Pierre Lacerte and the Protocols of the Elders of Outremont

Here's the story. The Hasidic synagogue Gate David in Outremont wanted to expand their synagogue to accomodate their growing numbers. Reasonably, this proposal was put to a community vote. Reasonably, the vote failed, and the congregation will not be allowed at this point to expand their building.

Unreasonable is the man who led the "fight" against the synagogue, one Pierre Lacerte (link to his blog.) According to the story, he has been closely monitoring activities of members of the Hasidic community in Outremont, recording "everything from unkempt properties to alleged political influence on elected officials." MacLean's a couple months ago characterized him somewhat more harshly (and to me, at least, more fairly) as a man who "rarely leaves his house without a sense of righteous indignation, and never without his point-and-shoot camera holstered on his belt," meaning to record the smallest violations he claims have been committed by Hasidic community members.

So, what's his blog look like? Pretty fucking blatantly anti-Semitic. He brings up cases, like the alleged sentencing of a dog to stoning by a Jerusalem court (that story, as you might suspect, is false, and the originals have been taken down by the likes of the BBC) which, even had it been true, would be completely fucking irrelevant to the activities of Outremont's Hassids unless you think they're all the same, which he certainly seems to. Take this excerpt:

D'ailleurs, je ne sais pas si vous avez remarqué, mais la synagogue du 5363 Hutchison n'est pas l'exception vermoulue qui confirme la règle. Presque partout où les intégristes hassidiques installent leurs lieux de culte dans le Mile-End et à Outremont, les immeubles se transforment en cambuses aux allures sinistres et sordides.

Des exemples? Pensons au 5815 Jeanne-Mance , au 5555-5571 Hutchison , au 5843 Hutchison , 6082 Parc , à l'ancien restaurant La Mère Poule et la très célèbre synagogue des Rosenberg (cliquer sur les adresses pour accéder aux musées des horreurs) .

Now, I'm not in Montreal right now, so I can't go take pictures of the many quite nice Hasidic synagogues restaurants, and homes throughout the city. But that's OK. As long as you cherry-pick your examples from a large enough sample size, you can prove your point well enough, and if you can weave together some sort of narrative that makes it sound like it's not the individuals involved who are making front lawns look bad, but rather some sort of city-wide conspiracy to make Montreal neighbourhoods unattractive, all the better.

Newsflash, asshole. There are a lot of Hasids in Montreal. There are going to be a lot more. When you have a population of people, some of them are going to be slobs. If I went out every day with a camera in order to take pictures of every sub-optimal thing you did throughout the day, you'd look like a pretty shitty neighbour too.

Those of you who know me will know that I myself am not a great fan of most Hasidic communities. Like many religious groups, they discriminate against women, they can be intolerant of their own members who no longer wish to follow the lifestyle, etc. etc. Notice, however, that I don't single out the Hasids for no reason. It's oh-so-easy to make a group look like shits with the right attitude and a Wordpress account.

My absentee ballot hasn't arrived. I'm hearing from other expat friends that theirs haven't either. Son. Of. A. Bitch.

At least my riding is going Liberal. But seriously, man. Fuck.

Please don't hate me, all of you. Hate the postal service.

Rewrite

If you have to ask, the regression has taken seven days. From the blissful detachment of the internet deprived, it has taken me all but a week to forget that more important things in life do exist beyond those things that I read about on the news but cannot change and to get back to fuming over what the latest A1 New York Times article seems to imply:

The United States has long had a sterling credit report from ratings agencies because of the global preference for the dollar. But the latest deficit gridlock in Washington may have taken some of the luster off the reputation of the world’s largest economy and its currency.

On Monday, the ratings firm Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on the United States rating to negative. Although the agency did not actually lower its highest AAA rating on the country’s debt, it was the first time since the S.& P. started assigning outlooks in 1989 that the country was given an outlook that was something other than stable.

While it had not been completely unexpected, the S.& P. decision shifted the nation’s deficit debate out of the political arena — at least for the day — and thrust it on Wall Street. The action spooked investors, sending the three main stock indexes down more than 1 percent.

