We’re quick to point out political corruption around the world. Afghanistan is corrupt. Iran rigs elections. Putin has his oligarchs. It’s all true, but rarely do we take a long hard look at the corruption endemic in our own politics. My esteemed colleague, Dr. Denny, recently penned an important post detailing Congressional corruption. Like so much of our nefarious behavior, it looks relatively civilized because we dress it up nicely. But we all know that our representatives are as crooked as any in Kazakhstan. We just call it “campaign finance”. We all know it’s a huge problem, one that’s slowly grinding our Republic into dust. We just can’t do much about it. What chance is there that the crooked politicians are going to straighten the mess out against their own, personal interests?

Well, i have an idea. Call it the Nelson Muntz Initiative…
Full Story »

The National Security Archives at George Washington University recently published translations of Soviet Politburo meetings on Afghanistan. They are more illuminating than the combined words of America’s punditocracy that litter the nation’s editorial pages. For one, they probably reflect the administration’s deliberations with uncanny accuracy. For two, they are free of the domestic political maneuvering that editorial writers in the US seem incapable of putting aside. Reading them for their content and applying the words to the US situation requires letting go of the American exceptionalism that plagues our thoughts, but it is important to remember that such exceptionalism will be our downfall…so it’s best to dispense with that in any case.

Mikhail Sergeyevich applies the idiomatic phrase “…… vydelyvnet Krendelya” to Karmal. We could use it do describe Karzai, Obama, Clinton, McChrystal, et. al.. It translates literally as “….. is walking like a pretzel.” The figurative meaning is that someone is staggering and weaving like a drunk; that is, not being straight-forward.
Full Story »

Well now, the paper of what, why didn’t anyone tell us? record has stumbled across information suggesting that Ahmed Wali Karzai is on the CIA’s payroll. Yeah, that Ahmed Karzai who had the Senate’s panties all in a bunch as recently as August for his purported role in the Afghan opium trade.

According to the paper of sure we’ll lie to help you invade Iraq record, Mr. Karzai was paid for “a variety of services” that included raising a paramilitary force. You don’t say…

Full Story »

Election fiascos and strategy deliberations continue, while Pakistan’s army is laying waste to South Waziristan. The deliberations are of the utmost importance; more important and more pressing than health care reform. This is Obama’s second strategy review in nine months. He cannot, politically or strategically, continue on such a pace. That means that the decisions made can be expected to indicate overall policy for the rest of his term, if not longer in the way that policy develops a momentum of its own.

There’s no question that the election was rigged, but the low voter turnout is more dangerous to government legitimacy than the fraud. Just five years ago Afghanistan held an election that defied expectations: women voted in large numbers, old men cried after voting for the first time in their lives, polls had to stay open late so that all who wanted to vote could, and it was peaceful. In effect, we’ve been moving backwards.

Full Story »

Adam rested contentedly in the Garden. If we take The Book of Genesis at its word, all was perfect and pure. Opposites existed. There was, after all, a female companion for Adam named Eve, but they produced neither concern nor complication for the various named beasts and naked progenitors of human kind. At least not until the serpent came along…

The serpent, “who was more crafty than any of the wild animals the lord God had made,” practiced his deceit with the cunning of Socrates. “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” he asked, leading poor Eve towards our collective doom. Only two trees—one mostly ignored—were forbidden with the pain of death. The serpent persuaded Eve that she would not die; instead, he told her, “Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Full Story »

The Obama administration threw a bone to the lunatic, fringe left a few days ago. The memo to federal prosecutors in medical marijuana states has garnered hearty applause from Greenwald and the Marijuana Policy Project.

When elected, Obama said that federal raids on state-law legal marijuana cultivation and distribution would end. The didn’t, not by a long shot, and the reasoning was that the feds would continue to prosecute people who violated state and federal laws. That boils down to everyone, no matter their standing under state law. The latest memo simply tells prosecutors that it’s not a good use of their time to bring charges against those abiding by their State’s law.
Full Story »

Progress. Different people have different ideas of what we should be progressing towards, but there’s a general consensus that we can progress, even if one’s idea of progress looks like regression to others. The idea of progress requires that time take the form of a ray, beginning at some point and moving in a single direction. There’s support for the idea in many interpretations of evolution: organisms evolve complexity across time, and complexity is considered higher than simplicity. Political science certainly supports the idea, as the discipline would be pointless without it. But the foundation of the idea rests on the Abrahamic faiths, with their ideal of a true god of justice, chosen people and the eventual conquest of evil by the forces of good. If you were raised in “the West”, then the philosophical ideal is deeply ingrained in your thinking…even if you were raised without religion. This ideal has driven history, the interpretation of history and continues to drive the events becoming history. But is it shared across humanity?

Full Story »

I have no doubt that the climate is changing, nor that it will continue to change.  It seems reasonably well established that  the Earth has gone through extreme climate swings in the past; on the basis of that i predict that it will do so again. Maybe humans are not responsible for climate change, and the planet would be warming in any case as it sheds the final remnants of the last ice age. Maybe it is entirely our fault. The truth usually falls between the two extremes. I do not believe that humans have the power to destroy the Earth or life. Suggesting that we do strikes me as the height of egocentricity: both preceded us by unimaginable lengths of time and will survive us for just as long. We do, however, have the power to destroy ourselves and most of the forms of life we know.

