Dodd makes a speech

Senator Dodd (on the badly flawed FISA bill):


Mr. President, for six years, this President has demonstrated time and time again that he doesn’t respect the role of Congress nor does he respect the rule of law.

Every six years as United States Senators we take the oath office to uphold the Constitution. Our colleagues on the House side take that oath every two years. That is important.

For six years this President has used scare tactics to prevent the Congress from reining in his abuse of authority. A case and point is the current direction this body appears to be headed as we prepare to reform and extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Many of the unprecedented rollbacks to the rule of law by this Administration have been made in the name of national security.

The Bush Administration has relentlessly focused our nation’s resources and manpower on a war of choice in Iraq. That ill conceived war has broken our military, squandered resources and emboldened our enemies.

The President’s wholesale disregard of the rule of law has compounded the damage done in Iraq and has made our nation less secure and as a direct consequence of these acts, we are less secure, more vulnerable and more isolated in the world.

Consider the scandal at Abu Ghraib – where Iraqi prisoners were subjected to inhumane and humiliating acts by U.S. personnel charged with guarding them.

Consider Guantanamo Bay. Rather than helping to protect the nation, the prisons at Guantanamo Bay have instead become the very symbol for our weakened moral standing in the world.

Consider the secret prisons run by the CIA and the practice of extraordinary rendition that allows them to evade U.S. law regarding torture.

Consider the shameful actions of our outgoing Attorney General who politicized prosecutions – who was more committed to serving the President who appointed him than the laws he had sworn to uphold.

And consider, of course, the Military Commissions Act – a law that allows evidence obtained through torture to be admitted into evidence.

It denies individuals the right to counsel.

It denies them the right to invoke the Geneva Conventions.

And it denies them the single most important and effective safeguard of liberty man has known – the right of habeas corpus, permitting prisoners to be brought before a court to determine whether their detainment is lawful.

Warrantless wiretapping, torture – the list goes on.

Each of these policies share two things in common.

First, they have weakened our ability to prosecute the global war on terrorism – if for no other reason than they have made it harder, if not impossible, to build the international support and cooperation we need to fight it.

And second, each has only been possible because Congress has not been able to stop this President’s unprecedented expansion of executive power, although some in this body have tried.

Whether or not these policies were explicitly authorized is beside the point. In every instance, Congress has been unable to hold this Administration to account for violating the rule of law and our Constitution. In each instance, Republicans in the Congress have prevented this body from telling this Administration that “a state of war is not a blank check.”

And those aren’t my words, Mr. President – those are the words of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who was nominated by Ronald Reagan.

And today, it appears that we are prepared to consider the proposed renewal of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – a law that in whatever form it eventually takes will almost certainly permit the Bush Administration to broadly eavesdrop on American citizens.

Legislation, as currently drafted, that would grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that helped this Administration violate the civil liberties of Americans and the law of this country.

Mr. President while it may be true that the proposed legislation is an improvement on existing law, it remains fundamentally flawed because it fails to protect the privacy rights of Americans or hold the Executive or the private sector accountable if they choose to ignore the law.

That is why I will not stand on the floor of the United States Senate and be silent about the direction we are headed.

It is time to say “no more.”

No more trampling our Constitution.

No more excusing those who violate the rule of law.

These are our principles.

They have been around at least since the Magna Carta.

They are enduring.

What they are not is temporary. And what we do not do in a time where our country is at risk is abandon them.

My father was Executive Trial Counsel at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals during 1945 and 1946.

What America accomplished at those historic trials wasn’t a foregone conclusion. It took courage – when Stalin and even a leader as great and noble as Winston Churchill wanted to simply execute the Nazi leaders, we didn’t back down from our belief that these men—as terrible as they were—ought to have a trial.

We did not give in to vengeance.

As then, the issue before us today is the same.

Does America stand for all that is still right with our world? Or do we retreat in fear?

Do we stand for justice that secures America? Or do we act out of vengeance that weakens us?

Mr. President, I am well aware that this issue is seen as political. I believe that Democrats were elected to strengthen the nation – elected to restore our standing in the world.

I believe we were elected to ensure that this nation adheres to the rule of law and to stop this Administration’s assault on the Constitution.

But the rule of law is not the provenance of any one political party – but of every American who has been safer because of it.

Mr. President, I know this bill hasn’t even been reported out of the Judiciary Committee yet.

But I am here today because if I have learned anything in my 26 years in this body—particularly during the last 7 years—it is that if you wait until the end to voice your concerns, you will have waited too long. That is why I have written to the Majority Leader informing him that I will object to any effort to bring this legislation to the Senate floor for consideration.

I hope that Senator Leahy is able to remove this language – he is a dear friend and I know his respect for the rule of law runs deep.

But if he cannot, I am prepared to filibuster this bill.

President Bush is right about one thing: this debate is about security. But not in the way he imagines.

He believes we have to give up certain rights to be safe.

I believe the choice between moral authority and security is a false choice.

I believe it is precisely when you stand up and protect your rights that you become stronger, not weaker.

The damage that was done to our country on 9/11 was stunning. It changed the world forever.

But when you start diminishing our rights as a people, you compound that tragedy. You cannot protect America in the long run if you fail to protect our Constitution. It is that simple.

Mr. President, history will likely judge this President harshly for his war of choice and for fighting it with a disregard for our most cherished principles.

But history is about tomorrow. We must act today to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law.

Mr. President, this is the moment. At long last, let us rise to it.

Canon 200mm f/1.8

The Canon 200mm f/1.8 is an old lens, no longer manufactured, no longer supported (as far as I know). There is news that Canon is developing a 200mm f/2 lens.

Some incredibly lovely shots by the old lens can be found here (at least for now). The long focal length and wide aperture are essential ingredients of these photographs. (The photographer's skill, the subject and recording medium are other essential ingredients, to be sure.) Be sure to go beyond Page 1.

Until the annoucement of the new lens, the extinct version of the lens was trading reportedly for as much as $4000.

A Trading Proposition

I'm not sure why, but I find this to be very funny: (all of the following is an excerpt)

THIS APPEARED ON CRAIG’S LIST… I’m a beautiful (spectacularly beautiful) 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy… I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City… Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board?... I dated a business man who makes average around 200–250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. 250,000 won’t get me to central park west. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right?... Here are my questions specifically:… What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings… Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village… How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY. Please hold your insults – I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them – in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

Well, she got an answer:

I read your posting with great interest and have thought meaningfully about your dilemma. I offer the following analysis of your predicament.

Firstly, I’m not wasting your time, I qualify as a guy who fits your bill; that is I make more than $500K per year. That said here’s how I see it.

Your offer, from the prospective of a guy like me, is plain and simple a crappy business deal. Here’s why. Cutting through all the B.S., what you suggest is a simple trade: you bring your looks to the party and I bring my money. Fine, simple. But here’s the rub, your looks will fade and my money will likely continue into perpetuity…in fact, it is very likely that my income increases but it is an absolute certainty that you won’t be getting any more beautiful!

So, in economic terms you are a depreciating asset and I am an earning asset. Not only are you a depreciating asset, your depreciation accelerates! Let me explain, you’re 25 now and will likely stay pretty hot for the next 5 years, but less so each year. Then the fade begins in earnest. By 35 stick a fork in you!

So in Wall Street terms, we would call you a trading position, not a buy and hold…hence the rub…marriage. It doesn’t make good business sense to "buy you" (which is what you’re asking) so I’d rather lease. In case you think I’m being cruel, I would say the following. If my money were to go away, so would you, so when your beauty fades I need an out. It’s as simple as that. So a deal that makes sense is dating, not marriage… I hope this is helpful, and if you want to enter into some sort of lease, let me know.

