Cwhig

Why are the Israeli National Police badge and the New Orleans Police badge so much alike?

2011-12-28T09:21:00.002-05:00

Celebrate Moldova!

2011-12-08T23:07:00.001-05:00

Limba noastră-i o comoară

All Saints Church in Armenian Cemetery in the capital, Chisinau.

În adîncuri înfundată

Un şirag de piatră rară

Pe moşie revărsată.

Limba noastră-i foc ce arde

Într-un neam, ce fără veste

S-a trezit din somn de moarte

Ca viteazul din poveste.

These students have grown up and become Republican primary voters.

2011-12-05T10:38:00.000-05:00

The M Word

2011-11-11T08:33:00.000-05:00

The prosecutor who tried to bring charges against Sandusky disappears, with his laptop--hard drive removed--found in the river? Why isn't this the biggest scandal?

Revealed: Prosecutor who failed to nail Penn State coach for 'sex abuse' vanished in 2005 and was declared 'legally dead' this year

-Body of District Attorney Ray Gricar was never found but car abandoned and laptop dragged from river
-Gricar had a 'bitter taste in his mouth' about Penn State program

All-time favorite Demotivators poster: spot on.

2011-11-06T22:13:00.000-05:00

Great biography panel at the Mass. Historical Society

2011-11-05T21:02:00.000-04:00

Carol Bundy chaired a terrific panel of Civil War-era biographers at the MHS on Thursday night: Dean Grozzens on Theodore Parker, Tony Horwitz on John Brown, and Michael Burlingame on Lincoln. The best quip of the night was Burlingame: "I am a psychohistorian." <pause> "That's one word."

Who are the wingnuts backing?

2011-11-01T23:35:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while, when I have a powerful urge to know what the extreme right is thinking, I turn to my two "go-to" websites, RedState (far right) and FreeRepublic (unhinged right). Who, I wondered, could they be supporting in the Republican presidential primary? With a great deal of obvious resignation, the RedStaters seem on the whole to be for Perry (with the occasional pitiable Fred Thompson supporter(!)). More surprising, the Freepers seem largely to be Cain backers, and pretty happy about the choice. I guess they see it as vindication of their long, loud assertions that they are not racists. Well, good.

Update: The sexual harrassment accusations against Cain do not seem to have damaged his poll numbers with Republicans one bit.

Rick Perry in college--WFT?

2011-11-01T12:37:00.002-04:00

Check out the heel chains.

Combined with Rick's indescribable Manchester speech of Friday, I'd say the Perry campaign is officially golden brown and lightly buttered.

Gordis on Shalit's return: "A Rediscovered Abundance of Goodness"

2011-10-29T14:00:00.000-04:00

A Rediscovered Abundance of Goodness

A Jerusalem Post Column

October 28, 2011

We all felt it.

It was innocent, pure and thoroughly decent.

We were witness that day to an entire country

believing in something again.

Mr. Prime Minister,

Before the Shalit deal fades entirely from view, many of us are hoping that you have noticed what you unwittingly unleashed. I don't mean the next wave of terror or the terrible decisions that Israel must make before the next kidnapping. We knew about those even before last week. But last Tuesday, all of us - those opposed as well as those in favor (and there were persuasive arguments on both sides) - rediscovered something magnificent about this country. It would be tragic if we returned to business as usual without pausing to take note.

Read the rest of this essay here.

Ornithorhynchus anatinus

2011-10-28T21:56:00.001-04:00

"The bizarre appearance of this egg-laying, venomous, duck-billed, beaver-tailed, otter-footed mammal baffled European naturalists when they first encountered it, with some considering it an elaborate fraud." I still don't believe in them. I mean, come on.

Click on the link to see one swim.

Celebrate Estonia

2011-10-22T21:04:00.002-04:00

From Wikipedia (I know, I know, but it's a place to start):

Estonia ⁱ/ɨsˈtoʊniə/ (Estonian: Eesti), officially the Republic of Estonia (Estonian: Eesti Vabariik), is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia (343 km), and to the east by the Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation(338.6 km).^[8] Across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia covers 45,227 km² (17,462 sq mi), and is influenced by atemperate seasonal climate. The Estonians are a Finnic people, and the official language, Estonian, is closely related to Finnish.

Estonia is a democratic parliamentary republic and is divided into 15 counties. The capital and largest city is Tallinn. With a population of 1.34 million, Estonia is one of the least-populous members of the European Union, Eurozone and NATO. Today, Estonia has the highest GDP per person among former Soviet republics.^[9] Estonia is listed as a "High-Income Economy" by the World Bank, as an "advanced economy" by the International Monetary Fund and the country is an OECD member. The United Nations lists Estonia as a developed country with a Human Development Index of "Very High".^[5] The country is also ranked highly for press freedom, economic freedom,democracy and political freedom and education.

Like peace and quiet? Hate violence? Thank government.

2011-10-11T13:18:00.000-04:00

Steven Pinker's new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined has a one-two interpretive punch. First, he demonstrates that we are probably living in the least-violent period of human history. Second, the most important cause of this decline is the "pacifying force" of the modern nation-state, with its "monopoly on the use of force." That makes it particularly alarming that a cluster of forces, from the Tea Party to the billionaires' clubs (Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity) to the NRA and its fellow travelers, are working so assiduously to cripple or kill government--to "reduce it to the size where [they] can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub," as Grover Norquist to piquantly put it.

More on Pinker here (Wall Street Journal) and here (TED talk)..

Race Test

2011-10-03T09:35:00.000-04:00

For those of you who believe that race exists, a test: Can a single couple--one man and one woman--give birth to children of different races?

Who knew? Ruhnu.

2011-10-03T08:00:00.002-04:00

Not a Martian from War of the Worlds; the lighthouse designed by Gustav Eiffel on the Estonian island of Ruhnu.

Letts Celebrate

2011-10-01T17:21:00.000-04:00

We Are the 99%

2011-09-20T11:43:00.000-04:00

Did you notice there's an occupation of Wall Street going on? Russia Today calls it the American response to Arab Spring.

