Looking for Wealth in all the Wrong Places

How many of these Nigerian spammers are there?

Democracy, American Style

Election monitors are investigating irregularities in the Iraqi election. Given the long history of electoral fraud in the United States, no surprises here.

Take That, "Mr. President"

Juan Cole's Smackdown:

Mr. Bush, I don't recognize the world you paint. I find your speech a form of sheer propaganda, having almost no relationship to reality. And I am very, very worried that you will allow to happen to the Oil Gulf what you allowed to happen to New Orleans. After watching you for five years I have become convinced that you don't have the slightest idea what you are doing in Iraq, that you are just reacting and playing it by ear. You can't do that, George. This Iraq thing is extremely complex. It needs serious, concerted thought by high-powered people, not just your cronies and yes-men and ideologues of various stripes (from Right to far-Right). You might just need the help of Iran and Syria to get Iraq right. Did you ever think of that? Iraq is the biggest policy failure in US history so far. You need to get a handle on it, the way you do on tax cuts for the billionaires (you've been very effective in making your rich friends richer). Otherwise all that extra treasure you've thrown to your tuxedoed "base" is going to go right down the tubes, drowned in a world of $20 a gallon gasoline.



You can't "stay the course" because you don't have a course. Get one.

If It's Good Enough for FEMA...

Posted by Atrios

It's the American Way

I suppose that it only the supposed expession of surprise that Americans would be absolutely creative intheir attempts to craft schemes to get money they are not entiteld to for hardships that they did not endure is what makes the recent article in the New York Times stand out.

More than a month after the hurricane devastated the Gulf Coast, evidence is mounting that cheaters across the nation are trying to cash in on the catastrophe with a boldness that surprises even some longtime law enforcement officials.

"It is just amazing to me the moral values that seem to exist," said McGregor W. Scott, the United States attorney in Fresno, Calif., where nine area residents have been charged with defrauding the American Red Cross in a case involving false claims submitted to a Red Cross call center in Bakersfield, Calif.

Vonnegut at 82, All That and More

A profile from that liberal news bastion the USAToday:

From his perspective as a former World War II prisoner of war, Vonnegut writes that American soldiers in the Middle East are "being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas."

Ten Thousand Men: Nostalgia and Brand Loyalty

As I approach my fifteenth college reunion the power of nostalgia draws me back to those younger if not happier or more carefree times, and when I heard that the endowment of the alma mater had topped 25 billion dollars I whimsically slipped my class ring back on my finger.

Well it seems that I am not the only one pondering the state of the College these days, as Malcolm Gladwell reports on the Ivy League in the New Yorker. I could only smile when he reported the response of a fellow alum when asked where he had gone to college:

There was, first of all, that strange initial reluctance to talk about the matter of college at all—a glance downward, a shuffling of the feet, a mumbled mention of Cambridge. “Did you go to Harvard?” I would ask. I had just moved to the United States. I didn’t know the rules. An uncomfortable nod would follow. Don’t define me by my school, they seemed to be saying, which implied that their school actually could define them. And, of course, it did. Wherever there was one Harvard graduate, another lurked not far behind, ready to swap tales of late nights at the Hasty Pudding, or recount the intricacies of the college-application essay, or wonder out loud about the whereabouts of Prince So-and-So, who lived down the hall and whose family had a place in the South of France that you would not believe. In the novels they were writing, the precocious and sensitive protagonist always went to Harvard; if he was troubled, he dropped out of Harvard; in the end, he returned to Harvard to complete his senior thesis. Once, I attended a wedding of a Harvard alum in his fifties, at which the best man spoke of his college days with the groom as if neither could have accomplished anything of greater importance in the intervening thirty years. By the end, I half expected him to take off his shirt and proudly display the large crimson “H” tattooed on his chest. What is this “Harvard” of which you Americans speak so reverently?

Having just gone to a wedding where my college crew was out in full force, the sentiment seemed particularly vivid. My classmates stand out the most in my memory and whatever formaula that Haravrd used to choose us, it has served me well in life. I have called it the gift that keeps on giving or compared it to Tide. Tide may not be the best detergent, but everyone has heard of it.

Itunes to the Rescue

In an effort to recover from recruting shortfalls the Army National Guard turns to Itunes of all things. I find the juxtaposition of Itunes and the Army National Guard a commentary on something-- society, youth culture, technology, desperation. Or maybe it's just a joke. I can't quite figure it out.

RIP, August Wilson

One of the best American playwrights since Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams has died.

Wilson created an epic ten-play cycle chronicling the experiences of African Americans in the twentieth century. His command of language made his words into music.

No Good Deed

I have always beleived that no one does anything that she doesn't get something out of, and now there's research to support my misanthropic conclusions. The New York Times reports:

The selfishness may just be part of our wiring. Biologists were long stumped by altruism in animals because it didn't seem to make evolutionary sense. Creatures like the altruistic vampire bat, it was theorized, would eventually be wiped out of the gene pool because forgoing consumption to aid a fellow in need would reduce their own chance of survival and reproduction. This would leave only selfish bats.

But biologists have found that this only appears to be a paradox. They observed that altruistic animals tend to be more helpful with their own family or clan, which have a higher chance of sharing these altruistic genes. Researchers also found that altruistic animals engage in tit-for-tat strategies: generous to those who are generous back, but withholding from the selfish.

Declare Victory, and Leave

Seems that a change of rhetoric is in the air:

The U.S. generals running the war in Iraq presented a new assessment of the military situation in public comments and sworn testimony this week: The 149,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq are increasingly part of the problem.