3 trillion dollars is the estimated cost of the Iraq war, an outlay that was totally avoidable and which could have been used for other purposes, or never borrowed in the first place.
Numbers that big make your brain go numb. They are literally incomprehensible. This site tries to make them somewhat comprehensible.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgq5suMXCV8[/youtube]
This blog seriously cuts into my reading time. My stack of Christmas books is only beginning to dwindle. I just finished Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal, which, of course, I heartily recommend. Unlike the Great Unraveling, it is not merely a collection of his columns.
Krugman appears to be a Hillary supporter, primarily, I think, because he feels her health care plan is superior to Obama’s, which it probably is, if only marginally. He believes, with a great deal of justification, that health care is the defining issue of our time: if we get it right, then we will get a chain reaction of other progressive legislation. From reading his column, it appears that the policy wonk in him triumphed over the political analyst, for to my mind, his book makes a better case for Obama than Hillary. In one of his final pages Krugman observes:
During the Clinton years there wasn’t a progressive movement … and the nation paid a price. Looking back, it’s clear that Bill Clinton never had a well-defined agenda. …There were many reasons Hillary Clinton’s health care plan failed, but a key weakness was that it wasn’t an attempt to give substance to the goals of a broad movement-it was a personal venture, developed in isolation and without a supporting coalition. [After the defeat] Bill Clinton was reduced to making marginal policy changes. He ran the government well, but he didn’t advance a larger agenda, and he didn’t build a movement. This could happen again, but if if it does, progressives will feel rightly betrayed.
Even without the proof positive of the last few days, it’s always been clear that Hillary Clinton is stuck in that 90s paradigm. Her husband governed from a defensive crouch through circumstances only partly of his own making. He could make the case against Republican excesses, but was not so good at making the case for a progressive agenda. In point of fact, he never tried. He bought into the DLC vision of the world. If you believe you can only govern by pandering to the right, or blurring your differences, you can never achieve anything beyond small, incremental changes. Hillary is cut from the same cloth and molded by the same experiences. She cannot build a movement. She doesn’t see that as being part of her brief.
It is by no means clear that Obama can do better than Hillary, but the candidate of hope is really our only hope on this score. We need an unapologetic advocate for a progressive vision. That is not Hillary. It may not be Obama, but it might be Obama. We can only hope.
Somewhat related footnote: Obama says he will go after the criminals in the present administration, should he be elected. I devoutly hope that is true. I’m confident that Clinton would take the position that we should put trivial stuff like abuse of power and torture behind us. In addition to indictments, we need a Truth Commission. Not a “bi-partisan” coverup commission, but a commission stacked with people motivated to turn over all the rocks and expose the criminality to the light of day. My vote for AG, by the way, goes to Patrick Fitzgerald.
The Dean of the School of Law at Berkeley defends his school for continuing to shelter John Yoo, who is a tenured professor at that now tainted institution. Some of his argument makes sense. There are issues of academic freedom involved, and if he just stuck to the position that he abhors John Yoo, but he’s stuck with him because he has tenure, then the piece might be unobjectionable. But he also says this, which I think reflects a profound misapprehension of the duties of a lawyer, the moral responsibility of lawyers, and the dynamics of the conspiracy of which Yoo was a part.
Here’s the quote:
As critical as I am of his analyses, no argument about what he did or didn’t facilitate, or about his special obligations as an attorney, makes his conduct morally equivalent to that of his nominal clients, Secretary Rumsfeld, et al., or comparable to the conduct of interrogators distant in time, rank and place. Yes, it does matter that Yoo was an adviser, but President Bush and his national security appointees were the deciders.
Here the good Dean seeks to draw a distinction between the enabler and the enabled. We must recall that Yoo was not attempting to defend a client who had already engaged in some reprehensible activity: he was trying to come up with a legalistic sounding formula to give that “client” a green light to commit crimes in the future. He was, in fact, part of a conspiracy to commit criminal acts: his role being to “launder” the criminal acts by giving them a fraudulent legal sanction. This was part and parcel of the plan, and he is as much a part of that conspiracy as Rumsfeld, who passed the word to his underlings that it was now alright to torture. His role was similar to that of Albert Speer, who, if I recall correctly, never personally gassed or tortured any Jews. He just designed the system that facilitated and enabled the folks on the ground to do those very things more efficiently.
There is a world of difference between giving a person charged with a criminal act the best defense you can (even if that means making morally suspect legal arguments, which will, after all, be passed on by a court) and advising someone, without the reasonable possibility that your advice will be reviewed by a judge, that it is okay to commit a crime.
I’m not sure what I would do about Yoo if I were the Dean at Berkeley, but I would, I hope, not try to distinguish his acts from those of his co-conspirators. Were there justice in this world, he would be standing before the bar as a defendant in a war crimes trial, right next to the “deciders”.
