Category: Old Dish

“Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I regret to tell you that I am leaving the FDA, and will no longer be serving as the Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health and Director of the FDA Office of Women’s Health. The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women’s access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women’s health. I have spent the last 15 years working to ensure that science informs good health policy decisions. I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled. I therefore have submitted my resignation effective today.

I will greatly miss working with such an outstanding group of scientists, clinicians and support staff. FDA’s staff is of the highest caliber and it has been a privilege to work with you all. I hope to have future opportunities to work with you in a different capacity.” – Susan F. Wood.

That’s how many Americans believe that the earth and all its creatures have always been the same since they were created by God in Genesis. Fully “70 percent of white evangelical Protestants say that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.” 63 percent of them are “very certain” that this is true. I must say that there are times when one is rendered speechless. No educated intelligent person could possibly look at the evidence of science and say such a thing. And yet we are supposed to have a reasoned debate with these people on the matter. How is that even possible?

130 CHURCHES SOLD: One more effect of the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal in Canada. In one diocese.

Many emailers have harrumphed that there might too be a connection. In the abstract, you could make a case that warmer waters can increase hurricane ferocity. But every major article I have read on the story says that the pattern of hurricanes is independent of such shifts; that there was a lull in the recent past; and that the worst came in the 1930s and 1940s. When the New York Times is debunking the idea, partisan liberals might want to reassess it. Jim Glassman has futher thoughts here.

“Thanks for your comments about Krepinevich and Rumsfeld today. What has always horrified me about Bush’s approach to the war on terrorism, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq in particular, has been that his stated goals and motivations have not been supported — even contradicted — by the actions he has chosen to take.

WMD? Why didn’t we attempt to prevent weapons from leaving or coming into Iraq, when we were concerned they might get into the hands of terrorists from outside Iraq’s borders?

Yellowcake uranium? We didn’t even bother to secure the known Al Tuwaitha yellowcake storage site, so it was looted.

Protecting Iraqis from the insurgency? How can they trust that we’re serious about that when we did it Rumsfeld’s way (on the cheap) and still haven’t even stabilized the key areas (including the road near the Baghdad airport) after 2 1/2 years?

Bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqis? Why should anyone believe that — just because we say we mean well? What do those concepts mean to Iraqis when lawlessness and fear and destruction are still so widespread? Are we just going to pay lip service to the idea of a “constitution” and an “election,” declare victory and then “turn it over to the Iraqis” and run like GHW Bush did in 1991?

Why won’t Bush reassure Americans and Iraqis with a concrete set of initiatives and steps to achieving them? Apparently, according to Krepinevich, it’s because the Bushies still don’t HAVE any plan, any strategy, or any serious desire to achieve success. If they think they are serious about achieving a recognizable democracy in the Middle East, then why aren’t they doing the things necessary to achieving it? It blows my mind that people like Christopher Hitchens can rip apart a symbolic mom like Cindy Sheehan and not see that the greater threat to the success of the Iraqi invasion comes from the ignorance, ineptitude (and, perhaps, political cowardice) WITHIN the Bush administration itself.

Are they serious? Where’s the evidence since March, 2003?”

“For human pride is more powerful than any instruments of which it avails itself. It must be regarded as inevitable that a religion which apprehends the truth about man and God by faith alone should be used as the instrument of human arrogance. This is done whenever the truth which is held by faith, because it is beyond all human attainment, comes to be regarded as a secure possesion. In this form it is no longer a threat to man. It does not mediate judgment upon the false and imperial completions of human life. It becomes, rather, the vehicle of the pretentions that the finiteness and sin of life have been overcome.” – Reinhold Niebuhr, “The Nature and Destiny of Man: Vol. 2; Human Destiny.”

Not-so-awful news for the president. He’s still unpopular, but not in free-fall. The Congress is less popular: with only 37 percent approval, boding ill for Republicans in 2006, when they are due for a market correction. Democrats are mad at their leaders for not opposing Bush more aggressively. Ditto, oddly enough, independents. But on the crucial issue, there’s good news for Bush, it seems to me:

Public attitudes toward the war have not changed significantly since the first of the year, the poll found. Slightly more than four in 10 – 42 percent – approved of the job Bush is doing in Iraq; 57 percent disapproved, unchanged in recent months. Slightly more than half – 53 percent – said the war was not worth it, while 46 percent said it was, identical to the results of a Post-ABC poll two months ago. By a 51 percent to 38 percent ratio, the public said the United States is winning the war, despite mounting casualties and insurgent attacks.

A majority (54 percent) continued to say the United States should keep military forces in Iraq until civil order is restored there; 44 percent said U.S. forces should be withdrawn. Six in 10 opposed announcing a timetable for withdrawal. Only about one in eight — 13 percent — said U.S. forces should be withdrawn immediately.

I don’t think the administration can blame the press or the public for dissatisfaction with the conduct of the Iraq war. the public has been patient and supportive, especially of the troops. The Congressional opposition has been largely meek. Bush has been given a chance to make the war work. And he will and should be held responsible if it is ultimately deemed a failure.

Kos can’t help himself:

This is the greatest disaster to hit our nation in most of our lifetimes. Worse than 9-11.

It is indeed devastating. But we do not know how many have died; and we also know that this was an act of nature, not a premeditated attempt to murder innocent people. Do some on the anti-war left have to keep minimizing what happened on 9/11? And then, of course, it’s impossible for Kos to mention an awful tragedy without a dig at president Bush. That said, he has a point. The photograph he mentions from yesterday does strike me as completely off-key, and a pretty terrible p.r. posture for a president in the middle of a natural catastrophe. Who on earth signed off on that one? Playing a guitar? It’s the kind of image that can truly alter the perception of a president.

“The people of Bangaladesh have to live in a river delta because their whole country is one. Americans, by contrast, inhabit a roomy country and do not have to put themselves in the path of catastrophes that are completely predictable except as to date and time in order to make a quick buck in real estate or enjoy the view and a nearby swim for a few or many years. We need to have a serious think about whether it’s the duty of the rest of us to subsidize these choices.” – Mark Kleiman, asking some perhaps-too-soon questions raised by Katrina. The debate is worth having. But it should not detract from simple human sympathy for those caught in this awful event.
CORRECTION: That post on Mark Kleiman’s blog was by a guest-blogger, Michael O’Hare of the Goldman School at UC Berkeley.

A law-suit against a reader’s comment.

“Full blame for the misuse and abuse of the National Guard belongs to Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, a testily glib figure of monumental complacence. Unlike many of my fellow members of the Democrat party, I don’t hate George Bush or regard him as venal. He is sincere but narrow: most problematic in his presidency is his curious inability to fire those who have given him lousy advice and betrayed their stewardship. Is it some sentimental twist on family loyalty?” – Camille Paglia on misjudgment in the conduct of the war in Iraq.