Treasury yields, or the interest rate that the country pays on its debt, spiked immediately after the announcement. Since the United States owes more than $9 trillion in outstanding debt to the public, even a one-tenth of a percent increase could potentially add billions to the deficit over time.

There are a number of things wrong with these introductory paragraphs--namely those last two. In fact, those last two paragraphs are so flawed, I've decided to just rewrite them. You will find my corrections below in italics:

While it had not been completely unexpected, the S.& P. decision shifted the nation’s deficit debate out of the political arena — at least for the day — and thrust it on Wall Street. That isn't necessarily to say that the rating agencies should to be seen as apolitical, or, most importantly, as qualified and competent to actually offer trustworthy ratings. I mean really, after spending the first half of the aughts telling everyone that U.S. mortgage-backed anything constituted prime investment-grade material, who on earth would pay any degree of credence to anything they say? I mean, you'd really have to be an idiot to put any faith in these companies. This is particularly true when it comes to their assessments of government, as opposed to corporate, debt where the rating agencies have access to just as much relevant information as the general public and so there really is no other way to see this but as a guess which is supported by, at best, nothing at all and, at worst, mindless ideology. The action spooked investors, sending the three main stock indexes down more than 1 percent. Though obviously it's difficult to say whether the stock market was spooked because they actually feared a U.S. government default (an opinion they'd evidently not held or realized they'd held until S.&P. published its own), higher interest rates resulting from market fears of U.S. government default, future austerity measures imposed by the government responding to assumed market fears of U.S. government default, or something else entirely, like higher oil prices or Japan or Portugal or whatever.

Treasury yields, or the interest rate that the country pays on its debt, spiked immediately after the announcement. And by "spike immediately," I mean rose slightly from one historic low to another historic low before actually finishing the day lower than it started. Which is to say, I am completely making shit up at this point, but nevermind, you probably won't read past the jump to the business section anyway and you definitely won't bother looking up the April 18th figures from online sources that are readily accessible. Since the United States owes more than $9 trillion in outstanding debt to the public, even a one-tenth of a percent increase could potentially add billions to the deficit over time. Paul Ryan Paul Ryan PAUL RYAN!

Get out yo ruler.

Now here is some science I can get behind thank you Cory Doctorow from BoingBoing.
Men's taint-size correlated with fertility

thoughts for the season of buying shit

"Un artiste est un scarabée qui trouve, dans les excréments mêmes de la société, les aliments nécessaires pour produire les œuvres qui fascinent et bouleversent ses semblables. L’artiste, tel un scarabée, se nourrit de la merde du monde pour lequel il œuvre, et de cette nourriture abjecte il parvient, parfois, à faire jaillir la beauté."

-wajdi mouawad

parfois!

Today I found the ugliest assortment of Christmas bulbs ever manufactured, hand-blown in India for Old Navy (really), "Targét," and some other unnamed temple to misguided consumption, overpaid marketers, and underpaid producers. I reflected on the bulbs (and for that matter, in them, but that is a different story), both because the holidays sometimes provide ample reason to remain in musty basements longer than needed, and because I found in these hideous artifacts some twisted commentary on our collective idea of value.

We are all taught a simple formula - value, or rather, price, is a relation between scarcity and demand. Demand may be elastic or inelastic, but this itself is a function of relative value. Inelastic demand comes from objects that satisfy basic needs, or that are priced so low that any modest increase would not impact the decision to purchase. In other words, it relates to the things we need the most, and the things that seem to impact our financial lives the least. But what does it mean to "need" something, and how is value affected when cost becomes meaningless?

There're many answers, both varied and valid, but this is the one I came across that struck me the most.

http://www.slate.com/id/2083452/

Because often, when price is meaningless, the need is abstract. In this case, meaning, whatever the Sotheby assessment, is a matter of narrative significance. The article undersells the enormously decadent saltshaker by implying it could be replaced by a four-dollar table set from Target - a short trip to the smelter could turn that irreplaceable, irreplicable piece of Western cultural history (a true monument to décadence) into several thousand dollars worth of bullion. Inevitably, though, we would say that it had lost "value." But what do we lament, the entropic loss of Cellini's virtuosic craftsmanship, or the gaping hole in our archeological record - the dissolution of an artifact into specious accounts and unremarkable specie. Both of course, but while the one has disappeared permanently, the figurative loss remains: a debit against the past that cannot be repaid.

