Pet Peeve

I am frequently held up in line at convenience stores by smokers who absolutely must have a particular brand of cigarettes in a particular type of package. Everyone seems to smoke something obscure which is almost never available. This happened to me once again today. The delay is really brief, but still annoying.

The question on my mind though, having just seen "Thank you for Smoking", is why the hell anyone in this country still smokes? We've been told for at least the last 50 years that it will kill us in school, on warning labels, and even by Yule Brenner on TV in the 80s after he died a horrible death.

You, the smoker, have now been taxed to death so that a pack now costs what a carton did in the 70s. It costs you a fortune every year and makes your clothes and breath stink. No one is impressed by the fact that you smoke. Your main goal upon entering any new building is figuring out where you can find an ashtray. You are now being put upon to not smoke anywhere except at home underneath a blanket with the lights turned out and still you want to fight to keep smoking. You have kids now and you want to make sure they can't breathe it in so you hide outside to smoke. Why? Because you know it's killing you.

So the question is, why do you keep smoking. Is it really like a heroine addiction? Is it really that tough to quit? Do you really lack that much will power? Can it really be that enjoyable?

Every time I see a smoker I can only think of someone paying to have their hand slammed repeatedly in a car door. I cannot see the logic in any of it.

Neverending L in Philly

Urban Warrior | 'I CAN'T TAKE IT MUCH LONGER'

This is an interesting article and could raise several points for discussion.

The "L" isn't named for fact that the line looks like an "L" on a subway map, but rather because it is an "elevated" rail platform for the paltry city subway. The idea behind these types of elevated railways is that they are much less expensive and much quicker to build (in theory) than actual subways such as the NYC system.

The problem here is that the city has apparently been taking forever to reconstruct the L which has apparently been in bad need of repair for years. Merchants along the L are demanding money to reimburse them for business losses generated by L reconstruction.

Given that the reconstruction has hurt these business (it seems pretty clear), what are we to make of this crisis?

One question is whether an early investment in an underground subway system in this part of the city would have paid off now by not interfering with established businesses that have grown up around the subway system. The L itself is a tremendous eyesore and my impression is that its presence actually makes the neighborhood uglier and more dangerous to drive in. Compare this with DC where nearly everything is underground and I think it is obvious that while the city may have saved a ton of money in initial construction, the economic fallout is much worse. Another thought. If an L style railway is so great, why did they only use it in the poorer neighborhoods of West Philly instead of the whole system?

Another question is whether this crisis is the result of SEPTA and the City avoiding basic maintenance and thereby making the problem much worse when if finally came time to decide to make the repairs. The answer is probably yes.

Another question is that why should the government pay to help private businesses that are hurt by this reconstruction. This is actually a moral question. Obviously the business owners have taken a hit, but is this really a government taking? They have obviously benefited from the presence of the L, although they have likely paid for it with hire rents and property taxes. The question is whether this is a place to draw a line.

This crisis does tend to show what happens when government takes over too much control of something. A corporation running the system could theoretically do the same thing, but the corporation has a much stronger motivation to get the system repaired quickly because they lose money just as much as anyone else when there is less L traffic. On this point, though, I'm not sure if L traffic has gone down or that the lost foot traffic is from local neighbors who are going to other business that aren't near the L even though they still commute using the L.

Yet another question is whether the L would have been better run by a private company. I've taken the L. It isn't horrible, but it isn't all that great either. Every few years SEPTA makes a bad decision regarding the cars they purchase and then never seem to learn form their mistakes. They tend to get dirty and the stations themselves are pretty horrendous as far as cleanliness and associated businesses go. I'm not sure if a private company could make the line profitable, but I'm sure they could do a much better job than SEPTA and the City. The repairs would have been done a long time ago as well.

Back to article.

For one thing, the customers have not likely disappeared. Since it is appears that a reduction in pedestrian traffic is what has cost these businesses, chances are the customers have started going to other establishments. This means, of course, that when the L is back up and running, those businesses will suffer from a loss of customers. Does the city need to compensate them? I'm sure we'll be reading articles along those lines some time.

An irony here, of course, is that the City is now shelling out more money as direct welfare payments to hurt businesses just to keep them afloat because of its decision to save money by constructing an L instead of an underground subway, by not performing timely maintenance, and by being its usual corrupt, inefficient self when it comes to spending money on public works.

