Newsweek columnist and self-proclaimed sympathizer with third party causes Gersh Kuntzman, who provided us with that wonderfully germane diversion into the world of competitive eating in his last column dealing with third party candidates, is proving himself a stalwart fighter for the third party cause. "Because third party candidacies are considered such a joke, most of us would sooner vote for Oprah than for David Cobb," he explains. This week he does his small part by covering the Green Party candidate, David Cobb, on his campaign stop in New York City.
"This recruiting station is taking young people and turning them into fodder for an illegal and immoral war in Iraq! Support our troops—bring them home! We need to end our addiction to fossil fuels, which is driving us to war in the Middle East. We need to build schools instead of prisons. Health care is a fundamental human right! We need a living wage, not a minimum wage! And we need to repeal the Patriot Act!"
Again, there was no applause. There was a guy making a cellphone call ("Can you hear me? I'm losing you"). And the beer bum was uninspired. Not even Roosterman, a legendary Times Square figure who crows and makes crude sexual gestures, slowed down to listen to Cobb. A family of four stopped to stay out of the rain. I asked them if they liked what Cobb was saying. They said they hadn't been listening. "We love George Bush," the father said. "Now, we have to get to Madame Tussaud's." (Hmm, isn't that a French name?)
Maybe a first step to making them less of a joke would be to stop writing irreverent, silly articles about them. Just a suggestion.
Gersh Kuntzman is also a reporter for The New York Post which, if you don't recall, is the newspaper that brought us the early scoop(ed -- that's sarcasm) on Kerry's VP pick. Today's headline is slightly more factual, but only slightly: "Kerry Bashes Bush in Prez Race Kickoff." I saw Kerry's speech last night and from what I saw I thought it was remarkably free of Bush bashing, not to mention that the Democrats had a carefully enforced no Bush-bashing policy and emphasized an anti-negative campaign message.
Originally published 9/12/04
While reading through an article I was reminded why I don't like political science. For one, it almost always has an ideological agenda which, as a "science," it shouldn't have, right? And I always find the conclusions and deductions, to be very opinion-driven. Take this example, fleshed out below: constructing an argument that politician X, rather than politician Y, is the true heir to a political thinker. Yet there's only a slight difference, and in either case there's no real intellectual lineage - just a descriptive statement. What's the real purpose? If you're tracing the tangible intellectual roots of a political movement, then you're doing essential historical work, and that does have academic value. If the historical or philosophical background provides some insight, then you're helping to keep the public informed and better able to make decisions. But all too often, in contemporary academic work, I see tenuous, and tedious, ideological, agenda-driven comparisons and "analysis" that pass because they are obscure and intellectual enough to seem like scholarship.
Take this article, by a political science professor at BC. It starts:
To understand what is distinctive about today's Republican Party, you first need to know about an obscure and very conservative German political philosopher.
It then names two political philosopher contemporaries, Leo Strauss, who is widely credited as the forefather of the modern neoconservative movement, and Carl Schmitt, who I'm personally not familiar with. Strauss promoted a kind of authoritarian, and secretive democracy, administered by the elite. Schmitt on the other hand was nothing less than a modern-day Machievelli. He was also one of the founding thinkers of the European fascist movement and a member of the Nazi party to boot.
Schmitt ... joined the Nazi Party in 1933, survived World War II with his reputation relatively unscathed, and witnessed a revival of interest in his work, from both the left and the right, before his death in 1985 at the age of 96.
Given Schmitt's strident anti-Semitism and unambiguous Nazi commitments, the left's continuing fascination with him is difficult to comprehend...
...Schmitt wrote that every realm of human endeavor is structured by an irreducible duality. Morality is concerned with good and evil, aesthetics with the beautiful and ugly, and economics with the profitable and unprofitable. In politics, the core distinction is between friend and enemy. That is what makes politics different from everything else. Jesus's call to love your enemy is perfectly appropriate for religion, but it is incompatible with the life-or-death stakes politics always involves. Moral philosophers are preoccupied with justice, but politics has nothing to do with making the world fairer. Economic exchange requires only competition; it does not demand annihilation. Not so politics.
"The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism," Schmitt wrote
Between these two thinkers, which is closer to being the intellectual guru of the current administration? Schmitt, of course Why? I don't know:
Conservatives have absorbed Schmitt's conception of politics much more thoroughly than liberals. Ann H. Coulter, author of books with titles such as Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism and Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, regularly drops hints about how nice it would be if liberals were removed from the earth, like her 2003 speculation about a Democratic ticket that might include Al Gore and then-California Gov. Gray Davis. "Both were veterans, after a fashion, of Vietnam," she wrote, "which would make a Gore-Davis ticket the only compelling argument yet in favor of friendly fire."
Note that I'm talking about contemporary political science, not so much political theory and the great thinkers of the past.
Dear ______:
Yes, I get out before January. And one request: no museums. Take me to the museum of London streetlife and promiscuous, unholy Jordanian women.
... They've definitely got some work ahead of them with her, just like they did with me trying to get me to not talk with a British accent (the aristocratic kind).
In London, do they play basketball with the baskets on the wrong side of the court?
Adam
Here's something we're bound to hear more about in the future.
A photograph that flew around the Internet this week shows a boxy bulge in the back of President Bush's suit coat during the first debate, leading to widespread cyber-speculation that he was wired to receive help with his answers.
I doubt this was a prompting device. For one, I doubt the Bush team would implant it on his back where it's visible when there are so many other better places to put it. Secondly, Bush did poorly in the first debate. If Carl Rove was feeding him answers, would Bush really repeat himself so much and miss so many good opportunities? Salon suggests that some of Bush's untimely long pauses could be accounted for by listening to a prompter. I don't know. But I do know the bloggers will be all over this one.
“Back in 2000 a Republican friend warned me that if I voted for Al Gore and he won, the stock market would tank, we'd lose millions of jobs, and our military would be totally overstretched. You know what? I did vote for Gore, he did win, and I'll be damned if all those things didn't come true!"
A while back I predicted Nader was planning to drop out of the race before election day. More and more now it's looking like that won't turn out to be the case. One month ago Nader said to a newsweek columnist, "Kerry and Bush will drop out before I will … There’s no such thing as dropping out of a race like this. Once you get in, you’re in for the duration.” So ok, it doesn't look like he's going to drop out.
There was also another interesting quote in the article.
"Do you think you’re spoiling your legacy, especially among former supporters?" Dryly: “I don’t think they’re going to start ripping out seat belts from their cars.”
Indeed, agree with him or not, I think this sums up the guy's attitude quite well.
"My well-meaning effort to write a book accessible to a lay audience through the omission of footnotes or endnotes -- in contrast to the practice I have always followed in my scholarly writing -- came at an unacceptable cost: my failure to attribute some of the material the Weekly Standard identified," Tribe wrote.
Should I plagiarize that the next time I need to come up with an excuse for plagiarizing?
It seems that my objections to David Brooks' last article are widely shared. Here's the first complaint letter printed by the Times and it sums up all my main points:
Having earned a doctorate in electrical engineering at M.I.T., am I no longer allowed in the lab given that I apparently relate to the "postmodern, post-Cartesian, deconstructionist, co-directional ambiguity of Kerry's Iraq policy''?
It seems to me that the statistics show a correlation between education and political support regardless of numeracy or literacy. The fact that corporate chief executives and accountants are more likely to support George Bush is consistent with this observation: they are probably best educated that a third of his tax cuts go to the richest 1 percent.
a second letter:
At M.I.T., 94 percent of campaign giving was to the Democrats. What does Mr. Brooks think the people at M.I.T. do? Does he think that the electrical engineers, computer scientists, roboticists, biologists and economists run screaming from numbers and sit around reading Derrida?
Academia is full of very smart people earning very little money relative to what they could earn. They are curious people, dedicated to pursuing the truth and teaching others.
Business is full of very smart people whose sole responsibility is to make money, for stockholders and themselves. The first group supports Democrats. The second group supports Republicans. Draw your own conclusion.
This reminds me of something another blogger (I believe it was Grobstein) speculated about David Brooks a while ago to the effect that the editors must be so inundated with complaint letters following each of his columns that they usually print none, fearing it will make them look bad and perhaps incompetent. I suppose the response to this latest column was enough to overwhelm their letter censoring capabilities.
