In honor of the great John Updike, I post his rules on how to review books. This comes from the introduction to his Picked Up Pieces, his second collection of prose. Since this blog is part literary, I think it apropos that we take heed of Updike's advice:
"1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending. (How astounded and indignant was I, when innocent, to find reviewers blabbing, and with the sublime inaccuracy of drunken lords reporting on a peasants' revolt, all the turns of my suspenseful and surpriseful narrative! Most ironically, the only readers who approach a book as the author intends, unpolluted by pre-knowledge of the plot, are the detested reviewers themselves. And then, years later, the blessed fool who picks the volume at random from a library shelf.)
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's ouevre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?
To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in an idealogical battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never (John Aldridge, Norman Podhoretz) try to put the author "in his place," making him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end."
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Lessons from The New Deal
It is one thing to have reservations about some of the details of President Obama's stimulus bill. It is quite another thing to be opposed to governmental stimulus spending. Keynesian economics works.
The Republicans' Fatal Misreading of FDR -- and How It Would Worsen The Depression
by Michael Steele from The New Republic
Comments
The Arctic wind of a depression is colder with each passing week. There's still an air of unreality: can dole queues really swell and economies really shutter like they did in the history books? Is there a way out? It is here, in the falling darkness, that the differences between the main political parties - too narrow for too long - are becoming plain.
There is a deep disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans about what governments can and should do now. To understand this, we need to look at a seemingly esoteric debate between the parties about what happened in the last global depression. There are two contradictory stories about how the Great Depression ended. They provide dramatically different road maps for 2009 - so it's essential to figure out which is right. The winning side will determine your chances of losing your job and your home.
The dominant story in the public mind is of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's success. It goes like this. Like Obama, FDR comes to power with the American economy haemorrhaging jobs. He believed that, if private industry is withering, the government has to take up the slack by large public spending programmes. He set millions to work preserving green spaces and rebuilding the country's infrastructure. He thought it was necessary to borrow and spend in the short term to prevent complete and more costly collapse later. Use government to counter the economic cycle, rather than leaving us all to drift out to sea on it.
This is Barack Obama's story too, as they launch their own fiscal stimuli. His favoured analogy is of jump-starting a failing car, rather than let it whimper to a halt on the road.
But at the height of Reaganism, a small number of right-wing economists began to tell a different story about that time. They argued that the American people had been wrong: the New Deal actually made the Depression worse. By borrowing and spending so much, the government created a climate of uncertainty. This made investors hold on to their money - prolonging the despair. It didn't restore private investment, it "crowded it out". So in a depression, all government can do is cut back its own spending and wait for the business cycle to recover. The only effective way for government to hurry this along is a monetary stimulus: altering interest rates and the quantity of money in the economy in an attempt to increase demand.
This is increasingly the Republican view, promoted hard by conservative commentators like George Will. At the core of this case is a stark fact: unemployment was still at 13 per cent in 1937.
Which is true? The reality of FDR's rule is more complex than either story admits - but the lessons vindicate one set of principles resoundingly.
It's almost forgotten now, but FDR ran for election promising a balanced budget and big spending cuts. By the time he assumed the Presidency, however, public protests against the economic collapse were so huge that he was forced to change course and launch his public spending push. The result? Unemployment began to slide down from its 25 per cent peak.
But then, in 1936, FDR wobbled. He listened to the people making the fiscally conservative case and slashed spending. Unemployment rose again - producing the spike in unemployment that people like Osborne now perversely cite as evidence that the New Deal didn't work. But the reality stands. When FDR spent, unemployment fell. When FDR cut back, unemployment rose.
Yet perhaps the clincher is the answer to a bigger question: how did the Great Depression end?
It didn't stop with the conservative suggestion: slashed spending, slashed debt and slashed government activity. It ended with precisely the opposite: the vast fiscal stimulus of the Second World War. The government sent debt soaring to its highest levels in US history (until today) in order to spend more than ever before. It set up the longest boom in US history.
This is our choice now. Obama will have to be pressured hard to make their stimuli much bigger, and to focus less on propping up old corporations and more on building a new low-carbon economy. He will make many mistakes. But, as FDR put it, "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference".
The Republicans' Fatal Misreading of FDR -- and How It Would Worsen The Depression
by Michael Steele from The New Republic
Comments
The Arctic wind of a depression is colder with each passing week. There's still an air of unreality: can dole queues really swell and economies really shutter like they did in the history books? Is there a way out? It is here, in the falling darkness, that the differences between the main political parties - too narrow for too long - are becoming plain.
There is a deep disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans about what governments can and should do now. To understand this, we need to look at a seemingly esoteric debate between the parties about what happened in the last global depression. There are two contradictory stories about how the Great Depression ended. They provide dramatically different road maps for 2009 - so it's essential to figure out which is right. The winning side will determine your chances of losing your job and your home.
The dominant story in the public mind is of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's success. It goes like this. Like Obama, FDR comes to power with the American economy haemorrhaging jobs. He believed that, if private industry is withering, the government has to take up the slack by large public spending programmes. He set millions to work preserving green spaces and rebuilding the country's infrastructure. He thought it was necessary to borrow and spend in the short term to prevent complete and more costly collapse later. Use government to counter the economic cycle, rather than leaving us all to drift out to sea on it.
This is Barack Obama's story too, as they launch their own fiscal stimuli. His favoured analogy is of jump-starting a failing car, rather than let it whimper to a halt on the road.
But at the height of Reaganism, a small number of right-wing economists began to tell a different story about that time. They argued that the American people had been wrong: the New Deal actually made the Depression worse. By borrowing and spending so much, the government created a climate of uncertainty. This made investors hold on to their money - prolonging the despair. It didn't restore private investment, it "crowded it out". So in a depression, all government can do is cut back its own spending and wait for the business cycle to recover. The only effective way for government to hurry this along is a monetary stimulus: altering interest rates and the quantity of money in the economy in an attempt to increase demand.
This is increasingly the Republican view, promoted hard by conservative commentators like George Will. At the core of this case is a stark fact: unemployment was still at 13 per cent in 1937.
Which is true? The reality of FDR's rule is more complex than either story admits - but the lessons vindicate one set of principles resoundingly.
It's almost forgotten now, but FDR ran for election promising a balanced budget and big spending cuts. By the time he assumed the Presidency, however, public protests against the economic collapse were so huge that he was forced to change course and launch his public spending push. The result? Unemployment began to slide down from its 25 per cent peak.
But then, in 1936, FDR wobbled. He listened to the people making the fiscally conservative case and slashed spending. Unemployment rose again - producing the spike in unemployment that people like Osborne now perversely cite as evidence that the New Deal didn't work. But the reality stands. When FDR spent, unemployment fell. When FDR cut back, unemployment rose.
Yet perhaps the clincher is the answer to a bigger question: how did the Great Depression end?
It didn't stop with the conservative suggestion: slashed spending, slashed debt and slashed government activity. It ended with precisely the opposite: the vast fiscal stimulus of the Second World War. The government sent debt soaring to its highest levels in US history (until today) in order to spend more than ever before. It set up the longest boom in US history.
This is our choice now. Obama will have to be pressured hard to make their stimuli much bigger, and to focus less on propping up old corporations and more on building a new low-carbon economy. He will make many mistakes. But, as FDR put it, "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the constant omission of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference".
A Defense of the word "Liberal"
Alan Wolfe is not defending liberalism here, which needs no defense, he is merely defending the continuing use of the word "liberal" as opposed to say, "progressive." I agree completely.
29.01.2009
In Defense of "Liberal"
Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
When John McWhorter tells us liberals, today on TNR.com, to give up our fixation with the term, it is not clear if he is speaking as a linguist, a political pundit, or, increasingly fashionable these days, both. In any case, I could not disagree more.
Words change their meaning, as McWhorter rightly points out; one of my favorites is the persistent use of the term "condescend" in Jane Austen, where it is clearly meant as a compliment. But words do not change their meaning through acts of God. Their meanings change because we change them. This, I dare say, is precisely why McWhorter took to this site to make his argument. He was not merely announcing that the old meaning of liberal is now passé; he was urging that we treat it as passé.
A libertarian like F. A. von Hayek once wrote that he was not a conservative. I do not think that those to the left of George Bush and Karl Rove should say that they are not liberals. Liberal is a good word because the values it embodies--the very ones cited by Tim Ash, whose reflections on the term prompted McWhorter's piece--are good values. As I say in my own effort to deal with these issues, The Future of Liberalism (officially published next Tuesday), we do not study the "conservative arts" and we do not call Western polities "conservative democracies." Liberals are people who are generous of temperament, committed to fairness, and believers in such substantive goals as autonomy and equality. No other term captures that range of meanings. Progressive--a term frequently urged as a substitute for liberalism, including by McWhorter himself--is dreadful by comparison; it assumes a straight road from there to here to the future, when, as the liberal Kant pointed out and the liberal Isaiah Berlin seconded, out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing could be fashioned.
The application of the word liberal to politics derives from the first decade or two of the nineteenth century when Spanish reformers were searching for an alternative to Napoleonic rule. McWhorter says that we should not be bound by the way terms have been used in the past because conditions change. Some do. Some do not. The ideas that we ought to be free from the capricious rule of tyrants, that we have the power to shape the world in which we live, that we insist on the primacy of rights, that in recognizing our own flaws we should be tolerant of others--these are the stuff of permanent things. Letting go the term that made them part of our consciousness would be a terrible mistake.
--Alan Wolfe
Posted: Thursday
29.01.2009
In Defense of "Liberal"
Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College.
