Side by side comparison - Muslim extremist and Christian radicals

Without a doubt, our country has given significant power to Christian radicals like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Ralph Reed, to name a few. Our president panders to these religous zealots. Yet we depend upon our president and government to protect us and engage muslim extremists in the war on terror.
And against whom are we fighting the war on terror? Well, the terrorists, of course, and the biggest religous group affiliated with terrorism these days are Islamic fundamentalists.
As an interesting exercise, let's characterize some of the features of Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists to see just how similar the religious, radical right is to the terrorist they claim to be fighting.

	Taliban/Islamic Fundamentalists	Christian Fundamentalists
View their holy books as the inerrant, literal word of God/Allah	Yes	Yes
Believe the rule of God/Allah supercedes the law of man	Yes	Yes
Deny Evolution or other Scientific Theories that contadict their religous holy books	Yes	Yes
Sex is horrible, Abstinence is key outside of marriage	Yes	Yes
Women should not work	Yes	Yes
Have lots of babies - it's God's/Allah's will	Yes	Yes
Life begins at conception - ban abortion because it's murder	Yes	Yes
The world is against us - we are in a battle for our existance and future	Yes	Yes
Education should be centered around our holy texts	Yes	Yes
Our pastors/mullahs dictate how we vote and think	Yes	Yes

I'm sure there are several more identical features of the Taliban and American Christian religous zealots. It boggles the mind that we feel our evangelical Christian president is in any way suited to fight a war on terror against people whom he has so much in common with.

A bland future for America?

With a series of rate hikes by the Fed, spiking oil and commodities prices and the threat of inflation and recession on our horizon, the residents of America should be asking where our economy and country are headed.
Looking around at our government expenditures and the fuel that drives our economy, we need to ask, what serves as the foundation for economic growth? What kind of jobs and professions should we bank our future as a country on?
It seems to me, glancing at the landscape of the American economy that we have made some serious mistakes. Mistake number one is relying on real estate as a major linchpin to economic growth. Does America really need tons of real estate agents, title companies, home lenders and tons of other industries that rely entirely on inflated home prices? What are all these real estate dependent professionals going to do if and when there is a real estate slowdown?
Mistake #2 is that our government is mortgaging its future to the military industrial complex. Government spending on defense and the war in Iraq is a depressing figure to comprehend. If we shunted a mere fraction of that to schools, NIH and research funding, and even fanciful projects like the super conducting super collider, we would be much better off as a nation. Instead, 9/11 has served as an avenue for military contractors and the defense dept. to force Americans to open our checkbooks further.
Mistake #3 is relying on spending. How much of our economy is driven by people buying things? We Americans are ruthlessly materialistic, needing to buy too much for our own good. Even our houses of worship have undergone a materialistic expansion and spending spree, taking over sports arenas in places like Houston. What if we have a recession where people stop spending money so freely, or are unable to feed the materialistic desires of American churches with generous tithes? I guess for the spiritual folks, we'll have to see how much God loves them if they can't fill up the collection plate in church. For retailers and the other players in our consumer driven economy, who knows?
We as a country need to focus on things that matter - curing disease, improving quality of life, education and learning, promoting innovation and self-actualization. We need to find a way to distance our dependence or allegiance to sectors that may only give us greater headaches during recessions and may even sow the seeds for recession themselves.

Poor Kaavya

By now, the unveiling of the extent of plagiarism in Kaavya Vishnawanthan's debut book "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life" has become apparent. Whether we or not one believes Kaavya's assertion that she merely "internalized" text from Megan McCafferty's novels or actively copied from these and other works, one should step back and see the prop that Kaavya was in this sordid real-world plot. Take a young, ambitious Harvard student, with or without a modicum of intrinsic talent within her, throw lots of money at her, hook her up with a ghost-writing "book packaging" company and package a resulting chick-lit novel to thousands of pulp fiction devouring teens. Someone clearly saw a recipe to make a quick buck. Add to this, of course, movie rights, and you have a great recipe for wealthy returns all around. Except of course, for the missing key ingredients of honesty and originality.
Kaavya's Hindenburg like debut as a writer should be a lesson to the profit hungry publishers like Little, Brown & Company, in addition to ambitious young writers looking to strike gold. True writing, whether it be for chick-lit pulp books or Nobel prize winning fiction, requires hard work, real world experience, and hours of solitude and focus. No amount of money, packaging, or spin can circumvent that.
Perhaps Kaavya, whose name means poem, should eschew prose for her namesake poetry medium, or perhaps she should title her next novel, "Can't buy me into the NY Times Bestseller list"

Whom we vote for

With our current president's poll numbers slumping, and many members of the Republican party facing ethics trouble or court time for their transgressions of the law, perhaps we as a country should pause to consider what we use to judge our politicians in our republic.
The average American does not appear to care much with respect to qualifications for representing us in our government so much as nebulous things such as likeability. During the 2004 election, I recall a polling question of who would you much rather join in a backyard BBQ - George W. Bush or John Kerry. George W. Bush won this poll 50% to 39%.
To me, this finding, as well as George W. Bush's victory in the 2004 election tell me that we as a country don't care much about how thoughtful our leaders are, only how "chummy" they come across. Why do we place such a premium on likeability rather than ability to do the job? Such a preference seems to reach down to the most inconsequential elections - school presidents are more likely to be the popular kids than the studious, brainy types. While I'm not necessarily advocating that our nation become a technocracy, I would like to see our country put a premium on ability over charm. Would we ever vote for an MVP sports star who couldn't score points and win games?
George W. Bush had no business being elected governer of Texas or president of the US other than espousing a particular religious faith. He's the equivalent of someone who's been voted an MVP without ever scoring a goal in his life.