AIDS, Homelessness, Valor and Cowardice

U.S. Reports Drop in Homeless Population | NYTimes.com

The evil liberal media dominators at the New York Times report on a Bush initiative that has had an apparently remarkable impact on the chronically homeless in the United States. What is especially surprising is that all sides of the issue seem to be in agreement that the data are reliable. If such consensus is born of truth, then it is true that the chronically homeless population has declined by nearly 30% in the United States over the past four years.

Coupled to this report on PBS’s The News Hour about how resoundingly successful the President’s AIDS relief program in Africa has been, this astonishing development compels one to think of all the remarkable good that could have been achieved with the trillions of dollars (projected costs including interest) currently being squandered in Iraq. After all, the total cost of these programs ($15 billion for AIDS relief as cited by The News Hour report, and ostensibly no more than a few billions of dollars for the “housing first” program; I can’t presently find a citation) absolutely pales when compared with the $752 billion cited by the CBO for the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan thus far. Had such resources been allocated to AIDS relief and homelessness, the earth may well have been purged of both scourges.

Could the President be asking himself if the pursuit of the war in Iraq was a gross misappropriation of resources? After all, the three-quarters of a trillion dollars thus far spent in Iraq has had the sole effect of bringing the American economic engine to a halt by sending the price of crude oil into the stratosphere. Thus, the military operation in Iraq has, in effect, quashed all effective programs undertaken by the government in two ways. First, it has absorbed moneys that would otherwise have been dedicated to such effective programs like AIDS relief and housing first. Second, it has reduced the capability of the American economy to provide for any government program by reducing economic output.

Thus, the reasons why the neoconservatives keep insisting on the validity of the military operations in Iraq are almost understood. Any admission that moneys spent elsewhere would be more effective than the moneys squandered in Iraq would reveal these war mongers to be the frauds and the hucksters that they are. It is, therefore, nothing but an article of fear that compels the cowards who wage war to deny their misdeeds.

And, that is why their cowardice is almost understood. Those occupying positions of power must have the courage to make such admissions. It is their duty. It is, in fact, their legal obligation to confess to their mistakes so that these mistakes can be rectified or remedied before they erode the public’s trust and destroy the institutions that guarantee accountability and efficacy in governance. This very fact that persons vested with authority must carry a higher responsibility is the reason why such childish denials of fault in government are labeled high  crimes and misdemeanors, while those of the child who had broken a vase are labeled mere fibs.

If the constitutional mandate that punishments fit crimes were observed, then such high crimes and misdemeanors would merit harsher punishments than those meted out by parents for their children’s fibs. As it is, however, children are being held accountable for breaking vases, but politicians are exonerated for their squandering of the common wealth and the nation’s prestige. Who is measuring the merits of spending a pittance for the sake of the welfare of humanity against the spending of fortunes to increase the misery of mankind and opting for the latter?

[ad]

The Economic Oracles Speak

BBC NEWS | Business | US economy at a glance

Perhaps the only thing gloomier than this picture is the fact that no American news source can be bothered by the simple process of consulting publicly available data from the government. The Brits seem to have grasped the utility of the internet browser better than American journalists. Perhaps that’s because it was a Brit who invented the world wide web and the browser.

[ad#refer]

Trouble in Paradise

L.A. airports director Lindsey oversaw Seattle airport when controversial contracts were awarded | Los Angeles Times

The only thing more puzzling about the rapid decline of Los Angeles as a functional, livable city is the bold transparency with which the destruction of the city is undertaken by its elected officials and the contractors who have successfully corrupted them. The above link cites but the most recent instance of the grotesque cronyism and lack of accountability that  has Typical traffic in Los Angelesmade Los Angeles the most unlivable and unmanageable city in the United States. Even though Los Angeles has the most unsafe airport in the country and the worst traffic in the country, no leader in this city can sustain moral fortitude long enough to address problems that imiserate millions of people daily.

One would surmise that  after hosting the most embarrassing public works project in human history (one in which the Federal Government calls the Los Angeles Government corrupt!), the processes of improving the city’s infrastructure would improve. As the above articles shows, quite the contrary is true. The city’s airports, roads and public transit system are destined to wither and perish under unrelenting corruption before the eyes of a citizenry apparently too sleepy to care for its own well being.

As nature has demonstrated time and again, evolution is more likely to eliminate the weak than to promote the strong. Evolutionary data from the primordial soup that is Los Angeles strongly suggest that  evolution on occasion favors the stupid and the weak over the judicious and prudent. Whatever organism emerges from the primordial soup, I am ecstatic that, for now, I have managed to extricate  myself from the unbearably ugly evolutionary process that is shaping the primordial soup.

You should be too, if you don’t live in Los Angeles.