A good Maureen Dowd article appears in today's Times. The usually punchy Democratic Dowd is expressing a sentiment increasingly common to even the biggest Kerry supporters.
It's a remarkable feat, but teeter-tottering John Kerry is even managing to land on both sides of the ambition issue. For his entire life, he was seen as so ambitious to be president, as so eager to consort with heiresses, that it was off-putting; his St. Paul's classmates played "Hail to the Chief" on kazoos when he walked by, and in the Senate, Bob Dole mocked the Massachusetts senator's love of cameras by nicknaming him Live Shot.
But this summer, when that lust for power should have been coursing through his veins, Mr. Kerry grew timid and logy. He let the Bush crowd and Swift boat character assassins stomp all over him and, for the longest time, didn't fight back. He stumbled into every trap Bush Inc. set.
This piece caused me to do a little reflection on blogging and this blog.
In the meantime, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Start your own blog and become a member of the media. It may be the only way to get your voice heard.
I don't think my voice is any more heard as a result of this blog. If profile views are any indication of my readership, the most fitting slogan for this blog would be something like "changing minds, one per day." Mostly this blog is just a way for family and friends to see what's going on in my head.
There are two ways people do blogs as far as I can tell. One is as a micro media outlet, with original analysis, or links and quotes from online news sources. The other way is to post personal thoughts, ideas and opinions, like a homepage for your mind (pub -- that's not a bad slogan). I think this blog falls somewhere in the middle. For some reason, blogs have dealt almost exclusively with politics, though the best blogs in my opinion deal with all kinds of issues. Maybe that's because I'm not that interested in politics.
I've often wondered about the difference between a blog and a live journal. The most satisfactory answer I can come up with is that if it talks about feelings, it's a live journal. But the line is skewed lightly by the motherlode of bad poetry on blogger.
A lot of people are now including an imaginary editor as a way to insert parenthetical comments into their blogs (ed -- like this). I've used an editor a few times already without formally introducing him. Already there are some original variations on this theme, like Oren Cass's "prof." Wanting to be original myself, I've decided to start using a "publisher" which of course is funny because it implies these entries are worthy of publication. So expect a publisher's comment from now on whenever I wish to inflate the importance of what I'm saying.
I'd like to apologize for not updating this blog for over a week and I hope it didn't disappoint too many people (ed -- you didn't). I was busy being host to reader Nate (ed-- he's not a reader. Ok, just Nate then. I've had some ideas incubating over the break, so expect a few good posts relatively soon. The future of this blog is still up in the air, since I'm not sure how the year will pan out Noah, our invisiblogger, told me he still wants to be on board for the school year. Whether that means he wants to keep at his current level of participation or perhaps step it up a notch and post every month or so, I'm not sure. So we'll be seeing more of Noah, even if that's only in the upper-right hand of the blog under the 'contributors' heading.
I've come up with the worst (best) method for checking grammar ever. Take your grammatical phrase, google it, then take an alternative version of the phrase, google that. Continue indefinitely. The one that gets the larger number of hits is the correct phrase. Voila.
Whatever Ralph Nader's goal is this election, it doesn't seem to be going very well. The Democratic convention is revealing the Democrats intend to position themselves farther to the right on a number of issues than they were when Nader complained about them, not that that's a bad thing. Ralph isn't doing too well on his quest to get on the ballot. And there doesn't seem to be any emerging movement to support Nader's candidacy on the philosophical grounds that he represents a third party. Meanwhile, the media is becoming more bold with its anti-Nader pronouncements. Take this news article from CBS, titled "Nader to Dems: Look in Mirror." It opens unassumingly with these two paragraphs:
Ralph Nader insists he is in the presidential race for keeps. If President Bush wins again, so be it, he says. Though Nader thinks he'll hurt Mr. Bush more than help him.
Democrats call Nader delusional. He thinks they’re hypocrites. For the independent candidate, his long-term goals trump any short-term repercussions.
That's the kind of reporting I expect from a trusted news source. Notice how the first two paragraphs clearly, objectively outline the nature of the conflict: Nader wants to run for president and doesn't care if it hurts the Democrats chances at office because he thinks they're doing a poor job, although he expects his campaign will hurt Bush more. The Democrats think he's delusional. Both perspectives are given coverage. The reporting is objective, impersonal, without value judgment. But move on in the article...
“If they want to pick up some of these issues, if they catch on,” Nader continues, he will accept the loss of his liberal supporters. “That’s fair play,” he adds.
Ralph Nader is mad. He wants Democrats to earn his liberal backers. He refuses to give them away. And although he appreciates a willingness by Sen. John Kerry to reach out to him, the party itself has betrayed its political left for too long, in Nader’s view.
Whoa! So Nader's running for president this year and he is mad? I double-checked the top of the page to make sure I wasn't reading an editorial, but this was in fact a news article.
If Nader had not been on the ballot in New Hampshire or Florida, both states would have gone to Democrat Al Gore. Instead George W. Bush won by the narrowest of margins: 537 votes in Florida alone.
Whoa, where are they getting that crazy idea from!? But actually, this is the first time I've seen the accusation that Nader lost the election stated definitively by a "responsible" member of the press. Before, it had always been "Democrats blame Nader for losing them the race in 2000." The simple reason for this is that the exit polls, which try show who a voter would have voted for as a second choice, don't all agree. Some show Nader's votes drawing very heavily from potential Gore voters, some show them drawing roughly equally from both campaigns. Nader's own nifty campaign site says:
A Democratic exit poll showed that Ralph’s votes came 25% from Republicans, 38% from Democrats...
CBS cites a different poll with different data:
In 2000, Voter News Service exit polling showed that 47 percent of Nader's Florida supporters would have voted for Gore, and 21 percent for Mr. Bush, easily covering the margin of Gore's loss.
Apparently, CBS has determined its poll is authoritative.
The other variable is, how many voters for an independent candidate would simply have stayed home? It seems plausible that many would, since an independent candidate's platform differs much more from the two major parties' than their platforms differ from each other.
The funny thing is that, despite all the negative attention and non-attention, Nader seems emboldened.
"It is more likely I will ask John Kerry and George W. Bush to withdraw before I'd withdraw," Nader said. “They are focusing on one-tenth of the vote they think they may lose and ignoring the nine-tenths of the party they must get."
Perhaps this doesn't bode well for my earlier prediction that Nader was planning all along to drop out of the race.
On the other hand, I have to admit that some aspects of this conflict make for good entertainment. From this CBS article on the convention entitled"Nader to Crash Dems' Party," Nader is quoted saying:"I would like to see the bazaar. I'd like to see the alcoholic-musical-political payoff bazaar of accounts receivable," Nader said. "I would like to be there at the convention to watch. I will try to get credentials… I may try as a syndicated columnist, which I've been for 35 years. Let's see if they are against reporters." That's just funny.
For some reason the google-sponsored search-generator on the top of the page lists a barbecue food product for its related search every few reloads. Reload the page a few times and see for yourself.
Update: The source must be the editorial on eating competitions.
It's nice when everyone can put aside their partisan differences and lend a helping hand, as a human being...
Of course this story makes it to the front page of msnbc, but why don't we ever see any other Nader stories? Oh, youmean these? I think journalists have a rule that you're not allowed to mention Ralph Nader in an article unless "Al Gore lost in 2000" or "threat to Democrats" is mentioned in the same piece.
Of course the press isn't cutting him any slack. Observe this silly column:
Now, I would’ve cut Nader some slack—hey, he’s still right on so many of the issues, even if he remains unapologetic for creating an administration that is wrong on so many of the issues—but for the fact that he is entirely wrong about his fourth sign of “social decay.”
“Gluttony is rapidly becoming a competitive sport, in what its euphemists call ‘competitive eating,’” Nader wrote. “There is even an International Federation of Competitive Eating, which presides over dozens of events a year where contestants inhale hot dogs, matzo balls and chicken wings. What’s next—mayonnaise?” See? I told you Nader was out of touch: Mayonnaise is already a vibrant part of the competitive eating circuit. Oleg Zhornitskiy ate 136 ounces of Hellmann’s at the Glutton Bowl last year, a record that I think will stand for generations. Look, I have no equal when it comes to condemning American gluttony, from high-fat fast food to gas-guzzling SUVs. But Nader’s condemnation of the IFOCE willfully ignores the sport’s fundamental beauty (full disclosure: I am the Federation’s recording secretary—but only for the free hot dogs, I assure you).
