Dear United States, Welcome to the Third World!

It's not every day that a superpower makes a bid to transform itself into a Third World nation, and we here at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund want to be among the first to welcome you to the community of states in desperate need of international economic assistance. As you spiral into a catastrophic financial meltdown, we are delighted to respond to your Treasury Department's request that we undertake a joint stability assessment of your financial sector. In these turbulent times, we can provide services ranging from subsidized loans to expert advisors willing to perform an emergency overhaul of your entire government.

As you know, some outside intervention in your economy is overdue. Last week -- even before Wall Street's latest collapse -- 13 former finance ministers convened at the University of Virginia and agreed that you must fix your "broken financial system." Australia's Peter Costello noted that lately you've been "exporting instability" in world markets, and Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister of India, concluded, "The time has come. The U.S. should accept some monitoring by the IMF."

We hope you won't feel embarrassed as we assess the stability of your economy and suggest needed changes. Remember, many other countries have been in your shoes. We've bailed out the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia and South Korea. But whether our work is in Sudan, Bangladesh or now the United States, our experts are committed to intervening in national economies with care and sensitivity.

We thus want to acknowledge the progress you have made in your evolution from economic superpower to economic basket case. Normally, such a process might take 100 years or more. With your oscillation between free-market extremism and nationalization of private companies, however, you have successfully achieved, in a few short years, many of the key hallmarks of Third World economies.

Your policies of irresponsible government deregulation in critical sectors allowed you to rapidly develop an energy crisis, a housing crisis, a credit crisis and a financial market crisis, all at once, and accompanied (and partly caused) by impressive levels of corruption and speculation. Meanwhile, those of your political leaders charged with oversight were either napping or in bed with corporate lobbyists.

Take John McCain, your Republican presidential nominee, whose senior staff includes half a dozen prominent former lobbyists. As he recently put it, "I was chairman of the [Senate] Commerce Committee that oversights every part of the economy." No question about it: Your leaders' failure to notice the damage done by irresponsible deregulation was indeed an oversight of epic proportions.

Now you are facing the consequences. Income inequality has increased, as the rich have gotten windfalls while the middle class has seen incomes stagnate. Fewer and fewer of your citizens have access to affordable housing, healthcare or security in retirement. Even life expectancy has dropped. And when your economic woes went from chronic to acute, you responded -- like so many Third World states have -- with an extensive program of nationalizing private companies and assets. Your mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now state owned and controlled, and this week your reinsurance giant AIG was effectively nationalized, with the Federal Reserve Board seizing an 80% equity stake in the flailing company.

Some might deride this as socialism. But desperate times call for desperate measures.

Admittedly, your transition to Third World status is far from over, and it won't be painless. At first, for instance, you may find it hard to get used to the shantytowns that will replace the exurban sprawl of McMansions that helped fuel the real estate speculation bubble. But in time, such shantytowns will simply become part of the landscape. Similarly, as unemployment rates continue to rise, you will initially struggle to find a use for the expanding pool of angry, jobless young men. But you will gradually realize that you can recruit them to fight in a ceaseless round of armed conflicts, a solution that has been utilized by many other Third World states before you. Indeed, with your wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you are off to an excellent start.

Perhaps this letter comes as a surprise to you, and you feel you're not fully ready to join the Third World. Don't let this feeling concern you. Though you may never have realized it, you've been preparing for this moment for years.

I personally don't mind our Presidential candidates having a lot of money and seemingly being out of touch with the common man or women. That being said, this graphic representation from Newsweek does a fairly good job of showing the dishonest rhetoric leveled against Obama, while similutaneously heralding McCain as the "guy you want to have a beer with" candidate.

Personally, I want an elitist president... but that's another story.

For the last x number of years I've been receiving countless pro-McCain, or more specifically anti-Obama smear emails alleging he is a Muslim (one of the bad ones), the anti-Christ, Satan or some other derivative of a spawn of Satan.

Just now for the first time did I receive a pro-Obama email. I figured I would share it.

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

* If you grow up in Hawaii and are raised by your grandparents, you're
'exotic, different.'

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American
story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well
grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the
first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter
registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years
as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator
representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of
the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years
in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people
while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs,
Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you
don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city
council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000
people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people,
then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking
executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while
raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're
not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your
disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a
Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including
the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no
other option in sex education in your state's school system while your
unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in
a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city
community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values
don't represent America 's.

* If you're husband is nicknamed 'First Dude', with at least one DUI
conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until
age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession
of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable and you are know as putting country first.

OK, much clearer now.

It's not every day our little Georgetown protests receive the mention of the (in)famous Martin Kramer, who I would personally label as a stridently anti-Islamic, Zionist neo-conservative, but that's another story...

