Culturally Unconscious

The Spanish film Crimen Perfecto is one of the best films to watch on Halloween that’s not about Halloween. It has murder, butcher knives, ghosts. I highly recommend watching it.

Since the Eisenhower administration half a century ago, the Yankees have never won a World Series with a Republican in the White House. Nothing has made me want to vote Republican more.

Boise State, TCU, Utah, BYU, and Houston should get together and form their own conference. If they invite Idaho, who is currently undefeated and Fresno State and Hawaii. Fresno State and Hawaii, although not strong this season have had histories of success. This could be considered a super mid major confrence. If it existed today it would have five top-25 teams than any of the BCS conferences; more than the pac-10, Big-10, Big East, ACC, or even the vaunted SEC.

This would also solve a big problem for all of these schools which is finding ranked opponents to play them. For example Boise State played only one ranked opponent this year, Oregon, in it’s first game. That’s not a schedule that will set you up to climb the BCS standings. But BCS schools virtually refuse to schedule games against Boise State. (Given what happened this year Oregon would probably help itself if it dropped Boise State from it’s schedule.)

Portland get mentioned in one of Matt Yglesias’ recent posts, commenting on how many cities cited as models for urban planing have low African American populations.

if you take a place that’s under-invested for decades in walkable urbanism and then create a bit of walkable urbanism the tendency is for that bit to become very expensive. And since African-American households have lower incomes and substantially less wealth than white households, the tendency is for the walkable urban places to become white. But to raise this as an objection to building walkable urbanism is like saying that we shouldn’t try to have great public schools, because poor people might not be able to afford to live near them. That’s totally backwards—the inability of poor people to afford to live in good school districts highlights the need for more good educational opportunities not fewer. By the same token, if investments in walkable urbanism cause prices to shoot up and price people out of the area that shows that we need more walkable urbanism.

From my own personal experience, living in NE Portland, I think it is obvious that progressive urban planning can make it more difficult for low income families to live in gentrifying neighborhoods (Alberta). While I agree with Yglesias that investing in more walkable urbanism will help solve the problem of low income people being priced out, I think other policy solutions should also be used. Such as housing vouchers to help low income families afford living in gentrifying neighborhoods.

Many Neoconservatives seem unable to admit that no matter how much money and blood we shed fighting to make the world a better place, the world will never be perfect. Improving the human condition is extremely difficult as the wars in Iraq and Afganistan have shown.

It is ironic that Neoconservatives are unable to admit that there is a limit to what the government can accomplish through military action, while they will readily admit that there are limits to what the government can achieve in domestic policy. The reverse Irony exists for liberals. I think it would do both Neoconservatives and liberals well to remember that there are limits to what can be done, both by the government and private institutions.Many of the problems that the world faces are so large, that given a limited time frame they will not be solved.

I’d like to note that I use the term neoconservative in this post, because I would, perhaps naively, like to believe that there are still Conservatives such as Robert Taft (1889-1953) who are opposed to the US intervention in foreign affairs.

The Pakistani government seems to be able to prevent the Taliban from toppling Pakistan’s government, while at the same time being unable to eradicate the Taliban in Pakistan. If ther US withdrew it’s ground forces from Afganistan, I think the Afgani government, with military subsidies from the US would be able to produce a similar stalemate.

While I would love to see the Taliban cease to exist, I think it need to be acknowledged that there are limited resources at the United States’ disposal to eradicate them, and that there are any number of important investments that could be made with those resources both at home and abroad that may be just as worthwhile, if not more so than fighting in Afganistan.

I think whether one considers it possible to contain Iran via air power depends largely on what satisfactory containment is viewed as.

For 40 years the United States was able to contain the Soviet Union, in that the Soviet Union never bombed or invaded one of our key allies. However, the Soviets invaded numerous other countries and had they been crazy enough to destroy the world they certainly possessed enough nuclear weapons to do so. So if a Cold War style containment is what we’re looking for I think it is entirely possible to contain Iran (assuming they are not crazier than the Soviets, which is perhaps a big assumption).

If the United States wanted to prevent Iran from obtaining Nuclear weapons they could probably do so with air power. However, it would possibly come at the expense Iranian civilian casualties and a black eye for America in the international community, as well as possible reprisals against American allies in the region.

I would hope, and I think the Obama administration hope so to, that it is possible to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons through non-military means. Unfortunately those hope look increasingly dim.

I don’t know how much air power alone can contain the Taliban in Afganistan. I do think that it is important to remember that the reason we invaded Afganistan in the first place wasn’t because we were opposed to the Taliban regime, but because the Taliban were giving sanctuary to Osama bin Ladin and Al Qaeda leaders.

With that in mind I think it is clear that while our military presence in Afganistan has limited Al Quaeda’s ability to conduct terrorist attacks, it still exists as an organization and has inspired other Islamic terrorists to commit terrorist attacks in London and Madrid.

However, even if we were to remove the Al Qaeda pressence from Afganistan, I think it would be very likely that the leadership would just move to another country that was unstable or sympathetic to its goals. Al Quaeda already has done this several times. In 1994 Osama bin Laden’s Saudi citizenship was revoked and he went into exile in Sudan. In 1996 when Sudan’s government made it clear that Al Qeada was not welcome they moved to Afganistan.

Even if the United States dismantled Al Quaeda, the violent ideology which it uses would still exist. Tom Ridge talked about this on the Daily Show on Thursday. That while it is possible to invade countries and topple dictators, destroying an idea is impossible. Given this, as much of an effort should go into foreign aid and diplomacy that can help eradicate the root causes of terrorism.

I just finished watching Oliver Stone’s Wallstreet and I find it amazing that a movie made 22 years ago could so accurately capture the morality behind the economic crisis of a year ago.

Matt Yglesias, my favorite blogger, deftly points out that David Brooks contention that a Taliban victory in Afganistan would be bad for Pakistan is false. While a Taliban victory would be bad for countless Afganis and humanity in general, Pakistan has not looked happily upon Hamid Karzai’s outreach to India and would favor a regime less friendly to India, who the Pakistanis still view as their largest threat despite all the problems the Taliban is giving them.