At least I find it troubling...

Reported from today's fiscal summit:

Baucus said he wanted to get at least 60 votes in the Senate, but maybe as many as 70votes on a health care reform bill.

70? Am I being too partisan when I say that there are not 10 Republican senators who would sign off on a health care bill that would make a difference?

Arkansas, where the calendar is lying when it reads the present time

From Newsweek's On Faith comes a humorous/disturbing story about Arkansas trying to out-Alabama Alabama.

Apparently Arkansas has a little bit in its state constitution that bars atheists from serving in elected office. This is funny because the US Constitution has a not-so-little-bit in it about not being able to bar atheists form serving in elected office. This normally wouldn't be a big deal since every state has outdated laws that are never enforced, plus not a lot of people would want to run for office/live in Arkansas. Apparently however, recent attempts to change the constitution, and make it compatible with things like liberal democracy, freedom, the 18th century, modern western thought, have well...failed:

In 2005, state Rep. Buddy Blair filed a resolution to affirm Arkansas' support for the separation of church and state. The resolution lost 39-44 in the House.

Luckily for the residents of Arkansas, the state still recognizes the importance of the second amendment:

Meanwhile, in a related story, the Arkansas House passed a bill Wednesday allowing people to bring their guns to church.

"Due to many shootings that have happened in our churches across our nation, it is time we changed our concealed handgun law to allow law-abiding citizens of the state of Arkansas the right to defend themselves and others should a situation happen in one of our churches," said state Rep. Beverly Pyle.

I could make some distasteful comment about how if your getting shot while praying, you probably weren't praying correctly, or to the right God, but that's not really the issue here.

I'm actually for this new law. I'm no theologian, but I'm pretty sure this was the type of thing Jesus would have supported. Sure he never mention guns in the Bible, but that's just because there were no guns back then. If you believe in a living Constitution (and I'm sure they don't in Arkansas), you should believe in a living Bible too. Forget that whole turning the other cheek part, just think how much better things would have been if they had guns back in the day. Do you think the Romans would have screwed with Jesus if the Apostles were packing heat? Probably not! Oh sure, this would be counter to the values of the Bible, and the story of Christianity, but if the Arkansas legislature doesn't mind ignoring the Constitution, we shouldn't really be surprised.

New York Times: G.O.P. Governors Support Obama

For good evidence that Congressional Republicans were simply opposing the stimulus bill just on partisan grounds, comes this wonderful story from the New York Times. It seems Republicans who are actually obligated to govern support TARP. This of course puts them at odds with the modern-day GOP, which hasn't been concerned with governing in some time.

The Case for Israel

I've read a number of prominent Jewish and pro-Israeli writers discuss the future of the Jewish state, and wonder if it is as necessary as it once was, or if its presence actually puts Jews in more danger. (For example by creating one big target for a nuclear-armed Iran) I really don't have an opinion on this, its a tricky issue that I'm rather hesitant to wade into. The question of whether a Jewish state is "necessary" is pretty important however, because its the only real way you can justify its creation.

Despite my criticisms of Israel, when I read stories like this, It makes me pretty sympathetic to claims that Jews still aren't really safe. The fact that it is unsafe for Jewish kids to attend public school in a liberal, secular country like Denmark is pretty shocking and unbelievably disturbing. I want to state that I've never lived in Europe and I can't speak to the actual level of antisemitism that exists in day-to-day life, but I read about stories like this a bit too often to dismiss this as propaganda.

Critics might claim that it's Israel's actions that stir this type of hatred against Jews. Not only does this not address the immorality of the issue, but it fails to recognize that maybe, also, it's these types of actions that lead many people to support the state of Israel.

Putting the screws to NR

Cliff May over at the The National Review has a problem with a pretty reasonable assessment by Steve Clemons' :

Steve Clemons, an analyst at the New America Foundation in Washington, says he knows how to achieve peace in the Middle East:

At the end of the day, Obama has to be willing to put the screws to Israel.

Would it ever occur to him to propose "putting the screws" to the Palestinians, recommending that the Obama administration tell Gazans, for example, that they need to decide whether they prefer to live in peace, or whether they'd rather sacrifice their lives and those of their children to Hamas’s explictly (sic) stated cause: the annihilation of Israel?

Hmmm.... maybe its because the US has done all of these things. We've never had a problem putting the screws to the Palestinians, and I don't think Clemons is saying we shouldn't stop calling them out when they warrant such action. When however, you sign a peace agreement that states that Israel needs to put a freeze on settlement building, and Israel continues to build settlements anyway, and you do nothing to punish them, while then, maybe a little though talk wouldn't hurt.

Fighting for Tomorrow

According to Zeinobia over at Egyptian Chronicles, Ayman El-Kholi has won his fight to be head of the Al Ghad (tomorrow)party, beating out NDP apologist Moussa Mustafa Moussa. Although Al Ghad is the most prominent opposition party in the country, I haven't really heard much news about this in any of the Dailies. This is probably due to the perceived insignificance of any of the legally recognized parties. (I think the success of the otherwise poorly organized Kifeya was somewhat attributable to the fact that nobody had faith in opposition parties to achieve anything.) The very fact that the administrative court (government) made the final decision on a who would take the helm really shows how thoroughly the NDP has managed to control the rules of the game.