Anyways, he decided to criticize my academic program for discouraging academic freedom or some other cliche by highlighting in an official newsletter that our program's students led the protest last year. Then he alluded that the guy who led the protest, my roommate, just so happened to receive a prestigious summer scholarship from the program. That he was chosen out of 100 applicants by chance (wink wink). (He did conveniently forget to mention that this same student getting alleged preferential treatment for leading the protest recently returned from his Birthright Israel trip... also another story). Anyways, the accusations are ridiculous and entertaining, and our center is actually rather proud to be attacked by Kramer as it means we are doing something right in our study of the Middle East.

See the article below:

Intimidation at Georgetown

« H E » email

posted Tuesday, 26 August 2008

Back in the spring, some students at Georgetown University took umbrage at a celebration of Israel's sixtieth anniversary, organized by a pro-Israel student group. Their protest took the form of sitting on the lawn next to the revelers, mouths taped shut. The student newspaper The Hoya covered the demonstration, and described it thus:

About 30 demonstrators, many of whom were graduate students, wore black shirts, tape over their mouths and, in many cases, neck scarves. They did not speak but handed out quarter sheets with a cartoon and short message; one held a poster-sized version of the quarter sheet which began, "Our presence is a gesture toward the many for whom the passing of these 60 years is not marked by celebration."

There is nothing unusual about this scene at Georgetown or any campus. Student demonstrations for and against political causes are a staple of campus life.

But I was taken aback to see this demonstration highlighted in the newsletter of an academic unit of the university. I refer to an article in the June issue of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies' CCAS News, under the headline "MAAS Students Demonstrate Against 'Israel: Still Sexy at Sixty' Celebration." Some of the students in question, it turns out, were masters' degree students at the Center. (The CCAS degree program is called MAAS, Master of Arts in Arab Studies.) CCAS News ran this story over two pages, with two photographs of the protesting students, taking care (unlike The Hoya) to identify them as "MAAS students" (and to point out that the "neck scarves" were kaffiyehs).

Presumably this demonstration was not a CCAS activity, and not done at its initiative or under its sponsorship. So I wonder why it is highlighted under "Center News" in this thrice-annual survey of the Center's academic activities. Am I to understand that CCAS officially takes pride in its students' activism for this political cause? After all, the newsletter is comprised exclusively of news about the admirable achievements and doings of the Center and its faculty, students, guests, and supporters.

The public wink of approval offered by CCAS to this anti-Israel demonstration is a troubling example of the total confusion of the academic and the political. It is also a form of subtle intimidation. It sends a signal to those Georgetown and CCAS students who do not share the views on display in the demonstration, or who might even have participated in the pro-Israel celebration. What are they to conclude? That they are not welcome, or less welcome, to take a masters' degree or a course in this program? That their lack of activism, or their activism for Israel, will put them at a disadvantage? They might well conclude just that. (Coincidentally, the same newsletter reports that the student who organized the demonstration received a U.S. government summer study grant via the Center. Almost 100 students applied; only five received grants.)

I urge the director of CCAS and the Georgetown administration to express their regret at the unfortunate inclusion of this article in CCAS News, and to reassure all Georgetown students that CCAS does not explicitly or implicitly endorse the extracurricular political activities of any of its faculty, staff, or students. The U.S. Department of Education, which subsidizes CCAS to the tune of about $1.5 million a year (under Title VI), should actively seek such reassurance.

Find the original link here.

Attached below is an interesting article from Time magazine examining the voting implications of McCain choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. Some of my friends who are (former) Assembly of God members, similar to Palin, have had some interesting things to say about the denomination in general as well as some of its stances.

That being said, the article has some interesting insights on how McCain's choice will affect Evangelical voters across the spectrum. Personally, her evangelical conservatism has turned me off even more to McCain and his party. She represents many of the extreme right/pro-oil/anti-environment/pro-war stances typical of many Conservative Christians that I am frankly embarrassed to be associated with as a fellow Christian.

In addition, I'm also extremely annoyed with both parties and the media for how they have taken the issue of her pregnant daughter and either used it to boost Palin's anti-abortion credentials, or used it as further evidence that young women need further government services to help with pregnancy. Leave the issue alone, leave the poor girl alone.

While my uncle and I disagree on this point, I personally think that Palin was the nail in the coffin of the Republican Party this term, and that McCain's choice of Palin reeks of desperation, not smart politicking. I think she will continue to be more of a liability than an asset in the upcoming two months... but I may be proven wrong. I look forward to her debates with Biden.

The article can be found here.

But McCain and his aides may not want to say hallelujah just yet. While Palin is inspiring rhapsodies from the lions of the Christian right, her appeal to more moderate and younger Evangelicals — as well as independent swing voters — may be limited.