The Palin Farce beats anything by far that I have ever seen in my political lifetime. She is red meat to the white Confederates found mostly in the South. That is ALL she is.
30 Sep 2009 09:59 am
The Right Goes Rogue by Andrew Sullivan
It's necessary to recall that the nomination of Sarah Palin to be vice-president of the United States was a farce. As the Republican State Senate President of Alaska, Lyda Green, noted on August 30, 2008:
"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"
Unlike the reckless McCain campaign, Green knew Palin and was from her hometown. The campaign subsequently proved her right. We discovered that Palin knew nothing even about energy policy and was incapable of keeping her stories straight on any number of matters, large and small. She was a cynical tool of cynical people, marketed entirely as an identity politics candidate to appeal to white conservative red staters. In a party where the number of serious figures actually trying to address policy questions can be counted on one hand, she relied on absurd slogans such as "Drill, baby, drill!" and ugly insinuations about "real America." Her emergence revealed that America is in a period of decadence and unseriousness, even as its decline as an economic and world power accelerated and its moral authority crumbled.
But the cynicism endured. We are asked to believe that she wrote a 400-page autobiography in two months. Although no one ever believed Harper Collins' Jonathan Burnham was actually interested in the content of books, this new contract and its absurd delivery date closes the case.
Then we have John Fund this morning hailing the book as a sure-fire best-seller, and praising the rogue strategy against McCain. He is no doubt correct about the sales. But Fund is allegedly a serious figure on the right. His and his newspaper's capitulation to the Palin farce is another sign that just as Burnham believes publishing is simply marketing, so Fund believes politics is about what sells.
He reveals the contours of the next Republican presidential campaign, in which Palin will lead a cohort of Beck and Limbaugh dittoheads on a platform of a holy war in the Middle East, the restitution of torture as a core American value, and tax cuts in the face of massive and mounting debt. Here's what we will face in the future:
Ms. Palin was booked on grueling interviews with hostile reporters while talk-show hosts such as Glenn Beck couldn't even get through to her aides. Mr. Beck tells me he was stunned when he picked up the phone one day just before the election to discover Sarah Palin was on the other end of the line. "She explained that she had been blocked from reaching her audience, so she was now 'going rogue' and booking her own interviews," Mr. Beck told me. "I was thrilled she had burst out of the cage they'd built for her and we were finally talking."
Translation: we couldn't get enough infomercials on Fox, but next time we will. The days of open press conferences will be over as Palin narrow-casts only to the base. At the same time, you see the right urging a coup, while all but beating a drum for the assassination of the president, an event that would tip this country into a near civil war. In this climate, establishment conservatism for the most part is fanning the flames and pouring on the gasoline.
I always thought it would get worse before it gets better. But I never thought it would get this poisonous this soon.
(Full disclosure: Burnham published my last book, The Conservative Soul. I know whereof I speak.)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Who Would Want to Listen to a Blithering Idiot?
Palin Lectures Not Selling, No One Wants To Book Her: NY Post
Sarah Palin is not selling well on the lecture circuit, an industry insider told the New York Post.
"The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot," the source said. "They don't want to tick people off."
Palin's fee for a recent speech in Hong Kong was rumored to be in the low six figures.
Palin finished her memoir, "Going Rogue," in just four months -- ahead of schedule and in time for the holiday season.
Get HuffPost Politics Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/palin-lectures-not-sellin_n_304020.html
Sarah Palin is not selling well on the lecture circuit, an industry insider told the New York Post.
"The big lecture buyers in the US are paralyzed with fear about booking her, basically because they think she is a blithering idiot," the source said. "They don't want to tick people off."
Palin's fee for a recent speech in Hong Kong was rumored to be in the low six figures.
Palin finished her memoir, "Going Rogue," in just four months -- ahead of schedule and in time for the holiday season.
Get HuffPost Politics Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/palin-lectures-not-sellin_n_304020.html
From Paul Krugman
September 30, 2009, 7:22 am — Updated: 7:22 am -->
Moral decay? Or deregulation?
Andrew Leonard is unhappy with my colleague David Brooks for suggesting that rising debt in America reflects moral decay. Surprisingly, however, Leonard doesn’t make what I thought was the most compelling critique.
David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 — that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. Although he doesn’t point this out, this was also when the federal government first began running substantial deficits even in good years.
David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn’t something else happen around 1980? Can’t quite remember .. someone whose name begins with the letter “R”?
Yes, Reagan did it.
The turn to budget deficits was a direct result of the new, Irving-Kristol inspired political strategy of pushing tax cuts without worrying about the “accounting deficiencies of government.”
Meanwhile, the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation.
So what happened? Did we lose our economic morality? No, we were the victims of politics.
Moral decay? Or deregulation?
Andrew Leonard is unhappy with my colleague David Brooks for suggesting that rising debt in America reflects moral decay. Surprisingly, however, Leonard doesn’t make what I thought was the most compelling critique.
David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 — that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. Although he doesn’t point this out, this was also when the federal government first began running substantial deficits even in good years.
David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn’t something else happen around 1980? Can’t quite remember .. someone whose name begins with the letter “R”?
Yes, Reagan did it.
The turn to budget deficits was a direct result of the new, Irving-Kristol inspired political strategy of pushing tax cuts without worrying about the “accounting deficiencies of government.”
Meanwhile, the surge in household debt can largely be attributed to financial deregulation.
So what happened? Did we lose our economic morality? No, we were the victims of politics.
The Decline & Fall of David Brooks
By Andrew Leonard
Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 09:19 PDT
The decline and fall of David Brooks
America needs "a moral revival," declares David Brooks in Tuesday's New York Times. We are drowning in a sea of debt, and this is because we have lost our moorings; we have abandoned our tradition of Calvinist restraint, self-denial and frugal responsibility. If we don't start living right, we run the risk of cultural failure, that time-honored historical pattern in which "affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline."
My my my. I've seen some high horses in my day, but David Brooks is perched on a saddle so far aloft in the clouds of self-delusion that he can't even see the earth, much less reality. Let's examine his thesis more closely.
Americans ran up a lot of debt in the last few decades. There's no question about that. But one of the most striking developments of the last year has been how Americans have responded to the financial crisis at an individual level. We made a collective decision to start saving and stop spending. Is this because we woke up one morning last fall and suddenly became born-again Calvinists? No, it seems clear that we were responding rationally to economic incentives. The economy crashed, unemployment surged, home prices plummeted, and presto: We all started pinching pennies. Morality, insofar as expressed via our spending habits, is merely a reflection of the economy.
To his credit, Brooks acknowledges this point. But then he immediately dismisses it:
Over the past few months, those debt levels have begun to come down. But that doesn't mean we've re-established standards of personal restraint. We've simply shifted from private debt to public debt.
This, Brooks suggests, proves that "there clearly has been an erosion in the country's financial values." Elsewhere he suggests that our cultural decline began sometime around 1980.
Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression. Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.
But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street.
Bruce Bartlett has calculated that even without Obama stimulus-related spending increases, the current deficit for fiscal year 2009 would be about $1.3 trillion instead of $1.6 trillion. If you are a believer in Keynesian economics, you can make a pretty good case that Obama's additional spending is designed to get the economy growing again, so as to avoid even worse deficits in the future. Do nothing, and a shrinking economy means lower tax revenues and higher social spending. Morality has very little to do it -- the appropriate, responsible fiscal choice at this point is for government to spend, while the people save.
Obama would be in much better position to do what's appropriate, of course, if he hadn't been saddled with a trillion-dollar deficit when he walked in the door. But the responsibility for that does not belong with some widespread betrayal of America's founding puritan values. It belongs explicitly to the party in control over the last eight years.
― Andrew Leonard
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Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2009 09:19 PDT
The decline and fall of David Brooks
America needs "a moral revival," declares David Brooks in Tuesday's New York Times. We are drowning in a sea of debt, and this is because we have lost our moorings; we have abandoned our tradition of Calvinist restraint, self-denial and frugal responsibility. If we don't start living right, we run the risk of cultural failure, that time-honored historical pattern in which "affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline."
My my my. I've seen some high horses in my day, but David Brooks is perched on a saddle so far aloft in the clouds of self-delusion that he can't even see the earth, much less reality. Let's examine his thesis more closely.
Americans ran up a lot of debt in the last few decades. There's no question about that. But one of the most striking developments of the last year has been how Americans have responded to the financial crisis at an individual level. We made a collective decision to start saving and stop spending. Is this because we woke up one morning last fall and suddenly became born-again Calvinists? No, it seems clear that we were responding rationally to economic incentives. The economy crashed, unemployment surged, home prices plummeted, and presto: We all started pinching pennies. Morality, insofar as expressed via our spending habits, is merely a reflection of the economy.
To his credit, Brooks acknowledges this point. But then he immediately dismisses it:
Over the past few months, those debt levels have begun to come down. But that doesn't mean we've re-established standards of personal restraint. We've simply shifted from private debt to public debt.
This, Brooks suggests, proves that "there clearly has been an erosion in the country's financial values." Elsewhere he suggests that our cultural decline began sometime around 1980.
Brooks displays a bizarre historical amnesia throughout his column. For example, he never even mentions the transition from the Roaring Twenties to the Great Depression. Maybe it's because the shift from decadence to thrift at that point was also obviously a response to economic incentives. Even worse, a moral revival didn't restore economic growth after the Crash -- government action and ultimately the fiscal stimulus provided by World War II did the trick.
But a far more pertinent point of reference comes much earlier. Has Brooks somehow forgotten that just nine years ago the U.S. operated under a balanced budget and enjoyed a budget surplus? The explosion of public debt since that point has very little to do with the moral failings of Americans, and everything to do with objective fact. George W. Bush cut taxes, but did not match those cuts with spending cuts. Instead, he ramped up spending dramatically, on two wars, healthcare, and finally, a huge bailout of Wall Street.
Bruce Bartlett has calculated that even without Obama stimulus-related spending increases, the current deficit for fiscal year 2009 would be about $1.3 trillion instead of $1.6 trillion. If you are a believer in Keynesian economics, you can make a pretty good case that Obama's additional spending is designed to get the economy growing again, so as to avoid even worse deficits in the future. Do nothing, and a shrinking economy means lower tax revenues and higher social spending. Morality has very little to do it -- the appropriate, responsible fiscal choice at this point is for government to spend, while the people save.
Obama would be in much better position to do what's appropriate, of course, if he hadn't been saddled with a trillion-dollar deficit when he walked in the door. But the responsibility for that does not belong with some widespread betrayal of America's founding puritan values. It belongs explicitly to the party in control over the last eight years.
― Andrew Leonard
46 comments
Post a comment
Facebook = White / MySpace = Black (?)
White Flight Online?
Dayo Olopade wonders:
MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.” And even within the networks, black kids befriend other black kids, Latinos mix with Latinos, and the self-segregation often practiced in real life is rampant online. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, compares this dash from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight” from inner cities.
Dayo Olopade wonders:
MySpace is no longer cool. As a matter of fact, its number of users is now one-half the size of rival Facebook. Is this because MySpace is too black for the rest of America? Teenage Internet users may hold the answer. High-schoolers report their use of the social-networking giants along racial lines—MySpace is seen as “black,” while Facebook is “white.” And even within the networks, black kids befriend other black kids, Latinos mix with Latinos, and the self-segregation often practiced in real life is rampant online. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, compares this dash from MySpace to Facebook to “white flight” from inner cities.
The Palin Party
The Palin Party
Politico surveys the GOP base and finds Palin-mania still strong. I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.
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var et6a00d83451c45669e20120a5ff5028970c = "The Palin Party - The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan
Politico surveys the GOP base and finds Palin-mania still strong. I think she perfectly represents a form of protest cultural politics that has no interest in actually governing. And what's fascinating about the various quotes from local GOP machers is that none of them refers in any way to policy. She is not supported because of what she allegedly believes, or what she says she'll do. She is supported because she shares an identity, real or imagined, with white, angry alienated conservatives. She is identity politics personified. And so the loony right's transformation into a mirror image of the loony left of the 1980s accelerates.
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var et6a00d83451c45669e20120a5ff5028970c = "The Palin Party - The Daily Dish By Andrew Sullivan
The Republican Health Care Plan
BIG NEWS:
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) took to the House floor last night to give his take on the Republican health care plan: Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.
After saying he was inspired to read the Republican health care plan by the paper-waving GOP lawmakers at Obama's recent address, Grayson summed up his findings with a few simple pieces of posterboard. "The Republican health care plan: don't get sick," he said. But, he added,"The Republicans have a back up plan in case you do get sick ... This is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly!"
House Republicans called on Grayson to apologize; he did not. They quickly jumped on the remark, declaring deep offense.
"That is about the most mean-spirited partisan statement that I've ever heard made on this floor, and I, for one, don't appreciate it," said Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-Tenn.).
"It's fully appropriate that the gentleman return to the floor and apologize," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, another Tennessee Republican.Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/alan-grayson-republicans_n_303996.html
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) took to the House floor last night to give his take on the Republican health care plan: Don't get sick, and if you do get sick, die quickly.
After saying he was inspired to read the Republican health care plan by the paper-waving GOP lawmakers at Obama's recent address, Grayson summed up his findings with a few simple pieces of posterboard. "The Republican health care plan: don't get sick," he said. But, he added,"The Republicans have a back up plan in case you do get sick ... This is what the Republicans want you to do. If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly!"
House Republicans called on Grayson to apologize; he did not. They quickly jumped on the remark, declaring deep offense.
