One of my first posts on this blog complained about the ugliness of San Francisco busses. I argued that the design and color scheme was direct proof of how socialism will fail. Today while I was doing an image search for socialism on the 5th page of Google I came across the image of the bus I used in my post. How awesome is that I have linked socialism to San Francisco. On some level I view my work as a benefit to society. I’m just getting the truth out in the public.

Are magnificent creature.

Its sure is cold here in Durham. This whole week its hardly broken 50.

Lets see if you can guess the political disposition of U2 and the Rolling Stones.

The rock powerhouse U2 has transferred lucrative assets to Amsterdam, as have other pop singers and well-known athletes….

While old-school, offshore tax havens — the warm ones with tropical fish, off-the-shelf holding companies sporting post-office-box addresses, and scant regulation or transparency — still attract money, they are largely patronized, tax lawyers and entertainment bankers say, by hedge funds and private equity firms looking to protect lush trading profits from taxes. But for earnings derived from intellectual property such as royalties, the Netherlands has become a tax shelter of choice.

Many of the world’s multinational corporations, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Ikea, and Gucci, have set up holding companies here in recent years to take advantage of tax shelters nearly identical to the ones that the Rolling Stones and U2 use.

If you guessed hypocrite give yourself a pat on the back.

This is particulary funny when you consider how Bono solicited our goverment for federal funds to fights AIDS in Africa. I would be curious as to see what kind of explanation he would give.

Found this speech by Barack Obama. It claims he wrote it. If this is the case, I must say im even more impressed with Barack even if i disagree with most of it.

Now let me be clear – I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power. He has repeatedly defied UN resolutions, thwarted UN inspection teams, developed chemical and biological weapons, and coveted nuclear capacity.

He’s a bad guy. The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the middle east, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.

In several posts Boose seems to be arguing that both the ideology and the methodology of Islamic Fundamentalism is evil. He writes:

agreed. The terrorists are evil. I still think it’s important to look at how evil their goals are as well as their methods. If we were to spread propaganda in iraq, like we should, about how evil the terrorists are, then we should talk about the evils of terrorism and the evils of theocracy. Otherwise, those that might become terrorists would still see terrorism as a necessary means to achieve their evil ends.

The ideology that informs Islamic terrorism is fundamentally wrong on every level, but I’m not sure I wish to dismiss it as evil. However there horrifying acts of mayhem and destruction are most certainly evil in the most bilabial sense of the term. There are two reasons why I want to hold a distinction between method and theory in moral evaluation.

The first reason is that one should be entitled to hold any thoughts they want without suffering accusation of being evil. Much of history is filled with examples of great men being persecuted with accusations of heresy simply because their ideas ran contrary to religious hierarchy. To protect against this outcome ideas should be left morally neutral. One may think anything they want without the fear of those ideas being branded evil.

The second reason is that ideas have no physical form and therefore lack the ability to harm others. Ideas are only harmful to the extent they are translated into a method capable of harm. In this regard, one does not need to condemn an idea as evil since they are can label the accompanying harmful act as evil. Thus we can retain freedom of thought while maintain a way to censure horrifying acts.

I should be clear here: I do not support Islamic ideology. My argument is that it’s too dangerous to censure some thoughts as evil since morally branding requires granting power to an authority to determine the moral value of thoughts. History has repeated examples of how the authority has used this power to stifle innovation and knowledge as a means to retain power. For this reason, no one should have this power. Furthermore, since we are still allowed to condemn the physical manifestation of a faulted ideology we maintain recourse in all instances were ideology is translated into physical harm. Thus we avoid the thought police while at the same time enjoy being able to condemn as evil acts that do actual harm.

Seriously which one is it.

Check out the gremlin I drew using Corel Painter and the Wacom tablet my family got me for Christmas.

You love it and you know it.

Our work in Iraq has the moral high ground in comparsion to those that will do these things:

The prayerful people may not have known he was coming, but we hear the explosions every day. Every single day. Seven days per week. I remember the story told to me by Tennessee National Guardsman of another such man who had grabbed the hand of a nearby child as cover, then walked over to some policemen before detonating himself and the child. I remember the bomber who rammed a car full of explosives into vehicle full of American soldiers in Mosul. The Americans had been surrounded by Iraqi children, and the bomber could have waited a block or two then attack the Americans man-on-man, but instead he chose to blow up the Iraqi kids. Sometimes we see the torn and mangled hunks of flesh. Sometimes their open bodies curl a baleful steam into the cold morning air.

Nebraska is always ahead of the curve in engaging in debate about new controversial social issues.