy we should be growing at least 4 times faster than Europe's average--but we are not in a recession.

Portable Rotary Phone - Red

It's a rotary dial cell phone. Really.

Now if I could get the guts of the electronics installed in an MG...

Reverend Wright must destroy Barack Obama's chances to win the White House.

Why?

Black Liberation Theology.

Simply put, Liberation Theology is the teaching that Jesus Christ is not just the Redeemer of Man, but the Liberator as well. Liberation Theology focuses on Jesus as the active revolutionary--as the man who overthrew the money changers in the temples and as the man who died on the cross as punishment for his active participation in overthrowing the established order of Rome. Jesus' crucifixion redeemed mankind because it showed us the way to redemption--as active revolutionaries who must be willing to die, if we must, in order to liberate our fellow man.

Black Liberation Theology adds the dimension of race to this particular active form of Christian theology: Liberation becomes not just about liberating mankind from social injustice, but specifically about liberating African-Americans from the social injustice of racism and slavery. African-Americans are thus cast in the role of either Jesus or the Jews who followed Jesus who lived under the thumb of their Roman oppressors. While to most whites race is at best a taboo subject, to one following Black Liberation Theology race is elevated to a sacred battle, not to be ignored, but to be fought and won in the blood of a (black) Christ.

Of course for Black Liberation Theology to survive in a world that has increasingly become post-racial, Black Liberation Theology must therefore perpetuate the stereotypes which define the battles which allow African Americans to be seen in the sacred light of the oppressed. And here we have the central irony of Black Liberation Theology: as sacredness and virtue is framed in terms of racial identity and in the plight of the oppressed who must be liberated, should that identity disappear and the oppressed finally reach the promised land, there would be no more need for Liberation.

In a very real sense, Liberation Theology makes liberation undesirable as it is the need for liberation rather than the goal of liberation which is held sacred. For African Americans believing in Black Liberation Theology, being downtrodden and prejudiced against is what makes them sacred.

Which is why Reverend Wright must destroy Barack Obama.

Barack Obama has managed thus far to leverage his identity as African American in terms of Moses delivering us to the promised land, as a Liberating Christ figure who will lead us to Liberation. The promised land is near, if we only will elect Barack Obama and follow him to Israel.

Yet, as with Moses (Numbers 20:12), Barack Obama cannot be allowed to enter the promised land and win the elections--because to do so would achieve a degree of liberation which would effectively nullify the Black Liberation Theology of Reverend Wright.

Thus, Reverend Wright--who I'm sure sincerely believes in what he is preaching--would be far better off destroying Barack Obama's chances of winning the White House than he would in allowing his brand of Liberation theology to have its ultimate goal reached, even to a small degree. Because to do that would nullify an entire system of thought and an entire system of theology--and in the process reduce those who follow Reverend Wright from sacred and holy followers who are repressed by an intrinsically racist system into a bunch of, well, equals: people whose skin color no longer confers them anything special or sacred.

And most people would rather commit suicide--or destroy their political successes--than change their thinking.