Competitive eating is the only sport entirely dominated by average folk like you and me (even bowling has celebrities nowadays). As such, it is our most democratic sport.
Unlike the myth that any American kid can grow up to be president, any child who really puts his stomach to it can be a competitive eating champion. Ed “Cookie” Jarvis, the American hot dog, cannoli, chicken-fried steak, dumpling, ice cream and chicken wing-eating champion? He’s a real estate broker from Long Island. Eric “Badlands” Booker, the burrito, cheesecake, corned-beef hash and matzo ball champion? He’s a conductor on the 7 line of the New York City subway system. Hirofumi “The Kofu Consumer” Nakajima, who ushered in seven years of Japanese domination of the sport? He’s a furniture delivery boy.
More important, competitive eating is constantly pushing our society forward. Sure, hot dogs and mayonnaise get all the attention, but the IFOCE just sponsored the first-ever turducken-eating contest last week in New York. (Turducken, for the uninitiated, is an ethereal Thanksgiving treat consisting of a turkey stuffed with a boneless chicken that’s been stuffed with a boneless duck breast. Order one at turducken.com.) “Turducken is the first real advancement in Thanksgiving since the Indians sat down with the Pilgrims,” said IFOCE president George Shea. “I’m so pleased that the IFOCE is playing a part in advancing our entire culture.”
And the best thing about last week’s turducken-eating contest was that the winner was none other than 100-pound Sonya Thomas, the sport’s brightest rising star. Watching the svelte Thomas eat 7 ¾ pounds of turducken dinner while standing cheek-by-jowl with Jarvis and Booker (both about 400 pounds) was a sight of athletic majesty that Ralph Nader simply couldn’t understand.
Now, I didn't read the editorial this columnist is refering to, but I find it hard to believe that Nader identified "eating competitions" as his fourth sign of social decay. More likely, he had chosen gluttony as the fourth sign of social decay and was illustrating with an anecdote, which was the phenomenon of "eating competitions." Moreover, I find this guy's fervor for food competitions rather off-putting. Is he really helping to make his point and giving his opinion credibility by going on a five-paragraph rant displaying his intimate knowledge of the rising stars of eating competitions? And I love the half-hearted attempt to equate eating competitions with democracy.
But really, this time Nader shows all the signs of wanting to help the Democrats. He displays an awareness that this time, his campaign is subordinate to theirs. For instance, for a long time he had been urging John Kerry to pick Edwards as his running mate. And one of his favorite defenses for his candidacy is that he's able to attack Bush in ways that are politically impossible for Democrats - like the political equivalent Islamic Jihad and Hamas for Arafat. Granted, this may be nothing more than a contrived defense - like his generally unconvincing attempts at defending his role in the 2000 election outcome ("Al Gore lost the election for Al Gore"). I still wish the press would give him some coverage.
Because - and I am officially owning this claim - I predict that before election day, Nader will drop out of the race and strongly endorse Kerry. Nader's still an activist at heart (he's certainly not a presidential candidate), and this exactly the kind of thing an activist would do.
Update: On the other hand, if Nader really believes everything he says about the political system being broken and the Democrats being failures, his real intention may be to elect what he considers the worst administration possible, hoping to create a backlash and eventually a reform movement that he would potentially lead. It's hard to say what he's really thinking. At times he says the Democrats are no better than Republicans, and other times he acknowledges that a Democratic victory would be preferable to a Republican victory. His website right now features a quote saying, "can you imagine if the Abolitionist Party was told not to run against the pro-slavery Whigs and Democratic Parties." I don't know what exactly is occuring in America that reaches the level of slavery (campaign finance, inadequate minimum wage, foreign policy?).
If Nader truly thinks that the state of the country is broken beyond the scope of the two-party system to repair, then I think it's fair to say that he's out of touch. America has seen equal turmoil and internal strife to what it's experiencing right now, and was able to come to some point of concilliation without going full-scale revolution.
I went to see The Bourne Supremecy last night. It was more stereotypical than I would have expected. Let's see how well it fits the thriller mold:
"The truth" is revealed gradually as the movie progresses: Check. To enhance the suspense and authenticity, Matt Damon is also suffering from memory loss about what happened in his past
Multiple bad guys with surprise "bad guy" agents revealed as the movie progresses: Check. Extra typicality awarded for the fact that the bad guys are foreign. (Double award for the fact that they're Russian and German)
Token McGyver-esque stunt: Check.
Lots of chasing, in cars and on foot: Check. The movie very well could have originated as a two-hour long car chase, which they subsequently cut by several minutes to make room for a supporting plot.
Implausible incident count = at least 10: Check. Thanks to the recurrent car chase scene, this movie has by far the largest number of successive run red lights and multi-lane highway crossings I've had the privilege to witness. (Note: this condition may be more applicable to the action movie genre)
According to newsmedia, Ralph Nader is still alive and existent. In a shocking development since Nader announced his bid for the presidency and the national media went into a state of denial over his existence, it appears that he has resurfaced again to momentarily comment on John Kerry's campaign. Nader is not expected to exist tomorrow.
Ralph Nader is the consummate patriotic American, a man that stands up for the purest values in this country, believing in free speech, a liberalized economy free from the shackles of such corporations as Halliburton and the like. Our founding fathers once defended this country as a refuge for radical thinkers, and progressive minds. Today is a sad day in American politics, where we are to select between candidate A, backed by corporate dollars and fighting for media and corporate interest, and his slightly less evil twin democratic opponent. Today we shun Ralph Nader for running in an election and probably swinging the vote in one candidate's favor or another. The true patriot in all of us would not accept a sure defeat of Nader at the hands of these so called "political conglomerates." A patriot would vote his mind and defend his principles at all odds not just vote for the lesser evil. This November election will mark yet another defeat in the democratic system that we once fought a revolution for and yet lost without a fight.
Are there people out there who actually spend their time repeatedly hitting the "next blog" button on the navigation bar browsing other people's blogs? In the last 5 minutes alone I've gotten two referrals from random blogs, which can only be accounted for by someone hitting the "next blog" button. Why is there is a "next blog" button? Do people use it? I mean, do I really care what some random person in Georgia (the country, probably) has to say about the time they went to visit their parents? (pub -- some people take a human interest approach to blogs. You should consider adopting a similar approach to life in general) What's the likelihood of finding someone with something insightful to say by chance? (pub -- touche!) That's why blogs are all about connections and word of mouth, or link rather. And that's why I strive to make sure this blog lives up to the high KrisKraus standard.
I don't know who's more late, Al Gore or this columnist:
In closing his 45-minute presentation in Boston, Gore shows one last, majestic shot of Earth. “We don’t have any other home, so our job is to keep our eyes on the prize.”
When he is finished, the audience is slightly stunned, and walks out talking about how they’ll never forget this night. Somebody says maybe delivering this environmental S.O.S. is the former vice president’s true calling. He’s so full-throated now, so sure of himself in this campaign, that maybe this was the thing he was meant to be doing all along? Nah…
DfMoore asks a variant of a question I started to address in a previous post about the phenomenon known as "natural law." He asks:
If nature has purpose (like a telos), but not consciousness or intelligence, then what are ethical ways of treating nature and interacting with it.
Aside from what I wrote before, I had a few things to add, which I will reprint for your reading satisfaction. For the uninitiated, a telos is like an innate plan.
The first issue that comes to my mind is how are we sure we know what the telos is? Even in something widely accepted like evolution theory, which does fundamentally guarantee the existence of a telos in living nature, the "purpose" or adaptivity of a given element of nature is subject to different interpretations. There are a few cases in which we can be pretty absolutely certain of what the telos is. One instance would be the instinct, in conscious or unconscious terms, possessed by a living thing to survive. You don't even have to buy into evolutionary theory to be pretty sure that living nature is set up in such a way that one of its main ends is survival. Then you can ask: well, how do we take into account this basic truth in our interactions with nature? I think it's safe to say there's a pretty universal ethic among humans cultures to not kill something if it's for no good reason. Where does this come from? Are we identifying with a telos we innately sense, or are we are we merely projecting our own personal aversion to death? The issue of our regard for life may offer hints into how we do unconsciously respond to a telos in nature.
