Month: March 2010

No you really can't make this up:

A supporter sent her the biblical passage Isaiah 49:16: "See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."

"If what was good enough for God, scribbling on the palm of his hand, it's good enough for me, for us," Palin said. "In that passage he says, I wrote your name on the palm of my hand to remember you. And I'm like okay, I'm in good company."

What some liberals fail to see in their Pavlovian reaction to this riff is that it was clearly meant partly as a joke, and partly as a way of cementing her identity with the Christianist base. The response is interesting: the crowd both applauds and laughs.

She uses the trope of evangelical literal use of the Bible to justify everything and anything – and she does it jokingly as another jibe against the "mainstream media" with a bit of self-deprecation thrown in. Genius.

It also provokes a response from the liberal blogosphere and media that cements the idea that she is out of her mind, a religious nut-job, etc, which completes the circle for her base. In this populist climate, with recession continuing, with alienation high, with fundamentalism at the heart of the new Republicanism, she is not to be under-estimated or dismissed. She is the next Republican nominee by default at this point.

This is a stunning, even beautiful, quote from a random voter in Iraq's very Iraqi election today. It says a lot about the stoicism of the people of Iraq that after a hundred bomb blasts and thirty-eight dead, they still made it to the polls to cast their vote. Can you imagine Americans having that kind of courage in turning out to vote?

The fact that this happened at all is a wondrous thing and the people we need to thank for it first are the servicemembers of the US military whose skills, flexibility and sacrifice made this possible. The second are the Iraqi people themselves whose mere endurance through unfathomable trauma and violence and war is miraculous. So many of them have died, of course, literally countless of them. But those who have barely survived to be bribed and flattered in this strange form of democracy have managed to pull off an election that seems a lot more credible than the recent one in Afghanistan. The Obama administration deserves some credit as well.

But we have been here before. The mere fact of an election does not change the underlying, dangerous dynamics that can and, in my judgment, probably will tip the country back into its normal condition of civil war or dictatorship. Petraeus on Fareed's show today:

“All progress that has been made to date — all of the legislation that’s been passed and so forth, has all required cross-sectarian, cross-ethnic coalitions, and I think that actually will continue to be the case. Because when you do the math, there’s no way that a prime minister will be elected without a cross-sectarian, and indeed cross-ethnic, coalition developing to elect that individual and the other key members that will be part of the package.”

I hope he's right. But many of the really tough decisions were postponed till after these elections, and we simply do not have solid evidence that the surge worked in terms of its core criteria: creating a non-sectarian politics and a functioning non-sectarian government. Previous elections intensified sectarian violence; many Sunni candidates were barred from running; internal tensions within Kurdistan are running high and critical and explosive issues between the Kurds and the Shiites are unresolved.

Stay tuned – but don't trust anyone, including Obama or Biden, claiming success or victory at this point. Success is when there are no occupying troops and a functioning multi-sectarian government. These elections tell us close to nothing about the future possibility of that. How Iraqi politicians react to the results will.

(An Iraqi election worker counts ballot papers March 7, 2010 at a polling station in Baghdad, Iraq. Iraqis in 18 Iraqi provinces voted today to elect their candidates to the 325-seat parliament at about 10,000 polling centers. By Muhannad Fala'ah /Getty.)

A reader writes:

Kim Elsesser misses the point. The awards aren't given out on the basis of the actor, they're given out on the basis of the role. So long as Hollywood continues to treat male and female roles as two separate spices, the salt and pepper of screenplay seasoning, it makes sense to give separate awards.

Thinking about the best supporting actor and actress awards should help make this clear.

They aren't given out to support-males and support-females, lesser examples of the gender. They are given out because the role of supporting male is different from the role of lead male, and the same for the female roles. The photos that you posted of Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in Boys Don't Cry make the point perfectly. She should have been awarded the Oscar for best actor in a leading male role. 'Actor in a Leading Role' is shorthand for such a role, because it's one almost exclusively played by a man, but it need not be. If anything should be changed, it's the name of the award.

Another writes:

Contra Kim Elsesser, I think there are a number of sports that should be genderless as well. Any of the shooting sports—archery, rifle, whatever. But even more, what about ski jumping, which is not currently a winter Olympic sport even though there are some women who actually jump farther than the men. How about half-pipe snowboarding? Or that freestyle jumping thing they do with skis? Why not have men and women compete together in fencing? I competed against women in college; fencing is more about reflexes and speed and eye-hand coordination than strength.

