February 2010 Archives
Continue reading Blowing off Tea Baggers as Racist Misses the Point.
If we get health care reform--either through reconciliation (which means the opposite of being reconciled) or through bi-partisan cooperation (yeah, right)--whom can we thank or blame? Health care reform was the major Obama agenda item, and it was to be done before Easter in his first year. Then by summer. The August recess all but killed it. Deadlines came and went. Bi-partisanship was promised and withdrawn. Conservatives cried "socialism." Liberals cried "not good enough."
Two different versions got passed, one by the House and the other by the Senate. To blend them together would necessitate running the senatorial filibuster blockade one more time. With the Republican victory in Massachusetts, it looked dead. Now it walks again. It could happen if congress passes the senate bill and trusts fixes to come in reconciliation, which can't be filibustered.
How did it rise from the dead? We Californians can take some measure of ownership here. Our own Anthem, BlueCross, WellPoint announced 39% premium rises for private health insurance customers. The timing, the shock, the outrage applied the paddles to the body of reform. Without it, I am confident that there would be no health summit nor the current push to enact reforms.
Was this a terribly timed miscalculation by a major insurance agency? Did they not foresee the consequences? I simply do not believe that they are stupid, or that this is a mistake. They call for raising premiums because, in this recession, healthy people are dropping their insurance, which makes the insured pool older, sicker and more expensive. However, the insurers know that raising premiums 39% will accelerate the dropouts to Toyotas Gone Wild speeds. The system will crash.
Virtually everyone agrees that the current system does not work. And it will only get worse as both private customers and industry become increasingly unable to pay. The only salvation for the insurance companies is a health plan without a competitive public option that will bring them some 35 million more customers. For all the folks who pretend that this is socialism and a power grab by the government, it is actually a bailout of the health insurance industry.
Kicking and screaming all the way to the bank, Anthem's actions may bring a healthy answer to our sick health care system.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Don't do drugs. This could be you!!
If a grassroots group wants to publish an anti-drug booklet, then Grace Slick should be its cover girl. A knockout in her younger years, the former Jefferson Starship front woman looks like the elderly neighbor standing outside at all hours trimming the hedges with a menacing grin. Gone is the willowy figure, the defined, even features, the long dark hair. They have been replaced by someone who looks like someone's crazed grandmother with eyes like an over-wound cuckoo clock. Part of the culprit must be drugs.
Maybe karma has finally caught up with the former lead singer, though her brain is too fried for her to notice or even care. When she had a baby with former band mate Paul Kanter, before settling on China, she eyed a crucifix on the wall and joked with a religious nurse about naming her daughter g-o-d in small letters to teach the child humility. The nurse was aghast. Then perhaps in an act of ultimate kindness and humility, she planned on sneaking into a White House party and spiking Richard Nixon's iced tea with some LSD she'd stashed under a fingernail she kept extra long for snorting purposes, but she and date Abbie Hoffman were nabbed by Secret Service and never made it to the table.
After that, all was rumbling along fine too until her piece de la resistance in Germany where she went onstage drunk, fell into the crowd, groped a couple of woman and stuck her finger up someone's nose. It marked the end of her singing days with the band.
It's too bad former First Lady Nancy Reagan couldn't have crossed paths with Slick as she is now because her "Just Say No" to drugs campaign would have been a success rather than backfiring and turning more people onto drugs. And Grace Slick could have been the unwitting patriot that turned this country around.
Continue reading Lots of Cooks Prepared the Compton Cookout Racial Insult Stew.
We are all trying to weather this terrible recession cum depression. And by the way, the difference between a recession and a depression is simple: If I have to cut back on luxuries, it's a recession. If I have no job, can't pay bills and am about to lose my home, it's a depression. So, yes, this is for most a recession but also for millions of Americans, this is a great depression.
Our government doesn't really know what to do. They do know that if they balance their budgets--Federal, State and City--they will have to cut services and lay people off. This makes really great short-term sense, but not long term. It balances some budgets but shifts costs and losses to others.
We lay off thousands who then can't pay bills and don't pay taxes, fees and assessments, and the money saved disappears in the coming year. When California pretended to balance our budget last year, we all knew that sales tax income would be lower than calculated, property tax receipts short and income tax way down. We knew this and lied about our projected income, because we know that laying people off looks good in the micro but is a disaster over time--and has a cascading effect on the state, merchants, and restaurants. Children not educated, poor sick not treated, rents not paid may turn out to cost us in ERs, police, fire, and welfare. Shifting expenses from teachers and social workers to police, courts and jailors may not be smart over time.
Personally we are also in a dilemma, caught up in a tension between what is in our immediate interest and in our society's long-term interest. In a recession, it makes sense for me to pull in, to cut expenses and dispense with luxuries. Take fewer trips, go out for fine dinning less, abandon high-end groceries and switch to big box stores.
