I'm reading Rick Perlstein's Before The Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, slowly. I'm just past half way. The JFK assassination is about the midpoint.
What strikes me so far is the way in which Perlstein uses Goldwater as a center piece of his narrative but doesn't focus on him. The action is driven by others. Clarence Manion is the first character to be introduced. Clif White is another major player. He introduces us to William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller, the last two as 'antagonists.'
The thesis of the book is that a 'Conservative' movement grew out of various resentments toward the 'New Deal' and the 'rights of Labor' and began to coalesce around Barry Goldwater, partly for aesthetic reasons. Much as Ronald Reagan would later, Goldwater seemed to embody the thoughts and feelings of many thousands of Americans. Part of this was because many people projected their own feelings onto Goldwater, who did speak often of a new, Conservative approach to American government. (New in one sense, anyway.)
We'll see what happens next. There's talk of a run for President, in '64. ; )
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
Steve Chapman writes for the Chicago Tribune. His column is syndicated and carried in many 'local' papers. The Wisconsin State Journal carries his column on Sundays. He tends toward the conservative point of view but he isn't bound by ideology and his pieces are always worthy of my time. ; )
This week, however, I felt the need to rebut. You can likely find his piece on the interwebs. Occupy Wall Street Has Got It Wrong is the title that I see. here's what I had to say:
I like reading Steve Chapman's column on Sundays and I hope the WSJ continues to carry it. He misses the mark a bit, though, this time around. It IS difficult to say exactly what the Occupy movement is all about; many different issues are mentioned via signs and interviews. But there IS a common thread, and he mentions it in his conclusion. "When the economy crashes, it's those with the least ... who suffer the most." What he ignores is that "the economy" didn't just mysteriously "crash." The reckless, greedy actions of a few, aided and abetted by a money-corrupted Congress, CAUSED it. And to date not only has no one been punished but the worst offenders have been rewarded with taxpayer-funded bailouts used primarily for "bonuses" and gobbling up smaller banks. The issue, then, is not that the rich have so much wealth but that they have excessive political influence. A government that represents the interests of the few at the expense of the many is NOT a democracy. THAT'S worth protesting and I'm glad somebody is.
They usually print my letters, now that I've ceased sending them almost daily. We'll see. Probably about Wednesday is my prediction.
This week, however, I felt the need to rebut. You can likely find his piece on the interwebs. Occupy Wall Street Has Got It Wrong is the title that I see. here's what I had to say:
I like reading Steve Chapman's column on Sundays and I hope the WSJ continues to carry it. He misses the mark a bit, though, this time around. It IS difficult to say exactly what the Occupy movement is all about; many different issues are mentioned via signs and interviews. But there IS a common thread, and he mentions it in his conclusion. "When the economy crashes, it's those with the least ... who suffer the most." What he ignores is that "the economy" didn't just mysteriously "crash." The reckless, greedy actions of a few, aided and abetted by a money-corrupted Congress, CAUSED it. And to date not only has no one been punished but the worst offenders have been rewarded with taxpayer-funded bailouts used primarily for "bonuses" and gobbling up smaller banks. The issue, then, is not that the rich have so much wealth but that they have excessive political influence. A government that represents the interests of the few at the expense of the many is NOT a democracy. THAT'S worth protesting and I'm glad somebody is.
They usually print my letters, now that I've ceased sending them almost daily. We'll see. Probably about Wednesday is my prediction.
Thursday, November 3, 2011
From My "Junior" Year
This was my contribution to a group 'sustainability project' in my Botany 100 class, Spring '10. We were trying to address the needs of feeding the population of the world, in the foreseeable future. Mine involves slowing population growth.
Can human population growth be checked? Sure. Several possibilities come to mind, but government mandated one-child policies wouldn’t be popular and genocide, wiping out a whole continent or a large part of one, … well, lets not go there.
Clearly we need to come up with a plan that involves voluntary compliance. Let’s look at the graph. Here we see world population trending ever upwards. Looking closer we see some of these lines flattening out and three trending up, especially these two. Really especially, this one. Africa.
"I delivered all these children because I didn't know there was another way," said Adongo, who started on a free quarterly contraceptive injection last year. Surrounded by her weary-faced brood, her 21-month-old boy clutching at her faded blue dress, she added glumly: "I fear we are already too many in this family." (Ya think?)
“On a continent where fewer than one in five married women use modern contraception, an explosion of unplanned pregnancies is threatening to bury Adongo's family and a generation of Africans under a mountain of poverty.”