And so, in the spirit of Christmas, we remember that it's "the thought that counts," but that thought is fear. This fear of being without the hard stuff, the bullion, the proof takes on a ritualistic quality come the holiday season. Who wants to be the one without a gift? The social capital invested in the wrapped whatever-it-is has far more value than the item itself. This is not the same as spontaneous giving. We all know which gifts we may have bought each other anyway, out of pure consideration (though the cynic would suggest that they all fall in the category of items with meaningless cost). We also know the season creates certain holes that must be filled, lest our stories and our cultural memory slip into "the" abyss. Otherwise, there may be empty spots on your Christmas tree.

That's why we buy cheap ornaments when the tree's about to go up, even if some poor Bangledeshi uttered an ancient curse on the miserable designer when she had committed another day to blowing his nauseating glass balls. The fear of losing meaning at this highly meaningful time compels some people, including my precious mother, to buy these absurdities even when quaint and perfectly lovely orbs sit below piles of other trucs (there is no real translation for "stuff").

That's why I took them to the garbage and smashed them individually. And go figure, there was nothing inside.

(sauf, peut-être, une histoire).

also, on spending time in the basement alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39UJuPogwiY

Let's blame the new generation

This is a response to the New Yorker article Sarah posted on Facebook, "Small Change," written about two months before this moronic cartoon character anti-child abuse campaign* started, but certainly applicable. It's an interesting piece, and all its points about the futility and idiocy of making a change to one's ephemeral online persona in order to support an activist cause are generally good. Unfortunately, however, it strikes me, like so many New Yorker pieces do, as thoroughly patronizing and extremely unself-aware. I know this is a literary piece and not a scientific study, but the points the author makes are based on comparison of "internet-age" activism and civil-rights era activism, and the things he's comparing are simply not comparable.

The author's point, like most people who complain about these things (including myself), is that the internet and social media are lowering the standards of activism so that someone can feel warm and fuzzy about helping abused children without actually having done jack shit - "slactivism" is the incredibly annoying neologism I've read a few times to describe this phenomenon. As anyone arguing about the activism (or lack thereof) of young people today must do, Gladwell brings up the rightly legendary sacrifices of the civil rights protestors, marchers, etc. And hey, maybe a little shame would get some people (again, including myself) off their asses and out to an actual protest. But, it's really not a good argument he's making.

Gladwell is essentially saying that we can compare the 500 million users of Facebook (and OK, not all of them are students) to the tens of thousands of student activists who did so much in the fight for civil rights. Can anyone spot the problem here? He's taken the top couple percent of the 50's and 60's student population in terms of activism and is claiming that since more people than live in the United States are not doing the same work that they did, the internet must be making us soft.

Now, by saying what I'm about to say, I am being equally non-evidence-based as Gladwell was, but I'm going to say it anyway. I would put my money on the internet and social media in fact increasing rates of activism among young people - if we look at the number of students today who are active comparably to the civil rights activists. The problem here isn't that it's so easy to do something meaningless - it's ALWAYS been easy to do something meaningless. The problem is that those meaningless things are so much more visible now. For every civil rights activist - and anti-civil rights activist - in the 50's and 60's, there were lots of people who didn't do anything - just like changing your profile picture doesn't do anything. The problem is that no one knew they weren't doing anything, because there wasn't a global platform for them to not do anything on!

Anyway. Sorry this is so badly written, I have been working non-stop for the past week and my brain is rather tired. Also, since Dave and Ben are both unlikely to have blog access for the next little while, I guess it's just me, Sarah, and Lion (and maybe Dan) on this one.

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* I would like to point out that my profile picture has been Milhouse since October 22, and that changing it from a cartoon character to something else to avoid the campaign would simply be giving in to the moronism.