Political soulmates: The Afghan Whigs

2011-09-15T15:44:00.001-04:00

Founded by Greg Dulli. Previous band: The Black Republicans. Reverse evolution from Whigs to Republicans, but definitely on my wavelength. 1965 is a great album.

Mapping connections between disciplines

2011-09-15T12:01:00.000-04:00

I love this kind of research.

For once in his life, Beck is right.

2011-09-13T22:56:00.000-04:00

“How many warnings do you think you’re going to get, and how many warnings do you deserve? This hurricane that is coming thorough the East Coast, for anyone who’s in the East Coast and has been listening to me say ‘Food storage!’ ‘Be prepared!’ ‘Be somebody that can help others,’ you’ve heard me say this for years. People have made fun of me. That’s fine, I don’t care. I’ve been telling you, ‘Don’t be in a panic situation.’ If you’ve waited, this hurricane is a blessing. It is a blessing. It is God reminding you — as was the earthquake last week — it’s God reminding you you’re not in control. Things can happen. Be prepared and be someone who can help others so when disaster strikes, God forbid, you’re not panicking.” --Glenn Beck

It's unfortunate that the one time Beck gets something right, the media goes right ahead and ridicules him for it anyway.

Listening to Earthquakes

2011-09-13T22:52:00.000-04:00

Note: This piece was written before the arrival of Hurricane Irene, and I haven't taken the trouble to update it. The reader can easily interpolate the appropriate additional warnings and messages.

In 1638, the fledgling colony of Plymouth was struck by “a great & fearfull earthquake." To the chastened Pilgrims, shaken but unharmed, the quake sent a powerful message: it echoed the discord within the community, “as if the Lord would herby shew the signes of his displeasure, in their shaking a peeces & removals one from an other,” in the words of its governor, William Bradford.

In 1727, an even greater earthquake shook the eastern seaboard, toppling scores of houses but again, as in 1638, claiming no lives. The Rev. Cotton Mather interpreted the event as a decisive wakeup call from God: “In the Works, wherein the glorious GOD goes out of the Ordinary Road,…His Voice becomes very Notable; and most inexcusable are they who Regard not the Works of the Lord…”

It does not require a Cotton Mather to interpret the lessons of Tuesday’s earthquake. For me, the most crucial of them relate to the potential man-made disasters we have contrived for ourselves in the form of nuclear power.

Last spring’s earthquake and tsunami in Japan made plain the vulnerability of nuclear reactors, and reminded us what nuclear power is: using toxic and explosive radioactive material to boil water to turn a turbine that powers a generator which produces electricity, creating as a by-product even more deadly, often weapons-grade, radioactive waste that will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

The ongoing tragedy of the Fukushima disaster—which as I write could still produce a global radiological catastrophe—demonstrated the inherent peril of these devices. But Japan’s distance from us, and its location in one of the most earthquake-prone regions on earth, may have lulled Americans into the sense that “it can’t happen here.”

If so, the Virginia earthquake should have laid that fantasy to rest. Virginia is in the middle of a tectonic plate, not at the unstable edge. The state has only once in recorded history, over a century ago, experienced a quake of such magnitude. Unlike California’s Diablo Canyon reactor, built directly on a geological fault, Mineral, Virginia’s North Anna construction site, just 11 miles from the epicenter, had a clean seismic bill of health—until last August, when researchers for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, rated the plant the the seventh most likely to sustain core damage from an earthquake,

The North Anna complex is only 82 miles from Washington, well within the range of a radioactive plume in the event of a meltdown. But that danger pales beside the number one most threatened: Buchanan, New York’s Indian Point Plant, a mere 25 miles from New York City. The NRC rates the likelihood of a core meltdown from an earthquake at Indian Point as one in 10,000.

By comparison, as MSNBC’s Bill Dedman observes, one’s chance of winning $10,000 in a multistate Powerball lottery is one in 723,145.[1]

The most powerful earthquake ever to hit the eastern United States (magnitude 7.7 on the Richter scale) occurred 200 years ago centered on New Madrid, MO. It affected 50,000 square miles, caused the Mississippi to run backwards for a time, and made church bells ring in Boston. In 1811, the affected region was only sparsely settled; today, it contains more than 15 million people, and fifteen nuclear power plants. Last May, the federal government staged an exercise designed to model the effects of a New Madrid-scale quake today. The results remain classified. But Paul Stockton, the deputy defense secretary in charge of homeland security, described the impact of such a quake as “so much bigger than anything we’ve faced—way beyond Hurricane Katrina.”

If they were alive today, William Bradford and Cotton Mather would view the Virginia earthquake, coming on the heels of Fukushima, as the clearest possible divine warning to America, and would consider it blasphemous folly for us to disregard it: “Indeed there is this Argument for hearkening to the Voice of our GOD, that if we do it not, we provoke Him to Render His Rebukes in Flames of Fire unto us.”

Oh, and the plant the NRC ranked as the second most threatened by earthquakes? The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant in Plymouth. One can only imagine what the Pilgrim Fathers would think about that.

[1] Bill Dedman, “What are the odds? US nuke plants ranked by quake risk,” MSNBC.com website, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42103936/, Mar. 27, 2011 (accessed August 24, 2011).