But practically, I would argue that there are few things of which we can reasonably be sure we even know the telos. However, this doesn't mean that people don't construct normative systems based on some kind of supposed grand plan in nature. Social darwinism and eugenics are a great example of people trying to facilitate nature, and coming up with ethically monstrous policies in the process. The ethical profile of these things is bleak at best. But my objection to this kind of ethical stance is that for every positive normative argument for facilitating the "purpose" or "function" of nature, I can give a negative normative argument for why we shouldn't do the very same thing, because humans are higher beings and the raw workings of nature are often brutish or inhumane. Which argument wins? It seems pretty subjective.
David Brooks has written what strikes me as a very important op-ed today on the topic of social mobility in America which, needless to say, is a very important thing.
The United States is a country based on the idea that a person's birth does not determine his or her destiny. Our favorite stories involve immigrants climbing from obscurity to success. Our amazing work ethic is predicated on the assumption that enterprise and effort lead to ascent. "I hold the value of life is to improve one's condition," Lincoln declared.
The problem is that in every generation conditions emerge that threaten to close down opportunity and retard social mobility. Each generation has to reopen the pathways to success.
...
Economists and sociologists do not all agree, but it does seem there is at least slightly less movement across income quintiles than there was a few decades ago. Sons' income levels correlate more closely to those of their fathers. The income levels of brothers also correlate more closely. That suggests that the family you were born into matters more and more to how you will fare in life. That's a problem because we are not supposed to have a hereditary class structure in this country.
But we're developing one. In the information age, education matters more. In an age in which education matters more, family matters more, because as James Coleman established decades ago, family status shapes educational achievement.
...
In this way these highly educated elites produce a paradox - a hereditary meritocratic class.
It becomes harder for middle-class kids to compete against members of the hypercharged educated class. Indeed, the middle-class areas become more socially isolated from the highly educated areas.
One of the things that happens when your regional paper is also a newspaper of global reknown is the curious oddity that your local trifles get broadcast and amplified to the world at large. It's not as if this is on the level of a police report, although it's still pretty entertaining to read the editorial's heart-wrenching homage to hawks. I've added bold type to the good parts:
There is no historic preservation district or landmarks commission for hawks' nests. But if there were, the red-tailed hawk's nest at 927 Fifth Avenue, overlooking Central Park at 74th Street, would surely have qualified. Until Tuesday, the nest stood on a 12th-floor cornice with a sublime aerial view of the urban forest in our midst. Since 1993, 23 young hawks have been raised there, sired by a bird called Pale Male.Thousands and thousands of bird-watchers over the years have followed the lives of the hawks in that nest. But this is not an homage to bird-watching - it's an homage to birds.
Aside from being an entertaining read, this editorial is actually quite remarkable, for several reasons. For one, it contains a kind of overwhelming amount of detail, suggesting that someone has been closely observing the nest like on a daily basis for over 10 years. Second, the author of the editorial has, apparently without irony, penned a name on one of the birds. I mean it's either that or the bird named himself. Or the flock named him, and pasted a name-tag on him. Third - most important of all! - a hawk's nest is getting a full editorial! Don't underestimate the editorial as a mere runoff for the cesspool of overly sentimental and trivial humans... This one makes a few strong observations, we can't deny that:
Perhaps residents were annoyed that the hawks didn't do a better job of cleaning up after themselves by using a pooper-scooper or putting their pigeon bones in the trash, the way a human would. Perhaps they simply wearied of the stirring sight of a red-tailed hawk coming down out of the sky to settle on its nest.
I'm not sure what mix of irony and hoakiness is the appropriate mix for interpreting that passage. Although I'm thinking maybe the authors were being serious?
The hawks have gone out of their way to learn to live with us.
I wouldn't have given them so much credit. I would have thought, maybe I'm wrong, that the hawks didn't notice anyone at all - because they're hawks!
I forgot your schedule. Are you around before Christmas? I'll email you in January to continue our discussions re: Bush, UFOs, Trivia. Oh, and more important things are totally fine as well.
The New York Times prints an article "How do you prove you're a Jew?" on Jewish marriage, or something, by author named Gershom Gorenberg. Am I the only one who sees irony here? Of all the people who should be preoccupied enough about proving they're a Jew to write an article, Gershom should be last on the list. Aside from that, I have nothing else to say about the article because I don't care about its content one bit.
I don't know why everyone is calling David Patterson New York's first legally blind governor when his immediate predecessor, Elliot Spitzer, was apparently also legally blind? Yeah I know, feel free to groan at that one.
12.14.2006
The Senate is now in danger of returning to the Republicans again.
Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson was taken to the hospital on Wednesday after becoming disoriented during a conference phone call with reporters. At first, he answered questions normally but then began to stutter. He paused, then continued stammering before appearing to recover and ending the call.
"The senator is recovering without complication," said Adm. John Eisold, the Capitol physician. "It is premature to determine whether further surgery will be required or to assess any long-term prognosis."
Eisold said doctors drained the blood that had accumulated in Johnson's brain and stopped continued bleeding.
Johnson's condition, also known as AVM, or arteriovenous malformation, causes arteries and veins to grow abnormally large and become tangled.
The condition is believed to affect about 300,000 Americans, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. The institute's Web site said only about 12 percent of the people with the condition experience symptoms, ranging in severity. It kills about 3,000 people a year.
The senator's wife, Barbara Johnson, said the family "is encouraged and optimistic."
In a statement from Johnson's office Thursday, she said her family was "grateful for the prayers and good wishes of friends, supporters and South Dakotans."
A person familiar with Johnson's situation said surgery began late Wednesday night and ended around 12:30 a.m. Thursday and that the next 24 to 48 hours would be critical in determining Johnson's condition. The person spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for the senator's family.
If Johnson were forced to relinquish his seat, a replacement would be named by South Dakota's GOP Gov. Mike Rounds.
A Republican appointee would create a 50-50 tie, and allow the GOP to retain Senate control.
Do you subscribe to the New York Times? Check out their new initiative called Timespoints (The program is basically a way to earn points from the New York Times by linking all your credit card purchases to a New York Times-affiliated account)
It's an interesting scheme, from a business perspective. The consumer benefits are obvious. From the NYTimes point of view, the benefit of gaining access to information about a customer's credit card purchases is ambiguous. Do you think it's demographic profiling for the newspaper itself? Do you think the NYTimes is attempting to make more informed pitches to its advertisers? Do you think it is actually selling consumer information to other companies? Is it a business loyalty program of some sort? Your new business education surely enables you to answer these questions and more...
Oh yeah, and I am becoming less busy by the end of this week and would enjoy having that in depth discussion we have not been able to have in a while,
Keeping you on your toes,
Adam
Follow up: paranoid analysis:
However, at the same time I see the potential for mischief here. Like what is to stop the Rewards Program from compiling a private database of ALL of my credit card purchases, and then
1) Selling it to interested buyers who will target me with unsolicited mail, phone calls, and spam of all sorts
2) Selling the information to those who may, at some point, have the incentive to blackmail me with disclosures of my purchases (that Hardcore Geriatrics 37 video being but one of my many incriminating purchases)
You are now an expert in business law, right (I think you took one class in that or something)? Does the law protect me?
The webpage itself is misleading:
"Q: Why is The Times doing this?
A: This program allows our readers to get more from The Times by doing the everyday things they already do - dining out, shopping online and staying at hotels. Our objective is to reward our loyal readers and further enhance the value of their relationship with The Times. We are providing members with a hassle-free way to save on their subscription and also an opportunity to save on some of our other offerings - exhibition-quality photographs, thought-provoking books from our journalists, historic pages and more."
So the Times has its customers best interests in mind and there is no gain to be accrued to its organization... Riiight.
I will post the reply on this site.
11.18.2006
I actually paid attention to this election. The national results have been so completely analyzed that there is surely nothing new I can say. However, too little attention has been paid to the results that have taken place right here in Massachusetts. First, some background:
Our present governor, Mitt Romney, has actually accomplished very little. As everyone knows, he is just more interested in running for president than governing Massachusetts. Romney has cut funding for top Republican 'priorities,' like public safety and criminal justice, while espousing his superior conservative ethical bearing in stark relief to those wacky, degenerate Massachusetts people he oversees. Every once in a while, our governor pulls a 'John Kerry' and completely contradicts or reverses an earlier position on a contentious issue, but no one in Massachusetts notices or cares because his approval rating is close to 20 percent anyway. Or our governor will pull a 'George Bush,' which is the Massachusetts equivalent to bristling atop an aircraft carrier in a flight suit with obvious padding to make your crotch look huge. Here in Massachusetts, our governor struck a commanding pose in the Big Dig conference room emblazoned with pocket protector and holding a laser pointer. Wow, look at Romney - he's Atlas and Big Dig disaster relief all rolled into one! Sadly, though, the reality doesn't measure up.