Photo by VirtualErn.

[ad]

Model Spam

Moran Atias | Moran Atias Nude

One of the blogs that I maintain has been inundated with Spam from the site above. According to the site, this woman is a “Palestinian model” and television presenter. I have no idea what either means. I am struck with a tinge of pity, however, that there are models who feel as if they need to resort to spamming in order to achieve the sort of groundswell from the internet underground that lifted Cindy Margolis and several other models whose names are not worth seeking or remembering. 

Alas, even the title of the site is misleading. She’s not nude. Was this out of respect to her Muslim heritage? Is she a traditional Palestinian Christian? Would she reject an Israeli agent or photographer?

Ah, useless questions that hound us in the primordial soup. 

For inexplicable reasons, I did more research. Her Wikipedia entry and her official site (Italian) imply that she is Jewish of Moroccon descent. Her portfolio includes little work that would be recognized in the US. So, these damned spam bots are working overtime on any site that happens to mention Italy.

Is this fortunate or unfortunate for her?  

Crime and the Punishment of Municipalities

Detroit declared most dangerous US city | Yahoo! News

The American obsession with rankings and the “competition” that rankings are believed to spur is so fervent, so strong and so overwhelming that any ranking–no matter how unscientific, how thoroughly biased or how flawed–is bound to get press. The college football and basketball rankings, the US News & World Report’s annual college rankings, hospital rankings, etc., etc., etc. So many rankings exist that they have obscured the more important question of whether all universities, hospitals or whatever are competent at all. After all, overall competence and excellence is the goal of standards, not individual competence or excellence. Who cares if you have 50 good universities (or even 200), if 1000 universities are lousy? A thousand competent hospitals do much more for public health than five stellar ones.

The 14th annual  City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America published by Congressional Quarterly threatens to be the most irresponsible of such rankings primarily because it is published by a trusted source. When a report on crime is anticipated by such criticism from the highest sources on criminology, the reasons why anyone gives it press become baffling. The criticism included in the above article include:

The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as “an irresponsible misuse” of crime data.  

Critics also complain that numbers don’t tell the whole story because of differences among cities.

“You’re not comparing apples and oranges; you’re comparing watermelons and grapes,” said Rob Casey, who heads the FBI section that puts out the Uniform Crime Report that provides the data for the Quitno report.The FBI posted a statement on its Web site criticizing such use of its statistics.”These rough rankings provide no insight into the numerous variables that mold crime in a particular town, city, county, state, or region,” the FBI said. “Consequently, they lead to simplistic and/or incomplete analyses that often create misleading perceptions adversely affecting communities and their residents.”

But, most appalling is the CQ Press’s own insistence and admission that the study is worthless:

 CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said details of the weighting system were proprietary.    

Thus, the publisher asserts that it is propounding a hypothesis–their statistical model–that they refuse to have tested independently. This runs contrary to all scientific principles of inquiry. In all sciences–including social sciences like sociology–openness is the most essential ingredient. Without it, hypotheses cannot be tested independently in order to be verified. Without independent verification, there is no truth. By making the hypothesis proprietary, CQ Press is disallowing scrutiny and forbidding independent verification. Thus, CQ Press propagates an untested notion, a falsehood. In effect, it is acting as a propagandist. 

Hopefully other silly rankings will soon be discredited by similar confession of inadequacy by their publishers. 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Good or Bad?

BBC NEWS | Americas | Iran ban for Garcia Marquez novel

One wonders what happened to those unlucky 5000 people who managed to buy copies of one of Marquez’s lesser known works. The appeal of Marquez’s work in Iran is abundantly manifest because his works are suffused with a disdain for Spanish colonialism specifically and imperialism in general. In as much, they are grist for a regime that frames its repressive methods and its catastrophic failures in the context of the struggle against Western imperialism. 

Memories of My Melancholy Whores is such a wonderful title. The content of the novel could not possibly differ significantly from Marquez’s other writings. One Hundred Years of Solitude contains many stories of men who were ruined by whores, men who discovered their manhood with whores and men who fell in love with whores. Hence, the Iranian government’s objection to the title and the content of Memories of My Melancholy Sweethearts (the sanitized title) seems especially out of place. After all, the story is ultimately that of the salvation of a pervert at the age of 90. Furthermore, the following quote from Solitude clearly demonstrates that there is just as much content in Solitude that would be deemed objectionable to Islamic law.

…until he heard some old man tell the tale of the man who had married his aunt, who was also his cousin, and whose son ended up being his own grandfather. “Can a person marry his own aunt?” he asked, startled. “He not only can do that,” a soldier answered him, “but we are fighting this war against the priests so that a person can marry his own mother.” 

