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