HotShot Blog

According to WaPo today, the east coast no longer has the monopoly on population density.

And Los Angeles grows more crowded every year, adding residents faster than it adds land, while most metropolitan areas in the Northeast, Midwest and South march in the opposite direction. They are the sprawling ones, dense in the center but devouring land at their edges much faster than they add people.

Odd as it may seem, density is the rule, not an exception, in the wide-open spaces of the West. Salt Lake City is more tightly packed than Philadelphia. So is Las Vegas in comparison with Chicago, and Denver compared with Detroit. Ten of the country's 15 most densely populated metro areas are in the West, where residents move to newly developed land at triple the per-acre density of any other part of the country.

This northeasterner isn't too surprised by the finding. The metropolitan area development on the east coast is much older, with most going back to World War II or earlier. Back in those days the population was much smaller, allowing space for modern luxuries such as lawns.

Since then there has been tremendous population growth from the large wave of immigration. Most of this growth is occurring in the west and southwest, along with Florida and the outer reaches of the east coast metropolitan areas. New developers, squeezing as much profit out of buyers as they can, are building homes into ever shrinking lots, creating high density housing on new land. With housing so scarce as it stands, homebuyers are willing to pay top dollar for small spaces.

That is not to say you won't find high density sprawl on the east coast. Just look at new developments in New Jersey for example. However, the existing lower density development still covers much of the metropolitan area. It may be that the east coast will catch up in density to Los Angeles with new developments. In that case, I'll just have to move to Montana.

This morning I saw an interesting documentary on public access. A group of people claim to have documented evidence that airplanes have been used over the last six years to deliberately spray aerosol substances throughout the world's sky. In addition to scientific analysis of air samples, visibility reports, magnetic fields, and so on, they have some compelling photographs, including the following one.

The first photo shows the sky after several airplanes crossed over it. Contrails streak across the sky. However, instead of dissipating into the air as normal contrails do, the contrails remain in place and expand. Clouds then form around the airborne material, thereby covering what was initially a clear sky.

Local residents in rural areas of New Mexico have observed their sky change from a deep blue in the mid-90s to a pale white-blue today. With increasing numbers of people experiencing respiratory problems such as asthma, it certainly is an intriguing hypothesis.

So far the experts in government and industry are denying anything than ordinary contrails. I don't know the science here, but it seems to me that contrails dissipate very quickly; they do not streak across the entire sky. If there is streaking across the sky, possibly unintentionally, we should figure out why that is and assess the environmental impact. It should not simply be dismissed as the EPA, Pentagon, and other agencies have done so far.

Two news photos with captions:

A young man walks through chest deep flood water after looting a grocery store in New Orleans on Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005. Flood waters continue to rise in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina did extensive damage when it made landfall on Monday. (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Two residents wade through chest-deep water after finding bread and soda from a local grocery store after Hurricane Katrina came through the area in New Orleans, Louisiana. (AFP/Getty Images/Chris Graythen)

Notice anything? Watch the conservative press start yapping about personal responsibility and how these "criminals" don't deserve our help. Forget about their backgrounds and why they weren't able to leave the city in the first place. It's obvious from the pictures that they don't need our help. After all, what kind of disgusting person steals food at a time like this?

If there's one lesson to be learned from Katrina, it's that all is not well in America. 50 years after passage of civil rights, the black/white fault still permeates society. WaPo today has an excellent essay on the way poor minorities are denigrated and cast aside in popular culture.

They are the Other, these victims of Katrina.

An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas.
An often-invisible underclass, now front and center: Evacuees from New Orleans receive personal hygiene bags before resuming their long relocation trip to Dallas. (By Scott Saltzman -- Bloomberg News)
Video

And in this country, the Other is black. Poor. Desperate.

Mainstream America too often demonizes the Other because, well, we've been conditioned to do so. And because it's easier to put people in a box and then shove it in the corner, away from view. Then it becomes their problem, not ours. To talk about race, for those who are weary of it, is to invite glazed-over eyes and stifled yawns -- or even hostility.

