I’m not even going to try to write it better than this. I can’t. Enjoy the read, and read the whole thing. Here’s an excerpt:
12. The only hope you have of ever seeing another pay raise is if Congress passes health care reform. Without health care reform, the increasing cost of your health insurance will swallow this year’s raise. And next year’s raise. And pretty soon it won’t stop with just your raise. Without health care reform, the increasing cost of your health insurance will start making your pay go down.
13. I wish I could tell you that this was just a worst-case scenario, that this was only something that might, maybe happen, but that wouldn’t be true. Without health care reform, this is what will happen. We know this because this is what is happening now. It has been happening for the past 10 years. In 2008, employers spent on average 25 percent more per employee than they did in 2001, but wages on average did not increase during those years. The price of milk went up. The price of gas went up. But wages did not. All of the money that would have gone to higher wages went to pay the higher and higher and higher cost of health insurance. And unless Congress passes health care reform, that will not change.
Well, it will change in the sense that it will keep getting worse, but it won’t get better. Unless the problem gets fixed, the problem won’t be fixed. That’s kind of what “problem” and “fixed” mean.
almost like a lot of misleading fluff designed to fill the void that should follow an understanding of the foregoing, at least on the subject of ‘why no bipartisanship?’ There’s really nothing more to be said about ‘why no bipartisanship,’ once one recognizes the GOP party discipline (emphasis original). On this issue, it’s absolutely astounding to blame Obama or even the Congressional leadership (although Pelosi and Reid leave much to be desired otherwise). It’s doubly astounding that the GOP did it once before, less perfectly, but with a very large reward for bad behavior in the form of the 1994 mid-term elections. Yet no one calls them on it effectively, and bad behavior seems about to be rewarded again…
Read the actual conversation at the top of the article. It is an apparently word-for-word conversation about how ‘bipartisanship’ works.
“If Democrats could find a way to talk about structural issues — if everyone can find a way to talk about them — that would be at least a step. And the Dems could talk about the simple impossibility of governing when the opposition is committed to ‘No’ as a bloc,” seems like a pipe dream by James Fallows. But who can blame him. He outlined, in this one post (go read it!) the failures of our federal legislative system. Thankfully, that’s just one branch of the federal government. There are (if they are still functioning) other branches of the federal government, and (also, hopefully still functioning) state governments.
The thing is, the conversation doesn’t end here. And there will be more elections in the future. Hopefully, things stay together.
As many of you know, the courtroom is just another theater. There are a few goals: get some laughs, know your lines without stumbling, and prove your point more effectively than the other side. Just like theater. It amazes me that professionals are surprisedby this.
[F]ollowing the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial over the past three weeks has been a reminder that a courtroom can also be a great and theatrical classroom, where the values of thoroughness, precision in speech, and the obligation to reply have a way of laying bare the fundamentals of certain rhetorical positions….The crucible of cross examination forces the witness to confront the other side; they can’t fall back on bumper sticker slogans.”
Generally, if you sit through some college classes – I daresay that most of these journalists have – you figure that out. Hopefully you reflect, ponder, enough to realize that this is exactly what the courtroom is. It is a showcase for ideas; it is theater.
How do you persuade? It’s not easy. But have you seriously forgotten that that’s what happens in a court of law? And, just as a closing thought, in response to the truly odd assertion that, “you sometimes hear it said that a courtroom is not the best venue for playing out battles in the culture wars—better that they be fought in the legislature, or at the ballot box, or even in the blogosphere,” when was the last time you really thought an American court isn’t sufficient for solving some issues? Have the not-yet-in-the-works trials of ‘terrorists’ in New York scared us that much?
1788 – Isaac Briggs and William Longstreet patented the steamboat. (See also, Gibbons v. Ogden)
1790 – The U.S. Supreme Court convened for the first time in New York City.
1884 – The first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published.
and more.
It is not my intent to blog at you. Some of the things I say here require no reply. For those things that engender – provoke – a reply, this blog should be a running conversation. This is, as I call it, a social commentary. But it is not sufficient that I am commenting on society. If you read along, change my world-view.
My view alone is not sufficient. My view is unique, but simultaneously it cannot be unique. There must be things that you, the reader, agree with. There must be things that you disagree with. This writing is my output, but it should be shaped by more than just me. I am not, for better or for worse, alone. When I blog, you are also here. You, the reader.
stolen. Thanks!
Chutzpah (huztpah)
Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, sheer guts plus arrogance;
it’s Yiddish and, as Leo Rosten writes, no other word, and no other language, can do it justice.
This example is better than 1,000 words….read on!
THE ESSENCE OF CHUTZPAH…
A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for 25cents each. Every day a young man would leave his office
building at lunch time, and as he passed the pretzel stand, he would leave her a quarter, but never take a pretzel.
And this went on for more then 3 years. The two of them never spoke. One day, as the young man passed the old lady’s
stand and left his quarter as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him.
Without blinking an eye she said:
“They’re 35 cents now.”
As I sometimes do, I’m posting a message I (just) wrote to Andrew Sullivan, because I felt it necessary to comment on a post on his blog. Please expand my world view.
Your worry
My worry, however, is that there are enough Americans perfectlyhappy to live with this nihilism indefinitely, and to perpetuate the policies of spend-and-borrow and invade-and-occupy that any serious attempt to address our problems is impossible. And their response tothat will be to blame all those problems on a Democratic president, if there is one; and if there’s a Republican president, to simply deny that any of the problems exist at all.
