The Where is John Edwards Web Page highlights the fact that he is being left out of the main stream press coverage of the Democratic Presidential nomination race.
I think he and Dennis Kucinich have managed to pull the Democratic field more in my direction than the field started out. I’d hate to see that force disappear.
The book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life by Robert B. Reich, is a great description of how capitalism has come to dominate democracy in our government.
When it comes to solutions, I think the book falls short. Follow the link above to see the details.
I think I have come up with a practical step that is better than any that Reich proposes in his book. You’ll also find that at the link.
Congressman Wexler spoke before the U.S. House of Representatives calling for impeachment hearings on Vice President Cheney.
He has a web site for joining the campaign to bring about hearings.
The Tantasqua Town Common published an opinion piece on page 7 of the January 10, 2008 edition. The title is ID Challenge lacks challenge.
I wrote the following letter to the editor in response:
In response to Patrick Lacaire’s guest column on intelligent design, I have a few brief comments.
It is good to question scientific theories. That is one of the ways science progresses. In the case of Lacaire’s questions, I think that most of them are answered in the book “Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design” by Michael Shermer. The book is available at the Sturbridge public library.
As for the comment that “random and purposeless processes do not produce complexity and order”, I think Darwin would agree. That is why his theory includes natural selection to add survival of the fittest as the purpose that produces order and complexity out of the randomness of genetic mutations.
As for intelligent design, I would like to see some discussion of how an intelligent designer would go about designing life in the universe. Can someone describe what experiments the intelligent designer carried out? What physical mechanisms were used to carry out those experiments? Surely the Discovery Institute must have contemplated these questions.
Follow the link to the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute to look for yourself.
Perhaps ABC news is trying to redeem itself with this story.
Regarding the so-called threat from the Iranian boat, the U.S. Navy spokesperson said, “It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. …”. I don’t suppose it could have come from the U.S. Navy itself?
Here is another plausible explanation from the Navy Times.
Firedoglake posits some reasons for the Iraqi soldier’s killing of U.S. soldiers while they were on a joint mission. I will be watching the news to see how this story ends up.
If the U.S. media is indeed leaving out the important facts, it will not instill confidence in their reporting on the so called Iranian provocation in the Gulf of Hormuz.
Richard H. has found another interesting piece. If this keeps up, I may have to put him on the staff.
This New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof discusses the rising tide of religious belief in the United States compared to the rest of the industrialized countries.
He compares some aspects of this trend to what he has seen when he has been with mullahs and imams of the Islamic world.
I think I begin to understand the common factor. The United States is seeing unprecedented economic competition from the rest of the world. People in this country are seeing signs of the possible end to U.S. economic domination. We may have a strong military, but we may not have the economic resources to keep it in the field against all the adversaries we are facing.
On the Islamic side of the world, there has been a general failure of most citizens in Islamic countries to realize any economic gains from the rising price of oil. The Palestinians’ living conditions have not improved due to any concessions that the Arab world has made in negotiations with Israel. What few Islamic countries have seen any progress toward democracy have not seen any benefit for the lives of the average resident.
The common factor between these two sides is fear. Add in global warming and you just get more fear. I think there is a tendency to turn toward unquestioning religious faith in times of fear and stress. No rational action has seemed to make things better. Perhaps some savior will step in to rescue us.
Another common factor is the presence of people seeking power who take advantage of the fear that the population is feeling.
I realized the other day that I am actually a believer, too. I have faith that basing personal and political actions on rational and intelligent analysis of the situation is the best hope of humanity. We can figure out what has gone wrong with previous policies, and we can choose better policies. I also have faith that technological innovation, with some of which I have been involved since 1961, can make our lives better if used carefully.
Another tenet of my faith is that making life altering decisions based on beliefs that seem to contradict rational evidence is not a wise thing to do. As an engineer, I was always having to make decisions based on incomplete knowledge. However, an engineer does have the responsibility to gather as much information as is feasible before making those decisions.
If there is a God, would she have given us a brain if she didn’t want us to use it?
A Muslim woman persuades her husband that their family would be happier if they left the West Bank and moved to America. They do, and things are good…until September 11. After that, the elementary school their daughter goes to begins using a textbook that says Muslims want to kill Christians. This and other stories of what happens when Muslims and non-Muslims try to communicate, and misfire.
My most loyal lurker, Richard H., heard a rebroadcast of this old This American Life. He found it deeply disturbing. He wondered if it were worthy of being posted on my blog.
The part that Richard H. found most disturbing was This American Life – Shouting Across the Divide Act One. Act One starts at minute 7 of the broadcast.
What do you think?
For a neutral debate moderator, Charles Gibson is amazingly good at spewing the Republican Party line.
He spends 15 minutes of the debate on the worst problem that America faces which he claims is that of a nuclear bomb exploding in this country. Then in the next 15 minutes he chides all the candidates for not agreeing that the surge is working and that we should spend more effort in Iraq. He makes no connection to the fact that this would undermine our efforts to concentrate on what he just said was the biggest problem America faced.
Of course no one on the panel connected our concentration on Iraq instead of Afghanistan to the troubles in Pakistan. What about the fact that Turkey is now attacking the Kurds in northern Iraq. Perhaps our surge has just shifted the theater of battle to someplace else. So if the surge was so good, why is the overall situation on the verge of collapse. Those nuclear bombs exploding in our cities might very well come from Pakistan because the situation there went out of control.
It’s like George Bush put a big thumb in the middle of a bowl of Jello. Everyone notices that there is now a big depression where he put his thumb. Pay no attention to the mountain of Jello rising behind you.
Later the questioners state that two-thirds of the economy has been driven by consumer spending. They want to know what the candidates are going to do to help the consumer. When the candidates say they will give tax breaks to the middle class and pay for those breaks by taking away some of the breaks for the wealthy, Gibson starts spewing out a defense of rich people’s tax breaks. Did he not remember that the conversation started when he and his cohort brought up the need for consumer spending? It is very well known that the rich are more able to set aside some of their wealth in savings and investment instead of spending it than are the people who are struggling to pay the mortgage and the credit card bill. If you need to stimulate consumption, then you need to give the tax breaks to the people most likely to spend it.
Of course there was the old saw about when Clinton was President nothing was different. For a news anchor, Charles Gibson is mighty ignorant of the news going on around him. I guess huge deficits to huge surpluses and back again is no difference. I suppose recession to boom and back to recession is no difference. I guess going from being respected in the world as upholder of human rights to being a world supporter of torture is no difference. I suppose even Ralph Nader couldn’t tell the difference between Al Gore’s support of the environment and George Bush’s. So Gibson is in good company there.
The candidates certainly failed to get their message through to Charles Gibson if he still thinks nothing has gone wrong since George Bush took office.
This is the ad that Dennis Kucinich would like to run during tonight’s ABC debate in New Hampshire.
I am of two minds on the debate issue. On the one hand, it would be nice to focus on the major candidates. On the other hand, Dennis Kucinich helps to shift the debate in an interesting direction.
I think Kucinich’s problem may be that he says extreme things to get attention. His extremism may scare some people.
In the end, he has to decide if he only wants attention or if he also wants to win an election. If all he wants to do is exert some influence, then maybe his tactics are working. Although that is certainly debatable.