"That is about the most mean-spirited partisan statement that I've ever heard made on this floor, and I, for one, don't appreciate it," said Rep. Jimmy Duncan (R-Tenn.).
"It's fully appropriate that the gentleman return to the floor and apologize," said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, another Tennessee Republican.Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/30/alan-grayson-republicans_n_303996.html
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Republicans Love Medicare (Hypocrites)
From Andrew Sullivan's Blog
29 Sep 2009 09:24 am
Republicans ♥ Medicare
Tom Schaller questions the wisdom of the GOP's entitlement fear-mongering:
Are there not risks to this strategy? Specifically, does it not further cement the GOP's image as an aged, out-of-touch coalition? Also, how is the GOP defense of cuts to Medicare not creating at least some dissonance with the very protesters who turned out for town halls and the recent march on Washington complaining about a too-big government getting bigger? (I suppose I'm presuming that people complaining about big government are, in fact, able to identify such contradictions; surely, some are not.)
This was also something the Tories did as they reeled from the first term of Blair. They actually opposed any real cuts or reform in the welfare state in a desperate bid for some, any, votes. They were obsessed with tactics and forgot even a smidgen of strategy. It took them twelve years to have a shot at governing - and largely because of Labour's failure. The GOP is now defined entirely by opposition to Obama - regardless of the merits of his policies. If you want evidence that the tea-party message is pure phony, look no further. Even Mark "Freedom Or Tyranny" Levin won't risk offending seniors. (Leave it to Pareene.)
29 Sep 2009 09:24 am
Republicans ♥ Medicare
Tom Schaller questions the wisdom of the GOP's entitlement fear-mongering:
Are there not risks to this strategy? Specifically, does it not further cement the GOP's image as an aged, out-of-touch coalition? Also, how is the GOP defense of cuts to Medicare not creating at least some dissonance with the very protesters who turned out for town halls and the recent march on Washington complaining about a too-big government getting bigger? (I suppose I'm presuming that people complaining about big government are, in fact, able to identify such contradictions; surely, some are not.)
This was also something the Tories did as they reeled from the first term of Blair. They actually opposed any real cuts or reform in the welfare state in a desperate bid for some, any, votes. They were obsessed with tactics and forgot even a smidgen of strategy. It took them twelve years to have a shot at governing - and largely because of Labour's failure. The GOP is now defined entirely by opposition to Obama - regardless of the merits of his policies. If you want evidence that the tea-party message is pure phony, look no further. Even Mark "Freedom Or Tyranny" Levin won't risk offending seniors. (Leave it to Pareene.)
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Words of Robert Anson Heinlein:
"Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash you hands afterwards."
Sunday, September 27, 2009
About Curiosity (2)
The problem with being a curious person is that your mind jumps from one thing to another. It's hard to stay focused on one subject long enough to pursue the subject in detail. Before you know it, you're off on another subject or author. It's like having intellectual ADD.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
This book is disappointingly boring. It is considered among the best in American fiction, but I could not wait to finish it.
The plot begins with Rosemary Hoyt, an actress, who admires the glamour, poise, and charm of Dick and Nicole Diver. When the story turns the Divers, however, we find that their marriage is not as solid as it seems. Dick is a psychiatrist who was once Nicole's doctor. When they marry, they love each other, but Dick cannot stop treating Nicole as a patient. When Dick and a partner open a sanitorium, Nicole's family wealth finances it. Dick subsequently never adjusts to losing his independence to his wife. He later has an affair with Rosemary and begins drinking heavily. As Nicole is cured and becomes stronger, Dick only deteriorates.
In some ways, the plot is similar to the life of F. Scott - Nicole's and Zelda's psychological troubles, Dick's and F. Scott's alcoholism, and Dick's and F. Scott's declines from promising careers.
I especially liked this exchange, where Dick, to me nonchalantly, recognizes his decline:
Nicole: "Dick, this isn't faintly like you."
Dick: "Excuse me again. I'm not much like myself any more."
The plot begins with Rosemary Hoyt, an actress, who admires the glamour, poise, and charm of Dick and Nicole Diver. When the story turns the Divers, however, we find that their marriage is not as solid as it seems. Dick is a psychiatrist who was once Nicole's doctor. When they marry, they love each other, but Dick cannot stop treating Nicole as a patient. When Dick and a partner open a sanitorium, Nicole's family wealth finances it. Dick subsequently never adjusts to losing his independence to his wife. He later has an affair with Rosemary and begins drinking heavily. As Nicole is cured and becomes stronger, Dick only deteriorates.
In some ways, the plot is similar to the life of F. Scott - Nicole's and Zelda's psychological troubles, Dick's and F. Scott's alcoholism, and Dick's and F. Scott's declines from promising careers.
I especially liked this exchange, where Dick, to me nonchalantly, recognizes his decline:
Nicole: "Dick, this isn't faintly like you."
Dick: "Excuse me again. I'm not much like myself any more."
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
One Book I Will NOT Read
Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol sells over 2 million copies its first week of publication. This is one book I will make it a point NOT to read. This kind of conspiracy fiction doesn't appeal to me.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Senate GOP Mailer Suggests Dem Health Care System Will Discriminate By Race
BY Sam Stein
21 September 2009
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/senate-gop-mailer-suggest_n_293332.html (to see the article, along with the mailer and survey)
Senate Republicans are mailing out a "survey" insinuating that the president's health care reform agenda includes the creation of a lottery system to determine who gets medical treatment and a quota system that based on race and age.
Written under the vague and non-partisan title of "U.S. Senate Health Care Task Force," the mailing, which includes a fundraising letter, was commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and passed to the Huffington Post by a Democratic source. It asks recipients to respond to several misleading questions, including:
Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:
23. Denial of treatment in cases where the patient's prospects are deemed not good?
24. A "lottery" system of determining who will get priority treatment?
25. A "quota" system which would determine who would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?
The mailer also suggests that the legislative proposals being considered by Congress would give the federal government the power to:
• Pick who is "eligible" for certain medical procedures? • Pick your doctor for you? • Restrict certain medical procedures on the basis of age? • Put strict price controls on medicine and drugs? • Penalize you for choosing to see a private doctor • Seriously undermine private health care insurers who currently serve tens of millions of Americans?
All of these descriptions are either intentionally misleading or deeply contested interpretations of the health care provisions put forth by Democrats. And while the name and NRSC title -- "Chairman" -- of Senator John Cornyn, (R-Texas) is listed in the header, there is no mention of the fact that he's a Republican. Only in the sixth paragraph is it revealed that "Republican leadership of the United States Senate" commissioned the survey.
In addition to asking recipients to fill out the survey, Cornyn also encourages donations "of at least $25, $50, or even $100 to help finance this project and elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate."
Mailers such as these are standard fare in legislative and political battles, certainly those as hotly contested as the current health care debate. But recently they seem to be the preferred practice of Republican campaign committees. Several weeks ago, the Republican National Committee was roundly criticized for sending out a mailer which erroneously suggested that President Obama's health care proposal would discriminate against Republicans.
"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system," read the mailer. "Does this possibility concern you?"
21 September 2009
Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/21/senate-gop-mailer-suggest_n_293332.html (to see the article, along with the mailer and survey)
Senate Republicans are mailing out a "survey" insinuating that the president's health care reform agenda includes the creation of a lottery system to determine who gets medical treatment and a quota system that based on race and age.
Written under the vague and non-partisan title of "U.S. Senate Health Care Task Force," the mailing, which includes a fundraising letter, was commissioned by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and passed to the Huffington Post by a Democratic source. It asks recipients to respond to several misleading questions, including:
Are you concerned that health care rationing could lead to:
23. Denial of treatment in cases where the patient's prospects are deemed not good?
24. A "lottery" system of determining who will get priority treatment?
25. A "quota" system which would determine who would determine who would get treatment on the basis of race or age?
The mailer also suggests that the legislative proposals being considered by Congress would give the federal government the power to:
• Pick who is "eligible" for certain medical procedures? • Pick your doctor for you? • Restrict certain medical procedures on the basis of age? • Put strict price controls on medicine and drugs? • Penalize you for choosing to see a private doctor • Seriously undermine private health care insurers who currently serve tens of millions of Americans?
All of these descriptions are either intentionally misleading or deeply contested interpretations of the health care provisions put forth by Democrats. And while the name and NRSC title -- "Chairman" -- of Senator John Cornyn, (R-Texas) is listed in the header, there is no mention of the fact that he's a Republican. Only in the sixth paragraph is it revealed that "Republican leadership of the United States Senate" commissioned the survey.
In addition to asking recipients to fill out the survey, Cornyn also encourages donations "of at least $25, $50, or even $100 to help finance this project and elect Republicans to the U.S. Senate."
Mailers such as these are standard fare in legislative and political battles, certainly those as hotly contested as the current health care debate. But recently they seem to be the preferred practice of Republican campaign committees. Several weeks ago, the Republican National Committee was roundly criticized for sending out a mailer which erroneously suggested that President Obama's health care proposal would discriminate against Republicans.
"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system," read the mailer. "Does this possibility concern you?"
No Harm from the Internet!
Current Books
Is the Internet melting our brains? No! The author of "A Better Pencil" explains why such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself
Is the Internet melting our brains? No! The author of "A Better Pencil" explains why such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself
Sunday, September 20, 2009
About Curiosity
Curiosity As Sin
by Stanley Fish
Search All NYTimes.com
Sunday, September 20, 2009
September 14, 2009, 9:30 pm — Updated: 8:24 am -->
Does Curiosity Kill More Than the Cat?
Last Thursday, the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities James A. Leach gave an address at the University of Virginia with the catchy title, “Is There an Inalienable Right to Curiosity?”
Taking his cue from Thomas Jefferson’s “trinity of inalienable rights: ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” Leach reasoned that even though Jefferson never wrote about curiosity, “a right to be curious would have been a natural reflection of his own personality.” He was, after all, the “living embodiment of an inquisitive mind” and was reputed to have known “all the science that was known at the time.” Surely he would have prized curiosity, especially since it is the quality “oppressive states fear.” Given that “the cornerstone of democracy is access to knowledge,” it is not too much to say, Leach concluded, that “the curious pursuing their curiosity may be mankind’s greatest if not only hope.”
This sounds right, even patriotic, but there is another tradition in which, far from being the guarantor of a better future, curiosity is a vice and even a sin. Indeed, it has often been considered the original sin.
When God told Adam he could eat of all the fruits of the Garden of Eden, but not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed what has been called a “provoking object” in Adam’s eyes. The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies. Those who engage in this fantasy, says Thomas Aquinas, think “they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.”
Another churchman, Lorenzo Scupoli, put it this way in 1589: “They make an idol of their own understanding” (“Knowledge puffeth up,” I Corinthians 8:1). Pascal said it succinctly: “Curiosity is only vanity.” Jonathan Robinson, writing in this century, makes the same point: “What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy” (“Spiritual Combat Revisited”).
Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge’s boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H. to digitalize just about everything. “The computer revolution,” he announces, “holds out the prospect that the digital library could be become an international citadel for the pursuit of curiosity.”
That’s exactly what Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity at Duke University, is afraid of. Where Leach welcomes the enlargement of curiosity’s empire, Griffiths, who is writing a book on the vice of curiosity, sees it as a sign of moral and spiritual danger: “Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life” (“Reason and the Reasons of Faith”). The prescriptions come in the form of familiar injunctions: follow the inquiry as far as it goes, leave no stone unturned, there is always more to know, the more information the better. “In a world where curiosity rules,” Griffiths declares, “unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device . . . amounts to nothing less than a . . . radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.”
Griffiths builds on the religious tradition in which curiosity is condemned because it distracts men from the study and worship of God, shackling them, says Augustine, “to an inferior love.”
But curiosity can also distract men from secular obligations by so occupying their minds that there is no room left for other considerations. These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge, pay no heed to the social consequences of their investigations, and take no heed of the warnings issued in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
They are obsessive and obsessed and exhibit, says John Henry Newman, something akin to a mental disorder. “In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control” (“The Idea of a University”). They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance — to a deity, to human flourishing, to community — that might serve as a check on their insatiable curiosity. (Curiosity is inherently insatiable; its satisfactions are only momentary; there is always another horizon.)
In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes.
COMMENTS
And it’s certainly news too me that too many people are curious and curiouser. Quite the opposite, I’d guess.— Edward G. Nilges
Curious article.
Odd to hear that curiosity “distracts” one from worshiping. It’s actually a pretty frightening argument — justification for punishing people because they aren’t satisfied with a dogma. It turns the whole argument about curiosity on its head, and shows just how prideful and arrogant a person can be in their “humble ignorance.” Like — there’s really nothing more to know?
I don’t know. The portrayal of curiosity as some sort of stepping-stone to pride and arrogance is certainly not true. Knowledge (starting with Socrates’s famous statement about it, that we “know nothing”) often breeds humility. Nor do I think it accurate to describe curiosity as “insatiable.” Curiosity can certainly be muted, a person not really minding that his curiosity is never satisfied. Pride and insatiability do not go hand-in-hand with curiosity. Lots of curious people are neither, and lots of non-curious people are both.
