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Paul Fako 9:58 AM (1 hour ago)
Heard from Sue on Sat that you were in the hosp again since thursday and flyi...
Jerry Pfaffl
10:47 AM (13 minutes ago)
to Paul, bcc: Ron
I was so bad last Wednesday morning it took me 40 minutes to get out of my recliner--I kid you not. I had ignore warning signs of swollen feet at my peril. I couldn't walk and I was totally depleted of energy. I looked like a gray ghost by the time I got to the ER. Went through battery of tests; at first they they thought it was a blood clot but in time they reverted to the obvious: CHF (Congested Heart Failure) / emphysema=the Battle Royal between my pumping heart and fluid going to the lungs; it is the main field of engagement between the two major organs and lungs keep getting ahead lately. However with steroids and a nebulizer I bounced back in a hurry, and of course I'll pay a price for the help later; but when it is a life and death situation the choice is simple, unless you want to to die.That was tempting but I have book to finish. After I managed to walk up and down the corridors at the hospital Saturday and when my color had returned I was able to leave by ten o'clock Sunday morning. I even slept in my new bed, the first time in eight months. Of course I was so beat I could have slept on a bed of nails last night.
This experience was very complicated, with several doctors, multiple tests, an exotic change of meds, some curious sidebar incidents, like a tech telling me her life story, like me being the crank with a 20 yr twit who wanted me to go by the book. ( I was classed as a red sock person, one likely to fall, so I had to wait for help to walk eight feet to the bathroom. At times I got impatient to wait to piss and skipped protocol, which set off an alarm in the bed. The older nurses were loose on this point but this young twit had a cow every time I did it. When I called the main desk for help I started calling myself "Red Socks 429," with 429 being my room number. You get bored and want to play with the aides who are young and more vulnerable.) I put in a request already for the medical record of the four days I was in "lock-up." I need to straighten out exactly what happened and how I should prepare for the next one--or find out how to avoid it.
Sorry to hear you were under the weather. At least you are mobile. Be thankful for that!
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Monday, February 27, 2012
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Coming Apart
Newsletter: Coming Apart
David Brooks of the NYT is constantly on a chase for explanations of our social structure that won’t make the upper crust look bad. His latest find to do that is Charles Murray’s new study called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, a book that at bottom wants to blame the “welfare state” for beginning the process of “coming apart.” Since Murray makes no bones about being a conservative sociologist I have to take his thinking with a grain of salt, especially his contention that the cultural divide between the two white communities--what Brooks calls the upper-tribe, which represents 20% of the white population, and the lower-tribe, which represents 30% of the same population--that the divide between them is cultural more than economic, and stagnant wages, a decline in manufacturing, rampant joblessness, and divisive inequality have little to do with the separation of tribes or classes. Brooks doesn’t want to use the word “class, “ but I don’t see “tribe” as a great improvement or more descriptive somehow. No matter how you cut the pie, it’s still round.
Murray attempts to turn the accepted idea of class differences upside down. For example: the notion that working class people, those that Sarah Palin likes to call “ordinary Americans,” are the backbone of our core American values, like faith, hard work, honesty, and marriage. Murray calls these our “founding virtues.” In contrast the upper crust was viewed as secular, skeptical, irreligious, often divorced, dishonest and a bit decadent. In the early sixties the two groups lived cheek by jowl, not so far apart as they are today. The old interaction is totally absent. So how are those “founding virtues” doing today? Lets look at what Murray discovered. Having a child out of wedlock is now a rare occurrence in the upper-tribe, whereas in the lower-tribe 45% have kids outside of marriage, and, not too surprising, marriage is less frequent or tends to be unstable. And remember we are talking about only the white population. It appears lower-tribe probity and core strength isn’t what it used to be. In the upper-tribe, after a flirtation with countercultural values in the sixties and seventies, has righted the ship and the folks in the 20% group are now going to church, divorcing less and maintaining the centrality of marriage and smart child-rearing, display civic concern, believe in the value of education, working hard, and live in enclaves of considerable stability. Their communities are no longer contiguous with the 30%. They live in gated communities or in suburbs filled with the like-minded.. The homes of the well off cost ten times what they had cost in the sixties. They live in isolation from the poor and middle class. And the separation is quite deliberate. One critic called it “self-segregation.” Birds of a feather flock together. It’s a cliché but its still true. The cultural habits of the elite class would be unrecognizable to the lower tribe—to mainstream America. They eat differently, they play with more expensive toys, have more expensive cars, like a different brand of entertainment, and live in clusters in what Murray calls “super Zip Codes, surrounded by huge lawns and neighbored by other rich. They are separated not only by culture but by geography.”
