Glenn Beck's Socratic Discourse

Finally a serious thinker addresses Glenn Beck: http://beckstudies.blogspot.com/. I highly recommend these well-considered remarks on the important contemporary thinker, Glenn Beck. This blog presents a welcome addition to the nascent field of Beck Studies.

Re: A Cautionary Thought About Egomaniacs

Obama's Egomania is, in the view of at least one commentator, nearly messianic in scope. In my view, though, Obama's Egomania is a significantly smaller problem than his unknown position on Israel and other foreign affairs and his pink-o economic plans. The fact that he palls around with terrorists like Ayers and people like Khalidi and Mazen Asbahi does not particularly endear him to me, to say nothing of his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. In fact, I do not see how one can consistently support both Israel and Obama.

Coining New Terms

"Raising McCain" - the latest negative campaign commercials from the McCain camp.

Remember, you saw it here first.

Q. What do they use to vacuum the Whitehouse?

A. A Dyson. And what a good vacuum it is.

The Just v. The Good, or Bad

Statements like these bother me:

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Mr. Bush said [regarding the verdict of I. Lewis Libby]. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison." -NYT

This is the second time in a week I have been consternated by such a commentary on the Justice system (the first was when Israeli AG Mazuz claimed to strike a plea bargain because it "minimize[d] the harm to the institution of the presidency" in his words). You don't commute a sentence because you feel like you understand the law better than the jury or the judges. You are just the executive, sans Juris Doctorate, I might add. The president does have the prerogative to commute a sentence, but as the executive not as an officer of the law.

Oddly, my feelings are reversed for the case of Mazuz. There he is not responsible for the "institution of the presidency," but bringing cases to trail and getting convictions. If he can't get a conviction, plea bargains are acceptable, but in the face of the evidence, not the defendant. Law examines the individual person, politics examines the state. Can we please keep those two things separate?!

Happy American History Written by the Victors Day!

Synthetic Myths

How can one judge a good myth? What makes a myth strong and powerful is very difficult to discretely identify, but the properties of a strong myth would seem to be slightly less vague. A good myth is trafficable such that it does not loose efficacy in a different time or space. The Jeffersonian myth of American federation would appear to be one of those good myths. Whether in a classroom or on a farm, in a courthouse or in battle, Americans internalize the story of their founding, and the values such as liberty, freedom and felicity that it radiates.

For the last half decade I have fervently challenged the notion that Palestinian nationalism was a false (i.e. weak) myth. The fact of the matter is, I would argue, if people say they are Palestinian, they are Palestinian irrespective of historical evidence to the contrary. The events of the past six days in Gaza are leading me to challenge this dogma.

Dennis Ross mentioned the "three state solution" this week (Israel, the West Bank and Gaza) but dismissed it out of hand. I believe he did this more out of a pragmatic approach to politics than a reasoned one. The factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah reveal a very live and significant rupture between the two societies. The West Bank and Gaza are very different in their social, religious and economic composition, and it is beginning to appear as if they are more different than they are similar. That coupled with the geographic divide between the two stretches of land makes the eventual confluence of these two cultures seem only that much more remote. I agree with Mr. Ross that a two state solution might be more convenient, but I don't know if it should be more possible.

And here is where I feel Palestinian myth wears thin. Its claim is too bold and too recent--many who are alive today still remember when this narrative was being composed. While Palestinians may have self-identified for many years, the ability to forge a national identity, one that is beyond self-identification (meta-self-identification, as it were) only began in the '70's with Yassar Arafat. When this myth is now threatened and forces rise which seek to subvert this story to Egyption-Qutbist ideologies, the people, qua nation, does not rise to combat this perill. When liberty was at risk in America, brother rose up against brother to ensure that a nation constituted of the people and by the people shall not perish from this earth. The fact that American myth was strong enough to sustain the country through the war between the states and narrate history through the waters of national despair is indicative of its fastness. I fear that the synthetic nature of the Palestinian myth is evidence through the wear of this resolve.

For know what is above you...

...a watchful eye, a listening ear and a book in which all your deeds are written. (Avot 2:1, loose translation)

Amnesty International seeks to make literal this mishna when it launched eyesondarfur.org today. The conflict in Darfur is, unfortunately, very complicated with many facets (alot of ins, alot of outs). By posting satellite imagery of troubled hotspots in Darfur, Amnesty hopes to dissuade the Sudanese government's role in genocide by allowing people around the globe to see images of the conflict from above.

While I think there is what to be desired in this technology (I would like to see better resolution and more real time imagery. At this stage the images are still too vague to reconstruct a serious portrait of the real-time conflict) this appears to be a wonderful idea in concept. Offering global transparency to international conflicts allows a method for real oversight (quite literally). Obviously such technologies can be distorted to infringe on privacy, but for now this appears to be a creative solution to an otherwise ongoing mess.

Civic Reading

Last day to issue comments on proposed changes to the way states issue federally recognized ID cards is May 8th. I am attempting to read the regulations through so I can complain out of frustration, and not ignorance, as if often the case.

Seriously though, I really don't like any mechanism which further removes identification from identity. No one should be able to tell you that you are not who you are.

