Rick Perlstein's article looks back at the level of paranoia on the Right every time a Libreral is elected, and how it goes back at least as far as FDR and Truman. What he sees as different, now, though, is that the media is treating the paranoia as worthy of serious consideration.
Glenn Greenwalt is the go-to guy on torture issues, having studied it intensively. Here he refutes Dick Cheney's claims that torture was necessary to get actionable intelligence on Al-Quaeda. He doesn't mention it here, but my understanding is that more traditional interrogation methods were working with KSM before he was tortured.
I don't want the argument on torture to be about its efficacy, but about the ethics and legality of it... but effectiveness arguments help end the use of torture, I'll use them.
Nicholas Kristof has this important article reminding us of why health care reform is so important. Two important quotes:
"A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That’s one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour."
and
"A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these people actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills."
This article talks about Forbes' magazine calling Exxon-Mobil the greenest company of the year, and then goes into the details of why that isn't true. They fund climate-change deniers to this day, despite promises to quit, they were awful in dealing with the Exxon Valdez spill, etc.
This article makes an excellent point about Dr. Martin Luther King... he was a dreamer, yes, but sadly those are about the only words of his that most people remember. He also spoke truthfully about the nightmare that most African-Americans faced then, and the author details the difficulties that still exist for so many. Dr. King's vision is not yet fulfilled.
This is true of the vision of America's fouding fathers. They voiced some of the most stirring words about the future of humankind, yet their vision has yet to be wholly fulfilled as well. Nor would they recognize how we strive to fulfill the vision of equality for all... they would have been quite startled at giving equal rights to all classes, to women, to African-Americans, to LGBT people. Yet what they articulated remains our goal.
This article makes an excellent point about Dr. Martin Luther King... he was a dreamer, yes, but sadly those are about the only words of his that most people remember. He also spoke truthfully about the nightmare that most African-Americans faced then, and the author details the difficulties that still exist for so many. Dr. King's vision is not yet fulfilled.
This is true of the vision of America's fouding fathers. They voiced some of the most stirring words about the future of humankind, yet their vision has yet to be wholly fulfilled as well. Nor would they recognize how we strive to fulfill the vision of equality for all... they would have been quite startled at giving equal rights to all classes, to women, to African-Americans, to LGBT people. Yet what they articulated remains our goal.
| Title | Grave Goods (Mistress of the Art of Death) |
| Author | Ariana Franklin |
| Rating |  |
| Tags | mystery, series, historical mystery, women, doctor, henry ii, england |
| Third in the Mistress of the Art of Death series. So far Franklin hasn't faltered yet. All three books in the series are among the best books I've ever read (thanks to Tom Fisher for introducing them to me). The main character is a woman doctor who specializes in pathology, or as they put it, a master in reading what a corpse has to tell about its death. She was educated in Salerno, Italy, where they don't scorn to teach women.She has been living in England now for several years, called by Henry II, the Plantagenet King, who values her services and won't let her go. Besides that, she has a child and a family of sorts, and is happy in the fens of Cambridgeshire treating the poor.King Henry is preoccupied putting down revolts by the Welsh who call out the name of King Arthur in battle. Since the publication of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History 40 years before, King Arthur has been a romantic hero to all Britains. So when Henry hears a monk's story that the body of Arthur might be buried at Glastonbury, he calls on Adriana to establish that Arthur is, indeed, dead, not sleeping until he returns.Adriana does what the king says, but is also investigating the disappearance of her friend Emma and Emma's entourage, and this puts her in danger.What makes a book great? For me, it is interesting characters who grow and develop, plots that are believable, good writing, and often a strong sense of the time and place of the story. Franklin does all of these superlatively.But now I have to wait for the next book to come out. Ouch! | |
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| Publication | Putnam Adult (2009), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 352 pages |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| ISBN | 0399155449 / 9780399155444 |
This article is by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In it, he says all the lovely things I like having the military say, such as "No, our biggest problem isn’t caves; it’s credibility. Our messages lack credibility because we haven’t invested enough in building trust and relationships, and we haven’t always delivered on promises." He points out the the Taliban delivers, both in terror to people who disobey them and in services that they promised to deliver. This is pretty common with insurgencies, by the way... they help to ensure that the govermment they are fighting can't provide basic services like health care and garbage collection, then they deliver those services. Very effective combination.
