They Still Have US to Kick Around

Thomas Friedman really hit the ball out of the park with his article today in the NY Times. If Iran and North Korea do indeed develop and test nuclear weapons, whose fault will it be? In the eyes of the world, it will be the fault of those Americans, no doubt. But Friedman questions whether Europe and China have the political will or even desire to pressure Iran and North Korea into giving up their radioactive dreams. The US has already severed nearly all ties with both countries, and therefore has little leverage left. Friedman is especially insightful when he makes this statement:

Are the Europeans and Chinese behaving cynically? Of course, these are the very countries constantly complaining about U.S. "hegemony," and calling for a "multipolar world." Yet the only thing they are really interested in being a pole for is to oppose the U.S. - not to actually do something hard themselves to stabilize the global system.

They complain when we act like the world's only superpower and they complain when we don't. It is almost enough to make you want to return to those halcyon days of American isolationism and quit being the world's policeman. But the world needs a policeman, and who else will take that role? The Europeans? The Chinese? Do we really want them to?

Dead Last

I may not have the quote exactly right, but I heard LA Mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa state today that "of the top 67 largest cities in America, Los Angeles' roads rank dead last." He may be right, I can't quibble about the number, but I find it hard to believe that the survey took into account only 67 cities. Maybe 50 cities, or 75, or even 100, but not 67. If LA had come in the 44th position, the quote would have read "of the top 44 largest cities in America, Los Angeles' roads rank dead last." The same would be true if they had been 23rd, or even 7th. The key thing is that Villaraigosa was able to say that they were "dead last."
I don't have a horse in the LA Mayors race. I don't live in Los Angeles, and wouldn't care much for either candidate if I did. That being said, the use of statistics in this manner is disingenuous at the very least. As my grandfather often would say, "There are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics."

Thank God for the UN

The United Nations has issued an alarm for women's rights groups in Afghanistan "after three young Afghan women were found raped, hanged and dumped on a roadside with a warning not to work for foreign relief organizations."
I'm just trying to remember - did the UN issue any such alarms for women's rights when they were living under the Taliban?

Words, Words, Words.... Wolf!!!

Words mean something, or at least they used to. Today, however, it seems that even our language is suffering from egalitarianism.
The degradation of the meaning of words takes many forms. In some cases, we degrade our speech by resorting to the use of obscenities. It isn't merely that obscenities are dirty, foul, or degrading, but that they don't have the same power of language. When we are angry, we often say that we are 'pissed'. But what, exactly, does that mean? There are many words for angry: upset, agitated, perturbed, annoyed, mad, furious, irate, livid.... Where, precisely, does 'pissed' belong in a continuum of such words? Instead of finding a place in the continuum, it covers the whole spectrum, and we lose the nuances of the other words that could have been used. How about insults? Calling someone a #(&*@ (coward - female genitalia) just doesn't carry the same weight as saying that they "have the backbone of a chocolate eclair". Even Archie Bunker calling his son-in-law 'meathead' had more meaning than an obscenity would have.
Another way that words lose their meaning is when we use them improperly, especially in improper comparisons. When we use the word 'rape' to describe a woman that wakes up and regrets having sex with the man she met the night before, we degrade the meaning of the word rape, and therefore the act of rape itself. When people use the word 'jihad' to describe the religious right in this country, we aren't just making the religious right out to be worse, we are saying that actual 'jihad' isn't so bad. John McCandlish Phillips references a number of major columnists in this article in the Washington Post.
All this makes me think of the boy who cried wolf. If we continually degrade our language by trying to make dissimilar things out to be similar, soon we won't be able to tell the wolves from the sheep. A serial rapist? Isn't that just another word for a Casanova?