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/12/13/80331/bush-birth-control-policies-helped.html
We have to be careful, now, not to blame everything on Africa, but really, we can only do so much with our population. It’s actually trending the right way.
“"Fifty-one million unintended pregnancies in developing countries occur every year to women not using contraception," the World Bank said in a statement released on the eve of World Population Day.Although birth rates have fallen in the past 30 years, in 35 countries -- 31 in sub-Saharan Africa and East Timor, Afghanistan, Djibouti, and Yemen -- birth rates are more than five children per mother.
A global approach, encompassing not only contraception but also better access to education, is needed to bring down the fertility rate in countries where it is still too high and puts the lives of women at risk, said Sadia Chowdhury, senior reproductive and child health specialist at the World Bank.
"Girls' and women's education is just as important in reducing birth rates as supplying contraception," said Chowdhury, who is also a pediatrician.
"Women's education provides life-saving knowledge, builds job skills that allow her to join the workforce and marry later in life, gives her the power to say how many children she wants and when.
"And these are enduring qualities she will hand down to her daughters as well," said Chowdhury, co-author of a World Bank report on contraception and unintended pregnancies in Africa, eastern Europe and central Asia.
Countries with a high birth rate also tend to have high maternal mortality, infant mortality and poverty, and poor education, health care, and nutrition, Chowdhury said.
"It all adds up. When you see one thing not happening, you see other development aspects not happening," she said.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hboHlfuYX7-7E5wPRixdHRut8YjA
So, policy-makers in developing countries can be appealed to on the grounds that family planning best serves their people. Not just that they are over-populating the world.
| As a general rule, when women become literate and educational attainment rates rise, birth rates fall. That isn't just a vague policy statement that's hard to grasp. That's a real predictor of actual behavior – across the board. The higher an education a woman has, the fewer the children the woman will have. That's because typically a woman getting an education will put off getting married and having children until she's finished with her education. Educated women learn about contraception and family planning, so they have fewer unwanted pregnancies. Even further still, education broadens their perspectives about what the world has to offer them besides being a wife and mother.** Which is why there are a number of cultures around the world consciously preventing their daughters from being educated. It isn't because they believe girls are incapable of learning. It's the reverse: they fear what the girls could accomplish if they were educated. They're losing out. Not only are they missing the contributions those women could have made, actually, educated women also learn about how to better care for the children they already have. They spend more time, not less, with their kids. They stimulate and engage the children in ways that would never even occur to those without an education. So … they're better moms. http://www.pobronson.com/factbook/pages/225.html |  |
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Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.
Bush's mammoth global anti-AIDS initiative, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, poured billions of dollars into Africa but prohibited groups from spending any of it on family planning services or counseling programs, whose budgets flat-lined.
The restrictions flew in the face of research by international aid agencies, the U.N. World Health Organization and the U.S. government's own experts, all of whom touted contraception as a crucial method of preventing births of babies being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The Bush program is widely hailed as a success, having supplied lifesaving anti-retroviral drugs to more than 2 million HIV patients worldwide.
However, researchers, Africa experts and veteran U.S. health officials now think that PEPFAR also contributed to Africa's epidemic population growth by undermining efforts to help women in some of the world's poorest countries exercise greater control over their fertility.
"It was a huge missed opportunity to integrate HIV/AIDS and reproductive health in ways that made sense," said Jotham Musinguzi, a Ugandan physician who heads the Africa office of Partners in Population and Development, an intergovernmental group that promotes sexual health in developing countries.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/12/13/80331/bush-birth-control-policies-helped.html
So, can you and I make a difference, on a global scale? Yes we can. We do it by holding our elected officials accountable for implementing sensible policies regarding aid to developing countries, including modern contraception as a means of effective family planning, as well as combating AIDS.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
I Understand, Now
I had a high school physics course; actually two semester-long ones. I didn't get much out of it/them. That was in the 1970s. In the 1990s I bought Stephen Hawkings' A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes. I started it, couldn't finish. Only read about 15 pages. It was a combination of too 'dry' and a bit over my head. I hadn't been exposed to any of the concepts in any but the most superficial way and it was easy to just toss it aside.
Last night I picked it up again. (I found it on top of a stack in a box in my storage locker and brought it upstairs, earlier in the week.) I opened to the table of contents. Chapter 4: The Uncertainty Principle. I remembered we had talked about that in my Physics 107 class, Fall semester, 2008. And that I didn't really get it, then, or remember anything about it now, other than the name Heisenberg goes with it. (I guess you could say I was uncertain.)