However, the interests of the larger community demand that I keep spending in order to keep people employed at the boutique market, the nice restaurant and the plush resort. All the people who work at these places need jobs, have bills to pay, shop for food and have economic lives of their own.
So in the end, not only is the path for our governments unclear between balancing the books this quarter and making things worse next year; but I have exactly the same problem. Do I save my money or save your job?
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Sane and sober conservatism, Rob? You rang? That must be my cue to move from the left to the right, or from the center to the right, and hereby proclaim my candidacy and platform, so here goes:
Health Care: Everyone will pay something under my health care plan. If people on welfare and food stamps can afford to buy their progeny Wii's, good shoes, cell phones and every other gadget on the market, then they can afford to pay a measly co-pay of at least ten dollars for an visit to the doctor.
Taxes: While I'm at it, we should tax those games more than ten percent. Eleven percent would be fine for all the sloth those games cause. Pennsylvania should institute a sales tax and put the money in a national health care plan.
Assign a year of hard labor to anyone who goes to work sick, sends their children to school sick or appears in airports and other public places sick because I am sick of being sick.
Welfare: Send exercise and boot camp sergeants to their houses to get them up at six o'clock in the morning for a rousing workout. Make them clean up in a school lunchroom. Free them and give massages with the workouts once they get a j-o-b.
Immigration: Stop extending downhome hospitality to any living, breathing being who comes to this country illegally and cut the Spanish as a Second Language routine once they get here. There weren't any signs or phone messages in any other language when other people's families came here, so there shouldn't be any now.
The Banking Industry: I'd stop the accolades and perks that the bankers and Wall Street moguls get. Anyone caught sneaking on the sly will either become Bernie Madoff's roommate or join in the rebuilding efforts of Haiti.
That's it for the start of my platform and campaign. I welcome any ideas and suggestions. Diane?
I'll agree with Earl that the Palin Effect is beneficial to an adrift Obama administration.
Their best-case scenario is a GOP nomination of Sarah in 2012, but even less than that will help them politically. Sarah's inability to get out of the spotligiht will finally trigger the explosion of the long-simmering tensions within the GOP's libertarian-moderate-teaparty-theocracy-warhawk Big Tent.
Republicans are unified right now only in opposing Obama and in refusing to help him get any victories, even at the cost of our nation's progress. That camouflages the huge battles happening under the surface of the GOP. But those battles will come out into the open inevitably, in a way that will probably hurt them in a few years if not by the midterm elections.
This may be good for Democrats' political expedience, but it's not good for the American republic, which is in desperate need of a sane and sober conservatism.
Hamas' arms procurer, Mahmoud al Mabhouh, was assassinated in Dubai. Naturally, the buzz on the Arabs Street is that it was Israel and the Mossad. This is the default position of the Arab Street that believes that an early version of Mossad put the hit on King Tut. While it is certainly true that Israel would not mourn his death, the only thing that points to the Mossad is that this would be a very atypical Mossad hit. Kind of reverse psychology. It is so clumsy, so not Mossad that it must be. This is how Middle Eastern thinking works.
Mossad tends to be quick and neat. A team of ten people with false identities, wigs and glued on facial hair is not their normal signature. And if Israel were to create fake identities, choosing Jews and an Israeli resident is, well, counter-intuitive. Letting themselves be photographed by security cameras at the hotel where Mabhouh was smothered, is not good tradecraft. Israel is better at this than that. They know not to stare into the lens.
Like Agatha Christie's, Murder on the Orient Express, where all the suspects conspired to do it, much of the Arab World had an interest in eliminating Mabhouh. As an arms agent for Hamas he worked against the Palestinian Authority and also represented interests that were opposed to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Only Syria and Iran had any stake in his survival.
Israel is used to taking the blame and is usually pretty sanguine about it. But the greatest reason for the Arab World to pin this on Israel and for Israel not to have done it, is the value of Dubai to Israel. They do a lot of business in the Arab World, even with Iranian interests. There are Arab-Israeli co-development deals throughout South Asia, Asia Minor, Europe and even on the Arabian Peninsula. Dubai is the meeting place, the money laundry and the financial version of a no-tell motel.
This smells like it came from the Palestinian Authority. The bodyguards with whom Mabhouh always travelled were "unable" to obtain tickets for his plane and came along the following day. One does not need to be a God Father fanatic to know that when Don Corleone's chauffer took the day off, the hit was going down. And it was an inside job.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
Is anyone surprised that someone from my generation, AKA the Me Generation, published a book about waving the white flag of surrender in finding Mr. Perfect and settling for Mr. Good Enough? Well, my lieges, don't be. In her latest tome, "Marry Him: Settling for Mr. Good Enough," Lori Gottlieb states her case for giving up the quest for finding the perfect man with a Pierce Brosnan smile, George Clooney's looks, Brad Pitt's sex appeal and their combined paychecks because that person, the white knight on a steed who may or may not lance you, may not be riding around that corner. Instead, she makes her case for settling for Mr. Good Enough. Not a 10, a 9 or even an 8, mind you, but a 7.