I don't think however that we should completely discount the potential significance of Al Ghad. It would be nice after all to have some organizations besides the Muslim Brotherhood that offered up their own policy agenda every now and then. One of the problems with the current state of the liberal opposition in Egypt is that it really doesn't go beyond criticizing the NDP. That's not to say they offer no substance, but the Facebook phenomenon and Kifeya were really just loosely held together, ad-hoc movements that had a unifying grievance. This is great for putting pressure on Mubarak, but more has to be done if there is any hope of replacing him with something better.

Update: On a not so serious note, I really wish the party hadn't used the name "Ghad" which is the more classical word for tomorrow, as it sounds similar to the Egytpian food chain "Gad." To Egyptian's I'm sure there is no confusion, but with my non-fluent Arabic I can't help but be reminded of hummus when I hear about Al Ghad. I suppose using the Egyptian word for tomorrow "Bukra" might be associated with simply putting something off for tomorrow because it can't be done today. That's usually the context in which I hear the word. Of course it would also be an accurate description of real reform in Egypt, but they probably don't want to admit that.

Polling Gaza

I’m always curious as to why the level of scrutiny of polling in the United States is never applied to some other pretty important polls elsewhere. Maybe it's because election polls are eventually proven accurate or inaccurate, whereas others are onetime snapshots of public opinion that can't really be challenged.

I mention this because of an article in the AFP discussing attitudes of Palestinians after the war in Gaza. Now the poll may be accurate, I’m not sure, but there were some red flags that were raised which the article doesn't address. I don't' really fault the pollster here – like in the US, it's mostly the fault of the media in the way they report polls.

The article leads with the headline: Poll: Gaza Boosts Hamas Support.

It then goes on to say:

Hamas would get 28.6 percent of the vote compared with 27.9 percent for the rival Fatah faction of Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas if elections were held today, according to the survey by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Centre.

In Gaza, the poll put Hamas at 28 percent against 33.6 percent for Abbas' Fatah. In the West Bank, the poll gave Hamas 29 percent support against 24.5 percent for its rival.

Why do I have a problem with this? First of all, the headline, which states: "Gaza Boosts Hamas Support" is inaccurate. In order to show that it boosted Hamas' support, we would have needed an earlier poll taken before the war to measure support then. If such a poll was taken, it would have to be by the same firm with the same exact methodology. The article doesn't mention any such poll. So whatever the actual current level of support is, we don't really know if it was an increase or a decrease. This didn't stop the writer from blindly assuming a phenomenon based on no empirical evidence.

The article then goes on to mention the numbers listed above, which is fine, but uses them to make blind assertions about who actually enjoys more popularity. Given the narrow gap between the figures however, I think this is rather reckless. For example, it's declared that Hamas would win an election because it gets 28.6 percent compared to 27.9 for Fatah. It doesn't take much to observe that that's only slightly over one percentage point. Given that the polls margin of error was stated to be plus or minus 3, we can't really assume a victory based on a 1-point difference. A margin of error of 3 means that the actually results could be anywhere from Hamas - 25.6% and Fatah – 30.9, to Hamas - 31.6 and Fatah - 24.9. We can predict the real numbers would lay somewhere close to what was stated, but the article doesn't predict, it makes a bold statement about something the poll actually doesn't say.

I also wonder about the way the margin of error was calculated. The article states:

The pollsters surveyed a sample of 1,198 people -- 758 in the West Bank and 440 in Gaza -- and gave a margin of error of plus or minus three percent.

Okay, that’s fine, but if you're going to poll both territories together, and then divide them separately, it's not the same margin of error. Anytime a pollster in the US looks into demographic subgroups of a poll they know that the data isn't as accurate as the entire poll because they're not dealing with as large as a sample size. If we plug the number of respondents in the West Bank, compared with a rough estimate of the population (2,345,000) and assume a standard deviation of 95, then the margin of error for that territory would be 3.55. If we do the same for Gaza, the margin is 4.29.
That’s using the equation: square root of p (p -1) / n x 1.96. Where p = percent of respondents polled to the population, n = total population.

I also have to wonder about the accuracy of the survey given the difficulty in taking an accurate poll at this point in time. Polling a territory that was just bombed seems like it would be prone to all sorts of errors. First of all, how many people have working land lines at this point in time? Of those who do or don't, there might be a difference in affiliation. Maybe somebody who wasn't able to answer a phone for whatever reason would be more likely to support Hamas. This may be because their house was destroyed, are still at a hospital, taking care of others, etc… Or maybe any of these situations would make them more likely to support Fatah, or neither, we don't know, but there could be a difference that would greatly throw off the findings of the poll.

This isn't helpful

Barak okays new West Bank settlement in return for evacuation of illegal outpost

For those of us who sometimes forget that Labor's record on settlements is even actually even worse than Likuds. I realize this move was part of a bargain to get settlers to dismantle an illegal outpost, but I find it ridiculous that a government has to negotiate and bargain with its own people committing an illegal activity.

Light Rail in Dubai

With all the ridiculous spending going on in Dubai, it's nice to hear they're investing in something that really is worth the money. If only we had spare money to waste in the United States, we could also invest in more public transport.

Of course we do have a rare oppourtunity to spend a lot of money on a lot of stuff, but we seem to be squandering the oppourtunity. TARP only sets aside $43 billion for transportation projects, including $12 billion targeted for mass transit. I'm for improving public infrastrucure, and roads are important, but I don't see how we're supposed to kick American's off our fuel comsuming habits if we put pavement so high ahead of public transport.