And Mullen also says that we fail when we don't live up to our ideals as Americans:
"No other people on Earth have proven more capable at establishing trust and credibility in more places than we have. And we’ve done it primarily through the power of our example. The voyage of the Great White Fleet told the world that the United States was no longer a second-rate nation. The Marshall Plan made it clear that our strength was only as good as it was shared. The policy of containment let it be known we wouldn’t stand for the spread of communism. And relief efforts in the wake of natural disasters all over the world said calmly and clearly: we will help you through this.
We didn’t need a public opinion poll to launch that fleet. We didn’t need a “strat comm” plan to help rebuild Europe. And we sure didn’t need talking points and Power- Point slides to deliver aid. Americans simply showed up and did the right thing because it was, well, the right thing to do.
That’s the essence of good communication: having the right intent up front and letting our actions speak for themselves. We shouldn’t care if people don’t like us; that isn’t the goal. The goal is credibility. And we earn that over time."
Now THERE's something to which I can say Amen and Hallelujah.
Yesterday I watched a video posted on Facebook by one of my friends. It was called something like "this will get you thinking" and so it did, although I doubt the person who put it together would LIKE my thoughts. I'm not going to point to the video because they have a goal of getting a certain number of views and I don't want to add to them any more than I already have.
The video does have some nice music, by the way, but the rest of it is just white text on a black background. Anyway, it tells the story of a college professor who for twenty years has been turning Christian students into unbelievers with his impeccable logic and his intimidation, calling believers fools, etc. Of course the video doesn't share with us any of his impeccable logic, but we'll move away from that thought. At the end of the semester, he always asks that anyone who still believes in Jesus to stand up, whereupon he again calls them fools and says if Jesus is God, he could keep this piece of chalk from breaking. He drops the piece of chalk and for twenty years it has broken. But this time a student stands up, the professor drops the chalk awkwardly, and it doesn't break. The professor storms off and the student spends a couple of hours sharing his witness of Jesus Christ as his lord and Savior.
Well, there are just so many things wrong with this it is hard to know where to begin. Not very true to academic life, first of all. I've been a student trough an undergraduate and two masters, and never had a professor this abusive. I've also worked in academia for over twenty years, and I've known some professors who were prima donnas, and heard some horror stories, but I suspect any professor this abusive would be risking his job. But ok, forget that. Is the fall of a piece of chalk REALLY a worthwhile test on which to base either belief or unbelief? Really?
I suspect this video is a piece of comfort food for fundamentalist Christians. I suspect that they find a lot of college students do lose their beliefs in college, and they don't understand why, and it is too uncomfortable to like, you know, ASK the students why. I can come up with a couple of scenarios. One may be that these students have been told for years that evolution is wrong, a sham, and not scientific, and even their teachers in high school may have been too intimidated to do more than gloss over the subject. But in college, they find out that evolution is, indeed, a foundation stone of modern science, and as well proved as the theories of gravity and atomic structure. Not only does this challenge their beliefs, it means that the people who have been responsible for their spiritual warfare were deluded or LYING to them.
Another scenario would apply to students who go to seminary, and for the first time in their lives are exposed to the last couple of centuries worth of Biblical scholarship, which goes to show that we do not have the original texts of the Bible, that the texts were written beginning thirty to forty years after Jesus' death and we have no copies written earlier than a couple of centuries after his death, that the copies we do have are riddled with errors and changes, and that some of the books of the Bible are most likely forgeries. Again, the student learns that the people responsible for his spiritual guidance were wrong or lying.