Unstated but assumed in all of this is what philosopher D. C. Stove, in his book of the same name, would call a Darwinian Fairy Tale, the fairy tale here being that because there is a theoretical evolutionary basis for rich men to pursue beautiful women, they must in fact follow this course.

Bush, Rumsfeld implicated in torture

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/23/145542/57

A US vision of a Middle East

Iran is a major obstacle to the U.S. vision of a Middle East, Rice says.







Via miaculpa.blogspot.com

Song

Original


My apologies to those who don't know Hindi. I can't translate.

Guess who is in the news?

As per sitemeter, this blog has been receiving a number of hits from Pakistan, all based on searches for Ijaz/Ejaz Shah.

This blog posting and this one produced the hits.

I was wondering why, until I saw this by B. Raman: Bin Laden's Former Handling Officer Was In Charge of Benazir's Security - International Terrorism Monitor---Paper No. 288

Another Garba picture

The dancers were visibly reacting to the camera in my hands, and my niece N took the camera, (correctly, as it turned out) pointing out that they would not notice as much the camera in the hands of another young woman. Here is one of the results:



#7 in the previous post is also likely by my niece.

A Keeper

This essay on Bush versus History is a keeper.

The plan for governance in “post-Saddam Iraq” does not exist, all discussion of it having been paralyzed by a bitter dispute between officials in the Pentagon, State Department, and CIA that the President will never resolve. The Iraqi “civil society” that he tells Aznar is “relatively strong” will soon be decimated by the prolonged looting and chaos that follows on the entry of American troops into Baghdad. The “good bureaucracy” he boasts about in Iraq will shortly be destroyed by a radical de-Baathification ordered by the American proconsul that he almost certainly never approved. The Iraqi army that he decides in early March will be retained and used for reconstruction will instead be peremptorily dissolved, to catastrophic effect.

If these radical departures from the President’s chosen plan have dampened his optimism and faith — or indeed have even led him to try to discover what happened — there is no evidence of it. When Bush’s latest biographer, Robert Draper, asked him why the Iraqi army had not been kept intact, as the President had decided it should be, Bush replied, “Yeah, I can’t remember. I’m sure I said, ‘This is the policy, what happened?’”

The Decline and Fall of the New York Times

But the Times made one more mistake -- one which it alone could make, and which I think ultimately led to yesterday's meltdown. Most newspapers adopted the always dangerous strategy of trying to become more like one's competitors rather than establishing the defensible position of being even more true to oneself. Like most newspapers, the Times decided to become more timely, more hip, and more judgmental than the electronic media -- when it should have become better reported, more objective, and better written; professionalism being the one arena where the new competitors would have a hard time competing. - Michael S Malone, How the New York Times Fell Apart.

This is something I have long believed. The only problem is that perhaps there isn't enough of a market for a better reported, more objective, better written newspaper with high standards of professionalism. This being a country where professionals for whom English is a second language write better than the natives; a country that reelected George W Bush, a country that made Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly into stars.

Neither professionalism nor competence is a value for the majority, and there in lies the real story of the NYT's decline.

Road Sign, Holmdel, New Jersey

The Spirit of Dance

The Indian Culture Society of New Jersey held a series of Navaratri Garba dances at the Dunn Sports Center, Elizabeth High School. Rediff.com pictures of the event are here.
My few pictures are here.

I felt disoriented when I entered the indoor stadium turned dance room:



It is not just the women that were dressed in vibrant colors. While many guys had come in jeans and tee-shirt, some of them did not disappoint. Little children shared in the fun.











The spirit of dance:

Pictures from the East Brunswick Festival

September 16th a fair/festival was held on the grounds of the East Brunswick library. Some pictures from there:

Why America is in Iraq

The whole of Retd. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski's speech should be read.

If not, read below:

In the second half of 2002, a total of 27 different reasons were given by the administration or by Congresspersons as to why we needed to go into Iraq as soon as possible. I know this because a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign wrote her senior honors thesis entitled "Uncovering the Rationales for the War on Iraq: The Words of the Bush Administration, Congress and the Media from September 12, 2001, to October 11, 2002." Devon Largio did a detailed analysis identifying 23 different reasons put forth by the administration, and 4 more put forth by various congressmen in the run up to war.

....

Today, we generally understand that we were lied to by the Pentagon, and by our government. These lies were repeated and often expanded upon by politicians and our media in 2002 and for several years after the invasion. Suggestions by politicians and media outlets that the truth was actually somewhat different were met by scorn, and accusations of sleeping with the enemy. And we all fell in line, and marched in unison.

There were of course, real reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. There might even be 27 real reasons. But I know of three.

One reason has to do with enhancing our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. There was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia, and thus the troubled monarchy. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter – to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important – that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. And Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.

A major reason for the invasion, and the urgency of it, is that sanctions and containment had worked, and over the years, almost too well. They had become counterproductive. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.

Naomi Klein has researched and written many astute articles on our foreign policy in Iraq. One of these, published by Harper’s in September 2003, was called "Baghdad Year Zero." She made a compelling case for the convergence of business interests and a kind of neoconservative free market ideology – and that the invasion and occupation was a clean slate transformation of a command economy into a free trade utopia. Neoconservative ideology does not embrace free trade in the sense that libertarians or Adam Smith might embrace it, but instead prefers significant state involvement in trade, for the good of the nation. However, Klein’s article from 2003 sheds a great deal of light on what we really wanted and intended for Iraq.

Another reason is a uniquely American rationale, and it relates to our currency, and our debt situation. Saddam Hussein decided in November 2000 to sell his Food for Oil program oil sales in euros. The oil sales permitted in that program weren’t very much. But if the sanctions were lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been setting a standard away from, and competing with, US paper.

The U.S. dollar was, and remains, in a sensitive period because we are a major debtor nation now. Our currency is still globally popular, but these days that’s more due to habit than its reliability as a currency backed up by a government that the world trusts not to print boatloads of bills for no productive reason. To the extent that oil, almost the new gold in terms of in-demand commodity reliability, is traded on the euro, global confidence in the dollar and global bank reserve demand for the dollar shifts negatively.

In any case, the first executive order regarding Iraq that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.

These, for me are the big three.

QsOTD

Christopher Manion

Ron Paul is right, of course: foreign countries and foreign people are not barbarians, nor are they simpletons who "hate us because we are free." There are millions of intelligent and cultured people in the world who watch what our government does. And they act accordingly. In seven years of occupying the Oval Office, Mr. Bush has not yet learned this simple lesson that any high-school kid who didn’t go to Andover could teach you in ten minutes on the playground.

Karen Kwiatkowski:

What we have done – intentionally or not – is to create an Iraq that today recalls the poorly functioning Ba-ath command economy, after a decade of deadly UN sanctions and periodic American bombing, as a good thing, a lovely memory. Electricity was delivered, water was clean and water systems functional, there weren’t two million internally displaced and another two million refugees in camps in neighboring countries, and people could drive their cars through comfortably mixed neighborhoods to visit, shop, and sell goods – or to visit a museum, library, or park.

As a libertarian, I condemn Iraqi Ba-ath Party socialism, its command economy, its lack of civil liberties and freedom, its crude and warlike dictator who invaded one country after another – first Iran, then Kuwait.

As an American, I am quite simply sick that we have done Saddam Hussein one better in every one of these areas.

Worlds Apart!