I find the arguments presented kind of repulsive, but thank for the article. I didn’t know this strain of thought had existed.— Pear
Object to the premise: Far from “killing” cats, curiosity instructs them. As a life-long cat caretaker, I have gobs of experience demonstrating just that.— Daphne Chyprious
What an odd article to print - that being curious is sinful - at a time when Americans really need to be more curious about what their government really is doing. Is this meant to quell questions about what is going on politically?— Kurt
While Mr. Fish presents some cogent arguments about why being in a state of constant curiosity would be personally unsatisfying, he does not explain how curiosity hurts society. Nor does he offer an alternative state in which a person should be. Should people just ignore their natural urge to discover and instead read things that have already been written? The implications of this column are deeply disturbing and slightly patronizing.Mr. Fish’s column implies one of two things. First, that all the things we need to know have been discovered, therefore more curiosity would be extravagance. Or, that only certain men (Mr. Fish being among them?) are capable of riding that crazy monster known as Curiosity.Mr. Fish is known to be a scholar. At some point, he was a mere mortal, a mere undergraduate. I wonder what his twenty-year-old self would have thought after reading this column. Would the young Fish gone on to become a foremost expert of Milton? Or would he have duly suppressed his curiosity about a long-dead English poet and gone on to mechanics, a wood cutting or some other, more tangibly useful field?— Katy
Can I asume that your last paragraph does not indicate that you worship at the altar of the God of unfetted cuiosity(to the detrment of all else)? This would seem then to be in contrast to the defence of the religious God in previous articles. THat is not to say that I(or you) would wish to sacrifice curiosity and inquiry to worship a religious deity. As a theology student I know they must go hand in hand.— zac
Another way to ask this question, perhaps more productively, is to consider the role of values or morality in determining the direction and nature of intellectual inquiry.
The problem is not curiosity itself, but whether curious energy is directed into narrow channels whose shape is determined by ideological or political forces (e.g. devising more complex financial securities products), or whether it is directed at knowledge that relates to or advances scientific knowledge, creative thought, and human welfare.
The freedom to question our own questioning - that is a curiosity worth supporting.— Kevin
Prof. Fish, I did like it better when you were trying to create a pedagogy for college writing on the basis of speculation, conviction, and anecdotal evidence. This is so serious. Also, so limited, at least given the example of the interwebs.
The internet, to quote my girlfriend’s able work, is rhizomatic, collective, myriad, connected, a series of infinite systems that are at once small and large. They isolate and distract, replace other forms of contact; they enhance and enable, making contact possible. They are the pharmakon: hey will heal us or poison us, depending on whether we are inside or out. The essential element is orientation: how will we consider the phenomenon of ‘modernity’, and what will we make of it? Curiousity is necessity, and the sort of shiftless drive for the next extreme, or the desire to replace God, is something else entirely. Surely you know that, when you’re not making an abstract argument abstractly?— MC
My wife, who is a cancer researcher, had a very hard time learning to do dissections. Watching family members die of cancer was much harder.
The reason we do science is because we have a very firm belief in human society, kindness and life.
Humanists may imagine scientists are self-worshiping and fame seeking. This caricature does not fit the horde of (mostly immigrant) hard working, anonymous scientists toiling in the basements beneath your offices.
If humanists would like to be relevant again, they should perhaps pick something to rally around other than antiquarian complaints about civilization.— Brett
The reasoning “against” curiosity assumes (a) a “god” and (b) a transcendent god who want us to remember we that we are “inferior.”I wonder (a form of curiosity) why we have to make these assumptions. They certainly reinforce a particular hierarchical/political attitude.I agree that there are issues related to technology, internet, etc. I suppose Galileo faced similar “technology” issues regarding his curiosity.On a personal level, it is my own curiosity that keeps me alive. It is one of my most valued traits. Without it I would feel like a robot.— DM
And thankfully so.
Those who wish it otherwise would do well to start by producing a god which can cure tuberculosis and then moving on to something more challenging.— ctm
My curiosity overcomes me. Why should Mr. Fish want to write such a piece?— Rachlel
Of course religious, especially Catholic, thinkers would condemn curiosity; anyone curious enough to look behind their curtain would find a faulty system, one based on received knowledge long discredited by (here it comes) science. Such inquiries are a shell game with no actual basis and no actual use, save to aid in the repression of human knowledge. The final arbiter is not a demonstrable, indisputable fact, but rather a totally irrational faith, which, if followed, leads to a dark corner. If I must have a religious basis to my epistemology, I prefer the one which values the inquiry “why ruin a perfectly good question with an answer?”— mburgh
It was not curiosity that killed the cat.
It was carelessness.— John C
Prof. Fish, I did like it better when you were trying to create a pedagogy for college writing on the basis of speculation, conviction, and anecdotal evidence. This is so serious. Also, so limited, at least given the example of the interwebs.
The internet, to quote my girlfriend’s able work, is rhizomatic, collective, myriad, connected, a series of infinite systems that are at once small and large. They isolate and distract, replace other forms of contact; they enhance and enable, making contact possible. They are the pharmakon: hey will heal us or poison us, depending on whether we are inside or out. The essential element is orientation: how will we consider the phenomenon of ‘modernity’, and what will we make of it? Curiousity is necessity, and the sort of shiftless drive for the next extreme, or the desire to replace God, is something else entirely. Surely you know that, when you’re not making an abstract argument abstractly?— MC
On a personal level, it is my own curiosity that keeps me alive. It is one of my most valued traits. Without it I would feel like a robot.
by Stanley Fish
Search All NYTimes.com
Sunday, September 20, 2009
September 14, 2009, 9:30 pm — Updated: 8:24 am -->
Does Curiosity Kill More Than the Cat?
Last Thursday, the new Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities James A. Leach gave an address at the University of Virginia with the catchy title, “Is There an Inalienable Right to Curiosity?”
Taking his cue from Thomas Jefferson’s “trinity of inalienable rights: ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,’” Leach reasoned that even though Jefferson never wrote about curiosity, “a right to be curious would have been a natural reflection of his own personality.” He was, after all, the “living embodiment of an inquisitive mind” and was reputed to have known “all the science that was known at the time.” Surely he would have prized curiosity, especially since it is the quality “oppressive states fear.” Given that “the cornerstone of democracy is access to knowledge,” it is not too much to say, Leach concluded, that “the curious pursuing their curiosity may be mankind’s greatest if not only hope.”
This sounds right, even patriotic, but there is another tradition in which, far from being the guarantor of a better future, curiosity is a vice and even a sin. Indeed, it has often been considered the original sin.
When God told Adam he could eat of all the fruits of the Garden of Eden, but not of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, he placed what has been called a “provoking object” in Adam’s eyes. The provocation was to go beyond the boundaries God had established and thereby set himself up a rival deity, a being with no limits on what he can conceive, a being whose intellect could, in time, comprehend anything and everything. Such a being would imagine himself, God-like, standing to the side of the universe and, armed only with the power of his mind, mastering its intricacies. Those who engage in this fantasy, says Thomas Aquinas, think “they are doing something great, if with surpassing curiosity and keenness they explore the whole mass of this body which we call the world; so great a pride is thus begotten, that one would think they dwelt in the very heavens about which they argue.”
Another churchman, Lorenzo Scupoli, put it this way in 1589: “They make an idol of their own understanding” (“Knowledge puffeth up,” I Corinthians 8:1). Pascal said it succinctly: “Curiosity is only vanity.” Jonathan Robinson, writing in this century, makes the same point: “What we are talking about is the desire to satisfy our curiosity on any and every conceivable subject that takes our fancy” (“Spiritual Combat Revisited”).
Give this indictment of men in love with their own capacities a positive twist and it becomes a description of the scientific project, which includes among its many achievements space travel, a split atom, cloning and the information revolution. It is a project that celebrates the expansion of knowledge’s boundaries as an undoubted good, and it is a project that Chairman Leach salutes when he proudly lists the joint efforts by the University of Virginia and the N.E.H. to digitalize just about everything. “The computer revolution,” he announces, “holds out the prospect that the digital library could be become an international citadel for the pursuit of curiosity.”
That’s exactly what Paul Griffiths, professor of divinity at Duke University, is afraid of. Where Leach welcomes the enlargement of curiosity’s empire, Griffiths, who is writing a book on the vice of curiosity, sees it as a sign of moral and spiritual danger: “Late modern societies that are fundamentally shaped by the overwhelming presence of electronic media and the obscene inundation of every aspect of human life by pictures and sounds have turned the vice of curiosity into a prescribed way of life” (“Reason and the Reasons of Faith”). The prescriptions come in the form of familiar injunctions: follow the inquiry as far as it goes, leave no stone unturned, there is always more to know, the more information the better. “In a world where curiosity rules,” Griffiths declares, “unmasking curiosity as a destructive and offensive device . . . amounts to nothing less than a . . . radical critique of superficiality and constant distraction.”
Griffiths builds on the religious tradition in which curiosity is condemned because it distracts men from the study and worship of God, shackling them, says Augustine, “to an inferior love.”
But curiosity can also distract men from secular obligations by so occupying their minds that there is no room left for other considerations. These men (and women) fail to register the pain of animals subjected to experiments in the name of knowledge, pay no heed to the social consequences of their investigations, and take no heed of the warnings issued in Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus,” Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (not to mention the myth of Pandora and the Incredible Hulk).
They are obsessive and obsessed and exhibit, says John Henry Newman, something akin to a mental disorder. “In such persons reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the madman: once fairly started on a subject, they have no power of self-control” (“The Idea of a University”). They have no power of self-control because they have no allegiance — to a deity, to human flourishing, to community — that might serve as a check on their insatiable curiosity. (Curiosity is inherently insatiable; its satisfactions are only momentary; there is always another horizon.)
In short, curiosity — sometimes called research, sometimes called unfettered inquiry, sometimes called progress, sometimes called academic freedom — is their God. The question, posed by thinkers from Aquinas to Augustine to Newman to Griffiths, is whether this is the God — the God, ultimately, of self — we want to worship. Given the evidence, including Chairman Leach’s address, the answer would seem to be yes.
COMMENTS
And it’s certainly news too me that too many people are curious and curiouser. Quite the opposite, I’d guess.— Edward G. Nilges
Curious article.
Odd to hear that curiosity “distracts” one from worshiping. It’s actually a pretty frightening argument — justification for punishing people because they aren’t satisfied with a dogma. It turns the whole argument about curiosity on its head, and shows just how prideful and arrogant a person can be in their “humble ignorance.” Like — there’s really nothing more to know?
I don’t know. The portrayal of curiosity as some sort of stepping-stone to pride and arrogance is certainly not true. Knowledge (starting with Socrates’s famous statement about it, that we “know nothing”) often breeds humility. Nor do I think it accurate to describe curiosity as “insatiable.” Curiosity can certainly be muted, a person not really minding that his curiosity is never satisfied. Pride and insatiability do not go hand-in-hand with curiosity. Lots of curious people are neither, and lots of non-curious people are both.
I find the arguments presented kind of repulsive, but thank for the article. I didn’t know this strain of thought had existed.— Pear
Object to the premise: Far from “killing” cats, curiosity instructs them. As a life-long cat caretaker, I have gobs of experience demonstrating just that.— Daphne Chyprious
What an odd article to print - that being curious is sinful - at a time when Americans really need to be more curious about what their government really is doing. Is this meant to quell questions about what is going on politically?— Kurt
While Mr. Fish presents some cogent arguments about why being in a state of constant curiosity would be personally unsatisfying, he does not explain how curiosity hurts society. Nor does he offer an alternative state in which a person should be. Should people just ignore their natural urge to discover and instead read things that have already been written? The implications of this column are deeply disturbing and slightly patronizing.Mr. Fish’s column implies one of two things. First, that all the things we need to know have been discovered, therefore more curiosity would be extravagance. Or, that only certain men (Mr. Fish being among them?) are capable of riding that crazy monster known as Curiosity.Mr. Fish is known to be a scholar. At some point, he was a mere mortal, a mere undergraduate. I wonder what his twenty-year-old self would have thought after reading this column. Would the young Fish gone on to become a foremost expert of Milton? Or would he have duly suppressed his curiosity about a long-dead English poet and gone on to mechanics, a wood cutting or some other, more tangibly useful field?— Katy
Can I asume that your last paragraph does not indicate that you worship at the altar of the God of unfetted cuiosity(to the detrment of all else)? This would seem then to be in contrast to the defence of the religious God in previous articles. THat is not to say that I(or you) would wish to sacrifice curiosity and inquiry to worship a religious deity. As a theology student I know they must go hand in hand.— zac
Another way to ask this question, perhaps more productively, is to consider the role of values or morality in determining the direction and nature of intellectual inquiry.
The problem is not curiosity itself, but whether curious energy is directed into narrow channels whose shape is determined by ideological or political forces (e.g. devising more complex financial securities products), or whether it is directed at knowledge that relates to or advances scientific knowledge, creative thought, and human welfare.
The freedom to question our own questioning - that is a curiosity worth supporting.— Kevin
Prof. Fish, I did like it better when you were trying to create a pedagogy for college writing on the basis of speculation, conviction, and anecdotal evidence. This is so serious. Also, so limited, at least given the example of the interwebs.
The internet, to quote my girlfriend’s able work, is rhizomatic, collective, myriad, connected, a series of infinite systems that are at once small and large. They isolate and distract, replace other forms of contact; they enhance and enable, making contact possible. They are the pharmakon: hey will heal us or poison us, depending on whether we are inside or out. The essential element is orientation: how will we consider the phenomenon of ‘modernity’, and what will we make of it? Curiousity is necessity, and the sort of shiftless drive for the next extreme, or the desire to replace God, is something else entirely. Surely you know that, when you’re not making an abstract argument abstractly?— MC
My wife, who is a cancer researcher, had a very hard time learning to do dissections. Watching family members die of cancer was much harder.
The reason we do science is because we have a very firm belief in human society, kindness and life.