So I flipped to page 53 and started reading. OMG! I understand it now! And I only read three pages! WTF? Not only that, it shed new light on something else that had mystified me when I heard it referred to, at least three times over the years, that being the idea that the observer has an effect on the observed.
Obviously that idea makes sense if we think about humans behaving in a certain way if they feel 'unobserved' and a different way if they know they ARE being observed. But sub-atomic particles? How could they know they were being observed? They can't possibly, right? So what gives?
I see the rest of the chapter includes the 'two-slit experiment.' I have never understood that, either, and I hear that it isn't actually explainable, yet. But I think I'll read Hawkings' explanation. Do you think, maybe ... ?
Last night I picked it up again. (I found it on top of a stack in a box in my storage locker and brought it upstairs, earlier in the week.) I opened to the table of contents. Chapter 4: The Uncertainty Principle. I remembered we had talked about that in my Physics 107 class, Fall semester, 2008. And that I didn't really get it, then, or remember anything about it now, other than the name Heisenberg goes with it. (I guess you could say I was uncertain.)
So I flipped to page 53 and started reading. OMG! I understand it now! And I only read three pages! WTF? Not only that, it shed new light on something else that had mystified me when I heard it referred to, at least three times over the years, that being the idea that the observer has an effect on the observed.
Obviously that idea makes sense if we think about humans behaving in a certain way if they feel 'unobserved' and a different way if they know they ARE being observed. But sub-atomic particles? How could they know they were being observed? They can't possibly, right? So what gives?
I see the rest of the chapter includes the 'two-slit experiment.' I have never understood that, either, and I hear that it isn't actually explainable, yet. But I think I'll read Hawkings' explanation. Do you think, maybe ... ?
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Occupado
So, what about this "Occupy" movement? Good, bad, silly, crazy, harmless, criminal? Who are the occupiers? Who are their leaders?
Usually when I start out with questions I attempt to answer them in the rest of the post. Not today. Those are all "good" questions but as nearly as I can tell none of them has a definite answer. In any case, I have no definitive answers. Maybe you can tell me.
Which doesn't mean I have nothing to say. So, what follows is what I would do if I was pulling their strings, starting ... now.
First off, any and all violence is forbidden. Self-defense, OK, but self-defense is not violence. And, there will be no need to defend yourselves from the police because starting NOW, all laws will be obeyed. If your group is told that it's time to move along then MOVE ALONG. Pick anther spot, go on home for a couple days, whatever. But clear the area.
I saw a bit of an interview with a young woman tonight, from Oakland. The question I remember being asked of her was, "So, what should the cops have done?" Her answer: "I think using (tactics such as rubber bullets and tear gas, I forget the details) was hugely inappropriate."
Well thanks, honey, for nothing, though. The question WAS, what should the police have DONE? Not, please give us your opinion of the appropriateness of what they did. Bit of a difference, don't you know.
I understand that sometimes pushing the police to respond with, arguably, excessive force is a tactic. In MY opinion (as the new boss) it is a tactic that ill-suits our purpose. Hamas uses that tactic, to get Israel to respond with massive force. Are we Hamas? No! Are our objectives similar to those of Hamas? No! This is an assymetric warfare tactic and we are NOT AT WAR! We are angry but, as some of us are fond of saying, or attaching to our bumpers, War Is Not The Answer! Let's keep that in mind.
(When she was asked if what the police alleged was true, that they had thrown, I believe, rocks and bricks at the officers as they moved in she said yes, but since the police were wearing riot gear that wasn't so bad and the police response was out of proportion.)
So people, listen up! We are NOT going to be forcing confrontation. That is NOT what this is about. We aren't the Civil Rights Movement. We're pissed about the way big money interests have stolen our democracy from us and turned capitalism into corporatism, borderline fascism. And there is a way to redress that.
We needed to raise awareness. We have done so. Reliable polls show that America is aware of us and largely on our side. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE THAT! And the more we look like a lawless bunch of radicals the more we lose whatever hard-won respect we DO have. So ...
... we move on to the next phase. Coordinated political activity. It's the only way any progress has ever been achieved in America, and that's something to be proud of because America has achieved some great, progressive goals (yes, we're skipping the Civil War, here). The Democratic Party will hereby be put on notice. WE are your base. THIS is what we insist upon. ECONOMIC JUSTICE. We don't give a FUCK if Glenn Beck wants to call us Socialists, because who the fuck is GlennBeck, anyway? Ditto for Rush Limbaugh. Let him howl. It's what he does. Democratic Party, you WILL represent us or we WILL desert you. We can do it. We WILL do it. We will start a third party. We are strong. We will not win in 2012 but we WILL NOT GO AWAY. We will only grow STRONGER!