From NYT's Metropolitan Diary (perhaps only NJ-ites might appreciate this)

Dear Diary:

I work in a shop near New York University. A month ago, on registration day, a father and his student son came to the store. When they were asked to check their bags, the father seemed surprised and said “They don’t do that where we’re from.”

Expecting he would say they were from a place far from New York, I asked where they lived. The father replied that they were from New Jersey.

When I said that I hadn’t thought New Jersey was that different from New York, the father said: “Oh, yes. We have bears.”

The pair went on to shop and then retrieved their bags. As they turned to leave the store, the father said to his son, “John, you’re in a whole new world.”

Olga Hughes

Fair Game by Jon Swift

Jon Swift is a satirist in the tradition of the original Jonathan Swift, but some things go beyond even his ability to satirize.

Being a conservative means never saying you’re sorry for what other conservatives do. It means justifying the means if you support the ends, whether that involves ruining people’s lives and reputations, invading people’s privacy, violating people’s constitutional rights or torturing them. It means seeing anyone who is not with you 100% as an enemy and seeing every issue as black and white. It means doing whatever is necessary to defeat the enemy even if you sometimes have to violate your own principles to do it and seem like a hypocrite. Being a conservative means scoring political points by going after easy enemies and racking up victories instead of wasting a lot of time with the much harder job of persuading people with the rightness of your cause. It means doing it to them before they do it to us. It means seeing everyone opposed to us, even a 12-year-old boy, as “fair game.” Yes, I am very proud to be a conservative. - "Fair Game"

The context is the battle over S-CHIP, a government program to provide health insurance to children. The President vetoed an expansion of this program. The Democrats chose a 12-year old boy, Graeme Frost, who is a beneficiary of the program to give the Democrats' reply to the President's weekly radio address.

The Frosts' story is that though they are in a way comfortably off - both parents work, they own a house bought way back when housing prices were rational, the children go to good schools - there was no affordable health insurance available to them when both their children were seriously injured in a automobile accident. (The Frosts, we are told, earn a combined $45K a year, and the health insurance that was quoted to them was $1.2K a month). Under Maryland law, which is where the Frosts live, the children were eligible for S-CHIP (the rule was for a family of 4 having income within 200% of the official poverty level or some such).

The Frosts committed at least two cardinal sins, in the eyes of the conservatives. One of them dared criticize the President. Secondly, as a diarist on dkos pointed (sorry, I couldn't find the diary), the Frosts explode the myth that a white American family with all the right values and hard work can make it in America on their own. The reality is that every middle-class family is one serious health emergency away from bankruptcy.

So the conservative attack dogs in the media did a number on the Frosts, and it was so bad that even Jon Swift's unfailing wit did the unthinkable and failed.

The real mood in America

The Congress is intent to bring to a vote a resolution that terms the killing of 1.5 million Armenians around 1915 by the Ottoman Turks as a genocide. Symbolic though it may be, it has made the Turks angry. The Congress is resisting pressure from the President on this. (By Congress, we really mean the leaders of the Democrats.)

Why are Nancy Pelosi and her followers so determined? Because there is a constituency for it. Quote

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will determine whether the Foreign Affairs Committee resolution comes to a vote on the House floor. She comes from California, a state with a large Armenian population, and she's on record as favoring the resolution.

Nothing like doing things one's constituency wants (and seemingly principled, too - who wants to be a holocaust denier?) to put some spine into a politician!

What that implies, (and is noted by Frank Rich in today's New York Times) is that there is no constituency that demands with the same energy or influence for, among other things:

- an end to the policy of torture instituted by G.W. Bush
- a restoration of habeas corpus and an end to illegal surveillance

I don't mention other things, like an end to the war in Iraq, because there are powerful forces other than the President who are in opposition.

But surely no one condones torture or the suspension of civil liberties?

Think about it and let it sink in.

In particular, it means that the liberal netroots plus whatever additional civil liberties constituency is out there, collectively has much less influence than Nancy Pelosi's Armenian constituency. Time and again, the very same Congressional Democrats have given Bush and the neocons whatever they want. One would have thought that the same two things that apply in the Armenian case, a constituency and a principle, would be enough to give them the courage to fight.

We haven't taken to heart Ben Franklin's warning:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Americans will countenance anything their government does ,as long as it lets them max. out their credit cards, and allows unscrupulous lenders to give them shady loans. Civil liberties are no good as a collateral for a loan, so who needs them?

Climate news!

Gore and UN panel win Nobel prize
BBC breaking news graphic
Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mr Gore, 59, was vice-president under Bill Clinton and has since devoted his efforts to environmental campaigning.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change brings together the world's top climate scientists.

The Nobel committee said it wanted to help the world focus on the threat it faced from climate change.

Is he goofy -2?

At the time of the VA Tech shooting, Russel T. Johnson had written

I've written on this subject before, but here it goes again. Every time I point this out, people roll their eyes and act like I'm goofy, but....

These shootings always occur right after a public health crisis, in this case a big pet food recall. The last school shooting, the one at the Amish school, came right after the big ecoli/green onion scare."

There was a school shooting in Ohio on October 10, in which a student injured five and then killed himself. In other news (this item dated October 11, but clearly the problem had occurred well before the 11th, the alert was issued October 9)

OMAHA, Neb. — ConAgra Foods Inc. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are defending their decision not to recall pot pies linked to a salmonella outbreak, although two East Coast grocery chains made their own choice to pull the product from store shelves Wednesday.

The Banquet and generic brand chicken and turkey pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 139 cases of salmonella in 30 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 20 people have been hospitalized, but so far no deaths have been linked to the pot pies.

Consumers have been warned not to eat the pot pies while officials investigate, and ConAgra is offering refunds.

ConAgra spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said the Omaha-based company decided with USDA officials that the consumer alert issued Tuesday {Oct 9} would more appropriate than a recall.

"From the consumer perspective, there's not much difference," Childs said.

But unlike with a recall, the pot pies remain available in many stores.

Contempt of Court

That is what one feels about the current Supreme Court.

So do I!

Such a worthless, spineless pusillanimous set of elected officials, I've never witnessed in my life; in the history books maybe those folks in the Weimar Republic?

Like Cenk Uygur, I too Officially Give Up On The Democrats.

PS: Glenn Greenwald raises faint hopes.

The God We Don't Want

Swami Dayananda Saraswati, in his commentary on the Gita:

If ...He is the author of the world, the one from whom everything has come, then ultimately He is the author of all the people in the world. Why, then, has He placed some people in elevated positions and others in lowly positions?...And if He is responsible, He must certainly have a problem - the blemish of partiality.

Why else would He put a silver spoon in the mouth of one person...and not even a plastic one in the mouth of still others?

If this question cannot be asked and answered, why bother about God at all? It is not enough to say "The differences among people are all according to God's wish and He should not be questioned." This double justification simply means that God does whatever He does and because He is God, no one can question Him. Well, He may be God, but I am the sufferer....

What kind of God is this, that sits above us somewhere, having a wonderful life, where some unfortunate person has to inch along the ground because he or she is lame? And if God must make a crippled person, the least He could do is put the person in America where motorized wheelchairs are readily available. Even this much He does not do for the person! How can we look at such differences and say that God is justified in all that He does. What kind of justification is this?

Further I am told that, not only has God made me, but He has also said I must follow Him. Someone else tells me. The least God could do is come and tell me Himself. Then this would all mean something to me. In fact God should tell everyone.

Instead, someone else tells us that God told him and then asked him to tell us. If God wants me to know this, why does He not tell me Himself. Also another person sometimes comes along, saying that God told him that what He told the first person earlier is no longer current and what we are now going to hear is the latest word from God!

