A New York Times Reporter Was Kidnapped in 2008? WTF?!

This story came as a shock to me. I like to think of myself as a well-versed war watcher, but I had no idea a NY Times journalist had been kidnapped 5 months ago. Furthermore, that he’s been held hostage this long and apparently moved to Pakistan, and no one is reporting it, is really strange.

There’s no other way to describe this. It’s just plain weird that (a) the Times isn’t reporting it (b) the anti-war types aren’t reporting it (c) the war-supporter types aren’t reporting it (d) the internets haven’t really reported on it. It’s as if this didn’t happen.

I don’t even know if wars or military ventures can “nuke the fridge”, but if they can, the war in Afghanistan just did it. When a reporter from one of the nation’s biggest papers is kidnapped by Taliban-esque forces, and IT’S SWEPT UNDER THE RUG, our nation has officially gone to crazytown.

P.S. Not to be a cold-hearted cynic about this, but the cold-hearted cynic in me at least wonders if this incident has affected any of the Times’s reporting on Afghanistan.

Guantanamo: Thoughts via DFW and HDT

I’m really torn about this story. One part of me wants to smirk and mock those who think we have a bunch of “innocents” locked up in Gitmo*, but the other part of me wants to say that the real point of the critics is, or perhaps should be, that it doesn’t matter whether these guys are innocent are not. Even if they are guilty, we, as a nation, shouldn’t be putting guys in a legal limbo in a foreign nation.

David Foster Wallace used to talk about there being a “baseline cost” of being a liberal democracy. For the sake of living in our (at least theoretically) free nation, we might have to suffer a certain amount of terrorist attacks/awful mistakes that are caused/blamed by our freedom. We shouldn’t, however, go back on those liberal values for the sake of safety. That idea, one of a base cost for the joys of freedom, has stuck with me probably more than anything DFW’s written. Freedom is a historical anomaly. I don’t see it written anywhere that I have a God-given right to living in both complete freedom and complete safety. And, if given the choice, I’d rather have complete freedom with episodes of tragedy than complete security with episodes of liberty.

I’m pretty confident that the “idea” of America is incompatible with Guantanamo. Maybe we got to this point through ten thousand miniscule compromises, maybe it was through several panics/frenzies brought on by national war. However it happened, the idea that established jails/camps in foreign lands carry the stamp of the nation of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson is…off-kiltering. I think Henry David Thoreau (two three-named authors in one post!) had it right when he protested the Mexican-American War by refusing to pay taxes. He somehow got the American idea: it’s not one of a society that must be preserved at any cost. It’s not one of national music and literature or a “national identity”. It’s one based in the idea of liberty, the idea that mankind, bearing certain amount of costs, can live unmolested by his fellow man. The individual will have the freedom to act as he pleases, take the results/consequences solely upon himself, and live by his own code.

When I load up Google News, I don’t see that world anymore. I don’t see that nation. The idea has returned to the books.

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*Every time I find myself enjoying the waters on the ACLU-side of this debate, someone comes and pisses in the pool by saying grade-A retarded stuff about the Gitmo detainees. Lookit: these guys are BAD GUYS. They aren’t chain-smoking coffee-sipping spoken-word artists, they aren’t dissidents. They’re assholes. We have a good debating point when we observe that our treatment of detainees is dissonant with our national ethos, let’s not screw it up with some good old-fashioned stupidity.

They Probably Stole the Hand Towels Too

I can’t think of the perfect analogy, but the closest I can get for this is a house guest screaming at the host about the host’s shopping habits: Sirs, you can be forced to leave and a bill would be shortcoming.

Web 2.0 Shenanigans and Late Night Television

This is a time-specific post, but it is fun.

For those who don’t know, I tweet (see in the upper right part of the page?) as csstieber. I follow ?uestlove’s twittering, and he’s working this little twitter-stunt on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (who also tweets). They’re trying to set some kind of record by boosting bryanbrinkman’s following. The message is making its rounds around the interwebs, and since I joined at roughly 1,800 people about 30 minutes ago, it’s already exploded to 6,000.

Join the madness, or at least pop in and watch some of the web-community flash mobbin’ bedlam.

