Bryan Fischer's Difficult Dilemma

The near universal condemnation of Bryan Fischer over a recent editorial is, indeed, unfortunate. After all, so many of the critiques seem to intentionally misunderstand his position on the Giunta Medal of Honor. But a straightforward reading of his editorial clearly shows that he was not dismissing that award. It's just that Mr. Fischer is also simply pointing out an apparently politically motivated (and not coincidentally, liberal) policy, leading him to question why we aren't also awarding Medals of Honor to brave service members exclusively for acts of heroism more consistent with traditional conservative Christian values.

In sympathy with Mr. Fischer's difficult dilemma, I have done a bit of research and perhaps I could suggest that he nominate Steven Green for a Medal of Honor for his decidedly unfeminine acts of killing people and breaking things in our names.

Seriously, GTFOOTMYS.

Of Climate Hawks and Chicken Hawks

Around the intertubes, some Very Serious People™ are apparently throwing in with those who have had their hair on fire about climate change for a decade and more. But first, of course, they need to very carefully preen and pose and harrumph and distinguish themselves from the riff-raff and Very Seriously weigh the singular and foremost issue in addressing potential global catastrophe: the appropriate marketing tagline to convey their newfound conviction (and, not coincidentally, to slight and hold at bay said riff-raff).

I suppose beggars can’t be choosers and those concerned about climate change should welcome anyone into the fold, no matter their little idiosyncrasies, but holy f**k. Clean energy hawk, or environmentalist, or climate hawk? The Lord of the Manor is holding up swatches of wallpaper while the servants are battling a flooding moat that is, quite literally in Pakistan, washing crocodiles and s**t into the place? And could there be a worse metaphor for how we approach climate change than with Donald F**king Rumsfeld’s brand of proactive attitude toward gathering dangers – his resolute indifference to the expertise of and consequences to others? Holy f**k.

Well, that’s out of my system. Door’s open, c’mon on in, welcome to the fold climate hawks.

Unsourcing

It seems at least plausible that a principal contribution to the burgeoning income inequality in the U.S. is offshoring and outsourcing. The mechanism is straightforward supply and demand economics coupled to the de facto compensation mechanisms for corporate executives: if a corporation outsources and offshores those functions and obligations that are typically performed by lower earning workers – custodial, secretarial, customer service, manufacturing, and so on – at lower cost (and almost invariably lower compensation to the workers performing identical functions) than it would incur by hiring its own employees, it simultaneously undercuts the compensation bargaining position of its own and its competitors workers in these lower earning roles, and it boosts corporate profits which are in turn used to justify increased compensation of the high earning executives. The executive rewards incentivize (for the executives) the repetition of this income diverging cycle.

What is only now becoming obvious (at least to me) in the unfolding mortgage debacle is that a significant portion of the U.S. corporate sector has added a third component to the outsourcing/offshoring strategy: unsourcing.

Unsourcing: deliberately failing to perform essential and/or long established and/or legally required corporate functions and obligations, usually as a means only to increase executive compensation. Usage: The Countryslide Mortgage Company recently announced that it will be unsourcing its processing and maintenance of mortgage documents in all future mortgage transactions. Executive bonuses totaling the GDP of Bolivia were distributed following the announcement.

In retrospect, I suppose, we should have anticipated this. Unsourcing is the easiest and least costly of the three strategies to implement. The corporation simply doesn’t fulfill its functions and obligations.

To flesh this out just a bit, my reading of the Daily Caller article linked above (disclaimer: have your favorite stomach remedy handy before reading - it’s sickening) is that one significant element now contributing to a potentially renewed and particularly virulent contagion of the financial sector is through the complete abandonment by – for lack of a better word – “banks” of their admittedly mundane but long established and essential clerical role in processing and maintaining documentation associated with the mortgages that they issued, bought, sold, sliced, diced and apparently pureed.

Now don’t get me wrong. On the scale of evil, unsourcing by Corporate America is probably not the worst. This unfolding economic dark night of the soul has unearthed evil upon evil: gambling, unconscionable greed, collusion, corruption, extortion, narcissism, deception, delusion, fraud, theft, malfeasance, misfeasance, and on and on. But somehow through all that I still, probably foolishly, retained a sense that if we could just peel off those rotting outer layers, thick as they were and difficult and unpleasant as it might be, that there was at least a tiny redeemable core at the center. But there is something so primal about unsourcing as a corporate strategy in such a central position in the economy, that now I am not so sure.