When the Republicans announced that their nominee this election would be Romney's Lt. Governor Kerry Healey, naturally I had nothing to say...
Much more interesting were the Democratic primary candidates. During the primary campaign, the diversity of choices was magnificent and the policy differences among them veritable. At some point close to the middle, Deval Patrick arose as the inevitable nominee. This was interesting, because Patrick's plan and rhetoric were the vaguest of any candidate's. From the beginning, I was not inclined to take him very seriously. Nonetheless, it became clear that he had a kind of unstoppable momentum over and above the other two candidates, and resisting his train to the nomination was futile.
Why did Patrick beat Gabrielli and Reilly? He had the least concrete things to say. He wasn't an amazing speaker or very charismatic (despite what the die-hards said). His campaigning was not very outstanding either. His overall position on the political spectrum was pretty undistinguished. There can be many theories on how he went on to win, but I won't try to decide between them. I'll just list all the plausible ones that I can think of:
Patrick may have been a better politician. This is plausible, given that Reilly was prone to making blunders, and Gabrielli was, from his very outermost appearance to the core, not a politician at all. Not to hold anything against him: how many medical-school trained investment bankers do you know that would have much potential as a political candidate? Gabrielli, had he won (and if I were eligible, I would have voted for him), would have been a frighteningly efficient and probably very successful governor. Patrick, in his wisdom, kept his campaign vague, ESPECIALLY during the primary season, which must prove to have been a wise move given that entire campaign turned out to be so negative.
Patrick may have had a better product. And by product, I don't mean better SHELL. By that token, Healey would have won, since she has great hair.. Of course I mean product in the doctrinal sense. The message, which was, to be fair, perfectly loud and clear in all its vagueness, advertised a desire to govern by coalition rather than faction, by inclusion rather than division. This message, we may safely say, is during these times a badly needed balm at least, and redemption at its most.
It may have been Patrick's reputed charisma, whatever that is imputed to mean. Whether this came from his inspiring personal story or some exceptional personal quality, I don't really get. What I do know is that people reported finding it an integral and reinforcing part of his total message. Does charisma win elections? Sure. But it's hard to define, so let's instead move on to the next factor..
Patrick is black... This is not to take away from any other factor that led to his success this election, just as arguing that "Patrick is charismatic" is not in any way taken to imply that he offered a bad product. Since he is our state's first black governor, any analysis of his candidacy cannot ignore the fact of his race, just as the voters surely did not. Massachusetts is a leading - if not THE leading - progressive state. At the same time, Boston is STILL a racist place. I'm not going to go much further into supporting this claim other than to point out that race and class still correlate to a regretably close degree in Massachusetts, and, in effect, Boston is highly geographically segregated by race. And its a testimonial to the progressiveness of this state that voters overwhelmingly chose a black governor despite these baser ingrained tendencies.
Patrick was genuine and that's why he won. I just don't buy this one, not because I believe Deval is ungenuine (whatever that means in his case...) but because his Democratic opponent was absolutely genuine. Chris Gabrielli was way too much of a brainiac nerd and a policy freak to care for dissembling before the electorate. In other words, he was painfully genuine, which in his case translated to fully, clearly, and transparently lacking any charisma whatsoever, which I guess made it a liability in his case. The only other possibility is that Patrick was PERCEIVED to be genuine, which I guess was the case because his 'genuine' nature was consistently cited by supporters and commentators alike.
Of course, the foregoing analysis has been completely Patrick-centered. In reality, his opponents may have simply been worse. I mean, Reilly is undistinguished as Attorney General and definitely an insider in a political state that loves spending and behind the scenes brokering, thereby making him a risk. Gabrielli lived literally next to John Kerry, a fact that due to its symbolic significance made him automatically unfriendly and suspect to the powerful Southie-type lobby.
Lastly, the voters may have calculated that Patrick had the highest potential to beat the Republican Healey. What the idea may have been here, I can only speculate. Certainly he was different from Healey. And he did beat her.
Tomorrow I'll give my commentary on the campaign itself...
10.06.2006
The Foley thing, aside from being really sick, is just about the best example of bad karma that I have ever seen. Andrew Sullivan, the hands down go-to man in the case of a monstrous election-year Republican gay scandal involving a hypocritical closeted gay politician, abuse of power and church abuse (well, for any one of those, really), may well be enrapturing and ascending to the Creator at this very moment...
"The base of the GOP has been fed homophobia and gay-baiting for years now. It was partly how Rove won Ohio and the presidency. Gay-hating is integral to their machine. Now, the very homophobia these people stoked and used is suddenly turning back on them. Part of me is distressed that the GOP could lose not because of spending recklessness, corruption, torture, big government, pork, and a hideously botched war ... but because of a sex scandal which doesn't even have (so far as we know) any actual sex. But part of me also sees the karmic payback here. They rode this tiger; now it's turning on them. And it's dinner time."
"Three other pages describe Foley's online predation. The GOP is going to have to find another angle to deflect this. They've tried blaming the MSM; they've tried blaming Clinton; they've tried to turn all the victims into pranksters. It's been a worthy display. But in the end they may have to take ... responsibility. Remember that? It used to be a conservative value."
"The silent victims of the closet are not just the closeted gay men and women themselves. The pathology destroys marriages, wounds wives and husbands, traumatizes kids, breaks up families, leads to acting out, sexual abuse and dysfunction. The victims of homophobia are not just gay people. They are straight people as well. And the only way out is through.
If one good thing comes out of this Foley fiasco, I hope it is a clear sign that the closet and its pathologies must end. And only the institution of civil marriage for all can kill it off for good. Gay people desperately need institutions in which to express their love constructively and responsibly. We are just as human as anyone else."
Whichever Democrat invented this scandal is an absolute genius. Here's why:
Hypocrisy - Politicans are all hypocritical, we are taught. Yet contemporary Republicans are supposed to be an improvement on this stereotype; they are straightlaced and devout. Not so. We all know that being a flaming hypocrite is an equal opportunity employer, but I could not imagine a more, well, flaming, example of hypocrisy. Not only is this guy a Republican, not only was he completely in the closet and gay, he was 'chairman of the House caucus on missing and exploited children.' He sponsored a bill protecting children from exploitation. If you're a Congressman, does that make personally exploiting children better or worse?
Sex - Remember when the Republicans got all fake-bent out of shape that 'one of Bill Clinton's trysts with Monica took place in the oval office on...Christmas!' Imagine the excellent opportunities to turn this around: 'One of Representative Foley's internet chats with an underage boy on penises, naked asses, and masturbation took place... during an appropriations bill for IRAQ! The fact that naked asses takes priority over well-armored asses on our troops is an assault on our troops. And, he probably wants gays in the military: underage, gay prostitutes!'
Gay - Just the fact that the GOP is currently so homophobic and yet could be brought down by a gay scandal is quite poetic.
Grandstanding - Republicans arguably won the last couple elections by grandstanding on corruption of leadership and their intolerance to sex scandals. Now, considerable evidence that the leadership not only covered up a sex scandal, but looked the other way, makes this claim ridiculous.
This guy did EXACTLY what Clinton did, aside from having actual sex on the premises. Given that Clinton's scandal was such a winner for the Republicans, this is guaranteed to be a whopping loser for them. Moreover, it seems that he started stalking pages or whatever AFTER Clinton got caught in his sex scandal. It's almost as if Clinton's trangressions gave him the idea... Just a thought. But picture it: "While Republicans were busy shutting down our government and calling in a constitutional crisis over sex, Mark Foley was chatting with your teenager on AIM about penis size." "While Republicans were grandstanding about gays, Representative Foley was turning your kid gay." Ridiculous, I know, but this is the stuff that wins, is it not?