The Slav Trade

2011-08-16T15:47:00.001-04:00

Of this slave trade, which flourished down to 1783, when the Crimea was finally conquered and annexed to Russia, we have a graphic account by an eyewitness, a Lithuanian traveller of the sixteenth century. "Ships from Asia," he says, "bring arms, clothes, and horses to the Crimean Tartars, and start on the homeward voyage laden with slaves. It is for this kind of merchandise alone that the Crimean markets are remarkable.
Slaves may be always had for sale as a pledge or as a present, and every one rich enough to have a horse deals in them. If a man wishes to buy clothes, arms, or horses, and does not happen to have at the moment any slaves, he takes on credit the articles required, and makes a formal promise to deliver at a given term a certain number of people of our blood—being convinced that he can get by that time the requisite number. And these promises are always accurately fulfilled, as if those who made them had always a supply of our people in their courtyards. A Jewish money-changer, sitting at the gate of Tauris and seeing constantly the countless multitude of our countrymen led in as captives, asked us whether there still remained any people in our land, and whence came such a multitude of them. The stronger of these captives, branded on the forehead and the cheeks and manacled or fettered, are tortured by severe labour all day, and are shut up in dark cells at night. They are kept alive by small quantities of food, composed chiefly of the flesh of animals that have died—putrid, covered with maggots, disgusting even to dogs. Women, who are more tender, are treated in a different fashion; some of them who can sing and play are employed to amuse the guests at festivals. When the slaves are led out for sale they walk to the market-place in single file, like storks on the wing, in whole dozens, chained together by the neck, and are there sold by auction. The auctioneer shouts loudly that they are 'the newest arrivals, simple, and not cunning, lately captured, from the people of the kingdom (Poland), and not from Muscovy;' for the Muscovite race, being crafty and deceitful, does not bring a good price. This kind of merchandise is appraised with great accuracy in the Crimea, and is bought by foreign merchants at a high price, in order to be sold at a still higher rate to blacker nations, such as Saracens, Persians, Indians, Arabs, Syrians, and Assyrians. When a purchase is made the teeth are examined, to see that they are neither few nor discoloured. At the same time the more hidden parts of the body are carefully inspected, and if a mole, excrescence, wound, or other latent defect is discovered, the bargain is rescinded. But notwithstanding these investigations the cunning slave-dealers and brokers succeed in cheating the buyers; for when they have valuable boys and girls, they do not at once produce them, but first fatten them, clothe them in silk, and put powder and rouge on their cheeks, so as to sell them at a better price. Sometimes beautiful and perfect maidens of our nation bring their weight in gold. This takes place in all the towns of the peninsula, but especially in Kaffa."

From Russia, vol. 2 (1877), by Sir Donald McKenzie Wallace, p. 73.

Giverny notecards - my picture from Monet's water garden

2011-06-19T15:38:00.000-04:00

I love turning my photos into notecards. It's a drag that Shutterfly doesn't let you put a photo credit on the back, though --might as well get them pre-printed from the store.

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Conservative Historians

2011-06-09T13:03:00.000-04:00

One thing I like about right-wing historians of the Ashbrook Institute/Claremont/Naval War College variety is that they take ideas seriously. Fashionably-trained historians avidly collect ideas like trading cards or shiny objects in a jackdaw’s nest; they are excited by their novelty or rarity but basically unconcerned about their content or, God forbid, their "truth." That is someone else's department, and it's not a department they ever plan to visit. Conservative historians, on the contrary, are as excited about the big ideas--human nature, the best form of government, the balance of liberty and order, and so on—as bright eighth graders, and that’s a compliment. It does tend to make their solutions to current problems simplistic and dogmatic; not that the up-to-date solutions are proving any more successful. I wonder, as well, whether these thinking conservatives’ dogmatism does not result in part from the unwillingness, or inability, of the orthodox historical establishment to engage with them seriously on an equal level.

What makes me think about this subject is a book I just borrowed from the UConn library called Enlightened Republicanism: A Study in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia. It's by David Tucker, whose bio describes him as "an associate professor in the Department of Defense Analysis and codirector of the Center on Terrorism and Irregular Warfare at the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California." His other books are on U.S. special ops forces and confronting unconventional warfare. His book on Notes is one of the clearest, most insightful, and least tendentious analyses of the subject I have read. It has the drawback (not rare in such studies, I'm afraid) of having virtually nothing to say about Jefferson's racist and irrational pronouncements in Query 14; but it is nonetheless one of the most useful works I have consulted in writing my article on Jefferson.

Bloody Ban

2011-03-28T14:04:00.000-04:00

Banastre Tarleton, the notorious British liutenant-colonel, was described as having a face as beautiful as a woman's. Based on Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait, I'd have to say that the woman is Glenda Jackson.

Where's Nali?

2011-03-09T18:37:00.002-05:00

Nali Forbes

Lost cat. Nali is about three years old, medium-sized, cinnamon-colored, affectionate but skittish and kind of spacy. She makes a tiny little mewing sound when upset. Purrs loudly when comfortable. Missing since Tuesday morning. She lives at 2055 Chapel Street, corner of Alden Ave. Reward for return!

Providence vs. Progress

2010-12-20T15:09:00.000-05:00

I recently read an article in the Times about Google's new Ngram Viewer, which allows you to graph the frequency of use of words in the books (about 5.2 million) that Google has scanned. I ran a comparison of the words "Providence" and "Progress," as seen in print between 1600 and 2008, and got this:

Pretty striking the way "progress" takes off around 1780 and goes through the roof in the early 19th century, while "providence" droops. What are we to make of this?

The 3/5ths Clause: The Power of Irrationality

2010-12-17T15:12:00.000-05:00

I have long believed that the most powerful antislavery clause in the Constitution is the three/fifths clause, which designates slaves as constituting three-fifths of a person for purposes of congressional representation. Why? Because of its indefensibility and irrationality. If the Northerners had won, and slaves were not counted for purposes of representation, the South probably would not have signed the document. If the Southerners had won, and slaves were counted as 5/5, it would have been distasteful to the Northerners, but they would have swallowed it, and the controversy would be over (and Southern power substantially increased). But by ordaining this cockamamie "Federal Ratio," every time a slave state came up for admission to the Union, the issue of slave representation blew up again and ripped off the scab. It kept the fact of the political injustice of slavery alive, even at times when the moral injustice was being ignored.

Surely the framers could not have intended this effect, right? Well, it's possible. As Jan Lewis observes in her essay "The Three-Fifths Clause and the Origins of Sectionalism (in Finkelman and Kennon, Congress and the Emergence of Sectionalism), it was James Wilson of Pennsylvania who proposed the Federal Ratio. And he was one of the most forceful opponents of slavery in the Convention.

