I’ve previously supported hate crimes law beacuse they help crack down on racial and political violence. Of course, for hate crimes to actually function that way and not to encourage such violence, the powers-that-be have to actually be against such violence.

I haven’t heard the Obama campaign calling for a hate crimes investigation into this yet:,

Woman Attacked At ATM, Assailant Scratches Letter Into Her Face – Pittsburgh News Story – WTAE Pittsburgh
Police spokeswoman Diane Richard said the robber took $60 from Todd, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim’s car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter “B” into her face, Richard said.

The Tribune reported that Todd, who isn’t familiar with the area, drove to a friend’s house and together the pair located the Citizens Bank ATM at Liberty and Pearl where the attack happened and called police.

Todd declined to comment to the Tribune. Friends said she is in Pittsburgh volunteering for the McCain-Palin campaign.

Richard said the woman refused medical treatment after the assault, which happened outside the view of the bank’s surveillance cameras.

The robber is described as a dark-skinned black man, 6 feet 4 inches tall, 200 pounds with a medium build, short black hair and brown eyes. The man was wearing dark colored jeans, a black undershirt and black shoes.

Barack Obama has previously opposed urban COIN.

Update: The complaint may be false, which brings to mine the Duke LaCrosse scandal. In that, Obama called for an investigation into District Attorney Nifong, but not for any action against the false accuser. I cannot recall McCain’s reaction. It will be interesting to see how behavior around this scandal relates to past behavior.

I am impressed with Barack Obama’s recent adjustment. After being criticized by John McCain for expanding welfare (increasing payments to those who do not work)… Obama improved his position, dropped those payments, and focused on a class which we used to call the deserving poor:

Political Radar: Obama Tweaks Tax Plan to Rebut McCain
Facing criticism from John McCain that his tax plan constitutes “welfare,” Barack Obama recently added a work requirement to one of his proposals.

“They started saying this was welfare,” said Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee. “So, just so they would absolutely not be able to say that, we decided that for the last two percent we’ll simply add a work requirement.”

…

Goolsbee referred to the number of non-working Americans who would benefit from the original understanding of Obama’s plan as an insignificant “sliver” when compared to the much larger number of working Americans who would benefit from Obama’s plan.

Our brains are wired to detect cheaters. Cheater detection is the part of human nature that revolts at providing subsidies to those who do not contribute fairly. One big problem that old-style tax-and-spend liberals had is that they wanted subsidizes for all those who were poor, whether they were deserving or not.

People naturally are repelled at providing to charities to encouraging social cheating, such as shirking responsibility, and it is virtuous for people to refuse to support such institutions. Too many old-fashioned Democrats were never able to see that, so potentially good social programs were either trashed out of concern the Democrats would let the cheaters in, or become magnates for cheaters themselves.

Obama, by shifting his position to try to freeze out the ‘undeserving poor,’ seems to understand that. And that’s a good thing.

Lady of tdaxp and I watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull yesterday. I had been hearing bad reviews of it for some time, with most debate focusing on whether or not it is worse than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The South Park satire finally gave me no choice but to watch.

Crystal Skull made me think of Oblivion, another piece of art that was the fourth in the series and much worse than the third. Their similarities do not end their. Both are lobatomoizations of what had come before: both Oblivion and Crystal Skull maintain the art direction and “world” of what had come before. But the logic is gone. The game preceeding Oblivion, Morrowind, presented players with a fully realized world where one could play for 100 hours, save the world, and never die. The movie preceding Crystal Skull, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, expertly mixed a romantic view of archaeology, a romantic view of Christian traditions, and a romantic view of European lore to tell a story of a father and son.

Crystal Skull is unfiarly panned for many elements which could have made an excelletn Indian Jones movies. Crystal Skull is set in the 1950s, so its use of an early Cold War mythos is fully appropraite. But nothing makes sense. It’s a Mummy movie that somehow stars Indiana Jones. Like Oblivion is a puzzle game that somehow takes place in Tamriel.

Two international institutions that have been in the news these days are the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Union State of Russia and Belarus (USRB). The IMF, created by America after World War II and run by Europe, is in the process of turning the financial crisis into an opportunity, forcing market reforms and increased openness in exchange for large government loans. The USRB, a relic of Yeltsin’s foreign policy, seems to exist only to show the destruction that Vladimir Putin has done to Russia’s power in the world.

Consider, for example, Belarus going to the IMF for a loan, after empty talk of Russia bailout out Iceland was shown as just another of Putin’s bizarre stunts. (Iceland went to the IMF, too.)

Or that the Republic of Kosovo, sliced out of Russia’s former client Serbia, will also join the IMF. Or that all Russia could do to help its Union State partner Belarus was to suspend collections of natural gas payments.

It pays to have friends. Russia’s nemesis Georgia will get $200 billion from Japan. And Kosovo is getting rule-of-law assistance.

Talk of a “new cold war” is so laughable, because Russia’s in no position to fight one. During its heyday, Russia was able to prevent Poland and Czechoslovakia from joining the Marshall plan. Now half of the consistuent members of the USRB are going to the IMF. Putin may be Saddam with nukes, but Russia’s is also just an exceptionally beligerent Portugal. Like a driveway that collects ice, Russia’s a real danger to those who live in Europe. Russia must not be ignored, and Europe should take steps (such as increasing nuclear power and photovoltaics) to limit the danger. But there’s no need to hyperventilate about Russia, either.

Time is our friend. Russia’s demographic collapse is now compounding: the baby bust of the fall of the Soviet Union leads to an even greater baby bust now. Meanwhile, Chinese and Muslims increase as a fraction of Russia’s population. Russia is essentially a central Asian state, and the sooner it falls into China’s orbit (with the rest of the khanates), the better.