We all know that Philly is a bottomless pit for state and federal funding and that any money that gets spent there usually winds up in the hands of everyone except the people it is intended to help, but this is a fairly egregious case of the city ineptness. L construction should have been done years ago. It's continued problems are a beacon for how poorly run the City is.

Cal Thomas drinks the cool-aid again

None dare call it ‘victory’

A follow-up from Krauthammer's column:

Correlation Does Not Equal Causation

Also, two months of semi-good news in a 4.5 year war do not constitute solid statistical evidence of a trend. Only the neo-cons could call 35 deaths in a war that didn't need to be fought "good news". What if the deaths stopped altogether? How does that help us against Al Quaeda and terrorism? All of this "progress" is simply quelling a power struggle between Iraqis who want to control Iraq. It has NOTHING to do with terrorism.

When Cal Thomas is quoting the pages of the New York Times claiming that they have finally come around to seeing things his way and the way of the Bush administration, watch out. I don't have any stats to prove it, but I have been noticing that the press is reporting anti-war news ever since it became apparent that it is a strong negative for the presumed democratic front-runner - Clinton. Cindy Sheehan? She is a nut case now to the press - especially after she started attacking Hillary.

The New York Times editorial board will kick itself if it's anti-war rhetoric leads to another GOP victory because they front runner was just as involved in the invasion as any neo-con. That is why they are toning it down. If the war is successful, it becomes a non-issue. If the war continues to be a big issue, the average voter will trust Giuliani or Romney or Thompson over Clinton any day of the week since they always trust the GOP over the dems in matters of foreign policy. Things can always change, but only a fool would ignore past trends when formulating a strategy in this area.

This is, by the way, all perception. 2007 has actually been the WORST year for U.S. casualties. More of our partners have pulled out - including soon Australia after John Howard's recent defeat. We are no closer to finding bin Laden, and our so-called ally Musharraf has basically turned into a Saddam Hussein by jailing all opposition political figures, disbanding the Pakistani Supreme Court and filling it himself so that they can rule his reign "constitutional". The only difference is he has nukes and he hasn't started killing his people en masse yet. Look for that on the horizon whether he "wins" or loses the next election.

Cal Thomas, kool-aid drinker

Cal Thomas on the Presidential Debates

The Republicans, who rarely mention the president, agree that Hillary Clinton would be a bad president and each could fight terrorists better than any Democrat, except for Ron Paul who doesn't want to fight anyone.

OK, I'll admit it. I'm a Ron Paul supporter. This article really isn't about Ron Paul, but it should be. The quoted statement above should be "Ron Paul who doesn't want to fight anyone without a declaration of war". So apparently people like Cal Thomas who like to give a pretense of loving the Constitution at every turn and use it whenever they need a handy tool to decry someone else's opinion, pretty much ignore it if they are in favor of any policy that clearly violates the Constitution. Policies, for example, of invading foreign countries without a declaration of war from Congress. Remember that Ron Paul introduced a bill calling for a letter of marque to be issued against bin Laden shortly after 9/11. Here is one blog calling this "wacky" - apparently they haven't read the Constitution either.

So Cal Thomas in this article has the same complaint as a lot of people watching the presidential debate. This is a collection of meaningless sound-bites from polished C+ students seeing who can promise the most government handouts. The point he is misses is that Ron Paul is the only candidate in either forum whose platform is taking away benefits and abolishing segments of the government that both take away and hand out taxpayer money. How Cal Thomas missed this is anyone's guess.

Clueless Casey

Casey says Pa. facing urgent business challenges

Often, politicians decry things that they know they cannot change.

Often, politicians support legislation that they know will never pass for the sake of looking like they are doing something.

Often, politicians pass legislation that appears to do something, but in actuality accomplishes nothing.

Sometimes, politicians start speaking about complex issues that they do not understand and make it very clear that they are utterly unqualified for their positions. Witness the statements of Bob Casey in this article.

I have always thought the man sounded rather slow-witted, but I figured that was just his style. His old man seemed to be pretty sharp, but I was perhaps a little less critical of politicians back in the day. I am now convinced that Casey is a full-fledged incompetent at being a U.S. Senator. Sure he won the race for the Senate and is likely in their for years, but he is unfortunately a complete lightweight.

A U.S. Senator who has completely failed to understand the basics of U.S. monetary policy and the consequences of what he is saying is just an absolute embarrassment to the state and the country. Fortunately his rhetorical style is slightly less enthusiastic than a Ben Stein's professor character, so he will likely be ignored by everyone including the sleeping members of the audience.

