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February 28, 2009
Paper media on the cusp of transition to e-readers?
Apparently Hearst, one of the world's largest media conglomerates, has developed an electronic reader for newspapers and magazines. And this against the backdrop of the financial woes of newspapers worsening with every passing month, or so it seems.
The speculation is that the Hearst e-reader will be flexible and even foldable, which is interesting in it's own right.
Reportedly this e-reader will be launched in the next 12 to 18 months. Competiters are believed to be on the same technological track and timeline.
Posted by Kevin at 02:54 PM |
Slavery and Race in America
Tom has a fascinating post up today delving into a 1965 Department of Labor document known as the "Moynihan Report" because it was written by the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he was an Assistant Secretary of Labor in the Johnson Administration, and Tom notes that Moynihan's staff included a very young Ralph Nader.
The formal title of the document is: "The Negro Family: The Case For National Action."
I’ve heard of the “Moynihan Report” and read quotes from it, but I had never seen the entire document. I found it to be interesting, enlightening, and prescient.
I'd never heard of it at all. At least I don't think I have. My memory is pretty... um... porous and I've forgotten probably as much as I know. In any case, I too find the document interesting, enlightening and prescient.
I was particularly struck by the portion Tom quotes in his post comparing slavery in Brazil to slavery in America. I didn't realize that it was so incredibly different. Here's the teaser intro Moynihan wrote to the discussion comparing slavery in Brazil with what we had here.
The most perplexing question about American slavery, which has never been altogether explained, and which indeed most Americans hardly know exists, has been stated by Nathan Glazer as follows: “Why was American slavery the most awful the world has ever known?” The only thing that can be said with certainty is that this is true: it was.
That's as much as I'm going to repost here. If you find this even half as fascinating as I do, head over to Tom's blog and read the whole post. Comment there or here or both as you see fit.
Posted by Kevin at 02:38 PM |
February 27, 2009
Israeli women should be seen, not heard
A women's prayer group was asked to leave the Western Wall plaza....
The group sang out loud during the Hallel prayer, which violates the custom of the plaza.
Israel's Supreme Court has ruled that women can pray in groups at the wall, but that they may not hurt the feelings of other worshipers.
...
The women usually pray in an area near, but away from, the plaza, the rabbi said.
Meanwhile a tiny minority of Israeli citizens, Arabs and Jews, continue to fight for an enlightened existance for their children in the 21st Century while the rest of the nation remains mired in antiquated moral and racial dogmas.
Posted by Kevin at 12:18 PM |
February 26, 2009
A.G. Holder: no more raids on legal marijuana clubs
Attorney General Eric Holder said at a press conference Wednesday that the Justice Department will no longer raid medical marijuana clubs that are established legally under state law. His declaration is a fulfillment of a campaign promise by President Barack Obama, and marks a major shift from the previous administration.After the inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continued to carry out such raids, despite Obama's promise. Holder was asked if those raids represented American policy going forward.
"No," he said. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing in law enforcement. He was my boss during the campaign. He is formally and technically and by law my boss now. What he said during the campaign is now American policy."
This is a good thing.
A friend's wife has the debilitating fibromyalgia disorder for which she's been prescribed any number of high powered pain killers. But she tells me that medical marijuana does more (in conjunction with prescription pain meds) to alleviate the pain than anything else her doctors have tried.
She's not a pot-head. She's a highly intelligent, middle class "soccer mom" with a Masters in sociology and a fairly prolific penchant for producing avant garde paintings who rarily drinks alcoholic beverages and isn't into doing drugs. I believe her when she says that medical marijuana helps alleviate the pain.
(hat tip: spyder)
Posted by Kevin at 07:08 PM |
February 25, 2009
David Brooks on Jindal speech: "Insane, unmitigated disaster"
Via Salon.com: Conservative columnist Brooks: Jindal speech "disaster" for GOP
And later on the Charlie Rose show...
Posted by Kevin at 12:48 PM |
Scary, scary Chuck Schumer
Just saw this ad on the air here in Oregon:
Using the New York political boogeyman is a standard tactic for these sort of groups and for Republicans in general. Look out - if you elect more Democrats, Chuck Schumer will make government way, way too big for its own good.
Just take a look at the campaign ad Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell released in Kentucky last election cycle:
The old habits die hard, huh?
[UPDATE]
Okay this is getting ridiculous. I just saw THIS ad on Oregon's cable CNN:
Rep. Luis Gutierrez represents out of the state of Illinois. Ugh.
Posted by Ben at 11:58 AM |
Supreme Court okays religious test, finds that government speech is superior to individual speech
Mother Jones has the most elucidating coverage that I've found.
The Summum sect had sought to erect a monument to it's "Seven Aphorisms" in a Utah city park which has a monument to the "Ten Commandments" already in it. Rebuffed by Pleasant Grove City, the Summum had won in federal court and it was appealed all the way up to the SCOTUS.
A lower federal court had agreed with the Summum, but the justices in Washington were clearly swayed by arguments that a favorable ruling for Summum would open the door to a "parade of horrors" in public space everywhere.The Summum clearly had a sympathetic case, especially to stalwart believers in the separation of church and state. But they weren't helped by the very real example of Reverend Fred Phelps, the infamous head of the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas. Phelps, who runs www.godhatesfags.com, wants to erect a public monument in Casper, Wyoming depicting Matthew Shepard, the gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered in 1998. The caption would read, "Matthew Shepard entered Hell October 12, 1998, in defiance of God's warning 'thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.'" If the Summum had prevailed, Phelps might have, too.
Fair enough. I can certainly empathize with the desire to not give whackjob Phelps a platform for his hate speech. But I see no way to construe the Summum monument as hate speech. It's merely a different set of religious rules.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote that picking and choosing monuments for a public park was not the same thing as deciding who can and can't speak in a public place, as Summum had argued.
I agree with his argument on it's face. But it's an intellectual red herring. Picking and choosing between various overtly religious monuments is impossible to do without applying the very sort of religious test which the Constitution strictly forbids be applied to elective office. Granted, this isn't about elective office. But the proposition that it's strictly forbidden in one area of government but okay in another is nonsensical.
“We think it is fair to say that throughout our nation’s history, the general government practice with respect to donated monuments has been one of selective receptivity,” and properly so, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote for the court. - NYT
That's true enough. Likewise, throughout our nation's history the general government practice with respect to human slavery has been one of selective receptivity. Does that historical reality make slavery okay?