El Presidente, if you're not into the whole brevity thing

Listening to the President's interview on NPR was a puzzling piece of oration, until I read it as The Dude would. And then, suddenly, it all makes sense.

Donny: By the way, just quickly, Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader says that if you have an incursion into Iran, he expects that you would come to the Senate for approval.

El Presidente: I have no intent upon incur—going into Iran. I mean, this is the kind of thing that happens in Washington. People ascribe, you know, motives to me beyond a simple statement – of course we'll protect our troops. I don't know how anybody can then say, well, protecting the troops means that we're going to invade Iran. If that's what he's talking about, there's – I mean, we will protect our interests in Iraq. That's what the American people expect us to do. That's definitely what our troops want to do, and that's what the families of our troops want us to do. And if we find the Iranians are moving weapons that will end up harming American troops, we'll deal with it.

Why can't we just all get along?

Because you're a shmuck, that's why! The NYT ran a strange article last week about the feeble and misunderstood R. Yisroel Dovid Weiss and the Neturei Karta movement. What the article oddly neglects to say is that Iran is calling for Israel to be wiped off the map while simultaneously seeking the means to make good on the hope. Generally, a position which compromises millions of (Jewish) lives in looked upon with derision amongst normative Judaism (sometimes called a moser, a distinction better to avoid). I am thus puzzled why neither he, nor the good article's author, appear to grasp this rather rudimentary principle. The article further neglects to mention that similar treatment is not bestowed on all Jewish anti-Zionist, but reserved for ones who support the current Iranian regime. I doubt, though, that acute (or even accurate) sociology was Ms. Santos's motive.

Regionalism, here we go again.

Gematria Coincidences?

According to the calculations I made with the help of this website, it appears that Gerald Ford and Saddam Hussein, have more in common (from the perspective of Gematria) than one might think. Not only did the two die within four (4) days of one another, but the gematria of גראלד פורד is 528, half of which is 264. Now 264 is exactly 16 (that is 4*4) more than 248, the gematria of סדם חוסיין. In other words, Saddam is 4*4 less than half the man Gerald Ford was and note the significance of the number four here. Can this be mere coincidence?

A Thumpin'

What constitutes a thumpin'? According to Pres. Bush today:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. You just described the election results as a "thumping."
THE PRESIDENT: I said the cumulative -- make sure -- who do you write for?
Q The New York Times, Mr. President.
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, yes, that's right. (Laughter.) Let's make sure we get it -- the facts. I said that the elections were close; the cumulative effect --
Q Is a thumping.
THE PRESIDENT: -- thumping. (Laughter.)

I will, for the moment, have to respectfully disagree with the President. My dispute with Mr. President lies in my hypothesis that elections tend towards the mean. That is to say that people like close elections, and when polls spread candidates too far apart, you will generally see a correction of sorts. Generally. That being said I do not believe that given a long enough X(time) the curves will intersect. There seem to be districts which poll very close, but have a very large lean towards one party over the other. That is not to say that a heavily Democrat district will ever swing red, but it might correct itself so as not to thump one candidate over the other.

That being said, the President's remarks seem to indicate a different view on election results, some sort of randomness. Let's say, for the moment, that in the contested races the average victory was +/-2% which we can approximate to an equal likelihood for either candidate to win, given enough events. When the President said that, "Look, this was a close election. If you look at race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping." What he must have been saying was that every race was close, but given the number of events, which are in themselves 50/50, we just saw a run of one particular outcome. It's like flipping a coin 1000 times and getting 8 heads in a row; it does not mean that your coin or probability is broken.

But the President conceded in his remarks that the electorate was sending a message, which means that the aggregate effect was related to the individual events. It only appeared close because of the hypothesis I stated above. The President could only be correct if he truly believed the Democrat swing was a random series of events.

Groove pointed out to me that the President might have meant that it was only a small portion of the vote that actually swung the election. 45% are going to vote one way or the other every time, so it is the 10% which actually mattered, and they collectively combined to a large aggregate effect, but that it does not necessarily culminate to a democratic "wave." My answer to this is just that every election is defined by the middle. A thumpin' then must be defined by the context of elections which are fought at the margins. Thus for one party to win the majority of the middle in every election ipso facto constitutes a thumpin'.

Thank you President Bush for using such an awesome word and allowing me to write this post about thumpins'.

Wide...Center???

Figuring that Tom Toles was originally from Buffalo, Norwood's kick must go through his mind when he sketches this stuff.

Two great cartoons for your viewing pleasure:

Just Kidding

Apparently, Thomas Jefferson should have penned, "We hold these truths to be self evident...most of the time, but some times, when we think its a good idea, they're not so evident."
I was just reading through the text of S. 3930 otherwise sited as the "Military Commissions Act of 2006" when I came across the article §948b(g) which stipulates that

17 GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF RIGHTS.—No alien unlawful enemy combat-
18 ant subject to trial by military commission under this
19 chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source
20 of rights.

...most of the time.
Or as the ever amusing Keith Olberman puts it: Why does Habeas Corpus hate America?

Note: For those with a legal eye in the audience, I am not making a truly legal argument. Yes, I recognize that for instance, the Geneva Conventions are not constitutionally guaranteed. But there is still a discussion to be had regarding these "issues."