I'll save the analysis for tomorrow.

SEPTA and its Idiocracy

SEPTA to offer 'fare credit' to ease onboard ticket buy

Another brilliant decision from SEPTA management designed to punish the casual rider - the one group that could actually help it achieve some financial viability.

Every five years or so that have to recall automatic ticketing machines because no one in management ever seems to know or care about their past mistakes with the previous set of ticketing machines. Until about five years ago, these geniuses still had system maps in all of the stations that showed the trains going on lines that were shut down in the mid-80s.

They should spin-off and privatize the regional rail (if they can find a buyer). Then maybe someone will take their ticketing system out of the 19th century and eliminate the need for one union member per car on each train, some of whom make it their full-time job to be surly with passengers who aren’t familiar with the system.

Pakistan

Ann Coulter on Musharraf

I like reading Ann Coulter's because of her wit and writing style. Watching her on TV is painful however since she interviews the same way she writes. It makes her sound like a conspiracy theorists with ADA.

I have to say I totally disagree with several of her conclusions in this article which is apparently demonstrating her neo-con leanings. I disagree with her spin on the democrats position in this area. I do not think that they have any of the motivations or ideals that she states they have. My own conclusion is that the foreign policy of the democrats for the last 30 or so years has been to wait to see what the GOP leadership position is on an issue and deride it as being the wrong approach to achieve the exact same solution. The democrats want us in as much of a perpetual state of war as the neo-cons, right now they don't hold the presidency, so what the Bush administration does they will decry it as the wrong solution. When the dems are back in power, the republicans will go back to doing the exact same thing.

There is just so much to go after in this article it's not even funny:

The entire history of Pakistan is this: There are lots of crazy people living there, they have nuclear weapons, and any Pakistani leader who prevents the crazies from getting the nukes is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison all rolled into one.

This is an interesting analysis since Pakistan developed nukes under the prior regime of which Musharraf was a member, before he ousted them in a coup. A bunch of Islamic crazies didn't do it, his buddies did it before he stabbed them in the back. And when they did it, we basically did nothing to stop them or admonish them. And once he took power, he did nothing to dismantle or destroy the weapons. He just sat on them.

Now the technology has now apparently made it over to Iran directly from Pakistan and so we are now threating to invade Iran even though they don't have the weapons yet. Why didn't we do the same for Musharraf when he thumbed his nose at us, the U.N., and the non-proliferation treaty (you know, the things we are using as excuses to invade Iran)? Because even though he is a thug, he is our thug. For now at least.

Musharraf has been a crucial ally of ours since Sept. 12, 2001. His loyal friendship to the United States while governing a country that is loyal to al-Qaida might prove dispiriting to the terrorists.

As I recall, Musharraf refused to help us initially when we wanted to attack the Taliban in Afghanistan. That is why we are still using bases from the former Soviet republics is Asia. For this completely lack of cooperation, we forgave billions in Pakistan's debt and gave him approximately $2 billion per year since 2001. This is not loyalty. It is a mix of extortion and welfare. By the way, he hasn't done a thing to shut down the Islamist schools and all intelligence reports indicate that bin Laden has been hiding in his country virtually since day one. All of our reports also indicate that the Pakistan secret service is riddled with Taliban and bin Laden sympathizers, which is why his help as yielded no results. So since he has no control over several regions and segments of his population or Islamic extremists who basically live as independent enclaves, his solution is to lock up all the remaining secular Muslims who want to restore Pakistan to a democracy.

Remember democracy? That is supposedly the latest reason why we need to stay in Iraq. We just can't afford to have it in one of the few Muslim nations with a democratic tradition.

Now, with the surge in Iraq working, Democrats are completely demoralized. Al-Qaida was counting on them. (We know the surge in Iraq is working because it is no longer front page news.)

The surge is not working in Iraq. The casualty rates are as high as ever. The difference now is that the media has stopped sensationalizing it since it may hurt the chances of the democratic front-runners who want to keep us in Iraq until at least 2013.

You wouldn't know it to read the headlines, but Musharraf has not staged a military coup. In fact, he was re-elected — in a landslide — just weeks ago under Pakistan's own parliamentary system.