Is a significant worry, and it’s not to be ignored, if we intend to survive as a country. When I read this I realized where the problem stems from. It is both the root of our modern system, which gave us Obama, and the curse of our modern system. Web 2.0. This wonderful world of the internet, which allows me to know that you exist, and to communicate with you, produces problems for us. I think yesterday you wrote about how we seek confirmation of our own views, both with cable networks and with online news; true.
Look at the numbers for a moment. We who follow the news want the numbers to be believable. There’s about 20-25% of Americans who call themselves Republicans. Another 20-25% who are Democrats. There’s a big middle ground, and that’s where our elections focus. “…their response tothat will be to blame all those problems on a Democratic president, ifthere is one; and if there’s a Republican president, to simply denythat any of the problems exist at all,” you said. That’s true. But you’re hearing so much noise, so much outcry, because there is web 2.0. And there has been, for even longer, cable news. You’re hearing screaming because the networks give us screaming. And the online news – well, we choose to read the person who yells loudest online too, right? If all we had was still five national cable networks and some local news, the screaming you hear would be very different.
It seems to me that we don’t have a choice in whether the screaming is there or not. It will come from both sides; this is the noise you hear in politics. ” Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated,” Obama told us Wednesday. Our choice is in how we hear that noise. Frankly, it would be nice to just shut everything up for an hour and not have the talking heads. But that’s not a viable choice. Instead we have to choose which noise to listen to, and how to synthesize it so that we can guide ourselves in a direction we want to take. As for which direction that is … that’s a different story.
Today is the 65 Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s time to check in and see if we are where we want to be.
Thought interruption
This is an issue that hurts to write about. it’s much easier not to think about, to write about, Auschwitz, Treblinka, World War II, or any other issues of contention.
Response to Thought Interruption
That’s part of the problem. No one wants to think about, write about, consider, confront, deal with, any of these issues. They’re so much easier to avoid. Let’s move on about our daily lives. Our daily lives containing high unemployment, several wars, poverty – and on the bright side, a good response to an earthquake. Yes, let’s move on and forget the past.
Continuation of thought
It seems right, necessary and proper, to confront these issues. Not just trying to figure out why Virginia banned the new edition of Anne Frank’s diary. That was an odd decision, Virginia. We can expect the Deep South to want control over literature. But not Virginia, not The Old Dominion. Not the state of glory.
I’m getting sidetracked, a bit. Where are we? What did we take away from when the Big Red One liberated Auschwitz? Israel became a state. Now it’s a police state, or close to it. Then again, so are we … but nobody will tell you that. Israel thinks the best solution to the Palestinian Problems (oops, did I just call it that) is to build walls, deprive a nation of jobs, and enforce ways of life – sound familiar? Think ghetto. Countries want nukes. After all, we’re all safer when we all play M.A.D., right?
Things aren’t all bad. Miranda, Roe, Loving Brown v. Board of Ed. made sure of that. That’s some progress. All suggested by the same court that at times overturns those decisions. Most countries have a political system. Is it the system they want? Well … there don’t seem to be many choices. DEMOCRACY, or we say nothing works. We’ll make sure nothing works.
Strangely, there’s still hope. There’s always hope, but a lack of bad sure is nice. We’ll take hope. Just give us a reason. We need a reason.
Destroy the modern Auschwitz’s. It’s time to do things right.
I was at Subway tonight with a friend after the State of the Union and a thought flashed through my mind that was important enough to pull out a pen and write it down on the back of the receipt – I always have a pen in my pocket, don’t you? Here’s my thought. Reality – feeling, accepting, dealing with reality – is just another form of escape from reality. Or, conversely, escaping from reality is just another way of dealing with reality.
What’s real to you? It’s hard to know, isn’t it. How do you deal with the parts of reality you don’t like? Do you drink? Smoke? Overwork? Study constantly? Read? Keep yourself so busy you don’t have time to remind yourself of the things you’d rather not remember anyway? You have a form of escape. You might not call it that. You might not know it’s that. You might tell yourself – or you might be told – that what you’re doing is helping you with reality. And maybe it is. But isn’t it a form of escape?
Let me reemphasize my point. Accepting reality is just another form of escape. By thinking that you’ve come to terms with whatever your reality is, aren’t you also escaping from not knowing how to face reality. A very real, scary, Catch-22. There are lots of them. Your reality may be that you think you have accepted reality. Which means you’re running from reality. Or if you’re not running from reality, you are running from reality, because you think you’re not running from it. Scared yet? That’s the reality I see.
Crossposted on facebook
I don’t want to do a book review. That is not my forte, and I’ve always found that book reviews are a bit unfair to people who haven’t read a book – even if it’s a review that makes them want to read said book. That said, I’m going to do something like a book review. A thousand Splendid Suns. I don’t want to say, ‘this was good,’ ‘this was bad;’ that’s not my point. I want to comment on the human condition. What the author wrote was not fiction. Nor was it non-fiction. It was something more – it was reality.
Imagine Afghanistan, if you can, that has not been destroyed by thirty years of war. Sometime in the 1970’s. Imagine a world where you are what you are born as. You are a bastard? You are always a bastard. You are a son of a fishmonger? You will be a fishmonger too. You sell rugs in the bazaar? So will your sons. That is this world. Europe was like that once, too. We are not so advanced, or so different. Ideas, ideals, and ideologies. They are so unavoidable. Our way changed because our ideals changed our ideas. Someday, quite without meaning to, we may change again.
I want to make just one more observation (a short post is a relief after the State of the Union). Our ideas of justice change. Sharia under the Taliban in Afghanistan is very different from Sharia in North Africa which is very different from Sharia in Saudi Arabia. And all of it is based on interpreting the same text, the same rule of laws.
Not such an explicit book review, eh? All I’ve told you is that the book exists. I hope you read it.
The Dole Blog 