Politics

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Rich Lowry on Cynicism & Government on National Review Online

In these conditions, it’s a political boon to have a distance from government. The best thing that might have happened to Republicans lately is their loss of Congress, which means that Democrats have gone from attacking a spectacularly unpopular Congress to running a spectacularly unpopular Congress. Congratulations!

Rich Lowry on Cynicism & Government on National Review Online

I must admit that I have become disillusioned and cynical with our government process. I was skeptical that the Democrats could manage their own affairs let alone forge bipartisan partnerships to redirect the government in new directions. It appears that my cynicism was well-founded. Congress has accomplished nothing and the polls show it. Not to be outdone the Republicans look like they will be unwilling or unable to forge any unity on major issues. Although I have had personal dealings with the immigration system, I found myself unenthusiastic with the immigration reform bill. It increasingly looks like both parties are embracing a “do-nothing” Congress again. This lack of unity and purpose does not bode well for Republicans taking back the Congress. The Democrats could lose the Congress but I don’t think the Republicans can win it.

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Althouse: "We think the ad’s authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real."

“The disaster is the atmosphere….”

Source: Althouse: “We think the ad’s authors were right to give voice to the students quoted, whose suffering is real.”

It is amazing that the professors have not embraced a bit more humility as the events have unfolded. The original letter written by the professors was an emotional outburst that showed little of the leadership or wisdom we would like to believe is prevalent in our college professors. A quick background check on the stripper would have confirmed that she is not the next Rosa Parks. Sadly she is a woman of questionable character. Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King had great character and integrity. It was their character that continuously guided the civil rights movement to the higher ground. I am surprised that this higher ground so eagerly sought by the civil rights movement was so carelessly forgotten by these professors. In an effort to be sensitive to one side, they beat all of the Duke students over the head with the “racist” bat and are unrepentant about their actions. The professors’ actions inflamed public opinion, was demeaning to the students, embarrassed the alumni, and was catastrophic to those students involved in this incident. If these professors had taken a few minutes to think about their actions, they probably would have noticed the risks they faced if the stripper’s accusations did not survive careful scrutiny. A little humility and patience would have helped the professors avoid looking so childish. I find it ironic that the professors’ misguided actions continue to be the real “Social Disaster”. They just don’t get it!

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Do Women like Pelosi?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif. speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007, after meeting with President Bush to discuss his revised Iraq strategy. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)My wife does not like Nancy and the ferocity of her dislike has me bemused. I have seen this behavior before in women. Her complaint appears to be focused on the red cape. Naively I assume there must be something else that “really” triggered this strong response but experience has taught me to not ask any more questions. I have been down this path before and I have learned not to go there anymore. Never is there a greater gulf in the communications between a husband and wife than on a subject like red capes.

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The Christian Science Monitor | Life at America’s bottom wage

Drawing on government data on the American workforce, labor economists highlight several patterns in the low-wage workforce:

  • Most workers don’t work the minimum wage for very long. Of workers who are 10 years into their careers, only about 13 percent have spent half or more of their career earning within $1.50 of the minimum wage, according to a 2001 study.
  • Minimum-wage workers are concentrated in low-skill service-sector occupations, including food service, retail, and motel housekeeping. Among Labor Department occupations, “leisure/ hospitality” leads the pack with 14.3 percent of workers earning $5.15 or less per hour. (Workers in some occupations such as food service can earn less than $5.15 if they earn enough tips to equal the minimum.) By contrast, just 0.4 percent of manufacturing workers earn minimum wage.
  • Of the 6.6 million workers who would be directly affected by the proposed minimum-wage hike to $7.25 an hour, 61 percent are female, 29 percent are age 16 to 19, 21 percent are Hispanic, 16 percent are black, and 9 percent are single parents, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

    Those numbers are all higher than the share of those groups in the total workforce. By contrast, 16 percent of those affected will be married parents – many fewer than the 29 percent of all workers who are in that group.

  • Many low-wage workers also face a high level of job insecurity. People with low skills are more likely to be unemployed, according to government data. And many low-wage workers have only part-time jobs. Of those directly affected by the proposed wage hike, 21 percent work fewer than 20 hours per week, whereas just 5 percent of the overall workforce is in that category. In addition to low skills, barriers to employment can include substance abuse or mental illness and other disabilities.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor | Daily Online Newspaper

Some additional barriers I have noticed in Habitat families trying to get and keep a job are:

  • Credit card debt
  • Illness/Short term disability
  • Transportation issues
  • Amount of time needed for training to get a better paying job 
  • Children with special needs
  • Family members moving in
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RE: 15 rules for understanding the Middle East

For a long time, I let my hopes for a decent outcome in Iraq triumph over what I had learned reporting from Lebanon during its civil war. Those hopes vanished last summer. So, I’d like to offer President Bush my updated rules of Middle East reporting, which also apply to diplomacy, in hopes they’ll help him figure out what to do next in Iraq.

Rule 10: Mideast civil wars end in one of three ways: a) like the U.S. civil war, with one side vanquishing the other; b) like the Cyprus civil war, with a hard partition and a wall dividing the parties; or c) like the Lebanon civil war, with a soft partition under an iron fist (Syria) that keeps everyone in line. Saddam used to be the iron fist in Iraq. Now it is us. If we don’t want to play that role, Iraq’s civil war will end with A or B.

Rule 11: The most underestimated emotion in Arab politics is humiliation. The Israeli-Arab conflict, for instance, is not just about borders. Israel’s mere existence is a daily humiliation to Muslims, who can’t understand how, if they have the superior religion, Israel can be so powerful. Al Jazeera’s editor, Ahmed Sheikh, said it best when he recently told the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche: “It gnaws at the people in the Middle East that such a small country as Israel, with only about 7 million inhabitants, can defeat the Arab nation with its 350 million. That hurts our collective ego. The Palestinian problem is in the genes of every Arab. The West’s problem is that it does not understand this.”

Rule 12: Thus, the Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always make sure they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 13: Our first priority is democracy, but the Arabs’ first priority is “justice.” The oft-warring Arab tribes are all wounded souls, who really have been hurt by colonial powers, by Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, by Arab kings and dictators, and, most of all, by each other in endless tribal wars. For Iraq’s long-abused Shiite majority, democracy is first and foremost a vehicle to get justice. Ditto the Kurds. For the minority Sunnis, democracy in Iraq is a vehicle of injustice. For us, democracy is all about protecting minority rights. For them, democracy is first about consolidating majority rights and getting justice.

Rule 14: The Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi had it right: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”

Rule 15: Whether it is Arab-Israeli peace or democracy in Iraq, you can’t want it more than they do.

Read the rest of the Rules.

timesunion.com
20 December 2006

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Losing the Enlightenment

From the Claremont Institute: A civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront the Islamists.

Link to Losing the Enlightenment

This is an interesting article whose premise is that our self-loathing is the ultimate source of strength for radical Islamists. He makes a persuasive case. The political middle ground and shared values that was a great strength of this society seem harder to find each passing day. Everybody has their own “facts”. With these facts it is easy to be a journalist. If you cannot convince the “other side” with your reasoning, then you need to raise the volume and shout them down. Not everybody is cut out to be a journalist. There is not a lot of humility in today’s society or our writing. Our cyncism that has convinced us that the elected official is often the lesser of two evils. It is hard to be optimistic about our elected officials ability to lead with such a resounding vote of confidence.