USA and Iran: What do they know about each other?

“Jihad Walking: Jason Jones Compares American Knowledge Of Iran To Iranian Knowledge Of America (VIDEO)”. Funny and enlightening.

Colin Powell endorses Obama

Colin Powell gives a great, even-handed analysis of both candidates for the U.S. presidency. Watch the video.
One of the highlights: He says that a good answer to the question "is Barack Obama muslim?" is "no, he is christian", but an even better answer is "why does it matter?".

Arguments against the “war on drugs”

While I don't have any perfect answer, the global “war on drugs” smacks of the American prohibition of alcohol, something that ended up causing a lot of crime. If all drugs were legal, there would be no extraordinary profit in selling them and thus the crime that surrounds drugs would go away. Except, obviously, the crimes committed for making money to afford drugs (which is not an issue with rich people and would be less of an issue with poor people if drugs become legal and thus cheaper). What I'm not sure about is if free drugs would increase drug usage and, if that is true, there could be something done about that. The article “The Wire's War on the Drug War” has some more things to say about this topic, mainly that it leads to arresting the wrong people and that all of them are part of the lower class.

[source: doggdot.us]

2 Great Articles on Barack Obama

Two ... audacious ... articles on Obama:

• The Audacity of Hopelessness by Frank Rich
  contrasts Clinton's and Obama's thinking (hint: one of them is positive, the other one is negative) and points out that judging by how well Obama organized his election campaign, he would do just fine as a president. In contrast, Clinton, who has criticized Obama for his lack of experience, has had major organizational gaffes in her campaign.
• The Audacity of Data by Noam Scheiber
  shows that Obama's philosophy is very pragmatic and un-ideological, he is not really out to change the status quo, but rather to improve it. While I think that in some areas, one should at least explore more unorthodox ideas, this philosophy might be exactly what the US needs right now. At any rate, Obama is thinking outside the box and I really like it. And you have to love the idea that the IRS does your taxes for you (hmm, I wonder what group of people will heavily oppose this).
  

Is the war on terrorism bogus?

The Guardian has published an article (by a former British environment minister, no less) that sheds light on some of the motivations behind the United States' invasion of Iraq. Oil seems to have played a huge role (as has been alleged before). It is interesting that when it comes to oil supplies, the US government chose a military solution where there would have been an engineering solution: Funding a research program for non-oil energy sources would have produced none of the negative effects of a war (which at the time of the decision were very obvious risks), while still strengthening the US position globally (in a purely positive way).

[source: doggdot.us]