When John McWhorter tells us liberals, today on TNR.com, to give up our fixation with the term, it is not clear if he is speaking as a linguist, a political pundit, or, increasingly fashionable these days, both. In any case, I could not disagree more.
Words change their meaning, as McWhorter rightly points out; one of my favorites is the persistent use of the term "condescend" in Jane Austen, where it is clearly meant as a compliment. But words do not change their meaning through acts of God. Their meanings change because we change them. This, I dare say, is precisely why McWhorter took to this site to make his argument. He was not merely announcing that the old meaning of liberal is now passé; he was urging that we treat it as passé.
A libertarian like F. A. von Hayek once wrote that he was not a conservative. I do not think that those to the left of George Bush and Karl Rove should say that they are not liberals. Liberal is a good word because the values it embodies--the very ones cited by Tim Ash, whose reflections on the term prompted McWhorter's piece--are good values. As I say in my own effort to deal with these issues, The Future of Liberalism (officially published next Tuesday), we do not study the "conservative arts" and we do not call Western polities "conservative democracies." Liberals are people who are generous of temperament, committed to fairness, and believers in such substantive goals as autonomy and equality. No other term captures that range of meanings. Progressive--a term frequently urged as a substitute for liberalism, including by McWhorter himself--is dreadful by comparison; it assumes a straight road from there to here to the future, when, as the liberal Kant pointed out and the liberal Isaiah Berlin seconded, out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing could be fashioned.
The application of the word liberal to politics derives from the first decade or two of the nineteenth century when Spanish reformers were searching for an alternative to Napoleonic rule. McWhorter says that we should not be bound by the way terms have been used in the past because conditions change. Some do. Some do not. The ideas that we ought to be free from the capricious rule of tyrants, that we have the power to shape the world in which we live, that we insist on the primacy of rights, that in recognizing our own flaws we should be tolerant of others--these are the stuff of permanent things. Letting go the term that made them part of our consciousness would be a terrible mistake.
--Alan Wolfe
Posted: Thursday
Lincoln Says
"I cannot read generally. I never read textbooks, for I have no particular motive to drive and whip me to it. I don't and can't remember such reading."
-Abraham Lincon from The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln edited by Bob Blaisdell
-Abraham Lincon from The Wit and Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln edited by Bob Blaisdell
Revolutionary Road - The Movie (2)
Upon reflection let me make a few more comments.
The 50's are caricatured as a decade monochromatic sameness and dullness. In the movie we see hoards of men going to work in the same looking suits and the same looking hats. This is a bit overdone. There was much more going on in the 50's that conformity. After all, the modern civil rights movement started with Montgomery and Little Rock. We had the beginning of rock and roll. And many other things.
The tragedy of the story is finally April Wheeler. She is the one trapped, with aspirations that cannot be fulfilled, trapped in a decade before women had the choices they have today. Everyone suffers at the end because of her desperation. I have no sympathy for Frank. What a klutz.
The 50's are caricatured as a decade monochromatic sameness and dullness. In the movie we see hoards of men going to work in the same looking suits and the same looking hats. This is a bit overdone. There was much more going on in the 50's that conformity. After all, the modern civil rights movement started with Montgomery and Little Rock. We had the beginning of rock and roll. And many other things.
The tragedy of the story is finally April Wheeler. She is the one trapped, with aspirations that cannot be fulfilled, trapped in a decade before women had the choices they have today. Everyone suffers at the end because of her desperation. I have no sympathy for Frank. What a klutz.
The Increasingly Marginalized Republican Party
Even Sen. Mitch McConnell says that the Republican Party is becoming increasingly marginalized as a regional party. What he doesn't say, of course, is that the party is marginalized in the Confederate South. Republicans are slow learners, to their detriment.
Permalink
January 29, 2009
McConnell warns of grim GOP future
McConnell painted a dismal picture of the state of his party.
(CNN) – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell painted a downright dismal view of the state of his party Thursday afternoon, telling Republican National Committee members the GOP is in grave danger of being marginalized to a regional party.
"We’re all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us," the Kentucky Republican said on the second day of the four-day gathering.
"And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one.
"In politics there's a name for a regional party, it's called a minority party," said McConnell.
The sobering remarks came one day before the 168 members of the RNC are set to elect a chairman tasked with steering the party out of its beleaguered status, and win back some of the voting blocs virtually abandoned the party last November, including minority and younger voters.
Permalink
January 29, 2009
McConnell warns of grim GOP future
McConnell painted a dismal picture of the state of his party.
(CNN) – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell painted a downright dismal view of the state of his party Thursday afternoon, telling Republican National Committee members the GOP is in grave danger of being marginalized to a regional party.
"We’re all concerned about the fact that the very wealthy and the very poor, the most and least educated, and a majority of minority voters, seem to have more or less stopped paying attention to us," the Kentucky Republican said on the second day of the four-day gathering.
"And we should be concerned that, as a result of all this, the Republican Party seems to be slipping into a position of being more of a regional party than a national one.
"In politics there's a name for a regional party, it's called a minority party," said McConnell.
The sobering remarks came one day before the 168 members of the RNC are set to elect a chairman tasked with steering the party out of its beleaguered status, and win back some of the voting blocs virtually abandoned the party last November, including minority and younger voters.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Revolutionary Road - The Movie
First a warning. Do not see this movie if you are depressed for it will only make your situation worse. The movie, which follows the novel which I did read, is a complete downer. It's dark, and there is no upside. Having read the book, I knew the ending, but still it was depressing leaving the theatre.
Yes, it does follow the book closely, which I always like if I've read the book.
The only quarrel I have is that I find it hard to see Leonardo DiCaprio as a 50's fellow. He seems out of place in 1955. The rest of the casting is fine. Kate Winslet give an Oscar-worthy peformance.
I suspect the material reflects the life of Richard Yates, who probably never fit into the conventional life. The Wheelers think they are better than their surroundings, and from the beginning think they should a better life than the suburban life of the 50's. What that better life is is never spelled out in either the book or the movie. What exactly were they looking for? The other comment I would make is that they apparently took no great pleasure in their children. I suspect that Richard Yate didn't either.
As I left the theatre at Patton Creek, I heard a man behind me say, "That's the most depressing thing I've ever seen."
Well, yes, but the acting is great and powerful and I would recommend it if you're in a good mood. Do not chance if you are not in a good mood!
Yes, it does follow the book closely, which I always like if I've read the book.
The only quarrel I have is that I find it hard to see Leonardo DiCaprio as a 50's fellow. He seems out of place in 1955. The rest of the casting is fine. Kate Winslet give an Oscar-worthy peformance.
I suspect the material reflects the life of Richard Yates, who probably never fit into the conventional life. The Wheelers think they are better than their surroundings, and from the beginning think they should a better life than the suburban life of the 50's. What that better life is is never spelled out in either the book or the movie. What exactly were they looking for? The other comment I would make is that they apparently took no great pleasure in their children. I suspect that Richard Yate didn't either.
As I left the theatre at Patton Creek, I heard a man behind me say, "That's the most depressing thing I've ever seen."
Well, yes, but the acting is great and powerful and I would recommend it if you're in a good mood. Do not chance if you are not in a good mood!
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Politics and Corporate Models According to Cows
AN AMERICAN REPUBLICAN:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So what?
AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.
A COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
A FASCIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
They are mad. They die.
Pass the shepherd's pie, please.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.
A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship both of them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them
AN ISRAELI CORPORATION:
There are these two Jewish cows, right?
They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?
AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
That one on the left is kinda cute!
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So what?
AN AMERICAN DEMOCRAT:
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office who tax your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money and buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous.
A COMMUNIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
A FASCIST:
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and sells you the milk. You join the underground and start a campaign of sabotage.
DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.
CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE:
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when the cow drops dead.
A FRENCH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create clever cow cartoon images called Cowkimon and market them World-Wide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You reengineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
A BRITISH CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
They are mad. They die.
Pass the shepherd's pie, please.
AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You break for lunch.
A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.
A SWISS CORPORATION:
You have 5000 cows, none of which belong to you. You charge others for storing them.
A BRAZILIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You enter into a partnership with an American corporation. Soon you have 1000 cows and the American corporation declares bankruptcy.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You worship both of them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
You have 300 people milking them. You claim full employment, high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who reported on them
AN ISRAELI CORPORATION:
There are these two Jewish cows, right?
They open a milk factory, an ice cream store, and then sell the movie rights. They send their calves to Harvard to become doctors. So, who needs people?
AN ARKANSAS CORPORATION:
You have two cows.
That one on the left is kinda cute!
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Meaningful Missions and Visions
I have been reading about organizational structure and management. I thought this piece quite humorous and worth sharing.
by Tom Terez
.
Q. What exactly is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement, and how can ours be world class?
A. There is a critically important difference between these two key ingredients of an effective organization. A recent study, conducted by the American Association of People Who Don't Mind and In Fact Advocate Long-Windedness in Their Communications, showed that the typical mission statement includes two semicolons, two dashes, and at least two business buzzwords -- while the vision statement contains only one dash but makes up for it with at least one run-on sentence. To be at all credible, a company's mission and vision statements combined must include at least five of the following terms and phrases:
high performance
world class
diversity
empowerment
employees are our most important asset
exceeds
delight(s)
right the first time
everyone's job
puts people first
puts the customer first
puts employee bonuses first
Of course, examples are the best way to convey these important guidelines. Here is what the little-known Anon Company* came up with after spending eight hours in a hotel meeting room, during which the organization's 35 employees consumed 102 donuts, 90 cups of coffee, 68 soft drinks (including 24 cans of Jolt Cola), 35 boxed lunches, and countless peppermint candies.
