President Obama speaking today on his drone policy and the need to redefine the ‘War on Terror’:

We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” … The AUMF [Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists] is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States.

Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.

Not Muslims

The horrific murder of a man in London yesterday afternoon has shocked Britain and much of the world. Two armed men ran over, then decapitated an unarmed soldier near his army barracks in Woolwich, South East London, in broad daylight. An eyewitness described a horrendous ordeal where the victim was dragged into the middle of the road, and literally hacked up like a piece of meat as people walked by.

The murderers committed the crime in the name of Islam, apparently shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is the greatest) as they bludgeoned the victim with machetes and a meat cleaver. After the crime, one of the assailants told a passerby with a cell phone camera, “We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”

Armed police arrived on the scene and the two men reportedly brandished guns and charged the police. They were both shot, sustained serious injuries, then taken to hospital where they remain under heavily armed security. The government fears that the attacks may have been part of a broader assault with possible links to al-Qaeda, and are busy holding high level meetings to figure out how best to deal with it.

The murder was clearly designed to shock – the two men were looking for a fight, telling a passerby that ”We want to start a war in London tonight.” And it looks like they are getting one. In response to the attacks, the ultra right-wing EDL (English Defense League) organized protests and attacks on Mosques around the country, fueling fears of race riots and civil unrest. Given the nature of the murder and the already volatile economic crisis in the UK, it is highly likely they will continue.

There is a sad truism that whenever an act of violence occurs, extreme elements will always react to it. We attack Iraq and Afghanistan, we get terrorism at home. When we get terrorism at home, extreme elements react again ensuring the cycle of violence and intolerance never ends.

It is incredibly easy to lose perspective after a horrendous tragedy. Emotions take over reasoning, and rash decisions can be made that do nothing other than make a bad situation worse.

It should be remembered that the vast majority of the 1.6 billion Muslims  in the world do not go around hacking people’s heads off in the name of Allah, just as the vast majority of 2.2 billion Christians don’t go around torturing people into converting. The Muslim community in Britain condemned the attack in London immediately, in the most withering and explicit terms. The Muslim Council of Britain issued a statement saying:

“This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family. We understand the victim is a serving member of the armed forces. Muslims have long served in this country’s armed forces, proudly and with honour. This attack on a member of the armed forces is dishonourable, and no cause justifies this murder.

This action will no doubt heighten tensions on the streets of the United Kingdom. We call on all our communities, Muslim and non-Muslim, to come together in solidarity to ensure the forces of hatred do not prevail. It is important we allow our police authorities to do their job without speculation. We also urge the utmost vigilance and ask the police authorities to calm tensions.”

To most Muslims, the murderers responsible for the depraved attack on an innocent man have nothing to do with Islam. They practice a religion that promotes community, charity, spirituality and respect for the law. Extreme acts of violence have no place in true Islam, just as they have no place in true Christianity or Judaism.

Pastor Fred Phelps and his goons from Westboro Baptist Church picket the funerals of dead soldiers in the name of Christ, but they are not Christians. Zionist Jews kill Palestinians in their own land, and they are not Jews. The men who killed the soldier in London yesterday are not Muslims. They are violent murderers who committed an act of terror in the name of a religion they know nothing about. And they should not be confused with anything else.

Should we tolerate Dr Ben Carson’s intolerant views?

Dr. Ben Carson, the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins was penciled in to deliver the commencement speech at the Hopkins School of Medicine last month. After going on Fox News and equating pedophilia and bestiality with homosexuality, students at the university drafted a petition to have him removed as commencement speaker. Carson apologized for his comments and voluntarily withdrew, writing in an email to the dean of the Johns Hopkins medical school, Paul Rothman, saying:

“Given all the national media surrounding my statements as to my belief in traditional marriage, I believe it would be in the best interests of the students for me to voluntarily withdraw as your commencement speaker this year.”

The email was largely graceful, but Carson also added he felt discriminated against for his beliefs:

“Someday in the future, it is my hope and prayer that the emphasis on political correctness will decrease and we will start emphasizing rational discussion of differences so we can actually resolve problems and chart a course that is inclusive of everyone,”

While conservatives have rallied around Carson, blasting the university for criticizing the esteemed doctor and accusing them of discrimination, Carson also received some unlikely support in Michael Kinsley, the (mostly) liberal editor of The New Republic.

“My analysis is that, at a crucial moment, the dean failed to defend a real core value of the university: tolerance,” wrote Kinsley.

“Carson didn’t murder millions of people. All he did was say on television that he opposes same-sex marriage—an idea that even its biggest current supporters had never even heard of a couple of decades ago,” he went on. “Does that automatically make you a homophobe and cast you into the outer darkness? It shouldn’t. But in some American subcultures—Hollywood, academia, Democratic politics—it apparently does. You may favor raising taxes on the rich, increasing support for the poor, nurturing the planet, and repealing Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, but if you don’t support gay marriage, you’re out of the club.”