9.10.2006
Associated Press, bringing you the news you didn't know you already knew. These headlines are from today's (September 10th) 'Top Stories' section on Yahoo, presumably because the 'top' number of people already know them and therefore have nothing to gain from reading about them. The complete five listed stories as of 3:00 pm are:
It's clear the AP is trying to outdo CNN at running news that people already know. But the AP will lose, because tomorrow CNN is running the entire day's coverage of 9/11, 2001, exactly as broadcast five years ago. Beat that! You can't get more redundant than that. And also, that's just weird.
I emailed ___ the other day with the intention of provoking him into a blind rage whereby he has no choice but to play me and subsequently surrender to me in tennis. He told me that after all the practice he has been getting in India, he wishes to indulge instead in a match of shuttlecock. It's not what you're thinking you pervert! Shuttlecock is a game where you attempt to bat the cock around until it finds the other person's rough. If you're lucky you can find the cock right over their end, at which point you can really ram it home. Don't pervert this very distinguished aristocratic game with your filthy ideas.
Anyway, let me know you are alive, etc.
your friend, Howard Hughes
p.s. I think all our pool playing finally came in handy the other day during a competitive family event.
2.18.2006
For how bad it is, the Bush Administration has actually achieved a lot. It's amazing to sit back and reflect on the number of systemic flaws they have duly exposed, without without any intent to do so. The way I look at these things, and I could be very wrong, the biggest problems right now are gross inefficiencies and corruption at the very highest levels of the government apparatus.
Things were not always this way. At one time, federal government had the integrity and the will to get things done, and the state governments and prior to those, the local ward systems, were filled with overwhelming special interests, corruption and stagnation. Not to say the latter has gotten notably better either (and ward systems don't exist anymore), yet under this administration, it is clear that federal government has veered disturbingly toward a kind of boss system as well.
It's pretty clear to me that the administration has been manufactured to make this as palatable on a federal scale as possible. Everyone's suspicion back in the pre-9/11 days that Bush couldn't possibly be in charge has turned out to look correct. Now we know more about how decisions - important decisions - are made in the Bush Whitehouse: An idea has been on the agenda for a while. When the opportunity is ripe, Bush gathers his closest advisers together for a relatively unextensive briefing / series of briefings. Not being a "details person," Bush accepts their briefings without looking any further into alternative views or other information, or intelligence or whatever. I can say that he doesn't look at alternatives because it is a fact the every high-level appointee in that administration has an agenda! With few exceptions, every single appointee has come in with an agenda that is plainly evident from even their surface histories. I have no idea who exactly, but many belong to the Federalist Society. Cheney has been a part of the same group of White House administrators who for over a decade have wanted a toppled Iraq with an American military and contractor presence. Rumsfeld is head-over-heels about the prospect of sleek and stealthy global American military dominance and capability. All these men's advisers and counsels and undersecretaries are in the same boat. I don't think the force of persuasion and coercion of these two groups should be underestimated. The rest of the appointees to the State Department and especially the Intelligence Agencies are either highly screened, or highly loyal. The ones who defect just literally leave, for whatever reason.
The facts have finally come to light that the pre-Iraq intelligence community was dealt with in three ways. The nuts and bolts officials who presented contravening information were literally funneled into oblivion, or if they refused to shut up, threatened or removed. Secondly, the higher-ups on the intelligence community who were ordained to communicated with the Departments were quite simply used. They were exploited to cherry-pick the "right" intelligence. Results-based intelligence inquiries were the norm, and when contrary evidence was presented despite this, it was discriminated against and ignored by the Administration. It's completely known that various department and vice-president officials of various strata said to intelligence officials "give me every piece of credible intelligence that supports this point." Thirdly, officials then pressured the intelligence community to adopt the Administration line, which worked. It's now known that the majority of the intelligence community was not convinced enough to share the Iraq-WMD link claim.
Proceduraly, the genius of this set-up is that it evades scrutiny. Bush is the head of state, and a kind of hard to ignore one at that, so people and the press naturally put their attention on that. Then, one scandal or another happens and the press immediately turns to a presidential press conference or the press spokesman or Laura Bush or whoever, which then proceed to categorically deny any knowledge, involvement, or culpability in the proceedings. The thing is, it may be true. But meanwhile, these various undertakers in the background, many of whom no one has even heard about, actually enforce the order and do the dirty-work. I think the Vice President's recent terse statement in response to the issue of executive leaks is telling in this repect. He said that the Vice President has the authority to de-classify classified information, which apropo the ongoing investigation, would include the identity of covert intelligence officials. Nevermind the fact that no one knew this, because it was signed into law by the President with little notice shortly into his first term. Or the fact that it is an unrestricted power, or that it embodies an ongoing mandate from the President without any oversight or two-way notification.
The Administration has been able to use existing intelligence agency codes and the absence of whistle-blower laws for intelligence officials to its advantage. These laws, which are designed to protect state secrets and information pertaining to national security interests, are now being used to enforce deep conformity to a narrow definition of these things, which is actually equivalent to the administration agenda, sanctioned by executive powers. Only now are we finally seeing a swelling in those willing to give an inside story. And as more are emboldened by their example, it will not be a pretty picture.
It is truly distrubing the degree to which the Adminstration uses and controls information. Their conduct with intelligence is only one example. They don't appear before the press, except in highly scripted events. Even then, they don't actually give any information. They claim executive privillege at every turn, from confirmation hearings, to indictments, to congressional hearings. The public doesn't get to know anything about national security threats, probably for legitimate reasons, but at the same time, vague warnings about that information are used to justify all sorts of things, from terror alerts to continued policies of war to controversial domestic programs such as warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detentions. Some even suggest that the warnings are used tactically. The wiretapping program is by definition another appropriation of information by the Adminstration, and whether it is legal or not will be eventually settled. Allegations that the program and other surveillance programs involve data-mining, the collection of large, encompassing amounts of information and then sifting through all of it according to certain ordained criteria, would be potentially even more of an information offense, because of the implication that acquisition at the first phase at least is non-specific. The known collaboration in this endeavor of telecom giants, and the majority of major search engines brings the picture of informational hegemony to Orwellian new heights. Finally, the creepy way they enforce a groupthink is a huge form of information control comparable to the others listed above.
However, in this way, the Administration may be prescient. I admit, I have no more acceptable alternative to managing national security in this information age. One way or another, presumably a way equivalent to the existing methods that can remain lawful will be found. In contrast, enemies are not encumbered by the same constitutional considerations, so the pressure will be steep. It also might be the case that the age of global, instantaneous media and information transmission has been ushered in, in which all future Administrations will be wise to conduct their own affairs in a much more secretive and controlled way. This does not involve breaking the law, of course, but it does involve disassembling some of the customs developed so far. This might include things like internal transparency, and much more aggressive use of info-ops. In the global age, any piece of the major media has the power to spoil an info campaign, so instead of being formally enslisted, the media has to be managed.
Next time, I will address the premise, which is how the Bush Administration has unintentionally revealed flaws in an accelerating fashion...
2.13.2006
A lot of talk has been devoted to the notion of the so-called "mainstream media," and how our current media does not live up to this supposed standard. But the understanding that the fact that something inhabits the mainstream discourse makes it newsworthy is flawed. It is indicative of the pathology currently suffered by the media: an obsession with the ratings or popularity of news, the stock price of the holding corporation, and the ability of the content to attract a desired "target audience" to the readership.
In all possible respects, the commercialization of news is a bad thing. First, it only encourages the public's sensationalist instinct. It doesn't logically follow that what people will most like to pay attention to, or pay attention to most immediately, is the same thing as what's important. Secondly, what the advertisers want is increasingly in contradiction to what solid, investigative reporting will entail. This is a consequence of increasing conflicts of interest between regard for the readership and the desire to obtain legislative and regulatory favors from the government, itself following from Big Money politics. Most ridiculous of all, a more mainstream media is sometimes interpreted to entail news practices that "keep up" with the prevailing state of knowledge in the country. I can't think of a more blatant reversal of the role of media than to suggest it ought to be more in touch with what people already believe.
I understand the objection that many will raise, that what is actually referred to as 'mainstream' is a location on the ideological spectrum. This complaint is common, in fact, however contradictory the various incarnations of it may be. Liberals complain that the media is more conservative than liberal, and that it certainly is not as liberal as it used to be. Conservatives, on the other hand, recite the refrain of "the liberal media" without end. Therefore, I don't believe this concept holds water. And if it did, would we want the media to be ideologically allied or ideologically determined in any way? From this light, the criticism seems more like a way to attempt to advance your particular viewpoint than a legitimate critique.