Wow, the unelected leader who has controlled Pakistan as a military despot since he overthrew the last democratically elected government won in a landslide. I'm sure this had nothing to do with him being the supreme leader of the country through military force and shutting down all the opposition parties and media outlets prior to the election.

But the Pakistani Supreme Court, like our own Supreme Court, believes it is above the president and refused to acknowledge Musharraf's election on the grounds that he is disqualified because he is still wearing a military uniform. That's when Musharraf sent them home.

Perhaps it is because they were reading their constitution, a document which neo-cons find offensive when you bring it to their attention in discussing the role of our government.

Musharraf's election was certainly more legitimate than that of Syrian president Bashar Assad (with whom every leading Democrat has had a photo-op) or Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (adjunct professor at Columbia University) or Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (loon).

Wow. This really warms my heart about Musharraf. She has certainly placed him in the right company in this paragraph even if she doesn't see the irony.

Pakistan is a country where local Islamic courts order women to be raped as punishment for the crimes of their male relatives. Among the Islamists' bill of particulars against Musharraf is the fact that he has promoted the Women's Protection Bill, which would punish rape, rather than using it as a device for social control.

This situation exists precisely because Musharraf has been doing absolutely nothing since 9/11 to reign in Islamic fundamentalists in his own backyard. He is the world's best paid welfare recipient. I suppose Coulter thinks the if Bhutto takes over she would be in favor of this type of treatment for women? No, but Bhutto has never proven to be our thug.

The Litte Green Book

One of the biggest crimes with our education system - especially in history and social studies - is the lack of explanation about what could be called basic conservatism and basic capitalism. Instead, our history is mostly taught around personalities, not principles. This might be because younger minds do not understand such abstract concepts or see their application to the world. It could also be that we are lazy and prefer to make history into fun stories.

What I would define as true conservatism is perhaps more like libertarianism. It is the idea that the focus on individual rights and freedoms should be the foundation of society. This train of thought is apparently fundamental in the Federalist Papers and perhaps more so the Anti-Federalist Papers. The idea is that the founder fathers, when forming a new government, decided to make the individual the focus rather than the state or someone who represented the state. This was a fundamental change in Western Thought, which, although based on earlier philosophers (Locke, Hume, and Hobbes), was tried for the first time in practice with the United States.

I call this idea of the focus on the individual true conservatism for two reasons: (1) it hearkens back to the philosophical origins of the nation and (2) it repeats the sentiments in Goldwaters's Conscience of a Conservative.

Dovetailing into this is the capitalism propounded by Adam Smith which could also be accurately characterized as philosophy focusing on the individual. Pure capitalism, however, has taken much of a beating in the 20th Century in the form of the welfare state, the creation of the Federal Reserve, Social Security, and the advent of Keynesian Economics. What we have now is the freedom to engage in capitalism within the confines of a welfare state that takes a substantial portion of our earnings no matter how we choose to earn a living. This does not prevent some from amassing great fortunes, but many of those fortunes are made on the back of the masses in the form of coerced spending from the government (such as military spending) or monopoly created by government fiat (such as cable TV companies).

But here is my point. Conservatism and Capitalism, as I have defined them above, based on the focus on the individual, appear to have a tough time making converts in the U.S. The democratic party, has more or less become hostile to the free market in every form decrying every problem that occurs as a result of the "excesses of capitalism". The Republican party claims to be for both of these items, but in recent years has done the exact opposite on nearly all fronts. What's more, is that many regular people registered as Republicans do not understand the ideals of capitalism or conservatism as anything more than a platitude. The Republican party has, in reality, become the party that professes to keep taxes low and to support the pro-life movement. It does nothing else to forward the ideals of capitalism and conservatism, and often acts against these interests to steal issues from the democrats by either expanding government programs or bringing home government pork.

What struck me most recently about all of this is that my sentiments are neither new nor original nor recent. What is written above is basically a paraphrase of the opening of Conscience of a Conservative by Goldwater (or his ghostwriter actually). These sentiments are repeated today in the Ron Paul campaign as well as by the Austrian School of Economics with its emphasis on individual behavior and pure capitalism. These sentiments are also found in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. To my great misfortune, I have only starting to embrace the ideals contained in the books recently. To my horror I realized that most people in the U.S. have no real concept of any of these ideas, even the few that are informed about them, because the ideals of conservatism are either loathed because of the label, or not understood by their supposed supporters.