What is really coming apart is the lower tribe. Murray thinks the bonds of community, and the founding virtues that support the bonds, are frayed and in decline. Many men are working just part time and those once called “bums” are no longer scorned like in the past. It appears that he is suggesting that there is a degrading process going on among the 30%, as they seem to be falling into the same “sociological underclass” that we usually associate with African-Americans and other ethnic subsets. While the poor in the rest of the world are emerging from living on a dollar a day, the 30% are going backwards, experiencing the early stages of Ghettoization. Murray’s conservatism is revealed when he blames the “welfare state” and government bureaucracy’s habit of allocating funds inefficiently. (What about Medicare, sir!) There are few people being coddled by a welfare system these days, unless you consider food stamps a luxury and unemployment insurance a waste of money during hard times. Murray pays little attention to the inequality gap between the tribes, keeping to his premise of cultural differences, paying little heed to the economic factors which are obviously huge and causative.
Brooks comments about the lower tribe: “ Members work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.” He softballs an answer to the great divide: persons from the upper tribe should interact with their brethren on the lower level, something along the lines of the old Vista program. National Service is easy to suggest, but hard to bring off, especially with the current Congress.
Bradford Wilcox of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Coming Apart and concluded “policy makers and business leaders need to shore up the economic foundation of working and middle class life.” That’s a good place to start.
David Brooks of the NYT is constantly on a chase for explanations of our social structure that won’t make the upper crust look bad. His latest find to do that is Charles Murray’s new study called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, a book that at bottom wants to blame the “welfare state” for beginning the process of “coming apart.” Since Murray makes no bones about being a conservative sociologist I have to take his thinking with a grain of salt, especially his contention that the cultural divide between the two white communities--what Brooks calls the upper-tribe, which represents 20% of the white population, and the lower-tribe, which represents 30% of the same population--that the divide between them is cultural more than economic, and stagnant wages, a decline in manufacturing, rampant joblessness, and divisive inequality have little to do with the separation of tribes or classes. Brooks doesn’t want to use the word “class, “ but I don’t see “tribe” as a great improvement or more descriptive somehow. No matter how you cut the pie, it’s still round.
Murray attempts to turn the accepted idea of class differences upside down. For example: the notion that working class people, those that Sarah Palin likes to call “ordinary Americans,” are the backbone of our core American values, like faith, hard work, honesty, and marriage. Murray calls these our “founding virtues.” In contrast the upper crust was viewed as secular, skeptical, irreligious, often divorced, dishonest and a bit decadent. In the early sixties the two groups lived cheek by jowl, not so far apart as they are today. The old interaction is totally absent. So how are those “founding virtues” doing today? Lets look at what Murray discovered. Having a child out of wedlock is now a rare occurrence in the upper-tribe, whereas in the lower-tribe 45% have kids outside of marriage, and, not too surprising, marriage is less frequent or tends to be unstable. And remember we are talking about only the white population. It appears lower-tribe probity and core strength isn’t what it used to be. In the upper-tribe, after a flirtation with countercultural values in the sixties and seventies, has righted the ship and the folks in the 20% group are now going to church, divorcing less and maintaining the centrality of marriage and smart child-rearing, display civic concern, believe in the value of education, working hard, and live in enclaves of considerable stability. Their communities are no longer contiguous with the 30%. They live in gated communities or in suburbs filled with the like-minded.. The homes of the well off cost ten times what they had cost in the sixties. They live in isolation from the poor and middle class. And the separation is quite deliberate. One critic called it “self-segregation.” Birds of a feather flock together. It’s a cliché but its still true. The cultural habits of the elite class would be unrecognizable to the lower tribe—to mainstream America. They eat differently, they play with more expensive toys, have more expensive cars, like a different brand of entertainment, and live in clusters in what Murray calls “super Zip Codes, surrounded by huge lawns and neighbored by other rich. They are separated not only by culture but by geography.”
