May 2005 Archives

I've been away for almost a week, so I apologize for this late posting about Memorial Day.

From the Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

Nothing young Americans can do in life is more honorable than offering themselves for the defense of their nation. It requires great selflessness and sacrifice, and quite possibly the forfeiture of life itself. On Memorial Day 2005, we gather to remember all those who gave us that ultimate gift. Because they are so fresh in our minds, those who have died in Iraq make a special claim on our thoughts and our prayers.

In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country.

In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes. Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don't expect untruths from those in power.

But that works better as an explanation than as an excuse.

I only wish that the editors would acknowledge how shamelessly the MSM rolled over for the Bush Administration before, and during, the war.

Regardless, I believe that many of us will wake up (one day soon) and wonder what the hell we were thinking all those years ago. But the damage will have been done and it will take a generation to repair.

You can see the list here. It isn't ranked in any particular order.

It would be easy to pick the list apart, naming all the movies that should have been on the list but weren't, i.e., No Wizard of Oz?

Instead, I've got another take on it.

Films I'm pleasantly surprised to see on the list:

• Day for Night (1973): One of the sweetest, best Truffaut films.

• Pinocchio (1940): Still my all-time fave Disney cartoon.

• Ninotchka (1939): A remarkably good film, even after 65 years. Also a film that is part of the funniest Billy Wilder story, ever...(below the fold).

• Meet Me in St. Louis (1944): Judy! What's not to like? Also the film that originated what I believe is the best Christmas song ever, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

• Miller's Crossing (1990): Best of the best -- the Coen Brothers at the top of their game....OK, except for maybe The Big Lebowski.

Films I'm just surprised to see on the list, period:

• Barry Lyndon (1975): People still remember this? Wow. Of course, I did see it twice, on successive days, no less. But among the Top 100?

• The Fly (1986): Other than Alien, probably the most terrifying movie I've ever seen. But among the Top 100?

• Finding Nemo (2003): Better than The Lion King? Beauty and the Beast? No way.

• Star Wars (1977): Oh, please.

No way these films belong on a list like this:

• Brazil (1985): What a mess -- it was like the aftermath of an explosion in the screenplay factory. And/but it contained one of the weirdest (and, yes, funniest) bits of dialog I've ever heard:

  Sam (Jonathan Price): Remember me to Alison and the twins.
  Jack (Michael Palin): Triplets.
  Sam: Triplets? God, how time flies.

I can tell that Dan Champion is feeling a bit better these days because he's arguing politics.

More specifically he asks, "Is it me, or has the ACLU become just plain mean?" He's referring to this post at Blogcritics.

Allow me to say a couple of things here.

First, the post at Blogcritics is a review of David Limbaugh's book, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity. Both the blogger and Rush's brother would prefer that we frame this in a certain way, but I'm not buying it.

Second, I'd appreciate a link from the blogger to the quote about "removing [Christians] from society." Until that happens, I'm not buying it.

Third, the ACLU is about protecting our rights as detailed in the Constitution. This means that they will often be representing the minority position, which by definition will be "unpopular."

Fourth, David Limbaugh is practicing one of the oldest political tricks in the book: pitting "us" against "them," or more specifically, Christians against the ACLU.

But the next time you hear someone, anyone, do that, just remember this: What they're really saying is that it is God against the Constitution.

And that's a false choice.

Conan O'Brien, in Newsweek:

TiVo, the digital recorder with a brain, will continue to evolve with alarming speed. Super-TiVos will arrange marriages between like-minded viewers and will persuade mismatched couples to throw in the towel and start seeing other people. Tough-talking TiVos will even confront viewers, saying, "You've watched 40 straight hours of 'Sponge- Bob'—get off the weed!"

One of TiVo's best loved features—its ability to provide viewers with commercial-free television—will inevitably force TV advertising to go extinct. As a result, celebrities will be forced to find new and creative ways to compromise their integrity. (At this moment, the writer pauses to slake his thirst with a delicious Diet Peach Snapple... now with less aspartame!)

The sudden loss of ads on television will push many companies to stage their pitches live on Broadway, revitalizing the theater in America and garnering Patti LuPone a Tony award for her work with Geico.

Meanwhile, computers will continue to be used more and more to watch digital streaming video, eventually turning them into televisions. With no computers available to solve complex math problems, people will have no choice but to return to the abacus. Within a few months, this ancient device will be abandoned when it's realized that there is no good way to make "abacus porn."