As much as I have enjoyed reading portions of these works, I have to admit that they can be tough reading. They are written with passion but they are not passionate reads. Even Atlas Shrugged, which attempted to turn these ideals into a more enjoyable novel format, was not something I was able to finish - and I have read Moby Dick at least three times. In my mind, the problems is perhaps one of formatting. Essays to a great job of explaining how you reach your points, but the essayist often forgets to concisely summarize these points, obviating the need to constantly reread these works to try and understand their conclusions.

I would propose that modern capitalism and conservatism really need a sort of new "little green book" or something similar to a short Bible to help spread the message. The message has to be one of simple, short sentences, organized by topic or along some other lines that clearly expose the basic tenants of modern conservatism. Perhaps literary stories or actual history could be used to illustrate points. The point is that we need a work that either gives basic principles to help define modern conservatism and also to help shape arguments whenever a question arises as to "what is best" for a particular situation. A work that can be quoted as chapter and verse - even if only guidelines. In addition, it is probably a good idea to have a work of literature that is really enjoyable and relatively short that exemplifies these tenants. It can be an historical novel. It could be pure history. Both these philosophical/economic and literary works could even be combined just as the Bible combines Genesis with the laws of Leviticus. There may be such a book out there that explains conservatism so succinctly, but I have not seen it.

NATO and Giuliani

"Powers once assumed are never relinquished, just as bureaucracies, once created, never die." - Charley Reese

NATO "established a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party." - Wikipedia

NATO formed in 1949 in reaction to the Soviet Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe. When the Cold War ended, NATO did what any other entrenched bureaucracy would do when it's original purpose had ended: it attempted to expand.

And what exactly has this mutual protection bought us since the Cold War ended? Well, every time we are attacked or seek to go to war as NATO, France, one of the only NATO members with a functioning military, refuses to support us. What happens when two NATO members threaten to go to war with each other as Turkey and Greece nearly did on a few occasions? Nothing. Or rather we act as a mediator, which has nothing to do with our role in NATO and does not depend one iota on our role in NATO. We also likely sent money to both sides as supposed foreign aid to keep them quiet.

So now Giuliani wants to expand NATO to Japan, India, and apparently the rest of the known world. Which will mean what? Nothing except more expenses. Pakistan, our long-time quasi-ally, has been involved in three major wars with India since their independence after WWII. Would we defend a NATO India against a non-NATO Pakistan, then? A better question, of course, is why we would spend U.S. money and risk U.S. lives over who controls Kashmir? Would we attack China if India engaged in another war over Sikkim? Has Giuliani ever even heard of these wars?

I'll write more on this later, but for now it seems that our only reason to keep expanding NATO is basically to give the appearance and perhaps the reality of diplomatically isolating Russia and China from the rest of the world. Constitutionally this is the wrong decision. Morally it is the wrong decision. In practical terms it will ruin our economy and just give us new enemies that we do not need to fight wars over lands where no American lives. Do we really need to gear our foreign policy to making sure their is an American soldier buried in every square mile of soil on Earth just to show we can do it?

GOP keeps promoting clueless as qualified

Fred Thompson's stunning error

Romney may flip-flop, but at least he has enough understanding of both sides of the issue to intelligently talk about his position - whatever it happens to be at the time. We already know Thompson has no work ethic. Now he shows he has no understanding of his own party's platform or what his own position on abortion actually means. I could care less about the abortion issue, but this guy has millions of social conservatives thinking he is an incarnation of Reagan (who was also a flip-flopper). Reagan could at least pretend to be pro-life effectively. Thompson just keeps showing he isn't even township supervisor material.

Think about it this way. If he can't extemporaneously answer a basic question that has dominated American politics for 35 years - a question that he should have known was coming and about which he has probably been coached hundreds of times - what hope to we have for this guy making any intelligent decisions about any other issues that he may face? Especially ones that are a little more complicated than the abortion issue.

Is a vote for Rudy a vote for war?

Rudy once again demonstrating that he has no idea about anything regarding foreign policy. "Show you support the military" his advisers tell him. "I know, I'll call for the expansion of NATO to India!" Brilliant. He also wants to include Japan, with whom we already have a treaty, even though Japan's constitution prevents it from having military forces operating outside of its own defense. That is kind of the antithesis of what NATO is about. Again, absolutely brilliant.

Beyond Obscene

Pennsylvania taxpayers fund rapping groundhog, G-Hog

Monica Yant Kinney | Rapping G-Hog got this to say...