None of this will necessarily shake the faith of the kind of Christian who sees the Bible as an inspired guide, and Jesus as an expression of God's love. But it can be devastating to the student who has been taught the Bible is the literally true inerrant word of God. And the fundamentalist has no cure for that. So they produce the comfort food of a video like this one that assures them that atheist professors will be easily vanquished, and that their children will not turn away from them and their beliefs. Now of course I think their solution should be to face up to the real world and teach their children the truth. But I can see that that would be devastating to them as well. I don't have a solution for them that they will find acceptable. And so students will go on being shocked by knowledge, and they will or won't turn away from the beliefs of their fathers and mothers. Many remain Christians, just not fundamentalists. That isn't a help to a fundamentalist parent who doesn't believe non-fundamentalists are Christians, though.
| Title | Kill for Me |
| Author | Karen Rose |
| Rating |  |
| Tags | thriller, series, serial killers, human trafficking |
| Fast-paced thriller with a high body count. It is the third of a set of related books, and I did feel a bit lost at first for not having read the first two. But Rose gives enough of the backstory to make the book intelligible.There are few books these days I find I can't put down... this was one of them, and I stayed up until after one on a weeknight to finish itl. The characters are quite well done, the main characters each have to deal with a serious emotional wound. The villains are truly nasty characters, not much nuance to them. They're just bad, and mostly proud of it. The plot is fast-paced but handled well. | |
| Publication | Grand Central Publishing (2009), Edition: Reprint, Mass Market Paperback, 560 pages |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| ISBN | 0446616931 / 9780446616935 |
| Title | The Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court |
| Author McKean, David | Cliff Sloan |
| Rating | |
| Tags | supreme court, non-fiction, judicial review, john marshall, thomas jefferson |
| Well told story of perhaps the most important Supreme Court decision in United State history, the one that determined that the Supreme Court had the power of judicial review. In other words, it established the Supreme Court as a co-equal branch of government with the power to decide if laws passed by Congress were constitutional or not. The two antagonists in Marbury vs. Madison were Chief Justice John Marshall, a Federalist appointed by John Adams, who had served as Adams' Secretary of State, and Thomas Jefferson, President of the United State, and a Republican. The authors give a nice sense of the personalities, the parties, and the legal issues involved. They argue that the legacy of an independent judiciary is America's greatest legal legacy, and quote the following from a Russian judge:"I like my wine French, my beer German, my vodka Russian, and my judicial institutions American."The book has extensive notes, a good index, and the full text of the Marbury vs. Madison decision. | |
| Other authors
| McKean, David |
| Publication | PublicAffairs (2009), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 288 pages |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| ISBN | 1586484265 / 9781586484262 |
Nicely-written meditation on the violence in the films of Quentin Tarantino, and how they reflect a moral emptiness. Rather than fostering empathy for the characters, it appeals to the basest part of us. The author, Johann Hari, finds that Tarantino's talent makes it worse.... that he could be making some of the best films ever, but does not.
The violence has kept me from watching a lot of Tarantino's films, despite their critical acclaim. This article reinforces that I've made the right choice for me.
I've said before that religion has been used in madly destructive ways, and that because so many people seem to blindly accept that religion is good, I've been willing to point out where it has been bad.
What I really believe is that any religion can be used for the positive - to connect the celebrant (I much prefer the concept of celebration to that of worship) to something greater than herself, to create community, to facilitate helping others, and so on. Likewise, any religion can be used for destructive purposes - to increase hatred, to justify killing those who are different, to try to control people's lives and force their adherence to rules that are harmful, and so on. This week, I've been hit on the head with one example of each.
The good example comes from a former co-worker and friend. It is the First Baptist Church Decatur (Georgia). My friend Leslie attends this church, and in our book club's discussion of Outcasts United she mentioned that the church has been working with a lot of refugees. Her husband Bill is an Asian scholar and knows some languages that allow him to be a huge help with some of the refugee population. She says that a lot of the church's ministry in there kinds of areas is behind the scenes. There's an article on the church and its pastor in Atlanta Magazine from May 2008 on pg. 112 (I haven't had a chance to read it). Reading the book made me realize how much help is needed by the refugee population, and how overwhelmed the aid groups are, so this kind of outreach is so much needed and speaks of care on the part of the church.
The bad example comes from this article from Talking Points Memo about the pastor of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ. The pastor preached a sermon called "Why I Hate Barack Obama" the day before a member of the church brought a gun to an event where Obama was appearing. I listened to the first few minutes, and according to the pastor, God is quite capable of hating people, and he hates the violent in particular. It shows, again, how little these type of people have the capacity for self-reflection. They have a page of their doctrines, and one of them is this: "We believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination which God punishes with the death penalty." The pastor, Steven Anderson, in his sermon prayed for Barack Obama to die - not by violence, that would create a martyr, but a natural death. Maybe he's been taking lessons in imprecatory prayers from Wiley Drake.