This kind of God is someone we would all be better off without, in fact. If God is something that is to be established, the concept should be a rational one, at least. What is unreasonable cannot be accepted.

An amazing statistic

history_mom , in a comment on pandagon

...statistically the first year of a child’s life is the period when most marriages end...

Totally shocking, makes me doubt the existence of civilization.

________

PS:
1. We could say that the above is a snapshot of a society in transition, not a permanent state of affairs. One would devoutly hope so!

2. We could say that the above is not a problem to be solved at all. IMO, no pre-industrial society could have survived such a chronic problem. In the modern world, indeed, government is being asked to take up the slack:
Amanda Marcotte:

...we need federally subsidized day care, more worker protections for working mothers, better maternal leave (and maybe even mandatory paternal leave), more flex time at work, and less social stigma on motherhood.

3. Religion and tradition served to hold these types of things in check; but they've been discarded as superstition. Also is argued that the American religious actually have more divorces than atheists. This seems to be based on the work of George Barna. A good critique of Barna is available here. Please read through the entire series of posts.

Perhaps more on this later.

A rejoinder to Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul (and now candidate for Presidency), March 2005:

The notion that an all-powerful, centralized state should provide monolithic solutions to the ethical dilemmas of our times is not only misguided, but also contrary to our Constitution. Remember, federalism was established to allow decentralized, local decision-making by states. Yet modern America seeks a federal solution for every perceived societal ill, ignoring constitutional limits on government. The result is a federal state that increasingly makes all-or-nothing decisions that alienate large segments of the population.

This federalization of social issues, often championed by conservatives, has not created a pro-life culture, however. It simply has prevented the 50 states from enacting laws that more closely reflect the views of their citizens....

The idea that the centralized state should provide solutions to the ethical dilemmas of our time arose from slavery and, in the modern era, from the segregation and deeply ingrained racism of the country. The "decentralized, local decision-making" states were the reactionary culprits in these stories. The states have not exactly been beacons of liberty, freedom and the right to happiness.

'toons

She collects 'toons.

My favorite is the fourth one.

Starburst

Via Darksyde on dkos, this Hubble picture of the starburst cluster in NGC 3603.

"Merely" 20,000 light years away.

The Root of Loneliness

Swami Dayananda Saraswati in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita had this to say:

Every society has false values and these false values are taught; they grow upon you. When, for instance, the society thinks that to be single means to be lonely, this particular thinking seeps into everyone's psyche. In fact, being single has nothing whatsoever to do with being lonely. A person is lonely when he or she is not understood by another person. Thus, if you want to be understood, you will be lonely. You can be lonely in the midst of a million people. You can live in a house with twenty people and still be lonely, especially if you sit in a corner thinking that no one likes or understands you.

Observation!

Paul Krugman in today's NYT:

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

Wall Street, on your health

NYCEve has a great diary at dkos.

In which world does Thomas Friedman live?

Six years later and only because the number of business visitors to the US is down ("Only the U.S. is losing traveler volume among major countries, which is unheard of in today’s world"), Thomas Friedman, NYT columnist and billionaire, finally gets some inkling -

What does that mean? This: 9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

He should really say - "I was catastrophically wrong for most the last six years. I resign my job as pundit. The America I believe in does not condone persistent failure."

Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry

Sept 22 - an overcast, drizzly day, only by evening was there somewhat of a clearing up. Snapshot taken from the Staten Island Ferry, cropped and resized for the web.
Exposure:
Camera: Canon EOS 5D
Exposure: 0.167 sec (1/6)
Aperture: f/4
Focal Length: 24 mm (Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS)
ISO Speed: 3200

More as a memento of a pleasant day than anything else. Also to express some amazement at what the camera is capable of. The lens is as wide open as possible and the shutter speed is as slow as possible (on the deck of a boat). The ISO is cranked to the impressive maximum that the Canon 5D is capable of.



PS: As Rajan points out in the comments, the Image Stabilization (IS) built in the lens is crucial.

Two Impressive Rants

Arthur Silber: Excerpts:

Let it be noted that, if and when World War III destroys much of the world and the comfortable, ignorance-ridden lives of many Americans, neither the Democrats nor their defenders should look to any remotely civilized person for forgiveness. It will not be forthcoming......

........I note that murder, chaos, devastation and human suffering on an ungraspable scale are what the U.S. governing class wants. Is it what you want? For many Americans, the answer is: Yes. Yes, it is.

God damn all such people to hell.

You have to hand it to the Washington Democrats and those commentators and bloggers who continue to shill for them. The Democrats count on the American public and their lobotomized lapdogs not to remember significant events from one week to the next -- and the Democrats' enablers willingly render themselves deaf, dumb and blind. The Democrats first put on a phony show of aggressively questioning Petraeus and doubting his propagandistic claims, and very shortly thereafter they rely on Petraeus's lies to set the stage for World War III.

I almost admire the Democrats' defenders in a certain way. The Democrats stab them deep in the gut and, while the knife is disemboweling them, the Democrats continue to lie in their agony-ridden faces -- and the victims still tell these bastards they will continue to support them. This collection of subhumans give sado-masochists a bad name. The commitment to cruelty, self-abasement and self-humiliation is all but perfect. It's no wonder they can regard one genocide after another with equanimity. It appears none of these people has a conscience any longer to be troubled in the smallest degree.

Karen Kwiatkovski: Excerpt:

It’s over. The faithful and the hopeful may carry the corpse of the American republic, hoping that it can be brought back into normality, into life, and into power. I am afraid these nurturers will not survive the present reality of imperialism.

But some of us will look directly at the ugly, dangerous and very real empire. We will stare – with little hope but also with little fear – into the face of the FUBAR nation, and then roll up our sleeves and get started on the only life we may honestly live, as internal dissidents. We will no longer pledge allegiance, we will not obey old rules, we will make do and make it up as we go along. Our minds focused on surviving the empire, our talents and creativity unleashed against the state and its fantasist faithful, we will live as if we are free.

This simple prescription will not only make us survivors, but it will gradually cultivate a political landscape for a future of free republics where today we see nascent totalitarianism and bankrupt empire. This prescription was written for us in 1809 by revolutionary war general John Stark. He advised, "Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils."

We face a modern American state more overweening and dictatorial than even King George III could imagine, yet we have no declaration of independence, no privileged elite to demand it, no interested population to read and debate it. This time, our declaration will be made individually, every day, in calm desperate fearlessness, as we simply live free.

American Divorce Rates

The narrative of rising divorce is also completely at odds with counts of divorce certificates, which show the divorce rate as having peaked at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married couples in 1979 and to have fallen by 2005 to 16.7.
- Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers in the NYT

American Narcissism

Arthur Silber:

THIS IS NOT PRIMARILY, OR MOST IMPORTANTLY, OR IN ANY SIGNIFICANT WAY ABOUT THE MISERABLE, REPELLENT CALCULATIONS OF DOMESTIC POLITICS, OR ABOUT YOU OR ABOUT US, YOU NEUROTICALLY SELF-ABSORBED, IGNORANT DUMB FUCKS.


He quotes Lew Rockwell.
"None Dare Call It Genocide".

The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only recently a liberal and civilized country by the region’s standards. This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that one could find in the area.

It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won’t we face this? Why won't we take responsibility? The reason has to do with this mysterious thing called nationalism, which makes an ideological religion of the nation's wars. We are god-like liberators. They are devil-like terrorists. No amount of data or contrary information seems to make a dent in this irreligious faith. So it is in every country and in all times. Here is the intellectual blindness that war generates.