While people who don’t support gay marriage might not believe that they are intolerant, those of us who do beg to differ. To believe that gays do not have the right to marry means you do not accept them as being equal to heterosexuals. It means that you ignore the science that says homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality and subscribe to Bronze age mythology that states killing your wife for adultery is God’s law. You are free to believe in whatever you want to in America, but that doesn’t mean your views should be considered legitimate or tolerant just because you think they are.

Viewed in that light, Carson and Kinsley’s argument can be boiled down to the following logic: It is intolerant to not tolerate someone else’s intolerance. And that simply doesn’t wash.

Carson has done huge amounts of good in his field (he was the first doctor to successfully separate co-joined twins) and donates large sums of money towards educating children. But his views on homosexuality are wrong and discriminatory. The fight for Gay Rights is as important as the Civil Rights movement in the 1960′s, and reverting to religious scripture as some sort of moral reasoning against it is akin to arguing that blacks are not equal to whites because of the ‘Curse of Ham‘ (the Biblical story used by whites to justify segregation  in America and apartheid in South Africa).

If someone stated today that society should be more tolerant of their biblical based racist views, they would never be allowed near a television or students at a prestigious university like Johns Hopkins.

Nobel prize winning DNA pioneer Dr James Watson, who alongside Francis Crick discovered the double helix, stated that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”. As a result of his comments, Watson has been shunned from public life and disowned by much of the scientific community (it’s also worth remembering that ironically, Watson’s own DNA revealed he was 16% African).

Most people reacted with horror at Watson’s statement, and rightly so. Homophobia is unfortunately still fairly mainstream in America, so coming out against gay marriage is still viewed as an acceptable position. And yes, being anti gay marriage is homophobic, just as believing blacks shouldn’t be entitled to the same rights as whites is racist.

No one is saying that Carson does not have the right to have, or express his views. In that regard, Carson is the beneficiary of a great deal of tolerance. But Carson’s views directly oppose the legal rights of homosexuals, and America’s constitution exists to protect those rights. When African Americans refused to tolerate intolerance, they paved the way for a more inclusive nation. And as society continues to shun those opposed to gay rights, they too pave the way for a country that respects the rights of everyone, regardless of sexual orientation.

As  Karl Popper once stated, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society… then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.”

I went on the Thom Hartmann show again last night to get into it with Tim Cavanaugh, Senior Online Editor at The Daily Caller and Conservative Hughey Newsome of the National Advisory Council-Project 21, and MoveOnUp.org. We debated Sen. Tom Coburn’s pledge not to fund disaster relief in Oklahoma, more Benghazi cover up conspiracies, Apple not paying tax, and whether the IRS hates the Tea Party. I was up against a couple of nut cases last week, but last night’s debate was far more interesting as Cavanaugh and Newsome are bright guys. It starts at the 14min 58s mark (video should start there automatically):

Like everything else that is good for the environment, cycling has morphed from being a mode of transport into a weird annoying cult full of pious missionaries spreading the good word. As a driver, I have lost count of the amount of times I’ve been held up by a cyclist (usually with no helmet) taking up the center of the road and holding up traffic. Honk your horn and they’ll erupt in a fury of indignation. “I’m a cyclist dammit! I’m special!”. And there’s not much you can do about it, other than wait patiently until they turn off. Or run them off the road and face jail time…

Like vegans, cyclists want everyone to know that they’re cyclists. The wear cycling t-shirts, post pictures of themselves cycling on facebook, visit cycling website, and even start their own annoying blogs about cycling and how great it is. Cyclists also hate motorists, and make a point of giving drivers dirty looks if they get too close or try to engage them in debate. Motorists are dirty, evil environment killers and are not worthy of talking to. Drive a car to work? Screw you, baby seal killer.

A couple of days ago, a cyclist was killed outside my office in DC. Why? Because he ran through a red light, wasn’t wearing a helmet, and got hit by an oncoming car. He spent a few hours in hospital in critical condition, then died from his injuries. It was a terrible tragedy, but if you’re going to cycle with no helmet and break laws designed to stop people from getting killed, there is a limit to how much sympathy you are entitled to.

In DC, it’s pretty common to see cyclists speeding through the streets without helmets (around 25%, according to the data). The capital’s bike sharing program is increasingly popular, and as a result, increasingly dangerous. Many incidents go unreported, and when they happen, the results are more often than not, pretty horrific.