Whether it's African-Americans looting while white people find food, evangelical leaders warning how homosexuality is destroying the moral fabric of America, or Pat Buchanan blaming immigration for all social problems, it has always been popular to box a certain category of Americans as "those people" who ruin things for the rest of us.

The tragedy of Katrina has brought to the front and center how this social undercurrent has a real impact on Americans. Wealthier, mostly white Americans evacuated New Orleans and stayed in hotels during the disaster. Poorer, mostly black Americans rode out the storm, only to be devastated when the levees broke. The response from a government that cares little about social programs was minimal. After all, they believe in personal responsibility. But it became clear to all Americans that these people weren't there because they didn't try hard enough in life or that they were somehow too stupid to leave the city early. These people were devastated because they didn't have cars, they needed to work, and they had no where else to go.

For many Americans it is simply not possible to understand how the poor live. Our politics suffers as a result. It's easy to talk about reduced funding for social programs and disaster relief in the comfort of a suburban McMansion. I hope that a silver lining from Katrina is a larger societal awareness of the American underclass. It is time we stopped ignoring these people and work to give them the respect all Americans deserve.

In The Grapes of Wrath, Joe Davis' boy is a tractor driver who tears down tenants' homes for the bank. He is portrayed as selling his soul for the riches of the evil bank, an allusion which is obvious if you connect the name Joe Davis' boy to Judis and the last supper.

Western literature is replete with Christian references. Biblical allusions abound not only in works such as John Donne's Holy Sonnets, but even in a pro-communist narrative of Steinbeck. It is only fitting then that if we are to expect Americans to learn Western literature, they should have the tools to understand it. For many young men and women who grew up in religious Christian families, this is no problem. But those who are less religious or non-Christian are at a distinct disadvantage. For myself, I felt frustrated to learn that I had completely misinterpreted a reading passage on the AP English exam because I did not understand the religious connotations.

We need secular Bible education in the context of reading literature. A new textbook has been written to help schools do just that.

"The Bible and Its Influence," released last week in Washington, is designed to meet constitutional standards and to convey the Scriptures' broad influence on Western civilization. Covering Old and New Testaments, it presents the biblical narratives, characters, and themes as well as their cultural influences.

Students may gain a more nuanced understanding of Shakespeare, with his 1,300 biblical references; or grasp the import of the Exodus to the African-American experience and musical heritage; or learn how the Bible shaped Abraham Lincoln's vision. They may even recognize a biblical origin for their hometown - Corpus Christi, New Canaan, and Salem, for example.

The new textbook "treats faith perspectives with respect, and ... informs and instructs, but does not promote religion," says Chuck Stetson, the Project's founder and chairman.

Of course, I understand concerns many would have with any kind of Bible education class. Taught by the wrong kind of teacher, it has the potential for proslytezing. But the disservice done by limiting any kind of study of religion to non-Judeo-Christian faiths is too great to ignore.

Ok, this pisses me off. Transportation agencies are going after a website that provides subway map downloads for ipod.

A lawyer for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority sent Bright a terse "cease and desist" letter in mid-September demanding he immediately remove the New York City subway map from his Web site.

Another letter followed on Sept. 21 from the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District, instructing Bright to take down his BART system map.

Both agencies said copyrights they held to the maps barred anyone from repackaging and redistributing them without permission.

Heavens forbid people can actually use your fucking transportation. In New York, subway maps are free anyways. That's right. You can walk into any subway station and pick up a free subway map. But having convenient access on your ipod, that's heresy!

It seems Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), of video diagnosis fame, is embroiled in an insider trading scandal. Frist's family founded and still runs Hospital Corporation of America, the nation's largest hospital chain. (Incidentally, they perform abortions at HCA's hospitals.) Frist apparently sold 2.3 million shares a week before the stock of the company started to tank, leaving open speculation that Frist traded on insider information.