Justice Breyer's concurring opinion illuminates.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer emphasized in a concurring opinion that, while the Summum members have been thwarted in their bid to have a monument erected, “the city has not closed off its parks to speech; no one claims that the city prevents Summum’s members from engaging in speech in a form more transient that a permanent monument.” In other words, Summum members, like other citizens, can presumably hand out leaflets or stand on soapboxes and hold forth on the issues of the day.
The legal strategy of the Summum group was apparently flawed in pursuing a free speech case rather than a separation of Church and State case. To put Breyer's assertion in a different historical context... citizens retained the right (more or less) to speak out against slavery and the fact that slavery remained legal in certain states didn't deny them that right. Which would be true enough, but it would also utterly avoid the real issue - slavery. Likewise this ruling utterly avoids the real issue - separation of Church and State.
What the SCOTUS effectively ruled was that government entities have their own right to free speech and that it is significantly broader than that afforded to citizens. Which is exactly the sort of thing that the ACLJ, staunch opponents of Church/State separation, have long wanted.
More coverage at WaPo.
Posted by Kevin at 11:11 AM |
February 24, 2009
Sen. Merkley reacts to President Obama's speech
(via press release email I received)
Washington, DC – Oregon’s Senator Jeff Merkley released the following statement reacting to President Barack Obama’s address before the Joint Session of Congress this evening:
"Over the past few weeks, the Senate has worked with the Obama Administration to address the vicious vortex of economic challenges facing working Americans: the unemployment crisis, the lending crisis, and the housing crisis.
"In that time, we've committed to create jobs, assist families at risk of losing their homes, and get credit flowing again. These tough financial times won’t end tomorrow, but we're working with President Obama to do two things: to quickly and decisively end the crises that are costing people their jobs and homes, and to revitalize the economy for the long term so ordinary American families have the opportunity to get ahead once again.
"I'm very encouraged by President Obama's commitments to reforming our health care system and developing an economy built on green jobs. The way out of these tough economic times begins with the transition to a renewable energy economy.
"We've been hit with bad economic news for months now, but I'm confident that if we work together with President Obama to attack the problems in our mortgage and financial systems that got us into this mess, and make smart investments in the future, we will not only recover but come out of this period stronger than ever."
Posted by Kevin at 09:07 PM |
Obama's speech to Congress - your thoughts?
I gotta be bluntly honest here. As I watch the cameras pan across the audience it serves to remind me that President Obama is, in my estimation, the only person in that building being honest with me, the view, the citizen, the constituent.
You can almost watch the political calculations being made as the cameras pan across the assembled members of Congress. The President makes a point and one side starts clapping in applause right away... then the "other side" joins in, so then the first side all start standing up to give a standing ovation, so the "other side", knowing that this is all televised, do a quick political cost/benefit analysis and slowing, one by one stand up so as to be seen as supportive of whatever constituency might feel slighted if they didn't.
It disgusts me!
On substance... I'm loving what I'm hearing. The quip about "nobody messes with Joe" was funny! Obama's been careful not to call out Republicans specifically. And that's proper, IMO. They may have been in control for most of the last 8 years, but they had lots of cooperation from Congressional Democrats who surely do not deserve a pass just because they were going with the flow.
It's still going on so I'm going to go back to watching and listening. Perhaps I'll have more to say afterwards.
Posted by Kevin at 06:33 PM |
He's baaaack.
Andy Richter, that is. Andy will be teaming back up with Conan O'Brien on The Tonight Show, albeit in a different capacity. Instead of co-host, Andy will be the announcer as well as take part in comedy skits.
I LOVED the old Conan O'Brien show when Andy was co-host. Conan is alright by himself. Well, a bit better than just alright. But from where I sit the real magic was the contrast between Andy and Conan that was funniest.
It's not politics, I know. My political cup is running low at the moment, so, as always, I write about what moves me and this is it at this moment in time.
Posted by Kevin at 05:56 PM |
Draft DeFazio
I haven't been blogging quite as much lately because I've been involved in a new blog project: Draft Pete DeFazio for Governor.
The movement's picking up steam, as we see from more than 130 people joining the Facebook page in a matter of about 10 days.
If you want to read why I support drafting DeFazio into the Governor's race, see the post I wrote over at Blue Oregon.
Run Pete, Run!
Posted by Ben at 02:32 PM |
Facebook: Get on the Wayback Machine!
I’ve moved a lot in my life. My parents divorced when I was 13 and we moved out of state, and then moved and moved and moved some more, following my mom’s jobs. Since then, I’ve moved to yet another state, and within Oregon I’ve moved and moved and moved some more.
I’m done moving. Don’t ever want to do it again.
But in the mean time, I’ve left a long trail of friends and family behind – people I’ve thought of so many times but had no way of reaching. Until now! I’ve discovered Facebook, and over this past week I’ve not only been to a virtual family reunion, I’ve also virtually reunited with people I haven’t seen or heard from in as many as 35 years. All I can say is it is awesome. I’ve felt excited and choked up about it all week.
There’s something really fascinating about seeing people after so many years. Many of them are still just the same – they did exactly what you would have expected. A few turned out very different. What is surprising to me is that apparently, I have fallen into the second category.
As I’ve written before, I grew up Seventh-Day Adventist and always went to SDA schools, so literally all of my old friends were also SDA. It’s a pretty tight community, just like so many other religious or cultural groups. I was a true believer in high school, and that’s how I’m remembered. Now, I live a lifestyle that is decidedly non-SDA – I dance, drink, go to movies, wear jewelry, eat pork and seafood, and don’t believe in Christianity or go to church.
I’ve actually been very surprised at how many of the people I knew as teenagers, who were entirely uninterested in their religion when we were in school, are still SDA, raising their kids in the church, and clearly “into it.” So naturally, they are surprised at me. I am sure they believe, as most Christians do, that I’m just being rebellious. And that could not be further from the truth. My religious beliefs are the product of intense searching and study. They are not casual, lazy, or superficial. I was genuinely crushed when I realized the truth about the Christian myth (apologies to my mother).
A few real gems have popped up in my Facebook experience this past week. I’ve found my best friend from 3rd-6th grade. She’s still as wonderful and funny as ever and lives nearby. I can’t wait to see her. I’ve also learned that a child molesting teacher that I knew died of cancer, and I was happy about it (does that make me a bad person?). I found three former classmates who have a lot in common with me – women I should have gotten to know more back then – one is also a restaurant owner, one is a professional artist (a really good one), and one, like me, enjoys wine and scuba diving. And I’ve gotten to see pictures of all my many, many cousins’ babies (they’re every bit as adorable as their parents were at that age the last time I saw them).