The IMF grows in influence. The Union State of Russia and Belarus is split. The Core grows, and the ability of the Gap to cause trouble shrinks.

Update: Russia slaps sanctions on Belarus, while Belarus pushes for a Belarus-EU Free Trade Area. Belarus increasingly looks like a “Seam State,” bordering New Core (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia), Seam (Ukraine), and Gap (Russia) states and being able to work in any of those environments.

The technical assistance of the deal are beyond this blog’s interests, so I will just poin tout the headline: “Calculated Risk: Report: Iceland to Accept IMF Bailout.”

I know there has been a chorus in the blogosphere that oil is the future, petrocarbons are the answer, and that if we just speed up the transfer of wealth to natural-resource-exporting states they can help us out, by turning their money (formerly ours) to good. (I think this attitude is greatest in the oil-related services industries.)

However, for all the big talk, the Gap state of Russia was unable or uninterested in helping Iceland. So the Core’s IMF will instead. Likewise, the Gap state of Saudi Arabia was unable or uninterested in helping Pakistan. So the Core’s IMF will instead.

Take a look at the financial crisis, and you can learn some valuable lessons. Global problems need global solutions. Complicated issues of the Core need to be solved by the Core, and not Gap states we give lots of money too.

We can hope there will be worthwhile changes from the crisis as well. European institutions may become stronger. The WTO-IMF-WB system may be expanded to deal with modern financial instruments.

And we may realize how empty the promises of hydrocarbon states actually are.

I strongly recommend the “Photovoltaics” article from Wikipedia, which is eye-opening in the way that Netscape Navigator was eye-opening to people whose only exposure to computers had been WarGames.

One big feature of the Wikipedia article is the lead that Germany has in solar technology.  Germany is using solar as a way of gaining energy independence from Russia, in spite of popular opposition to nuclear power.  We should hope them the best.

Another topic is “grid parity,” the point at which Solar becomes a cost-effective energy source.  Projectsions are for grid parity to be reached in ten years, which would be very good. Not so much about global warming (who cares about that), but against because of the promise solar holds to weaken Russia’s ability to harm the countries of the Core and the Seam.

Interesting reading!

The best and brightest in this country do not go into politics. They go into business. The ambitious and bright can do more well and more good in the private sector than in the public. So we get politicians who are relatively bright, can certainly write well, but who react to the world instead of shaping it.

I was struck by this when I was comparing the two related fields of User Experience Research (UXR) and Program Evaluation (PE). Both have generally the same purpose: combine quantitative analysis with anthropology to see how well tools actually work. One practical difference between the fields, however, is that UXR is typically applied by industry while PE is often done with a focus on government funding or intervention.

This leads to several consequences. One is that UXR gets a more l33t abbreviation (UER not being synergistic enough, presumably). Another, more important, one is that methods that are common in PE would be laughed out of a UXR report. For instance, I finished reading a well regarded and politically influential PE concerning a high-profile Nebraskan institution. It was nothing but legal buzzwords and anecdotes! This concerns an institution I have no interaction with of any kind whatsoever, so I can’t comment on the conclusions, but the methodology was laughable. A list of a hundred anecdotes or so might be emotionally moving, but hardly tells you whether or not a process is working or not.

So what is the consequence of having such second-raters guide our national policy? The best and brightest will continue creating wealth, while the remainder sets about redistributing it. This can cause problems, as the current financial crisis shows, but even in situations such as this at least we don’t have a competent overclass capable of changing our systems of government.

The most interesting story of the past few weeks that has received no attention has been the courtship of Belarus by both the European Union and Vladimir Putin. Belarus was formerly the most friendly of the post-Soviet states toward Russia, but Vladimir Putin’s destruction of the “soft power” built by former President Yeltsin had put cooperation on ice. Stay, Putin has been playing nice since the international rejection his unilateral recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin temporarily sees the need for friends.

While Belarus still refuses to join Russia and Nicaragua in recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Belarus has apparently allowed those two statelets to join the Union State of Russia and Belarus as observers. Europe’s attempts at friendship rely less on one-off subsidies and more on building political and financial links. Thus, Belarus and EU member Latvia are working on energy and portage, and the EU pushes Belarus to allow European politicians in.

If the future is international institutions that focus on economics, then Belarus’s future should be in Europe, not in Russia.

Let’s hope Belarus agrees.

Russia’s bailout of Iceland is on ice.

An ad-hoc collection of rich dicators? Not going to help Pakistan..

But (as my friend Dan Nexon snarkily wrote), watch Ukraine. Ukraine and Hungary will both be obtaining aid from the International Monetary Fund, and IMF aid to other countries is coming soon. Depending on one rich friend to bail out a country is anarchonistic. Rather, American-led institutions like the World Bank, European led institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and hopefully soon a similar institution from East Asia, provide a networked, stable, and bureaucratic way to get the job done.

In the morning, we went ot the Dunham Western Heritage Museum (formerly Omaha’s Union Station) for some performance art derived from the book, Beads on One String. While there, I was struck by the differences between Internationalism and Globalism as approaches to world peace.

Later, we went shopping, and then made some Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Sandwiches for lunch.

There followed a marathon viewing of 30 Rock, where 15 episodes in a row took us through the end of Season 1 and beyond. It’s perhaps the greatest show I had never seen an episode of before. Really very funny, and I need to thank John McCain for the pleasure (as without him picking Sarah Palin, I would not have been so impressed with Tina Fey’s impersonation, and thus not drawn to Tina’s own show).

Then the cooking and consuming of Cherry Bars, along with red wine. Some South Park, some football, and soon some SNL (fittingly featuring the real Sarah Palin), and that’s today.