A True Tragedy of Modern Life

From Radley Balko’s personal site* comes this Washington Post feature piece on infant hyperthermia, or the phenomenon of parents absent-mindedly leaving their babies in car seats, which leads to the infant’s death. Fair warning: I could barely finish this piece. It’s that somber and unhesitating in its look at a phenomenon that can only be described by words like “tragic” and “soul-rending”. It’s wonderfully written (Gene Weingarten better win some national awards for this piece, and the Post has been superb in their feature-length stories in 2009), and I encourage anyone who might be interested to give it a look: it’s the kind of story that periodicals/newspapers are made for.

Some thoughts/questions:

1. I know I talked about this last week, but this piece is fascinating from a pro-life/abortion debate perspective: while I find it disturbing that a VA prosecutor charged a parent with manslaughter for leaving his kid in a car, I have this question: if you are going to prosecute for the accidental death of a parent who loved his kid dearly, how can you differentiate between that and a third-term abortion? I mean, at least the first parent wanted his kid, right?

Also: is this really the best use of a district attorney’s office? Is this upholding the laws of Virginia, or is this merely a case where the law enforcement is acting less like Protectors of the Republic and more like the Police to Prevent Vice and Promote Virtue?

2. This story reminded me that, no matter how far we might advance as a society, no amount of technology can prevent some tragedies. Perhaps it is because we are so insulated from death and error that such stories are so shocking, but we mustn't let ourselves think we need all kinds of new oversight to prevent such stories from happening again. As trite and insensitive as it is, the saying remains: crap happens.

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*Seriously, I link to Radley’s pages many, many times a week. I try and only post to ones that I can add value to (through own comments and perspective), but I still feel guilty for mooching so much off him. Please, please, please go to his site regularly. He puts more effort into his own reporting and has such a razor insight into policy and its effects that you are missing one of the stars of internet newsmaking if you miss his stuff. Check him out. Regularly. Please.

Friday Evening Links

I normally hate these kinds of posts (looking back at past “grab-bags” of my own makes me shudder*), but I gots a birthday to celebrate tonight (not mine), and I have a few tabs o’ interest I wanted to throw up before the weekend began:

1. The Economist, famed journal of reasoned-moderation and must-read material of “thoughtful” undergraduate political science majors everywhere, endorses the legalization of drugs.

2. “What if California got out of the marriage business altogether?”

Beginning with that line, the L.A. Times suggests, in the light of the kerfluffle around Prop. 8, subsequent anti-Prop. 8 riot/protests, further subsequent anti-Prop. 8 witch hunts, and furtherer subsequent California Supreme Court hearing on the legality of Prop. 8, that maybe the government should get out of the business of determining marriages altogether. *Gasp!* You mean that the State shouldn’t be involved in the personal details of citizens’ lives? Treason!

3. Some pretty sound advice from economist Bruce Bartlett, suggesting a carbon tax is far preferable to a cap-and-trade tax. I post this now because I’m getting the feeling that the cap-and-trade debate is going to get rolling in the near future, and we liberty-minded folks need to start laying track ASAP. Cap-and-trade plans, while allowing for companies to act within a confined area, already steal two or three intellectual bases in the first place, such as: who gets to decide where we “cap” the industries? Based on what science? Furthermore: what kind of provisions are in place to prevent corruption, especially considering the current brobdingnagian size and scope of the federal government? Do we really think that the U.S. government, which can’t even run it’s SEC right, is capable of monitoring “pollution credits”? There’s sure to be more to come…

4. Death of Europe Update: An Italian court sides with a Maghrebi husband, wife, and son, who murdered their daughter/sister because the girl wanted to live a Western life and had dated a non-Muslim. The reason the court found convincing? That the victim had been, in the words of her family, “beaten up for her own good”.

5. I’ve already made it well known that I’m strongly in the anti-abortion camp, so you’ll know where I stand on this story. For others, however, the article still presents some good thought-food. The difference between a constitutionally protected act and outright murder is, apparently, moving the child a few inches from the woman’s body.

That’s all from my side, have a good night and great weekend.

Oh, and Go Blue! And Minnesota, you suck. (pax Lileks)

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*That’s what she said.