A little bit of history: Insider trading is placing a trade to buy or sell securities based on material knowledge of a company's assets and liabilities that is not available to the market as a whole. Insider trading was legal until the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934. During the depression, there was a great deal of speculation about what caused the market crash, and insider trading was labelled as one of the causes. CEOs had made heaps money selling their firm while making public statements to the contrary.

Still, there were almost no prosecutions for insider trading until the 1980s. Then, a young New York lawyer made a name for himself by handcuffing corporate criminals and walking them in front of the cameras. Rudy Guiliani took down leading Wall Street figures Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken among many others and made insider trading an enforced crime.

So if it wasn't a crime except in the last 20 years, what's the big deal? The argument against insider trading is the following: if CEOs and others are allowed to trade based on their private information, they will have an unfair advantage in the marketplace. Ordinary investors will demand a higher return in compensation for being placed at an informational disadvantage. This will drive up investment costs and weaken economic growth.

There are two problems with this. First, word does get out. A number of academic papers have highlighted price movements that occur before the announcement of news. Second, the market sees information and reacts very quickly.

In fact, you can make a fairly strong case that insider trading should be legal because it makes prices more efficient. The stock market in a capitalist society serves to direct investment where it is most productive. By allowing insider trading, the CEOs and other people in the know will eliminate the short term mispricings that occur before private information is revealed. As an example, suppose a company is being sued for producing a harmful product. This news is not available to the public. In the meantime, the stock price will be higher than the company is actually worth, leading some people to invest unproductively. If insiders were allowed to trade based on their information, they would sell shares until the price dropped to what the company is worth after settling the liability.

Of course, regardless of whether insider trading should be illegal, it is a crime. Certainly the most powerful senator should be expected to obey the law. I have no tolerance for corporate criminals who in many ways do more damage to society than their volient street thug counterparts.

This story is just sad. One rape victim in Arizona frantically searched for three days to get emergency contraception.

While calling dozens of Tucson pharmacies trying to fill a prescription for emergency contraception, she found that most did not stock the drug. When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections. "I was so shocked," said the 20-year-old woman, who, as a victim of sexual assault, is not being named by the Star. "I just did not understand how they could legally refuse to do this."

It's disgusting how the religious right tries to force their views on others. It is not acceptable that a pharmacist refuses to do the job he undertook in full knowledge of what it entails. What if on "moral grounds," the pharmacist chose not to fulfill prescriptions for Jews, or non-Christians for that matter? Apparently, pharamacies such as the ones in Tuscon or the whole Target chain (which allows pharmacists to choose what they fill) do not have a problem with that.

Oh this is too funny. CNN had a web poll on their front page today that asked the following question:

Who is stupider?

• Ann Coulter
• Jeering UConn students

No joke. As of 3:15pm, the vote was 63%-37% for Coulter. I saved a screenshot of the poll for posterity:

I've written several times about the need for real leadership in this country. Today we honor a man who knew the real meaning of courage, determination, and bravery. Many of the freedoms that we enjoy today, regardless of race, are a direct result of what King fought for and ultimately died for. Civil rights meant not only desegregation, but Miranda rights, the right to vote in a fair and free election, equal representation, and a host of other liberties that we now take for granted.

These liberties did not come free, not will they be easily maintained. And so as we stand facing weighty issues of government authority and liberty in a time of war, let us pause to remember the words of a true leader.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

The dream lives on indeed.

This is part 1 of a multipart series on the sad state of our media. In this posting, I focus on the disregard for facts by supposed journalists and the disdain for truth-based reporting.

The most irksome lie I have seen in the media over the past few weeks is the repeated assertion that Democrats are somehow guilty in the Abramoff scandal. This is an accusation with no basis whatsoever. When the scandal broke, the Republican National Committee issued talking points and a list of contributions from Indian tribes that Abramoff had represented to media outlets. It then was published in the Washington Times, a partisan GOP newspaper. This led to reporters all over the media claiming that Democrats would be implicated in the scandal. Courtesy of the RNC site, here are a few of the comments reporters made.