I’m having the time of my life.
Posted by Becky at 09:09 AM |
February 21, 2009
Oh sweet jesus - Conan and Hunter, hard liquor and wicked guns!
Bpaul never fails to entertain, which is why his blog is enshrined on my favorites list. This time it's an awesome video clip of Conan O'Brian and Hunter S. Thompson drinking hard liquor and shooting military hardware that you gotta see to believe.
Posted by Kevin at 07:28 AM |
February 20, 2009
Truth and Reconciliation Commission for America?
There are at least a couple ways of signing onto this idea. You can sign Sen. Leahy's petition directly, or you can sign on via Democracy for America and they'll let your Congressional representatives know that a constituent wants them to support it.
Posted by Kevin at 10:35 AM |
High Powered Camera at the Inauguration
I just ran across this amazing photo taken at the Inauguration. The picture was taken with a 1,474 megapixels robotic camera (295 times the standard 5 megapixel camera). Just double click anywhere and you will zoom in on that spot.
This is very interesting (to me) for three reasons. First, if you were at the Inauguration, you will be able to find yourself in the crowd and will be able to prove to your friends and family that you actually were there. It is that clear. It's also rather interesting to see where all the former Presidents and other well-known personalities were seated. Second, this photograph adds to our understanding of the security capabilities of our government. Literally, if needed, anyone in the crowd could be easily identified. And third, a you scan through the photo you can see where the camera itself, in creating this photograph, scans across, creating seams that leave some interesting results - legs walking with no body attached, tops of heads missing, etc. It's actually kind of fun to look for those spots and see a bit about how the machine works.
Posted by Becky at 09:01 AM |
February 19, 2009
Pretty savvy prognostications
I am getting pretty good at this predicting politics game.
First, I finished tied for first in BlueOregon's primary punditology challenge.
Now, I manage to finish a robust 472nd in the Daily Kos election prediction contest. That's out of almost 9,000 entrants.
Awesome.
Did any of you enter that same contest?
Posted by Ben at 12:12 PM |
Here's what I don't understand about the bailout
The new plan is to take $275 billion and from that $200 billion goes to mortgage giants and $75 billion goes to homeowners facing foreclosure.
Why not steer the entire $275 billion to homeowners?
The mortgage holders are going to end up with it anyway, right? And wouldn't steering the entire amount to homeowners adds some credible value to those nearly worthless mortgage-backed securities at the center of the implosion?
What am I missing here???
Posted by Kevin at 12:24 AM |
February 18, 2009
The Despicable Racism of the NY Post
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been riveted by the horriying chimp attack earlier this week. Not something one would think ought to be made into a joke. Especially an overtly racist joke that involves an assassination wish for our President. But that is just what the New York Post has done today in publishing this cartoon:
Naturally, the Post claims there was no racist intent here, and says Al Sharpton is just "a publicity opportunist" for saying otherwise. Hmm. Sounds every bit as genuine as the denials that a certain T-Shirt distributed by a right-winger during the campaign was racist:
Why would anyone jump to the conclusion that depictions of apes are racist? Hey, it's been that way for a long, long time. Witness this political cartoon of Abe Lincoln holding the Emancipation Proclamation:
It is obvious as the sun at noon in Arizona that the dead chimp depicted in the Post's cartoon is intended to represent our President. Therefore, it is obvious that the Post has just made a very public statement that it wishes our President was shot dead. Let's face this outrage head on and not be polite about it. We should be infuriated with the Post. On so many levels, I most certainly am.
Posted by Becky at 12:55 PM |
Preach it, brother!
Jazz Shaw is a fellow ex-Republican who I've long admired. After doing stints at the now defunct Running Scared blog (he founded it) and Middle Earth Journal, he is now an associate editor at The Moderate Voice. And that's where he let loose today with a rant that I utterly identify with: The Day the Miracle Whip Died.
This is one of those things were you can neatly divide people into one of two entrenched camps. There are mayonaise people and then there are Miracle Whip people. I am and always have been a Miracle Whip person.
Jazz laments the day that Kraft committed the Unpardonable Sin of altering the recipe for Miracle Whip.
Posted by Kevin at 12:45 PM |
Geithner, Daschle and Palin - progressives miss the obvious
What do Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former Senator Tom Daschle and now Alaska Governor Sarah "I can see Russia" Palin have in common? Failure to pay taxes
Where progressives are missing the stunningly obvious is the common thread. It is much less a Left/Right issue (as framed at Huffington Post) and much more a Have/Have Not issue. Geithner, Daschle and Palin were all in a position to know better... to pay taxes owed. And each got away with it on a level that I never would because I'm not one of the Haves.
Money and power produce a fundamentally different level of "justice" in America from that afforded to the least among us. As often as not, those who end up in our prisons are the Have Nots who couldn't afford the high-power and high-priced legal counsel which routinely keeps the wealthy and powerful Haves out of prison.
I believe that it is a fundamental disservice to this country for progressives to cooperatively play the same Left/Right game of divide and conquer that the conservatives play. Yes, it will be interesting to see if conservatives hold Palin to the same standard they've articulated for Geithner and Daschle, as Mark Nickolas framed the issue at HuffPo. But it will be just as interesting to see if progressives will too.
My $0.02 worth on the subject...
Posted by Kevin at 12:34 PM |
The Gentile, the Jew and the Astronomer
I've mentioned before that I am Jewish. But it wasn't always so. Which is to say that I didn't know about my Jewish heritage when I was growing up. And since 2009 is also the International Year of Astronomy I thought I'd address my connection to both issues in one post.
I don't remember the exact year but I think it was either 1998 or 1999 when I received a phone call from my mother informing me that she'd just been informed by my maternal grandmother that her mother (my maternal great-grandmother) was a Jew. It was essentially a family secret which my grandmother gave up only grudgingly.
Growing up I'd always identified most strongly with my father's Aryan Germanic heritage. And if you saw my brothers and I in the same room you'd probably readily understand why. We look Germanic, especially my older brother who looks like he stepped right out of one of the Nazi "racially pure" Aryan camps where the supposed master race was allegedly being nurtured.
I can only guess at my grandmother's reasons for not wanting to divulge her mother's ethnicity. But I strongly suspect that it had little to do with her ethnicity. Rather it is the tale of a disfunctional family.
