Month: January 2011

Bruce Bartlett begs the GOP to acknowledge reality:

[S]pending and deficits are not going to be controlled by taking a meat-ax to the budget, as many of those in the Tea Party want to do. You can’t just enact across the board cuts in every program or abolish departments and agencies and expect their functions to completely disappear. … The reality is that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are where the real money is, and reducing outlays for these programs is very, very hard; not just for political reasons, but because they are highly complex programs and require changes in the law governing eligibility to reduce spending in the long run. Doing so in a way that can’t be gamed by beneficiaries or create massive unfairness is a major challenge.

A reader writes:

Just a quick correction to one of your readers.  In the video you posted, Carlos Whittaker is Hispanic (Panamanian if I remember correctly), as is his wife (of Mexican/White descent I believe).  Both girls are natural daughters.  Their son is the only one adopted, he is from South Korea.  He used to be one of the pastors at my church.

The family recently won a People's Choice Award for their video. Carlos runs a really vibrant blog worth taking a look.

A dog waits to fight during the weekly dog fights on January 07, 2011 in Kabul, Afghanistan. Dogfighting was banned under the Taliban for being un-Islamic but it is now common practice. By Majid Saeedi/Getty Images.

Foreign Policy recently surveyed terrorism experts. Worth pondering:

Asked to name the world's most dangerous terrorist, counterinsurgency expert Andrew Exum wisely named not one of the obvious suspects like Osama bin Laden but "the terrorist whose actions precipitate a war between India and Pakistan." Indeed, a "Mumbai II" is one of the most predictable challenges that Obama can reasonably expect to confront in the next two years. And just this past week, Mumbai went on high alert for a possible terrorist attack. Bizarrely, former CIA director James Woolsey named Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the globe's most dangerous terrorist, a confirmation that, at least in some quarters, neoconservatism is not entirely dead.  

Dan endorses this amped-up version by Rebecca Drysdale, the butch Britney:

A reader elaborates on a central theme of this thread:

I have an aunt and uncle who struggled with infertility for years. She had a serious case of endometriosis and hormonal issues that caused miscarriage after miscarriage, and one pregnancy was etopic and nearly killed her. Devout Catholics, they took it all as a sign from God that they were not meant to have children "the old fashioned way", so they decided to adopt. They told the agency they signed up with they would take any child, any age, any race, any health issues. They just wanted to be parents. Two months later, they received a call from their agency. "We have a match for you."

They got a newborn, biracial daughter, born seven weeks premature to a crack addict mother who picked them simply because they were willing to take on what ever God was willing to throw at them.

The mother was a mess, but had a moment of clarity at some point in time that her infant, if the child even survived what was sure to be a torturous beginning of withdrawal, would likely have severe health issues. And she did. The first year was hell for my lovely aunt and uncle, who were not rich but comfortable enough. They had the benefit of living in Canada, which has a great pediatric system, so medical costs were not a major issue, even if the medical issues were real.

There are still issues even now. My cousin is fifteen. Physically, she appears to be healthy. But she suffers from an extreme case of OCD that was diagnosed when she was in preschool, where the fits she threw were so bad that they actually had to pull her from her class and deal with the underlying issues before they re-enrolled her. She is super sensitive to touch, and seams and hems of her clothes feel like razors. Her treatment has made this easier for her to deal with, and she has been in constant therapy since her infancy. I have no idea if her prenatal environment caused these issues, although I suspect that it was a significant contributor. How can anyone be sure?

If you ask my aunt and uncle if they would change a thing, they always say no. I love them even more for that. My cousin is beautiful, bright, funny, and warm. She is loving and is a great nurturer to her siblings.

Less than a year after they adopted her, my aunt miraculously got pregnant and stayed pregnant. They had a son. When he was two and a half, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. They were already in the process of adopting ( it took longer this time-two years, but they were again willing to take any child that was offered to them). Fortunately, the surgery worked and he is a healthy kid of thirteen.

They welcomed a second adoptive daughter eighteen months later, who was perfectly healthy, then another miracle happened and they welcomed their second biological son, who is also healthy, two years after that. They are all beautiful, lovely kids, well mannered and talented. They have been raised by two people who love them unconditionally.

I have three kids of my own, all around the same age as my cousins. My eldest is a dream child, the type I wanted and imagined I would have. My younger two are as well, even though one is dyslexic and has many other learning disabilities that require my frequent attention, and my youngest was born with several health problems, ranging from hypoglycemia to a congential hearing loss that has no known cause. I worship each and every one of them, for the joy they bring me always outweighs the pain and terror they sometimes cause. Their hugs make up for the fact that they always steal the ice cream out of the fridge and eat it all before I can get a taste.