I thought I was done for the day, then I ran into this (via Pharyngula), and had to pass it on:
SANA’A, April 9 – An eight-year-old girl decided last week to go the Sana’a West Court to prosecute her father, who forced her to marry a 30-year-old man.
Nojoud Muhammed Nasser arrived at court by herself on Wednesday, April 2, looking for a judge to handle her case against her father, Muhammed Nasser, who forced her two months ago to marry Faez Ali Thamer, a man 22 years her senior. The child also asked for a divorce, accusing her husband of sexual and domestic abuse.
According to Yemeni law, Nojoud cannot prosecute, as she is underage. However, court judge Muhammed Al-Qathi heard her complaint and subsequently ordered the arrests of both her father and husband.
“My father beat me and told me that I must marry this man, and if I did not, I would be raped and no law and no sheikh in this country would help me. I refused but I couldn’t stop the marriage,” Nojoud Nasser told the Yemen Times. “I asked and begged my mother, father, and aunt to help me to get divorced. They answered, ‘We can do nothing. If you want you can go to court by yourself.’ So this is what I have done,” she said.
Nasser said that she was exposed to sexual abuse and domestic violence by her husband. “He used to do bad things to me, and I had no idea as to what a marriage is. I would run from one room to another in order to escape, but in the end he would catch me and beat me and then continued to do what he wanted. I cried so much but no one listened to me. One day I ran away from him and came to the court and talked to them.”
“Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him. This lasted for two months,” added Nasser. “He was too tough with me, and whenever I asked him for mercy, he beat me and slapped me and then used me. I just want to have a respectful life and divorce him.”
As PZ Myers points out, it’s not just Mormons doing this sort of thing. At least the Yemenis stepped in to help the gutsy little girl. What’s depressing is that I find that fact surprising.
I am not a good enough writer to express the outrage I feel as Hillary Clinton attempts to insure a McCain victory in the fall. The Democrats are notoriously undisciplined, but no one has undermined a competitor in this fashion since Humphrey did a similar sort of number on McGovern in 1972. McGovern probably would have lost anyway, but it didn’t help that Humphrey painted him as a wild eyed radical who couldn’t be trusted to be president. What Hillary is doing is ever worse, because if Obama loses it will be in much greater part because of the groundwork laid by Hillary. Should she get the nomination, she is also guaranteeing her own defeat, because she is throwing away the support of committed Democrats, liberals, young people and blacks. All she’ll have left is embittered gun toting Bible readers, who will vote for McCain anyway.
So, since I’m not going to write about Hillary, I’ll content myself with explaining my absence yesterday. My wife and I went to Brooklyn to see my son, who is living there while he’s attending graduate school at NYU. We were happily surprised that our older son came up from Washington to join us. We went to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, both in sort of whirlwind fashion because of the time constraints we were under. A picture from the Gardens below. Anyone interested can see a lot more at the “Brooklyn” page, link on the upper right or you can click here.
wtfdnucsailor (who I assume is from Waterford) reports at Connecticut Local Politics that my friend Sean Sullivan has attacked Joe Courtney, who has been in Congress a little over a year, because we are not currently building two subs a year in Groton. As the sailor from Waterford points out:
I am not sure what Candidate Sullivan is referring to. Unfortunately, you cannot start building two submarines a year immediately, even if you wanted to. Congressman Courtney successfully got $588 million in the current budget that included lead time funds for a second submarine starting in 2011, vice the 2012 proposed by the Navy
The blame, if any there is, for the fact that we are not presently building two submarines a year rests with Rob Simmons, who was in Congress during the years the planning for those subs should have taken place.
I express no opinions about whether we should be building any subs, primarily because my identity is known, and speaking ill of the sub-building business is a capital offense here in Groton.
I’m too impressionable. These guys were on Colbert last week, so I figured next chance I got, I’d put them up.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_XFMCgeI7c&feature=related[/youtube]
This is the most absurd anti-Democrat spin I’ve heard of to date:
Now they’re making up weird new rules as they go along. Here’s the money quote from the video:
And it’s just one of those sort of weird things. You know, when the owner of the diner says, “Here, have some coffee,” you say, “Yes, thank you,” and, “Oh, can I also please have some orange juice, in addition to this?” You don’t just say, “No, I’ll take orange juice,” and then turn away and start shaking hands.
Who knew? Most likely, Chris Matthews didn’t know about that rule until it came out of his mouth.
This is all part of one media narrative. Obama is an elitist who can’t bowl and doesn’t know how to eat at a diner. He’s not like “us” media folks who understand Joe Lunchpail. (Pay no attention to our million dollar paychecks and summer homes in Nantucket.) It’s not just Chris Matthews, though he’s the leader of the pack on this meme. Gail Collins, at the New York Times, finds Obama “disturbingly Ivy League“. This “posh Ivy League elitist not man of the people” narrative, by the way, coexists comfortably with the Obama as radical America hater narrative. Do they contradict themselves? Very well, they contradict themselves.