My maternal great-grandfather was the noted amateur (in the sense that he was self-taught) astronomer, comet discoverer and telescope maker John E. Mellish, who is most famous for his claims to have seen craters on Mars back in 1915 when the reigning scientific paradigm flatly denied that there could be craters on Mars or any planet other than the Earth. His claim was scoffed at by most of his astronomy peers and most of those who didn't scoff resisted doing so on the basis of his infamous trait of rigorous honesty rather than because they questioned the dominant scientific theory of the day. It wasn't until the Mariner-4 flyby of Mars in 1965 that he was vindicated and the reigning scientific paradigm was debunked. But by then he was an old man and his observational drawings while at Yerkes Observatory had been destroyed in a fire at his Medford, Oregon shop just months before.
Nevertheless, in 1994 Crater Mellish on Mars was so named in his honor.
The Wisconsin Academy Review published a feature article on Mellish in 1979 and in the November 1999 issue of Sky & Telescope there is another feature article on him.
Interestingly enough, the eminent 20th Century Astronomer Edwin Hubble first gained fame for the discovery of "Hubble's Variable Nebula," an anomaly that was actually discovered by my great-grandfather at Yerkes where they both worked.
Anyway, the Sky & Telescope article, which is unfortunately no longer available online, details the general gist of the highly disfunctional family in which my grandmother was raised in an article titled Telescopes, Marriages, and Mars: The Life of John E. Mellish.
Long story, short... on a dare from two of her friends, a 17 year old Jessie Wood ran an advertisement in a Chicago newspaper announcing that she was seeking "a perfect husband." 2000 men responded to the ad and from them she selected my great-grandfather, who was then an observer at Yerkes Observatory. On their third date they eloped and his fate was sealed. My grandmother was their first child.
In her defense, my Jewish great-grandmother Jessie had born the strain of 13 pregnancies - only 8 of whom survived - before she suffered some sort of psychic and physical breakdown after which she was never the same, physically or mentally. And that's when things got crazy for the family. She falsely accused her husband of having an affair with a teenager girl which led to his being voluntarily committed to a mental insitution in a vain attempt to clear his name on psychiatric grounds. After months of unending chaos they eventually divorced and he was deported from the state of Illinois - yes, he really was deported.
Several years later she reappeared in his life asking for a reconciliation. Their oldest son warned his father to reject her, but he didn't take the advice and they eventually remarried. Shortly thereafter the marriage imploded and a nasty divorce ensued until it was discovered that her interim marriage to someone else had never been terminated and the reconciliatory marriage with my great-grandfather was annulled. Somewhere in there the kids all ended up in the state's foster care system before my great-grandfather eventually secured custody of them all. And my grandmother never forgave her mother. So that, I believe, was the primary reason why my grandmother never divulged her mother's ethnicity. It wasn't about the ethnicity... my grandmother flat out never wanted to even talk about her mother at all and the ethnicity thing just got caught up in the larger disfunction.
So, I am a Jew who once thought he was a Gentile. And as you can see I have the all-important maternal line which is how Jews recon these things. All because of a teenage dare. Yet without it I wouldn't be here.
Posted by Kevin at 11:10 AM |
February 16, 2009
Campaign flashbacks
Okay I totally just saw an ad from America's Agenda Health Care for Kids, thanking Oregon's Senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley for their roll in passing the SCHIP expansion.
Previously, they ran ads during the 2008 cycle thanking Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden for previously healthcare battles.
So I think that makes the first Oregon political ad of the "2010" cycle? Have mercy...
If anyone sees this ad and can capture it for posting, please let me know.
Posted by Ben at 07:25 PM |
February 13, 2009
Crack for a foodie like me
I don't know how many of you have seen Spain - On The Road Again but I've been watching the many episodes on PBS's "Create" channel (OPB's 10.3 here in the Portland area - I'm watching an episode as I type this post...). And although I'm not a particularly big fan of Spanish cuisine and some of it I'm not sure that I'd willingly eat - I was raised a vegetarian, after all, and mental blocks remain - but I can't even begin to describe how thoroughly I enjoy watching these hardcore foodies literally eat their way through Spain.
Actors Gwyneth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols team up with Iron Chef Mario Batali and food writer/cookbook author Mark Bittman in endless pairings and occasionally with all four of them together at the same time.
I'm not sure if it's because they are guys like me or because they're both food professionals or what it is, but I absolutely revel in watching Batali and Bittman wallow in the sheer pleasure of the food they are savoring. Chef Batali in particular tries to find the right words to adequately describe what he's experiencing and that's exactly what I struggle with when I'm indulging in some new culinary pleasure. More often than not the spoken word fails to truly convey the experience. But I never tire of trying anyway.
Put simply, good tasting food is one of life's supreme pleasures as far as I'm concerned. It's not a replacement for any other pleasures and indeed couldn't replace any of life's other pleasures. But I have to say that for me an exquisite culinary experience is right up there with anything else you could name. And I do mean anything!
The very next best thing to experiencing it directly, IMHO, is watching someone else take pleasure in an exquisite culinary experience and therein lays the vast appeal of Spain - On The Road Again for me.
Posted by Kevin at 05:31 PM |
Conservatives and Corporatism, via the Fairness Doctrine
(editor's note: My cyber-friend Tom has been blogging in opposition to any reintroduction of the fairness doctrine. Yesterday it was a post about Camille Paglia's February column on Slate.com in which she makes the following assertion:
Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment’s thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows.
And as sometimes happens, in the process of writing up a comment it occurs to me that the comment would make a good post.)
Forgive me for asking an inconvenient but salient question... but how would the fairness doctrine, which would apply to stations rather than to individual shows, "muzzle conservative shows" as Paglia alleges?
It seems to me that what Paglia and like-minded conservatives are really objecting to is the "public interest" obligation which has always been a the very heart of federal regulation of radio and TV stations. Furthermore, it seems to me that by challenging the fairness doctrine these conservatives are revealing their hand.
As The Museum of Broadcast Communications puts it:
The obligation to serve the public interest is integral to the "trusteeship" model of broadcasting--the philosophical foundation upon which broadcasters are expected to operate. The trusteeship paradigm is used to justify government regulation of broadcasting. It maintains that the electromagnetic spectrum is a limited resource belonging to the public, and only those most capable of serving the public interest are entrusted with a broadcast license.
There is a common thread here which weaves this issue fairness doctrine thing in with a wide range of long-standing right-wing complaints. And that common thread is a general rejection of the principle of public ownership for the public good.
At the center of a wide variety of conservative complaints is the desire to enable corporations to profit from publically held resources with little to no accoutability. Whether that be the electromagnetic spectrum, or timber in state and federal forests, or rivers and streams into which toxic waste could profitably be dumped, or mineral resources on or in publically owned lands, or tax dollars being funneled to mega-corporations like Haliburton and Blackwater where truly massive amounts of taxpayer dollars seem to just vanish. The list goes on and on.