Humanists may imagine scientists are self-worshiping and fame seeking. This caricature does not fit the horde of (mostly immigrant) hard working, anonymous scientists toiling in the basements beneath your offices.
If humanists would like to be relevant again, they should perhaps pick something to rally around other than antiquarian complaints about civilization.— Brett
The reasoning “against” curiosity assumes (a) a “god” and (b) a transcendent god who want us to remember we that we are “inferior.”I wonder (a form of curiosity) why we have to make these assumptions. They certainly reinforce a particular hierarchical/political attitude.I agree that there are issues related to technology, internet, etc. I suppose Galileo faced similar “technology” issues regarding his curiosity.On a personal level, it is my own curiosity that keeps me alive. It is one of my most valued traits. Without it I would feel like a robot.— DM
And thankfully so.
Those who wish it otherwise would do well to start by producing a god which can cure tuberculosis and then moving on to something more challenging.— ctm
My curiosity overcomes me. Why should Mr. Fish want to write such a piece?— Rachlel
Of course religious, especially Catholic, thinkers would condemn curiosity; anyone curious enough to look behind their curtain would find a faulty system, one based on received knowledge long discredited by (here it comes) science. Such inquiries are a shell game with no actual basis and no actual use, save to aid in the repression of human knowledge. The final arbiter is not a demonstrable, indisputable fact, but rather a totally irrational faith, which, if followed, leads to a dark corner. If I must have a religious basis to my epistemology, I prefer the one which values the inquiry “why ruin a perfectly good question with an answer?”— mburgh
It was not curiosity that killed the cat.
It was carelessness.— John C
Prof. Fish, I did like it better when you were trying to create a pedagogy for college writing on the basis of speculation, conviction, and anecdotal evidence. This is so serious. Also, so limited, at least given the example of the interwebs.
The internet, to quote my girlfriend’s able work, is rhizomatic, collective, myriad, connected, a series of infinite systems that are at once small and large. They isolate and distract, replace other forms of contact; they enhance and enable, making contact possible. They are the pharmakon: hey will heal us or poison us, depending on whether we are inside or out. The essential element is orientation: how will we consider the phenomenon of ‘modernity’, and what will we make of it? Curiousity is necessity, and the sort of shiftless drive for the next extreme, or the desire to replace God, is something else entirely. Surely you know that, when you’re not making an abstract argument abstractly?— MC
On a personal level, it is my own curiosity that keeps me alive. It is one of my most valued traits. Without it I would feel like a robot.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Everyone is Talking About Edmund Burke
by Leon Wieseltier
from The New Republic
September 18, 2009 4:06 pm
Travel westward along Massachusetts Avenue, down from Capitol Hill, and you will run into Edmund Burke. He seems to be hailing a cab, hand raised high, fingers parted, his whole form tense with the attempt to seize your attention; but in fact he is in mid-expostulation. This is the torsion of argument. The bronze statue, a copy of a late nineteenth-century one that stands in Bristol, which Burke immortally represented in Parliament, is eight feet tall, and was presented to Washington in 1922 by a British organization devoted to Anglo-American comity. Inscribed on its pedestal is a sterling sentence--"magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom," in the capital usually honored in the breach--from the conclusion to Burke's speech in 1775 on "conciliation with the colonies," which is the greatest speech I have ever read. The statue's location is a fine emblem of the local polyphony: a block away is the memorial to Samuel Gompers, glumly in bronze, who sits beneath a turgid company of allegorical figures, which contrasts unfavorably with the animated lucidity of Burke's image. The progressive monument shows a fasces, the conservative monument shows a tricorn hat. And a few steps up the street is the libertarian glasswork of the Cato Institute—in a certain light Burke seems almost to be castigating it. In 1967, in a worshipful book about Burke, Russell Kirk ominously declared that "if, in the near future, this Burke statue still stands in deathless bronze on Massachusetts Avenue; and if its original ... still stands at Bristol ... --why, they will remain as symbols of a human order that has not been pulled down altogether." Well, it still stands, on a grassy island amid the traffic of an unapocalyptic city in which nothing can pull down human order, or disorder.
We are in the middle of yet another Burke revival. Jon Meacham, who relies on the identification of trends for his professional survival, ruled so last spring. The evidence is everywhere. Sam Tanenhaus smartly explains the fate of American conservatism as a contest between Burkeans and "revanchists." David Brooks calls President Obama a Burkean, though Thomas Sowell disagrees. In merry complicity with his own manipulation, Brooks tells of David Axelrod greeting him in the White House with a copy of Reflections on the Revolution in France in his hand. (No doubt liberal columnists are met with On Liberty.) A few years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger invoked a school of political thought that he unforgettably described as "Schwarzenegger, Edmund Burke, [and John] Kennedy." In a CNN discussion of health care hysteria last summer, Mary Matalin spoke obscurely of "Edmund Burke–type linguistics." Even Patrick Leahy cited the right's idol in a speech on government reform. And so on. (I do not include George Will in the fashion, because he really is a Burkean and has the study to prove it.) Many decades ago Kirk noted with some astonishment that "nowadays Burke is praised in such journals as The New Republic." I am happy, in the spirit of the subject, to conserve the tradition of the house.
The Question of Burke is the question of change. It is no wonder that he is back now. Whether or not it is Burkeanism that moves Obama, the scale of his plans are an incitement to its reconsideration. But if Burkeanism means a hostility to change, then Burke was himself not a Burkean. "At once to preserve and to reform": here is the other great dialectical thinker about modern politics. "We compensate, we reconcile, we balance." On America and on India, Burke espoused drastic historical action. Conor Cruise O'Brien, of genuinely blessed memory, may have liberalized Burke a little too much in The Great Melody, but he was correct, I think, that Burke's "one constant target" was the abuse of power. And for all his celebrated traditionalism, Burke unflaggingly championed rational deliberation: "In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters; that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion upon them. They sift, examine, and discuss them ... Your whole importance, therefore, depends upon a constant, discreet use of your own reason; otherwise you and your country sink to nothing." Or, more poetically, "mind must conspire with mind." Tradition, in Burke's category-shattering complexity, was in its way the history of public reason, and therefore not to be trifled with. Liberals should welcome a notion of truth as additive and accumulative. It may be objected that reason cannot operate adequately without abstraction, which was what Burke most loathed; but still his fidelity to received understandings must not be mistaken for a vindication of prejudice and unexamined conviction.
What Burke Demanded, rather, was circumspection about the motive for, and the pace of, change. Caution is not a sign of "reaction"; and the long annals of left-wing incaution, of the degradation of reform by revolution, should humble some of Burke's despisers. The Burkean retort to the call for change is, with respect to what? The idea of changing everything and the idea of changing nothing are both merciless, and unempirical, and futile for politics. We are all Burkeans and all not Burkeans, all preservers and all reformers, all liberals and all conservatives; we all have our preferred acceptances and our preferred remedies; we all do not wish to create or to destroy the world. We must all climb down from our glittering generalities and justify what we propose in the particular. Concrete change is the only change we can believe in. (Obama has a peculiar relation to concreteness: he floats above it, in the empyrean of his diction, until he collapses into expediency.) The question, are you for change?, is like the question, are you happy?: an emotional set-up, an invitation to mistake a mood for an analysis.
The only right answer to such a question is yes and no. To fulfill our desire we must disaggregate it. In the matter of health care, the Democrats are learning this lesson, reluctantly; but the Republicans are now in a frenzy (or as Burke has it, a phrenzy) of aggregation, in wanton opposition to everything. It is not Burkean to declare, as William Kristol did again the other day, that "there is no health care crisis." Such a view is an affront to Burke's teaching about the significance of "circumstance," and to his undoctrinal and uncomplacent tone. It preserves, but it does not reform. Anyway, the preservation of our ills is not what we mean by tradition.
from The New Republic
September 18, 2009 4:06 pm
Travel westward along Massachusetts Avenue, down from Capitol Hill, and you will run into Edmund Burke. He seems to be hailing a cab, hand raised high, fingers parted, his whole form tense with the attempt to seize your attention; but in fact he is in mid-expostulation. This is the torsion of argument. The bronze statue, a copy of a late nineteenth-century one that stands in Bristol, which Burke immortally represented in Parliament, is eight feet tall, and was presented to Washington in 1922 by a British organization devoted to Anglo-American comity. Inscribed on its pedestal is a sterling sentence--"magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom," in the capital usually honored in the breach--from the conclusion to Burke's speech in 1775 on "conciliation with the colonies," which is the greatest speech I have ever read. The statue's location is a fine emblem of the local polyphony: a block away is the memorial to Samuel Gompers, glumly in bronze, who sits beneath a turgid company of allegorical figures, which contrasts unfavorably with the animated lucidity of Burke's image. The progressive monument shows a fasces, the conservative monument shows a tricorn hat. And a few steps up the street is the libertarian glasswork of the Cato Institute—in a certain light Burke seems almost to be castigating it. In 1967, in a worshipful book about Burke, Russell Kirk ominously declared that "if, in the near future, this Burke statue still stands in deathless bronze on Massachusetts Avenue; and if its original ... still stands at Bristol ... --why, they will remain as symbols of a human order that has not been pulled down altogether." Well, it still stands, on a grassy island amid the traffic of an unapocalyptic city in which nothing can pull down human order, or disorder.
We are in the middle of yet another Burke revival. Jon Meacham, who relies on the identification of trends for his professional survival, ruled so last spring. The evidence is everywhere. Sam Tanenhaus smartly explains the fate of American conservatism as a contest between Burkeans and "revanchists." David Brooks calls President Obama a Burkean, though Thomas Sowell disagrees. In merry complicity with his own manipulation, Brooks tells of David Axelrod greeting him in the White House with a copy of Reflections on the Revolution in France in his hand. (No doubt liberal columnists are met with On Liberty.) A few years ago Arnold Schwarzenegger invoked a school of political thought that he unforgettably described as "Schwarzenegger, Edmund Burke, [and John] Kennedy." In a CNN discussion of health care hysteria last summer, Mary Matalin spoke obscurely of "Edmund Burke–type linguistics." Even Patrick Leahy cited the right's idol in a speech on government reform. And so on. (I do not include George Will in the fashion, because he really is a Burkean and has the study to prove it.) Many decades ago Kirk noted with some astonishment that "nowadays Burke is praised in such journals as The New Republic." I am happy, in the spirit of the subject, to conserve the tradition of the house.
The Question of Burke is the question of change. It is no wonder that he is back now. Whether or not it is Burkeanism that moves Obama, the scale of his plans are an incitement to its reconsideration. But if Burkeanism means a hostility to change, then Burke was himself not a Burkean. "At once to preserve and to reform": here is the other great dialectical thinker about modern politics. "We compensate, we reconcile, we balance." On America and on India, Burke espoused drastic historical action. Conor Cruise O'Brien, of genuinely blessed memory, may have liberalized Burke a little too much in The Great Melody, but he was correct, I think, that Burke's "one constant target" was the abuse of power. And for all his celebrated traditionalism, Burke unflaggingly championed rational deliberation: "In a free country every man thinks he has a concern in all public matters; that he has a right to form and a right to deliver an opinion upon them. They sift, examine, and discuss them ... Your whole importance, therefore, depends upon a constant, discreet use of your own reason; otherwise you and your country sink to nothing." Or, more poetically, "mind must conspire with mind." Tradition, in Burke's category-shattering complexity, was in its way the history of public reason, and therefore not to be trifled with. Liberals should welcome a notion of truth as additive and accumulative. It may be objected that reason cannot operate adequately without abstraction, which was what Burke most loathed; but still his fidelity to received understandings must not be mistaken for a vindication of prejudice and unexamined conviction.
What Burke Demanded, rather, was circumspection about the motive for, and the pace of, change. Caution is not a sign of "reaction"; and the long annals of left-wing incaution, of the degradation of reform by revolution, should humble some of Burke's despisers. The Burkean retort to the call for change is, with respect to what? The idea of changing everything and the idea of changing nothing are both merciless, and unempirical, and futile for politics. We are all Burkeans and all not Burkeans, all preservers and all reformers, all liberals and all conservatives; we all have our preferred acceptances and our preferred remedies; we all do not wish to create or to destroy the world. We must all climb down from our glittering generalities and justify what we propose in the particular. Concrete change is the only change we can believe in. (Obama has a peculiar relation to concreteness: he floats above it, in the empyrean of his diction, until he collapses into expediency.) The question, are you for change?, is like the question, are you happy?: an emotional set-up, an invitation to mistake a mood for an analysis.
The only right answer to such a question is yes and no. To fulfill our desire we must disaggregate it. In the matter of health care, the Democrats are learning this lesson, reluctantly; but the Republicans are now in a frenzy (or as Burke has it, a phrenzy) of aggregation, in wanton opposition to everything. It is not Burkean to declare, as William Kristol did again the other day, that "there is no health care crisis." Such a view is an affront to Burke's teaching about the significance of "circumstance," and to his undoctrinal and uncomplacent tone. It preserves, but it does not reform. Anyway, the preservation of our ills is not what we mean by tradition.
Ignorance Starts Early
Sep 17, 2009 10:30 AM CDT
Oklahoma Students Score Low on Basic Civic Questions
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students' basic civic knowledge.
"They're questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen," Dutcher said.
A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
"Jefferson later said that a nation can't expect to be ignorant and free," Dutcher said. "It points to a real serious problem. We're not going to remain ignorant and free."
Question
% of StudentsWho Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land?
28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?
10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
61
What are the two major political parities in the United States?
43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
11
Who was the first President of the United States?
23
Who is in charge of the executive branch?