"Law-Enforcement Authorities And Others Said The Investigation's Opening Phase Is Scrutinizing ... Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat; And Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat ..." (Jerry Seper and Audrey Hudson, "Abramoff-Linked Probe Focuses On 5 Lawmakers," The Washington Times, 1/11/06)

"Democrats Have Taken A Special Interest In [Team Abramoff Lobbyist And Former Reid Staffer Eddie] Ayoob's Clients. Of The Eight Tribes Ayoob Represented When He Was With Greenberg Traurig, Reid Acted In Behalf Of Or Moved Legislation Benefiting Six." (Rebecca Adams, "The Game's The Thing: Reid Has Been A Ready Ally To Abramoff-Linked Interests," Congressional Quarterly Weekly, 1/16/06)

Larry Noble, Executive Director And General Counsel For The Non-Partisan Center For Responsive Politics: "I Would Say, Broadly Defined As A Question Of The Tribes' Buying Influence In Washington, It Includes Democrats." (Donald Lambro, "Dean Denies Party Ties To Abramoff," The Washington Times, 1/11/06)

CNN's Ed Henry: "I Want To Underline Again, There Are Democrats Implicated In [The Abramoff Scandal] As Well. So [Democrats'] Argument About A Culture Of Corruption May Not Resonate With People Across The Country." (CNN's "CNN Live Today," 1/3/06)

Henry: "[D]emocrats Like Byron Dorgan Of North Dakota ... [Are] Returning The [Campaign] Money Because They've Been Implicated At Least Generally In This Investigation ..." (CNN's "CNN Live Today," 1/3/06)

Even the Washington Post, a paper that conservatives deride as far-left, took the bait. In an article by WaPo ombudsman Deborah Howell, she repeated the assertion that Abramoff had contributed to Democrats.

Schmidt quickly found that Abramoff was getting 10 to 20 times as much from Indian tribes as they had paid other lobbyists. And he had made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties.

The problem with this: it's not true. A quick search at the Center for Responsive Politics shows that Abramoff was a partisan Republican. He never gave a single dime to a Democrat ever. Furthermore, Harry Reid and other Democrats have gone on record claiming that they have never met the person. To this date, no one has disputed that claim. So how do you get influenced by a lobbyist you've never met and have never taken money from?

We expect the Washington Times and conservative pundits on CNN to mouth off this crap. But the Washington Post claims to report facts, not heresy. Mediamatters.org and a group of WaPo readers took Howell to task for this incorrect statement. They posted comments on a feedback blog that the paper had created. Being the ombudsman, a position that exists to solicit reader feedback and correct mistakes, you might think she would simply issue a correction and move on.

Instead, Howell and others at the Post continued to defend their claim without any facts whatsoever. Four days after the initial article, she issued the following statement:

I've heard from lots of angry readers about the remark in my column Sunday that lobbyist Jack Abramoff gave money to both parties. A better way to have said it would be that Abramoff "directed" contributions to both parties.

Lobbyists, seeking influence in Congress, often advise clients on campaign contributions. While Abramoff, a Republican, gave personal contributions only to Republicans, he directed his Indian tribal clients to make millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

Her proof: Indian tribes contributed to both parties. Yet just because the tribes contributed to both parties does not mean that Abramoff asked them to do so. By looking at the past giving records of the tribes, Howell would have seen that the tribes gave money to both parties well before they hired Abramoff to represent them.

So again, readers take her to task. The response this time was even more incredible. The Washington Post shut down their blog, effectively telling readers to shut up. She then attacked her critics, issuing this non-apology:

I wrote that he gave campaign money to both parties and their members of Congress. He didn't. I should have said he directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties.