What is really coming apart is the lower tribe. Murray thinks the bonds of community, and the founding virtues that support the bonds, are frayed and in decline. Many men are working just part time and those once called “bums” are no longer scorned like in the past. It appears that he is suggesting that there is a degrading process going on among the 30%, as they seem to be falling into the same “sociological underclass” that we usually associate with African-Americans and other ethnic subsets. While the poor in the rest of the world are emerging from living on a dollar a day, the 30% are going backwards, experiencing the early stages of Ghettoization. Murray’s conservatism is revealed when he blames the “welfare state” and government bureaucracy’s habit of allocating funds inefficiently. (What about Medicare, sir!) There are few people being coddled by a welfare system these days, unless you consider food stamps a luxury and unemployment insurance a waste of money during hard times. Murray pays little attention to the inequality gap between the tribes, keeping to his premise of cultural differences, paying little heed to the economic factors which are obviously huge and causative.
Brooks comments about the lower tribe: “ Members work hard and dream big, but are more removed from traditional bourgeois norms. They live in disorganized, postmodern neighborhoods in which it is much harder to be self-disciplined and productive.” He softballs an answer to the great divide: persons from the upper tribe should interact with their brethren on the lower level, something along the lines of the old Vista program. National Service is easy to suggest, but hard to bring off, especially with the current Congress.
Bradford Wilcox of the Wall Street Journal reviewed Coming Apart and concluded “policy makers and business leaders need to shore up the economic foundation of working and middle class life.” That’s a good place to start.
The Price of Grandeur
Newsletter: The Price of Grandeur
There’s a lot of talk going around right now about Steve Jobs outsourcing of Apple products to firms on mainland China, to employers who work their employees like slaves, to the extent of exhaustion and injury, to satisfy Jobs’ need for speed at low cost. In China when one employee falters there’s always another to take his of her place. And they specialize in getting things done in a hurry, so the product can be put on the market for hoopla and sale. (In the fourth quarter of 2011 Apple sold 37 million iPhones (128% over sales for 2010), 15.43 million iPads (110% better than the previous year), and 5.3 million iMacs (a 26% increase over 2010). Apple’s profit in the fourth quarter was $13 billion, their best ever, if I remember correctly.)
To gain some perspective on this question of the price of grandeur, let me make a couple of comparisons. Pushing human energy to the limit of endurance has been done many times throughout history and often the results have been spectacular and long lasting. The Taj Mahal for example, an extraordinary marvel of architectural beauty and engineering. No one would argue with the exquisite quality of it as a work of art. It was built in the middle of the 17th century in India, in honor of the deceased wife of the Mogul Emperor. So what did it take to build this magnificent memorial and an everlasting token of the emperor’s love for his wife? Twenty thousand laborers were forced to work day and night for twenty years. A ramp ten miles long had to be built just to move materials up to the 187-foot-high dome. The budget had no bottom line, nor was any value put on man-hours put into the project. God knows how many workers fell by the wayside in this herculean effort. As Steve Jobs guided his products from design through marketing, it was said that the Emperor Shah Jahan played a major part in overseeing the design and building of the Taj Mahal. Both can be seen as autocratic rulers who got results.
A Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He supervised the building of a fleet of 317 ships constructed of the finest woods available; indeed, it took three hundred acres of forest to build one ship that was four masted and four times longer than Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. Zheng’s flagship had nine masts, four decks, and was as long a football field; and altogether the ships could carry 28, 000 men and ample supplies, including live animals. One ship was just for drinking water. Columbus’s three ships carried 150 sailors and were puny in size by comparison. This awesome fleet set sail 87 years before Columbus embarked on his journey to the New World; moreover, it made seven separate voyages through the waters of the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Middle East, and around south Asia, showing the inhabitants of the region the reach and power of the Ming dynasty. It is said Zheng died on the seventh voyage. Nothing in Europe at the time compares with this fleet and its range of travel. Size mattered, money did not, and once again little is know what kind of manpower was used to build the fleet, to maintain it, and to sail it. But in China there is never a lack of bodies and helping hands.
Steve Jobs is taking a lot of heat posthumously over the outsourcing and the apparent rough and sometimes inhumane treatment of the Chinese employees. Jobs was out to change the world and made no apology for his decisions as a capitalist, which helped him to realize his goal with his game-changing “fleet” of products. His decisions from the business point of view only made sense and brought about great results, namely, huge profits and enormous influence in the technological realm. However, from the viewpoint of a moral imperative we can be critical of his decisions and methods. His actions seem elitist and uncaring, lacking in compassion. The Pope and the Dali Lama would lecture him on that point. On the other hand no one can argue with the man’s genius or the fineness of Apple’s line of products, which are indeed changing the world. Do we have to take the dark with the light; is that an inevitable part of the deal? Does his brilliance balance with the cruel element in his business acumen? Or is there some kind of middle path that could be adopted? Do we marvel at the Taj Mahal less because we know the workers were forced to do the work? Does that taint its exquisite beauty? And do we stop admiring Zheng He’s fleet and all that it took to create it when we think of all the laborers that exhausted themselves in the construction of something way ahead of its time? How do we measure the price of grandeur?
There’s a lot of talk going around right now about Steve Jobs outsourcing of Apple products to firms on mainland China, to employers who work their employees like slaves, to the extent of exhaustion and injury, to satisfy Jobs’ need for speed at low cost. In China when one employee falters there’s always another to take his of her place. And they specialize in getting things done in a hurry, so the product can be put on the market for hoopla and sale. (In the fourth quarter of 2011 Apple sold 37 million iPhones (128% over sales for 2010), 15.43 million iPads (110% better than the previous year), and 5.3 million iMacs (a 26% increase over 2010). Apple’s profit in the fourth quarter was $13 billion, their best ever, if I remember correctly.)
To gain some perspective on this question of the price of grandeur, let me make a couple of comparisons. Pushing human energy to the limit of endurance has been done many times throughout history and often the results have been spectacular and long lasting. The Taj Mahal for example, an extraordinary marvel of architectural beauty and engineering. No one would argue with the exquisite quality of it as a work of art. It was built in the middle of the 17th century in India, in honor of the deceased wife of the Mogul Emperor. So what did it take to build this magnificent memorial and an everlasting token of the emperor’s love for his wife? Twenty thousand laborers were forced to work day and night for twenty years. A ramp ten miles long had to be built just to move materials up to the 187-foot-high dome. The budget had no bottom line, nor was any value put on man-hours put into the project. God knows how many workers fell by the wayside in this herculean effort. As Steve Jobs guided his products from design through marketing, it was said that the Emperor Shah Jahan played a major part in overseeing the design and building of the Taj Mahal. Both can be seen as autocratic rulers who got results.
A Chinese admiral by the name of Zheng He supervised the building of a fleet of 317 ships constructed of the finest woods available; indeed, it took three hundred acres of forest to build one ship that was four masted and four times longer than Columbus’s flagship, the Santa Maria. Zheng’s flagship had nine masts, four decks, and was as long a football field; and altogether the ships could carry 28, 000 men and ample supplies, including live animals. One ship was just for drinking water. Columbus’s three ships carried 150 sailors and were puny in size by comparison. This awesome fleet set sail 87 years before Columbus embarked on his journey to the New World; moreover, it made seven separate voyages through the waters of the Indian Ocean, East Africa, the Middle East, and around south Asia, showing the inhabitants of the region the reach and power of the Ming dynasty. It is said Zheng died on the seventh voyage. Nothing in Europe at the time compares with this fleet and its range of travel. Size mattered, money did not, and once again little is know what kind of manpower was used to build the fleet, to maintain it, and to sail it. But in China there is never a lack of bodies and helping hands.