People should get worked up about this but won't. Our state government is truly a laughing stock.

The worst part is that our government is being used to encourage people to enter the health care industry not because there is a shortage of people, but because they want a cheaper labor market. Think about it this way. If these jobs paid well enough, they would have not trouble finding people to work in the industry. But why pay $40,000 a year if you can hire someone for $25,000 a year? How do you do that? Get state government to foot the bill to increase the supply of people in the job market. That way, when you have a new job to fill, instead of 2 applicants, you can have 10 and then you can start to lower the pay when you realize there are more qualified workers than available jobs.

This is the same thing the IT field does with claiming there is a shortage of qualified IT people, necessitating an increase is the supply of H-1B visas.

General Motors Loses $39 Billion

I believe I have ranted about this before. GM and Ford and a lot of other American companies need to be completely restructured or allowed to die a quick and painless death if we want to continue having manufacturing in this country for anything.

Anectodal evidence suggests:

• Most executives are overpaid (at least based on the results they produce)
  
• Most companies are strapped with labor deals that leave them unable to make quick changes or innovate in any areas
  
• Detroit has no clue what the markets want and are always five years behind in trends
  
• Government will bend over backwards to subsidize these dinosaurs with unfair tax breaks and tax money (corporate welfare) which only keeps them alive to get more subsidies instead of actually forcing them to change
  
• At the same time, government will step in to over-regulate these businesses to the point that they can't produce anything at a competitive price
  

As a simple moral point, it is time to end the subsidies (and some of the regulations while we're at it) and let these companies either adapt on their own or die.

Carter Country

Carter, unlike Bush, faces reality on West Bank issue

My respect for President Carter disappeared years ago. My respect for Bob Novak has been knocked down a nudge on this issue.

Israel leaving the West Bank will not end Palestinian terrorism against Israel or bring peace to the region. A substantial number, if not most, of Palestinians view ALL of Israel as being an illegal occupation and will not rest until it is "wiped off the map" like the Iranian president has predicted.

Look at the simple facts of just the past few years. In Gaza, Israel completely dismantled all of its settlements, pulled out, and let the Palestinians run things on their own. What did the Palestinians do with their new found freedom from Israel? Before the last Israeli soldier left, they started launching rockets into Israel from their now liberated homeland. In the first few months they dug an underground tunnel into Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier (who is still missing by the way). Then they overthrew their own elected government and declared Gaze to be under Sharia.

This did not happen because Israel refuses to leave the West Bank. It happened because Israel left Gaza. If Israel leaves the West Bank, the exact same thing will happen. Those who want Israel destroyed will continue to attack Israel and no concession in the world will change that. To this day, the rocket attacks continue from Gaza. The West Bank, on the other hand, is relatively peaceful because the legitimately elected government of Palestine is running the show. The instant Israel leaves, that government will again be overthrown and Hamas and its backers will get another safe haven from which to attack Israel.

Palestine is not nor will ever be a democracy any time in the near future. If it was, you might see concessions from Israel resulting in a two-state solution. Instead, Palestine will be like every other Arab nation. Whoever has the most guns runs the country. And the people who have the most guns in the West Bank and Gaza are the ones who want to destroy Israel. Even if 90% of Palestinians would be satisfied with a two-state solution, none of them would ever stand up for Israel's right to exist or work against Hamas or other groups. This is because they would taken out in the street and shot within five minutes of saying anything that might be construed as a positive comment about Israel. You can negotiate with a democracy. You cannot negotiate with armed thugs. This is something Carter never understood as president and never will.

Also, by the way, the two-state solution was what the original UN mandate called for and what Israel went along with in 1948. The sole reason Israel has had to occupy so many other territories is because every time they attempted to play nice with their neighbors and try to work within the mandate of the two-state solution, they would be invaded. After implementing almost 90% of Oslo, they got Arafat flipping over tables and calling for a new intifada. Why? Because without Israel as an enemy, Arafat and his thug successors in Palestine have nothing to offer their own people.

A two-state solution is what the U.S. wants. It is not what the majority of Palestinians want and it is not what Israel should want unless they are willing to do what they should have done a long time ago. I stick by what I said several years ago, which is Israel should completely withdraw from the West Bank, and as soon as the militants start up their attacks again, Israel should go full force into both territories and occupy and settle them for good. Right now, the status quo is about Israel's only good alternative to keep the violence to a minimum. The day they withdraw from the West Bank, they should either be prepared to fight another major war or just give up the fight altogether.