Our mission is to develop a high-performance mission statement -- one that puts the customer first, puts employees first, and does it right the first time -- in a way that delights anyone who had concerns that this mission statement would actually mean something; in order to show that employees can exceed expectations for how much unhealthy food they can consume during a single work day; and so we can get out of this damn hotel room with its thermostat that we can't control and end this madness an hour early.
This mission statement clearly conveys that the employees of Anon are bold risk-takers, as demonstrated by their brazen abuse of their high-performance gastrointestinal systems. The employees also show a command of key business terms, particularly those words and phrases that have had the meaning squeezed out of them years ago. And let's not ignore the powerful empowerment reference at the very end of the statement.
The team from Anon also developed a vision statement:
Our vision is to be a world-class organization -- one that becomes a benchmark for other organizations, so they can copy what we do and get it right in about five years, by which time we will be light years ahead of them; one that impresses its customers the first time and every time with its plastic-laminated mission and vision statements; and one that fully empowers its employees so they aren't forced to spend an entire day in a freezing-cold hotel meeting room churning out run-on sentences while the real work backs up.
These statements are guaranteed to strike a deep chord in employees, customers, and printers of plastic-laminated cards. Imagine the Anon employee who needs a quick dose of direction or inspiration. All they'll need to do is reach into their wallet or purse and -- oh gee, I must have thrown it out.
* Anon Company is not a real company. The name has been entirely made up for the purpose of this article. Anon = Anonymous, get it? But it's a big country, and for all I know, there may be a real Anon Company, the CEO of which is reading this right now. Well, any name similarity would be purely coincidental, accidental, transcendental, and so forth. If there is a real Anon Company out there, I'm certain it's an excellent organization with world-class mission and vision statements, and I encourage you to buy its products and/or services in great quantities.
by Tom Terez
.
Q. What exactly is the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement, and how can ours be world class?
A. There is a critically important difference between these two key ingredients of an effective organization. A recent study, conducted by the American Association of People Who Don't Mind and In Fact Advocate Long-Windedness in Their Communications, showed that the typical mission statement includes two semicolons, two dashes, and at least two business buzzwords -- while the vision statement contains only one dash but makes up for it with at least one run-on sentence. To be at all credible, a company's mission and vision statements combined must include at least five of the following terms and phrases:
high performance
world class
diversity
empowerment
employees are our most important asset
exceeds
delight(s)
right the first time
everyone's job
puts people first
puts the customer first
puts employee bonuses first
Of course, examples are the best way to convey these important guidelines. Here is what the little-known Anon Company* came up with after spending eight hours in a hotel meeting room, during which the organization's 35 employees consumed 102 donuts, 90 cups of coffee, 68 soft drinks (including 24 cans of Jolt Cola), 35 boxed lunches, and countless peppermint candies.
Our mission is to develop a high-performance mission statement -- one that puts the customer first, puts employees first, and does it right the first time -- in a way that delights anyone who had concerns that this mission statement would actually mean something; in order to show that employees can exceed expectations for how much unhealthy food they can consume during a single work day; and so we can get out of this damn hotel room with its thermostat that we can't control and end this madness an hour early.
This mission statement clearly conveys that the employees of Anon are bold risk-takers, as demonstrated by their brazen abuse of their high-performance gastrointestinal systems. The employees also show a command of key business terms, particularly those words and phrases that have had the meaning squeezed out of them years ago. And let's not ignore the powerful empowerment reference at the very end of the statement.
The team from Anon also developed a vision statement:
Our vision is to be a world-class organization -- one that becomes a benchmark for other organizations, so they can copy what we do and get it right in about five years, by which time we will be light years ahead of them; one that impresses its customers the first time and every time with its plastic-laminated mission and vision statements; and one that fully empowers its employees so they aren't forced to spend an entire day in a freezing-cold hotel meeting room churning out run-on sentences while the real work backs up.
These statements are guaranteed to strike a deep chord in employees, customers, and printers of plastic-laminated cards. Imagine the Anon employee who needs a quick dose of direction or inspiration. All they'll need to do is reach into their wallet or purse and -- oh gee, I must have thrown it out.
* Anon Company is not a real company. The name has been entirely made up for the purpose of this article. Anon = Anonymous, get it? But it's a big country, and for all I know, there may be a real Anon Company, the CEO of which is reading this right now. Well, any name similarity would be purely coincidental, accidental, transcendental, and so forth. If there is a real Anon Company out there, I'm certain it's an excellent organization with world-class mission and vision statements, and I encourage you to buy its products and/or services in great quantities.
The Honesty of Rush Limbaugh
"I hope he fails."
-Rush Limbaugh
At least you have to admit that Limbaugh is honest as he expresses what is surely the sentiment of the Reich Wing. These people value ideology above all else. The good of the country pales into insignificance campared to their now discredited ideology. Limbaugh and his fellow conservatives would rather see thE country die than admit they are wrong.
-Rush Limbaugh
At least you have to admit that Limbaugh is honest as he expresses what is surely the sentiment of the Reich Wing. These people value ideology above all else. The good of the country pales into insignificance campared to their now discredited ideology. Limbaugh and his fellow conservatives would rather see thE country die than admit they are wrong.
A Good Summary of the Inaugural Address by E.J. Dione
TODAY'S TOP STORIES
On Both Sidesby E.J. Dionne, Jr.
The Washington Post Writers GroupCarefully Radical by E.J. Dionne, Jr.Signs that Obama will confuse dogmatists on both sides.Post Date January 22, 2009
WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. He will honor government's role in our democracy and not degrade it. He wants America to lead the world, but as much by example as by force.
And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people. One of the wondrous aspects of Obama's inaugural address is the extent to which those on the left and those on the right both claimed our new president as their own.
Many conservatives were eager to argue that Obama is destined to disappoint his friends on the left because the president who now wields power will be far more careful than the candidate who deployed rhetoric so ecstatically.
Their evidence included Obama's stout defense of old-fashioned values--"honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."
"These things are old," Obama declared. "These things are true." It was one of the most powerfully conservative sentiments ever to pass any president's lips.
But note the nature of that list: "tolerance and curiosity" in particular are values notoriously associated with the adventurous, with those who seek out the new and the novel. "Hard work" and "fair play" have long been invoked by egalitarians on behalf of those who are the salt of the earth.
And Obama told us straight out the ends toward which he was conscripting the old virtues: "They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
The emphasis on progress pervaded what was in many ways a radical speech. Obama clearly broke with the conservative past, more recently associated with George W. Bush and more distantly with Ronald Reagan.
As he has done so often, Obama pronounced debates about the size of government as irrelevant. What matters is "whether it works." Quietly but purposefully, he was overturning the Reagan revolution.
He announced the repeal of the Bush-Cheney approach to domestic security with these words: "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." And while celebrating America's power, he broke with the past again by saying "that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please."
Finally, American presidents rarely ask explicitly whether "the market is a force for good or ill." Obama acknowledged its "power to generate wealth and expand freedom" but warned that without regulation, the market could "spin out of control." He also counseled against rampant inequality, insisting that "the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."
What makes Obama a radical, albeit of the careful and deliberate variety, is his effort to reverse the two kinds of extreme individualism that have permeated the American political soul for perhaps four decades.
He sets his face against the expressive individualism of the 1960s that defined "do your own thing" as the highest form of freedom. On the contrary, Obama speaks of responsibilities, of doing things for others, even of that classic bourgeois obligation, "a parent's willingness to nurture a child."
But he also rejects the economic individualism that took root in the 1980s. He specifically listed "the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some" as a cause for our economic distress. He discounted "the pleasures of riches and fame." He spoke of Americans not as consumers but as citizens. His references to freedom were glowing but he emphasized far more our "duties" to preserve it than the rights it conveys.
This communitarian vision fits poorly with "the stale political arguments" between liberals and conservatives that Obama condemned, because they are really arguments between these two varieties of individualism. Their quarrel has been fierce not only because of how the two sides differ, but also because they share so many assumptions. Family feuds and civil wars can be especially brutal.
For now, each side in the old debate can enlist aspects of Obama's rhetoric in their polemics against the other. But in associating our recent past with "childish things," in insisting that greatness is "never a given" and always "must be earned," Obama is challenging the very basis of their conflict.
It is a worthy fight. It will also be a hard fight to win because rights are so much easier to talk about than duties, and freedom's gifts are always more prized than its obligations.
On Both Sidesby E.J. Dionne, Jr.
The Washington Post Writers GroupCarefully Radical by E.J. Dionne, Jr.Signs that Obama will confuse dogmatists on both sides.Post Date January 22, 2009
WASHINGTON--President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. He will honor government's role in our democracy and not degrade it. He wants America to lead the world, but as much by example as by force.
And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people. One of the wondrous aspects of Obama's inaugural address is the extent to which those on the left and those on the right both claimed our new president as their own.
Many conservatives were eager to argue that Obama is destined to disappoint his friends on the left because the president who now wields power will be far more careful than the candidate who deployed rhetoric so ecstatically.
Their evidence included Obama's stout defense of old-fashioned values--"honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism."
"These things are old," Obama declared. "These things are true." It was one of the most powerfully conservative sentiments ever to pass any president's lips.
But note the nature of that list: "tolerance and curiosity" in particular are values notoriously associated with the adventurous, with those who seek out the new and the novel. "Hard work" and "fair play" have long been invoked by egalitarians on behalf of those who are the salt of the earth.