Munchkinland Before Dorothy

2010-12-16T14:44:00.000-05:00

When Dorothy lands in Munchkinland, she is greeted by a highly organized society with a mayor, lawyers, representatives of cultural and social organizations, and a well-drilled, uniformed military. There are also spies concealed in the underbrush—hidden figures equipped with elaborately-constructed camouflage (hats with flowers, etc.). Ominously, a coroner already has an elaborately-calligraphed death certificate made out and ready to sign. Most importantly, there is no evidence that the Munchkins suffered any kind of oppression under the rule of the Wicked Witch, much less engaged in any resistance. Where were they during the oppressive reign of the Witch of the East? It seems powerfully evident that the Munchkins were collaborators on a par with the Austrians in World War II.

Munchkin Militia, 1939

Romania's Fascist Iron Guard ("Greenshirts"), 1940

For President, 1860: Bedford Brown??

2010-06-15T16:18:00.000-04:00

Former president Martin Van Buren was displeased with the
choices for presidential candidate available to the Democrats
in 1860. He had his own dark horse in mind: Senator
Bedford Brown of North Carolina. If you haven't heard of him
before, don't feel too bad. Trust me, you are not alone.

Martin Van Buren to Theodore Miller.
June 11, 1860.

Lindenwald,

My dear Mr. Miller

Did you make the acquaintance of
Bedford Brown of N. Carolina, at Charleston? If you
did not let me advise you to do so without fail at Balti-
more. He is without exception one of the best and
truest specimens of the old Republican school now left
in the country, an old and constant friend of Genl Jack-
son and my own, one on whom as much as any other
man, we relied for support of our respective administra-
tions in the Senate of the U. States. lie has been Gov
of his State, and represented it for two terms in the j
Senate;* I never knew him to be a candidate for office |
nor the time when we had any reason to believe that he
would accept one or we would have been most happy •
to offer it to him. I at least would think the country j
fortunate to get such a man for the office of President ;
or Vice President. Mr. Wright loved him as a brother j
and thought as much of his talents and his unsurpassed
integrity as I have always done.
Please say to him that the responsibility of his not
receiving a reply to his letter to my son John rests with
me and the money he shall have in good time. I however
caused it to be (read) to Messrs. (Aager) and company
by Smith and them to understand the character of its
writer. Present me kindly to him and also Mr. Ed-
wards of the same State if he is with you. Accept my
best wishes for a safe deliverance and believe me as ever

Your friend

M. Van Buren.

Theodore Miller Esq.
Historical Society of Trinity College, An Annual Publication of Historical Papers (Durham, N.C., 1900), 20-21.
,

Me--from Connecticut? Um...

2010-05-07T13:19:00.002-04:00

UPDATE: Lieberman's "statement" on the Terrorist Expatriation Act just digs deeper.

Once again, the junior senator from Connecticut inflicts acute embarrassment on his constituents. Not only does David Frum oppose his torpedo-the-Constitution bill (not really a surprise), another famous discredit to the Constitution State (Glenn Beck did local radio in New Haven) actually stands up for the Constitution, and has this to say about Rachel Maddow's take on Joe Lieberman: "She's right."

Something there is that doesn't love a surplus

2009-10-28T22:44:00.000-04:00

The following essay was written a few months into the George W. Bush administration. I emailed it to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and got a call from the editor about ten minutes later. "Are you sure the country has run a deficit for thirty years?" he asked. "I guess you're right. Well, I guess we have to run this, then."

Thereafter, silence. I heard nothing back from the Times, and when I called to find out what the problem was, the editor would not take my calls. Curious.

The Real Danger of a Budget Surplus

By Robert P. Forbes

Why does President Bush want to knock the federal budget into the red? It's a familiar claim these days that Bush developed his $1.6 trillion tax cut plan to fend off a primary challenge from Steve Forbes, and continues to defend it now have a stubborn consistency. Such a view overlooks the three-year commitment of conservative Republicans to preventing the accumulation of the budget surplus. The reasons for the seemingly irrational policy is not hard to find if one looks to earlier American history.

The federal surplus, as 19th century slaveholders knew and feared, carries with it the potential for social transformation on a huge scale. James Madison suggested that the government emancipate the slaves and relocate them to Africa. The cost he projected as a staggering $600 million; but "happily," he wrote, the expense was not a problem because the nation's greatest resource, its public lands, were worth three times that amount. Nine northern states called for just this policy in 1825.

John Quincy Adams, the most strongly nationalist president between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, urged that the United States apply the tremendous power it derived from its liberty to "ends of beneficence"--toward building the nation's infrastructure, chartering a national university, promoting scientific expeditions, and responsibly managing the country's natural resources. For his proposal, Adams incurred the wrath of reactionary Southerners and their Northern allies, who believed that national spending constituted a deadly threat to the slaveholding status quo.

Adams was replaced by Andrew Jackson, a staunch friend of slavery. But Jackson's policy of fiscal restraint, which first endeared him to slaveholders, later terrified them as the federal debt. An ally of South Carolina senator John C. Calhoun described the imminent extinction of the debt as "a crisis in the history of nations" that would shatter Jackson's Democratic Party, because the surplus would invite steps to end slavery. Many anti-tariff South Carolina "nullifiers" explicitly declared that it was not federal power that they most feared, but the federal revenues that an increased tax on imports would generate and that would serve as a tempting catalyst to social change. For this reason, most Southern leaders supported giving away the public lands to settlers at virtually no cost.

Quietly and without fanfare, the Clinton administration reversed 30 years of deficit spending and put the government in the black. One would think that this would be the ideal time to resume John Quincy Adams's conversation about the proper means of applying American power toward "ends of beneficence." Some commentators have begun this discussion, moving beyond the usual formulas of paying down the debt and shoring up Medicaid and Social Security. Groups like the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities have promoted such uses as extending health coverage to the uninsured, reducing poverty, and investing in education, research, and the nation’s infrastructure as appropriate ends for employing the surplus.