She says that one should have a checklist of general qualities that are desirable in a mate. Not one filled with minutiae like he should like fried rather than steamed tofu but that he should have a healthy enough appreciation of food not to look like a sumo wrestler. So long as the man doesn't have angst over his mother, has a decent job and bathes at least once a week, then grab him. And in a way, she's right because we all have clay feet and bunions, warts and blisters.
Of course, the Me Generation's blind spot in all this is that he could also wind up settling for Mrs. Good Enough in us as we hobble down the aisle with our fallen arches and capped teeth.
Ramon Cortines resigned from the board of Scholastic Inc--a company that does $16 million of business with L.A. Unified. It was the right thing to do, but he should never have put himself and our school district in this position. Ordinary staff have ethics training and are taught to avoid not only conflicts of interest but the appearances of conflicts.
The issue is not if Cortines is corrupt. It is if his example is corrupting. When the leader sees no ethical issues in taking $150, 000 in pay from a company that does major business with the district he heads, he leads lower level staff into temptation. He sets a poor example, and that is not what a leader should do.
Now he needs to recognize publicly his error in judgement and teach his troops through his own learning and example.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
If you want to see the perfect example of the petulant partisan gridlock that has paralyzed the nation, you only have to look to California. We are traditionally in the vanguard, modeling the dystopic future to the rest of the nation. We showed the way for political dysfunction and financial catastrophe that other states and the Feds are only now catching up to.
We have not passed a California budget at even close to the deadline mandated by our State Constitution in memory. All the delays cost us money both directly and indirectly. We have to borrow short term at higher interest rates and the ratings of our State Bonds go down. Can we all pull together in the interests of our citizens? You know the answer.
There is no finer example of our petulance than the handling and mishandling of the nomination of Republican State Senator Abel Maldonado as Lt. Governor. He is a pragmatist and from time to time crosses the aisle and votes with Democrats. He is also Hispanic. This should have been the feel good story of our Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Year. But no.
While our Governator probably thought the Republicans might hold up his confirmation because Maldonaldo had voted with the Democrats to end this year's disastrous budget deadlock, it was the Democrats who have stymied his nomination--so far. This is the reward they give for voting with them. A terrible example.
Now, it could have just as easily and stupidly gone the other way. The Republicans could be calling him a traitor and refusing to support him, while the Democrats complain of needlessly punishing Maldonaldo for a gesture of bi-partisanship and then feigning outrage that an Hispanic was being stopped.
This appointment would only have been to fill in for former Lt. Governor Garamendi who went to the Congress. It is unlikely that it would have given Maldonaldo much of a leg up to run in the upcoming general election.
The controlling principle here is unprincipled. It is a kind of oppositional defiant disorder (DSM IV. 313.81). Whatever one party wants the other will oppose. They are all thinking about themselves and their own narrow interests. They are not thinking of us.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
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If there is one part of the Constitution that turns semi-yahoos into full-time ones, it is the one about free speech. It's what's caused other drivers to give me the finger for driving too slowly. It's what caused Larry Flynt to publish that magazine, and it's what caused Florida teen, Katherine Evans, to post a comment about her English teacher on Facebook.
Two years ago when the then seventeen year-old honor student was in Sarah Phelp's English class, she was less than thrilled with her teacher's grading and overall performance, so she posted a comment about her on the social networking site that read, "Ms. Sarah Phelps is the worst teacher I've ever had." Evans was accused of cyberbullying and suspended two months later.
Ever true to form, the Evans family traipsed on down to a lawyer, and then traipsed on down to a court that ruled that her post wasn't "lewd, vulgar or threatening," nor did it incite mayhem, Molotov cocktails or violence and she can now sue her former principal for violating her First Amendment rights. Technically, they were right.
The problem is that it is one small step forward for the ill bred and one giant leap into the gulch for the genteel and refined.
It's too bad that Ms. Phelps may be too ladylike to post anything about Katherine Evans on Facebook because if she did, she'd probably have some interesting things to say about her former student.
When Michoel Grossman was a teenager in the early sixties, he murdered someone, but there were circumstances surrounding this act. One is that he suffered from a mental illness that is treatable today but was not then, and he had little idea of the impact of his crime or what he was doing. The other is that it was an impulsive crime for which he has served time in prison and is repentant.
Only 1% of the population in his home state of Florida is executed and of that population, the crimes were premeditated and far more heinous than his.