And Obama told us straight out the ends toward which he was conscripting the old virtues: "They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
The emphasis on progress pervaded what was in many ways a radical speech. Obama clearly broke with the conservative past, more recently associated with George W. Bush and more distantly with Ronald Reagan.
As he has done so often, Obama pronounced debates about the size of government as irrelevant. What matters is "whether it works." Quietly but purposefully, he was overturning the Reagan revolution.
He announced the repeal of the Bush-Cheney approach to domestic security with these words: "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." And while celebrating America's power, he broke with the past again by saying "that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please."
Finally, American presidents rarely ask explicitly whether "the market is a force for good or ill." Obama acknowledged its "power to generate wealth and expand freedom" but warned that without regulation, the market could "spin out of control." He also counseled against rampant inequality, insisting that "the nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous."
What makes Obama a radical, albeit of the careful and deliberate variety, is his effort to reverse the two kinds of extreme individualism that have permeated the American political soul for perhaps four decades.
He sets his face against the expressive individualism of the 1960s that defined "do your own thing" as the highest form of freedom. On the contrary, Obama speaks of responsibilities, of doing things for others, even of that classic bourgeois obligation, "a parent's willingness to nurture a child."
But he also rejects the economic individualism that took root in the 1980s. He specifically listed "the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some" as a cause for our economic distress. He discounted "the pleasures of riches and fame." He spoke of Americans not as consumers but as citizens. His references to freedom were glowing but he emphasized far more our "duties" to preserve it than the rights it conveys.
This communitarian vision fits poorly with "the stale political arguments" between liberals and conservatives that Obama condemned, because they are really arguments between these two varieties of individualism. Their quarrel has been fierce not only because of how the two sides differ, but also because they share so many assumptions. Family feuds and civil wars can be especially brutal.
For now, each side in the old debate can enlist aspects of Obama's rhetoric in their polemics against the other. But in associating our recent past with "childish things," in insisting that greatness is "never a given" and always "must be earned," Obama is challenging the very basis of their conflict.
It is a worthy fight. It will also be a hard fight to win because rights are so much easier to talk about than duties, and freedom's gifts are always more prized than its obligations.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Inauguration Day
I chose to watch the inauguration from the campus of an historical black college. It was thus inspiring to be on the campus of Alabama State in Montgomery to watch this historic event. The modern civil rights movement is deemed to have started with the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The campus of Alabama State was one of the communications headquarters for that historic event.
I watched with students and a few faculty with rapt attention as the events on the podium unfolded. When the acceptance speech concluded the room erupted in applause and celebration. It was wonderful.
It seemed to me that the speech was low-key---deliberately so I would assume given the gravity of the problems this country faces. I did not hear any high-flow rhetoric, no great memorable phrases. That's OK. Perhaps this is not a time for high-flown rhetoric.
It's time to get down to business. This great country is still busy being born. We are a country of inclusion rather than exclusion. Today was an historic day of incredible proportions. The hard part starts now. Let us all wish President Obama well.
I watched with students and a few faculty with rapt attention as the events on the podium unfolded. When the acceptance speech concluded the room erupted in applause and celebration. It was wonderful.
It seemed to me that the speech was low-key---deliberately so I would assume given the gravity of the problems this country faces. I did not hear any high-flow rhetoric, no great memorable phrases. That's OK. Perhaps this is not a time for high-flown rhetoric.
It's time to get down to business. This great country is still busy being born. We are a country of inclusion rather than exclusion. Today was an historic day of incredible proportions. The hard part starts now. Let us all wish President Obama well.
Monday, January 19, 2009
An Email Hoax
A bogus chain email hoax has circulated supposedly written by a law professor at "Hemline University* with purported facts concerning the 2008 election. This professor disavows the email (on his university website) and says he has no idea where this came from. The email is a continuation of one disseminated after the 2000 election and contains totally erroneous facts. This is from factcheck.org. FACTS DO MATTER.
*actually it's Hamline
January 5, 2009
Q:
What's the deal with Prof. Joseph Olson's "unreported stats" from the 2008 election?
Is this true?
INTERESTING FACTS ----- NOTICE LINK AND MAP AT BOTTOM Some unreported stats about the 2008 electionProfessor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:-Number of States won by: Democrats: 20; Republicans: 30-Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000; Republicans: 2,427,000-Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million; Republicans: 143 million-Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2; Republicans: 2.1Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in rented or government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin.The original posting with this information is below this Newsweek article at this link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/163337.
A:
This chain e-mail is a hoax. The "statistics" are grossly incorrect, and Prof. Olson says he didn't write it.
First, Joseph Olson is a professor at Hamline (not Hemline) University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn. None of what appears in this e-mail was written by him. He has been denying authorship of this old hoax since earlier versions first cropped up after the 2000 election. Most recently he posted a disclaimer about the 2008 version on his university profile page:
Olson: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp.More important, the "unreported stats" listed in this e-mail are all wrong:
President-elect Barack Obama actually carried 28 states (and the District of Columbia), not 20 as claimed in the message. Sen. John McCain carried only 22 states, not 30.
The total area of states won by Obama is actually 1,483,702 square miles, significantly more than the 580,000 stated by the e-mail. McCain's states have an area of 2,310,315 square miles, not the 2,427,000 claimed.
The population of counties carried by Obama is just under 183 million, not the 127 million claimed. McCain carried counties with a total population of just under 119 million, far fewer than claimed in this message.
The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than claimed in the message.
Our CalculationsWe calculated county populations and murder rates using official data from the U.S. Census Bureau's "USA County Data Files." We obtained nearly complete county-by-county election results from the Web site of University of Michigan professor Mark Newman, who extracted them from USA Today's election Web site as of Nov. 16. We adjusted these figures only to resolve ties in three counties (more recent figures show two of these counties going for Obama, one for McCain). It is possible that a few counties will change hands when all official results are reported.Population figures are Census estimates for 2007. Murder rates are calculated from the number of murders and non-negligent homicides by county for 2005, the most recent figures Census provides, and population estimates for 2005.
Origins of a HoaxThis hoax goes back eight years, when an earlier version began to circulate following the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election. Snopes.com, a site devoted to debunking urban myths, took that one apart at the time, noting that Prof. Olson denied authorship and that some factual claims didn't check out. A new version went around for a time after the 2004 election, and whoever wrote the 2008 version of the e-mail didn't even bother to make up new "stats," but simply substituted the words "Democrats" and "Republicans" where the names "Gore" and "Bush" had appeared. The origin of the population and square-mile figures used in the 2008 version, in fact, is this USA Today map of the 2000 election results. It shows 143 million people in counties won by George W. Bush and 127 million in counties won by Al Gore, for example. Of course elections are won by electoral votes not counties won. And the fact is that in 2008 the counties carried by Obama were far more populous than those carried by McCain.The crime figures, however, were no more accurate in the original than in the 2008 version. They were debunked by Snopes which put the actual county-by-county murder rate at 6.5 for counties supporting Gore, in 2000, and 4.1 for counties supporting Bush. Each of those figures is a far cry from the 13.2 and 2.1 figures used in the original 2000 e-mail, and they're simply repeated in the most recent version and attributed to Obama and McCain counties.One original note in the 2008 version of the e-mail is the line added at the end: "Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin." But even that is a bit misleading. McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, did win all counties in Oklahoma and did carry the state of Alaska, but Alaska doesn't tally votes by county.
Where Did It Come From?
References to the original e-mail were spotted as far back as November 2000. Terry Krepel, writing for ConWebWatch, a Web site "dedicated to analysis and critique of conservative 'new media'," mentioned two articles that appeared on the news site NewsMax.com in 2000 citing information from the e-mail.
Dave Hamrick, in his article for Georgia's Fayette Citizen, offers an explanation of how Prof. Olson's name came to be tied to the bogus murder rate figures. He asked Olson about them and discovered that the e-mail wasn't Olson's work:
Hamrick, Jan. 17, 2001: But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him.In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew.
Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true.We can't be certain with whom, or precisely when, the message originated, but Hamrick's observation, that Olson forwarded a version of the e-mail he had received, may explain how Olson's name became attached to it.-D'Angelo Gore and Brooks Jackson
*actually it's Hamline
January 5, 2009
Q:
What's the deal with Prof. Joseph Olson's "unreported stats" from the 2008 election?
Is this true?
INTERESTING FACTS ----- NOTICE LINK AND MAP AT BOTTOM Some unreported stats about the 2008 electionProfessor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2008 Presidential election:-Number of States won by: Democrats: 20; Republicans: 30-Square miles of land won by: Democrats: 580,000; Republicans: 2,427,000-Population of counties won by: Democrats: 127 million; Republicans: 143 million-Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Democrats: 13.2; Republicans: 2.1Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won was mostly the land owned by the taxpaying citizens. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in rented or government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare..."Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.
Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin.The original posting with this information is below this Newsweek article at this link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/163337.
A:
This chain e-mail is a hoax. The "statistics" are grossly incorrect, and Prof. Olson says he didn't write it.
First, Joseph Olson is a professor at Hamline (not Hemline) University School of Law in St. Paul, Minn. None of what appears in this e-mail was written by him. He has been denying authorship of this old hoax since earlier versions first cropped up after the 2000 election. Most recently he posted a disclaimer about the 2008 version on his university profile page:
Olson: There is an e-mail floating around the internet dealing with the 2008 Obama/McCain election and the 2000 Bush/Gore election, remarks of a Scottish philosopher named Alexander Tyler, etc. Part of it is attributed to me. It is entirely BOGUS as to my authorship. I've been trying to kill it since December 2000. For details see: http://www.snopes.com/politics/ballot/athenian.asp.More important, the "unreported stats" listed in this e-mail are all wrong:
President-elect Barack Obama actually carried 28 states (and the District of Columbia), not 20 as claimed in the message. Sen. John McCain carried only 22 states, not 30.