So here we have concrete examples of the light and the dark, love vs. hate, kindness that reaches out vs. evil that excludes. I think you can guess where my sympathies lie. Blessings to those who are spreaders of light, and may the haters look out from the pit they have dug for themselves and decide to become a part of what is good in the world.
Excellent post on marriage equality by Top Chef Blogger Tom Colicchio. Here's a sizable excerpt:
"I’m going to go out on a limb and say a few words about same-sex marriage: First of all, part of the problem with the issue is that it is framed by opponents as a discussion of whether gay people should get special rights. This is specious – yes, special legislation or court decisions grant them the right to wed in a particular state, however this is done to ensure that they share equal protection under the law by finally being able to avail themselves of the same rights as everyone else. They are not seeking special treatment, just equitable treatment. Second, religion has no business being part of the discussion. When a couple is wed in a house of worship, the officiant may be performing a religious rite, but as far as the law is concerned, that officiant has been authorized to perform a civil function, plain and simple. And even were same-sex marriage to be legalized by the state, no one would be holding a gun to the heads of the clergy to require them to perform a ceremony that their faith or personal creed does not condone. Just as some rabbis would not perform my marriage to my wife because I wasn’t Jewish, clergy can decline performing same-sex marriages; gay couples can either find clergy willing to officiate or can be wed in a civil setting. The idea that religious leaders are continuing to shape state law is just wrong. The institution of marriage should be available to all. The idea that you can have a life-long partner and not make decisions for them in a hospital, not share in insurance benefits, not automatically have parental rights unless you are the birth parent, is just flat-out wrong."
Well said, Mr. Colicchio!
So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade. According to many commentators, that’s a terrifying number, requiring drastic action — in particular, of course, canceling efforts to boost the economy and calling off health care reform.
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York TimesPaul Krugman
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.The truth is more complicated and less frightening. Right now deficits are actually helping the economy. In fact, deficits here and in other major economies saved the world from a much deeper slump. The longer-term outlook is worrying, but it’s not catastrophic.
The only real reason for concern is political. The United States can deal with its debts if politicians of both parties are, in the end, willing to show at least a bit of maturity. Need I say more?
Let’s start with the effects of this year’s deficit.
There are two main reasons for the surge in red ink. First, the recession has led both to a sharp drop in tax receipts and to increased spending on unemployment insurance and other safety-net programs. Second, there have been large outlays on financial rescues. These are counted as part of the deficit, although the government is acquiring assets in the process and will eventually get at least part of its money back.
What this tells us is that right now it’s good to run a deficit. Consider what would have happened if the U.S. government and its counterparts around the world had tried to balance their budgets as they did in the early 1930s. It’s a scary thought. If governments had raised taxes or slashed spending in the face of the slump, if they had refused to rescue distressed financial institutions, we could all too easily have seen a full replay of the Great Depression.
As I said, deficits saved the world.
In fact, we would be better off if governments were willing to run even larger deficits over the next year or two. The official White House forecast shows a nation stuck in purgatory for a prolonged period, with high unemployment persisting for years. If that’s at all correct — and I fear that it will be — we should be doing more, not less, to support the economy.
But what about all that debt we’re incurring? That’s a bad thing, but it’s important to have some perspective. Economists normally assess the sustainability of debt by looking at the ratio of debt to G.D.P. And while $9 trillion is a huge sum, we also have a huge economy, which means that things aren’t as scary as you might think.
Here’s one way to look at it: We’re looking at a rise in the debt/G.D.P. ratio of about 40 percentage points. The real interest on that additional debt (you want to subtract off inflation) will probably be around 1 percent of G.D.P., or 5 percent of federal revenue. That doesn’t sound like an overwhelming burden.
Now, this assumes that the U.S. government’s credit will remain good so that it’s able to borrow at relatively low interest rates. So far, that’s still true. Despite the prospect of big deficits, the government is able to borrow money long term at an interest rate of less than 3.5 percent, which is low by historical standards. People making bets with real money don’t seem to be worried about U.S. solvency.