Let's list some of the times the media followed the mainstream line during the Bush tenure. After 9/11, for, oh...a good year and a half, the media publicized, parroted, and lionized everything said by any senior administration official. They let legislation get passed without any deference whatsoever to an opposition view. Did the overwhelming mainstream of Americans support bills like the Patriot Act unwaveringly? At the time yes, but that doesn't mean the dissent shouldn't have been covered. Now that people have changed their minds, we're hearing the dissenting views, 5 years after the fact. Nothing has changed. In fact a lot of the worst stuff was already passed in the first bill. In the Iraq build-up, the same pattern occured. It's not that there weren't PLENTY of contrary views to the assertion that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was capable/willing to use them imminently. Many of the international intelligence agencies held this dissenting view and were ignored. Not to mention the wide section of the intelligence community represented by those who have spoken out and the U.N. inspectors. Yet basically no airtime was given to these parties.
2.09.2006
We've heard about the cartoons, seen the effects, probably even seen at least one of them. People are rioting from the West Bank to Pakistan. There are a lot of points to be made out of this series of events, most already tired out. People are calling this the anticipated "clash of civilizations" or saying it's proof that a clash is inevitable. Sometimes I'm tempted to see the situation that way. People see the "Arab street" as a monolithic swath of would-be suicide bombers, throwing rocks at international peacekeepers all day. However, this is not the case. Essentially what you're observing is the precept "the loudest are the ones with the least to contribute." A moderate majority still exists. In everyday life, most muslims live in a way that's consistent with contemporary Judeo-Christian teaching. Most permit portrayal of the prophet, even though in both Islam and medieval Christianity, this was forbidden. A similar situation exists in the West Bank, where (up until now) a majority of the population would negotiate with Israel given the opportunity. (Likewise, an overwhelming majority of Israelis would negotiate with the Palestinian government in exchange for peace. This may no longer be the case with the recently elected government, however.)
The problem is the generation being educated right now. Regime, militant, and zealot-controlled public education and media are the standard in the Arab world. An insane amount of the Palestinian population grows up sympathetic to true radicals thanks to this effort, which institutionally praises self-sacrifice as the highest human calling. We are talking television media, the press, K through whatever they have there schooling, religious education, religious training, "investigative" government commissions and initiatives. It's reasonable to say all these institutions continue to supply people with a steady stream of unequivocal incitements. Iran just commenced an "independent government commission" to investigate the true history of the holocaust. This is despite the fact that the president has already prepossessed their conclusion.
This all ignores the fact that the middle eastern governments are characteristically weak, including Iran (which is Persian, so kill me), Iraq Syria, Lebannon, Saudi Arabia and the PA (or whatever it's called now). That's a good thing, right, because then inherently good-natured people are going to rise up against their oppressive demagogue governments and establish moderate civil society that attends to the people's needs of employment, education, and civic institutions and allows them freedom to modernize or to practice Islam to whatever degree of strictness they want, and all will live in peace. Well, it's not a coincidence that it's also one of Al Qaeda's explicit directives is to topple the governments in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, on top of the tired old rants against the west. I believe those who say it is not a clash of civilizations yet are correct. It is a war within Islam and the Muslim world, first. Through all these institutions which convey ideologies, pan-Arab Islamist movements are attempting to unify the entire muslim world around a single goal of the revival of Islam through resistance to subversive forces like the West.
It is scary, but from the perspective of Arab muslims, the case is awfully compelling. Unemployment might be very high, you might be lacking basic human resources. The government as a rule does not work for the people. Of course this varies by country... If you have an education in history, you probably know that Islam had been a great world civilization and empire until the Crusades. If you know modern history, you know that Europe and America have divided and exploited the Middle East for over a century. Geopolitical division, direct occupation, military and financial interference in internal politics, and reciprocal patronage with dictators who neglect their peoples, you name it. If you don't have the internet, although the number of users is surging, the news you hear every day probably goes something like "Zionists / the West _________ (fill in the blank)" The prominent person in your area is probably a firebrand cleric who spreads even more insidious and inflammatory rhetoric. So you think, "Our governments neglect us, our states are continually played off against each other militarily to keep all of them weak, and the news (some of it truthful, but distorted) says that the West continues to attack us and plot to take our resources." Suddenly the group espousing a pseudo-fascist solution based around the shared heritage of Islam doesn't sound bad.
2.07.2006
My commentary on the Supreme court: Alito has been confirmed, Roberts breezed through, third spot pending. Now, Bush and the Federalists have 5 out of 9 Justices predisposed to rule in their favor on issues of importance to their aims. 4 out of 9 are proud Federalist society members (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito), a group which promotes a radical view of executive power, congressional oversight, and foreign policy objectives. There are many more shadier beliefs originating with current or past members of the group, but no reason to necessarily associate them with any of the sitting justices.
The abortion issue is a sham. These selections had nothing to do with abortion, and the debate shouldn't focus on it. Roe versus Wade may stand, or it may not. It may be worn down to a point of impotence (no pun intended), as everyone was fearing when Alito's internal Reagan whitehouse documents were released, it may be revised, or it may be flatly overturned; or most likely it will be left alone in large part due to the principle of starae decisis and limits on its application will be imposed according to according to a narrower interpretation of other statutes and perhaps the Constitution also. The point is, you shouldn't care. The Administration doesn't choose Supreme Court nominees because they suspect they will overturn the right to an abortion. I'm sure they marginally care about abortion, but it's just meant to be manipulative. This is pretty much the same deal as "let us raise your taxes, and we'll stop boys from kissing." There is no hard evidence that either new Justice will commence rolling back civil rights or abortion or gender rights, despite what the stupid sensationalist media says. However, the evidence is clear as anything, in that both Justices talked about it extensively in their respective confirmation hearings, that both have extreme and reformative views of the nature and extent of government.
The evidence is all out in the open, and people just aren't paying attention to it. Remember Alito defending the point that the unitary executive is actually a misunderstood and not radical approach? There are doubtless many breeds of this "theory" - although it's not so much a theory as it is a movement. Some embody the sentiment of America's beloved president Nixon, right after he resigned, when he said "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal." (There's a reason he became a consultant on foreign policy and not the Constitution) Others suggest that the range of things the executive does is limited in some way, but once those boundaries are established, activities should be unhindered by Congressional oversight. This seemed to be the kind of view Alito was articulating, but who knows.
The next logical question to ask is, who sets those boundaries? Well, in the short-term the executive can do whatever it wants, short of impeachment or the unlikely creation of some kind of new investigative agency. Ultimately, anything can come before the courts, and they have the final word. So, assuming that the executive does everything in the distant expectation that it will ultimately be supervised by the Supreme Court, we can clearly say that a careful Executive does everything that he thinks the Supreme Court won't strike down. There are three years left in this Administration and the president and his staff already have a good idea of how at least four of Justices will rule on major hotbutton issues of government. Scalia, Alito, Thomas and (I think) Roberts, all believe in presidential signing statments, which essentially says they think the role of the Executive is not to execute the laws passed by Congress but to execute AS WELL AS interpret the laws passed by Congress. Then, all three (with Roberts being the perennial wildcard thus far) are proud "textualists" in their interpretation of Constitutional matters. They take literally that clause in the Constitution (whatever it says exactly...) that the Executive has unlimited power to protect the American people in wartime. Ok, so we are in a war on terror for until they say it's over, so I guess the president the president has unlimited authority and that settles the wire-tapping debate. Isn't textualism fun! Alito and Roberts' views on privacy are instructive. I believe it took Alito a few days and several hours of hectoring by Democratic senators before he acknowledged a Constitutional right to privacy. Roberts' answer I believe was something to the effect, "I believe there is a Constitutional right to be left alone." That's interesting, because one, neither is a very emphatic supporter of the right to privacy, and Roberts' answer reflects only a small part of the concept of privacy. Isn't that interesting given the new information on legally questionable undertakings of the Administration which is now being legally predicated on a generic grant for use of force against Al Qaeda.
Ultimately, the wiretapping program itself is not of great consequence to this issue. With the amount of overt attention and scrutiny alreayd being paid to this, it seems unlikely that it will go before the Supreme Court. I'm not a lawyer, but from my assessment it seems illegal. At any rate, the entire notion of Executive authority and control in foreign policy is being radically questioned. I'm greatly concerned by this, because as anyone knows foreign affairs is going to be THE KEY focalpoint for many years.