A Wave of Cold Water

Much is being said around the blogosphere recently about this revitalizing nugget of Charlie Cook wisdom concerning wave elections:

The one sobering thought that veteran Republican consultants are already contemplating is that the larger the wave this year, the more difficult it will be to hold onto some of these seats in 2012 and 2014 in the House and 2016 in the Senate.

The bigger the wave, the weaker the class and the harder it will be to hold onto those seats. Democrats only have to look at their 2006 and 2008 classes for plenty of examples.

What this means is that we will likely have our third wave election in a row this year, and the bigger this one is, the more likely that there will be a countervailing wave in either 2012 or 2014.

I'll admit, when I first read the article, I was encouraged. On its face, it seems logical. If the Republicans make big gains this year, they will come in regions that are demographically trending blue, they look to be relying on depressed democratic turnout, and of course this crop of Republican candidates is particularly insane. It's somewhat cold comfort for those of us who had hoped for a continued legislative agenda that wasn't bogged down by fishing expeditions and threats of government shutdown, but this kind of analysis offers, dare I say it, hope. All we need to do is tough it out for two years, and we'll be okay again. The Republicans will stretch themselves too far, far beyond the actual geographic contours of their party, and a large correction will follow. At that point, assuming the economy doesn't crash groin-first into a cactus again, Obama keeps the presidency and gets back to work passing more desperately needed legislation.

Well, as much as I'd like to leave it there, that's not the way it crumbles, cookie-wise. As Matthew Yglesias points out, Republican gains this year are going to be coming out of a very large Democratic majority. The current breakdown is 255-177; just to reach parity, the Republicans need to pick up 40 or so seats. The Democrats are the ones that are already stretched way beyond their bounds, holding seats in all kinds of places they just never would have without George Bush's help. Many of these seats were picked up by the much-maligned Blue Dog democrats, most of which are now trapped in "who's the most conservative conservative" style battles with well-financed and typically crazy Tea Partiers. If there's ever a "natural" state to party control, these are "naturally" Republican areas, now matter how the demographics may slowly be trending. In other words, this election is the countervailing wave, and only if it's a wave of such a magnitude to tip into traditionally blue districts (a 70+ seat wave) could we reasonably expect another wave to come.*

Cook also has this to say:

Should the Senate end up with a 9-seat net gain for Republicans, or even eight, there will be immediate speculation about what Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., do. Both are up for re-election in 2012 and neither is likely to be oblivious to the fact that Democrats have twice as many seats at risk in 2012 and 2014 as Republicans. Whether the GOP captures a Senate majority this year or not, the odds are pretty good that they will have one in either two or four years. That kind of exposure is enormously important, particularly given the rarefied circumstances in which Democrats won some of those seats in 2006 and 2008.

So even if there is a countervailing wave, and somehow the House returns to Democratic control, the GOP is still going to have two more decent shots to take the Senate, where the real action is. And it's the Senate which has caused progressives the most grief in the last two years, slowing up every confirmation or bill that so much as looked at them funny. Worse yet, Senate control may lie in the hands of Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, two crabby old "moderates", in the worst possible sense of the word.**

So, cold water. Of course, it's possible that the Republican Party somehow deviates from its current strategy (though unlikely, considering both how much success they've had with obstructionism and how many Tea Partiers will soon be in Congress), or that legislative procedural reform is passed (also unlikely, as the Democrats will be happy to pick up those tools once used against them), and then Obama is once again capable of passing large, ambitious, and vital legislation. It's much more probable, though, that the next 4-6 years are a blur of frivolous congressional investigations, hyperbolic showdowns, and maybe even an impeachment or two.

* And keep in mind that the natural breakdown of voting constituencies has always resulted in a lopsided congressional map towards the Republicans. Democratic voters tend to cluster in higher concentrations (urban areas) than Republican voters do, so even if the congressional vote is 50-50, you'll have a Republican majority due to the way the districts are laid out.

** I wrote about this way back, but these guys get away with murder under the guise of being "independent". Remember the Cornhusker Kickback? Or, say, anything Joe Lieberman has ever done? They possess enormous power simply because they've positioned themselves at the ideological fulcrum of the Senate.