Steve Jobs is taking a lot of heat posthumously over the outsourcing and the apparent rough and sometimes inhumane treatment of the Chinese employees. Jobs was out to change the world and made no apology for his decisions as a capitalist, which helped him to realize his goal with his game-changing “fleet” of products. His decisions from the business point of view only made sense and brought about great results, namely, huge profits and enormous influence in the technological realm. However, from the viewpoint of a moral imperative we can be critical of his decisions and methods. His actions seem elitist and uncaring, lacking in compassion. The Pope and the Dali Lama would lecture him on that point. On the other hand no one can argue with the man’s genius or the fineness of Apple’s line of products, which are indeed changing the world. Do we have to take the dark with the light; is that an inevitable part of the deal? Does his brilliance balance with the cruel element in his business acumen? Or is there some kind of middle path that could be adopted? Do we marvel at the Taj Mahal less because we know the workers were forced to do the work? Does that taint its exquisite beauty? And do we stop admiring Zheng He’s fleet and all that it took to create it when we think of all the laborers that exhausted themselves in the construction of something way ahead of its time? How do we measure the price of grandeur?
Phony baloney
Newsletter: Phony baloney
The current dust-up over the birth control issue is a farce, when in fact 28 states already comply with the mandate, including catholic institutions, and it is clear to everyone with their head screwed on tight that 99% of women, including Catholic women, have chosen to ignore the bishops and the church’s teaching on contraception, to practice birth control at some time in their life. Rarely do you nowadays see broods like Bobby Kennedy had or like Rick Santorum has, that darling of reactionary religionists. Both my parents came from a family of seven kids. Birth control in the early 20th century meant, more times than not, no more sex. My wife’s grandmother told her husband after birthing three kids that was it; there was no more sex for 45 years. (Could that really happen?) And they weren’t catholic. The right wing has pounced on this issue of contraception as a way to cast aspersions on President Obama who they have been trying to tag as the anti-Christ, to go along with his illegitimacy as a citizen, the fact he’s really a Muslim, a big government Socialist, and last but not least, a repellent black man in a white man’s office. It is a phony baloney issue being used to fling more mud at a hated figure, nothing but a trumped up gimmick. It also serves to put the Bishops in a hostile relationship with American women, proving once more that the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in dogma and dominance than women’s welfare. Pundits worry that the president will lose the Catholic voters. Not to worry; the better part of the deal is the women he’s pleased and won over to his cause.
Gawd, I am so sick of this mud-slinging primary season, and to think we aren’t even close to the main event later this year. I can’t stand Santorum’s whole schtick: the pious Boy Scout with seven kids peddling a rancid brand of warmed-over religiosity based in the 1950’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To hear him carry on makes me believe he is living on another planet. But it looks like he is leaving Newt in the dust, as Romney’s super-pac annihilated him in Florida. It only cost $15 million to do the job. Santorum’s eager embrace of socially conservative issues may make him the choice of the like-minded base of the party, but they are, I am convinced, of tertiary value to Democrats and independents in the big cities of America. They have a more secular cast of mind and they don’t care who marries who or what one’s sexual orientation is. Those issues are no longer wedge issues for the Right, like they used to be. Attitudes have switch sides. Most folks are concerned with practical matters, namely, jobs, jobs, jobs, and holding on to their houses. Pseudo-issues like the church and birth control barely register on their meter of importance. Those issues are the stuff of beltway beanbag played for political points, where relevance has long since been abandoned. Be serious! Let’s face it; Republicans are off their heads, too gone into politics to think sensibly about anything. They have ears like Dumbo, a nose to rival Pinocchio, and staffs composed of the seven dwarfs. They have surrendered all sense to one goal: defeating Obama—a tactic that has their nose to the grindstone, a narrow focus which has handicapped their vision. They are little more than extensions of the will of a small clutch of billionaires who are trying to buy the seat in the oval office. And I fear, they may succeed, as Obama’s support is not what it was like in 2008.