New Rule: The New York Times has to stop spinning stuff! Check out this grossly distorted headline: Miers Failed to Win Support of Key Senators and Conservatives. Why can't the Times just accept the White House talking points like everyone else, and leave it at that?
"Harriet Miers's decision demonstrates her deep respect for this essential aspect of the Constitutional separation of powers..." Mr. Bush said he would announce a new nominee "in a timely manner."
End of story. The Senate hasn't voted yet, so how could you ever claim she lacked support?
'Let's move on," said Republican Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record) of Mississippi. "In a month, who will remember the name Harriet Miers?"'
'Sen. Sam Brownback (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., a potential 2008 presidential nominee who is courting conservative activists, said he had been "feeling less comfortable all along"'
'Another Republican moderate, Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, said this week that he needed "to get a better feel for her intellectual capacity and judicial philosophy, core competence issues." He added, "I certainly go into this with concerns."'
'Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican who opposes abortion rights...said he continued to question whether Ms. Miers had developed "a consistent, well-grounded, conservative judicial philosophy" and wanted "writings that predate the nomination" to clarify her views.'
'Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, called Republican sentiment toward Ms. Miers's nomination "a question mark."'
'Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a Judiciary Committee member, acknowledged that senators who had met with Ms. Miers were telling colleagues that they had been unimpressed. "She needs to step it up a notch," Mr. Graham said.'
'Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska... called Ms. Miers "an accomplished professional" but said of the Supreme Court: "We want an elite group of individuals. I'm not so sure I want my next-door neighbor, as much as I like him or her, to be on the Supreme Court because they're nice people."'
'Several groups like Concerned Women of America are calling for her withdrawal. ''We believe that far better qualified candidates were overlooked and that Miss Miers' record fails to answer our questions about her qualifications and constitutional philosophy,'' said Jan LaRue, the conservative group's chief counsel.'
'"I would like to see the nomination withdrawn. If I were in the Senate today I would vote against it," Buchanan said. "My guess is, she will not be confirmed, and she will be withdrawn."'
'The Weekly Standard, a bible for dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, on Sunday called the choice of Miers "at best an error, at worst a disaster" which should be reconsidered.'
'"I think it was appropriate. She was not -- I didn't think, a lot of people didn't think -- really qualified. I think we all have to have some sympathy for her because she was thrust into a position as a nominee she shouldn't have been put in, and as a result, got rather beaten up in the press and elsewhere," said Judge Robert Bork, failed 1987 Supreme Court nominee.'
Instead, The Times insists on peddling cheap rumors like "Coincidentally or not, Ms. Miers's withdrawal, ostensibly over the principle of separation of powers as it relates to White House papers, is the very scenario that some conservative commentators have suggested as a face-saving ploy for the nominee and the White House." If one were cynically deranged like Times reporters, one could even infer that Bush was so assured he would announce a new nominee "in a timely manner" because he had known Harriet Miers was going to resign, and perhaps fail from the beginning. And that makes me sick. Like the White House would ever use a Supreme Court nomination for political purposes... Just, look at how they gleefully report the remarks of that fake-Republican senator, Arlen Specter "...Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, remarking that Ms. Miers could benefit from a "crash course in constitutional law."
Look how they quote their own senator Charles Schumer "The selection process, said Mr. Schumer, should include discussions about potential nominees with the Senate. "One of the real reasons for this mistake was there was no real consultation," he said." Quit cherry-picking, Times. You might as well interview someone from the Times itself. Of course that's what he's going to say, but what about ultra-liberal Leahy and Majority Leader Reid, who said Miers was promising. You make me sick New York Times.
New Rule: What the Middle-East conflict needs is a good comedian-statesman-diplomat-therapist, like a Henry Kissinger but with better empathy skills. And more comedic talent. All right, maybe he's a poor start.
Obviously the first thing on the agenda is to get the Israel issue solved. Or that what everyone always says, anyway. For one, although the U.N. is a hideously hypocritical, bordering on powerless entity, the conditions in the occupied territories have been declared a human rights violation about 537 times (check that - it's called U.N. Resolution # 537) at least some of those sanctions are appropriate. I think the wall is a necessary measure, but it has cut off and dismembered numerous Palestinian (and Israeli) communities, through no reason other than the farther east the wall extends, the more security Israel has, and the happier Israel's expansionist extremists will be. The IDF has done bad things, and this happens with any army. However, the objection is legitimate that army occupation of the territories period is the real issue here, not the behavior of the army in general. This is a complicated issue, because military occupation of the adjoining territories is proper in war. It's arguably a necessary security policy when those territories have no centralized power capable of controlling and eliminating rogue and extremist terrorist organizations that would otherwise take over the area. Nonetheless, the effects of fifty years of occupation are undeniable. Like all other arab peoples, Palestinians have their own national identity and aspirations, which actually reached maturity in the 1960s with the newly minted Arafat and the PLO of all things, before it assumed its current non-negotiation stance. The inability of these aspirations to reach fruition to even the slightest extent is no doubt a terrible humiliation for Palestinians. Poverty, which has as much to do with Israel as ongoing non-existent infrastructure, also has negative effects. And of course, no one likes living under military occupation.
Don't get me wrong, I believe the way the Israeli army conducts itself is still incomparably better than the way an Arab army would if the situation were reversed. But the situation in the territories is becoming a worse and worse human rights problem, and a legitimate grievance. I most of Israel's hardliners are even realizing this. A solution to the problem is complex, but I think most mainstream people are currently putting their bets on a push for democracy and control in the Palestinian Authority, and a simultaneous disengagement from the West Bank. Of course, I am not counting on any of the West Bank settlements being relocated before or after then. And the wall will probably stay up for a while. But it's different when the Palestinians have their own sovereign nation. Then, instead of dividing its constituents, Israel is exerting its sovereign right to build a wall on its territory wherever it wants to, just like I have the right (well, if I own a piece of land) to erect a wall between me and my neighbor's house, as long as the nice part of the wall faces outward. (actually the law, check it out if you don't believe me...)
The Palestinian issue is a huge bugaboo and, I would argue, prohibitive barrier to any steps toward reconciliation between the West and the Arab world. We all know it's exploited disproportionately by leaders in Arab countries. For instance, just yesterday, Iran's hardliner president stated that Israel's existence was an affront to Islam, put in place by the West to oppress Islamic states. This is a common meme in Muslim countries. Of course, the speech concluded saying that Israel must be wiped off the map, and any Islamic state that negotiates with it is committing treason. The name of the conference was "A world without Zionism." You have to give credit to extremist Islamists: they don't beat around the bush.
Two summers ago, the Egyptian "media" made real press by asserting that all terrorist attacks around the world were perpetrated by Zionists. I'm not kidding about this. Of course this is really just manipulating definition. But it's also an even more ludicrous extension of the idea, also popular in Egypt for a time (and in the U.S. as well), that Israel perpetrated the 9/11 attacks - or less extremely, knew about it days before the fact and failed to notify the U.S. Of course, every one of these allegations is untrue. The establishment of Israel, which was in effect granted by the British, was hardly more divisive than the arbitrary division of nation-state boundaries in an area of the world that has always been a territory of the prevailing world empire. This should go without saying but, Israel is not an affront to Islam, any more than Arab nations are an affront to Judaism. Both arguments can be made from each respective religion's holy book, and this is just silly. The allegation that Israel (and only Israel) carried out the 9/11 attacks is an insult to the intelligence of Arabs everywhere.
After this is accomplished, the Middle East and a few western countries ought to enter some serious therapy to work out these issues with the mysterious entity known as "The West." What is "The West" and what did it do? Is the West the victors of WWI and particpants in the Sykes-Picot agreement? Or is the British, who were assigned the Mandate of the area under that agreement and it is fair to say are fully responsible for granting the state of Israel existence? Is the West the United States, which tacitly supported all of these historical steps, and is currently by far Israel's biggest financial and political supporter? Maybe if we could figure out what "The West" is, and what it did, we could take steps to act constructively about it. Of course, the West is a real entity and it did do real things, but the point is people need to think in a little more complex way about these issues.
There's more to say, but I'll have to say it later.
Originally published 7/4/12