A Birthday Celebration

A Birthday Celebration in Goa, India.

QOTD

It isn't only -- or even principally -- the "Blue Dogs" which make the "Democratic Congress" nothing but an enabling instrument of the Bush White House and its right-wing policies. Far worse are the establishment-defending, soul-less, belief-less, self-perpetuating "liberal Senators" like Feinstein who render the concept of "opposition party" nothing more than a deceitful illusion. Dianne Feinstein is the drained and Bush-enabling face of the 2007 Democratic Congress.

Must -read Glenn Greenwald

Hunter is good!

Hunter is very good!

miaculpa.blogspot.com

Desi's (Diane Sweet) Greatscat! (miaculpa.blogspot.com) is probably the blog I visit most frequently. One of my private nightmares is that Desi decides to stop blogging one day. What is her power?


Thoughts and intuitions crystallize around words. The Ira Chernus essay that I quoted here led to such a precipitation for me about miaculpa.

Chernus brings up two things - the debate about the war in Iraq avoids the question of whether it is a moral war; and the "support the troops" as used in the discourse is not about supporting real people. Two excerpts to those points follow:

And we can expect both parties, and the media who keep the show going, to abide by an unspoken agreement that one kind of question will never be asked, because the tension it raises might be unbearable: Is it moral for our troops to occupy another country for years, bomb its cities and villages, and kill untold numbers of people halfway across the planet?

"Supporting our troops" is not about helping individual soldiers to live better lives or, for that matter, making their lives safer. It's about supporting a morality play in which the lead actor, "our troops," represents all the virtues that so many believe—or wish they could believe—America possesses, giving us the privilege (and obligation) of directing all that happens on the world stage.

I hope Ira Chernus discovers Desi's blog. Desi hasn't sipped any of the Kool-Aid - miaculpa is a relentless blitz on the right side of precisely these two issues. (If I have a criticism of the blog it is that it moves too fast to have an extended conversation.) Desi posts on the damage the war is wreaking on individuals, Iraqis and Americans alike, pictured and named when possible. The anti-war focus of the blog is rooted in this. "Support the troops" and "the war is wrong" come from the concern for persons, real persons not abstract ones.

I don't know where Desi finds the energy to do this day in and out, but I hope it never flags.

Desi is a voice in a million. Just sayin'.

The Show Must Go On

The great debate about Iraq is not, and never really was, about what we should do in Iraq. No matter how many Iraqis have died or become refugees thanks to the Bush intervention, they remain largely ignored bit players in our central drama, which is, and always was, about what we will make of America. Now, the outcome of that debate is coming more clearly into view and it's not a pretty picture. The compromise the two parties are hammering out on Iraq policy reflects a deeper compromise the public seems to be groping toward on national identity—between who we are in reality (pragmatic, if sidelined, civilians who know a war is badly lost and want to end it) and who we are in our imaginations (heroic soldiers proving our character in the theater of war).

All theater, all storytelling, rests on the power of illusion and the willing suspension of disbelief. Bush and the Republicans have repeatedly given millions of doubters a chance to suspend their post-Vietnam disbelief in traditional tales of American character; the Democrats have given millions of doubters a chance to suspend their disbelief that the will of the people can make any difference whatsoever. The two parties join together to give the whole nation a chance to believe that a fierce debate still rages about whether or not to end the war. That political show we can expect to go on at least until Election Day 2008.

And we can expect both parties, and the media who keep the show going, to abide by an unspoken agreement that one kind of question will never be asked, because the tension it raises might be unbearable: Is it moral for our troops to occupy another country for years, bomb its cities and villages, and kill untold numbers of people halfway across the planet? If the script ever makes room for that question, we'll be able to watch—and participate in—a far more profound debate about the war.

Ira Chernus

Bee's Imaginary Part

I can't put my finger on why I find Bee's Imaginary Part so hilarious!

Globalization

Some 25 million Iraqis - 1 million killed, 2 million refugees - have their fate placed in the hands of about six hundred people in Washington - the President, his Cabinet, the Senate and the Congress.

What principle of accountability? Locality? Democracy? What process of law? sanctions this abomination?

We fool ourselves with our illusions of being civilized.

QOTD

To grasp the Petraeus moment, you really have to re-imagine official Washington as a set of drunks behind the wheels of so many SUVs tearing down a well-populated city avenue -- and all of them are on their cell phones. They hardly notice the bodies bouncing off the fenders. For them, the world is Washington-centered; all interests that matter are American ones. Nothing else exists, not really. Think of this as a form of imperial autism and the Petraeus moment as the way in which the White House and official Washington have, for a brief time, blotted out the world.

From Tom Engelhardt

An Analysis of Bin Laden's Latest

Decoding bin Laden's Latest: An Odd Congruence, a dailykos.com diary is worth a read.

Where are the young concert pianists?

Looking for some classical music recordings to gift to a young relative, I was struck by the fact that most of what is available on the shelves at Borders and Barnes&Noble is old stuff, sometimes way older than the intended recipient.

What was there was Schnabel, Horowitz, Brendel, Kempf, Ashkenazy, Gould, from the 50s, 60s, 70s - you get the picture. My guess is that the big labels are not issuing new recordings rather than there is no exciting young talent, or that classical music is dying.

Presumably there are small labels issuing good CDs - but where to find them?

An Appeal from an American Exiled Gandhian

http://www.lewrockwell.com/knaebel/knaebel10.html

Please read it through.

(Selective) Quote of the Day

Daniel Pipes and others managed to get Debbie (Dhabah) Almontaser to resign as Principal of a proposed school in New York City that would teach Arabic and Arabic culture (the Khalil Gibran International Academy) by issuing attacks such as this:

Arabs or Muslims, Ms. Almontaser says, are innocent of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: "I don't recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims." Instead, she blames September 11 on Washington's foreign policies, saying they "can have been triggered by the way the USA breaks its promises with countries across the world, especially in the Middle East, and the fact that it has not been a fair mediator."

For the latter part, Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul (R-TX) too blames 9/11 on Washington's foreign policies, too (watch him here).

But the above makes the selective quote of the day because to this NYT article, the statement is not in concord with her record and her character and because what Ms Almontaser is supposed to have said:

I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.....Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and stolen my religion.

PS: More Ron Paul, The Lessons of 9/11

Unfortunately, the biggest failure of our government will be ignored. I’m sure the Commission will not connect our foreign policy of interventionism – practiced by both major parties for over a hundred years – as an important reason 9/11 occurred. Instead, the claims will stand that the motivation behind 9/11 was our freedom, prosperity, and way of life. If this error persists, all the tinkering and money to improve the intelligence agencies will bear little fruit.

Quote of the Day

Charley Reese gives us this:

Iraq's misery and difficulties remind me of a quotation from a Turkish officer who said, "The trouble with being an ally of the United States is that you can never tell when it's going to decide to stab itself in the back."

Health Insurance Crisis

As per this dailykos diary, the American crisis of health insurance - murder by spreadsheet for-profit healthcare - is continuing to expand.

BIG NUMBERS, like 45 million uninsured Americans, are hard to grasp. But that number came home to me at a recent conference. The keynote speaker was former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Her topic was our healthcare system, and her message was personal and anguished.

The gist was that even she lives in constant fear of major uninsured health bills. Not her own -- those of her son. He can't afford insurance because his son -- her grandchild -- has a preexisting condition.

Happy Raksha Bandhan!

Raksha Bandhan 1,2,3



PS: someone's photo gallery

Quote of the Day

(via TPM)

Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) on the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

"Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things."