The total area of states won by Obama is actually 1,483,702 square miles, significantly more than the 580,000 stated by the e-mail. McCain's states have an area of 2,310,315 square miles, not the 2,427,000 claimed.
The population of counties carried by Obama is just under 183 million, not the 127 million claimed. McCain carried counties with a total population of just under 119 million, far fewer than claimed in this message.
The murder rate for counties carried by Obama was 6.56 per 100,000 inhabitants, less than half the rate claimed in the message. The rate for counties carried by McCain was 3.60 per 100,000, much higher than claimed in the message.
Our CalculationsWe calculated county populations and murder rates using official data from the U.S. Census Bureau's "USA County Data Files." We obtained nearly complete county-by-county election results from the Web site of University of Michigan professor Mark Newman, who extracted them from USA Today's election Web site as of Nov. 16. We adjusted these figures only to resolve ties in three counties (more recent figures show two of these counties going for Obama, one for McCain). It is possible that a few counties will change hands when all official results are reported.Population figures are Census estimates for 2007. Murder rates are calculated from the number of murders and non-negligent homicides by county for 2005, the most recent figures Census provides, and population estimates for 2005.
Origins of a HoaxThis hoax goes back eight years, when an earlier version began to circulate following the bitterly disputed 2000 presidential election. Snopes.com, a site devoted to debunking urban myths, took that one apart at the time, noting that Prof. Olson denied authorship and that some factual claims didn't check out. A new version went around for a time after the 2004 election, and whoever wrote the 2008 version of the e-mail didn't even bother to make up new "stats," but simply substituted the words "Democrats" and "Republicans" where the names "Gore" and "Bush" had appeared. The origin of the population and square-mile figures used in the 2008 version, in fact, is this USA Today map of the 2000 election results. It shows 143 million people in counties won by George W. Bush and 127 million in counties won by Al Gore, for example. Of course elections are won by electoral votes not counties won. And the fact is that in 2008 the counties carried by Obama were far more populous than those carried by McCain.The crime figures, however, were no more accurate in the original than in the 2008 version. They were debunked by Snopes which put the actual county-by-county murder rate at 6.5 for counties supporting Gore, in 2000, and 4.1 for counties supporting Bush. Each of those figures is a far cry from the 13.2 and 2.1 figures used in the original 2000 e-mail, and they're simply repeated in the most recent version and attributed to Obama and McCain counties.One original note in the 2008 version of the e-mail is the line added at the end: "Notice that only in the states of Alaska and Oklahoma: All counties were won by McCain/Palin." But even that is a bit misleading. McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, did win all counties in Oklahoma and did carry the state of Alaska, but Alaska doesn't tally votes by county.
Where Did It Come From?
References to the original e-mail were spotted as far back as November 2000. Terry Krepel, writing for ConWebWatch, a Web site "dedicated to analysis and critique of conservative 'new media'," mentioned two articles that appeared on the news site NewsMax.com in 2000 citing information from the e-mail.
Dave Hamrick, in his article for Georgia's Fayette Citizen, offers an explanation of how Prof. Olson's name came to be tied to the bogus murder rate figures. He asked Olson about them and discovered that the e-mail wasn't Olson's work:
Hamrick, Jan. 17, 2001: But in response to my e-mail, Olson said the "research" was attributed to him erroneously. He said it came from a Sheriff Jay Printz in Montana. I e-mailed Sheriff Printz, and guess what? He didn't do the research either, and didn't remember who had e-mailed it to him.In other words, he got the same legend e-mailed to him and passed it on to Olson without checking it out, and when Olson passed it on, someone thought it sounded better if a law professor had done the research, and so it grew.
Who knows where it originally came from, but it's just not true.We can't be certain with whom, or precisely when, the message originated, but Hamrick's observation, that Olson forwarded a version of the e-mail he had received, may explain how Olson's name became attached to it.-D'Angelo Gore and Brooks Jackson
Michael Burlingame on Lincoln & Obama
Michael Burlingame, one of our leading Lincoln scholars, is the author of the new and much anticipated 2-volume biography of our 16th president. Here is what he has to say about Lincoln and Obama.
Going In, A Lot Like Lincoln
From Early Family Woes To Abundant Political Gifts, Some Striking Similarities
By MICHAEL BURLINGAME
January 18, 2009
Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama share much in common. Obama is the first black president of the United States; Lincoln was, according to Frederick Douglass, "emphatically the black man's president," the first chief executive "to show any respect for their rights as men." Obama and Lincoln are the only Illinois politicians elected president. Each served only a brief time in Congress before winning the presidency. Like Lincoln, Obama is an ambitious, disciplined, prudent and gifted political strategist. The eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson claimed that Lincoln was the only president who could have made his living as a writer. If Wilson had lived to see Obama elected president and had read Obama's "Dreams From My Father," he might have amended his pronouncement. Both men lost parents in early life. Lincoln's mother died when he was 9. Obama's father deserted the family when the boy was 2. Both men were estranged from their fathers. Both were uprooted as youngsters. The Lincoln family moved from Kentucky to Indiana when Abe was 7; Obama's family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia when Barack was 6. Like Lincoln, Obama enters the White House with two young children. Lincoln's sons, Willie and Tad, were 7 and 10. Obama's daughters are 7 and 10.
Both Lincoln and Obama assumed office in the midst of a great national crisis. Lincoln had to deal with secession; in the period between his election and inauguration, seven states in the Deep South pulled out of the Union. As he carefully prepared his inaugural address, he sought to be conciliatory enough to prevent the eight other slave states from seceding; while at the same time he sought to remain true to the Republican Party platform, which condemned slavery and pledged to keep it from spreading into the western territories. His inaugural managed to do both.
He then hoped that time would work its healing wonders, and that the seceded states would realize that they were too small to function as a successful independent nation and would return voluntarily to the Union. The day after his inauguration, however, that plan collapsed as Lincoln discovered that the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor would soon run out of food. Either he must resupply the fort or abandon it — if he chose the latter course, he would implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. President Obama faces a similar challenge in dealing with today's economic crisis. He must remain true to his campaign pledges to provide a strong stimulus to the faltering economy, while at the same time enlisting the support of enough Republican senators to make passage of such a package possible. To be successful in solving that dilemma and the others that will arise, President Obama may well profit from Lincoln's example, for he has said that he enjoys reading about the 16th president. Perhaps the most important element of Lincoln's success was his remarkable psychological maturity and strength. Most politicians, like most people, allow power to go to their heads, but Lincoln did not. He kept his ego under control and refused to take criticism and disagreement personally. A vivid illustration of this quality is the paternal advice that Lincoln gave to a young Union officer who was squabbling with his superiors. A great fan of Shakespeare, Lincoln began by quoting from one of his favorite plays, "Hamlet": "The advice of a father to his son, 'Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee,' is good, and yet not the best." Lincoln altered this counsel which Polonius offered to Laertes: "Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite." That is advice from which President Obama and the rest of us can profit. • Michael Burlingame is the Sadowski Professor of History emeritus at Connecticut College and has written 12 books about Abraham Lincoln including "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" published in two volumes in 2008.
Going In, A Lot Like Lincoln
From Early Family Woes To Abundant Political Gifts, Some Striking Similarities
By MICHAEL BURLINGAME
January 18, 2009
Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama share much in common. Obama is the first black president of the United States; Lincoln was, according to Frederick Douglass, "emphatically the black man's president," the first chief executive "to show any respect for their rights as men." Obama and Lincoln are the only Illinois politicians elected president. Each served only a brief time in Congress before winning the presidency. Like Lincoln, Obama is an ambitious, disciplined, prudent and gifted political strategist. The eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson claimed that Lincoln was the only president who could have made his living as a writer. If Wilson had lived to see Obama elected president and had read Obama's "Dreams From My Father," he might have amended his pronouncement. Both men lost parents in early life. Lincoln's mother died when he was 9. Obama's father deserted the family when the boy was 2. Both men were estranged from their fathers. Both were uprooted as youngsters. The Lincoln family moved from Kentucky to Indiana when Abe was 7; Obama's family moved from Hawaii to Indonesia when Barack was 6. Like Lincoln, Obama enters the White House with two young children. Lincoln's sons, Willie and Tad, were 7 and 10. Obama's daughters are 7 and 10.
Both Lincoln and Obama assumed office in the midst of a great national crisis. Lincoln had to deal with secession; in the period between his election and inauguration, seven states in the Deep South pulled out of the Union. As he carefully prepared his inaugural address, he sought to be conciliatory enough to prevent the eight other slave states from seceding; while at the same time he sought to remain true to the Republican Party platform, which condemned slavery and pledged to keep it from spreading into the western territories. His inaugural managed to do both.
