One of the Bush administration's talking points on the occupation of Iraq is to compare this effort with the rebuilding of Japan and Germany in the years following World War II. I'm not sure this is a comparison they really want to be making, since it sets a very high standard for the eventual outcome of the occupation — Germany and Japan became prosperous, democratic allies of the U.S. The comparison also highlights the excessive cost of the Iraqi occupation,... Read more
Molly Ivins can't keep up, can she? It's not easy being an occasional columnist and trying to stay abreast of all the hypocrisy, deception, ineptitude, embarrassments, treasonous leaks and flagrant corruptions of the ruling GOP. Even a daily column wouldn't allow the current crop of outrages the full space and attention they deserve. Sometimes, the best a columnist can do to keep pace is simply to list a dozen or so instances of this scandalous behavior — which is what... Read more
Via Buzzflash, I find this article from Catherine Belton of The Moscow Times: President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power — potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. … A move by Russia, as the world's second largest oil exporter, to trade oil in euros, could provoke a chain... Read more
On a related note to the post below, another pet peeve of mine is references to "the family" as an abstract — as in "we must strengthen the family." This is a recipe for bad thinking and worse policy. There is no "the family." There are only families. Policy, like love, cannot have an abstract as its object. Whenever you hear a politician or pundit talking about "the family," substitute "American families" and see whether the statement makes any sense... Read more
So, it's National Marriage Protection Week. What does that mean? Apparently not much. At least not anything that might make an actual difference in terms of actually protecting actual marriages. It doesn't mean special discounts from babysitters, florists, romantic restaurants and marriage counselors. (If I were designing a week to bolster marriages I would insist, to paraphrase Rupert Everett, "By God, there should be dancing!") But no, NMPW is merely a political bone for social conservatives and the religious right.... Read more
In light of the discussions below of civlity vs. incivility and justice vs. jealousy, the following seemed appropriate. This aggressively impolite rant is from St. John Chrysostom (347 – 407), from his ninth homily on 1 Corinthians. Here Chrysostom turns his wrath on the "covetous and rapacious" wealthy man who does not do all he can to help the needy. It's a primal scream of a sermon that would doubtless today earn him criticism — without irony — for preaching... Read more
"The challenges we face today cannot be met with timid actions or bitter words; our challenges will be overcome with optimism and resolve and confidence in the ideals of America." — President George W. Bush, Oct. 10, 2003 "Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." — President Vaclav Havel The White House is currently... Read more
… listen:there's a hell of a good universe next door;let's go edward estlin cummings was born 99 years ago today. sadly, cummings died in 1962, before the advent of desktop publishing — which he likely would have put to better use than anyone before or since. my undergrad lit thesis was on cummings and yeats. we had to do yeats&someone because our seminar prof was a yeats obsessive and he wasn't thrilled that i considered e.e. worthy of mentioning in... Read more
In comments to the post below, the apocryphally named "Jonathan Maccabee" asks: "Where in anyone's Scripture does it say to make people suffer because they are comfortable? … this sounds like warmed-over Marxism to me" He rails against "[taking] a comfortable person down, appealing to jealousy." And "to associate an insistence on civility with upper-class bigotry" is, he says, a kind of demagoguery. Appeals to justice are not the same as appeals to jealousy. That's not a minor distinction. To... Read more
There's an old principle for preachers, adopted also by some journalists, that says fidelity to the truth calls us to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." The comfortable take offense whenever anyone follows this advice. They know better than to claim this treatment is unfair — fairness and justice are not concepts they're trying to promote — so they end up sniffing that it just seems rude. "Civility" becomes the last bastion of those who cannot appeal to justice... Read more
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