29
See the answers to the test
Oklahoma Students Score Low on Basic Civic Questions
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Only one in four Oklahoma public high school students can name the first President of the United States, according to a survey released today.
The survey was commissioned by the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs in observance of Constitution Day on Thursday.
Brandon Dutcher is with the conservative think tank and said the group wanted to find out how much civic knowledge Oklahoma high school students know.
The Oklahoma City-based think tank enlisted national research firm, Strategic Vision, to access students' basic civic knowledge.
"They're questions taken from the actual exam that you have to take to become a U.S. citizen," Dutcher said.
A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens.
About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.
Dutcher said this is not just a problem in Oklahoma. He said Arizona had similar results, which left him concerned for the entire country.
"Jefferson later said that a nation can't expect to be ignorant and free," Dutcher said. "It points to a real serious problem. We're not going to remain ignorant and free."
Question
% of StudentsWho Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land?
28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?
27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?
10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?
61
What are the two major political parities in the United States?
43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?
11
Who was the first President of the United States?
23
Who is in charge of the executive branch?
29
See the answers to the test
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Limbaugh: We need segregated buses
17 September 2009
the raw story
In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.
Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.
“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”
That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.
“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”
“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”
Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.
“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”
the raw story
In a remark extraordinary even by the standards of conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio heavyweight declared on his program Wednesday that the United States needed to return to racially segregated buses.
Referring to an incident in which a white student was beaten by black students on a bus, Limbaugh said: “I think the guy’s wrong. I think not only it was racism, it was justifiable racism. I mean, that’s the lesson we’re being taught here today. Kid shouldn’t have been on the bus anyway. We need segregated buses — it was invading space and stuff. This is Obama’s America.”
A full transcript of Limbaugh’s comments on his radio show is available at MediaMatters.org.
Limbaugh’s comments came after a called complained to say that local law enforcement said the attack probably wasn’t racially motivated. The incident had been hyped by the conservative Drudge Report, which posted a video of the fracas.
“Police initially said the beating of the white student by two black students appeared to be racially motivated,” the Associated Press wrote. “But police on Tuesday backed away from that.”
That didn’t stop Limbaugh from making his comments Wednesday.
“In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on,” Limbaugh also said. “I wonder if Obama’s going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard.”
“White Americans are racists who have created what they call free markets that really just enslave the rest of America and her trading partners,” Limbaugh also mocked. “I mean, it was white Americans that ran off Van Jones. No, look, let’s just follow Eric Holder’s advice and not be cowards about all this. Let’s have an open conversation, an honest conversation about all of our typical white grandmothers. You had one, I had one. Obama had one. They’re racists just like our students are. ACORN — hey, nothing but racism fueling the pursuit of ACORN.”
Limbaugh also suggested that racism itself was acceptable.
“If homosexuality being inborn is what makes it acceptable, why does racism being inborn not make racism acceptable?” the talk show host asked. “I’m sorry — I mean, this is the way my mind works. But apparently now we don’t choose racism, we just are racists. We are born that way. We don’t choose it. So shouldn’t it be acceptable, excuse — this is according to the way the left thinks about things.”
When Getting Beaten By Your Husband Is A Pre-Existing Condition
17 September 2009
Huffington Post
Huffington Post
With the White House zeroing in on the insurance-industry practice of discriminating against clients based on pre-existing conditions, administration allies are calling attention to how broadly insurers interpret the term to maximize profits.
It turns out that in eight states, plus the District of Columbia, getting beaten up by your spouse is a pre-existing condition.
Under the cold logic of the insurance industry, it makes perfect sense: If you are in a marriage with someone who has beaten you in the past, you're more likely to get beaten again than the average person and are therefore more expensive to insure.
In human terms, it's a second punishment for a victim of domestic violence.
In 2006, Democrats tried to end the practice. An amendment introduced by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), now a member of leadership, split the Health Education Labor & Pensions Committee 10-10. The tie meant that the measure failed.
All ten no votes were Republicans, including Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), a member of the "Gang of Six" on the Finance Committee who are hashing out a bipartisan bill. A spokesman for Enzi didn't immediately return a call from Huffington Post.
At the time, Enzi defended his vote by saying that such regulations could increase the price of insurance and make it out of reach for more people. "If you have no insurance, it doesn't matter what services are mandated by the state," he said, according to a CQ Today item from March 15th, 2006.
Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for an insurance industry trade group, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), said that the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) has proposed ending the discrimination. "The NAIC has a model on this that we strongly supported. That model bans the use of a person's status as a victim of domestic violence in making a decision on coverage," he said.
During the last health care reform push, in 1993 and 1994, the industry similarly promised to end discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
Murray pushed to include the domestic violence concern in this year's comprehensive health care bill. "Senator Murray continues to believe that victims of domestic violence should not be punished for the crimes of their abusers. That is why she worked to include language in the Senate HELP Committee's health insurance reform bill that would ban this discriminatory and harmful insurance company practice," said spokesman Eli Zupnick.
In 1994, then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), now a member of Senate leadership, had his staff survey 16 insurance companies. He found that eight would not write health, life or disability policies for women who have been abused. In 1995, the Boston Globe found that Nationwide, Allstate, State Farm, Aetna, Metropolitan Life, The Equitable Companies, First Colony Life, The Prudential and the Principal Financial Group had all either canceled or denied coverage to women who'd been beaten.
The Service Employees International Union asked members to write letters to Congress regarding the exclusion and have quickly generated hundreds, says an SEIU spokeswoman.
The relevant provision:
SEC. 2706. PROHIBITING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST INDIVIDUAL PARTICIPANTS AND BENEFICIARIES BASED ON HEALTH STATUS.
'(a) IN GENERAL.--A group health plan and a health insurance issuer offering group or individual health insurance coverage may not establish rules for eligibility (including continued eligibility) of any individual to enroll under the terms of the plan or coverage based on any of the following health status-related factors in relation to the individual or a dependent of the individual:
(1) Health status.
(2) Medical condition (including both physical and mental illnesses).
(3) Claims experience.
(4) Receipt of health care.
(5) Medical history.
(6) Genetic information.
(7) Evidence of insurability (including conditions arising out of acts of domestic violence).
(8) Disability.
(9) Any other health status-related factor determined appropriate by the Secretary.
UPDATE: The eight states that still allow it are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming, according to a report by the National Women's Law Center.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Family health costs outpace inflation and wage growth
BY Tony Pugh
15 September 2009
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The average cost of job-based family health insurance climbed 5 percent to $13,375 in 2009, making this the 10th straight year that health care premiums have increased faster than workers' wages and overall inflation have.
Insurance costs have increased 131 percent since 1999, when a year of family coverage cost about $5,791 , according to the 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust .
That supercharged growth rate far outpaces the 38 percent increase in wages and 28 percent growth of inflation over the same period.
The inability of consumers and employers to finance that growth in cost is helping to drive the heated debate over how to revamp the nation's heath care system.
At a time when employers are laying off workers, facing revenue declines and looking for ways to cut costs, health insurance is proving a substantial financial burden.
So they're passing the costs to employees, who're paying higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses while often receiving less comprehensive coverage for their money.
Twenty-one percent of firms with insurance coverage reduced benefits or increased employee cost-sharing due to the recession, the survey found. Fifteen percent increased their workers' shares of the monthly premium.
"When health care costs continue to rise so much faster than overall inflation in a bad recession, workers and employers really feel the pain," said Drew Altman , the president and chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Employers typically pay about $9,860 of the standard $13,375 family policy, the survey found. Workers pick up the rest, about $3,515 or 27 percent. That's the same share as last year.
The cost of single coverage increased slightly this year, averaging about $4,824 compared to $4,704 last year. Employees pay about 17 percent of the cost, or $779 toward the coverage.
The rising costs mean that a year of family coverage, on average, now costs employers about $15,000 , nearly as much as a year of labor from a full-time minimum wage worker, Altman said.
Consumers also pay more, on average, for family coverage than they'd pay to purchase a gas-sipping Chevrolet Aveo — about $12,000 — or to rent a two-bedroom apartment for the nationwide yearly average of $11,136.
"It just underscores why health insurance is increasingly unaffordable for working people and for employers, especially small employers," Altman said.
About 159 million people have employer-based coverage nationally, but the percentage of companies that provide it is declining, particularly among smaller ones. Only 59 percent of firms with fewer than 200 employees offer coverage in 2009, compared with 62 percent last year. The rate fell from 78 percent to 72 percent among companies with 10 to 24 employees.
Perry Goodwin , who runs the Gaines W. Harrison & Sons hydraulic repair shop in Columbia, S.C. , saw his insurance costs increase 28 percent to 33 percent a year for five straight years. But when it cost him $16,000 a month to insure his 20 employees, Goodwin decided it was time for a change.
So he switched insurance carriers several years ago, and his premiums fell to about $10,000 a month. "But then they shot up another $3,000 (a month) over the period of one year," Goodwin said. "So then I went to another carrier, who got me down to about $11,000 a month."
Goodwin now pays about $10,000 a month, and to keep his costs down he increased his employees' deductible this year to $500 from $250 and cut his coverage for employee dependents in half.
"I could get it cheaper if I wanted it, but you get what you pay for," Goodwin said.
As the debate about health care goes on, Goodwin said he opposes what the Obama administration and Congress have proposed, particularly a government-run public option, which he fears businesses could be asked to subsidize.
"It ain't the government's business," Goodwin said. "They don't need to be running a car company, and they sure don't need to be running health care."
If there's a way to keep costs down without the government getting involved, however, Goodwin said he's all for it.
Dallas Salisbury , the president and chief executive of the Employee Benefits Research Institute , said Goodwin's comments are typical of surveys of business owners, who're mostly Republican or Libertarian and are likely to oppose most forms of government intervention.
Without state or local level regulation, however, Salisbury said insurance companies would withhold coverage from people with pre-existing conditions and try to "cherry pick," or insure only healthy people.
Resolving the cost, coverage and quality issues surrounding the health care debate will always be difficult as long as consumers want access to everything, "but they assume that everybody else is getting a lot of services that they really don't need. That has been, for at least 60 years, the dilemma of modern health care," Salisbury said.
Other key findings from the survey:
— Twenty-two percent of workers now pay at least $1,000 out of their own pocket for single coverage before their insurance kicks in. That's up from 18 percent last year, according to the survey of more than 2,000 public and private employers.
— The average annual deductible for single coverage in an HMO increased to $699 this year from $503 in 2008. For family coverage in an HMO, the average deductible jumped to $1,524 from $1,053.
15 September 2009
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — The average cost of job-based family health insurance climbed 5 percent to $13,375 in 2009, making this the 10th straight year that health care premiums have increased faster than workers' wages and overall inflation have.
Insurance costs have increased 131 percent since 1999, when a year of family coverage cost about $5,791 , according to the 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust .
That supercharged growth rate far outpaces the 38 percent increase in wages and 28 percent growth of inflation over the same period.
The inability of consumers and employers to finance that growth in cost is helping to drive the heated debate over how to revamp the nation's heath care system.
At a time when employers are laying off workers, facing revenue declines and looking for ways to cut costs, health insurance is proving a substantial financial burden.
So they're passing the costs to employees, who're paying higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses while often receiving less comprehensive coverage for their money.
Twenty-one percent of firms with insurance coverage reduced benefits or increased employee cost-sharing due to the recession, the survey found. Fifteen percent increased their workers' shares of the monthly premium.
"When health care costs continue to rise so much faster than overall inflation in a bad recession, workers and employers really feel the pain," said Drew Altman , the president and chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Employers typically pay about $9,860 of the standard $13,375 family policy, the survey found. Workers pick up the rest, about $3,515 or 27 percent. That's the same share as last year.
The cost of single coverage increased slightly this year, averaging about $4,824 compared to $4,704 last year. Employees pay about 17 percent of the cost, or $779 toward the coverage.
The rising costs mean that a year of family coverage, on average, now costs employers about $15,000 , nearly as much as a year of labor from a full-time minimum wage worker, Altman said.
Consumers also pay more, on average, for family coverage than they'd pay to purchase a gas-sipping Chevrolet Aveo — about $12,000 — or to rent a two-bedroom apartment for the nationwide yearly average of $11,136.
"It just underscores why health insurance is increasingly unaffordable for working people and for employers, especially small employers," Altman said.
About 159 million people have employer-based coverage nationally, but the percentage of companies that provide it is declining, particularly among smaller ones. Only 59 percent of firms with fewer than 200 employees offer coverage in 2009, compared with 62 percent last year. The rate fell from 78 percent to 72 percent among companies with 10 to 24 employees.
Perry Goodwin , who runs the Gaines W. Harrison & Sons hydraulic repair shop in Columbia, S.C. , saw his insurance costs increase 28 percent to 33 percent a year for five straight years. But when it cost him $16,000 a month to insure his 20 employees, Goodwin decided it was time for a change.
So he switched insurance carriers several years ago, and his premiums fell to about $10,000 a month. "But then they shot up another $3,000 (a month) over the period of one year," Goodwin said. "So then I went to another carrier, who got me down to about $11,000 a month."
Goodwin now pays about $10,000 a month, and to keep his costs down he increased his employees' deductible this year to $500 from $250 and cut his coverage for employee dependents in half.
"I could get it cheaper if I wanted it, but you get what you pay for," Goodwin said.
As the debate about health care goes on, Goodwin said he opposes what the Obama administration and Congress have proposed, particularly a government-run public option, which he fears businesses could be asked to subsidize.
"It ain't the government's business," Goodwin said. "They don't need to be running a car company, and they sure don't need to be running health care."