The common threads are corporatism and conservatives.
It would be nice if conservatives would just be honest about it, but as a former conservative I know better than to hold my breath waiting for something which will never come.
Posted by Kevin at 02:26 PM |
February 12, 2009
Conservative Lies, Part 2
Talking about how a conservative lie goes mainstream:
Is there really $30 million in the new stimulus package devoted to saving the salt marsh mouse in Nancy Pelosi’s district?That’s what some conservatives are now charging, and the claim seems to be gaining some traction with elected GOP officials and conservative media outlets, who are using it to argue that the bill is stuffed with Dem pork.
But there isn’t any such money in the bill. And Pelosi’s office is saying that the claim is a “total fabrication.”
How did this one get going? Yesterday a House Republican leadership staffer circulated a background email, which I obtained, charging that GOP staffers had been told by an unnamed Federal agency that if it got money from the stim package, it would spend “thirty million dollars for wetland restoration in the San Francisco Bay Area — including work to protect the Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse.”
Hat tip to Greg Sargent and Barbara Morrill at Daily Kos.
So conservative hill staffers circulate a lie, the politicians themselves pick up on it and use it in campaign rhetoric, and (taking the logical leap) outlets like Fox News allow these same politicians and right-wing media consultants on to expound upon it.
And away it goes.
Posted by Ben at 11:47 AM |
February 11, 2009
Now this is interesting
London (JTA): Amnesty International issued a report detailing Hamas violence against Palestinians during Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.
As with so many other issues on a daily basis, one has to go outside of the United States to find out what the hell is happening in the world.
I would hope that any who were crying crocodile tears for Hamas would read this report and understand that Hamas is every bit as much a part of the problem in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as Israeli policy has been and continues to be.
Posted by Kevin at 10:34 PM |
Diagram of how a conservative lie goes mainstream
Posted by Kevin at 03:19 PM |
Phelps, Kelloggs and an SDA fairy tale
The Agitator has a great post covering the dropping of Michael Phelps' sponsorship by Kelloggs, listing a couple of the more controversial items historically associated with Kelloggs founder and namesake John Harvey Kellogg.
This would be the same company that for decades has been encouraging children to start the day by inhaling sugar by the spoonful. It’s also the company that still proudly bears the name of the man who advocated yogurt enemas and pouring carbolic acid on the clitoris to prevent women from experiencing sexual pleasure.
I was taught a great deal about J.H. Kellogg - the inventor of Corn Flakes - as a child because he was (at one time) a Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) and I was raised SDA. Kellogg's role was particularly noteworthy because health has always been a central issue around which the SDA theology has revolved. But, for what are probably self-evident reasons, I was never taught about his unhealthy fascination with the masturbation habits of others. From our modern vantage point the destruction of a woman's clitoris is positively barbaric. But it had to have been relatively more acceptable back in his day. Which says a lot about how very far our American culture has... er... cum in the last hundred years.
What really struck me reading that Wikipedia entry was my own family history.
You see, the circumstances of how my parents first met, which of course eventually led to my being born, is a veritable SDA fairytale romance.
At around the same time that J.H. Kellogg and his brothers were parting ways with the SDA Church in Battleground Michigan, the Church launched a small health food store in sunny Southern California. When the Kelloggs brothers/SDA split was... er... consumated, the Church launched a sanitarium in California to replace the Kelloggs sanitarium - which had been the unofficial flagship SDA sanitarium up until the split.
The new sanitarium in Cali eventually turned into Loma Linda Foods. And one of their earlier products was a dry breakfast cereal called Ruskets which sorta served to replace Corn Flakes as a good, healthy, SDA breakfast cereal. I remember eating Ruskets when I was quite young. But LLF ceased producing them sometime in the early 70s because Ruskets had been a financial liability for a long time and showed no prospects of becoming profitable.
Anyway, Loma Linda Foods was located in close proximaty to two SDA universities, Loma Linda University & Medical School and the undergraduate La Sierra University in nearby Riverside, California. My parents both ended up as students at La Sierra and as employees at the Loma Linda Foods factory where they both ended up working on the Ruskets line. And the rest, as they say, is history.
(Hat tip to Spyder for emailing me the Agitator post and starting this particular trip down memory lane.)
Posted by Kevin at 11:12 AM |
February 10, 2009
Op-Ed: the erosion of democracy in Israel
Public opinion surveys predict that Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our home) party may win as many as 20 seats, making it the third largest party in the Knesset and a powerbroker in the formation of the next government.
Lieberman has never disguised his belief that Israel's Arab citizens are a potential fifth column threatening Israel's security and well-being. He advocates a policy of "transfer," whereby areas of Israel that are heavily populated by Arabs would eventually become part of a Palestinian state. Those Arabs living within the transferred areas would have the choice of moving to other parts of Israel or automatically forfeiting their Israeli citizenship.Proposing such a policy sends an explicit message to 20 percent of Israel's citizens that they are unwanted in the country in which they work, live, pay taxes and attempt to find some path to equality in the designated Jewish homeland.
Even more pernicious is the party’s slogan -- "Without loyalty there is no citizenship." This notion, reminiscent of America's dark days of McCarthyism, patently defies a central value of democracy: namely that human and civil rights are not dependent on how a government classifies the nonviolent expression of opinions.
Lieberman's formulation presents a recipe for the legal disenfranchisement of any Israeli, Jew or Arab, who fails to meet some government standard of "loyalty."
Read the rest: The erosion of democracy in Israel
On a related note, now that a heretofore secret Israeli database on West Bank settlements has been made public, a reader of the blog Mondoweiss has begun taking information from the database and mapping the settlements onto a Google map.
Posted by Kevin at 02:11 PM |
Hating on Europe
I just heard Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) say that this stimulus package moves us dangerously close to becoming like Western Europe. And that's a very bad thing.
Gosh I love the beltway bubble.
Posted by Ben at 01:59 PM |
Rubber and Road
So the stimulus package passed the Senate, 61-37. Every Democratic Senator, both independents, and three Republicans buoyed the package in the face of uniform hard-line conservative opposition.
And that's what I'm interested in talking about. I've been watching a ton of CSPAN during this process, and I've noticed uniform behavior amongst those Republicans who voted against the stimulus: they claim these events are the most dangerous in America's history.
More after the cut.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not thrilled with the negotiated compromised passed in the Senate. Some of the as-amended cuts were unnecessary and only included in the name of "bipartisanship."