And isn’t the situation in Syria a tragic mess? It is where the “Arab spring” has run afoul due to complications that didn’t apply in North Africa and Egypt. Syria is at the nexus of several states of regional and political importance, with strands going out in several directions, to both friend and foe alike. Nation after nation have condemned what is going on in Syria where a ruthless dictator is slaughtering his own people to maintain maniacal control of the country which has been under the control of either Assad’s father or himself for 40 years. But the thirst for freedom has driven the masses to revolt, like they did elsewhere in the Arab world, but because Russia and China are backing Assad, and there are worries about Iran entering the fray, the UN feels its hands are tied. The Israelis are watching the situation too, very closely, because they are considering a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities sometime soon. Russia had an envoy in Syria last week talking reform, which is ridiculous as the Rubicon was passed months ago. Assad is not about to negotiate with people he’s branded as “terrorists,” and the rebels know all he wants is a chance to identify the opposition and wipe them out like his father did in the eighties. Like his father, Assad has no moral scruples and could care less what the rest of the world thinks. I realize that Syria isn’t Libya, but there has got to be a way to stop the slaughter. If something isn’t done soon Assad is going to obliterate Homs, man, woman and child. Over a million people live there. Somehow the Arab League and Turkey seem the key to me.
The current dust-up over the birth control issue is a farce, when in fact 28 states already comply with the mandate, including catholic institutions, and it is clear to everyone with their head screwed on tight that 99% of women, including Catholic women, have chosen to ignore the bishops and the church’s teaching on contraception, to practice birth control at some time in their life. Rarely do you nowadays see broods like Bobby Kennedy had or like Rick Santorum has, that darling of reactionary religionists. Both my parents came from a family of seven kids. Birth control in the early 20th century meant, more times than not, no more sex. My wife’s grandmother told her husband after birthing three kids that was it; there was no more sex for 45 years. (Could that really happen?) And they weren’t catholic. The right wing has pounced on this issue of contraception as a way to cast aspersions on President Obama who they have been trying to tag as the anti-Christ, to go along with his illegitimacy as a citizen, the fact he’s really a Muslim, a big government Socialist, and last but not least, a repellent black man in a white man’s office. It is a phony baloney issue being used to fling more mud at a hated figure, nothing but a trumped up gimmick. It also serves to put the Bishops in a hostile relationship with American women, proving once more that the Catholic hierarchy is more interested in dogma and dominance than women’s welfare. Pundits worry that the president will lose the Catholic voters. Not to worry; the better part of the deal is the women he’s pleased and won over to his cause.
Gawd, I am so sick of this mud-slinging primary season, and to think we aren’t even close to the main event later this year. I can’t stand Santorum’s whole schtick: the pious Boy Scout with seven kids peddling a rancid brand of warmed-over religiosity based in the 1950’s Good Housekeeping seal of approval. To hear him carry on makes me believe he is living on another planet. But it looks like he is leaving Newt in the dust, as Romney’s super-pac annihilated him in Florida. It only cost $15 million to do the job. Santorum’s eager embrace of socially conservative issues may make him the choice of the like-minded base of the party, but they are, I am convinced, of tertiary value to Democrats and independents in the big cities of America. They have a more secular cast of mind and they don’t care who marries who or what one’s sexual orientation is. Those issues are no longer wedge issues for the Right, like they used to be. Attitudes have switch sides. Most folks are concerned with practical matters, namely, jobs, jobs, jobs, and holding on to their houses. Pseudo-issues like the church and birth control barely register on their meter of importance. Those issues are the stuff of beltway beanbag played for political points, where relevance has long since been abandoned. Be serious! Let’s face it; Republicans are off their heads, too gone into politics to think sensibly about anything. They have ears like Dumbo, a nose to rival Pinocchio, and staffs composed of the seven dwarfs. They have surrendered all sense to one goal: defeating Obama—a tactic that has their nose to the grindstone, a narrow focus which has handicapped their vision. They are little more than extensions of the will of a small clutch of billionaires who are trying to buy the seat in the oval office. And I fear, they may succeed, as Obama’s support is not what it was like in 2008.