If there's a way to keep costs down without the government getting involved, however, Goodwin said he's all for it.
Dallas Salisbury , the president and chief executive of the Employee Benefits Research Institute , said Goodwin's comments are typical of surveys of business owners, who're mostly Republican or Libertarian and are likely to oppose most forms of government intervention.
Without state or local level regulation, however, Salisbury said insurance companies would withhold coverage from people with pre-existing conditions and try to "cherry pick," or insure only healthy people.
Resolving the cost, coverage and quality issues surrounding the health care debate will always be difficult as long as consumers want access to everything, "but they assume that everybody else is getting a lot of services that they really don't need. That has been, for at least 60 years, the dilemma of modern health care," Salisbury said.
Other key findings from the survey:
— Twenty-two percent of workers now pay at least $1,000 out of their own pocket for single coverage before their insurance kicks in. That's up from 18 percent last year, according to the survey of more than 2,000 public and private employers.
— The average annual deductible for single coverage in an HMO increased to $699 this year from $503 in 2008. For family coverage in an HMO, the average deductible jumped to $1,524 from $1,053.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The Words of Kurt Vonnegut:
"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae."
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Nothing New about the Right
There is nothing new about these Rightwing nutcases.
by Glen Greenwald
Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now. All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency -- to say nothing of the Bush years -- to see that none of this is remotely new. Nothing they're doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it's just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.
by Glen Greenwald
Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now. All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency -- to say nothing of the Bush years -- to see that none of this is remotely new. Nothing they're doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it's just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.
Paul Begala - A Sign of the Times
It's not about deficits. It's not about a government takeover of healthcare. Consider the hypocrisy of Congressman Wilson, who assails government-run healthcare while taking advantage of HIS government-run healthcare as a veteran. And do you see these Neanderthals wishing to do away with Medicare, a government-run socialist heathcare program? Of course not because it works well and Americans love it. No---It's not about anything but racial hatred of Barach Obama. Great piece by Paul Begala.
Paul Begala
CNN political commentator
Posted: September 13, 2009 01:42 AM
The sign said it all. It was not some last-minute message some meth addict scrawled in crayon on a scrap of cardboard. No, this sign was professionally printed. White block letters on a blue background, the four-word message was in all caps. Someone had to have thought this through. Someone wrote it, edited it, planned it, designed it, ordered it, paid for it. Someone approved it, printed it, distributed it. And then someone thought this was a message he or she wanted to convey to the world. Thank goodness someone had the courage to take a photo of it, and then Huffington Post had the guts to post it on its home page.
The sign made me nauseous, made me embarrassed, made me wonder if at long last there is no decency on the far right. The sign said:
"BURY OBAMACARE WITH KENNEDY"
Oh, I get it. Sen. Kennedy is dead, and these slugs want health care reform to be dead too. That is so clever.
Fourteen days after Edward Kennedy was laid to rest in the company of his fellow American heroes in Arlington, right-wing hate-mongers decided to use his burial to make a cheap point about their opposition to health care reform.
What would they have done if liberals had printed signs that equated Ronald Reagan's burial with the hoped-for death of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security? Or Bill Buckley's painful passing with the GOP's loss of the White House in 2008? Or the demise of my right-wing former colleague Bob Novak with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? You can't imagine that, can you? Because, while we progressives have our moments of frustration and our occasional lack of couth, there is nothing I can think of that compares to the sick, savage sign that the teabaggers were waving in Washington.
The inmates have taken over the asylum. The ever-sunny Reagan is dead. The congenial Buckley is dead. The old-school conservative Novak is dead as well. In their place is the party of Joe the Shouter and Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Death Panel Screecher.
They hate Pres. Obama - even though he has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. They hate tax increases - even though the Democrats have cut taxes for 95% of Americans. They hate health care reform - even though Ted Kennedy fought his whole life to get them the same health care millionaires like him already had.
There was not, to my knowledge, a sign that said, "Let's Bury Medicare," even though Medicare is precisely the sort of single-payer, government-run, socialized health insurance the whack-jobs say they hate. Nor did I hear about a sign that said, "Let's Bury Tricare," although the military health system is as socialized as Britain's, its beneficiaries (including, according to Newsweek, Congressclown Joe Wilson of South Carolina) are very happy with their socialized health care. Nary a sign, so far as I know, decried the Bush prescription drug entitlement, even though it ballooned the deficit, enriched the pharmaceutical companies and furthered the supposed slide toward socialism. Nor, I'm told, were there any signs criticizing the $2 trillion Mr. Bush's unjust, unwarranted, unwise war in Iraq will cost our children and grandchildren. Nor ever a single sign about the Bush tax cuts, which helped squander the Clinton surplus. If this were about fiscal policy, the protests would have happened long ago.
These tea parties are, at least for some, more about hate than high-minded debate. Anyone who needed proof need look no further than the sign captured in the photo on the front page of the Huffington Post.
Paul Begala
CNN political commentator
Posted: September 13, 2009 01:42 AM
The sign said it all. It was not some last-minute message some meth addict scrawled in crayon on a scrap of cardboard. No, this sign was professionally printed. White block letters on a blue background, the four-word message was in all caps. Someone had to have thought this through. Someone wrote it, edited it, planned it, designed it, ordered it, paid for it. Someone approved it, printed it, distributed it. And then someone thought this was a message he or she wanted to convey to the world. Thank goodness someone had the courage to take a photo of it, and then Huffington Post had the guts to post it on its home page.
The sign made me nauseous, made me embarrassed, made me wonder if at long last there is no decency on the far right. The sign said:
"BURY OBAMACARE WITH KENNEDY"
Oh, I get it. Sen. Kennedy is dead, and these slugs want health care reform to be dead too. That is so clever.
Fourteen days after Edward Kennedy was laid to rest in the company of his fellow American heroes in Arlington, right-wing hate-mongers decided to use his burial to make a cheap point about their opposition to health care reform.
What would they have done if liberals had printed signs that equated Ronald Reagan's burial with the hoped-for death of George W. Bush's plan to privatize Social Security? Or Bill Buckley's painful passing with the GOP's loss of the White House in 2008? Or the demise of my right-wing former colleague Bob Novak with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? You can't imagine that, can you? Because, while we progressives have our moments of frustration and our occasional lack of couth, there is nothing I can think of that compares to the sick, savage sign that the teabaggers were waving in Washington.
The inmates have taken over the asylum. The ever-sunny Reagan is dead. The congenial Buckley is dead. The old-school conservative Novak is dead as well. In their place is the party of Joe the Shouter and Joe the Plumber and Sarah the Death Panel Screecher.
They hate Pres. Obama - even though he has bent over backwards to accommodate Republicans. They hate tax increases - even though the Democrats have cut taxes for 95% of Americans. They hate health care reform - even though Ted Kennedy fought his whole life to get them the same health care millionaires like him already had.
There was not, to my knowledge, a sign that said, "Let's Bury Medicare," even though Medicare is precisely the sort of single-payer, government-run, socialized health insurance the whack-jobs say they hate. Nor did I hear about a sign that said, "Let's Bury Tricare," although the military health system is as socialized as Britain's, its beneficiaries (including, according to Newsweek, Congressclown Joe Wilson of South Carolina) are very happy with their socialized health care. Nary a sign, so far as I know, decried the Bush prescription drug entitlement, even though it ballooned the deficit, enriched the pharmaceutical companies and furthered the supposed slide toward socialism. Nor, I'm told, were there any signs criticizing the $2 trillion Mr. Bush's unjust, unwarranted, unwise war in Iraq will cost our children and grandchildren. Nor ever a single sign about the Bush tax cuts, which helped squander the Clinton surplus. If this were about fiscal policy, the protests would have happened long ago.
These tea parties are, at least for some, more about hate than high-minded debate. Anyone who needed proof need look no further than the sign captured in the photo on the front page of the Huffington Post.
Maureen Figures it Out
Maureen Dowd has finally confronted the truth. The hate campaign against President Obama is firmly rooted in racial hatred. Congressman Wilson's disrespectful "You lie" is the equivalent of the white man calling the black man "boy." As you would expect, Wilson is a long-time Confederate.
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 12, 2009
The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.
Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.
The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.
I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.
I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.
But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.
“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.
“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’ ”
Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.
Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.
For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.
The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money. And now Joe Wilson.
“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina. He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.
“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!
It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”
Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 12, 2009
The normally nonchalant Barack Obama looked nonplussed, as Nancy Pelosi glowered behind.
Surrounded by middle-aged white guys — a sepia snapshot of the days when such pols ran Washington like their own men’s club — Joe Wilson yelled “You lie!” at a president who didn’t.
But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!
The outburst was unexpected from a milquetoast Republican backbencher from South Carolina who had attracted little media attention. Now it has made him an overnight right-wing hero, inspiring “You lie!” bumper stickers and T-shirts.
The congressman, we learned, belonged to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, led a 2000 campaign to keep the Confederate flag waving above South Carolina’s state Capitol and denounced as a “smear” the true claim of a black woman that she was the daughter of Strom Thurmond, the ’48 segregationist candidate for president. Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.
I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.
I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.
But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.
“A lot of these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing him as a president,” said Congressman Jim Clyburn, a senior member of the South Carolina delegation. Clyburn, the man who called out Bill Clinton on his racially tinged attacks on Obama in the primary, pushed Pelosi to pursue a formal resolution chastising Wilson.
“In South Carolina politics, I learned that the olive branch works very seldom,” he said. “You have to come at these things from a position of strength. My father used to say, ‘Son, always remember that silence gives consent.’ ”
Barry Obama of the post-’60s Hawaiian ’hood did not live through the major racial struggles in American history. Maybe he had a problem relating to his white basketball coach or catching a cab in New York, but he never got beaten up for being black.
Now he’s at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension. Even if he and the coterie of white male advisers around him don’t choose to openly acknowledge it, this president is the ultimate civil rights figure — a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.
For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.
The state that fired the first shot of the Civil War has now given us this: Senator Jim DeMint exhorted conservatives to “break” the president by upending his health care plan. Rusty DePass, a G.O.P. activist, said that a gorilla that escaped from a zoo was “just one of Michelle’s ancestors.” Lovelorn Mark Sanford tried to refuse the president’s stimulus money. And now Joe Wilson.
“A good many people in South Carolina really reject the notion that we’re part of the union,” said Don Fowler, the former Democratic Party chief who teaches politics at the University of South Carolina. He observed that when slavery was destroyed by outside forces and segregation was undone by civil rights leaders and Congress, it bred xenophobia.
“We have a lot of people who really think that the world’s against us,” Fowler said, “so when things don’t happen the way we like them to, we blame outsiders.” He said a state legislator not long ago tried to pass a bill to nullify any federal legislation with which South Carolinians didn’t agree. Shades of John C. Calhoun!
It may be President Obama’s very air of elegance and erudition that raises hackles in some. “My father used to say to me, ‘Boy, don’t get above your raising,’ ” Fowler said. “Some people are prejudiced anyway, and then they look at his education and mannerisms and get more angry at him.”
Clyburn had a warning for Obama advisers who want to forgive Wilson, ignore the ignorant outbursts and move on: “They’re going to have to develop ways in this White House to deal with things and not let them fester out there. Otherwise, they’ll see numbers moving in the wrong direction.”
Tim O'Brien - In the Lake of the Woods (2)
This is one of the more interesting novels I've read. There is a linear plot, but the plot is fragmented by constant flashbacks to the childhood of John Wade and to his Viet Nam experiences. Plus O'Brien intersperses nonfiction quotations. This novel is truly different.
John Wade has just suffered a crushing defeat in a U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. He is doomed by late revelations of atrocitities in Viet Nam in which he played a part. Wade and his wife Kathy retreat to a cottage in Northern Minnesota. There we relive his childhood with an alcoholic and distant father, his childhood hobby of magic behind which he could hide himself, and, of course, the atrocitities of war in which he was involved.
Then Kathy disappears one morning into the lake and woods around the cottage. What happened to her? Did she run away by herself? Did she run away with someone? Did John Wade kill her?
The plot leads to ambiguity, which normally irritates me in a work of fiction, but in this instance it works. You read this book and you think and wonder. It's all very satisfying.
John Wade has just suffered a crushing defeat in a U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. He is doomed by late revelations of atrocitities in Viet Nam in which he played a part. Wade and his wife Kathy retreat to a cottage in Northern Minnesota. There we relive his childhood with an alcoholic and distant father, his childhood hobby of magic behind which he could hide himself, and, of course, the atrocitities of war in which he was involved.
Then Kathy disappears one morning into the lake and woods around the cottage. What happened to her? Did she run away by herself? Did she run away with someone? Did John Wade kill her?
The plot leads to ambiguity, which normally irritates me in a work of fiction, but in this instance it works. You read this book and you think and wonder. It's all very satisfying.
From Andrew Sullivan
Congrats to the tea-partiers for the impressive crowds in DC today. One wonders where these people were when Bush was massively increasing debt, spending like LBJ, detaining citizens without charges and torturing them, and nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan? I guess limited government is an elastic notion. But any serious grass-roots movement against constantly expanding government is fine by me. But then you see the images and pictures and hysterical rhetoric ... and you see that this extremism and demonization of the president is as damaging to their cause as ANSWER was to the anti-war movement.
Here's a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.
The Census On The Bush Years
Not such a great legacy:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.
But those who voted for him are absolutely enraged at the possibility of any change.
Here's a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.
The Census On The Bush Years
Not such a great legacy:
On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.