In fact, Howell, it's exactly the opposite. According to a study by a non-partisan group Dwight L. Morris and Associates, Abramoff directed his clients to stop giving to the Democratic Party and increase their contributions to Republicans

The analysis shows:

• in total, the donations of Abramoff’s tribal clients to Democrats dropped by nine percent after they hired him, while their donations to Republicans more than doubled, increasing by 135 percent after they signed him up;

• five out of seven of Abramoff’s tribal clients vastly favored Republican candidates over Democratic ones;

• four of the seven began giving substantially more to Republicans than Democrats after he took them on;

• Abramoff’s clients gave well over twice as much to Republicans than Democrats, while tribes not affiliated with Abramoff gave well over twice as much to Democrats than the GOP -- exactly the reverse pattern.

  “It’s very hard to see the donations of Abramoff’s clients as a bipartisan greasing of the wheels,” Morris, the firm’s founder and a former investigations editor at the Los Angeles Times, told The Prospect.
  

But the assault on people who want the Post to do its job continues. On Saturday, the WaPo ran an article attacking liberal bloggers. This is part of a systematic effort by major news organizations to attempt to discredit the blogs that criticize them. Although I can't find the link, a few months ago the Post ran an article about how blogs were threatening businesses and how businesses can protect themselves from the evil bloggers.

This whole saga eeriely parallels the "Rathergate" scandal of the 2004 election campaign. A reporter carelessly failed to check the accuracy of his/her reporting. Members of the audience call him/her on it. Then, rather than issuing a correction, the reporters stands by the erroneous story.

But instead of discrediting and deriding the media as ideologically hostile, what people like me want is for reporters to be journalists. Stop reporting talking points as facts and start researching your stories. Too often, an article will boil down to some kind of he said/she said nonsense like the following.

Republican Senator Blah claims that "blah blah blah". Democrats assert that "blah blah blah".

This is not journalism. It is stenography. Real journalists would take the claims and check their accuracy. They would then report the facts, not simply each side's talking points. But that would require hard work and a willingness to seek the truth, something many reporters seem to lack.

This is a few weeks old, but according to the AP, a conservative Christian pastor is urging members to throw their money away.

A pastor who threatened a national boycott against Microsoft and other major corporations for supporting a gay rights bill urged people Tuesday to buy up the companies' stock and dump it to drive prices down.

Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Anti-och Bible Church in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, said the stock-dumping plan had been his strategy all along.

"You got to find out how you affect a company," Hutcherson said, conceding that it would be hard to get people to shun products from companies that dominate the marketplace as Microsoft and Boeing do.

This insanely stupid idea will have zero effect on Microsoft's stock price. Hutcherson seems to think that with enough people selling the stock on the same day, Microsoft's price will have to drop.

But even if he had enough followers to sell hundreds of thousands of shares and make a price impact, his plan is fundamentally flawed. People in the financial markets are sharks out to make money. As traders see Microsoft's price drop, they will realize the stock is selling very cheap and buy up huge quantities of the stock. As the traders buy all the sold stock, the price would revert back to its pre-dump value. In the process, the traders essentially take a ton of free money from the holier-than-thou crowd.

It will be interesting to look at data for Microsoft on May 1 to see if there is any abnormal trading volume or larger price movements during the day. My prediction: nothing happens. It's all words.

I haven't blogged about the Islam cartoon controversy until now because I didn't have much to say that hasn't already been said. I think the cartoons were offensive and not nice. But in a liberal democracy, everyone has the right to their political speech, including hatemongers and racists. We still have the Klan in the United States, and even though they are a contemptible group in every sense of the word, they have their right to say what they believe. I don't think anti-Semitic speech bans, which I didn't even know about until this cartoon controversy, have any place in modern society. Although I understand the historical reasons for such laws in Austria, I still believe people have a right to hate speech.

But people in a free society are not free to use violence, contrary to what Donald Rumsfield might say. The reaction by some Muslims in the Middle East was completely unjustified and immoral. It is not just retribution to torch a building simply because someone said something not nice about you.