Quote of the Day

As Jim Webb's recent pathetic explanation of his support for the abominable FISA legislation demonstrates, there would appear to be only one value that our politicians refuse to compromise or surrender: their wholehearted, indeed passionate devotion to abject stupidity.

From You, Too, Can and Should Be an "Intelligence Analyst by Arthur Silber.
Via lewrockwell.com.

Now this is not a spoof!

As per modern particle "physicists" - the scare quotes are because I no longer consider them to be physicists, though they occupy postdoc positions and professorships in academic physics departments, and publish in academic journals - a scientific explanation is of the form "If fact A requires B, then A is an explanation of B".

By chasing links from Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong you can find the culprits.

Let's look at an example:

Fact A = We earthlings exist. This requires
B = The earth's orbit is in the habitable zone around the sun.

Our existence, therefore, is an explanation of the earth's orbit.

Fact A = (Olber's paradox) - The night sky is dark, which requires
B = The universe is expanding.

(Olber's paradox is that if our universe is big enough (which it is) then any direction we look there should be stars, in fact, stars enough that the sky should be very bright. Read about it in Wikipedia. This example of mine is without explanation ruled to be somehow different from the previous example, btw.)

We can multiply examples.

Fact A = Airplanes fly, which requires
B = Airplane wings generate lift.

Therefore, the fact that airplanes fly, in the Brave New (Particle) Physics is an explanation of the lift generated by airplane wings.

I kid you not. Read Peter Woit's despairing lament about the descent of particle physics into pseudo-science.

__________

PS: A much better way of stating the problem is,
a. Suppose Fact A has no provided way of being a cause of B (i.e., Fact A is in the nature of an effect of B rather than a cause of B.)
b. Suppose Fact A requires B (i.e., the effect requires the particular cause B.)
c. Modern particle physicists, in particular, a large number of string theorists, regard A as an explanation of B.

The Drawbacks of Democracy

Resurrected from google cache this from the right-wing think tank, Family Security Matters. An excerpt:

However, President Bush has a valuable historical example that he could choose to follow.

When the ancient Roman general Julius Caesar was struggling to conquer ancient Gaul, he not only had to defeat the Gauls, but he also had to defeat his political enemies in Rome who would destroy him the moment his tenure as consul (president) ended.

Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter; he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home and establish himself as permanent ruler of ancient Rome. This brilliant action not only ended the personal threat to Caesar, but ended the civil chaos that was threatening anarchy in ancient Rome – thus marking the start of the ancient Roman Empire that gave peace and prosperity to the known world.

If President Bush copied Julius Caesar by ordering his army to empty Iraq of Arabs and repopulate the country with Americans, he would achieve immediate results: popularity with his military; enrichment of America by converting an Arabian Iraq into an American Iraq (therefore turning it from a liability to an asset); and boost American prestiege while terrifying American enemies.

He could then follow Caesar's example and use his newfound popularity with the military to wield military power to become the first permanent president of America, and end the civil chaos caused by the continually squabbling Congress and the out-of-control Supreme Court.

President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming “ex-president” Bush or he can become “President-for-Life” Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons.

Evading Reality - 6

From the Gretchen Morgenson article cited before

“They have their standard deviations, correlations, ‘stable value’ and ‘real return’ funds and nothing for what the normal human being would call risk at all,” said Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager at Greenbrier Partners in Dallas. “They’ve taken the word ‘risk’ and hijacked it. The concept of risk — the permanent loss of capital — vanished in the minds of the people who speak the new language.”

Evading Reality - 5

Back in 1994, Dick Cheney explained why invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein would be a bad idea to do.
This dkos diary even links to the video of that interview.

Once you got to Iraq and took it over, took down Saddam Hussein's government, then what are you going to put in its place?

That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off -- part of it the Syrians would like to have to the west, part of it eastern Iraq the Iranian would like to claim, fought over it for eight years.

In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey, then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey. It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.

Since nothing really had changed between 1994 and 2001, one can conclude that Vice President Cheney's advocacy of the invasion of Iraq was an evasion of reality. Exactly what he foretold in 1994 has come to pass.

Evading Reality - 4

Based on a Joshua Rosner NYT op-ed piece and some other stories in the NYT:

By law, banks, insurance companies and pension managers can purchase only high quality bonds. The quality rating of such bonds is issued by Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investor Service and Fitch Ratings.

Mortgage lenders make loans to home buyers and aggregate these loans and sell bonds ("mortgage backed securities") in the financial markets. The ratings agencies gave high ratings to subprime-mortgage backed securities (subprime means high-risk loans made to home buyers who previously would not have qualified for them), and only belatedly reissued ratings **after** the subprime crisis was upon us. The crisis is caused by the sort of obvious fact that people who on the average were expected not to be able to make the interest payments on their loans are turning out as expected not to be able to make payments on their loans and so are defaulting.

If so much institutional money was not available because of the high ratings given to such bonds, then subprime lending would have been limited. But...

Rosner:

...the ratings agencies are far from passive arbitrators in the markets. In structured finance, the rating agency can be an active part of the construction of a deal. In fact, the original models used to rate collateralized debt obligations were created in close cooperation with the investment banks that designed the securities.

Fitch, Moody's and S.&P. actively advise issuers of these securities on how to achieve their desired ratings. They appear to be helping investment banks, hedge funds and fund companies, all of which have a fiduciary obligation to investors, to develop the worst possible product that would still achieve a certain rating.

Only slightly more than a handful of American non-financial corporations get the highest AAA rating, but almost 90 percent of collateralized debt obligations that receive a rating are bestowed such a title. The willingness of Fitch, Moody's and S.&P. to rate as investment grade many assets that are apparently not has made structured securities ratings their fastest-growing line of business. Are we to believe that these securities are as safe as those of our most honored corporations?

Of course, simply the fact that someone has rated something as high-grade does not compel a pension fund manager to buy it. The problem is that most institutions do not have the expertise to be able to independently evaluate these financial instruments.

--- This morning's news is that both the European Union and the US Congress will be looking at the performance and conflicts of interest of the ratings agencies.

PS: Cartoon

KM Munshi and Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand's magnum opus "Atlas Shrugged" was published in 1957. Sometime in the next decade, K.M. Munshi, then already in his seventies - and/or his wife- read the book. Something about it hit a resonance in him: either Ayn Rand's craft as novelist, or the character of John Galt, Ayn Rand's hero. (Perhaps it was just the artistic device used by Ayn Rand in the passage quoted below. ) Whatever, the ideal of John Galt fused to some unknown non-zero extent (the reader may be the best judge of this) in Munshi's imagination with his hero of the Krishnavatara. Thus, Krishna,hero of ancient times, met the twentieth century John Galt, an event that I, personally, find very fascinating (my image of Krishna has been shaped largely by Munshi's novels).

This is the Krishna whom we venerate, the Krishna who teaches in the Bhagavad Gita, the avataar of Vishnu:

Vasudeva sutam devam, Kamsa-Chanur mardanam
Devaki paramanandam, Krishnam vande jagatgurum.

Son of Vasudeva, destroyer of Kamsa and Chanur, the supreme joy of (his foster mother) Devaki, that Krishna we salute as a teacher to the world.

On what basis do I say this?