Hyperbole aside, cyclists do have the right to use their bikes on public roads. In America, most funding for roads comes from general tax, and if anything, cyclists subsidize drivers, and not the other way round. Cycling is good for many reasons: It reduces congestion, is good for the environment, and it keeps riders healthy, lowering health care costs. Which is great.

But let’s be honest here – roads, at least in their current incarnation, are designed for cars and not bikes. And when they share, it can be pretty dangerous, and mostly for the cyclist. The average US car weighs 4,000lbs, while the average American weighs 177.9lbs. If they hit each other at speed, well, you do the math…

Safety issues aside, it isn’t actually all that clear whether cyclists provide much benefit to the environment when sharing roads with motorists. From EnvironmentalResearchWeb.org:

Encouraging people onto their bikes can reduce costs for all users by reducing congestion. But perversely, increasing bike use can actually add to pollution and greenhouse emissions if roads are not updated to accommodate these bikes. “Cities cannot hope to significantly increase cycle ridership without negatively impacting traffic unless they build bike facilities,” said Clarens. In particular, the researchers show that bikes can significantly slow traffic down on steeper sections of road and where roads narrow. The findings are published in Environmental Research Letters (ERL).

Clearly cycling is a good thing, but not when using roads that weren’t designed for it.

I’m all for ripping up current roads and making them bike friendly. In fact, I’d even get behind banning cars in all urban city centers to make them more livable places. Bring back rickshaws, bike taxis and trams, and limit car use to suburban areas and cross country travel.

But until then, cyclists need to accept the roads as they are. If you’re going to use the same space as motorists, don’t act like you own it, because physics dictates you clearly don’t.

An ardent supporter of fiscal austerity, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn is demanding budget cuts are made elsewhere before funding disaster relief for the tornado victims in his state. Coburn spokesman Jon Hart wrote to Politico telling them that “He’ll [Coburn] ask his colleagues to help Oklahoma by setting priorities and sacrificing less vital areas of the budget”.

This is clearly political suicide for the Senator, who along with Sen. Jim Inhofe have voted repeatedly against funding disaster relief around America. Reports the Huff Post:

They [Coburn and Inhofe] also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief.

Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained “wasteful spending,” and identified a series of items he objected to, including “$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies.”

If they remain steadfast and demand the cuts, they should be given credit for consistency. But certainly not compassion.

The Tornado that destroyed an entire suburb in Oklahoma and killed hundreds of people might well have not happened if humans hadn’t been pumping insane amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Or it still might have. We really don’t know for sure.

What we do know is that thousands of people have just experienced unimaginable horror and have been left with an apocalyptic wasteland that used to be their home town. Right now, the country should be focused on the victims in the suburb of Moore, and how they can be helped.

While there is an opportunity to bolster the argument for a strong federal government to help respond to the disaster, and an even better opportunity to promote action on global warming, liberals need to hold off and wait until the panic has calmed before making a point.

It’s not that the arguments are wrong; Disasters often highlight the need for a well functioning, well funded government, and extreme weather events help make the case that rising global temperatures really do have catastrophic effects on all of us.

It is the timing of it that matters.

Republicans will be itching to point fingers at reactionary Democrats (they are already busy smearing Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse for speaking out about it) in order to turn the public off of issues like global warming and funding the federal government. And it works. Republicans, in collusion with oil funded ‘research’, have managed to convince 30% of Americans that man made global warming is a hoax, and even more that government needs to shrink in size. They literally salivate over liberals doing what they do on a daily basis, as they get to look like grownups and swing public opinion in their favor.

So wait, liberals. You’re right about the federal government, and most likely right about the link between the tornado and global warming. Just keep it to yourselves for now if you want your message to actually affect anything.

To donate to the victims of the Oklahoma tornado, go to the Red Cross website here.

Here’s a tip for all you wannabe media moguls: If you want to get ahead in the business, make sure you have a very successful parent.

22 year old Gus Wenner, son of Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner has been promoted to head up operations at RollingStone.com after a long career in….college. Via JimRomenesko.com:

Here’s Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner’s memo about his son‘s promotion.

From: Jann Wenner <jann.wenner@rollingstone.com>
Date: Monday, May 20, 2013 2:52 PM
Subject: Gus Wenner

Gus Wenner (from his Facebook page)

Dear all:

[Wenner Media chief digital officer] David Kang and I are very pleased — and I am very proud — to announce that Gus Wenner, after leading the re-launch re-design effort for our website, will now continue by heading up the overall operations of RollingStone.com.

Jann

Hamilton Nolan’s take:

Gus Wenner, 22, is an amazing media success story. Just a few years ago, he was a Brown University student playing in a band with fellow celebukid Brown student Scout Willis. Today, he’s still playing in a band with Scout Willis— and also running the website of a major national magazine!…..Gus followed the traditional route to a perch atop the media hierarchy: playing in an alt-country band in college.