When I grow up, I want to live in the future!

David Brooks:

The big difference between poor Republicans and poor Democrats is that the former believe that individuals can make it on their own with hard work and good character.

According to the Pew study, 76 percent of poor Republicans believe most people can get ahead with hard work.

Only 14 percent of poor Democrats believe that.

Long ago and far away, the Republicans were probably right. But now? Not so much.

Kevin Drum:

While incomes of the well-off have skyrocketed over the past 30 years, working and middle class incomes have stagnated.

At the same time, the incomes — and jobs — they do have are far more unstable than they were a few decades ago. And as recent research indicates, most of them are increasingly stuck in these grim circumstances: every decade, fewer and fewer of them — and fewer and fewer of their children — have any realistic chance of moving up the income ladder.

I can see Brooks' point AND Kevin's point.

That said, I've always believed (and have tried to teach my children) that you need three things to succeed in this country:

1. Intelligence/education
   IQ isn't everying, so goes the cliche, otherwise Mensa would rule the world, yadda yadda yadda. Still, you really do have to go to college. But that alone isn't enough. You need something else...

2. Drive
   Some people define this as "competitive nature." Others define it as "persistence," i.e., never quitting, never giving up, never listening to someone else say you can't make it. But even THAT isn't good enough -- if you're relatively smart and driven, you still need one more thing...

3. Direction
   You know the joke: "Damn! We're lost but we're making good time!" Pick a direction and move towards it, little by little, everyday. You may have to adjust your plan, but always have a pretty good idea of where you want to end up. It's like driving at night with your headlights on -- you might only be able to see a few hundred feet in front of you at a time, but you can make a journey of 1,000 miles that way.

So, if could have my fondest wish -- that my children would succeed -- I'd want them to ignore the statistics and try to have those three elements in their makeup. Because I really believe that's what it takes to get what they want.

Of course this is just my opinion; I might be wrong.

But I doubt it.

If you've wondered how we got to a future where American religious fundamentalists are fighting Islamic religious fundamentalists, then you should read the transcript of this BBC documentary by Adam Curtis:

At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives, and the radical Islamists.

Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended.

Together, they created today’s nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The two seminal figures in the story are Leo Strauss and Sayyed Qutb.

In an earlier post, I shared the results of one of those personality profiles. I'm supposedly an "Idealist," someone that believes that "man is moving towards something greater," and that (in time) "all things will again become one."

Go figure.

Hal wrote back and suggested that it was "fascinating that your site name fits the description to a 'T'."

Hunh. You know, I hadn't thought of it that way.

Clearly, I've always believed that if America is about anything at all, it's about diverse people coming together to form a nation despite (and because of) their differences.

That's why I picked the title of the site. I had recently paid a visit to the visitor's gallery of the US Senate. I saw that "E Pluribus Unum" was chisled in stone over the main dais. It moved me.

But maybe, on another level, I chose it because I've always believed that (from the moment we're born) we humans spend our entire lives trying to get back to God. Or, at least, something greater than ourselves.

It seems to me that some people try to merge with God through worship, but many others try to merge with God through art, music, dance, sex, drugs, heaven knows what else.

And not only that, but my hunch is that we all have that forehead-slapping moment as we "pass away" when we realize and recognize that's what it was all about.

Well, anyway, that's my story and I'm stickin to it.

P.S. The beauty of our system is that we all have the freedom to pursue that (or any) dream in our own way. Our Constitution sets forth the rules whereby the government (of the people, by the people and for the people) must stand aside and grant us that freedom.

But, have we lost our way? Has the pursuit of happiness made us into careless, self-absorbed, Godless creatures that have lost our spiritual way?

Good question and one worth debating. But if that is true, I certainly don't think it is up to the government to set down rules that bring us "closer to God."

That's just wrong -- that isn't the role of government. Not our government, anyway.

You scored as Idealist. Idealism centers around the belief that man is moving towards something greater.

An odd mix of evolutionist and spiritualist, you see the divine within man, waiting to emerge over time. Many religious traditions express how the divine spirit lost its identity, thus creating our world of turmoil, but in time it will find itself and all things will again become one.


