Month: September 2008

P.J. O’Rourke, an Atlantic contributor, has been diagnosed with a very treatable form of cancer. Always one for gallows humor, P.J. has written an article in the LAT on mortality, God, and whiskey. Our prayers are with him.

A great video from ADN – revealing her lies, corruption and stone-walling. These guys are not "elite" media. They are Alaska’s media. And they know Palin. If you really want to know about Palin – and you want to cut through the Putin-style access that the McCain clowns have put around her – read the Anchorage Daily News. They have her number – and the deception and corruption she represents.

Min Zeng and Mark Gongloff warn that the lending markets are still flashing red.

Bainbridge makes a good point:

Too big to fail is bad public policy. But I’m persuaded that the very real prospect of too many to fail presents an entirely different question. We are faced with a situation in which a systemic credit freeze will take down not just one or two banks, but many, including not just Wall Street but also local and regional banks. In turn, as more banks fail, it will become increasingly difficult for non-financial businesses to borrow. The ripple effect could be disastrous.

An uncanny similarity:

This week, Ahmadinejad finally conceded there "might be a few" gays in his country. Then he went on to blast homosexuality as an "unlikable and foreign act" that is illegal because it "shakes the foundations of society," "robs humanity" and "brings about disease."

Still, Ahmadinejad is still much more accessible to the US press than Sarah Palin. In that single instance, he respects American democracy better than John McCain and the Republican party.

They get it – and the message of the Gospels:

"Young evangelical Christians display generational differences on some key social issues. A majority of younger white evangelicals support some form of legal recognition for civil unions or marriage for same-sex couples. Older evangelicals remain strongly opposed. At the same time, young evangelicals are as solidly pro-life on abortion as older evangelicals."

Black evangelicals are another matter. There is, alas, no ethnic community as homophobic in America as African-Americans. Which is why the ballot initiative in California could be close. Donate here.

"The fate of empires is very often sealed by the interaction of war and debt. That was true of the British Empire, whose finances deteriorated from the First World War onwards, and of the Soviet Union. Defeat in Afghanistan and the economic burden of trying to respond to Reagan’s technically flawed but politically extremely effective Star Wars program were vital factors in triggering the Soviet collapse. Despite its insistent exceptionalism, America is no different," – John Gray.

Until the US scales back its imperial ambitions across the Middle East and seriously cuts its entitlement state, the country’s global hegemony will come to an abrupt and humiliating end.

The Bush administration has not yet lifted the regulation barring people with HIV from entering the United States, despite the law lifting the ban overwhelmingly passed by the Congress and signed by president Bush last July. Yesterday, they simply reiterated their previous plans to "streamline" the process, which, in fact, does nothing but make it more bureaucratically cumbersome for temporary visitors with HIV to enter the country as tourists or for conferences. They have done nothing to end the ban as the law clearly asked for.

As it currently stands, I will still be required to leave the US for good next March. And many more are in much worse straits. They say they will change the regs. And that it takes time. My guess is that it will take until after the election. But does anyone believe a Palin administration would make life any easier for people with HIV? For people with HIV, the Palin nomination should be terrifying.

William Finnegan writes in last week’s New Yorker about the war and mental health:

Compared with other American wars, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan seem to be producing victims at a high rate. A recent RAND Corporation study estimated that three hundred thousand veterans of America’s post-9/11 wars—nearly twenty per cent of those who have served—are suffering from P.T.S.D. or major depression, and many more cases are expected to surface in the years ahead. This elevated rate is generally attributed to the rigors of a long war being fought without conscription: multiple deployments and heavy use of National Guard and reserve units. And on the ground, at unit level, the discouragement of anyone with stress symptoms from asking for help is intense. The same RAND study found that, mainly because of the stigma still attached to P.T.S.D., only half of those afflicted have sought treatment.

(Hat tip: Mindhacks)

It’s this week. Phillip Pullman, author of The Golden Compass, writes about his book and the movie based off that book being targeted by the Catholic League:

…when it comes to banning books, religion is the worst reason of the lot. Religion, uncontaminated by power, can be the source of a great deal of private solace, artistic inspiration, and moral wisdom. But when it gets its hands on the levers of political or social authority, it goes rotten very quickly indeed.

The rank stench of oppression wafts from every authoritarian church, chapel, temple, mosque, or synagogue – from every place of worship where the priests have the power to meddle in the social and intellectual lives of their flocks, from every presidential palace or prime ministerial office where civil leaders have to pander to religious ones.

My basic objection to religion is not that it isn’t true; I like plenty of things that aren’t true. It’s that religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.

If religion is about truth, why is it so afraid of error?