The numbers tell you why. According to the White House projections, by 2019, net federal debt will be around 70 percent of G.D.P. That’s not good, but it’s within a range that has historically proved manageable for advanced countries, even those with relatively weak governments. In the early 1990s, Belgium — which is deeply divided along linguistic lines — had a net debt of 118 percent of G.D.P., while Italy — which is, well, Italy — had a net debt of 114 percent of G.D.P. Neither faced a financial crisis.
So is there anything to worry about? Yes, but the dangers are political, not economic.
As I’ve said, those 10-year projections aren’t as bad as you may have heard. Over the really long term, however, the U.S. government will have big problems unless it makes some major changes. In particular, it has to rein in the growth of Medicare and Medicaid spending.
That shouldn’t be hard in the context of overall health care reform. After all, America spends far more on health care than other advanced countries, without better results, so we should be able to make our system more cost-efficient.
But that won’t happen, of course, if even the most modest attempts to improve the system are successfully demagogued — by conservatives! — as efforts to “pull the plug on grandma.”
So don’t fret about this year’s deficit; we actually need to run up federal debt right now and need to keep doing it until the economy is on a solid path to recovery. And the extra debt should be manageable. If we face a potential problem, it’s not because the economy can’t handle the extra debt. Instead, it’s the politics, stupid.
Sign in to Recommend Next Article in Opinion (1 of 28) » A version of this article appeared in print on August 28, 2009, on page A23 of the New York edition.
Paul Krugman on the deficit and why it is not as worrisome as it sounds.
This article is about evolution in action. It talks about deer mice who have evolved with light-colored coats to match the area they live in. Scientists now know the gene that was at work in the natural selection. Deny that, creationists.
| Title | Outcasts United: A Refugee Team, an American Town |
| Author | Warren St. John |
| Rating |  |
| Tags | non-fiction, soccer, refugees, georgia |
| What a splendid book! My book club read it, and it makes a great companion to a book we read a few months ago, Three Cups of Tea. They are entirely different stories, but share teaching what is happening in other parts of the world and in being uplifting stories of what people are doing to create positive change.It is the story of Luma Mufleh, who was born and grew up in a loving family in Jordan, yet a family that expected Luma to follow tradition. After coming to the United States to attend college, she did not return to Jordan, knowing that she could not be a part of the traditions. She wound up in metro Atlanta, Georgia, and while driving through Clarkston, a suburb, she saw a group of refugee boys playing soccer. She had been a soccer coach and became the coach to the refugee boys.Besides telling Luma's story, St. John tells the stories of many of the refugee families: the horrors from which they fled, and the painful adjustments to living in Clarkston, usually living in poverty in a high-crime area in a totally new culture. The author also tells the story of the older inhabitants of Clarkston, who saw their typical small Southern town change drastically with the influx of refugees from all over the world.Luma, with little compensation, became coach to three different boys' soccer teams, the Under 17s, the Under 15s, and the Under 13s. The teams took the name Fugees, short for refugees. Each had its unique challenges and strengths.Sports is not, generally, a subject I care about at all, which I blame on growing up in Alabama when Bear Bryant was God. And yet I thorougly enjoyed this book and its stories of people living with great challenges but making something strong and courageous out of them.Highly recommended. | |
| Other authors 1 | |
| Publication | Spiegel & Grau (2009), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 320 pages |
| Publication date | 2009 |
| ISBN | 0385522037 / 9780385522038 |
Excellent post on the history of conservatism in this country and how the rabble-rousing seen at the health care town halls ain't the real thing. The author is unsure what they are looking to conserve other than the power and privileges of the insurance industry. Here's an important paragraph from the article:
"America was the first country founded upon Enlightenment values. Granted, Americans themselves have rarely in the mass lived up to those values, and the history of America is to some extent the development of these enlightened values over the darker forces of our nature for two hundred years. No one with eyes to see could say that America is a perfectly enlightened or tolerant country, but without a doubt the enlightened values of the founding have slowly found favor with a greater percentage of the population. Those Americans resisting the ideals of reasoned discussion and debate, toleration for the Other, individual rights, liberty, equality, and education are thus not conservatives, but reactionaries. They don't wish to conserve or even resurrect a fallen order, but to impose darkness on the land."