But it was a fair compromise and, with the correct actions in conference with the House, we can emerge with a decent bill whose aims are honest.
On the other hand, hard-line Republicans like Jim DeMint (R-SC), John Thune (R-SD), and John Ensign (R-NV) would rather roll the dice on scoring political points than honestly working for a compromise. Their only strategy is argue for useless, unnecessary "tax cuts" and hope our economy continues to spiral.
It's wholly political, and eye-popping given our predicament.
This compromise isn't perfect - not by a long shot. I'm thoroughly miffed about certain parts, but I also am hopeful that we can get a better product out of conference.
But at least Democrats tried. When faced with the gravest economic crisis since the Great Depression, they stood up and tried.
What did the Senate and House Republicans do? Got us in this mess, played political games, and hoped we would fail.
Posted by Ben at 10:08 AM |
February 09, 2009
"No, Jeff was my co-pilot"
Passengers reunite with hero pilot - Survivor Diane Higgins, 58, and her mother, Lucille Palmer, 85, who are from upstate Goshen, said they woke at 3 a.m. and had a car take them to New York for "The Early Show.""It was very exciting meeting Sully," Palmer said afterwards, adding: "I have a legacy to leave my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
"I survived the 'Miracle in the Hudson,' " she said.
Asked what she told Sullenberger when she met him, Palmer said: "You made history today . . . Thank you."
Higgins called the day "a whirlwind" and said: "It is the icing on the cake to meet the crew and just to meet the other passengers and to listen to their stories." She said she told Sullenberger: "You're my hero. And God was your co-pilot."
She said Sullenberger laughed at that one and said: "No, Jeff was my co-pilot."
The reference was to co-pilot Jeff Skiles, who was with Sullenberger in the cockpit when Flight 1549 ditched in the frigid Hudson on Jan. 15.
I'm sure that Higgins meant what she said as a compliment. But, aside from the fact that I like Sullenberger's rejoinder, the exchange made me think of a phrase I often heard from my Christian mother as I was growing up - "God gave us a mind and He expects us to use it."
*Here I'll ask our atheist and agnostic readers to bear with me. This is really more of a philosophical argument than a theological one, although from my perspective it is both.*
It's a bit of a cop-out for the pious to always invoke direct divine intervention every time a major catastrophe is averted. God may have directly intervened and I certainly can't prove otherwise nor can anyone else. But it seems to me that if one accepts that a creationist God deliberately gave us intelligence then I don't see any way around the logical conclussion that this same creationist God would have done so with the equally deliberate expectation that it would be used to good purpose.
In fact, I would go further and argue that under any creationist diety scenario the amazing display of skill and courage of Captain Sullenberger and his crew stands in stark testiment to that same diety. Meaning that however well meaning the trite invocation of God as his co-pilot may have been, it actually disses God rather than praises Him.
Posted by Kevin at 01:45 PM |
Thought Police
Reuters - The meetings, the first since the controversy over Bishop Richard Williamson, who denies the extent of the Holocaust, began last month, took place three days before Pope Benedict is due to address a group of American Jewish leaders."Today we strongly reaffirmed that the denial of the Shoah is not an opinion, but a crime," said Richard Prasquier, president of the French Jewish umbrella organization CRIF, using the Hebrew word for Holocaust. (emphasis added)
As the Reuters piece notes, Williamson is not a Holocaust denier. He doesn't deny that it took place, rather he denies the extent of it and one method employed by the Nazis. I'm not defending him, those are simply the facts. It is factually incorrect to call him a Holocaust/Shoah denier.
That said, it's deeply disturbing that Prasquier would argue that thoughts - even incorrect thoughts - constitute a crime.
Posted by Kevin at 01:30 PM |
February 07, 2009
Tax cuts = Conservative "pork"
Tax cuts are an inefficient mechanism of economic stimulus. As such their inclusion in the current stimulus plan amounts to pork for rightwingers more interested in pandering than in averting a monumental economic crisis.
But, pork was inserted by liberals too. Increased family planning access is arguably beneficial, but would that really do much to stimulate the economy? I don't see how. So why was it inserted into the stimulus bill if it is only conservatives who are being disingenuous about economic stimulus?
The centrist Eye on Oregon blog posits two criteria by which effective economic stimulus ought to be judged here in Oregon and which I would suggest all such stimulus projects nationwide ought to be judged:
...a project that (1) would put men and women to work and (2) would be a long term investment in Oregon.
I submit that both of these criteria have historically been proven effective. Here in Oregon we need look no further to see the embodiment of both criteria than Timberline Lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood. Built at the height of the Great Depression in the 1930s, it was ordered built by President Roosevelt via the Works Progress Administration with the goal of putting hundreds of Oregonians to work while simultaneously creating a long-term investment in the region which we continue to reap the rewards of some seventy years later and, barring a catastrophe, will continue do so for generations to come.
As the Friends of Timberline website puts it,
Construction workers at the lodge probably numbered about one hundred at any given time, but the jobs were rotated (except for highly skilled workers) in order to give work to as many of the unemployed as possible.
But it was more than just about putting people to work. As E. J. Griffith, State WPA Administrator at the time put it,
"The Timberline Lodge project was distinctly an experiment...to get away from the leaf raking type of project; and this was the spark that fired the imagination of those who planned Timberline Lodge... It was to be a monument to the skill and industry of the unemployed and it is a monument the world will have to acknowledge."
Now is not the time to be playing partisan politics with our economy on the ropes. Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike need to have their feet held to the fire. Giving "our side" a pass because they're on "our side" makes us complicit no matter how loudly we point fingers and scream about the "other side" and their shenanigans.
President Obama needs and deserves our staunch support in keeping Congress focused on the point of the exercise!
Posted by Kevin at 03:20 PM |
The NRSC's Opening Salvo of 2010
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, whom we all know and love from the recent Merkley/Smith Senate race here in Oregon, has released its opening political ad of the 2010 election cycle.
Their target? Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is up for re-election and is looking somewhat vulnerable:
I guess it's easier to make television ads about the stimulus than it is to actually help it pass.
Looking to score political points while America flounders? Disgusting.
Posted by Ben at 11:55 AM |
February 06, 2009
Enough with the tax cuts already!
From Jed at Daily Kos:
Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell are reporting that 42% of the Senate proposal consists of tax cuts. That's roughly $330 billion. Tax cuts, of course, are the absolutely least effective way to stimulate a boost GDP (and therefore employment) according to virtually every economist. So not only is this not enough, too much of it is on the wrong stuff.
Great. More tax cuts when tons of us cannot even get jobs.