This is our message. Everyone go home, unless you have a permit for your occupation, as needed. We can mobilize again. But for now I call for POLITICAL action. It's the only way we can win. If we stick together we WILL WIN! WE ARE THE 99%!
Usually when I start out with questions I attempt to answer them in the rest of the post. Not today. Those are all "good" questions but as nearly as I can tell none of them has a definite answer. In any case, I have no definitive answers. Maybe you can tell me.
Which doesn't mean I have nothing to say. So, what follows is what I would do if I was pulling their strings, starting ... now.
First off, any and all violence is forbidden. Self-defense, OK, but self-defense is not violence. And, there will be no need to defend yourselves from the police because starting NOW, all laws will be obeyed. If your group is told that it's time to move along then MOVE ALONG. Pick anther spot, go on home for a couple days, whatever. But clear the area.
I saw a bit of an interview with a young woman tonight, from Oakland. The question I remember being asked of her was, "So, what should the cops have done?" Her answer: "I think using (tactics such as rubber bullets and tear gas, I forget the details) was hugely inappropriate."
Well thanks, honey, for nothing, though. The question WAS, what should the police have DONE? Not, please give us your opinion of the appropriateness of what they did. Bit of a difference, don't you know.
I understand that sometimes pushing the police to respond with, arguably, excessive force is a tactic. In MY opinion (as the new boss) it is a tactic that ill-suits our purpose. Hamas uses that tactic, to get Israel to respond with massive force. Are we Hamas? No! Are our objectives similar to those of Hamas? No! This is an assymetric warfare tactic and we are NOT AT WAR! We are angry but, as some of us are fond of saying, or attaching to our bumpers, War Is Not The Answer! Let's keep that in mind.
(When she was asked if what the police alleged was true, that they had thrown, I believe, rocks and bricks at the officers as they moved in she said yes, but since the police were wearing riot gear that wasn't so bad and the police response was out of proportion.)
So people, listen up! We are NOT going to be forcing confrontation. That is NOT what this is about. We aren't the Civil Rights Movement. We're pissed about the way big money interests have stolen our democracy from us and turned capitalism into corporatism, borderline fascism. And there is a way to redress that.
We needed to raise awareness. We have done so. Reliable polls show that America is aware of us and largely on our side. WE CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE THAT! And the more we look like a lawless bunch of radicals the more we lose whatever hard-won respect we DO have. So ...
... we move on to the next phase. Coordinated political activity. It's the only way any progress has ever been achieved in America, and that's something to be proud of because America has achieved some great, progressive goals (yes, we're skipping the Civil War, here). The Democratic Party will hereby be put on notice. WE are your base. THIS is what we insist upon. ECONOMIC JUSTICE. We don't give a FUCK if Glenn Beck wants to call us Socialists, because who the fuck is GlennBeck, anyway? Ditto for Rush Limbaugh. Let him howl. It's what he does. Democratic Party, you WILL represent us or we WILL desert you. We can do it. We WILL do it. We will start a third party. We are strong. We will not win in 2012 but we WILL NOT GO AWAY. We will only grow STRONGER!
This is our message. Everyone go home, unless you have a permit for your occupation, as needed. We can mobilize again. But for now I call for POLITICAL action. It's the only way we can win. If we stick together we WILL WIN! WE ARE THE 99%!
Friday, October 14, 2011
Reload
This may shock and amaze you but I'm pulling the plug on the Kennedy assassination book. 1,500 pages of excruciating detail just doesn't fit the schedule right now. I have another book from the library that I've already started (God: A Brief History) and Rick Perlstein's Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, a precursor to Nixonland, came in today's mail.
But I can tell you this, just the same: Oswald did it! If you want further convincing, find the book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi, read the introduction, and see if you aren't satisfied. If not, keep reading.
Later.
But I can tell you this, just the same: Oswald did it! If you want further convincing, find the book, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by Vincent Bugliosi, read the introduction, and see if you aren't satisfied. If not, keep reading.
Later.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
JFK
As I was nearing the finish of Nixonland I remembered that Vincent Bugliosi had written about the Kennedy assassination a couple years back. Not sure but maybe something in Nixonland triggered it; anyway I had always meant to read that one so I went and found it in one of the libraries on campus.