These ideas are unlikely to receive a serious hearing, however. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, long an opponent of large tax cuts, cast a pall over spending for the common good by arguing that large surpluses "distort the structure of private economic growth." Spending is bad, he asserted, because it leads to deficits. Yet Greenspan made no objection to $1 trillion missile defense system that seems to have no feasible mission other than shooting down the nation's growing budget surplus. Missing entirely from Greenspan's testimony was any discussion of identifying national priorities or addressing national needs.

What would an America look like that had the physical means to provide such benefits as health care, decent housing, and a first-rate public education to all of its citizens? For the first time in our nation's history, we are on the cusp of finding out. But as ever in the past, powerful forces are fighting to ensure that scarcity prevails.

Public Option

2009-09-23T11:38:00.000-04:00

That's right, folks. You can get 60 votes, with a public option, if you include a trigger.

Olympia Snowe is for it:

SCHIEFFER: You first broached this idea of the so-called trigger option, and that is setting a deadline for these private insurance companies to come up with plans that would cover everyone who needed health care, and then if they didn't get that, then consider some sort of a public option. Do you still feel that way?

SNOWE: Yes, I do. I think it is a possibility. You know, bridging the gap at some point in this process as we move forward. And, in fact, I recommended it to the president months ago, even before health care was at the forefront in Congress, because that started (ph) as a way of assuring coverage, not instituting a public option, but making sure that people have access to choices of affordable coverage if the health insurance industry doesn't perform under a newly restructured market, similar to what we did in the prescription drug benefit, which actually -- it worked. There were so many choices, we never triggered the fallback, in fact.

David Sirota said on Rachel Maddow that a "trigger" is a euphemism for killing the public option. As evidence, he cited the "trigger" in the Medicare Part D bill that would have permitted purchasing drugs from Canada if the price here were not controlled.

A big difference, of course, is that during the Bush administration the fix was obviously in. Not this time! Congress can write a truly effective trigger if it wants to. And if it does, it can get to 60.

Nobody likes delay or uncertainty. But this can work.

Dick is a "big member," says Boehner

2009-05-20T21:50:00.002-04:00

"John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, the House and Senate minority leaders, both expressed support for Cheney's attacks on President Obama during Sunday show appearances this weekend.

"'It doesn't hurt us, it helps us,' Boehner told CNN's 'State of the Union.' Boehner also said Cheney is a 'big member in our party.'"

No, not written by Stephen Colbert.

Not One Cent for Tribute

2009-04-09T09:41:00.003-04:00

I'm apparently not the only one who believes that early United States history provides an urgent lesson for the current recrudescence of piracy in the global shipping lanes. I don't see eye to eye with Both Hands on most issues, I suspect, but I like his take on piracy.

instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs

2009-02-05T10:28:00.002-05:00

I notice that Joe Lieberman gives his party designation as "ID-CT." The dictionary defines "id" thus:

"In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs."

That's pretty good. On the other hand, it is very hard to think of Joe in any terms other than EGO.

The test

2008-12-28T11:13:00.003-05:00

"Mark my words. Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. As a student of history and having served with seven presidents, I guarantee you it's gonna happen. I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you, not financially to help him, we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

Who knew that the test would be launched by Israel?

The Purpose-Driven Pastor Selection

2008-12-18T23:23:00.005-05:00

Every news source I regularly read or watch has pronounced Obama's choice of Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation as his first real mistake. Gavin Newsom is disappointed; some supporters are going to boycott the inauguration.

Let's take a breath. Obama does not do anything reflexively. He has carefully thought out these first few months. In his economic and defense picks, it looks very much as if he is intent on covering his flank for dramatic initiatives, assigning some of the most dangerous critics of his policies the task of implementing them. It's a pretty neat trick.

With the Warren choice, he has either comitted a grievous offense against several core groups of his supporters, particulalry gays and lesbians--or he has performed another high-stakes flanking maneuver. Thus, here is my prediction: Just as Clinton's first major initiative was the botched, and later compromised, executive order to end discrimination against gays in the military, Obama will do the same--except this time, he will have the blessing of key segments of the evangelical community (Warren and the other younger, less-ideological leaders), as well as military brass who will agree that we can no longer afford the luxury of turning away competent, courageous would-be members of the armed services on the basis of sexual orientation.

Of course, I could be wrong. In that case, I stand corrected.

RNC still in self-immolation mode

2008-12-10T02:45:00.005-05:00

Twelve more months of W? Is this calendar part of the RNC's "comeback plan"?

A more nuanced look at the American Colonization Society

2008-12-09T15:26:00.005-05:00

A student cited this link to an essay by Doug Egerton and Judith Mulcahey. The key passage:

"Despite the widespread opposition to the ACS in northern cities, the group was never the planter-controlled organization that Walker and its abolitionist critics claimed it to be, and assertions by modern scholars that proslavery activists endorsed the society in the hope of removing dangerous free blacks like Vesey are largely without foundation. Admittedly, in the border South, proslavery politicians such as President John Tyler and Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur hoped to use the organization to rid their state of free blacks, whom they believed inspired perilous dreams of liberty in those yet enslaved. But despite the racist tone of their public rhetoric, many white colonizationists privately harbored progressive views regarding black capabilities. Society spokespersons insisted that southern poverty was not the result of alleged African American incompetence, but rather that an economic institution based on unwaged labor deprived blacks of both the incentives and the education that made northern free wage workers so productive. Because many border state colonizationists boldly advocated the complete elimination of the African American labor force, slave and free alike, in the name of greater regional prosperity, Lower South planter politicians like Robert Turnbull of South Carolina bitterly castigated the organization as an “abolition society.”