Way to go, guys. How out-of-touch can we get here?
Here's hoping that the conference puts some teeth back into this package.
[UPDATE] Wow. I'm watching CSPAN 2, and Senate Republicans are throwing Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (Rs - Maine) under the bus for being part of the compromise. They are pissed! Then again, their idea of compromise was to kick our economy while it was down...
Posted by Ben at 05:07 PM |
Stimulus and Senators
A few points which are very important to me in light of recent Oregon political speculation:
Speculation and rumor has Oregon Senator Ron Wyden in the running for the vacant Health and Human Services secretary job. This is a very bad idea.
Democrats and Oregon need Ron Wyden in the U.S. Senate. He is approaching seniority, with plum committee assignments. He has the best, most bipartisan health care plan working its way through government (the Healthy Americans Act). And we need his vote.
Why do we need his vote so badly? As is evidenced by the struggles of Obama's stimulus plan, there are not enough Democratic and progressive votes to accomplish major, major legislation. Sure, we got the Fair Pay Act and SCHIP, but what about this stimulus, or even the Employee Free Choice Act? Without Wyden's vote, we won't get it done.
More after the cut.
With center-right Senators like Nebraska's Ben Nelson (D) and Maine's Susan Collins (R) doing the negotiating, we can't be guaranteed to cross the 60-vote threshold needed to end the filibuster on key progressive legislation. And with Kennedy down for the count, who knows if we can get to 60 without Wyden.
We will get certain pieces of legislation done, sure, but we need Ron Wyden and his progressive values in the U.S. Senate. He is a leader, and we need his dynamic leadership and reliable vote.
Oh, and do you really want to see a special election for a vacant Senate seat? I'm sorry, but another election with former Senator Gordon Smith is like rolling the dice: we might keep the seat, or we might cough it right up.
It was said a lot during Senator Merkley's campaign, but Oregon needs two Senators fighting on the same side. We can't endure any more vote-canceling, especially not at such a pivotal crossroads.
Posted by Ben at 02:12 PM |
Women's lib comes full circle?
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A woman who was not hired by Washington's transit agency because she refused to wear pants has won a settlement of her religious discrimination suit.It wasn't all that many years ago when woman even wearing pants would have been considered radical, unfeminine and was heavily frowned upon.
Now a woman has to go to court to be allowed to NOT wear pants...
Granted this woman's case is in the context of religious garb rather than feminism (or is it?). But it's still a very interesting (and telling) commentary on how a culture can radically change.
Actually, what really struck me as I read the news blurb was the mental image of a society careening from side to side like a drunken sailor trying to find an equilibrium.
Posted by Kevin at 01:36 PM |
Santonio Holmes - the real deal
I just saw the Pittsburgh Steelers star wide receiver and Super Bowl MVP on Late Night with Jay Leno. And I just gotta say that I've seen so many young guys like him who are in their early 20s earning lots of money and all the fame and fortune goes to their heads and next thing you know they've been busted for shooting someone at a dance club or something like that. But Santonio is the real deal.
Jay joking asked Santonio if he'd partied all night after winning the Super Bowl and Santonio demurred at first by saying that he was too exhausted to party. But then he got a serious look on his face and went on and on about his kids and how he'd taken them home (probably meant he took them to their hotel room), made sure they had something to eat and how they watched some kids movie. He said what the movie was but I don't remember it.
The thing is... he never missed an opportunity to work his kids into the conversation. As a recovering addict I'm pretty familiar with the early 20s party animal mindset and Santonio didn't exhibit it at all.
I am impressed by his maturity and especially by how he seems to have his priorities straight. Fame and fortune will come and go but those kids are forever, and he clearly understands that.
A very impressive young man!
Posted by Kevin at 12:33 AM |
Michael Phelps suspended?
This is fucking rediculous. Phelps has lost a sponsor and been suspended by USA Swimming even though taking a bong hit doesn't violate any anti-doping rules for athletes.
Perspective is everything.
Michael could have been photographed taking shots of 190 proof Everclear, a vastly more dangerous mind-altering substance to use, and everything would have been copasetic. But with a substance that produces a much more mild level of intoxication and has a tenuous (at best) direct connection to addiction and everyone freaks out.
Get a grip, people!
Trust me on this. I've taken straight shots of Everclear and smoked copeous quantities of weed. And the Everclear is hands-down a much, much bigger deal. That stuff will fuck you up REAL fast.
But even if Everclear was fully comparable to bong hits it's still such an incredibly hypocritical situation because the pot is "illegal".
Posted by Kevin at 12:03 AM |
February 05, 2009
Two faces of Israeli society
One in five Israeli citizens is Arab:
Immigrants and religions redefine Israeli society:
Posted by Kevin at 08:16 PM |
Do you remember...
... the "ownership society"?
Posted by Kevin at 09:11 AM |
February 04, 2009
The recession hits home
I haven't been around much this last week because the Oregon bug finally got me: I came down with the flu last week, which graduated into a cough/cold over the weekend. And, to top it all off, I got pinkeye a few days ago.
Great thing I have health insurance. That only offers real coverage if I get run over by a truck. Great.
Anyway, the recession has finally hit home for me. Since I ended my recent stint with the Merkley campaign in December, I've been unable to find work. I have applied to many jobs, but every one has received a flood of applicants - and ultimately I haven't landed yet.
I guess it's not a great time to be a communications and public relations worker, huh?
More after the jump, with a few questions for ya'll about unemployment and you.
So, today, I took that big next step: I applied for unemployment through Oregon.
Thank goodness such a parachute exists for people in my situation - no work (not for lack of trying) and running out of money, I need a parachute to ease my free-fall.
I'll let you know how it all goes, but I'm hopeful that it will keep my bills paid in the short term (my wife also works for Borders).
Have any of you had experience with Oregon's unemployment system? Are any of you out there unemployed and looking for work? If so, how's it going?
Posted by Ben at 12:06 PM |
February 03, 2009
A progressive alternative for Secretary Clinton
Karol Collymore has a post up at Blue Oregon about an effort by Senator Ron Wyden and several others urging Secretary Clinton to implement equal rights for same-sex couples who work for the State Department. I was unable to find the exact press release she cites from Wyden and I struck out on Feingold too. But I did find one on Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's website.
Initially I was just going to comment on Karol's post but then I remembered something Carla said several years ago about how sometimes a comment would make a better post than a comment. So here I am.
Instead of quoting the entire press release let me just cut to the chase because that'll get to the crux of why I wanted to write about this in the first place.