Black on Black Image Portrayal

Protesting Demeaning Images in Media

Normally I dismiss many cries of racism that involve perception rather than overt acts against people or individuals as being without any substance, but I found some interesting points that the protesters here bring up with which I agree:

(1) America is a segregated country.

(2) Media portrayals of one segment of the population can affect they way a group as a whole is perceived by groups that have little or no contact with that group.

I think I agree with both of these statements, however, I do not ultimately side with the protesters on this for a number of reasons. This is primarily because of my moral convictions that bright line rules are often the best for society to use not because they necessarily always yield the best outcome in every situation, but because they make it a lot easier for everyone to make decisions. It's saves time when we know the rules and they are easy to apply to reality. That way we don't spend years and years fighting over minutiae building toward some amorphous ideal or sentiment that is not easily quantifiable and subject to abuse through subjective and selective interpretation. In this case, my bright line rule is against censorship of any kind by adults free to make their own decisions.

While I agree with the protesters that they are likely right as to the result and affect of these negative portrayals having a negative effect on black people as a whole, I abhor the idea of censorship. The simple argument when the media is playing this type of crap is, of course "turn it off", however, their argument is they can turn it off, but that won't prevent other people from watching and getting the wrong message. Absolutely true. In this case, of course, it is even more ironic because the protest is against a black run and owned network who employs black actors to play roles that other black people find demeaning to all black people as a whole. Not being a minority in this country, I cannot really relate exactly to the concerns, but I do understand and do believe it is problem. However, my moral guidelines that speak out against censorship tells me that telling the network "thou shalt not do anything which offends" is not the way to go. I do not have the solution just yet though.

As far as the US being a segregated country, yes. It is segregated racially, religiously, and any other number of ways depending on the criteria you select. Racial segregation, however, is obviously something that we have struggled with in this country for a long time. We have not needed laws to keep Lutherans and Methodists from fighting with each other, but we have needed laws and the force of arms to keep places from being segregated. We are probably more obsessed with racial equality in this country than any other country in the world. In Belgium the two native populations are at each other's throats figuratively. In the rest of the world, when there are two or more distinct races, one usually dominates the others through force of law. In those countries, racism is the official undeclared policy, but often the issue does not get a lot of attention until it breaks into full scale war or genocide (e.g. Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc.). In this country the official policy is to oppose racism and we almost seem to celebrate it the way we overdo it by finding it where it doesn't exist or exaggerating what I would call petty racism into a major crisis. These episodes wind up taking away from the real fight against racial equality because it is something that already exists under law and can only be won in people's minds. Turning a flip, unscripted remark from Imus into a showcase for why America is a racist country just convinces many people that there is no struggle left if the country goes DEF-CON 1 on a one-time idiotic remark.

The problem is, however, that this nation will always be segregated racially one way or another because this nation will likely have a steady stream of immigrants from one part of the world or another for the foreseeable future. Right now, we are seeing areas that are essentially segregated Mexican areas. There are stories of some basically acted as independent enclaves and those stories are only likely to increase. So do we take the complicate route of constantly emerging standards to fight different prejudices or stereotypes as they arise, or do we draw the bright line of saying censorship is never the answer? I say the latter of course because I believe in the long run it is the most sustainable and easiest to administer.

So in my mind, using segregation as an issue, while valid, only further complicates the formula for determining how and when the media is allowed to portray members of one group of another (even if only collectively as a by-product of a trend). Would there ever be a time where a white portrayal in the media is viewed as being so negative and wide-spread that it should be censored? It is, of course, always argued that because whites are the majority of the population in this country, the problem isn't the same. I think that is valid, but let me ask what is more damaging to society as a whole: (a) negative fictitious portrayals of black youth in the media or (b) the seeming glorification of the actual lives of young white females such as Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Britney Spears (not to mention the Girls Gone Wild genre).

I can tell you which will more likely have a negative impact on my family. I have black neighbors and friends that my family will come into contact with on a regular basis, so there is likely no risk of my children assuming that Snoop Dogg or Flavor Flav are representative of black people as whole. There is, however, a huge risk that my daughters will grow up thinking that being sexualized at a young age is OK. But, I will not protest the networks. I will shut off the TV. I will have to deal with the fact that the rest of the world likely has the media-warped perception of young white girls as glorified, out-of-control hedonists.