Reading the 36 page preface and the early part of the text I realized that in addition to examining the Kennedy assassination in excruciating detail and blowing up every conspiracy myth you've ever heard of, Bugliosi is writing on the same theme as Perlstein was: the polarization of America. Perlstein traced it to Nixon, Bugliosi goes back to that fateful day in 1963.
From the preface:
At approximately 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, while President John F. Kennedy, the most powerful man in the free world, rode in his presidential limousine slowly past the Texas School Book Depository Building and down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, three shots rang out ... lay mortally wounded on his wife Jaqueline's lap. The assassin had succeeded in brutally cutting down, at the age of forty-six, the thirty-fifth president of these United States, a man whose wit, charm and intelligence had captivated a world audience. The assassin's bullets had also extinguished a flame of hope for millions of Americans who saw in the youthful president at least the promise of excellence in national life.
As the years have shown, Kennedy's assassination immediately transformed him into a mythical, larger-than-life figure whose hold on the nation's imagination resonates to this very day. "The image of Kennedy is not based on what he accomplished, but on his promise, the hope he held out," said historian Stephen Ambrose in 1993. Years earlier, New York Times columnist James Reston wrote similarly that "what was killed in Dallas was not only the President but the promise. The heart of the Kennedy legend is what might have been. All this is apparent in the faces of the people who come daily to his grave on the Arlington Hill." In 1993, Ambrose added, "There's a very strong sense that if he had not died, we would not have suffered the 30 years of nightmare that followed--the race riots, the white backlash, assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra." While this is, of course, speculative, what is not is JFK's legacy of rekindling the notion that public service is a noble calling. If it is any barometer of the sense of hope and promise that Kennedy inspired in the American people, the ever-decreasing trust by Americans in their government down through the years started with the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent erroneously perceived notion--fostered by conspiracy theorists--that the government concealed the full truth about the assassination from them. Trust in our leaders in Washington to do what is right for the people plummeted from 76 percent around the time of the assassination to a low of 19 percent three decades later. "There's such a gulf in history between the day before and the day after Kennedy's assassination," says historian Howard Jones of the University of Alabama. "It's as if we passed through a hundred years in a day."
The book is 1,500 pages long; I don't know if I'll read every word. So far I'm liking it.
More to come ...
Reading the 36 page preface and the early part of the text I realized that in addition to examining the Kennedy assassination in excruciating detail and blowing up every conspiracy myth you've ever heard of, Bugliosi is writing on the same theme as Perlstein was: the polarization of America. Perlstein traced it to Nixon, Bugliosi goes back to that fateful day in 1963.
From the preface:
At approximately 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, while President John F. Kennedy, the most powerful man in the free world, rode in his presidential limousine slowly past the Texas School Book Depository Building and down Elm Street in Dallas, Texas, three shots rang out ... lay mortally wounded on his wife Jaqueline's lap. The assassin had succeeded in brutally cutting down, at the age of forty-six, the thirty-fifth president of these United States, a man whose wit, charm and intelligence had captivated a world audience. The assassin's bullets had also extinguished a flame of hope for millions of Americans who saw in the youthful president at least the promise of excellence in national life.
As the years have shown, Kennedy's assassination immediately transformed him into a mythical, larger-than-life figure whose hold on the nation's imagination resonates to this very day. "The image of Kennedy is not based on what he accomplished, but on his promise, the hope he held out," said historian Stephen Ambrose in 1993. Years earlier, New York Times columnist James Reston wrote similarly that "what was killed in Dallas was not only the President but the promise. The heart of the Kennedy legend is what might have been. All this is apparent in the faces of the people who come daily to his grave on the Arlington Hill." In 1993, Ambrose added, "There's a very strong sense that if he had not died, we would not have suffered the 30 years of nightmare that followed--the race riots, the white backlash, assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra." While this is, of course, speculative, what is not is JFK's legacy of rekindling the notion that public service is a noble calling. If it is any barometer of the sense of hope and promise that Kennedy inspired in the American people, the ever-decreasing trust by Americans in their government down through the years started with the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent erroneously perceived notion--fostered by conspiracy theorists--that the government concealed the full truth about the assassination from them. Trust in our leaders in Washington to do what is right for the people plummeted from 76 percent around the time of the assassination to a low of 19 percent three decades later. "There's such a gulf in history between the day before and the day after Kennedy's assassination," says historian Howard Jones of the University of Alabama. "It's as if we passed through a hundred years in a day."
The book is 1,500 pages long; I don't know if I'll read every word. So far I'm liking it.
More to come ...
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