Power-Literacy

Our country is ruled by a caste of lawyers who are almost to a man (or woman) economically illiterate. They know how to write laws to redistribute wealth but don’t understand how that wealth is produced. They also write laws that make it easier for lawyers to extort money from productive members of society, and centralizing power to lawyer-politicians who use that power to stay in power.

-- Joel West, professor at San Jose State University and open source researcher, in a bangin’ post about the market’s response to Obama’s economic maneuvers.

I’d push it even further: who says they’re only economically illiterate? Does anyone think that the bureaucrats are technologically literate? Environmentally literate? Culturally literate? Stop me when I name one… fiscally literate?

The truth is that the State is run by people who are coercion literate. The only language they know is one of crowd manipulation and control. They know how to garner power, they know how to boss people around with it.

If you have the power of the sword, why learn about anything else?

Why I’m Glad Dr. Dobson Is Leaving

I’ve received an email asking basically the same thing reader Goodbye said in a comment on my James Dobson post:

If you're going to declare your dislike of Dobson at least give some reasons.

Fair enough.

First, the bona fides: I had a childhood that was steeped in Focus on the Family. I listened to “Adventures in Odyssey” incessantly. Every day of the summer, one could guarantee that Young Snowden would be lying in front of his cassette-player, doodling in a coloring book, his mind floating in the world of ‘Whit’s End’, Rathbone Electric Palace, and window washer Bernard Walton. E-v-e-r-y day, without fail. (If you have no idea what any of that just said, just trust me when I say I was waaaay deep into the flagship children’s radio show for Focus on the Family.)

I also read dozens of Focus-approved books (Cooper Kids, anybody? Door In the Dragon’s Throat, whatwhat?!). I was a subscriber to Breakaway magazine, Focus’s teen-culture-watch publication. I saw “The Pistol” probably 30 times. I could name you Christian “safe for the family” alternatives to every major music act, thanks to my knowledge of the Christian culture. Like Sheryl Crow? Try Jennifer Knapp! Like 311? Try Pax 217! How ‘bout Korn? Give Thousand Foot Krutch a try!*

The only two cities I really grew up in are Colorado Springs and north-suburbs Dallas. Christian culture is what we do in those parts.

*Whew* Okay, pop-Christian dork status VERIFIED.

Allow me to destroy that status right heeyah: James Dobson is a bitter asshole.

Now to the why: Dobson represents everything that is scared about the modern evangelical Christian. When he looks out upon the world, he sees a God Loving People besieged by an aggressive secularist relativist enemy. He sees a binary world, one where it’s God v. Everyone Else. He sees, in short, the world the way Richard Nixon saw the world: it’s about survival of culture and “ways of life”, and principles be damned if they get in the way. So if that means that I go back on my word and endorse a guy who loathes my personage AND I loathe his, so be it -- from Dobson’s perspective, no maneuver is too low when The Gays And Atheists are running the schools or Marilyn Manson is instructing kids in school shootings: it’s Armageddon every day.

Additionally, this Armageddon is one of the Good Doctor’s own fabric.  Dr. Dobson created the beast he claims to serve. What beast is that? For lack of a better term, I’m going to call it Evangelical Pride Movement. Dobson saw the rise of the ethnic-identity and gay-rights movements and sought to fight fire with fire. He created an organization that was based in the “We’re Here, We’re Queer” ethos of the Stonewall protest. He saw that there was a significantly sized group that was frightened by the changes wrought by the Baby Boomers, and he forged the catch phrases and buzz terms that would give his flock the confidence to survive the scawee scawee wuld.

The only catch: the fundamental faith upon which Christianity is built has nothing to do with identity in a socio-political sense. Contrary to what Dobson and Falwell and Robertson tell you, the Bible says nothing about how a Christian should vote. The Bible and one’s faith will surely inform one’s voting, but I challenge any one to find me the “The kingdom of God is like a 17% flat tax” verse I missed in the Gospels. Yet Dr. Dobson would have you believe that this world has decayed from its prior Christian Greatness because of the hippies, Derrida, and MTV, and that with the Bible as our voting guide, we can return unto God. This is a dangerous ideal that drives Christians out of the world rather than into it.