Well, here's a passage from Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged". Her heroine, Dagny Taggart has just recovered conciousness after her plane-crash. She opens her eyes, and (there is John Galt)

She was looking up at the face of a man who knelt by her side, and she knew that in all the years behind her, this was what she would have given her life to see: a face that bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt. The shape of his mouth was pride, and more: it was as if he took pride in being proud. The angular planes of his cheeks made her think of arrogance, of tension, of scorn -- yet the face had none of these qualities, it had their final sum: a look of serene determination and of certainity, and the look of a ruthless innocence which would not seek forgiveness or grant it. It was a face that had nothing to hide or escape, a face with no fear of being seen or of seeing, so that the first thing she grasped about him was the intense perceptiveness of his eyes -- he looked as if his faculty of sight were his best-loved tool and its exercise were a limitless, joyous adventure, as if his eyes imparted a superlative value to himself and the world-- to himself for his ability to see, to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing. It seemed to her for a moment that she was in the presence of a being who was pure conciousness-- yet she had never been so aware of a man's body . . . .

He was looking down at her with a faint trace of a smile . . .

This was her world, she thought, this was the way men were meant to be and to face their existence-- and all the rest of it, all the years of ugliness and struggle were someone's senseless joke. She smiled at him, as at a fellow conspirator, in relief, in deliverance, in radiant mockery of all the things she would never have to consider important again. He smiled in answer, it was the same smile as her own, as if he felt what she felt and knew what she meant."

Now, here is Munshi, in Krishnavatara, Volume V:

Satyabhama, knocked unconcious by a fall, wakes up (to see Krishna):

Now the man was kneeling by her side. She opened her eyes and gazed at him.

It was not a strange face at all. In all the years since childhood, she would have given her life to see this face --a face so unfamiliar to those living in her father's house; it bore no mark of pain or fear or guilt. She must be in a dream. How could this face be near hers?

She was struck by the face. Did it express pride, arrogance or scorn ? No. It had a look of serenity and innocence, a face which had nothing to hide, a face which had no fear of being seen or of seeing.

His eyes were bright and beautiful; they had an indefinable quality of seeing life as a limitless, joyous adventure; they imparted a superlative value to himself and to the world -- to himself for his ability to see; to the world for being a place so eagerly worth seeing.

Half-dazed as she was, she felt sure that she was in the presence of a divinity. She had never been so aware of a man's body . . .

She felt a strange struggle in her heart, for he was looking at her with amusement. All these years of loneliness, ugliness and struggle she had spent, she felt, were someone's senseless joke. She smiled at him and he smiled in answer as if he knew what she felt.

---

Perhaps the Munshis felt justified in borrowing because

Gita 10-41

Wherever you find strength, or beauty, or (spiritual) power, you may be sure that these have sprung from a spark of my essence.

Evading Reality - 3

From a NYT article on July 25 :
The evasion of reality:

From 1987 through 1994, New Jersey was one of only a handful of governments that went to the trouble of setting aside money for retiree health care. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman stopped the practice the year she took office, along with cutting back on pension contributions.

The official explanation was that inflation in health costs had subsided and that setting aside money could create a bigger reserve than was needed. Also, her administration noted, the Clinton White House was working on a national health plan.

Not long afterward, though, health inflation went to double digits, and the Clinton initiative collapsed. But by then, New Jersey’s lawmakers had grown accustomed to using retiree-health dollars to balance the budget, which was required under the State Constitution.

Some of the consequences:

When New Jersey stopped funding its retiree health plan 13 years ago, it also stopped trying to keep track of the cost. That created the illusion that the long-term obligation was zero, not billions of dollars, and made it easy for the state to enhance its already rich benefits.

In 1994, New Jersey decided to stop setting aside money in a fund to pay for health care for its retired public workers. The savings paved the way for a big tax cut.

It turns out that New Jersey will need about $58 billion, in today’s dollars, to provide all the care it has promised its current and future retirees. That’s nearly twice the state budget and nearly twice the amount of its outstanding debt. And because of the step it took in 1994, the state has virtually no money in reserve to cover those costs.

Meanwhile, the state’s revenues are largely static. That means that unless something changes, New Jersey will have less money each year to pay for vital services like colleges, hospitals and mass transit. Its popular program to preserve green space just fell victim to the need to devote huge amounts to the retirement plans and debt servicing.

Evading Reality - 2

[This is from C.R. Rajagopalachari's rendition of the Mahabharata, a game of riddles, where Yudhisthira must answer all the questions of the Yaksha correctly in order to redeem his brothers.

PS: Yama is Death.]

"What is the greatest wonder in the world?"

"Every day, men see creatures depart to Yama's abode and yet, those who remain, seek to live forever. This verily is the greatest wonder."
___

Evading Reality - 1

Via a comment at turcopolier.typepad.com
George Orwell: ‘In Front of Your Nose’
First published: Tribune. — GB, London. — March 22, 1946.

Reprinted:

— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.

Full essay.

Excerpt:

There is no use in multiplying examples. The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

When one looks at the all-prevailing schizophrenia of democratic societies, the lies that have to be told for vote-catching purposes, the silence about major issues, the distortions of the press, it is tempting to believe that in totalitarian countries there is less humbug, more facing of the facts. There, at least, the ruling groups are not dependent on popular favour and can utter the truth crudely and brutally. Goering could say ‘Guns before butter’, while his democratic opposite numbers had to wrap the same sentiment up in hundreds of hypocritical words.

Actually, however, the avoidance of reality is much the same everywhere, and has much the same consequences. The Russian people were taught for years that they were better off than everybody else, and propaganda posters showed Russian families sitting down to abundant meal while the proletariat of other countries starved in the gutter. Meanwhile the workers in the western countries were so much better off than those of the U.S.S.R. that non-contact between Soviet citizens and outsiders had to be a guiding principle of policy. Then, as a result of the war, millions of ordinary Russians penetrated far into Europe, and when they return home the original avoidance of reality will inevitably be paid for in frictions of various kinds. The Germans and the Japanese lost the war quite largely because their rulers were unable to see facts which were plain to any dispassionate eye.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one's opinions about important events. Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it. Political predictions are usually wrong. But even when one makes a correct one, to discover why one was right can be very illuminating. In general, one is only right when either wish or fear coincides with reality. If one recognizes this, one cannot, of course, get rid of one's subjective feelings, but one can to some extent insulate them from one's thinking and make predictions cold-bloodedly, by the book of arithmetic. In private life most people are fairly realistic. When one is making out one's weekly budget, two and two invariably make four. Politics, on the other hand, is a sort of sub-atomic or non-Euclidean word where it is quite easy for the part to be greater than the whole or for two objects to be in the same place simultaneously. Hence the contradictions and absurdities I have chronicled above, all finally traceable to a secret belief that one's political opinions, unlike the weekly budget, will not have to be tested against solid reality.

They shrunk the NYT!

The August 6 NYT is about an inch less wide than the August 5 edition. The length is the same. After so many days, my main comment is that the paper is now easier to handle one-handed when reading at lunchtime.

Re: Much Ado about Ketchup

Philly.com columnist, Stu Bykofsky, wants another 9/11.

ONE MONTH from The Anniversary, I'm thinking another 9/11 would help America....
Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

Rip has a great riposte.

Sub-prime fallout

Behind the Times Select firewall, Gretchen Morgenson has explained nicely why the defaults on sub-prime mortgages are affecting all the financial markets.

What is amusing about it to me is that all the hot-shot hedge fund managers and their mathematicians and computers seemed to have forgotten the standard disclaimer that appears with any investment advertisement: past performance is no guarantee of future returns.

Excerpts:

Using what are known as market-neutral strategies designed by computer models, hedge fund traders have been blindsided by a correlation between bonds and stocks that they never expected would occur.

.....

