Guatemalan ex-president Alfonso Portillo will be extradited to the US after he goes through a local trial and serves his local sentence. The request for extradition came from New York's D.A. under the charge of money laundering (US$70 million). Guatemalan courts deliberated for nearly 12 hours yesterday in the midst of death threats to the judge panel's families and also strong accusations from ex president Portillo to the US Embassy. He argues that his extradition and persecution is political, due to the fact, among others, that he refused to sign a law that would render US armed forces acting in Guatemala above the law.
This will be a very long process and surely, one to follow.

Since we're talking about hipsters, here's a post on something hipsters (or other "socially conscious" folks) love to hate: The evil mega-corporation Wal-Mart, which somehow underpays their employees, manages to evilly drive other companies out of business, and underpays their suppliers. And, yes, I did pull this out of the comments. Oh well--sometimes I like my comments.

Explain this: whenever Wal-Mart opens up a store or a factory, they have applicants that FAR outweigh their positions. Seems to me like the people are taking advantage of the (relatively) high wages that Wal-Mart offers. Maybe everyone lining up is just masochistic. Maybe they need the nice westerners to tell them what they really should be wanting, eh?

In some examples, the next-best option to working at a Wal-Mart or Wal-Mart producer is picking through garbage at the dump. Oh, but at least a mean, evil western company isn't "exploiting" those dump workers! At least they're making an honest living. Right?

Wal-Mart works so well (hey, it wouldn't be an "evil empire" if it didn't work well, right?) because they have a business model for their stores and producers that enables them to use very low-skilled workers--workers that would not be able to find a factory job elsewhere--and then, having obtained modern factory experience, those workers often leave Wal-Mart to work at more lucrative positions elsewhere, having gained a great amount of human capital because someone "underpaid" them (according to the arrogant west-centric assumption that something other than a dollar a day is the 'right' wage for them).

For a primer on this issue, check the Econtalk on fair and free trade coffee w/ Munger here, and for more information on rent-seeking (what Munger refers to in the podcast as "job gentrification," check (another Munger) Econtalk here. Rent-seeking is the reason that you can't give money (or higher-than-market-wage-jobs) away for free w/o it being a net-loser for all involved.

This really is basic, elementary economics. If one is going to have an opinion on economic issues, it really behooves one to read some basic economics. And, Sowell's Basic Economics is a great place to start.

Here's a puzzler (answered in the aforementioned podcasts): the best way to help the poorest is not to try to offer high wages for low-skill jobs. Now, why is that?

As Robert Samuelson put it in a recent column,

One job of presidents is to educate Americans about crucial national problems. On health care, Barack Obama has failed. Almost everything you think you know about health care is probably wrong or, at least, half wrong. Great simplicities and distortions have been peddled in the name of achieving "universal health coverage." The miseducation has worsened as the debate approaches its climax.

According to Brett McCracken's blog here are characteristic of the new "cool" missional, formerly suburban Christians now moving to the city to "do mission." To live "incarnationally," etc.

Christian hipsters like music, movies, and books that are well-respected by their respective artistic communities--Christian or not. They love books like Resident Aliens by Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider, God's Politics by Jim Wallis, and The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. They tend to be fans of any number of the following authors: Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Wendell Berry, Thomas Merton, John Howard Yoder, Walter Brueggemann, N.T. Wright, Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Anne Lamott, C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, Henri Nouwen, Soren Kierkegaard, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Annie Dillard, Marilynne Robison, Chuck Klosterman, David Sedaris, or anything ancient and/or philosophically important.

Christian hipsters love thinking and acting Catholic, even if they are thoroughly Protestant. They love the Pope, liturgy, incense, lectio divina, Lent, and timeless phrases like "Thanks be to God" or "Peace of Christ be with you." They enjoy Eastern Orthodox churches and mysterious iconography, and they love the elaborate cathedrals of Europe (even if they are too museum-like for hipster tastes).

Here's one of my new questions: can these new, cool formerly suburban, now "missional" Christian hipsters actually reach people in "the city." Or are these Churches simply reaching Christian hipsters in the city?

Can hipsters reach hip hop culture?

BTW: Brett McCracken is the author of Hipster Christianity (Aug 2010).

Let them first consider how easily [the use of artificial contraception] of action could open wide the way for marital infidelity and a general lowering of moral standards. Not much experience is needed to be fully aware of human weakness and to understand that human beings--and especially the young, who are so exposed to temptation--need incentives to keep the moral law, and it is an evil thing to make it easy for them to break that law.

Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection.

"Liberating Black Theology" book promo from Joseph D. Martinez on Vimeo.

Insider twentysomething Christian journalist Brett McCracken has grown up in the evangelical Christian subculture and observed the recent shift away from the "stained glass and steeples" old guard of traditional Christianity to a more unorthodox, stylized 21st-century church. This change raises a big issue for the church in our postmodern world: the question of cool. The question is whether or not Christianity can be, should be, or is, in fact, cool. This probing book is about an emerging category of Christians McCracken calls "Christian hipsters"--the unlikely fusion of the American obsessions with worldly "cool" and otherworldly religion--an analysis of what they're about, why they exist, and what it all means for Christianity and the church's relevancy and hipness in today's youth-oriented culture.

Dudes, this is going to be "da bomb." Cool and hipster Christians are increasingly become the new losers (sellouts). It's too bad that "missional" and "hipster" have become cultural synonyms. This book is out August 10, 2010 (Baker Books)