Furthermore, for a man who claims that “family values” can be empirically proven to be optimal for society, his position on several touchy issues is flatly anti-empirical. Peep Focus’s page on transgenderism:

Because "transgenderism" violates God's intentional design for sex and sexuality, we believe that this is a cultural and theological battle that we must engage and win. The modern "transgender" movement is systematically working to dismantle the concept of gender as the Bible and the world have always known it to be. If the transgender lobby succeeds, there will be striking consequences for marriage, family and society at large.

Lookit: I don’t know how God and Christ view transgendered people. There’s lots of good science out there that posits that transsexualism is a physical, not psychological condition. I don’t know what God intends for a person born with male sex organs but feminine hormones and chemicals in his (her?) brain. You get into some really heavy teleological stuff when you parse apart gender identity. What I do know is that positioning it as a “battle” over culture and theology is worse than wrong-headed: it’s either delusional or grossly cynical. I mean, my God, even Iran has a very liberal policy on sex-reassignment operations, okayed by the Ayatollah himself! I’m not a Christianists-are-the-Taliban like Andrew Sullivan is, but I do think it’s good to step back and make small comparisons from time to time.

So, in closing, any man who can claim majority credit for the creation/inspiration of execrable slime like Tangle (formerly GodTube) or “Christian Salt” (as an alternative to that damned ‘Kosher Salt’. Jews, they’re everywhere!)  deserves my scorn.

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*The really sad part is, I didn’t have to do one second of internet searching to remember any of those bands, and I haven’t listened to any of that stuff in 7 or 8 years.

But What About Lorne Michaels and Tommy Chong?

(h/t: the always-funny Criggo, via Five Feet of Fury)

Snapshot of The D.

To those who’ve read this blog for a while, you will know that I have a weakness for the city of Detroit. It’s a sad weakness, really though. I have so many friends and classmates who are from the Wolverine State, and when you see how poorly the city is doing, how decrepit the Motor City has become, it stings.

So when you read stories like this, from the Chicago Tribune, you might just shake your head at the facts:

DETROIT — It may be tough to get financing for a new car these days, but in Detroit you can buy a house with a credit card.

The median price of a home sold in Detroit in December was $7,500, according to Realcomp, a listing service.

Not $75,000. Remove a zero—it's seven thousand five hundred dollars, substantially less than the lowest-price car on the new-car market.

but the numbers don’t do it justice (as much ‘justice’ as can be done to such an abysmal collapse). For those who’ve been there, you can’t forget what you see:

Would you pay $7,500 for either of the houses above? Would anyone, especially when there’s no hope for the future? No one see that city getting back to 3 million people with a revived suburbs and a vibrant core. The automakers are about to be finished off. So why buy a piece of crap and fix it up?

I found the above photo at the invaluable catalogue, Detroit Funk. It’s like a “Faces of Death” for a former Crown Jewel of America. Today?

I found this one there as well. It says it all:

Stone Cold Killers

For all you readers of teh blogosphere, just know that, according to my congressman, all of us “killed all the newspapers.”

I didn’t know what was I doing when I was killing your husband, if that’s any small consolation Mrs. Mountain News.

I particularly love that Rep. Polis started feeling his oats and let loose some good guerilla rhetoric:

"The media is dead, and long live the new media, which is all of us," said Polis, a Boulder Democrat.

It’s a breezy cocktail of “Viva La Revolucion!” and “L’etat, c’est moi” best served with chilled left-wing triumphalism. *Slurps* Mmm, that’s nice.

“Excuse me. I have to go to space now.”

Sorry for being so other-media heavy, but I’ve had an extra-helping of busy-gravy ladled on my foodweek. A peace offering?

And the even better follow up:

If A Prius Was Any Gayer, It’d Come With A Bleached Tailpipe

My Leader To Whom I Swear All Fealty Has Another Missive For His Followers:

Lil' O'Reilly - Obama's First Week

Heed his words, America. Heed his words.

It Was Going To Happen Sooner Or Later, I Just Wished It Was Sooner

Whatever your conception of God, I hope you agree with me that he (or He) is happier today because of this news.

J-Dobs and I are not friends. *Angry Emoticon*

Finger Lickin’ Dead

Another media rehabilitation on Jimmy Kimmel Live with a side of awesome sauce, please: