Today is “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day“. The founder may have denied having anything to do with it, but you can still participate: just grab some crayons or an Etch-A-Sketch and get cracking!

But the salesperson said it looked so natural ...

President Obama has authorized the CIA to assassinate an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. A more complete analysis of what this means can be found here. But in short, the President has decreed that this particular American has no right to due process under the Constitution regardless of the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is unconstitutional for the U.S. Government to even imprison an American as an “enemy combatant”. Pushing further the bad policy that allowed the Bush administration to imprison Jose Padilla without one, this administration is now claiming the right to impose a death sentence on an American without a trial — a step never taken by the previous administration.

This is just the most recent in a long line of reversals made by President Obama as it is in direct opposition to a response given by him when he was seeking the Democratic nomination, “I reject the Bush Administration’s claim that the President has plenary authority under the Constitution to detain U.S. citizens without charges as unlawful enemy combatants.”

A lot of people will look at this and think something to the effect of, “I’m not a terrorist and I don’t like terrorists so why should I care?” But the fact remains that he is an American citizen and if we let the government deny this man his rights under the Constitution, by logical extension none of us have these rights.

• The national debt is gigantic. The Census Bureau sent me (and everyone else) a letter saying only that that the census paperwork would be forthcoming.
• One of my co-workers won our dead pool with Corey Haims. I had thought my choice of Mike Tyson was inspired, but he yet lives.
• My regular bridge partner is moving away sometime in the next month or so. I have learned an awful lot playing with him. I’m afraid I’ll lose ground after he leaves, all these nifty conventions wasting away in my bag of tricks.
• I liked the new Alice in Wonderland movie more than I thought I would. I saw it in IMAX 3D, it was visually spectacular but that might have just been the format. Anyway, I enjoyed it and I was glad that it was not a butchered retelling of the original but a riff on it.

So the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporations and unions have the right to fund campaign ads for specific candidates. The Democrats, including our president, are flipping out about this and saying that now corporations will be able to buy elections. Now whether or not one believes that corporate entities are entitled to the same freedom of expression as individuals, the fact remains that the ability to pay for a campaign ad does not somehow translate into the ability to buy votes. Essentially the politicians who are saying this are saying that the American people are incapable of thinking for themselves, and while I’ll admit that I have very little evidence to the contrary I refuse to believe that to be the case. We did elect those who are now making the allegations which is an interesting loop if one thinks about it.

Daniel mentioned to me the fact that a French minister, as well as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, had made remarks about the U.S. military “occupying” Haiti. He had an interesting theory as to the motivation behind the remarks in question. It bothered me that the French government in particular would say such a thing, but I couldn’t immediately put my finger on why. Then I remembered my world history and the answer became quite clear.

Haiti, as one commentator put it, is a country with a last name, “The Poorest Country in the Western Hemisphere”. When people talk about why the country is so poor, mostly it is in terms of wasted natural resources and government corruption. Both of those things clearly play a role, but in at least so far as the former is concerned, the deforestation that has taken place in Haiti is largely the responsibility of France. When the French were sending ships full of African slaves to their colony, on the return trip the ships were full of timber.

France’s responsibility for the economic struggles of Haiti do not end there though. France refused to acknowledge Haiti as a sovereign nation until 1825 and only then in return for a payment of 90 millions gold francs as restitution for the colonialists’ “lost property” (by that, of course, they meant slaves). The government of Haiti agreed so that an embargo in place by France, Great Britain and, sadly, the United States would be lifted. The Haitian people were stuck paying off that debt until 1947.

My point is that the effects of the hurricane would not have been as devastating if the country had a better infrastructure and the infrastructure would have been much much better if the Haitian people didn’t have to spend more than 120 years paying off the French government. I don’t really care if Chavez wants to criticize the U.S. military’s involvement in Haiti. He’s so busy destroying the economy of his own country, that we’ll in all likelihood be there too when the time comes to clean up after a major catastrophe. But France doesn’t get to say word one about our involvement in Haiti. I wonder what the interest on 90 million francs would be. I wonder if that amount would be enough to rebuild Port-au-Prince, I suspect it would go a long way.

I got an e-mail last night from a mailing list that I’m on for one of my favorite comedians, Lewis Black. The e-mail was announcing an “Emergency Benefit Concert for Haiti” the event comprised several evenings featuring many different artists all performing at the City Winery in New York in the coming week. My first reaction was very positive, I was impressed that such a series of events could be put together on such short notice. A short way down in the finer print I spotted that the proceeds were going to Wyclef Jean’s YELE. That was distressing considering the allegations being made against that particular charity (see here and here). I sent out some e-mails to those involved asking that they carefully consider where they want to donate the money. I really doubt that it will make a difference, but I also felt like I had to say something. There are few things worse than a shady charity.

Addendum 20 January 2010:

More information here regarding the allegations against the YELE Haiti Foundation including Wyclef Jean’s brief statement in which he refused to address the payments made to him by the foundation.

This afternoon on All Things Considered, I heard a story about Lincoln University which is planning to withhold the diplomas of a dozen graduating seniors this year if they do not complete an exercise course that is now required for all students with a body mass index above 30; they’re making the fat kids take a P.E. class.

James DeBoy, chair of the Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation at Lincoln University, claims that this is because the university has a moral imperative to alert these students to the fact that being overweight is not healthy. I’d venture to guess they already know, considering the fact it is all but impossible to turn on a radio or a television, open a newspaper or browse a news website without coming across a story about the “obesity epidemic” and/or how to lose ten pounds before the next national holiday. Which is to say, not only does the university think these kids are fat, they also think they are stupid.

When confronted with the fact that Lincoln University itself bears some of the responsibility for the weight of these students by failing to consistently offer healthy options in its dining facilities, Mr. DeBoy began to hem, haw and finally bleat that Lincoln University is a H.B.U. and therefore is under-funded. My best guess is that “H.B.U.” stands for “Hugely Biased University”, but his comments do get to the heart of the matter no matter what he means by it. The fact is universities are businesses and this is another way to require (some) students to pay for yet another class. Colleges and universities have gradually made it more and more difficult, often nigh-on impossible, to graduate in a mere four years as a way of surreptitiously increasing their tuition. This is just another money-grab, plain and simple.

I would be a bit surprised if this policy manages to stand up in a court of law, but Lincoln University is a private institution so they can get away with terrible inequities, regardless I can tell you it is going to lose big time in the court of public opinion. I hope that students there opt to “vote with their feet”. This would be an excellent opportunity for any of the other many excellent schools in Pennsylvania to offer Lincoln University students, fat and thin alike, an opportunity to transfer over the winter break.

Addendum 5 December 2009:

Lincoln University has dropped the requirement for the class, and will instead recommend it to students who are deemed to “need it the most”.

U2 played a concert in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago. Ten thousand free tickets were distributed. MTV, who had sponsored the concert, erected a barrier to keep non-ticket holders from being able to see the event.

During the ongoing debate about nationalized health-care here in the U.S., lots of people on both sides of the issue have been pointing to the nationalized health-care systems in other countries. This strikes me as somewhat odd as there is already a government run health-care system within this country, I speak, of course, of the V.A. hospitals. I think we should be looking to those facilities to get an idea of how such a system would work for the rest of the nation. The fact is our government has failed to provide an acceptable standard of care to our relatively limited population of veterans. There really isn’t any reason to believe they would do better for us all.

Michael Pollan (“The Omnivores Dilemma”, “In Defense of Food”) has cited the ranchers in Argentina and the way they rotate land between crops and cattle as an example of how to sustainably maximize yield without using chemical pesticides. To over-simplify: The cows fertilize the land for the crops, the cows eat the plants left behind after the crops and taste better for it, the pests are confused when their crop of choice disappears and they find themselves being stepped on by cows.

Per capita, Argentinians consume more beef than anyone else and Argentinean beef is known for being some of the best in the world. The current government there, however, is seeking to undermine that industry in a bid to provide cheaper food to their poorest constituents. They have raised the taxes on exports of and put price caps in place on items like wheat and … beef. The result is that more and more farmers and ranchers are turning to crops like soybeans which are not widely consumed in Argentina and have escaped these measures. Beef production is down and wheat production is at its lowest levels since the late 1800s.

It is almost impossible, at this point, to see this as “the law of unintended consequences” at work because it would be beyond quixotic to think this wouldn’t happen. The fact is bad governments starve people. One would think we had enough examples of that already.