He then hoped that time would work its healing wonders, and that the seceded states would realize that they were too small to function as a successful independent nation and would return voluntarily to the Union. The day after his inauguration, however, that plan collapsed as Lincoln discovered that the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor would soon run out of food. Either he must resupply the fort or abandon it — if he chose the latter course, he would implicitly recognize the legitimacy of the Confederacy. President Obama faces a similar challenge in dealing with today's economic crisis. He must remain true to his campaign pledges to provide a strong stimulus to the faltering economy, while at the same time enlisting the support of enough Republican senators to make passage of such a package possible. To be successful in solving that dilemma and the others that will arise, President Obama may well profit from Lincoln's example, for he has said that he enjoys reading about the 16th president. Perhaps the most important element of Lincoln's success was his remarkable psychological maturity and strength. Most politicians, like most people, allow power to go to their heads, but Lincoln did not. He kept his ego under control and refused to take criticism and disagreement personally. A vivid illustration of this quality is the paternal advice that Lincoln gave to a young Union officer who was squabbling with his superiors. A great fan of Shakespeare, Lincoln began by quoting from one of his favorite plays, "Hamlet": "The advice of a father to his son, 'Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, bear it that the opposed may beware of thee,' is good, and yet not the best." Lincoln altered this counsel which Polonius offered to Laertes: "Quarrel not at all. No man resolved to make the most of himself can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control. Yield larger things to which you can show no more than equal right; and yield lesser ones, though clearly your own. Better give your path to a dog, than be bitten by him in contesting for the right. Even killing the dog would not cure the bite." That is advice from which President Obama and the rest of us can profit. • Michael Burlingame is the Sadowski Professor of History emeritus at Connecticut College and has written 12 books about Abraham Lincoln including "Abraham Lincoln: A Life" published in two volumes in 2008.
George Will on the Marginalization of the Republican Party
In his wry farewell to Bush 43, arch-Republican/Conservative George Will has this to say about the increasingly marginal Republican Party. The Republican Party is more and more isolated in the Confederate South.
"Actually, however, the contraction and self-marginalization of the Republican Party began before Bush entered office. In 2000, he became the first Republican to win the presidency while losing the North. In 2004, when he won re-election by winning Ohio, that was the only large state he carried outside the South. That year Bush became the first president since his father in 1988 to win more than 50 percent of the vote. This was a costly achievement, attained by embracing a sterile template of politics: Get your base riled up—it does not much matter about what—and hope that your base is a bit larger and angrier than the other party's, and that swing voters are a small slice of the turnout."
"Actually, however, the contraction and self-marginalization of the Republican Party began before Bush entered office. In 2000, he became the first Republican to win the presidency while losing the North. In 2004, when he won re-election by winning Ohio, that was the only large state he carried outside the South. That year Bush became the first president since his father in 1988 to win more than 50 percent of the vote. This was a costly achievement, attained by embracing a sterile template of politics: Get your base riled up—it does not much matter about what—and hope that your base is a bit larger and angrier than the other party's, and that swing voters are a small slice of the turnout."
Sunday, January 18, 2009
I Agree with Alan Wolfe
Obama, Don't Bother Reaching Across The Aisle
Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His latest book, The Future of Liberalism (Knopf), will be published in early February.
Barack Obama has not even waited until he assumed the formal powers of the presidency before putting into practice a key campaign promise: improving civility in Washington. George W. Bush generally preferred the company of conservatives; supping with anyone who voted for the “Democrat” Party was not for him. In a move meant to symbolize how inclusive he intends to be, Obama has already reached out to Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and other conservative writers not especially known for crossing ideological divides.
I rarely agree with Pat Buchanan, but watching him on Chris Matthews the other day, I think he got it right. The dinner invitees are all “neo” conservatives, Buchanan pointed out; they sniff out power and always position themselves close to it. The fact that Obama reached out to them does not mean much; if anything, Buchanan speculated, David Brooks, one of those at the dinner, in all likelihood voted for him.
In his own way, Buchanan reminded viewers that many conservatives and Republicans, unlike the neo-cons, are, as he called them on the Matthews show, “revolutionaries.” If you want to know what Buchanan meant by the term, you have to ask him; I interpreted him to mean that these are the kind of people that want to overturn pretty much everything in this country that has happened since the New Deal.
Unfortunate for Obama, Buchanan’s term accurately describes one prominent group of conservatives: pretty much the entire Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. As they demonstrated during the bailout vote last year, and as they will no doubt prove many times over in the next four to eight years, these are hard-right activists not especially interested in bipartisanship, policy, or responsibility. Being in the minority has liberated them. Forced to toe the line under Bush, they will move the line under Obama. Expect from them as much mischief as they are capable of imagining.
Will Obama’s call for inclusiveness include them? Should it? If Obama does reach out to them, I can understand his motives. We have been engaged in a culture war at least since Patrick Buchanan--there he is again--caught the ear of Richard Nixon and helped him appeal to white working class voters. Thirty years of endless talk about how Democrats are elitist and Republicans in touch with ordinary people are enough. Were Obama to bring it all to an end--to help kill off Palinism in the Republican Party by bringing Republican politicians into Washington’s great game of politics--that would be accomplishment enough. This play has been running longer than The Phantom of the Opera and it is time for it to close.
Yet why would the Republican revolutionaries, even now, be receptive to overtures from Obama? They are permanent campaigners. Hating government, they have no interest in governance. Insurgents don’t compromise. Free to shout, why should they leash themselves to anyone, let alone a Democrat? Obama has about as much chance of winning their cooperation as he does of carrying Wyoming in 2012. He can have Bill Kristol to dinner every month and not make a dent in their determination.
It may make more sense not to confront the Republicans in the House, for that would keep the culture war alive, but to ignore them. Let them vote against policies for dealing with the financial crisis that have widespread support. If they want to bring the Terri Schiavo business back to life, clear the space for them to do so. Let them be the wreckers of every effort to restore America’s moral standing in the world--so long, of course, as they fail.
In the best of all worlds, the culture war will end because both sides will sign a peace treaty. Given the extremists representing the Republican Party in the House, that is never going to happen. Let the culture war, then, end in a different way: One side should stop arming itself and let the other flail around until there is nothing left to fight.
--Alan Wolfe
Alan Wolfe is a TNR contributing editor and director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. His latest book, The Future of Liberalism (Knopf), will be published in early February.
Barack Obama has not even waited until he assumed the formal powers of the presidency before putting into practice a key campaign promise: improving civility in Washington. George W. Bush generally preferred the company of conservatives; supping with anyone who voted for the “Democrat” Party was not for him. In a move meant to symbolize how inclusive he intends to be, Obama has already reached out to Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, and other conservative writers not especially known for crossing ideological divides.
I rarely agree with Pat Buchanan, but watching him on Chris Matthews the other day, I think he got it right. The dinner invitees are all “neo” conservatives, Buchanan pointed out; they sniff out power and always position themselves close to it. The fact that Obama reached out to them does not mean much; if anything, Buchanan speculated, David Brooks, one of those at the dinner, in all likelihood voted for him.
In his own way, Buchanan reminded viewers that many conservatives and Republicans, unlike the neo-cons, are, as he called them on the Matthews show, “revolutionaries.” If you want to know what Buchanan meant by the term, you have to ask him; I interpreted him to mean that these are the kind of people that want to overturn pretty much everything in this country that has happened since the New Deal.
Unfortunate for Obama, Buchanan’s term accurately describes one prominent group of conservatives: pretty much the entire Republican caucus in the House of Representatives. As they demonstrated during the bailout vote last year, and as they will no doubt prove many times over in the next four to eight years, these are hard-right activists not especially interested in bipartisanship, policy, or responsibility. Being in the minority has liberated them. Forced to toe the line under Bush, they will move the line under Obama. Expect from them as much mischief as they are capable of imagining.
Will Obama’s call for inclusiveness include them? Should it? If Obama does reach out to them, I can understand his motives. We have been engaged in a culture war at least since Patrick Buchanan--there he is again--caught the ear of Richard Nixon and helped him appeal to white working class voters. Thirty years of endless talk about how Democrats are elitist and Republicans in touch with ordinary people are enough. Were Obama to bring it all to an end--to help kill off Palinism in the Republican Party by bringing Republican politicians into Washington’s great game of politics--that would be accomplishment enough. This play has been running longer than The Phantom of the Opera and it is time for it to close.
Yet why would the Republican revolutionaries, even now, be receptive to overtures from Obama? They are permanent campaigners. Hating government, they have no interest in governance. Insurgents don’t compromise. Free to shout, why should they leash themselves to anyone, let alone a Democrat? Obama has about as much chance of winning their cooperation as he does of carrying Wyoming in 2012. He can have Bill Kristol to dinner every month and not make a dent in their determination.
It may make more sense not to confront the Republicans in the House, for that would keep the culture war alive, but to ignore them. Let them vote against policies for dealing with the financial crisis that have widespread support. If they want to bring the Terri Schiavo business back to life, clear the space for them to do so. Let them be the wreckers of every effort to restore America’s moral standing in the world--so long, of course, as they fail.
In the best of all worlds, the culture war will end because both sides will sign a peace treaty. Given the extremists representing the Republican Party in the House, that is never going to happen. Let the culture war, then, end in a different way: One side should stop arming itself and let the other flail around until there is nothing left to fight.
--Alan Wolfe
Frank Rich on the Inauguration of Barack Obama
Washington is its own special American case, but only up to a point. For all our huge progress, we are not “post-racial,” whatever that means. The world doesn’t change in a day, and the racial frictions that emerged in both the Democratic primary campaign and the general election didn’t end on Nov. 4. As Obama himself said in his great speech on race, liberals couldn’t “purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap” simply by voting for him. And conservatives? The so-called party of Lincoln has spent much of the past month in spirited debate about whether a white candidate for the party’s chairmanship did the right thing by sending out a “humorous” recording of “Barack the Magic Negro” as a holiday gift.
Next to much of our history, this is small stuff. And yet: Of all the coverage of Obama’s victory, the most accurate take may still be the piquant morning-after summation of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Under the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” it reported that our new president will have “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.”