But those who voted for him are absolutely enraged at the possibility of any change.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Conservative Thugs Go Back to Calhoun
There is very little that is new in American history. The thuggery we are seeing from Republicans is nothing new. Here it is traced back to slavery/states rights defender John C. Calhoun. What IS new is a black President which is like throwing a match on gasoline with these Neantherdals.
by MikeLux
Author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Posted: September 11, 2009 11:33 AM
One of the people I spent the most time discussing in my book on the history of the American political debate, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came To Be, was a man named John C. Calhoun. I went so far as to call him the founder of modern conservatism, and the events of this year, including Joe Wilson's offensive outburst on the floor of Congress, Wednesday night, have added strong evidence to my argument.
Although discussions about the relative power of the states and the federal government had been around since the days of the Articles of Confederation in the 1780s, Calhoun was the South Carolina politician who fused a particularly extreme view of states' rights with a patriarchal and violent conservatism. Calhoun argued that states could come and go into and out of the Union, whenever they wanted to; that they could secede from the Union at any time and for any reason; and that even if they stayed in the Union they could nullify any law they wanted, again at any time and for any reason.
He was also violently opposed to the idea of democracy itself, say that they growing population of the North had no power whatsoever over slavery or any other thing the southern states chose to do, and in fact believed that the Bill or Rights only applied to what the federal government couldn't do--that the states were free to eliminate freedom of speech and religion and other civil liberties. (In fact, most southern states had done exactly that by the time of the Civil War.)
Calhoun was ready to start a Civil War in 1832, when he and Andrew Jackson disagreed over a policy that would hurt Calhoun's beloved plantation economy. He resigned as Jackson's vice president, and encouraged the state to secede and raise an army right then and there. It was a protégé of Calhoun who beat abolitionist Charles Sumner almost to death with a cane on the floor of the Senate in 1856, and protégés of Calhoun who led South Carolina to be the first state to secede from the Union in 1861 after Lincoln's election, and be the first state to fire on Union soldiers at Ft. Sumter.
Calhoun's states' rights theories were used to justify Jim Crow in the South and oppose integration after the Civil War all the way into the 1960s. Today, we are seeing Calhoun Conservatism spreading throughout the Republican party and the right wing movement. Joe Wilson's thuggishness on Wednesday night and the conservative movement's embrace of his action yesterday are just the latest examples. Some highlights from the last year:
• John McCain picks a vice presidential candidate whose husband was a seven-year member of a far right secessionist party with ties to the racist, neo-confederacy movement. Palin had gone to at least one of the party's conventions herself, and had done a warm welcoming video for their most recent convention, telling them she shared their values.
• Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that Texas might have to consider seceding from the United States.
• One of the congressional sponsors of a right wing rally on the Capitol steps, the "9/12 movement," which will be attended by Wilson and several other Republican members of Congress, is an organization advocating secession and the violent overthrow the United States. See this remarkable clip of Rachel Maddow talking about this group:
• Just yesterday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said he would consider asserting "state sovereignty" to keep Minnesota from participating in a health reform passed by Congress. (State sovereignty is what Calhoun used to call the right for state to nullify and generally ignore Federal laws.)
Maybe you thought the victory of the Union at Appomattox settled these kinds of issues for good. Or the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Or the defeat of Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s. Not so much. Conservative Republicans, birthers, militiamen toting their assault weapons to town halls, Congressmen screaming insults at the top their lungs during a Presidential speech--they are united in wanting to refight the battles of the Civil War all over again, perhaps literally.
These people are extremist to the core, and progressives have had to defeat their crazy political theories again and again in American history. But, hey, I guess we can be thankful for some things--at least Joe Wilson didn't try to cane anybody Wednesday night.
by MikeLux
Author, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Posted: September 11, 2009 11:33 AM
One of the people I spent the most time discussing in my book on the history of the American political debate, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came To Be, was a man named John C. Calhoun. I went so far as to call him the founder of modern conservatism, and the events of this year, including Joe Wilson's offensive outburst on the floor of Congress, Wednesday night, have added strong evidence to my argument.
Although discussions about the relative power of the states and the federal government had been around since the days of the Articles of Confederation in the 1780s, Calhoun was the South Carolina politician who fused a particularly extreme view of states' rights with a patriarchal and violent conservatism. Calhoun argued that states could come and go into and out of the Union, whenever they wanted to; that they could secede from the Union at any time and for any reason; and that even if they stayed in the Union they could nullify any law they wanted, again at any time and for any reason.
He was also violently opposed to the idea of democracy itself, say that they growing population of the North had no power whatsoever over slavery or any other thing the southern states chose to do, and in fact believed that the Bill or Rights only applied to what the federal government couldn't do--that the states were free to eliminate freedom of speech and religion and other civil liberties. (In fact, most southern states had done exactly that by the time of the Civil War.)
Calhoun was ready to start a Civil War in 1832, when he and Andrew Jackson disagreed over a policy that would hurt Calhoun's beloved plantation economy. He resigned as Jackson's vice president, and encouraged the state to secede and raise an army right then and there. It was a protégé of Calhoun who beat abolitionist Charles Sumner almost to death with a cane on the floor of the Senate in 1856, and protégés of Calhoun who led South Carolina to be the first state to secede from the Union in 1861 after Lincoln's election, and be the first state to fire on Union soldiers at Ft. Sumter.
Calhoun's states' rights theories were used to justify Jim Crow in the South and oppose integration after the Civil War all the way into the 1960s. Today, we are seeing Calhoun Conservatism spreading throughout the Republican party and the right wing movement. Joe Wilson's thuggishness on Wednesday night and the conservative movement's embrace of his action yesterday are just the latest examples. Some highlights from the last year:
• John McCain picks a vice presidential candidate whose husband was a seven-year member of a far right secessionist party with ties to the racist, neo-confederacy movement. Palin had gone to at least one of the party's conventions herself, and had done a warm welcoming video for their most recent convention, telling them she shared their values.
• Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that Texas might have to consider seceding from the United States.
• One of the congressional sponsors of a right wing rally on the Capitol steps, the "9/12 movement," which will be attended by Wilson and several other Republican members of Congress, is an organization advocating secession and the violent overthrow the United States. See this remarkable clip of Rachel Maddow talking about this group:
• Just yesterday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said he would consider asserting "state sovereignty" to keep Minnesota from participating in a health reform passed by Congress. (State sovereignty is what Calhoun used to call the right for state to nullify and generally ignore Federal laws.)
Maybe you thought the victory of the Union at Appomattox settled these kinds of issues for good. Or the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Or the defeat of Jim Crow in the South in the 1960s. Not so much. Conservative Republicans, birthers, militiamen toting their assault weapons to town halls, Congressmen screaming insults at the top their lungs during a Presidential speech--they are united in wanting to refight the battles of the Civil War all over again, perhaps literally.
These people are extremist to the core, and progressives have had to defeat their crazy political theories again and again in American history. But, hey, I guess we can be thankful for some things--at least Joe Wilson didn't try to cane anybody Wednesday night.
Friday, September 11, 2009
What's the matter with South Carolina?
BY Alexander Burns
11 September 2009
POLITICO
With two shouted words during the president's speech to Congress Wednesday night, Congressman Joe Wilson cemented South Carolina’s status as the geographic center of opposition to the Obama White House.
Just under nine months into the president's term, the state has emerged as a beachhead for the president's most aggressive conservative critics, a secure launching point for some of the harshest attacks on the administration’s policy initiatives.
Its governor, Mark Sanford, led the charge of Republican governors against the Obama economic stimulus plan and made national headlines by arguing that the administration’s excessive spending could lead to an economic collapse on the scale of Weimar Germany. Sanford, in fact, persisted in rejecting Recovery Act funding until a court ordered him to back down.
When Obama turned his attention to health care, South Carolina’s junior senator, Jim DeMint, touched off a firestorm of criticism by urging conservatives to "break " the new president by defeating reform legislation.
"If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo," DeMint predicted, drawing an acid response from the White House.
Wilson’s notorious “You lie!” outburst in front of a joint session of Congress, was just the latest in the series of salvos, this one coming as Obama claimed his health care reform plan wouldn't offer free care to illegal immigrants.
And there may be more to come: Some South Carolina Republicans say Wilson's remark isn’t exactly out of step with public sentiment in the conservative state.
"If Joe Wilson's mother and father were alive, they'd have taken him to the woodshed and flogged him for bad manners and poor form," said former South Carolina Republican Party Chair Katon Dawson. "But let me tell you what was [said] at the diner today. It was: 'Joe's right.'"
South Carolina didn't always look like such hostile territory for Obama. He never had much hope of winning the state in the general election, but his decisive primary victory there in 2008 helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. While he lost the state in November by nine percentage points to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his performance nevertheless represented the best Democratic presidential showing in nearly three decades.
Carroll Campbell III, the son of the popular late governor and a Republican exploring his own bid for Congress next year, suggested Wilson's behavior may have resonated with a powerful conservative base frustrated by its minority status.
"I talk to a lot of Republican groups, but most of these individuals are really happy that at least he's showing some backbone," said Campbell, whose father served two terms as governor. "Republicans are desperate for, looking for the new face of politics…There's a sense of satisfaction that at least he can step up and do what he did."
The state has a long history of stridency in national politics, having produced legendary opposition figures from Vice President John C. Calhoun, who helped pave the way for the Civil War, to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered historic civil rights legislation. By comparison, DeMint, Sanford and Wilson are a tame bunch.
"South Carolina is a state that's always loved having characters for politicians," said Bruce Haynes, a political consultant who served as an aide to Campbell. "There's been no shortage of South Carolina politicians over the past 50 years who have said some interesting and outrageous things. And they tend to be reelected by large margins."
While the state has also elected loose-cannon Democrats like Sen. Fritz Hollings, whose seat DeMint won when Hollings retired in 2004, it's no accident that its high-profile politicians tend to be Republicans these days or that they don’t feel bound by the constraints felt by their colleagues in more politically competitive states.
"It has traditionally been a pretty deep-red state and I think that Republican politicians feel that there's not a limit to what they can do or say when it comes to Democratic elected officials, particularly the president," said former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges, who was defeated by Sanford in 2002. "In most places, they play the sport of politics every two or four years. In South Carolina, they play it every year. It is more important than football, to some degree."
Dawson agreed, citing the state's long and tempestuous political history as a mark of pride: "South Carolina's been yelling from the top of our lungs on national politics since this nation was formed and entered the union."
Obama himself is no stranger to the state's hothouse political culture—one of his favorite stories from the campaign trail, which he retold as recently as Monday, took place at a campaign stop in Greenwood, South Carolina. There, a city council member introduced one of the campaign's most famous slogans when she warmed up Obama's crowd with a feisty chant of "Fired up! Ready to go!"
But even if swaggering politicians and impassioned oratory aren't entirely new to South Carolina, some Democrats say there's a newly harsh tone to public debate there. As the temperature of the conservative base has heated up, so too has the pressure on GOP politicians to become more vocal in their criticism of the president—and they've amped up their rhetoric accordingly.
"South Carolina has always had a reputation of being polite and courteous," said former Democratic Gov. Richard Riley, who served as education secretary in the Clinton administration. "In the past, we've always had a very aggressive, conservative group in South Carolina, but to my knowledge it had always been, basically, polite."
Members of both parties have expressed dismay at the kind of attention Wilson's comment brought to South Carolina - a new embarrassment, some said, on top of an already distressing summer, thanks to the sex scandal that extinguished Sanford's rising star. The state GOP's increasingly caustic tone, some Democrats said, was particularly troubling due to South Carolina's troubled racial history.
"The Republican Party in South Carolina is well steeped in the dark arts of racial politics and I think that Obama's election is particularly galling to some in that party," said Phil Noble, head of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group. "There are many in that party for whom simply the idea, much less the reality, of a black president is very painful."
Yet there’s evidence that it's not simply Obama who is the target of fired-up South Carolina conservatives. And their frustration isn't even limited to Democrats. Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from the Greenville-Spartanburg region, is finding out the hard way that his once-reliably conservative voting record doesn’t grant him immunity from the state's hunger for red-meat politicking.
Inglis has jeopardized his political fortunes by bucking the party line recently on issues ranging from climate change to Iraq to the Pledge of Allegiance. In August, when Inglis told a town hall audience to "turn that television off" when popular conservative talk show host Glenn Beck appears on the screen, the crowd erupted in fury. He is currently facing a crowded GOP primary field in 2010.
Haynes, a former chief of staff to Inglis, suggested that the president's chief South Carolina critics may be responding, in part, to the kind of pressure officeholders like Inglis are feeling back home.
"People have always thought of Joe Wilson as a good, party-line, thoughtful guy. These are not guys who have been thought of as bomb-throwers," he said. "They're conservative, all stretch of the imagination, but they're not anybody who has a long history of grabbing headlines, saying and doing outrageous things."
For now, it remains an open question whether this trend toward the sensational will prove to be a recipe for spinning conservative gold or for producing political poison that turns off Democrats, independents and the state's rapidly-growing population of transplants from other, less conservative regions.
"There is an angst out there and there is a climate of fear right now," Dawson said. "That confusion and chaos creates opportunity."
11 September 2009
POLITICO
With two shouted words during the president's speech to Congress Wednesday night, Congressman Joe Wilson cemented South Carolina’s status as the geographic center of opposition to the Obama White House.
Just under nine months into the president's term, the state has emerged as a beachhead for the president's most aggressive conservative critics, a secure launching point for some of the harshest attacks on the administration’s policy initiatives.
