Month: July 2010

Email Of The Day

A reader writes:

Contra your reader's assertion, there is at least one parent who uses those words (and it was you who sent them to me just yesterday, via your post):

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote…. It's an unfortunate thing, because war is hell and I hate war, and, Charlie, today is the day that I send my first born, my son, my teenage son overseas with his Stryker brigade, 4,000 other wonderful American men and women, to fight for our country, for democracy, for our freedoms.

The Slow Death Of Cap-And-Trade, Ctd

Tumblr_l5uzbplcsb1qzpwi0o1_500

Dave Roberts doesn't think much could have been done differently. Bernstein penned a post-mortem last week:

It's worth noting that on a legislative time scale, cap-and-trade was really very, very, new, and most important laws tend to take a long time, often spanning several Congresses, to pass.  Looking back…in 1992, global warming was a two-sentence throwaway at the end of the Democratic Party platform.  If anything, it's even less prominent in 1996. In 2000, the Al Gore platform contained a fair amount of climate rhetoric — but proposed almost no specific actions.  No change in 2004: plenty of rhetoric, but only vague calls to action, mostly focusing on international agreements.  No cap-and-trade, no carbon tax.  So for Democrats, the idea that Congressional action is needed to limit carbon emissions as a core party principle only goes back to the 2008 campaign.

(Image: The Daily What suggests an novel solution to the crisis.)

The View From Your Recession

A reader writes:

I worked hard to build a career that led to becoming a vice president of an international design firm.  And I worked hard to build a successful business for the seven years after I left them.  My industry, the architectural design industry, and especially large design firms, have seen cumulative layoffs from anywhere between 40 to 70% during the last three years. 

I'm a single parent with primary custody and I don't receive child support.  Also, I don't get unemployment because I've been self employed. One other also: I don't have a college degree.

I'd never had to apply for a job since I was in my late teens/early twenties.  I was lucky enough over the last twenty-five plus years that people recognized my hard work and skills and offered me jobs before I ever even looked at want ads.  In the last fourteen months, after I realized I could no longer make a living in my specialty, I haven't had so much luck. 

I've applied for hundreds of jobs.  During that time, I've worked in a warehouse, written copy for websites and hammered nails as a carpenter.

All of those jobs were project based meaning no long term prospects or benefits or unemployment eligibility.  To be clear, I have not been fired or quit any of those jobs. The healthcare insurance for me and my son has gone up 29% in the meantime.  I used to eke into a six figure income.  Now I'm happy to get a short term $15 an hour job because it means, with lots of Ramen noodles and little air conditioning/heat, I can keep a roof over my son's head.

Some politicians, and the number of them seems to grow daily, are claiming I'm lazy because I couldn't get a job.  I've found jobs!  None are of the type the politicians are alluding to apparently. McDonald's or entry/mid level employers won't hire me because I've had too much success in my past and others won't because, despite my proven accomplishments, I don't have a college degree. 

I'm not a special case.  There are hundreds of thousands of people like me.  We're not taking year-long vacations!  We're scared about not having the gas or a car to get our kids to school or to the extremely rare job interview (I've only had three in over a year).  We're spending sleepless nights worrying about nourishing our kids so they aren't distracted in school by hunger pangs, and how to buy new shoes as they grow out of the last pair, and how to not show them our deep anxiety about what next month brings.  We're frantically exploring whether we have enough money left to buy the time to sell our homes in a deeply depressed housing market and where we can find housing if we do…or don't. 

I do have good news though.  I recently accepted a job as senior account manager for a small firm.  It's a full time position with benefits and lots of incentives.  I'll even be managing the efforts of others.  Ten bucks an hour.

Mental Health Break

Every “Doctor Who” opening sequence ever made, starting in 1963:

For the record, I’ve probably watched more of this television show than any other (with the possible exception of the Simpsons). I love the creepy effectiveness of the very first sequence, but love the velocity of the Tennant era. As for the actors, I remain devoted to Tom Baker. But Matt Smith is really quite wonderfully dark. I remain an addict. It’s such an intelligent sci-fi show – not least because of its love of history and irony and a certain British decency which courses through the Doctor’s inhuman veins. He is the anti-Jack Bauer, in a way, proving that humaneness and humor is as effective as violence and evil, even when deployed by those who think they are doing good.

Why Israel Serves America’s Interests, Ctd

Larison seconds Noah Millman. And further rebuts Frum:

What does need to happen is to re-balance the relationship with Israel so that the political, diplomatic and financial costs of the alliance are matched by what the U.S. receives from it (which isn’t very much these days). At present, even the smallest moves in that direction are considered unspeakable betrayals. That is one reason why proponents of re-balancing the U.S.-Israel relationship are not interested in arguing for ending the alliance outright. It is difficult enough to argue for conditional reductions in economic aid that calling for a complete break would be rejected out of hand.

That is what makes Frum’s detour about Charles Freeman at the end of the same post especially ridiculous. Freeman outlined some of the costs that the alliance imposes on the U.S., and he may have understated the case, but he then made very modest recommendations for what the U.S. government should do to pressure Israel to halt settlements. My guess is that the “pathetically disproportionate” recommendations reflect Freeman’s understanding of what is politically possible here in the U.S. As it is, Freeman’s proposal to reduce economic aid to Israel to compel a halt to settlement activity is more than anyone in the administration or J Street is willing to advocate publicly. Had Freeman made a more radical proposal, Frum would not be congratulating him on his consistency or his boldness, but would instead be declaring him a lunatic.

Judge for yourself Freeman's latest. Some of it is spot-on; some, to my mind, just wrong. Israel has no friends apart from the US? Please.

The Ignored American

Roger Cohen wonders why the killing of American citizen Furkan Dogan by Israeli paratroopers has received so little attention and follow-up:

I have little doubt that if the American killed on those ships had been Hedy Epstein, a St. Louis-based Holocaust survivor, or Edward Peck, a former U.S. ambassador to Mauritania, we would have heard a lot more. We would have read the kind of tick-tock reconstructions that the deaths of Americans abroad in violent and disputed circumstances tend to provoke. (Epstein had planned to be aboard the flotilla and Peck was.)

I also have little doubt that if the incident had been different — say a 19-year-old American student called Michael Sandler killed by a Palestinian gunman in the West Bank when caught in a cross-fire between Palestinians and Israelis — we would have been deluged in stories about him.

But a chill descends when you have the combination of Israeli commandos doing the firing, an American with a foreign-sounding Muslim name, and the frenzied pre-emptive arguments of Israel and those among its U.S. supporters who will brook no criticism of the Jewish state.

I've noticed a very similar pattern with respect to US soldiers in Taliban captivity. I suspect it is because the US government now has no moral standing to complain about prisoner abuse and torture. And so we walk quickly on …

Correction

In Dave Weigel's post discussing the Trig controversy, he wrote:

Among the people who told me that Alaskans were well aware of Palin's pregnancy were Shannyn Moore, an award-winning and left-leaning political radio host who has been roundly attacked by Palin fans.

Moore actually said that everyone in Alaska knew that Bristol – not Sarah – Palin was pregnant. He muddled the two up.