"Modern historians also tend to regard any scheme of mass removal as an impossible one. But the society estimated the cost of sending one black settler to Liberia to be only twenty-five dollars. Since the black population during the early antebellum period grew by roughly six thousand people per year, it would cost Congress only $120,000 annually to remove every newborn or recently emancipated slave. Over the course of two to three decades, the white population would continue to grow, while the proportion of blacks in the national population would plummet, marginalizing unfree labor in the process. ACS defenders observed that a government that could force Native Americans to move west into Oklahoma was perfectly capable of compelling free blacks to sail east toward West Africa. Some politicians even noted that Washington could have conveyed 1.2 million black Americans to Liberia for the same sum that it spent crushing native resistance in the Second Seminole War."

What changes if we have to take the ACS more seriously?

Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Coalition Government

2008-12-02T09:51:00.001-05:00

"Abraham Lincoln managed to appoint to his cabinet four of his rivals to the 1860 Republican nomination. Barack Obama has now made one of his, his vice president, another of his, secretary of state, a third likely to become his secretary of commerce. But in our fifth story on the Countdown, as he rolled out his national security team, the president-elect could now out-Lincoln Lincoln. He also has a secretary of defense fresh from the Bush administration, an attorney-general and a U.N. ambassador from the Clinton administration, a head of an economic recovery advisory board out of the Carter and Reagan administrations, and a national security advisor who appeared at at least one campaign event for the senator Obama defeated in the election last month. This is not the dream of Doris Kearns Goodwin"s publishers come true, a Team of Rivals; this is now bordering on a coalition government."

Keith Olberman, December 1, 2008

Reincarnation, anyone?

2008-11-30T11:14:00.010-05:00

George III (wax model from life mask)

Lawrence Summers

Has anybody else noticed the amazing resemblance between Larry Summers and George III?

2008-11-30T11:12:00.005-05:00

Bill Kristol: Thinking is hard

2008-11-24T22:40:00.006-05:00

"I’ve worked in government. It’s hard to do much thinking there at all, let alone thinking anew."

Working for the Times seems to present the same problem, doesn't it, Bill? Or perhaps the problem is not in the workplaces, but in the worker?

A Return to Piracy

2008-11-18T21:51:00.006-05:00

piracy

PI'RACY, n. [L. piratica, from Gr. to attempt, to dare, to enterprise, whence L. periculum, experior; Eng. to fare.]

1. The act, practice or crime of robbing on the high seas; the taking of property from others by open violence and without authority, on the sea; a crime that answers to robbery on land.

Other acts than robbery on the high seas, are declared by statute to be piracy. See Act of Congress, April 30, 1790.

So says Noah Webster.

Eleven pirate attacks off of Somalia last week. Meanwhile, for the year to date:

A total of 199 incidents were reported to the IMB Piracy Reporting Centre (PRC) in the first nine months of 2008. The third quarter of 2008 saw reported incidents spike to 83, a significant increase when compared to the 53 reported in the first quarter and the 63 reported in the second quarter. The reported acts of piracy committed to date in 2008 have included 115 vessels boarded, 31 vessels hijacked, and 23 vessels fired upon. A total of 581 crewmembers were taken hostage, nine kidnapped, nine killed and seven missing – presumed dead.

So a problem we thought we had overcome 200 years ago is back.

Clinging to "Religion": an open letter to Michael Gerson

2008-04-16T10:43:00.005-04:00

This letter was written in response to Michael Gerson's column in today's Washington Post, "Better than the Bitter."

Dear Mr. Gerson,

I think you have correctly identified Barack Obama’s chief flaw, “Obamaism.” I'm not sure, however, that you are correct or fair in your conclusion that Obama's remark about "clinging to religion" indicates that his own religious outlook is inauthentic. Let's stipulate that it was a boneheaded remark--"elitist" if you will. But I think that Obama identified a kind of resort to religion that has existed throughout time: the impulse, when afraid, to construct a golden calf to pray to, or a sword to wield against enemies real and imagined. I submit that it is also true that politicians--from Aaron to Karl Rove-- have taken advantage of this impulse to direct the masses toward their chosen objectives. Not everything that calls itself religion qualifies as a wholehearted commitment to the divine; indeed much of what takes place under that name has precious little to do with the Almighty at all. (Thus Kenneth Copeland's sneering dismissal of rote Christianity with the tart epithet, "That's ‘religion!’”) The problem with such "religion" is not that it marks its practitioners as bitter rubes, but that, as an artifact created by (and manipulated by) humans, it is a hope builded upon sand, and will fail those who resort to it.

Is this what Obama meant in his remarks in San Francisco? I have no idea; if so, it's an almost sure bet that it was lost upon his audience. I raise this subject not for Obama but for you: from your writings, I intuit that you will understand what I mean. There is a core of authenticity in many of President Bush's best speeches that I attribute to you, and that have been the saving grace (well, almost saving) of his presidency for me. Like the New Yorker, I am a frequent fan of the message, and the "Gersonian" tones in which it is delivered, if not the messenger.

That said, I wonder if you will agree that much harm has been done to the message of Christianity in the last quarter-century by those who have employed it cynically as a tool to manipulate that class of voters to which Obama referred to his ill-starred remarks in San Francisco. In a conference on "Race and Religion," Abraham Joshua Heschel argued that it was better to say "race or religion,” because the one excluded the other. By the same token, perhaps we must say "politics or religion," recognizing that both are necessary to the state, but that religion in the service of the party, rather than the nation, can never be other than idolatry.

I believe we share an acquaintance in common; I have worked a good bit with Lew Lehrman, at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale, where I was for seven years the associate director. In that context, I would observe that when Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, perhaps most powerful invocation of religion in American oratory, he did so as the successful candidate of the Union party, and not as a Republican.

All best wishes,

Rob Forbes

On "Islamofascism": An Open Letter to Paul Berman and Heather Hurlburt

2008-04-01T20:10:00.000-04:00

I found your discussion on Bloggingheads both oddly troubling and almost entirely off point. Why move the ground from a highly polemical label, fascism, to the complexities of the term “communism,” without any discussion of whether the first term is appropriate? Surely a key factor in the appropriateness of the term “communism” to describe all of its various manifestations is the fact that all of the groups in question self-identified as communists. If the “Islamofascists” all described themselves as fascists, we could have a debate over whether they really were or not, but at least that would be a useful point of connection. The fact that Mr. Berman makes no effort whatsoever to make a case for the validity of the term in its own right strongly suggests that it is being employed purely for polemical purposes; and Ms. Hurlburt’s failure to call him on it made for a very tiresome seven minutes. Hence my uninvited rant.