Those messes are enormous, bigger than Washington, bigger than race, bigger than anything most of us have ever seen. Nearly three months after Election Day, it remains astonishing that the American people have entrusted the job to a young black man who seemed to come out of nowhere looking for that kind of work just as we most needed him.
“In no other country on earth is my story even possible,” Obama is fond of saying. That is true, and that is what the country celebrates this week. But it is all the tragic American stories that came before him, some of them still playing out in chilly streets just blocks from the White House, that throw both his remarkable triumph and the huge challenge ahead of him into such heart-stopping relief.
Next to much of our history, this is small stuff. And yet: Of all the coverage of Obama’s victory, the most accurate take may still be the piquant morning-after summation of the satirical newspaper The Onion. Under the headline “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job,” it reported that our new president will have “to spend four to eight years cleaning up the messes other people left behind.”
Those messes are enormous, bigger than Washington, bigger than race, bigger than anything most of us have ever seen. Nearly three months after Election Day, it remains astonishing that the American people have entrusted the job to a young black man who seemed to come out of nowhere looking for that kind of work just as we most needed him.
“In no other country on earth is my story even possible,” Obama is fond of saying. That is true, and that is what the country celebrates this week. But it is all the tragic American stories that came before him, some of them still playing out in chilly streets just blocks from the White House, that throw both his remarkable triumph and the huge challenge ahead of him into such heart-stopping relief.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Are We Readers? And Are We The Right Kind Of Readers?
BY Linda Holmes
14 January 2009, Monkey See (National Public Radio)
During a recent vacation, I happily devoured Nixonland, an 800-plus-page behemoth that I stuck to with such constancy that I'm fairly sure that toting it around and clutching it awkwardly with my short-lady fingers actually injured my wrist. Not kidding.
As L.A. Times book editor David L. Ulin points out today, this would not help me contribute to American "reading" under the definition used by the National Endowment for the Arts in its series of studies on reading in America. The last couple of reports had stated that reading was on the decline, but the one released this week, called "Reading On The Rise," shows that the trend is reversing itself. American "literacy," they say, is improving.
What's the catch? After the jump...
Of course, that only applies to "literary reading." It includes novels, short stories, plays, and poetry. It does not include history, politics, science, economics, memoirs...in short, it does not include much of what I personally enjoy reading for pleasure. And as Ulin points out, the report goes on at some length about not only the trends in literary reading, but also how good literary reading is for you -- as he puts it, "framing reading in terms of moral value." The study proudly points out, "literary readers attend arts and sports events, play sports, do outdoor activities, exercise, and volunteer at higher rates than non-readers."
Here's the irony, to me: Under this definition, I am more of a contributor to American "literacy" because I have a weakness for kicky romance novels than because I like books about politics and sociology. Yes, the NEA study does discuss rates of "book-reading" generally (meaning that all books are included), but those numbers are only touched upon; it is how much Americans read fiction that drives the report and the NEA's conclusions about how we're doing.
As Ulin points out, the definition of and dwelling upon literary reading "is unconscious of its own elitism, the idea that literary reading is different from (read: betterthan) any other kind."
Indeed, I have to question why the numbers on all book-reading aren't of more significance than the numbers on literary reading. Certainly, counting all "book-reading" means you sweep in self-help books and other things that the NEA perhaps doesn't have in mind when it sings the praises of reading, but it also includes all the worthwhile and satisfying nonfiction that's otherwise excluded. "Literary reading," after all, sweeps in plenty of material that's also emphatically not the NEA's focus: romances, mysteries, thrillers -- in fact, a good chunk of what all those "literary readers" are actually reading.
It's not hard to come up with guesses about possible motives for the perplexing definition the NEA is applying: it uses the results to sing the praises of its own literacy initiatives aimed at young readers. If you look at the numbers for "book-reading" generally, the story is actually different: a smaller percentage of adults read books in 2008 than in 2002. How can reading be "on the rise" when fewer of us read books? Because not all books are created equal.
I get a point for advancing American literacy because I read Shopaholic Takes Manhattan. (That's right; I read them all.) I get no point for Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready: Adventures In The Parallel Universe Of Christian Pop Culture, probably the most intriguing, thoughtful book I read last year. Nothing for Gang Leader For A Day, nothing for Mark Harris' Pictures At A Revolution -- oh, and nothing for Nixon.
It's useful to know where we stand on fiction reading, but it's also important not to drive people away from the entire world of books and book clubs and feeling the turn of a page by tut-tutting at them for not reading novels.
Now, if you'll excuse me: my non-literary reading calls upon me to ice my wrist.
14 January 2009, Monkey See (National Public Radio)
During a recent vacation, I happily devoured Nixonland, an 800-plus-page behemoth that I stuck to with such constancy that I'm fairly sure that toting it around and clutching it awkwardly with my short-lady fingers actually injured my wrist. Not kidding.
As L.A. Times book editor David L. Ulin points out today, this would not help me contribute to American "reading" under the definition used by the National Endowment for the Arts in its series of studies on reading in America. The last couple of reports had stated that reading was on the decline, but the one released this week, called "Reading On The Rise," shows that the trend is reversing itself. American "literacy," they say, is improving.
What's the catch? After the jump...
Of course, that only applies to "literary reading." It includes novels, short stories, plays, and poetry. It does not include history, politics, science, economics, memoirs...in short, it does not include much of what I personally enjoy reading for pleasure. And as Ulin points out, the report goes on at some length about not only the trends in literary reading, but also how good literary reading is for you -- as he puts it, "framing reading in terms of moral value." The study proudly points out, "literary readers attend arts and sports events, play sports, do outdoor activities, exercise, and volunteer at higher rates than non-readers."
Here's the irony, to me: Under this definition, I am more of a contributor to American "literacy" because I have a weakness for kicky romance novels than because I like books about politics and sociology. Yes, the NEA study does discuss rates of "book-reading" generally (meaning that all books are included), but those numbers are only touched upon; it is how much Americans read fiction that drives the report and the NEA's conclusions about how we're doing.
As Ulin points out, the definition of and dwelling upon literary reading "is unconscious of its own elitism, the idea that literary reading is different from (read: betterthan) any other kind."
Indeed, I have to question why the numbers on all book-reading aren't of more significance than the numbers on literary reading. Certainly, counting all "book-reading" means you sweep in self-help books and other things that the NEA perhaps doesn't have in mind when it sings the praises of reading, but it also includes all the worthwhile and satisfying nonfiction that's otherwise excluded. "Literary reading," after all, sweeps in plenty of material that's also emphatically not the NEA's focus: romances, mysteries, thrillers -- in fact, a good chunk of what all those "literary readers" are actually reading.
It's not hard to come up with guesses about possible motives for the perplexing definition the NEA is applying: it uses the results to sing the praises of its own literacy initiatives aimed at young readers. If you look at the numbers for "book-reading" generally, the story is actually different: a smaller percentage of adults read books in 2008 than in 2002. How can reading be "on the rise" when fewer of us read books? Because not all books are created equal.
I get a point for advancing American literacy because I read Shopaholic Takes Manhattan. (That's right; I read them all.) I get no point for Daniel Radosh's Rapture Ready: Adventures In The Parallel Universe Of Christian Pop Culture, probably the most intriguing, thoughtful book I read last year. Nothing for Gang Leader For A Day, nothing for Mark Harris' Pictures At A Revolution -- oh, and nothing for Nixon.
It's useful to know where we stand on fiction reading, but it's also important not to drive people away from the entire world of books and book clubs and feeling the turn of a page by tut-tutting at them for not reading novels.
Now, if you'll excuse me: my non-literary reading calls upon me to ice my wrist.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Question
How long will the public give the Obama administration to improve the current economic meltdown before they turn on him (assuming he is not successful)?
Saturday, January 10, 2009
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Superb book about two black men, Jefferson and Grant, equally trapped by the racial prejudice that prevailed in the 1940s South. Jefferson stands to be unfairly executed for robbery and murder, while Grant is university educated and a teacher on the local plantation. Despite the gap in their intellect and potential, both realize they are entrapped by the vicious cycle of social poverty and racial oppression. Together, they learn about dignity, freedom, and the power of caring for others, thus becoming heroic figures.
I am glad Fred inspired me to read this book by his earlier review.
I am glad Fred inspired me to read this book by his earlier review.
James M. McPherson - Abraham Lincoln
This slim volume by the preeminent Civil War historian of our time is a perfect refresher on the life of Lincoln. McPherson states plainly that without Lincoln and his leadership during the war there would not a United States today. It would have been easy for Lincoln to have let the South go, but Lincoln was unwavering in his determination for a Union military victory, and history has bore out his wisdom.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Dr. Irvin D. Yalom - Lying on the Couch
I discovered the fiction of Dr. Yalom while checking out Richard Yates. The two are contiguous on the bookstore shelf!
If you like clinical psychology like I do---I was once planning on becoming a clinical psychologist---you'll like this psychological tale,which takes you into the mind of psychiatrists in SF Bay Area. (Where else would you wish to read about shrinks except California or New York?
The main story line involves Marshall, a psychoanalyst, who gets hoodwinked twice by the same crook. A professional who is supposed to be a trained observer of people gets fooled royally. In the end, the crook gets away, but Marshall learns a few things about life from the school of hard knocks.
I love the jargon of psychology because I understand it. I love the Freud and the Jung and all the rest.
Like I said, this is an enjoyable piece if you like clinical psychology.