And isn’t the situation in Syria a tragic mess? It is where the “Arab spring” has run afoul due to complications that didn’t apply in North Africa and Egypt. Syria is at the nexus of several states of regional and political importance, with strands going out in several directions, to both friend and foe alike. Nation after nation have condemned what is going on in Syria where a ruthless dictator is slaughtering his own people to maintain maniacal control of the country which has been under the control of either Assad’s father or himself for 40 years. But the thirst for freedom has driven the masses to revolt, like they did elsewhere in the Arab world, but because Russia and China are backing Assad, and there are worries about Iran entering the fray, the UN feels its hands are tied. The Israelis are watching the situation too, very closely, because they are considering a raid on Iranian nuclear facilities sometime soon. Russia had an envoy in Syria last week talking reform, which is ridiculous as the Rubicon was passed months ago. Assad is not about to negotiate with people he’s branded as “terrorists,” and the rebels know all he wants is a chance to identify the opposition and wipe them out like his father did in the eighties. Like his father, Assad has no moral scruples and could care less what the rest of the world thinks. I realize that Syria isn’t Libya, but there has got to be a way to stop the slaughter. If something isn’t done soon Assad is going to obliterate Homs, man, woman and child. Over a million people live there. Somehow the Arab League and Turkey seem the key to me.
Newsletter:Aspirin between her legs
2012_2_17 Newsletter: Aspirin between her legs
It is hard to believe how adept the Republicans are at shooting themselves in the foot and how they can guess wrongly so often. The candidates and their allies in Congress have decided to reignite the culture wars of the 1990s, following the lead of Catholic bishops and other coreligionists who are up and arms about contraception—yes, birth control, believe it or not, something 99% of American women have used at some time in their life—and what they say is an assault on their religious freedom. 28 states are already abiding by the mandate to provide free birth control services even if they are hospitals with religious affiliation. Suddenly this has become an issue when Obama moved to extend the mandate. The dust-up has thrown grit in the eyes of conservatives everywhere, as if birth control was still a burning moral issue in America. Conservatives are saying it is the other half of the bad apple called contraception/ abortion, which is mixing apples and sour grapes. The two things are not equivalent. Birth control has been considered “family planning” for a long time and as such a morally permissible thing. Rick Santorum is especially hot on these issues as a social conservative; but I would remind people he was beaten in Pennsylvania by 18 points running on the same basic agenda. Why he thinks he can use it as wedge issue at this point amazes me. The drift of opinion is in another direction.
Foster Freiss, the wallet that is feeding Santorum’s campaign, brought the topic of contraception to a new level of gross hilarity and ridiculousness when he dumbfounded Andrea Mitchell yesterday by saying birth control in his day was a woman “putting an aspirin between her knees.” I happened to see him say that and I don’t recall ever seeing a veteran journalist like Mitchell be both embarrassed by a guest on her program and absolutely flabbergasted he would say something as offensive as that on national television, which he later excused as a joke, which is a common tactic with airheads on the right.