Regards,

Rob Forbes

A thoughtful discussion by Adam Simms of the term "Islamofascism" and of Paul Berman's role in promoting it is at JPF Notes and Comment.

The Audacity of Unity

2008-03-23T11:36:00.001-04:00

It’s interesting that so few discussions in the media of Obama's Eighteenth of March Speech have focused on its core theme: "how hungry the American people [are] for this message of unity." This story seems significant to me, because for many reasons, Obama is the first presidential candidate who could actually deliver on it.

Obama is calling for the overthrow of the two great binary paradigms of American politics and society--Federalist/Republican (and its successors) and black/white--that have held sway almost continually since the second administration of George Washington. It is clear that the Founders viewed parties as an aberration and an evil--and for reasons that ring true today: the tendency of factions to throw sand in the eyes of the people and manipulate public opinion to hijack government for their own private ends.

The first opposition political party, the Republicans (ancestors of today's Democrats), came together for two reasons. The first, stated reason was to combat the centralization and hostility to civil liberties of the ruling Federalist administration. The second reason, unstated at the time, was to build ties between the "southern planters and plain republicans of the north" in order to forestall northern attacks on slavery by ties of partisan and personal connection. When the Federalist party ceased to be viable after the War of 1812, President Monroe ushered in the "Era of Good Feeling" by promoting the "amalgamation" of parties--the absorption of the former Federalists into the body of the Republican Party, which now represented the nation as a whole. But a generation of Republican officeholders and professional politicians considered this step as anathema--they needed party competition to justify their paychecks and their existence. The professional pols joined forces with frightened slaveholders to destroy the presidency of John Quincy Adams and permanently enshrine the "two-party system" in American politics.

The public has never really liked this binary division into parties, and at moments of crisis--foreign attacks, civil war--has abandoned it and identified as Americans. But because the two systems of division, party and race, are self-reinforcing, efforts to transcend partisan division have always been scuttled by the politicians' strategic deployment of racial division.

What Obama is proposing is revolutionary, while at the same time it is profoundly conservative--it draws on the founding documents and proposes to redeem them by exorcising them of the slavery that disfigured them at their birth. Because he in his own person ("seared in my genetic makeup") reconciles the dichotomy of black/white, he offers for the first time a way out of the dichotomy of Republican/Democrat and an opportunity for America to truly "live out the meaning of its creed."

Even as they applaud his eloquence and courage, the punditocracy have largely ignored this aspect of his speech, which strikes at the heart of the divisiveness that provides them with an audience and a job.

We are challenged as well. We need to take seriously Obama's call to believe in one America, and not be locked into a dichotomy of "them" and "us." We need to view the Democratic Party as a vehicle to restore--or more accurately, to elevate for the first time--the fundamental values of "e pluribus unum," and avoid the trap of regarding our party as an end in itself--thus perpetuating the vicious system of divide and rule that has governed us for more than 200 years.

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

Gerry's Chutzpah

2008-03-12T00:06:00.000-04:00

In 1992, I contributed $10 to Ferraro's senate campaign. Big mistake. Ferraro's people called me more times over the next many months than a telemarketer trying to get me to extend my auto warranty. Not only did I get call after call to make additional contributions to her campaign, I actually got calls asking me to help retire her campaign debt so she could more plausibly qualify for a plum job in the Clinton Administration. It would not have surprised me to be asked to contribute to help her build a deck off her kitchen. Shameless--which is probably why she gets along so well with the First Family of Chappaqua.

Spitzer suspicions

2008-03-11T13:48:00.000-04:00

Elliot Spitzer has been such a sanctimonious prig that everybody who has dealt with him is happy to see him go down. Which testifies to the brilliance of going after him--nobody's going to stand up for him, and probably nobody is going to look into how the evidence against him was gathered.

My guess is they were tapping his phone and came up with the calls to Emperors Club VIP, then worked back to the payments, and not the other way around. Can I prove it? Obviously not. And just like the question of how CBS got a copy of the Texas Air National Guard memo on George W. Bush typed on a modern word processor, chances are nobody is going to look into it. Too bab. Somebody should.

Silver lining to a long primary season

2008-03-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

Is the long primary going to tear the Democratic Party apart? I really don't think so; the Dems will be united against McCain, even if some Independents are up for grabs, and nobody is going to sit this one out. On the other hand, it's something to see the Democrats in Wyoming (all 16,000 of them!) and Mississippi actually getting excited about a presidential nomination for the first time in more than a generation. If the key to change is personal involvement of individuals in the political system, this is essential.

Israel: Chosen for What?

2006-09-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

Israel: Chosen for What?

How can we best act to defend the Jewish state? In the midst of the carnage and tragedy of recent months, the current government of

Israel

adopted a policy of relying on military force alone—let the diplomatic and humanitarian chips fall where they may. We assert, correctly, that the actions that

Israel

is taking are no different from those that other states would take in the same situation; that

Iraq

Syria

, and other Arab states have engaged in more brutal operations, even against their own people. We resent, understandably, the perennial habit of the international community to hold

Israel

to a different standard.

Yet our tradition, our history, our religious heritage, our Torah, are all premised on the idea that Israel is unique, and that we are indeed held to a different standard—not by the nations, but by God.

Missing from the current controversy, in my opinion, has been much serious discussion of God’s purposes regarding a Jewish state (beyond what one might call the “Theme from Exodus argument”: “This land is mine, God gave this land to me”). Perhaps it is time to examine the Jewish state from a standpoint of Jewishness rather than simply “reasons of state.”

What is Jewish about the state of Israel beyond the fact that the people who live in it are Jews?