Full Story »

It was such a pleasant weekend. Fall is in the air. Football is on TV, and the Angels sent the Boston Red Sox golfing. It even felt wholesome and normal to listen to the soothing sounds of Republicans and Democrats making fun of each other and playing nerf meme dodge ball. I suppose that we owe the Nobel Committee a thank you note. But all good things must come to an end. Or…. Now that we’ve got that peace prize thing out of the way, let’s get back to the business of war.

Full Story »

One day my Austrian roommate came home and told me that one of the biggest bands in Russian rock history would be playing a show in Piter. How could i say no? So i went to the Cultural Palace with a group of Austrian students, a nation not known for its dedication to rock. The lobby was filled with Russians of every age and clique. Middleagers. Teens. Hippies. Metalheads. Punks. New Russians. Everyone. We found our seats near the back of the auditorium, but it was clear that the Russians–as is their way–were going to pay no attention to any rule stamped on a piece of paper. The chair free section in front of the stage was filling up fast, and i wanted to be up there. Once the band played their first chord i turned to my companions and said, “Stay here if you want, but i won’t.” I pushed down into the crowd with my companions following and had one of the best times of my life.

Full Story »

It isn’t Denis Mukwege, the doctor who’s treated at least 21,000 rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He’s the only doctor there who does such treatment and the hospital he founded has helped hundreds of thousands of women. It isn’t any of the Chinese dissidents who’ve been jailed or had to flee their native land for daring to speak against its government. It isn’t any of the human rights campaigners working in difficult nations without major media recognition. It isn’t the Afghan woman’s right campaigner. And it isn’t Handicap International and the Cluster Munition Coalition, two organizations dedicated to clearing mines and helping the victims of cluster bombs and land mines. Instead, the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize goes to the leader of a nation that continues to use cluster munitions and refuses to ratify the ban on land mines. The prize has been awarded on hope.
Full Story »

Modern Conservative is a powerful language, more capable than Greek or Hebrew of expressing the profound new concepts that Christianity introduced into the world. Evidently then, it needs to be applied to the Christian Canon. The perfectly revealed word of God turns out to be not-quite-perfect enough. Just kidding. It’s that liberals, feminists and maybe even Catholics have muddled the good news. You see, The Lord must have spoken Modern Conservative because he made modern conservatives in His image. It says so in the Book nearly ruined by pervasive, liberal influences.

Full Story »

Grover helps Thomas Jefferson meet a deadline:

Full Story »

“And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.” ~Book of Genesis

We all know what happens after that. The wickedness of the world is washed away in a deluge of planetary proportions, and only Noah, his family and the two of each unclean animal along with seven of every clean animal (but oddly, no plants) are saved to repopulate the world. Of all the mythological motifs that circle the Earth and run like a string through human history, none is told with more regularity and consistency than the story of the flood.

Full Story »

Remember the last year, when Big 3 executives went pleading for salvation in Washington? Of course you do, and you probably remember the Southern politicians telling them to shove it because the transplant factories of the South were the beacon of union-free automotive manufacturing. The foreign companies that own those factories were models of efficient production that could carry the weight, so send the domestics to the dustbin of Soviet Socialist history. On the other side of the political divide, liberals sang the praises of their efficient, reliable Toyotas. They cursed the domestics and beyond the bleeding of their hearts for those blue collar workers in the Rust Belt, cared little for the collapse of the domestic auto industry. Many of them cheered because the domestics make “inferior” products in any case.

Now Akio Toyoda is ready to commit seppuku because Toyota is on the brink of “capitulation to irrelevance or death”. That would explain why it still wants the millions promised to it by the state of California early this year for training workers, even after it pulled out of the NUMMI plant that will put close to 5,000 workers on unemployment.

Full Story »

Yesterday, a regular commenter wrote, “I don’t understand why everyone in liberal-land is still so fixated on Bush.” I think it’s a fair question and i’m willing to take a stab at it. Liberal-land is still so fixated on Bush because Americans don’t unite around positive things; we run on fear and loathing. The continued fixation on Bush is, to some degree, a closing of ranks in liberal-land. The denizens of liberal-land also like to believe that Bush corrupted or destroyed whatever wholesomeness was left in America. He did his part, no doubt…a bang up job really, but he didn’t start the process nor did it begin to end when he left office. Liberal-land would generally prefer to ignore its own leadership’s role in the hollowing out of America. And, you know, everybody loves a villain. Just like conservative-land is busy demonizing Obama for all sorts of sins, real and imagined.

Since we’re asking rhetorical questions of ill-defined groups of people, i have a few for conservative-land…

Full Story »

There are many renditions of Siddhartha Gautama’s life story and his becoming “The Buddha”. None of them are contemporary to his life, and all contain the motivations of their various authors as much as they detail Gautama’s path to enlightenment. Joseph Campbell chose the version penned by Ashvaghosha (c. 100 A.D.) for inclusion in The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology. I favor this version for the same reasons as Campbell, because it “…also devotes more precise attention than the Pali text to the crises of the intellectual search that preceded the finding of the Middle Way.” It is crisis of the intellect, or psychology, that provokes the mystic to search for answers to life’s great questions. The search, as it happened with Gautama, leads away from society and to the internal where the eternal resides.

Full Story »