Baldwin and her colleagues asked Secretary Clinton to institute, among other things, the following changes in State Department policy regarding Foreign Service Officers (FSOs):The problem as I see it here is purely a practical one. Currently these are priviledges reserved solely for married spouses of hetero couples. Extending these priviledges to same-sex couples in the absense of uniform gay marriage statutes nationwide would mean that rather than verifying partner status via a legal document (marriage license or something indicating the same) the criteria would shift to the say-so of the employee.Inclusion in travel orders for same-sex domestic partners of FSOs
- Access to training, including all language classes, area studies, and embassy effectiveness classes for same-sex domestic partners of FSOs
- Emergency evacuation and medevac from post when necessary for same-sex domestic partners of FSOs
- Access to post health units for same-sex domestic partners of FSOs
- Visa support for same-sex domestic partners accompanying FSOs to overseas postings, and for same-sex foreign-born domestic partners accompanying FSOs to postings in Washington or elsewhere in the U.S.
- Preferential status for employment at post comparable to that enjoyed by Eligible Family Members (EFMs) for same-sex domestic partners of FSOs
Now, I understand the inherent difficulty posed to same-sex couples due to the unavailability of nationally recognized legal marriage to them. That is not their fault.
But on the other hand, neither they nor we can say with realistic certainty that every same-sex couple which these rules might apply to would be married to their Significant Other if they could. America is full of hetero couples who at one point or another were engaged or otherwise had every intention of getting married only to have it never materialize, for whatever reason. Plenty of other intimate couples seemingly thrived together unmarried for several years only to get married and end up divorced within a year or two. That's exactly how my first marriage went.
The point being that in real world terms what Wyden et al are advocating would discriminate against hetero employees who may have been with their Significant Other just as long but don't have access to these benefits because they're not married.
What I would therefore urge Secretary Clinton to do would be to change the rules to apply to each employee and one other individual whom the employee would have to designate upfront. Whether that one other person is a spouse, a lover, a platonic friend or even a sibling would be besides the point and not relevant to the benefits at stake.
One employee + one other person and their criteria would be their own. One other person, designated upfront and non-transferable without some sort of paperwork hoops to jump through roughly as royal of a pain in the keister as divorce paperwork - just to keep it fair for everyone.
Posted by Kevin at 10:33 PM |
The normalization of evil
The father of Daniel Pearl wrote an eloquent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal decrying what he terms the normalization of evil centered primarily on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He makes some very valid observations, many of which I readily agree with. But it's a classic case of the Pot calling the Kettle "black".
But somehow, barbarism, often cloaked in the language of "resistance," has gained acceptance in the most elite circles of our society. The words "war on terror" cannot be uttered today without fear of offense. Civilized society, so it seems, is so numbed by violence that it has lost its gift to be disgusted by evil.I believe it all started with well-meaning analysts, who in their zeal to find creative solutions to terror decided that terror is not a real enemy, but a tactic. Thus the basic engine that propels acts of terrorism -- the ideological license to elevate one's grievances above the norms of civilized society -- was wished away in favor of seemingly more manageable "tactical" considerations.
That's a pretty good parsing of the relevant issues... if you wish to accept Pearl's frame. But ask yourself this: Has not the terrorism of Zionists just as readily been wished away in favor of seemingly more managable "tactical" considerations? How else do we explain the recent public lauding of Stern Gang terrorist Avraham Ravitz by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert? Or, for that matter, his having become accepted by Israeli mainstream and the resulting impressive political biography spanning decades? Whether the terrorist sects they belonged to comprised a minute fraction of Zionists is far less relevant than their acceptance by mainstream Israeli society, just as the minute fraction of Palestinian society which some of the militant groups lobbing mortars and rockets into Israel comprise is less relevant than their widespread acceptance among aspects of the larger Palestinian society.
One man's "freedom fighter" is another man's "terrorist." And it cuts both ways, as evidenced by Ravitz acceptance by so-called civilized society along with other Zionist terrorists such as Ariel Sharon. Not to mention the IDF's own role in gently nurturing Islamist Palestinians as a counterweight to the PLO in the 80s.
There are few harsher critics of Hamas than today's Fatah, the political descendant of what used to be known as the PLO. And what has Fatah gained by both opposing Hamas and preventing any Palestinians in the West Bank from lobbing mortars or rockets into Israel? Their reward has been yet further theft of land for the expansion of Israeli settlements, a modern road system on their own land which they are barred from using and those lovely partition walls enshrining the theft of their land, just to name a few of their consolation prizes.
I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Pearl. But the normalization of evil predates all of your cited evidence by many years. Indeed, by selectively partisanly parsing the issue you have yourself become a party to it.
Look in the mirror, Mr. Pearl.
Posted by Kevin at 08:37 AM |
February 02, 2009
J Street wants action
The new pro-Israel, pro-sanity lobbying group and political action committee J Street has a handy form on their website for you to send a message of support to 60 Minutes' Bob Simon for his recent piece covering, in their words, "the threat Israeli settlements pose to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
Needless to say, I made good use of the form.
Simon summed up the three primary choices Israel will have in ten years when population models say that Arabs will outnumber Jews in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
- Try ethnic cleansing
- Give Palestinians the vote
- Apartheid
I don't see any other choices either. But the more onerous choices haven't been put off at all. Apartheid is a reality right now in the West Bank, and policies amounting to ethnic cleansing are also in place and being enforced, as Dr. Barghouti explains in Simon's piece.
Note the heavily-armed IDF soldiers standing at the top of the stairs holding a Palestinian banker and his family hostage in their own home in this clip covering the first half of Simon's piece:
After the jump is the second of his piece and a link to the transcript of the entire piece.
Posted by Kevin at 08:47 PM |
To hell with tax cuts. Spend, spend, spend!
As President Obama gamely strives to build consensus between Republicans demanding more tax cuts and Democrats wanting more spending it is perhaps a good time to cut through the claims and look at the hard facts.
Well, that's what Marcus over at Centerfield has done.
A year ago, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's published this little remarked upon bombshell regarding the effectiveness of certain strategies surrounding the2008 stimulus package. Obviously the not so liberal corporately biased media made little hay of this. Yet in terms of policy this should have a profound effect on how we handle the current stimulus package.
Since the depth of my grasp of economics is relatively shallow, I suggest that you read the rest of Marcus's piece and comment there: Reality collides with Republican ideology. Ideology loses. Tax cuts are inefficient.
Along somewhat similar lines but from a more macro, global perspective is a post I wrote a little over four years ago: Riddle me this
Posted by Kevin at 08:23 PM |