Obama and Osama

I understand that it's easy to make a mistake and confuse the two names but people really should be more careful. I almost had a heart-attack when I saw the following in my blogroll:

So, Obama is dead.  Which is to say, he’s a martyr.  Of the many gifts the US gave him in his life, and they were many, this may be the last one.  Some say he didn’t want to be martyred, at least not right this moment, and no doubt that’s true.  But the difference between seeking martyrdom and not minding that much exists.  He didn’t really go that far out of his way to avoid death.  He could have shaved the beard, had some plastic surgery and disappeared into Indonesia.  He would never have been found.  His compound was not heavily guarded.  Bin Laden need never have been in the line of fire.

It's only when I got to the part about the beard that I realized whom the author of the post was actually referring to.

A Republican Reading of the President's Birth Certificate

I found this hilarious picture here.

On Obama's Birth Certificate

I was going to blog about President Obama releasing the long version of his birth certificate yesterday but my friend from Nigeria did it a lot better than I ever could:

I am a firm believer in the inner goodness of every human being in spite of their colour. I approached this country and people with the same open mindedness and was – like everyone else around the world – ecstatic and absolved when Obama was elected in 2008 in spite of what many considered his biggest obstacle: the colour of his skin. And then, from then, disappointed as to how every criticism of his policies seemed to come with something more than just a mere disagreement with economic policies. The press conference by Mr. Trump exemplified for me an unfortunate culmination of an underlying culture of intolerance. . . I don’t think that many Americans realize just how bad this reflects on the country to the rest of the world, and that makes it a little more unfortunate. I’m not American and may never try to be one. But seeing how the country treats its own and one of its best leaves very much to be desired. 

You can read the post in its entirety here.

Donald Trump Is a Birther

Everybody knows that Donald Trump is not especially bright. But did you know that he is also a birther? Watch this segment from The View where Trump expresses his birther convictions. The birther crap appears somewhere after 5 minutes 20 seconds of the interview:

Interventionist Policies

What I don't understand is how people can be simultaneously opposed to Bush's invasion of Iraq and supportive of Obama's bombing of Libya. Any military intervention in the affairs of another country under the slogan of "Let's remove that nasty dictator and liberate the people!" can only be based on the belief that one knows better what that country and those people really need. 

The idea that there is "good interventionism" and "bad interventionism" is, in my opinion, deeply flawed. Either you believe that your superior military strength allows you to meddle in the affairs of others, or you don't. But it's very hypocritical to criticize it when it's done by Bush and support it when the same thing is done by Obama. And, please, don't tell me that Obama and Bush have different intentions here. We cannot possibly know anything about their intentions or motivations. All we know is that the bombs are dropping and the people are dying because somebody from a different continent decided they know better.

I just read a joke on a Russian website on this subject:

"Why is Obama bombing Libya?"

"Oh, he just wants to get a second Nobel Peace Prize."

Ricardian

I have a host of weird hobbies and interests. One of them consists in collecting materials coming from Ricardian Apologists. To honor this interest of mine, I will regularly post reviews of Ricardian sources and start a new page on this blog where I will gather links pertaining to the topic of Ricardian Apology. It might seem like a boring subject at first, but bear with me, and I will tell you why it's fascinating.

We have all heard the opening lines of Shakespeare's Richard III:

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York.

In Richard III, Shakespeare presents Richard as a nasty, ugly, humpbacked character who compensates for his lack of male charms with an unquenchable thirst for power:

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, 

Have no delight to pass away the time, 

Unless to spy my shadow in the sun, 

And descant on mine own deformity: 

And therefore,--since I cannot prove a lover, 

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,-- 

I am determined to prove a villain, 

And hate the idle pleasures of these days. 

 Richard III was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 by Henry Tudor who started the Tudor dynasty. His death is often considered to be the symbolic end of the Middle Ages in England. Richard has been accused (and this is very important) of murdering his two young nephews who were legitimate successors to the throne. Ricardians believe that Richard was unjustly accused of killing the boys. They have offered very strong arguments as to why it makes no sense to accuse Richard of killing the two young princes and as to who was the real murderer. I will acquaint you with the Ricardian version(s) of events little by little.

Now you might ask why I, who am neither a medievalist nor a scholar of English history, became so interested in Richard III. When I was 9, I discovered the story of Boris Godunov, the Russian tsar who, just like Richard III, rose to the throne against enormous odds and was accused of killing the little prince Dmitri who was a legitimate heir to the throne. There are two famous literary works in Russian literature that take competing positions as to Godunov's guilt in the murder of the little Prince. Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet, wrote a famed play called Boris Godunov that supports the version of Godunov's guilt.

A.K. Tolstoy (not to be confused with a much inferior Leo Tolstoy, the author of the vapid Anna Karenina and War and Peace), however, wrote a much better (in my opinion) play titled Tsar Boris where he suggests that Godunov was not to blame for killing the Prince. I was so impressed by these competing literary accounts that I wrote my first piece of literary criticism at the ripe old age of nine, comparing these two works of literature.

The myth of Boris Godunov, an upstart who ascends to the throne as a result of cunning and a murder of a prince of blood, is as much a mark of Russian bloody separation from the Middle Ages as the story of Richard III is of England's.

Now think about what's going on in the US today for a second. Are we not living through a very similar debate as to who is more worthy of ascending to the throne, Bush Jr., who inherited it or Obama, who forged his birth certificate? Oh, you don't think he forged it? Well, maybe Richard III and Boris Godunov didn't kill anybody either. Maybe a painful entrance into modernity is always accompanied by a debate about whether inheriting power is more legitimate than ascending to power through one's own efforts. Maybe it always involves questioning whether "the upstart" has usurped power through a crime against the true, royal blood.