Fitna

Several Muslim countries are in an uproar right now. Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of Parliament, just released a ten-minute movie called “Fitna” (Arabic for ‘Ordeal’). The movie shows footage of several terrorist attacks spliced with verses from the Quran which encourage violence and Islamic superiority, as well as video of Imams spouting hate speech and violence. Jordanian lawmakers are considered breaking diplomatic ties to the Netherlands, and there have been protests in Pakistan, Iran, and Indonesia, all of whom have requested to speak with their respective ambassadors.

Mr. Wilders, who produced the film under heavy security, has received numerous death threats and requires a security escort at all times. Personally, while I don’t think the film is particularly good, I see nothing deceptive, dishonest, or hateful about it. Therefore, I see no reason why it should be censored, as the Dutch government has attempted to do. Freedom of speech is the bedrock of Western Civilization, and must be protected. However, you are welcome to the view the movie for yourself and make your own determination of whether this qualifies as hate speech, great art, something that looks like it was made by stoned undergrad at USC, or a triumph of free speech.

New Recovered CBS Footage Shows Hillary Clinton Told The Truth About Bosnia, Dodged Sniper Fire

Despite heavy lobbying by Barack Obama to keep the footage a secret, some noble Hillary Clinton supporters have convinced CBS to release hidden footage showing Hillary Clinton dodging sniper fire in Bosnia.

Little Girl in “3 a.m.” Ad is Now Grown Woman, Rejects Politics of Fear, Endorses Barack Obama

I’m very proud of my fellow Washingtonian, Casey Knowles, for standing up for what she believes in.

America needs more young people like you, Casey.

Bill Clinton - “If a politician doesn’t wanna get beat up, he shouldn’t run for office,”

This is of course, the mentality which has led me to view Hillary and Bill Clinton as potentially more disastrous than John McCain (who I can’t vote for until he can tell the difference between Sunnis and Shiites). While Obama wants the political process to be honest, open, and positive, Bill Clinton wants politics to be a fight to see who can give out the most punishment. In sports terms, if Obama is Michael Jordan, the Clintons are the ‘89 Detroit Pistons. One is graceful, hardworking, determined, and takes the game to whole new level, bringing in millions of newcomers. The other sees how much they can bend the rules, and rough up their opponent. One plays the game with the idea that the best man (or woman) should win, the other just wants to win at all costs.

The Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives Social Networking Event Was Awesome

Many thanks again to Wendy Beecham, Kim Moeller and all the awesome women of the FWE&E for having me, and to Jeremiah Owyang for recommending me to speak. Here are the videos from the event. The panel I was on along with Erika Brown, Katie Jacobs Stanton and Karen Appleton (Lena West couldn’t make it :() starts at the beginning of the second one.

Watch the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives Event on Ustream

I’ll be speaking along with a lot of amazing people at the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives: Business Applications of Social Networking event this morning. If you’re interested in watching, join us via Ustream.

Update:

Here are the video embeds from the event itself. It was a privilege to be included.

Hillary Clinton Lies About Her Experience

Props to Andrew Sullivan’s blog for bringing this to my attention. It really calls Hillary Clinton’s claim of foreign policy experience into question.

I don’t like to use the word “lie” lightly, but when she talks about landing under sniper fire where there was none, running with her head down when she was walking slowly with her head held high, and canceling a greeting ceremony of which there is footage, it’s to hard to say that she is not lying. Although I suppose that depends on what your definition of “is” is (I couldn’t resist).

New York Governor David Paterson Admits To Cocaine Use

Back in the 70’s. He also used marijuana back then too. And he admits to having several extra-marital affairs while he and his wife were separated. Personally, I appreciate the honesty of this politician. Casual drug use in one’s 20’s should not be relevant to governing abilities in one’s 40’s or 50’s (unless you are still having Acid flashbacks). And honestly, a politician’s sex life doesn’t affect their ability to govern as long as they are honest about it. I sincerely hope Paterson survives these admissions, as they tend to kill good politicians (Jim McGreevey) or at least damage them severely (Bill Clinton). But then again, most politicians who are killed by these sex scandals tend to be the ones who lie about them. And while I don’t care how many women (or men) my political leader is sleeping with, or how many drugs they did in college, I sure as hell don’t want a liar running my country.

While Clinton Campaigns in Pennsylvania, Obama Takes a Vacation

I’m really ambivalent about how to react to Barack Obama’s decision to take a vacation in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the middle of the campaign. I’m worried that it might send the wrong message to the Pennsylvania voters he needs to win over in order to knock Hillary Clinton out of the primaries. After all, it’s a cocky move to go on vacation while your opponent is campaigning hard, particularly when the polls show her with a 16% lead.

What’s more, liberals often ridicule our current Commander in Chief for being the most vacationed president in United States history. I do not want to see Senator Clinton get any ammunition to suggest that Senator Obama might be on vacation when the White House gets a 3 a.m. call.

But I also understand that every human being needs a break, especially when you happen to be a human being with young kids. With just a little less than a month until the primary, this is as good a time as any for Senator Obama to take some time for himself and his family. The best executives know how to nourish and replenish themselves, not just to work like dogs.

I hope that when he comes back from his vacation, he takes some of journalist Michael Tomasky’s very good advice:

[Obama should] go into four or five white ethnic enclaves across the state and have town hall meetings and answer every question they want to throw at him: Wright, his wife’s boneheaded comment about her (lack of) pride in America, you name it. Talking never hurts. He’ll get points for showing up at least.

More than that - this is the sort of thing Obama is supposed to do. A “new kind of politics” never meant to me that he could never say anything negative about an opponent. That’s ridiculous. But it does mean that he should try to shatter the mould a bit, and not just do the safe things. Uniting the country, if he is to live up to his claim for himself, means going into hostile territory and talking to people who are not his natural allies. That actually is the kind of leadership the country desperately needs.

This is the kind of thing I can see Senator Obama doing, and it can only help his chances.

Sloth

I’m at home in Utah right now. I’ve noticed that whenever I go home for a few days, I become extremely lazy, spending the vast majority of my time on the couch watching TV, sleep a whole lot, and lack the basic energy needed to feed myself. It took me ten minutes to get up the energy to order Domino’s. Does anyone else experience a complete and total wave of lethargy when they go back home?

Legalize It

I didn’t know anyone in Congress had the gall to file a bill to legalize marijuana. But the other night, on Real Time With Bill Maher, Rep. Barney Frank said “I’m going to file a bill as soon as we go back to remove all federal penalties for the possession or use of small amounts of marijuana.” Frank said he has always wanted to submit a bill like this, but didn’t think he could get away with it politically until now. “I think its time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public. The notion that you lock people up for smoking marijuana is pretty silly.”

He told Maher he’d call the bill the “Make Room for Serious Criminals” bill. Unfortunately, there’s really no chance that this bill will pass. The stoner voting block tends to occasionally, um, forget, to vote, whereas the “WON’T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN” voting block tends to make lots of angry phone calls and write angry letters. But it’s a nice start on the road to rational drug laws.

Vatican Issues New Seven Deadly Sins

Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. These are the seven deadly sins as issued by the Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th Century AD, and further brought into the mainstream by Dante and St. Thomas Aquinas. After 1500 years, Bishop Gianfranco Girotti (head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body which oversees confessions and plenary indulgences), has decided to issue a new seven deadly sins:

Environmental pollution
Genetic manipulation
Accumulating excessive wealth
Inflicting poverty
Drug trafficking and consumption
Morally debatable experiments
Violation of fundamental rights of human nature

Personally, I find these new sins both ridiculous and inappropriate. The old seven deadly sins have been a mainstay of our culture because they were non-specific, politically neutral and referred to intent than actions. No one is going to dispute that greed and envy are positive spiritual actions. However, the new seven deadly sins are highly charged politically, open to misinterpretation, overly vague, and in some cases, flat out wrong.

Let’s walk through each poorly written sin:

Environmental pollution: even freegans pollute to some degree, so where exactly does this sin begin? While dumping toxic waste into a reservoir seems obvious, what about driving a car with bad gas mileage? Is driving a car with good gas mileage okay? Does 28.4 mpg constitute sin, while 28.5 constitutes virtue? Even breathing oxygen increases the amount of CO2. Have I lived a life of sin if my carbon footprint is anything other than neutral? Or am I virtuous as long as I drive a hybrid and carpool to work? The Pope travels all across the world, burning up fossil fuels? Is he a sinner?

Genetic manipulation: so we probably shouldn’t clone a master race of super soldiers. But what about using genetic research to cure disease? Is using stem cells to treat Parkinson’s a sin? I believe Michael J. Fox would disagree.

Accumulating excessive wealth: what person has done the most good for mankind in the last five to ten years? Hard to say, but Bill Gates would certainly be in the running. The Gates Foundation has significantly improved the lives of tens of thousands of individuals. Has he been a scourge on mankind? Is the world worse off because he accumulated ridiculously excessive amounts of wealth? Only Steve Jobs would agree with that. Plus, aren’t most Bishops pretty wealthy?

Inflicting poverty: what exactly does “inflicting poverty” constitute. I don’t exactly break the bank as a teacher, but I have two TV’s and four computers. Do my spending habits inflict poverty (I could sell my TVs and give the money to the homeless)? Or do I need to go the Robert Mugabe rout and bankrupt a nation in order to commit this sin?

Drug trafficking and consumption: what exactly constitutes a drug? Heroin is a drug. But so is Aspirin. Is my uncle, a Merck employee, going to hell if he doesn’t confess his sins for helping to develop drugs that reduce cholesterol? Or is just drugs that are illegal? Does that mean it’s a sin to smoke marijuana in New Jersey, but not in Amsterdam? Or is the Vatican going to issue a list of drugs that are sinful?

Morally debatable experiments: so is any experiment that requires extra scrutiny by an ethics board sinful? If we have to debate the ethics of something, is it a sin? Does this mean we can only exercise the scientific method in non-controversial areas?

Violation of fundamental rights of human nature: not sure what this means, and it seems a little obvious, but I’ll let this one pass. At least it’s not condemning Bill Gates (who actually funded some of the computers at my school).

If you want to live your life by a set of rules someone you’ve never met came up with, I suggest using Gandhi’s seven deadly sins:

*Wealth without Work
* Pleasure without Conscience
* Science without Humanity
* Knowledge without Character
* Politics without Principle
* Commerce without Morality
* Worship without Sacrifice

If Experience is the Ultimate Qualification, then Richardson’s Endorsement is Hardly Insignificant

The rhetoric from the Clinton campaign that Governor Richardson’s endorsement of Barack Obama comes too late to be significant speaks volumes about the ultimate value they place on experience. After all, Richardson is the most experienced of all of the original Democratic presidential contenders. So why did Clinton’s chief strategist call Richardson’s endorsement insignificant?

I know that this blog is starting to turn into the “all Barack Obama, all the time” channel. I’m sure that has to be mildly — or severely — annoying to some of you. But right now I see it as a duty to point out how ridiculous the Clinton campaign is, and how ridiculous it is that they are even still in this race. We need to wrap this nomination up and move on to having a national discussion about Obama vs. McCain.

Richardson Endorses Obama

Bill Richardson, the man who placed 4th in most of the early Democratic primaries, the only Hispanic US Governor, former Secretary of Energy under President Bill Clinton, and longtime friend of the Clintons (he watched the Super Bowl with Bill) endorsed Barack Obama today.

While Clinton downplayed the endorsement the same way she has downplayed every other loss she has faced, this one is especially important, as Richardson is not only a close and longtime friend but holds significant influence with remaining voters and with the undecided superdelegates. Equally damning to the Clinton campaign was the remark by Dick Morris, (largely considered to be Bill Clinton’s “Karl Rove”) that “Barack Obama has already won the Democratic nomination. It’s over.”

The most important impact of Richardson’s endorsement, however, what he said, “It is time, however, for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we will face against John McCain in the fall. The 1990’s were a
decade of peace and prosperity because of the competent and enlightened leadership of the Clinton administration, but it is now time for a new generation of leadership to lead America forward. Barack Obama will be a historic and a great President, who can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together as a nation here at home and with our allies abroad.”

So very true. The other superdelegates are listening. Once Edwards throw his support (and delegates) to Obama, this race is over. Clinton is not going to beat Obama in pledged delegates, and the establishment is moving towards siding with Obama.

Obama’s “More Perfect Union” Speech Was Not a Quick Fix

A lot of pundits are saying that Barack Obama’s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going to be a sticking issue for his campaign and that his speech on Tuesday did nothing to resolve the issue:

The good news for Obama is that his numbers have stopped falling since his speech on Tuesday. The bad news is that they haven’t bounced back.

Have we become so accustomed to an information economy based in instant gratification that we cannot recognize true discourse when we see it?

This speech was not a tool of political expediency. It was not about poll numbers. Senator Obama took his campaign’s biggest political challenge to date and used it as an opportunity to address a much more serious and deep-seated issue. It was about something that Obama sees as more important than his own candidacy. It was about America’s future. That kind of message takes a while to sink in.

The speech is being widely discussed in academic, social and religious circles. The video has more than 1.6 million views on YouTube in just two days. My non-political friends are pinging me constantly to loop me in on discussions they’re having online with their friends about the speech. People are dissecting it, hashing it over and debating it at length.

Obama has sparked a national conversation that will take some time to yield measurable political results. How long it takes is really a matter of how ready the American people are to rise to his challenge.

Obama’s Comments on Welfare: The Wall Street Journal Needs to Fact-Check Their Editorials

I was rather incensed today to read this in the editorial section of the Wall Street Journal:

It is also notable that Mr. Obama situated Mr. Wright within what the Senator sees as the continuing black-white conflict and the worst excesses of racial injustice like Jim Crow. He dwelled on a lack of funding for inner-city schools and a general “lack of economic opportunity.” But Mr. Obama neglected the massive failures of the government programs that were supposed to address these problems, as well as the culture of dependency they ingrained.

A genuine message of racial healing would also have given more credit to the real racial gains in American society over the last 40 years.

If the Journal’s editorial board had bothered to listen to — or merely read — Senator Obama’s speech, they would have found both points well-addressed. Yesterday, Senator Obama spoke of welfare, the culture of dependency and the nature of self-help:

A lack of economic opportunity among black men, and the shame and frustration that came from not being able to provide for one’s family, contributed to the erosion of black families – a problem that welfare policies for many years may have worsened. And the lack of basic services in so many urban black neighborhoods – parks for kids to play in, police walking the beat, regular garbage pick-up and building code enforcement – all helped create a cycle of violence, blight and neglect that continue to haunt us.

and furthermore:

But I have asserted a firm conviction – a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people – that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past … And it means taking full responsibility for own lives – by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

As for the real racial gains that have been made:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old — is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know — what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

It’s very sad that the best the Journal can throw at Senator Obama isn’t even true. What’s even sadder is that some people will take their word for it rather than hearing the speech for themselves.

[Note: all the emphasis in the quotes above was added by me.]

The OTHER Speech This Week

Obama gave a great speech yesterday about race in America. Regardless of whether or not he wins the election, he is moving us in a positive direction as a country, by both speaking honestly about politically sensitive issues and by drawing new people into the political process.

But there was another speech given this week which received virtually no press coverage that I thought was also very relevant, if not MORE relevant, towards who I and many others will cast their vote this fall. This speech will be particularly important to me if Clinton faces McCain, where I would be facing a very tough decision. Or would have been. Because I have to wonder if McCain has ANY IDEA what is going on in the middle east:

This confuses me, since I assumed McCain was one of the most knowledgeable Senators on foreign policy. So I just figured that when he gave this speech he was just really drunk. But apparently he made a similar statement on Monday, when he appeared on the Hugh Hewitt show:

“As you know, there are al-Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they’re moving back into Iraq.”

Is this guy seriously running for President? I guess this would explain why Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to care about any harm she may be doing to the Democratic Party for the general election: John McCain is running a campaign based on foreign policy experience and thinks Al-Qaeda is working with Iran.

Personally, I am completely baffled as to how anyone who has given as many speeches on the Iraq War as John McCain can be so out of touch with the facts. Al Qaeda, a Sunni organization, and Iran, a Shiite theocracy, have not only never worked with each other, but are enemies. In fact, Osama Bin Laden has repeatedly stated that Iran is worse (in his mind) than the United States.

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