It is a fact, a somewhat uncomfortable one for some, that our claim to the land of Israel rests fundamentally on a Biblical basis of a relationship between the Jews and God. This was the case even for the secular Zionists, who showed little interest in alternative pieces of real estate, whether in East Africa, Upper New York State, or elsewhere. It is the subtext of the Balfour Declaration and the 1947 UN resolution recognizing a Jewish state. No matter how much we protest the unfairness of holding Israel to a different standard from other nations, we clearly regard it as so ourselves: Israel is different. Why? If the answer involves more than mere ethnic chauvinism (given its history and ours, a bad model for Jews to follow, in my opinion), one is inescapably drawn to explore the terms of our relationship with God and the land.

As I read it, one of the persistent themes of Scripture as a whole seems to be the Jewish people having to learn, again and again, that the land is not a given, that our tenure there is not an absolute. Just about every possible change is rung on that theme, and the message that comes across is pretty consistent. So, even though we are a long way from Passover, allow me to pose my own four questions:

Why were we originally given the land?

Why did we lose the land?

Why did we get the land back?

On what terms do we hold it?

Now, it is in theory perfectly reasonable to say that we hold the land in precisely the same terms as any other country—in theory reasonable, but in practice, utterly crazy. The sheer multiplication of improbable happenstances—even secular Jews rarely blink at calling them miracles—that marked the war of

Israel

’s founding in 1948 and the Six-Day War of 1967 boggles the imagination.

Still more miraculous is the transformation of what Mark Twain called “a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land,” a land that for two thousand years eloquently confirmed the curses of Deuteronomy 28-29, into an agricultural and industrial powerhouse that equally eloquently embodies the promises of Deuteronomy 30.

What do I take from these Biblical and historical referents? Chiefly, that God employs the Jews to make a basic point: that God exists. If that point can best be made by restoring the precious remnant of the Jews to their homeland after the defeat of the Assyrians, or the Nazis, well and good. If it can be made as eloquently by our exile, so be it.

The return of the Jewish people to Israel and the restoration of a Jewish state after so many centuries of exile must be counted as one of the greatest miracles of history.

Many years ago I complained to Rabbi Morris Goldfarb of Cornell Hillel that the problem with Israelis is that they take miracles for granted. “You’re right,” he agreed. “You can’t always rely on miracles.” He smiled wryly and added: “Sometimes you have to try prayer.”

To that I would say “Amen,” but would add the other two pillars, in addition to prayer, on which the Pirke Avot tells us the world depends: Torah, and acts of lovingkindness. For a crash refresher course in Torah, it’s hard to beat Rabbi Hillel: "What is hateful to yourself, do not do to others.”

Do these principles mean that we cannot use force to defend ourselves? Of course not. Self-defense, the preservation of life, is a primary Jewish obligation. They do, however, bar needless humiliation. The law may inflict forty lashes on a wicked man, but not more; “lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should be dishonoured before thine eyes” (Deut. 25:3). In case, God forbid, one should be tempted to construe the word “brother” as meaning that upright behavior is required only to other Jews, Moses leaves no room for misinterpretation: “Cursed be he that perverts the justice due to the stranger” (Deut. 27:19).

To return to my first question: why were we given the land? Our entire tradition tells us that we are part of a cosmic drama whose fundamental purpose is to reveal to the nations the power of God. Need another crash refresher course? Read the Aleinu prayer that ends every service: “Our job is to praise the Master of all things….And on that day the Lord shall be One and His Name shall be One.”

As our elders used to say, “Es ist shver zu zayn a yid”—it’s hard to be a Jew. But that doesn’t get us off the hook. If we want a Jewish state, we—and by “we” I chiefly mean us here in America, who are perhaps just as crucial in this matter as our Israeli brethren—are going to have to act Jewishly. If we give up on the things that make us Jews, no number of tanks or helicopter gunships is going to save us. In the words of the prophet Zechariah, during the last episode of nation-rebuilding after an exile: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord of hosts.”

Ping form

2006-09-24T16:28:00.000-04:00

I'm not exactly sure what this will do, but I'm "claiming my blog" at Technorati.

October Surprise Contest

2006-09-24T15:10:00.000-04:00

We know it's coming. The question is how to prepare for it.

Karl Rove has been openly advising Republican activists that they can expect a boost from an "October Surprise" that will lift their chances of holding the House and Senate in November's elections. What will it be? Osama's typhus-ridden body filled with bullet holes from an imaginary gun battle in Waziristan? A dirty bomb attack on Cleveland with Iran's fingerprints? A massive air, sea and infantry attack that takes out the Dear Leader's regime in North Korea?

The best way to defuse an October shocker is to inoculate against it. Put yourself into the mind of Rove (ecchhh! only temporarily) and try to come up with the most diabolical, Machiavellian, insidious dirty trick to defeat the Democrats you can imagine. We'll plaster the results all over the internet and beyond. We could even put it on the Iowa Futures Exchange--that way the winners will take home some scratch. Then when it happens, it will be old hat to the voters. Go to it!

Conscience Whig

2005-03-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr argued that individuals can be moral, but nations cannot. At their best, the American Whigs believed that the nation-state constituted the most important agent for righteousness and moral, political and material progress. They felt that the individual bore a responsibility for the actions of his nation. They believed as well that the American state carried a special historical role to demonstrate to the world the potential of peoples to govern themselves with morality and justice.

Sadly, the Whigs had little success in bringing their principles to a national stage. The convolutions of electoral politics denied their most talented leaders the presidency, and their two who did achieve the White House died too early in their administrations to implement their party's agendas. However, the third "Whig" to become president, Abraham Lincoln--in name a Republican, but an exemplary Whig in politics throughout his adult life--reshaped the nation along Whig principles and provided a standard in domestic and international affairs for Americans to look to throughout history.

This website will examine affairs of politics and society through a Whiggish perspective--one that puts principles above party, favors measures, not men, and seeks to persuade the American nation to assume its Providential role as a force for good in the world. Please note, however, that the opinions expressed herein are those of cwhig, and should not be taken as representing the official viewpoint of the Whig Party.