Hate-mongering against American Muslims

I saw this video late last night and then couldn't fall asleep for two hours. I lay awake in bed wondering what has happened to the America I thought I knew. Glenn Greenwald adds the commentary here. Waving an American flag is the furthest thing from my mind now that our formerly inclusive and honorable national symbol has been so thoroughly adopted by so many warmongers, and increasingly by abject bigots. I've personally heard several hideous broadbrush slams against Muslims over the past year, several times by people who (I thought) knew better. I'm afraid that it's getting much worse over the past year and the venom is aimed indiscriminately against all Muslims. Maybe someday the American flag will again widely symbolize unity and respect for individual rights.

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The sanctity of contracts

Daily Show host John Stewart eviscerates those asking teachers and other unions to make sacrifices in the name of cutting the budget deficit, especially when those same people (literally!) did not ask the same from Wall Street bankers following the trillions of dollars of bailouts and easy money:

Incidentally, much of the rhetoric is centered around asking the unions to "contribute more" towards their benefits package, but how does one contribute more than 100%?

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It’s incredible how different we all are . . .

Here's how photographer Timothy Allen sums up his two year trip to the far corners of the world in order to capture images for the BBC series Human Planet:

It's incredible how different we all are, but yet we share roughly the same hopes and dreams for life. We're essentially looking for a roof over our head, looking to find a mate in life and feeding ourselves and looking after our offspring, and that's about it, really.

Allen's quote brings to mind Donald Brown's work on the incredible sameness of all human animals. But, as Allen points out, our cultures are also dramatically different from one another. Now please do yourself the supreme favor of clicking on this link to view a sampling of Allen's exquisite photography for Human Planet. His slide show includes some of the most memorable photos I've ever seen. You can read through the live chat that the show's team had earlier tonight, and please do consider a visit to Allen's own site. And here's a bit of video from the series, a segment dealing with the "last free people on the planet."

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They’re still testing the wrong people.

Dafna Linzer wrote a piece for ProPublica (I found it on Slate) on February 23rd, titled "The Problem With Question 36" with the subtitle "Why are so many of the answers on the U.S. citizenship test wrong?" (On ProPublica, she called it "How I Passed My U.S. Citizenship Test: By Keeping the Right Answers to Myself"). She was summarizing her experience becoming a naturalized American citizen in January of this year. As you may guess from both titles, she found a few problems with some of the questions on the test administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). She quotes Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS:

"The goal of the naturalization test is to ensure America's newest citizens have mastered a basic knowledge of U.S. history and have a solid foundation to continue to expand their understanding as they embark on life as U.S. citizens."
I thought of my own short rant I wrote a year ago on my personal blog that I called "They're testing the wrong people". I considered rewriting it for here, but I'll just highlight (and elaborate) a few points in relation to this and not quite in relation:
  1. We make people wanting to become citizens of the USA take a test that I doubt most natural born citizens could pass. I speculated that many of our elected legislators couldn't.
  2. Adoptive parents endure tremendous invasion of privacy, screening and considerable financial impact, yet "natural" parent require no such tests.
  3. The military requires a test, but Congress doesn't.
  4. Civil service may require a test, but Congress doesn't.
  5. Boards of Education decree testing standards, but undergo no such tests themselves.
Ms. Linzer's story might enlighten you, or not, but I now have to add the USCIS - or at least the scholars, educators, and historians they consulted to create the current test - to the list of people who need to be tested.

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Is This Part of the 2011 Republican Strategy?

I am not a political analyst. Nor am I a games theorist, although I come from a family full of them. But there seems to be a pattern in the odd funding battles currently being fought by Federal House Republicans. Defunding Planned Parenthood is a high profile battle that seems pretty silly. For 1/6 the price of a single stealth bomber, Planned Parenthood provides birth control, pap smears, breast exams, STD treatments and other health services to millions of the poor and unenfranchised for a year. No tax money has gone for abortions since the 1970's, so this service is not actually the issue. Well, unwanted children help keep prisons full. Or become likely infantry assets (cannon fodder). They also keep the crime rate up, allowing the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt crowd a tighter control over individual rights. Also, knowledge is power. Planned Parenthood works hard to try to educate young people on how to get out of the young-breeder cycle and build more fulfilling lives. If conservatives could just get this unregulated source of pure information away from the young, then church indoctrination would provide the Quiverfull of Christian soldiers at the voting booths. Defunding Public Broadcasting is a less publicized issue. They argue that NPR and PBS may have been a necessary part of the dial back when there were three networks. But now there are hundreds! So who needs just one more paid for by taxes? Well, in the old days, there was one non-commercial educational network on the dial: PBS. Now, with hundreds of stations to choose from, there is one non-commercial educational network on the dial: PBS. Why is this a problem to conservatives? Well, the cities are a lost cause. With inescapable multiculturalism, a high rate of college education, and exposure to a wide variety of influences and media, cities tend toward a liberal bias. Knowledge does that. But out in the boondocks, the only fly in the otherwise completely conservative Christian ointment is the centrist ("bleeding heart liberal") influence of Public Broadcasting. If they could only get rid of that, they'd control all the channels. Conclusion: Republican Policy is Ignorance is Bliss: Cut programs accordingly.

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