Its governor, Mark Sanford, led the charge of Republican governors against the Obama economic stimulus plan and made national headlines by arguing that the administration’s excessive spending could lead to an economic collapse on the scale of Weimar Germany. Sanford, in fact, persisted in rejecting Recovery Act funding until a court ordered him to back down.
When Obama turned his attention to health care, South Carolina’s junior senator, Jim DeMint, touched off a firestorm of criticism by urging conservatives to "break " the new president by defeating reform legislation.
"If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo," DeMint predicted, drawing an acid response from the White House.
Wilson’s notorious “You lie!” outburst in front of a joint session of Congress, was just the latest in the series of salvos, this one coming as Obama claimed his health care reform plan wouldn't offer free care to illegal immigrants.
And there may be more to come: Some South Carolina Republicans say Wilson's remark isn’t exactly out of step with public sentiment in the conservative state.
"If Joe Wilson's mother and father were alive, they'd have taken him to the woodshed and flogged him for bad manners and poor form," said former South Carolina Republican Party Chair Katon Dawson. "But let me tell you what was [said] at the diner today. It was: 'Joe's right.'"
South Carolina didn't always look like such hostile territory for Obama. He never had much hope of winning the state in the general election, but his decisive primary victory there in 2008 helped propel him to the Democratic presidential nomination. While he lost the state in November by nine percentage points to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), his performance nevertheless represented the best Democratic presidential showing in nearly three decades.
Carroll Campbell III, the son of the popular late governor and a Republican exploring his own bid for Congress next year, suggested Wilson's behavior may have resonated with a powerful conservative base frustrated by its minority status.
"I talk to a lot of Republican groups, but most of these individuals are really happy that at least he's showing some backbone," said Campbell, whose father served two terms as governor. "Republicans are desperate for, looking for the new face of politics…There's a sense of satisfaction that at least he can step up and do what he did."
The state has a long history of stridency in national politics, having produced legendary opposition figures from Vice President John C. Calhoun, who helped pave the way for the Civil War, to the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who filibustered historic civil rights legislation. By comparison, DeMint, Sanford and Wilson are a tame bunch.
"South Carolina is a state that's always loved having characters for politicians," said Bruce Haynes, a political consultant who served as an aide to Campbell. "There's been no shortage of South Carolina politicians over the past 50 years who have said some interesting and outrageous things. And they tend to be reelected by large margins."
While the state has also elected loose-cannon Democrats like Sen. Fritz Hollings, whose seat DeMint won when Hollings retired in 2004, it's no accident that its high-profile politicians tend to be Republicans these days or that they don’t feel bound by the constraints felt by their colleagues in more politically competitive states.
"It has traditionally been a pretty deep-red state and I think that Republican politicians feel that there's not a limit to what they can do or say when it comes to Democratic elected officials, particularly the president," said former Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges, who was defeated by Sanford in 2002. "In most places, they play the sport of politics every two or four years. In South Carolina, they play it every year. It is more important than football, to some degree."
Dawson agreed, citing the state's long and tempestuous political history as a mark of pride: "South Carolina's been yelling from the top of our lungs on national politics since this nation was formed and entered the union."
Obama himself is no stranger to the state's hothouse political culture—one of his favorite stories from the campaign trail, which he retold as recently as Monday, took place at a campaign stop in Greenwood, South Carolina. There, a city council member introduced one of the campaign's most famous slogans when she warmed up Obama's crowd with a feisty chant of "Fired up! Ready to go!"
But even if swaggering politicians and impassioned oratory aren't entirely new to South Carolina, some Democrats say there's a newly harsh tone to public debate there. As the temperature of the conservative base has heated up, so too has the pressure on GOP politicians to become more vocal in their criticism of the president—and they've amped up their rhetoric accordingly.
"South Carolina has always had a reputation of being polite and courteous," said former Democratic Gov. Richard Riley, who served as education secretary in the Clinton administration. "In the past, we've always had a very aggressive, conservative group in South Carolina, but to my knowledge it had always been, basically, polite."
Members of both parties have expressed dismay at the kind of attention Wilson's comment brought to South Carolina - a new embarrassment, some said, on top of an already distressing summer, thanks to the sex scandal that extinguished Sanford's rising star. The state GOP's increasingly caustic tone, some Democrats said, was particularly troubling due to South Carolina's troubled racial history.
"The Republican Party in South Carolina is well steeped in the dark arts of racial politics and I think that Obama's election is particularly galling to some in that party," said Phil Noble, head of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group. "There are many in that party for whom simply the idea, much less the reality, of a black president is very painful."
Yet there’s evidence that it's not simply Obama who is the target of fired-up South Carolina conservatives. And their frustration isn't even limited to Democrats. Rep. Bob Inglis, a Republican from the Greenville-Spartanburg region, is finding out the hard way that his once-reliably conservative voting record doesn’t grant him immunity from the state's hunger for red-meat politicking.
Inglis has jeopardized his political fortunes by bucking the party line recently on issues ranging from climate change to Iraq to the Pledge of Allegiance. In August, when Inglis told a town hall audience to "turn that television off" when popular conservative talk show host Glenn Beck appears on the screen, the crowd erupted in fury. He is currently facing a crowded GOP primary field in 2010.
Haynes, a former chief of staff to Inglis, suggested that the president's chief South Carolina critics may be responding, in part, to the kind of pressure officeholders like Inglis are feeling back home.
"People have always thought of Joe Wilson as a good, party-line, thoughtful guy. These are not guys who have been thought of as bomb-throwers," he said. "They're conservative, all stretch of the imagination, but they're not anybody who has a long history of grabbing headlines, saying and doing outrageous things."
For now, it remains an open question whether this trend toward the sensational will prove to be a recipe for spinning conservative gold or for producing political poison that turns off Democrats, independents and the state's rapidly-growing population of transplants from other, less conservative regions.
"There is an angst out there and there is a climate of fear right now," Dawson said. "That confusion and chaos creates opportunity."
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Bookshelves
The following has fancy and artistic bookshelves. Rather impressive!
http://weburbanist.com/2009/09/06/15-more-creative-bookcases-book-storage-solutions/
http://weburbanist.com/2009/09/06/15-more-creative-bookcases-book-storage-solutions/
In Lawmaker’s Outburst, a Rare Breach of Protocol
BY Carl Hulse
9 September 2009
New York Times
WASHINGTON — It was a rare breach of the protocol that governs ritualistic events in the Capitol.
In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”
His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.
Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.
“It is outrageous,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who said it reminded him of the “antics that are being used to disrupt and fog what is going on.”
After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.
“No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Other Democrats said they did not want to dwell on the outburst or allow it to overshadow what they saw as an effective address by the president. But they also said it bolstered their contention that some Republicans were not interested in constructive dialogue, and they noted that Democratic plans specifically barred coverage for illegal immigrants.
Republicans also said the heckling was out of line. “I think we ought to treat the president with respect,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “and anything other than that is not appropriate.”
Mr. Wilson seemed rattled in the wake of his comment, and quickly left the chamber at the end of the speech.
His office later issued an apology, saying: “This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”
Mr. Wilson also phoned the White House and reached Mr. Emanuel, who accepted an apology on behalf of the president.
Critical body language and murmurs of disapproval are typical at presidential addresses and part of the political theater. But members of both parties were trying to recollect such a pointed attack from an individual lawmaker at a presidential address and noted that a similar remark could draw a formal reprimand if delivered at a routine session of the House.
When President Clinton addressed Congress in 1993 to push his health care plan, “both sides of the aisle received the President warmly,” according to a report in The New York Times at the time.
“But when he began talking about raising taxes on tobacco to pay for the plan, or the need to cut Medicare and Medicaid, many on the Republican side of the aisle began snickering, shaking their heads skeptically and making faces at each other,” the article said.
9 September 2009
New York Times
WASHINGTON — It was a rare breach of the protocol that governs ritualistic events in the Capitol.
In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”
His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.
Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.
“It is outrageous,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who said it reminded him of the “antics that are being used to disrupt and fog what is going on.”
After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.
“No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Other Democrats said they did not want to dwell on the outburst or allow it to overshadow what they saw as an effective address by the president. But they also said it bolstered their contention that some Republicans were not interested in constructive dialogue, and they noted that Democratic plans specifically barred coverage for illegal immigrants.
Republicans also said the heckling was out of line. “I think we ought to treat the president with respect,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “and anything other than that is not appropriate.”
Mr. Wilson seemed rattled in the wake of his comment, and quickly left the chamber at the end of the speech.
His office later issued an apology, saying: “This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”
Mr. Wilson also phoned the White House and reached Mr. Emanuel, who accepted an apology on behalf of the president.
Critical body language and murmurs of disapproval are typical at presidential addresses and part of the political theater. But members of both parties were trying to recollect such a pointed attack from an individual lawmaker at a presidential address and noted that a similar remark could draw a formal reprimand if delivered at a routine session of the House.
When President Clinton addressed Congress in 1993 to push his health care plan, “both sides of the aisle received the President warmly,” according to a report in The New York Times at the time.
“But when he began talking about raising taxes on tobacco to pay for the plan, or the need to cut Medicare and Medicaid, many on the Republican side of the aisle began snickering, shaking their heads skeptically and making faces at each other,” the article said.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
One Last Comment
We watch the local news and are amazed at what happened in some of our schools regarding the President's speech. How utterly silly and stupid of parents and school officials who did not show the speech and then the parents who didn't wish for their kids to hear the President tell them to study hard, stay in school, and take personal responsibility for their lives. This is advancing a "socialist agenda?" Sure, and I'm the King of England. Unbelievable!But then we all know it's all race-based---pure race hatred. If George W. Bush had delivered the same speech, these same people would be cheering.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Another Take on Obama's School Speech
Here is another take on Obama's upcoming speech to the students, which exposes his detractors as the real propagandists. The response by the Right is silly and simply STUPID (like everything else about these people).
Barack Obama's Education Speech: The Not-At-All Socialist Indoctrination
Posted by Michael Scherer Monday, September 7, 2009 at 12:56 pm
31 Comments • Trackback (4) • Related Topics: barack obamasarah palin, glenn beck, newt gingrich, socialism
At this point, most of the noise about Barack Obama wanting to indoctrinate school children in a back-to-school speech has mostly faded from view. Newt Gingrich has repudiated it. Historians (and White House aides) have pointed out that past Republican presidents--George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan--delivered the same sorts of messages. Some of those Republican leaders who made a stink over the President's plan--like Florida GOP chair Jim Greer--are getting a Labor Day grilling from their local press.
But now that the speech has been released--see the full text here--there is a greater irony at play. Rather than any lefty, neo-socialist, communitarian brainwashing, President Obama's speech to your kids reads like a paean to individual striving and free market capitalism, the sort of thing that Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater might have signed onto. At root, Obama's message is one of individual responsibility, a disquisition on the freedom of American youth to fail or succeed on their own tenacity and merits:
[N]o matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it. . . .
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home – that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying. . . .
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard.
True enough, at a couple of points the President mentions service to country--a principle that some in the Talk Radio/Fox News orbit now associate with a clandestine radical Marxist revolution. But the message about serving country is hidden deep beneath another one: Each child has an individual responsibility to succeed, to accomplish something, even to make lots of money, by working hard at school. Not quite Vladamir Lenin. More like Glenn Beck, from this 2008 interview with then Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
BECK: It's time for some personal responsibility. It is time for people to take on the responsibility that they have for themselves. Why don't we talk about personal responsibility anymore? Why don't we reach out to the American people and say, "Hey, government is not the answer. Nine out of ten times government's the problem."
GOVERNOR PALIN: I know. Let us preach, reaching people when they know there is a candidate willing to talk about this.
Barack Obama's Education Speech: The Not-At-All Socialist Indoctrination
Posted by Michael Scherer Monday, September 7, 2009 at 12:56 pm
31 Comments • Trackback (4) • Related Topics: barack obamasarah palin, glenn beck, newt gingrich, socialism
At this point, most of the noise about Barack Obama wanting to indoctrinate school children in a back-to-school speech has mostly faded from view. Newt Gingrich has repudiated it. Historians (and White House aides) have pointed out that past Republican presidents--George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan--delivered the same sorts of messages. Some of those Republican leaders who made a stink over the President's plan--like Florida GOP chair Jim Greer--are getting a Labor Day grilling from their local press.
But now that the speech has been released--see the full text here--there is a greater irony at play. Rather than any lefty, neo-socialist, communitarian brainwashing, President Obama's speech to your kids reads like a paean to individual striving and free market capitalism, the sort of thing that Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater might have signed onto. At root, Obama's message is one of individual responsibility, a disquisition on the freedom of American youth to fail or succeed on their own tenacity and merits:
[N]o matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to work for it and train for it and learn for it. . . .
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you've got going on at home – that's no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That's no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That's no excuse for not trying. . . .
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you're not going to be any of those things. But the truth is, being successful is hard.
True enough, at a couple of points the President mentions service to country--a principle that some in the Talk Radio/Fox News orbit now associate with a clandestine radical Marxist revolution. But the message about serving country is hidden deep beneath another one: Each child has an individual responsibility to succeed, to accomplish something, even to make lots of money, by working hard at school. Not quite Vladamir Lenin. More like Glenn Beck, from this 2008 interview with then Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
BECK: It's time for some personal responsibility. It is time for people to take on the responsibility that they have for themselves. Why don't we talk about personal responsibility anymore? Why don't we reach out to the American people and say, "Hey, government is not the answer. Nine out of ten times government's the problem."
GOVERNOR PALIN: I know. Let us preach, reaching people when they know there is a candidate willing to talk about this.
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