For example, a computer might trace the relationship and trading characteristics of two similar assets, like shares of General Motors and Ford. The fund manager then makes trades, going both long and short, based on the way these shares generally trade. If Ford typically trades cheaper than General Motors, the manager would short Ford and buy G.M., capturing what might be small profits, but on a large volume.

.....

Seeing that such bets typically generated profits over long periods left traders believing that their stakes were conservative.

The only trouble is, financial markets do not always trade in a way that is typical or predictable. And when they deviate from the norm, all the wonderful and smart trades stop behaving according to plan.

ANALYSTS call it model misbehavior.

I had to emphasize that last line, it made me laugh out loud.

Fund managers experiencing losses in their fixed-income portfolios who were unable to sell their positions then tried to unwind the trades they could sell — that is, stocks. They cashed in the shares they had purchased and bought back the ones they had sold short.

The result was that stocks that had historically been weaker became stronger, and vice versa.

“It is not simply that model returns are flat (or not working),” Mr. Rothman wrote, “but specifically that the models (ours included) are behaving in the opposite way we would predict and have seen and tested for over very long time periods (45-plus years).”

As a result, “risk models are miscalibrated for the current market environment,” he wrote.

Another line that made me laugh out loud.

The article goes on to explain that many of these funds work with borrowed money, so have to resort to desperate measures as things start unravelling; and that since everyone relied on the same market behavior, they're making the same trades, thereby compounding the effect.

“They have their standard deviations, correlations, ‘stable value’ and ‘real return’ funds and nothing for what the normal human being would call risk at all,” said Frederick E. Rowe Jr., a money manager at Greenbrier Partners in Dallas. “They’ve taken the word ‘risk’ and hijacked it. The concept of risk — the permanent loss of capital — vanished in the minds of the people who speak the new language.”

Risk, and all that it should connote to investors, is back in the language now. Unfortunately, it has brought an awful lot of losses with it.

Victims of Ideology

Just as Russians were victims of a Marxist ideology, Americans are victims of "market is god" ideology.

Read some of their stories in this dkos diary and weep.

---

The Gray Lady has weighed in with a lengthy editorial.

One fact from there that surprised me:

American doctors and hospitals kill patients through surgical and medical mistakes more often than their counterparts in other industrialized nations.

A fallacy of rationality

There is much in the news about the sub-prime housing loan crisis in the US. Over the past several years, mortgage lenders made housing loans to people who would not qualify in more conservative times. Very often these loans start out with attractive low interest rates that rise later. Now many borrowers are defaulting, either when the monthly payments rise or because of other financial distress.

Two things result - more houses come on the market as borrowers attempt to sell to end their liability or as lenders foreclose. Second, lenders start tightening on credit, shrinking the pool of potential buyers. Housing prices stagnate; new housing construction drops, consumer borrowing against the equity in their homes reduces, the economy slows down, resulting in more borrowers in financial distress.

There is a lot of finger-pointing going on about unscrupulous lenders and stupid borrowers.

But perhaps one should consider the possibility that everyone was acting perfectly rationally in their own best interests. Oh, I'm sure that there are some number of cases where a mortgage broker steered a person to a more expensive loan or in general persuaded them to do something fiscally stupid.

From the borrower's perspective, in a market where housing prices have been rising steadily, it makes sense to borrow. In case of isolated financial distress - say, because of the loss of a job - the house can be sold, and one might even end up with a little money in the pocket. From the lender's perspective, this is a loan against an appreciating asset.

The problem is that everyone doing what appears rational to themselves still doesn't necessary lead to the best outcome overall.

One could say that this is because the "rationality" is based on short term calculations. If one's calculations included - how likely is it that housing will appreciate steadily for the next ten years? or how likely in ten years is an economic downturn that throws people out of work and renders them unable to make their loan payments? - then one might have a different "rational" behavior.

Moreover, if enough of long-term calculators are present, so that most loans are sound, etc., then the short-term calculators' behavior may actually be rational, i.e., if I find myself close to default, then I will be able to sell the asset and that too, at an appreciated price.

________


If you think about it, environmental problems arise exactly because what is rational for everyone produces a bad outcome when done by everyone. i.e., as one individual in a vast world, my cutting trees, fishing, releasing smoke into the air, producing garbage is harmless. When everyone does it, we have deforestation, species extinction, air pollution, etc.

________


The only way to let people keep doing what is "rational" for themselves but to make that computation also be rational when everyone does it is to modify the rules by adding costs in the right places. I.e., regulation can be necessary.

The problem of course, is in devising the right set of costs. A secondary problem is that admitting that regulation is necessary is anathema to most ideologues of the free market, libertarians and the like.

The Government and the Media

The Hiroshima Coverup
Long story short - The NYT's William L. Laurence won a Pulitzer 60 years ago for spouting American government propaganda about the effects of the nukes dropped on Japan.

The Fourth Amendment

The Fourth Amendment was breached during the Clinton Admin, years and years ago. We just didn't notice.

Here.

Boys will be boys

Via my sis., this Tribune, India newsphoto - parts of India are reeling under floods, but what do kids know about that?



Caption: Children jump into the swollen Ganga from the top of a temple in Varanasi on Sunday. — PTI photo

Anger

In my view, this country can repair itself from disasters like the Iraq War or the Katrina Hurricane **provided** the underlying "system" is healthy. That "system" is embodied in the Constitution, the civil liberties it enshrines and the tri-part **accountable** government that it enables.

That system is being severely undermined.

Over the past few days, the President twisted arms and the Democrats who control Congress and Senate caved and passed a bill that "would eviscerate the Fourth Amendment" and "does violence to the Constitution of the United States" (the latter on the authority of the Speaker of the House).

They also inserted a sunset clause, so this legislation will come up for renewal in six months. At that time they (supposedly) plan to have a proper debate, and presumably do the right thing.

But instead of going into recess, why don't they extend the session and do that now? Ironically, forcing an extension of the session till they gave him a Bill was one of the threats the President supposedly used. To the Senate and Congress, their scheduled vacation is more important than the Constitution they took a sacred oath to uphold!

Glenn Greenwald wrote (Democrats' responsibility for Bush radicalism)

Examine virtually every Bush scandal and it increasingly bears the mark not merely of Democratic capitulation, but Democratic participation. In August of 2006, the Supreme Court finally asserted the first real limit on Bush's radical executive power theories in Hamdan, only for Congress, months later, to completely eviscerate those minimal limits -- and then go far beyond -- by enacting the grotesque Military Commissions Act with the support of substantial numbers of Democrats. What began as a covert and illegal Bush interrogation and detention program became the officially sanctioned, bipartisan policy of the United States.

I took what I think the next logical step in this line of thought in this dailykos diary.

In a couple of years of being around that forum, this is only the third diary I've attempted, so it should tell you about my state of mind - angry, angry, angry.

Sound the Trumpets!

A few years ago (five?), in trying to make my yard hummingbird-friendly, I planted a trumpet vine. It grew and grew, but did not flower. Given that I had read while researching this plant statements like e.g.,

In Michael Dirr's book Manual of Woody Landscape Plants he describes trumpet vine: "If you can not grow this, give up gardening; grows in any soil and also prospers in sidewalk cracks".

(here and you will find similar statements elsewhere on the web), you can imagine my relief that my gardening career need not be over, when today I saw these. Plain things, but a god-send! :)

In Praise of the Zinnia

The flower would almost cover my palm and fingers. The plants are huge and sprawling - probably they need more intense sunlight than available in my front yard. They make excellent cut flowers, a couple I took to office and stuck in water two weeks ago are only now fading. Jaya, Jaya Zinnia!