Parenting is a crapshoot. There is no guarantee that the child you give birth to will be healthy, or won't decide to commit suicide when they're fifteen, as my friend found out last year, or start using drugs, as another cousin discovered recently of her sixteen year old son. There is also no guarantee that the crack addicted baby you have been asked to adopt will be a morose, horrific problem child. If we obsess about getting just the right type of kid, for whatever reason, we will always end up disappointed somehow. Children are not the perfect reflections of us. They are human beings- flawed, maddening human beings. There will always be a problem. There will always be an issue. There will always be a solution. And there will always be love.

There is if you parent right. And that's the one thing missing from this conversation. If YOU parent right. The onus is on you.

Another echoes the sentiment:

OK, before I say what I need to say, here are my "stats": Me: 56 year-old white female. My kids: 12, 13, 15, all black all adopted from Texas. Each one is fabulous, infuriating, beautiful, lovable, annoying, lazy, industrious, sweet and snotty in their own inimitable ways. Just like we all were. I'm not going into diagnosis, school grades, social skills, or any of the other "blah blah blah" because it is PARENTING that is the kick in the ass, not adoptive parenting.

Adopting black kids out of Texas, I never waited more than 4 months, and the costs were about 1/4 of what it costs to adopt either internationally (ANY ethnicity/color) or in the USA (white and/or hispanic). I was 41 when I started adopting, and adopted as a single parent. If I wanted to be cynical, I could give you a price list.

Genetics are a crapshoot. My kids' gene pools are way better than mine, frankly. My family carries the BRCA1 gene mutation, and I'm the only one of my sibs who doesn't have to worry about passing it on. It's all serendipity.

I have dropped ALL judgment about the politics, business, and racism inherent in adoption. Did you give a kid a home? Do you love 'em? Do you do your best? Good. End of discussion.

From Mudflats, an obituary. The love overwhelms:

It is strange not having a mother. The woman who taught me how to tie my shoes, and how to make a white sauce, and how to use a maxi pad, and how to have empathy for even the unlikeliest of creatures. The woman who was one of my Girl Scout leaders, showing us how to plant marigolds, and guiding Troop 714 successfully through the  requirements to earn the Pet Badge.

You’d have to know her to appreciate this little daydream, but if I had to make up a fairy tale end for my mom, I picture her sitting at the beach on a 70 degree day with low relative humidity, no mosquitoes, eating a bowl of homemade clam chowder, and corn on the cob that wasn’t too mealy, and peaches dead ripe. There might be a never ending bowl of black jelly beans on the table. And she’d be with Dad, and her mother, and all her four-legged children that predeceased her – Spuddy Jinx and Skippy Peter, and Cleo and Fifi and Pepper who’d be running on the beach and not rolling in dead eels. And Luciano Pavarotti would live next door in the Myzak’s old house and practice arias all day on the deck. He’d occasionally have Joan Sutherland over for a barbecue.

In some ways she lived a life of regret. She never became an opera singer as she’d dreamed as a child. She never graduated from college. She never became a nurse, or a lab technician. But a caregiver she was, and a darn good teacher. She may never have gotten a paycheck for it, but she sure earned one. And even though at times she could be hard on her fellow adults, she gave endlessly to those who couldn’t do for themselves – her ailing mother, her children, her animals everywhere. She never failed the ones who really needed her.

Which is why she lives on.

Radley Balko refines a longrunning critique of SWAT tactics in the drug war:

I report on a lot of wrong door raids here. But this one shows why they’re an inappropriate use of force to serve warrants for nonviolent crimes even when the police have the right house, and they actually find their suspect with illicit drugs. SWAT tactics are appropriate when you’re using their inherent violence to defuse an already violent situation. When they’re used to serve drug warrants, you’re creating violence where none existed before. The consequences are predictable. People die—cops, drug dealers, people mistaken for drug dealers, and bystanders.

Even if you support the drug war, it isn’t any more difficult to get high in Framingham, Massachussets today than it was last week. So what purpose do the 150 or or so drug raids per day in this country serve, other than to inflict government-sanctioned violence on people suspected of consensual, ultimately political crimes?

One purpose is that they justify higher spending on weapons and salaries in police departments across the country. And the paramilitary garb has cachet among a lot of cops. Balko has much more on the subject here.

The Internet turns happy penguin into heavy metal penguin:

(Hat tip: Gabe)