What is Your World View?
created with QuizFarm.com

(Via Hal)

James Taranto of the WSJ says that secular liberals show open contempt for traditionalists:

...[W]hile secular liberals underestimate the intellectual seriousness of the religious right, they also overestimate its uniformity and ambition.

The hysterical talk about an incipient "theocracy"--as if that is what America was before 1963, when the Supreme Court banned prayer in public schools--is either utterly cynical or staggeringly naive.

Last week an article in The Nation, a left-wing weekly, described the motley collection of religious figures who gathered for Justice Sunday. A black minister stood next to a preacher with a six-degrees-of-separation connection to the Ku Klux Klan. A Catholic shared the stage with a Baptist theologian who had described Roman Catholicism as "a false church."

[Note: The entire event was headlined by the Republican Majority Leader of the United States Senate, the honorable Bill Frist.]

These folks may not be your cup of tea, but this was a highly ecumenical group, united on some issues of morality and politics but deeply divided on matters of faith. The thought that they could ever agree enough to impose a theocracy is laughable.

Christopher Hitchens of Vanity Fair, et. al., urges us to save the Republic from shallow, demagogic sectarians.

...[H]undreds of thousands of young Americans are now patrolling and guarding hazardous frontiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Is there a single thinking person who does not hope that secular forces arise in both countries, and who does not realize that the success of our cause depends on a wall of separation, in Islamic society, between church and state?

How can we maintain this cause abroad and subvert it at home?

It's hardly too much to say that the servicemen and -women, of all faiths and of none, who fight so bravely against jihad, are being stabbed in the back by the sunshine soldiers of the "crusading" right.

What's interesting is that (in this debate) the "Religious Right" is the one that implicitly must account for itself.

(HT to Dean)

Kevin Drum reports:

The Century Foundation has published a paper by über-mega-lifetime Social Security guru Bob Ball that outlines a "relatively painless solution" for restoring Social Security to solvency. Basically, it raises the payroll cap a bit, dedicates estate tax revenue to Social Security, and invests a portion of the trust fund in the stock market.

He also points out that what radical conservatives call "a tax increase," Ball describes like this:

"Gradually restore the maximum taxable earnings base to 90 percent, the level set by Congress in 1983."

The payroll cap was originally set in 1983 so that 90% of all income would be taxed. It's been increased since then in line with average wage increases.

However, because the wages of the rich have skyrocketed far faster than the wages of the middle class, the median wage has increased more slowly than total income. As a result, the current payroll cap captures only 85% of all income.

In other words, all Ball wants to do is gradually reset the payroll cap to the same effective level that Ronald Reagan originally set it at. Who could argue with that? For anyone who favors raising the payroll cap, this is about the best way of framing it you're likely to find.

Sounds good to me. I wonder if the powdered and pampered Pasha-Pundits are smart enough to understand that.

Your #1 Match: ENFJ

The Giver You strive to maintain harmony in relationships, and usually succeed. Articulate and enthusiastic, you are good at making personal connections. Sometimes you idealize relationships too much - and end up being let down. You find the most energy and comfort in social situations ... where you shine. You would make a good writer, human resources director, or psychologist.

Your #2 Match: ENFP

The Inspirer You love being around people, and you are deeply committed to your friends. You are also unconventional, irreverant, and unimpressed by authority and rules. Incredibly perceptive, you can usually sense if someone has hidden motives. You use lots of colorful language and expressions. You're qutie the storyteller! You would make an excellent entrepreneur, politician, or journalist.

(HT to RoQ)

Bush is down in the polls? His Social Insecurity plan on the skids? A majority now believes he lied about the war? Caught on camera kissing ass with Prince Abdullah and Tom DeLay?

Time for Dems to gloat? Feh.

Politics is like playing on a see-saw -- you get lots of ups and downs. But the only thing that really counts is when to get off. And Bush is very, very good at getting off at the right time.

I'm just saying.

Prevention -- Deborah McKenzie, science writer:

Deaths from cervical cancer could jump fourfold to a million a year by 2050, mainly in developing countries. This could be prevented by soon-to-be-approved vaccines against the virus that causes most cases of cervical cancer. [...]

[H]uman papilloma virus (HPV) is sexually transmitted. So to prevent infection, girls will have to be vaccinated before they become sexually active...

Punishment -- Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council:

Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV...Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex.

So, let's recap: We want you to get vaccinated so you'll live. They want you to abstain from sex, otherwise you'll die.

Any questions?