Update: More here.

U.S. Economy, 2010 (In A Nutshell)

What do you call it when the proudest infrastructure accomplishment of a country whose economy is imploding, primarily provides quicker access for retirees to gamble away their savings and is named for a friendly fire casualty from a deficit-fueled and unwinnable war?

Prescient.

Are you taking notes, China?

GTFOOTMYS

In response to the “shrillness and intolerance” of the New Atheism (NA), one of the distasteful conceits that has enjoyed a revival in defense of religion against the onslaught of the NA “barbarians” is that religion and science/rationality are non-overlapping magesteria, NOMA. The basic idea is “that’s yours to think about (leptons and quarks) and this is mine (how many angels can dance on the head of pin), and you stay out of my business (wine BECOMES the blood of Christ) and I’ll stay out of yours (covalent bonds).”

There are some pretty straightforward arguments that decimate the NOMA paradigm, but the fact that despite these it is stronger than ever, suggests it may not be a worthwhile front in the overall conflict.

So rather, than fight the NOMA paradigm in a frontal assault, I humbly suggest that a more productive approach might be to enlist, to challenge, the ardent NOMA proponents – for example, the Karen Armstrong’s, and the Francis S. Collins’s, and the Francisco Ayala’s and the whole Templeton lot for that matter – to live up to their grand NOMA ideals. If they are genuinely willing to live the NOMA ideals then I am genuinely willing to give them a second listen.

But let’s be perfectly clear about what that means in practice: when some s**thead two-bit cleric says of homosexuality:

"Some suppose that they were pre- set and cannot overcome what they feel are inborn tendencies toward the impure and unnatural. Not so. Why would our Heavenly Father do that to anyone? Remember, he is our Father.”

a s**thead two-bit cleric utterly lacking in understanding of prenatal biochemistry, genetic predisposition, the empathy necessary to gracefully accept others living out their lives as they were born, and even, apparently, the reflective ability to experience cognitive dissonance at his infantile doctrine in the face of something like, say, spina bifida [yes, why would our heavenly father do THAT to anyone?], then the brave little NOMA warriors will in unison, very loudly, and in boldface font say unto him or her: “Get The F**k Out Of This Magesterium You S**thead!”

Karen? Francis? Francisco? Anyone??

Update: Shrill and intolerant. Guilty as charged.

Gambling

The structure of gambling necessarily engenders both winners and losers, the winners benefitting at the expense of the losers. It’s part of the visceral “joy" of gaming. What has America done over the past generation but eagerly, seamlessly, ruthlessly integrate the gambling ethos into our economy, so much so that even curbing the gambling will utterly destroy the economy? It must feel exhilarating, self-actualizing, so self-evidently proper and natural for the few to walk away from the table with their multi-million and billion dollar compensation packages won so effortlessly at the expense of all those hapless 50+ year old losers and all the rest. What have we wrought? What have we wrought?

An Open Letter to President Barack Obama

President Obama,

I urge you to reconsider your administration's extraordinary and, in my opinion, extreme position on invoking the state secrets privilege to prevent review of targeted killing of U.S. citizens.

If we have learned anything as a nation, anything at all over the last troubled decade, it is that our extensive intelligence apparatus and best functioning executive processes are not immune to even the most basic failures.

It seems to me that precisely because of the inevitability of these failures our government was and has been wisely structured with checks and balances and this is nowhere more true than in the competition between the rights of individuals and actions of the government with its overwhelming power and resources. The targeted killing policy simply discards this fundamental principle and in a stunning manner that is the most irreversible, unenlightened, anti-democratic fashion imaginable.

As a veteran or our nation’s armed forces, I clearly understand that we live in a dangerous world and that the most important of your charges as president is the safety of America’s citizens. But, again, such safety is always a competition between the rights of the individual and the actions of an overwhelmingly powerful and self-evidently failure-susceptible government. Any realistic reflection on this policy in consideration of history, politics, and our constitution can lead to no other conclusion but that it demolishes a cornerstone of our values as a nation and will ultimately have tragic consequences. Again, I urge you to reconsider.