[Full disclosure: My father was a big figure in the entertainment industry. He did once get me a job in the video tape library of his company as a runner, but after almost getting fired for incompetence on several occasions, I left after 4 months.]

Only in the South…

In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a man selling shrimp on the side of the road had his sign stolen by a man in passing truck. Taking matters into his own hands, the shrimp seller jumped on the hood of the truck and the driver took off down the freeway with him on it.

A car passing by captured the incident on camera and had the following relatively relaxed conversation with the shrimp seller, going and God knows how many miles per hour:

Man on hood of speeding car: Call the police for me!

Woman holding camera: What’s going on?

Man on hood of speeding car:He ran me over and I jumped on the hood! Call the police for me.

Woman holding camera: Ok.

While the man on the hood of the car was not apparently telling the truth (he didn’t get run over according to the police) he did seem fairly annoyed at the driver:

Apparently, no charges have been filed by any parties involved.

Jamie Dimon: Wall St Titan and major dick

Macho man and JP Morgan Chase Chairman, President and CEO Jamie Dimon is regarded as a titan on Wall St, and a dick by pretty much everyone else. Dimon is a balls-to-the-wall capitalist and unapologetic advocate of the system that makes people like him rich, and brought the global economy to its knees in 2008.

In April 2o12, JP Morgan reported a loss in a London-based division, first calculated to be $2 billion. The estimates then kept going up, finally reaching over $6 billion. Dimon dismissed the incident initially, calling it a “tempest in a teapot”, then embarrassingly had to walk back his statement and accept his bank screwed up big time.

Thankfully, Dimon might get dealt a small dose of humility tomorrow as shareholder groups are calling for the bank to strip him of his chairman job. At the bank’s annual meeting in Florida, several groups including the union AFSCME, the NYCCO (New York City Comptroller’s Office) will ask bank shareholders to approve a proposal that splits the roles of chairman and CEO, giving the chairman job to someone outside the bank. This would essentially strip Dimon of much of his power and ensure he faced far more scrutiny in his job.

But of course Dimon wants none of this, claiming the event is a “sideshow” orchestrated by unions. Dimon wants everyone to understand just how how vital rich bankers are to the survival of America.  ”I am not embarrassed to be a banker” Dimon once told a roomful of corporate clients in response to attacks on his industry.

Quite the claim given the public had to put up $12.8 trillion to keep his industry from collapsing.

Dimon, described by the New Yorker “as an overgrown frat boy” has a long history of making dick statements, making his impending comeuppance all the more gratifying.

Here’s 9 quotes from the Wall St mogul that definitively prove that he is in fact, a giant dick:

1. “That’s why I’m richer than you.”

- Jamie Dimon Speaking to Mike Mayo CLSA analyst when asked whether he agrees that customers should feel safer with banks that have higher capital ratios (like JP Morgan).

2. “I have gotten disturbed at… some of the Democrats’ anti-business behavior, the sentiment, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counter-productive.”

- Jamie Dimon on Meet the Press in 2012 forgetting that his industry almost wrecked the entire global economy.

3. “You read constantly that banks are lobbying regulators and elected officials as if this is inappropriate. We don’t look at it that way.”

-Jamie Dimon in his annual shareholder letter arguing that banks have the right to corrupt the political system with money (JP Morgan spent $7.5 million on lobbying in 2011).

4. “I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.”

Jamie Dimon defending the business of taking tax payers money and lending it back to them at extortionate rates.

5. “The term ‘too big to fail’ must be excised from our vocabulary.”

- Jamie Dimon forgetting that the public bailed out the banks because the were indeed, too big to fail (and still are).

6. “Giving debt relief to people that really need it, that’s what foreclosure is.”

-Jamie Dimon arguing that banks taking people’s houses and kicking them onto the streets was in fact, a good thing for people ruined by debt.

7. ”JPMorgan would be fine if we stopped talking about the damn nationalization of banks. We’ve got plenty of capital. To policymakers, I say where were they? … They approved all these banks. Now they’re beating up on everyone, saying look at all these mistakes, and we’re going to come and fix it.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2009 at Davos speaking about the financial crisis, forgetting that his own bank required nearly $100 billion in taxpayer help to fill its own lack of capital during the meltdown.

8. “Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

— Jamie Dimon on the losses incurred by JP Morgan in 2012, rejecting the notion that more regulation is needed to prevent them happening again.

9. “We don’t think there are cases where people were evicted out of homes when they shouldn’t have been.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2010 responding to the investigation led by 49 state attorney generals into bank foreclosure practices. Along with several other banks, JP Morgan settled with regulators after widespread mortgage abuse was found and paid out a combined $9.2 billion to those it foreclosed on illegally.