Hence, Marquez’s seemingly favorable depiction of incest was deemed acceptable in Iran, but the story of a 90-year-old pervert who falls in love with an innocent girl is apparently taboo. 

What tangled webs we weave when we first choose to lie, the famous saying goes. The complexity of this web pales in comparison to the web woven by religious zealots who insist on reconciling their backward and repressive ways with modern philosophy. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said,

It is quite possible to live with uncertainty, with the possibility, even the likelihood, that one is wrong. But beware of certainty where none exists. Ideological certainty easily degenerates into insistence upon ignorance.

It is very clear exactly what it is that religious zealots, Islamic or otherwise, insist upon these days.

The Deli is Dead, The Deli is Dead, Long Live the Internet

KosherChefsDiet is a remarkable new service. They deliver Kosher California cuisine (my ascription) to your door daily, fresh or frozen.

They targeted me in one of their junk mail campaigns. Without a doubt, they must have obtained my information from organizations like the World Jewish Congress and other Jewish organizations who must have targeted me because I am a Jewish man who lives in Beverly Hills, who has a good credit rating and who has donated to Jewish charities in the past.kosherchefs.com“The past” is, alas, a rather long span of time. Though I have not contributed any money to these organizations in years, past donations and my prestigious zip code must place me in that class of people who are most likely to pay $27 or more per day to have gourmet Kosher food delivered to their houses.

This cost is considerably more than the standard “Jewish” food for which delis in New York are famous. The price is higher because kosherchefsdiet.com serves California cuisine: the latest varieties in healthy, fusion culinary delights designed especially to help people lose weight. 

The fact that this luxurious service is based in New York suggests that even New Yorkers have finally fallen pray to the sedentary life spent in cars and office chairs that has plagued the rest of the country for the past twenty years. No more walking to work or even to the subway station. Worse yet, no more kibbitzing over nosh at Nathan’s or the Carnegie Deli. Potato kugel? That’s for the birds. The modern Jew prefers small portions of low-cal potato puree, instead. Yiddish and pickled herring in sour cream are for boat people. Kosher needs to be as modern as Napa Valley, and if people can’t go to Napa Valley, then Napa Valley is going to come to them.

In Kosher form, no less.

I don’t know about you, but this is exactly what I have been dreaming about….even praying for.

Jesus Did not Suffer for This

Christianity’s image taking a turn for the worse | Los Angeles Times

Over the decades, the question of whether rock and roll bands belong in a place of worship has befuddled many a religious or spiritual mind in this country. It comes as a shocking surprise to learn that even the believers–especially the “Christian” believers–are beginning to resent and even regret the transformation of religion to pop culture to which they have dedicated themselves. It seems as if the relegation of profound religious sacraments to inane 4/4 time rock medleys is making people sick of their own religion just as they tire of ephemeral pop songs. The political power plays of churches are starting to be perceived as corruption of religion rather than elevation of government. And relentless, uncompromising proselytizing is beginning to be perceived as a rude expression of insecurity rather than a noble act born of strength.

It would be ever so nice if the profound wisdom of the Founding Fathers of the United States–the wisdom with which they codified the separation of church and state–were to reassert itself again in the minds of the populace. The rediscovery of a principle so manifestly true by a people so thoroughly removed from the pragmatism that made the country successful will be testimony to the wisdom of the founders and hope for the population. Alas, one can not have either one or the other.

Officially Disastrous Cost of the Iraqi Conflict

Congressional Budget Office – July 2007 Testimony on the Costs of the Military Conflict in Iraq (pdf)

It was quite a few months ago when I began composing this post, and it seems as if the journalism community has finally caught on to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office’s phenomenal economic forecasts of the past two years have declared the Iraqi war an economic disaster. In fact, mainstream reporting on the costs of the military conflict in Iraq has been so abysmal that I am utterly shocked that somebody at Reuters finally bothered to look at numbers that are available to everyone through the CBO web site, and that somebody at Yahoo! had the good sense to put the bleeding obvious on the front page.

What will journalists read next? Perhaps, that Clinton’s economic policies succeeded and Bush’s policies failed, as demonstrated in this budget projection (read chapter 1)?

It is true that the information age is here, and that most information is available to anyone anywhere. Nevertheless, it is also clear that mainstream news sources have gone out of their way to make themselves irrelevant. After all, it has taken them an entire year to report number that have been publicly available all along.

Silver Lining to California Fires?

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Californian fires affect TV shows

The California wildfires of 2007 will rank among the greatest tragedies that the state has endured. The only positive outcome of this tragedy could have been the halting of the filming of some of the horrible shows that that pass for entertainment on American television. Alas, the producers of 24 managed to resume filming at their Los Angeles studio, instead. The Writer’s Guild strike is the only hope we have left.