If you like clinical psychology like I do---I was once planning on becoming a clinical psychologist---you'll like this psychological tale,which takes you into the mind of psychiatrists in SF Bay Area. (Where else would you wish to read about shrinks except California or New York?
The main story line involves Marshall, a psychoanalyst, who gets hoodwinked twice by the same crook. A professional who is supposed to be a trained observer of people gets fooled royally. In the end, the crook gets away, but Marshall learns a few things about life from the school of hard knocks.
I love the jargon of psychology because I understand it. I love the Freud and the Jung and all the rest.
Like I said, this is an enjoyable piece if you like clinical psychology.
Monday, January 5, 2009
New Lincoln Book
This new book might be of interest to Lincoln enthusiasts. Not ending with his assassination or even wholly about the president himself, this book instead traces Lincoln's descendants in the century following his death. It is a different perspective than many other Lincoln biographies.
The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family, by Charles Lachman
The Last Lincolns: The Rise & Fall of a Great American Family, by Charles Lachman
Sunday, January 4, 2009
The Palin Catch-Phrase Collection
Fred mentioned Palinisms and Bushisms in some recent posts. As we embark on 2009, let us be glad that we may begin forgetting these vacuous expressions. In addition to those he listed, I am glad we no longer must suffer hearing the following:
"Palling around with terrorists"
"Team of Mavericks"
"Just a hockey mom"
"I put it on eBay"
"Thanks, but no thanks"
"You betcha"
The presidential election proved what I have long thought about GOPers: they are just a marketing ploy, a band of catchphrases.
"Palling around with terrorists"
"Team of Mavericks"
"Just a hockey mom"
"I put it on eBay"
"Thanks, but no thanks"
"You betcha"
The presidential election proved what I have long thought about GOPers: they are just a marketing ploy, a band of catchphrases.
2009 Reading
2009 will be the year of Lincoln. I anticipate reading many Lincoln books. Michael Burlingame's 2-volume biography is forthcoming and this will be the big Lincoln publishing event of the year. Close behind are Fred Kaplan's literary biography and the forthcoming biography from Ronald White. I am most interested in Lincoln's economic views and his Whig background.
I plan to read more Richard Yates books after enjoying Revolutionary Road.
I am currently finishing a novel by psychiatrist Irvin Yalom and plan to read all of his fiction.
I'd like to do some more reading on the Progressive Era in US history.
I anticipate reading up on health care reform, which will hopefully happen this year.
I plan to read more Richard Yates books after enjoying Revolutionary Road.
I am currently finishing a novel by psychiatrist Irvin Yalom and plan to read all of his fiction.
I'd like to do some more reading on the Progressive Era in US history.
I anticipate reading up on health care reform, which will hopefully happen this year.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Bigger Than Bush
BY Paul Krugman
1 January 2009
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.
Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?
But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.
But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.
Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.
Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
1 January 2009
As the new Democratic majority prepares to take power, Republicans have become, as Phil Gramm might put it, a party of whiners.
Some of the whining almost defies belief. Did Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general, really say, “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror”? Did Rush Limbaugh really suggest that the financial crisis was the result of a conspiracy, masterminded by that evil genius Chuck Schumer?
But most of the whining takes the form of claims that the Bush administration’s failure was simply a matter of bad luck — either the bad luck of President Bush himself, who just happened to have disasters happen on his watch, or the bad luck of the G.O.P., which just happened to send the wrong man to the White House.
The fault, however, lies not in Republicans’ stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party’s champion, to the Bush administration’s pervasive incompetence, to the party’s shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision.
If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well, it was just following the advice of leading conservative think tanks: after the 2000 election the Heritage Foundation specifically urged the new team to “make appointments based on loyalty first and expertise second.”
Where did this hostility to government come from? In 1981 Lee Atwater, the famed Republican political consultant, explained the evolution of the G.O.P.’s “Southern strategy,” which originally focused on opposition to the Voting Rights Act but eventually took a more coded form: “You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is blacks get hurt worse than whites.” In other words, government is the problem because it takes your money and gives it to Those People.
Oh, and the racial element isn’t all that abstract, even now: Chip Saltsman, currently a candidate for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, sent committee members a CD including a song titled “Barack the Magic Negro” — and according to some reports, the controversy over his action has actually helped his chances.Contempt for expertise, in turn, rested on contempt for government in general. “Government is not the solution to our problem,” declared Ronald Reagan. “Government is the problem.” So why worry about governing well?
So the reign of George W. Bush, the first true Southern Republican president since Reconstruction, was the culmination of a long process. And despite the claims of some on the right that Mr. Bush betrayed conservatism, the truth is that he faithfully carried out both his party’s divisive tactics — long before Sarah Palin, Mr. Bush declared that he visited his ranch to “stay in touch with real Americans” — and its governing philosophy.
That’s why the soon-to-be-gone administration’s failure is bigger than Mr. Bush himself: it represents the end of the line for a political strategy that dominated the scene for more than a generation.
The reality of this strategy’s collapse has not, I believe, fully sunk in with some observers. Thus, some commentators warning President-elect Barack Obama against bold action have held up Bill Clinton’s political failures in his first two years as a cautionary tale.
But America in 1993 was a very different country — not just a country that had yet to see what happens when conservatives control all three branches of government, but also a country in which Democratic control of Congress depended on the votes of Southern conservatives. Today, Republicans have taken away almost all those Southern votes — and lost the rest of the country. It was a grand ride for a while, but in the end the Southern strategy led the G.O.P. into a cul-de-sac.
Mr. Obama therefore has room to be bold. If Republicans try a 1993-style strategy of attacking him for promoting big government, they’ll learn two things: not only has the financial crisis discredited their economic theories, the racial subtext of anti-government rhetoric doesn’t play the way it used to.
Will the Republicans eventually stage a comeback? Yes, of course. But barring some huge missteps by Mr. Obama, that will not happen until they stop whining and look at what really went wrong. And when they do, they will discover that they need to get in touch with the real “real America,” a country that is more diverse, more tolerant, and more demanding of effective government than is dreamt of in their political philosophy.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Bushisms
The only bad thing about Bush going back to Crawford to hopefully never be heard from again is that we will have to give up Bushisms. But we still have Palinisms. My belief is that people who cannot express themselves clearly have nothing in their minds to express clearly.
The Complete BushismsUpdated frequently.By Jacob WeisbergUpdated Monday, Dec. 29, 2008, at 4:02 PM ET
"So I analyzed that and decided I didn't want to be the president during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression."—Washington D.C., Dec. 18, 2008
"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."—Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2008
"Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted."—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2008
"And they have no disregard for human life."—Describing the brutality of Afghan fighters, Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., June 26, 2008
The Complete BushismsUpdated frequently.By Jacob WeisbergUpdated Monday, Dec. 29, 2008, at 4:02 PM ET
"So I analyzed that and decided I didn't want to be the president during a depression greater than the Great Depression, or the beginning of a depression greater than the Great Depression."—Washington D.C., Dec. 18, 2008
"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."—Washington, D.C., Dec. 16, 2008
"Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted."—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2008
"And they have no disregard for human life."—Describing the brutality of Afghan fighters, Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008
"I remember meeting a mother of a child who was abducted by the North Koreans right here in the Oval Office."—Washington, D.C., June 26, 2008
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Reason Enough to Laugh at Sarah Palin
As if we didn't already have so many reasons to laugh at Governor Trailer Trash:
Thursday, Jan. 01, 2009
"You need to know that both Levi and Bristol are working their butts off to parent and going to school and working at the same time."
Governor SARAH PALIN,
leaving a phone message at PEOPLE magazine countering what she considers inaccurate descriptions about her daughter and future son-in-law
Thursday, Jan. 01, 2009
"You need to know that both Levi and Bristol are working their butts off to parent and going to school and working at the same time."
Governor SARAH PALIN,
leaving a phone message at PEOPLE magazine countering what she considers inaccurate descriptions about her daughter and future son-in-law
Things and People I'd Like to Forget about 2008
Before embarking on 2009, permit me to indulge myself by mentioning those things and people of 2008 that I'd like to forget.
Jen vs. Angelina. (Yawn. Who cares?)
The leader of this nation continuing to say "nucular. (If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't control it)
Auto execs flying to DC to testify in private jets. (Are these people as dumb as they act?)
Blago's hair. (And everything else about this slimebag)
Elisabeth Hasselbeck. (Enough said)
The Bradley Effect. (Can we forget about it now?)
Tom Cruise. (Can't stand him in any way, shape, or form)
Sarah Palin winking at us. (And hockey mom, drill baby drill, and all other Palinisms)
Jeremiah Wright, Rod Parsley, and John Hagee. (Has there ever been another year when the clergy was so disgraced?)
I'M SURE OTHERS WILL OCCUR TO ME. THIS IS ENOUGH FOR NOW.
Jen vs. Angelina. (Yawn. Who cares?)
The leader of this nation continuing to say "nucular. (If you can't pronounce it, you shouldn't control it)
Auto execs flying to DC to testify in private jets. (Are these people as dumb as they act?)
Blago's hair. (And everything else about this slimebag)
Elisabeth Hasselbeck. (Enough said)
The Bradley Effect. (Can we forget about it now?)
Tom Cruise. (Can't stand him in any way, shape, or form)
Sarah Palin winking at us. (And hockey mom, drill baby drill, and all other Palinisms)
Jeremiah Wright, Rod Parsley, and John Hagee. (Has there ever been another year when the clergy was so disgraced?)
I'M SURE OTHERS WILL OCCUR TO ME. THIS IS ENOUGH FOR NOW.
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