The New York Times published two articles recently about the quality of the cuisine at my Alma Mater, Bowdoin College in Bruswick, ME. We alums have always known that Bowdoin was the best school in the country, but it has not always had the best food. Now it is at the top of both heaps.
You can read about the culinary delights to be had at the school here and here.
Justin Foster, a freshman from Memphis, was surprised at the variety and the quality he found at Bowdoin. “White spinach lasagna, eggplant parm, ratatouille, Honolulu tofu with rice and peppers, sweet potato fries,” he reeled off his favorite dishes, “and they make a really good rum cake, too. Vegans, vegetarians — the cooks make it easy for those students with that lifestyle, and I appreciate the food more, knowing they’re making a real effort to be green, to use organic food, to be environmentally friendly.”
[Dining Director Mary Lou] Kennedy said: “First, our cooks know how to cook. All of our soups are from scratch. We have Fair Trade coffee locally roasted. We have our own butcher who grinds the meat for our hamburgers, and 20 percent of our food budget is locally sourced.”
Bowdoin has two organic gardens, begun five years ago as a student project and now in the hands of a farm manager. Last year they supplied more than $20,000 of herbs and vegetables, with the surplus sold at an on-campus farmers’ market.
Both articles point out that the yearly bill to parents for this food is a number approximately equal to the entire cost of a Bowdoin education (tuition, room and board) in the prehistoric period when I attended the school. In any event, I am not jealous, nor do I begrudge my academic descendants their gourmet meals. In my day, the food built character, particularly at my financially strapped fraternity (it folded while I was there), where the cook developed a tuna fish sandwich featuring pourable tuna, made possible by the proportion of mayo to tuna in the recipe. The menu also featured such delicacies as Shepherd’s Pie (a great way to recycle) and an oft served meat identified as lamb, something no one was ever able to verify. Yes, the food built character. These kids have it far too easy:
The Web site www.collegeprowler.com, which has more than 180,000 visitors a month and publishes college guides, just named Bowdoin “School of the Year.”
“After the warm atmosphere and amazing faculty, students cited the food as their favorite thing about the college,” the site’s co-founder, Luke Skurman, said in an interview. “After I visited, I understood why.
“The dining halls post the students’ comment cards. One read, ‘Would it be possible for you to make pumpkin chocolate muffins?’ Underneath, the reply was, ‘Please expect to see them every Monday morning.’ ”
Is that any way to prepare these kids for the cold, hard world they are about to enter? They’ll expect a life full of pumpkin chocolate muffins, when they’re more likely to get pourable tuna.
Garry Wills is one of my favorite writers. In the most recent New York Review of Books he makes the case that the best comparison to Obama’s recent speech on race is to Lincoln’s Cooper Union Speech, not to JFK’s speech on religion or FDR’s First Inaugural. Wills points out that both men faced similar challenges:
The most damaging charge against each was an alleged connection with unpatriotic and potentially violent radicals. Lincoln’s Republican Party was accused of supporting abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, who burned the Constitution, or John Brown, who took arms against United States troops, or those who rejected the Supreme Court because of its Dred Scott decision. Obama was suspected of Muslim associations and of following the teachings of an inflammatory preacher who damned the United States. How to face such charges? Each decided to address them openly in a prominent national venue, well before their parties’ nominating conventions—Lincoln at the Cooper Union in New York, Obama at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
The article must be read in full. Wills makes the point that both men successfully distanced themselves, in principled fashion, from the excesses of those with whom they were, in many ways, in fundamental agreement. Wills is too good a writer, and the points he makes are too nuanced to lend themselves to easy synopsis, but his concluding paragraphs make his overall point well:
Lincoln faced a greater challenge— the threat of national disintegration— and he had to make commensurately greater concessions, like granting the South its claim to constitutional protection of slavery. The extremist in his attic, John Brown, had not only spoken wild words but taken up weapons and killed men. Lincoln was under strong pressures to trash Brown, but he knew this would serve no useful purpose.
In his prose, Obama of necessity lagged far behind the resplendent Lincoln. But what is of lasting interest is their similar strategy for meeting the charge of extremism. Both argued against the politics of fear. Neither denied the darker aspects of our history, yet they held out hope for what Lincoln called here the better “lights of current experience”—what he would later call the “better angels of our nature.” Each looked for larger patterns under the surface bitternesses of their day. Each forged a moral position that rose above the occasions for their speaking.
Wouldn’t it be nice to once again have a president who can cope with complexity, both internally and in the way s/he communicates with the American people. Obama took the chance of treating the American people like intelligent people who could transcend sloganeering. It actually appears to have worked, at least partly. Maybe there really is hope.