But the right doesn’t pay much attention to what isn’t on FOX NEWS and talked about by Rush and his progeny on talk radio. They are too busy looking in the mirror of the own making to put their wet finger in the wind to see how the other half might feel about things. Santorum, the bishops and the rest of the foaming-at-the-mouth coreligionists still believe that birth control and abortion and same sex marriages constitute a wedge issue the GOP can win on. I got news for them. Those things were indeed a wedge issue for the right three decades ago, but they aren’t any longer; indeed, all indicators show that the reverse is true; they will be a wedge issue for the left, women, the young and independents. Plus many Catholics don’t follow what their bishops recommend. There is a telling generation gap among Catholics. Many go their own way these days. Every poll worth its salt says the drift nowadays is in a live-and-let-live direction. Read and weep you folks on the right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The dust-up in the House yesterday was a revelation to all with the eyes to see just how blind and insular and exclusionary the Republicans are these days. They just don’t get it. Their panel to investigate contraception was five clergymen, without a woman in sight, not even a nun. The photo of these five grim black-clad men looked like the tribunal that was going to serve at the Salem witch trials. The women in congress have seen to it this photograph has gone viral. It says so much unintentionally. They’d love to put women in their place, which is not at the table with them, to return them to second class citizenship and, if you are catholic, to bondage to a religion that is badly eroded in the Northern hemisphere and currently heading toward Africa where it hopes to get a new start. Adios and good luck. If anyone doubts these facts please look up the books of Philip Jenkins, a professor of religion at Penn State University who has be studying these trends for twenty years. In particular I would recommend The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
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It is hard to believe how adept the Republicans are at shooting themselves in the foot and how they can guess wrongly so often. The candidates and their allies in Congress have decided to reignite the culture wars of the 1990s, following the lead of Catholic bishops and other coreligionists who are up and arms about contraception—yes, birth control, believe it or not, something 99% of American women have used at some time in their life—and what they say is an assault on their religious freedom. 28 states are already abiding by the mandate to provide free birth control services even if they are hospitals with religious affiliation. Suddenly this has become an issue when Obama moved to extend the mandate. The dust-up has thrown grit in the eyes of conservatives everywhere, as if birth control was still a burning moral issue in America. Conservatives are saying it is the other half of the bad apple called contraception/ abortion, which is mixing apples and sour grapes. The two things are not equivalent. Birth control has been considered “family planning” for a long time and as such a morally permissible thing. Rick Santorum is especially hot on these issues as a social conservative; but I would remind people he was beaten in Pennsylvania by 18 points running on the same basic agenda. Why he thinks he can use it as wedge issue at this point amazes me. The drift of opinion is in another direction.
Foster Freiss, the wallet that is feeding Santorum’s campaign, brought the topic of contraception to a new level of gross hilarity and ridiculousness when he dumbfounded Andrea Mitchell yesterday by saying birth control in his day was a woman “putting an aspirin between her knees.” I happened to see him say that and I don’t recall ever seeing a veteran journalist like Mitchell be both embarrassed by a guest on her program and absolutely flabbergasted he would say something as offensive as that on national television, which he later excused as a joke, which is a common tactic with airheads on the right.
But the right doesn’t pay much attention to what isn’t on FOX NEWS and talked about by Rush and his progeny on talk radio. They are too busy looking in the mirror of the own making to put their wet finger in the wind to see how the other half might feel about things. Santorum, the bishops and the rest of the foaming-at-the-mouth coreligionists still believe that birth control and abortion and same sex marriages constitute a wedge issue the GOP can win on. I got news for them. Those things were indeed a wedge issue for the right three decades ago, but they aren’t any longer; indeed, all indicators show that the reverse is true; they will be a wedge issue for the left, women, the young and independents. Plus many Catholics don’t follow what their bishops recommend. There is a telling generation gap among Catholics. Many go their own way these days. Every poll worth its salt says the drift nowadays is in a live-and-let-live direction. Read and weep you folks on the right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
The dust-up in the House yesterday was a revelation to all with the eyes to see just how blind and insular and exclusionary the Republicans are these days. They just don’t get it. Their panel to investigate contraception was five clergymen, without a woman in sight, not even a nun. The photo of these five grim black-clad men looked like the tribunal that was going to serve at the Salem witch trials. The women in congress have seen to it this photograph has gone viral. It says so much unintentionally. They’d love to put women in their place, which is not at the table with them, to return them to second class citizenship and, if you are catholic, to bondage to a religion that is badly eroded in the Northern hemisphere and currently heading toward Africa where it hopes to get a new start. Adios and good luck. If anyone doubts these facts please look up the books of Philip Jenkins, a professor of religion at Penn State University who has be studying these trends for twenty years. In particular I would recommend The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity.
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