Americans want answers. Several months ago Iraq’s second most populous city, Mosul was overrun by a well-armed, well-organized, well-funded group of ‘militants’ called ISIS (now the Islamic State). Since then, thousands of Iraqis have been displaced, hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have been murdered and two American journalists have been beheaded. And the American people want knowledge and reassurance – two goals that in this instance seem to be at odds. In an address a couple of weeks ago, President Obama said flatly that he didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIS yet, a statement that drew criticism from the professional left and right. Joe Biden several days later delivered his own address – a sort of save – in which he promised to chase ISIS to the ‘gates of Hell’, which is still not a strategy, but did reassure the likes of Chris Matthews and presumably Al Franken and…

Chris Rock tells a hilarious and revealing joke about the pristine and mostly white community of Alpine, New Jersey that he calls home. Chris Rock, we all know, began life in a working class community in NYC and began working in comedy clubs when he was in high school. After years of toil that led to global fame, he bought the home of his dreams. According to him he had to make ‘miracles happen!’ to buy that house. Of course he was probably expecting his neighbors to be equally famous people: titans of industry, world-renowned innovators, maybe a few heirs and heiresses. But Chris Rock’s white next door neighbor was a dentist.  Not the guy that ‘invented teeth’ as Rock says, but a ‘pull your teeth’ dentist. Blacks often pay a surcharge in pursuit of a sense of accomplishment, but end wasting money in the process. Bruce Levenson, the majority owner of…

One of the ways institutions preserve power is through creating rules and regulations that are labyrinthian, archaic and seemingly unchangeable and then repeating them over and over again in a slogan, giving them an air of legitimacy that unfortunately the public buys into. The Bush administration’s claim that ‘If we don’t attack them there, we will have to do it here’ doesn’t quite resonate like it did back in 2001. And a politician claiming that ‘What is good for GM is good for America” would probably be given the side-eye these days. Conventional wisdom born of institutional sloganeering rarely holds up under scrutiny, so when I hear people regurgitate NCAA rhetoric against student athletes receiving payment it troubles me. Our first instinct is to immediately launch into an argument about how much money colleges do or do not make from college sports, which forces us to wade into the murky…

[slideshow_deploy id=’1954′] Overview This was an interesting, but confusing week. On the international front, Nelson Mandela’s funeral and memorial service was Tuesday, yet the focus seemed to be on a series of ‘gates’ or mini-scandals, rather than his life and legacy. On the domestic front, Marco Rubio signed his family up for Obamacare while Michigan women are being urged to buy ‘rape insurance’. Also an epidemic of non-epidemics continue to capture the public imagination – the knockout game, the war against Christmas, and the Stalinization of the Pope. In the sports/entertainment world, aside from random trivia like Tila Tequila’s embrace of white supremacy and a strange beef between Jim Brown and Kobe Bryant, two albums vied for the public’s attention. One is by a man who seems to revel in his status as an outlaw and pedophile. The other is by Beyonce. Let’s take another look at the week. Entertainment/Sports…

Uruguay legalized marijuana a few days ago, inspiring drug reform advocates and drawing the ire of the United Nations. Here’s what the UN had to say: “[the decision to legalize] will not protect young people, but rather have the perverse effect of encouraging early experimentation, lowering the age of first use, and thus contributing to… earlier onset of addiction and other disorders,” And that: “[Uruguay] fails to consider its negative impacts on health since scientific studies confirm that cannabis is an addictive substance with serious consequences for people’s health”. And on top of that: “Cannabis is not only addictive but may also affect some fundamental brain functions, IQ potential, and academic and job performance and impair driving skills. Smoking cannabis is more carcinogenic than smoking tobacco,” That all sounds pretty bad, but also pretty familiar like the gateway drug/slippery slope arguments of a generation ago, so maybe the UN is…

Last week Dr. Ben Carson further damaged his credibility and his chances of becoming the 2016 Republican presidential candidate by equating proponents of gay marriage with those that engage in pedophilia and bestiality. Here is his statement: “Marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s a well-established, fundamental pillar of society and no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.” In response to his critics he said the following: “Now perhaps the examples were not the best choice of words, and I certainly apologize if I offended anyone. But the point that I was making was that no group of individuals, whoever they are, whatever their belief systems, gets to change traditional definitions.” The funniest word in his reply is ‘perhaps’ — (perhaps?!). If he wanted to choose…