The violent reaction did not come from all Muslims. There are good, liberal-minded Muslims that recognize that fanning the flames of hatred is not the solution to the problem. Two journalists wrote to this effect and published a few of the cartoons as part of their stories. The result: they were thrown in prison.

To illustrate their points, both editors published selections of the drawings — and for that they were arrested and threatened with prison.

Mr. Momani and Mr. Assadi are among 11 journalists in five countries facing prosecution for printing some of the cartoons. Their cases illustrate another side of this conflict, the intra-Muslim side, in what has typically been defined as a struggle between Islam and the West.

The flare-up over the cartoons, first published in a Danish newspaper, has magnified a fault line running through the Middle East, between those who want to engage their communities in a direct, introspective dialogue and those who focus on outside enemies.

The situation in the Middle East shares an eerie parallel to the western world. A minority of violent hatemongers distorting religion and hellbent on destroying an external "enemy" weilds enormous power. Any sane person who dares to cross these extremists is branded as an enemy themselves and, in the Middle East, often imprisoned and/or killed.

Is it fair to compare American extremists to Muslim extremists? Absolutely. Both sides ground themselves on an absolutist us vs. them ideology which they spread through the use of religion. Radical mullahs Bin Laden and Falwell stand united against homosexuality, uppity women who want rights, tolerance for minorities, and a host of freedoms we take for granted. Consider the following quotes that seem like they come straight from Pat Robertson:

The government is committed to supporting God's religion, the country remains a strong bulwark for religion, and the people are among the most protective of God's religion, and the keenest to fulfill His laws.

The American people have put themselves at the mercy of a disloyal government, and this is most evident in Clinton's administration. The American government is leading the country towards hell.

All these crimes and sins committed by Americans are a clear declaration of war on God.

In fact, it was Bin Laden who made these remarks. Do they seem very different from these remarks by Robertson?

We have allowed rampant secularism.... We have insulted God at the highest levels of government.

There will never be world peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world.

A condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It'll bring about terrorist bombs; it'll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor.

Conservative idiots will argue equivalency. The idea that they're not nearly as bad. They don't use chemical warfare, torture innocents, and hate democracy. Except that they do. The Pentagon has admitted to using white phosphorus, a substances that causes deep burns down to the bone, in the battle of Fallujah. Reports have indicated that children have been hit with this substance.

Besides the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, which keeps getting worse as more pictures are released (Note: the link has very disturbing graphic images), just yesterday a federal judge approved the outsourcing of torture. Our government will continue to export prisoners of the war on terror to countries such as Syria that will torture them for us. Already one innocent Canadian man has suffered this fate.

But this is all okay because America is a democracy. We have a national debate about what we should do and then hold elections. But conservatives don't want that either. An increasing number of right-wingers have been talking up the possibility of criminalizing dissent. Al Gore asserted to an Arab audience last weekend, "There have been terrible abuses, and it's wrong. … I want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country." In response, Ben Shapiro of the influential conservative website wrote an article arguing we should imprison Gore, Dean, Kerry, and others.

At some point, opposition must be considered disloyal. At some point, the American people must say "enough." At some point, Republicans in Congress must stop delicately tiptoeing with regard to sedition and must pass legislation to prosecute such sedition.

This is no Ann Coulter joke. These people are dead serious and if they are allowed to continue down the current path, they will invoke a fascist state. President Bush himself has now begun routinely referring to his opponents as traitors, claiming that war opponents "bring comfort to our adversaries."

The terrorist question will not fully be resolved until the moderate and sane voices on both sides rise up and quell the extremists. These people have no sensible plan to end this conflict. All they do is spread the flames of hate.

Finally, I'll close with a more light-hearted interesting tidbit one of my colleagues found. According to a Reuters article, one shopkeeper in Gaza City acted as a rational arbitrageur. This is the guy that makes economic models work, and that's why we love him.

When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn.

Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade.

"I do not take political stands. It is all business," he said in an interview.

Genius.