A fascinating chart of the various income levels of adherents of various religions from Good.com . Click here for the full chart and here for the interactive chart. Hindus and Jews have the largest proportions of the wealthiest; Jehovah's Witnesses and historically black Christian churches have the highest proportion of the poorest.

John Sides asks the Democrats the core question:

[If] the bill is passed, it will not have the support of the majority of the country. At the same time, if healthcare fails, then a significant portion of Obama’s first year(s) in office will have been wasted on a failed major policy agenda and the Democrats will be portrayed as divided, incompetent, etc. Which would you rather take into the midterm elections? The President/Congress that succeeded where Clinton, Truman, etc. had failed in the past by passing healthcare reform – but without the support of a majority of the population – or divided, incompetent, failure?

In my view, at this point, you cannot blame the president if this bill fails to pass. And you cannot even blame the Republicans, although they will do all they can to bugger up the reconciliation process. In the end, this is about whether the Democratic Party can govern, whether it is a functioning political party, or whether it deserves to die. If it had one tenth of the discipline of the GOP, this would not be a question. But frankly, if it cannot pass this bill after the last election with this president at this moment, then it should be put out of its misery.

Michael Berger sees the potential of poetry:

 [P]oetry has that strange way of reflecting every sad inch of you.

Yet if we consider poetry as less a morbid exploration of these bleak realities and more of a redemptive confrontation with them, then poetry will start selling like The Power Of Now or The Secret.  Poems, instead of all those smug, unrealistic books on self-deification, will be the signposts directing us down navigable routes through thickets of pain and wastelands of loss.

A reader writes:

I saw your updated story from the man who posted the original photo from his office window in Santiago, Chile last Friday.  Also, ironically, that day–right before the earthquake–I reposted this View From Your Window on my Facebook page in honor of my son, Adam, and daughter-in-law, Paola, who were in Chile on vacation.  My daughter-in-law, who is originally from Chile, was with her sisters, nephew, and mother at her sister's house in Santiago when the quake hit.  My son and his brother-in-law were on Robinson Crusoe Island that day. 

Fortunately they are all OK.  We finally were able to talk to them by phone yesterday.  The sister-in-law's house is mostly intact, but Robinson Crusoe Island had some major tsunami waves and took a lot of damage.  My son and his brother-in-law just barely escaped, with water rushing in a back patio door of their hotel room–in the dark, in their underwear, and my son with with only one shoe. His room was on the third floor (about 35 feet up).  They climbed up the cliff (the house was built into the cliff–the patio door they escaped out of was on the cliff side) and on the way up my son was handed the little daughter of the inn's owner who needed to go back into the house to try to save his wife. 

My son–carrying this little girl–and his brother-in-law went up the cliff as far as they could reasonably go in the dark and stayed there for awhile.  They were joined by other survivors. Some of them were able to light a fire for warmth and light.  When it was light enough they went to a house further up on the cliff to get warm, etc.  My son told me that the little girl clung to him "like an octopus" for hours because she was so terrified.  She only left his side when she able to fall asleep.  Later there they were joined by their innkeeper and his wife who had miraculously also survived. 

After the danger passed they went back to their inn to see what they could salvage.  The house was still standing and they were able to reclaim a lot of their things, including my son's digital camera that was strangely still intact (with many photos capturing the island's beauty in the week before the quake).  He took several photos of the tsunami aftermath.  They were not able to get off the island for 4 days (and have stories to tell about the politics of that). 

It is amazing how fast things can change like your sense of calm.  We feel very fortunate that our loved ones survived when many did not.

The above photo was submitted by the reader's son. Another reader writes:

I just wanted to quickly write to let you know about Robinson Crusoe Island (also known as Isla Juan Fernandez). It’s a small, isolated island four hundred miles off the coast of Chile. The island is rich with history – including pirates, buried treasure and the real-life inspiration for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – but unfortunately lacking in resources. In 2006, I was part of a team of Chilean and American journalism students who went to the island and built a documentary website.

Minutes after last week’s earthquake struck Chile’s mainland, Robinson Crusoe Island was pummeled by a tsunami that, according to AP reports, covered nearly two miles of the island. When the wave retreated, it took with it nearly all of the island’s small fishing settlement. Just about everything is wiped out – their school, community center, fishing boats, supply stores, homes.

Some of us who created the site back in 2006 have put together a new video showing photos from before and after, and we have links to where visitors can find out more and donate directly to the island’s people.

TED captions this talk:

Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy — and our own self-awareness.