All we are asking is that the evidence be reviewed in light of current research and medical practices, not from when Grossman was convicted years ago. Please click on the link below and fill out the portions of you agree. After all, it could have been you, your children or your loved ones in this position as well.
Please click on this link for more info. here.
Thank you and blessings
The fun has gone out of the Winter Olympic Games, and I won't be watching it. I'll just drift in memory of when they were, in fact, games. This is a business, a big business and isn't about sports, youth and excellence. It is about ratings, advertisement and endorsements. We have gone from the beauty of sport to NBC and prominent websites offering a snuff film.
The fun is gone, and the death of the luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili, from Georgia is a symbol of the failure of Baron de Coubertin's original vision. The Olympic motto, Swifter, Higher, Stronger has been taken past the point of sport and is perverted into Riskier, More Dangerous and Tragic.
From the speed and danger of luge and down hill skiing to freestyle skiing and snowboarding, risk has replaced beauty as sleds and bodies hurtle down slopes and off ramps at the edge of disaster. And disaster is no longer understood as not winning. It has become being broken, maimed and even killed.
Even the formerly beautiful sports of ice skating and ice dancing involve jumps and throws that create not the ooohs and aaahs of appreciation but the gasps and frisson of impending disaster. The judging gives away the kind of thinking behind these once pretty sports. Figure skaters start with perfect scores and then the judges watch for mistakes, missed requirements and imperfectly executed jumps and spins.
Prurience has infected the games and the coverage. Once upon a time, TV would not show the Indy 500 live because they were afraid of people seeing a driver killed. This has now changed and we see death in a nearly constant loop. I suppose after watching our Twin Towers come down and watching the footage of two of our space shuttle disintegrating, TV folks think we demand to see danger and death, both live and again and again of tape.
What we have been seeing yesterday and today on TV (in the opening package that NBC showed last night and on the Net) is terrible, tasteless and wrong. Yes, I know that it would have showed up somewhere on the Net, but mainstream TV stations and websites do not have to normalize it by giving us what they think we want. Or worse, what they have trained us to want.
The late very great and unequaled sports columnist Jim Murray wrote of the Indy 500 that the command to begin should be, "Gentle start your coffins." At least there was a certain privacy in crashing and burning in a car. We see poor Nodar Kumaritashvili's body flying through the air and into the steel pillar--unprotected and unguarded by a cage of steel. We see flesh meet metal and life destroyed. We see it at every angle and repeatedly. It is a snuff film. I'm done!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I am confident that Superintendant Ramon Cortines is a fine fellow--well liked by all. I do not know if there is anything corrupt in his taking a $151,186 in salary, stock and stock options from a private educational company, Scholastic Inc. Scholastic Inc. just happens to have done $16 million dollars in sales to L.A. Unified School District. It's probably just fine, completely ethical and we should all forget about it.
And yet, there is this nagging sense of the appearance of impropriety and a vague stench wafting across the District. As a fellow Los Angelino, I do understand how hard it is to get buy on a salary of only $250,000 per year--even with a car, driver and support staff. I get that people in LAUSD have to moonlight to make ends meet. And certainly in a time of fiscal crisis, Cortines, as all LAUSD employees, is only day-to-day and has to protect himself. He could lose his job at any time. And he should.
Someone is being cheated here. If District Superintendant is not a full time job, then cut the salary. 250k is a lot for part time. If, as he claims, he works for Scholastic Inc. only on weekends, two questions naturally arise.
1. Is Scholastic Inc. getting its money's worth? After all he has collected from them over the last five years--over 400K--so they must believe he's worth it. Did they get really really good advice or do they assume that their $16 million in sales to LAUSD are related to his work, influence and personality?
2. Where can I get a part time, weekend job that pays $151,186?
This is a time when staff is being cut. New young teachers are being denied contracts to cut costs. Yet our superintendant moonlights and gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. I believe he must choose. And if he won't, we should. It would be interesting to see just how much Scholastic Inc. would pay for his wisdom when he is not superintendant.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
The late social critic Neil Postman said there are two kinds of people: Athenians and Visigoths. Athenians appreciate poetry and knowledge, Visigoths believe in mauling all competitors. The halls of power are often filled with Visigoths, while some of the great Athenians are found in the working class.
I'll apply that to our dealings with Iran. Visigoths like to portray rivals as Visigoths, in order to find an excuse to bomb them. Athenians by contrast, even when they fight, seek to empathize with their enemies.
For three decades, we have spoken daily in the West of attacking Iran. Some of their leaders have bloviated on occasion of desires to stick it to Israel, which leads to us speaking even more frequently and loudly about attacking Iran, which adds to their own bluster. Iran is surrounded by geopolitical threats. Yet when they respond with bluster, we heighten our desire to go Visigoth on them.
An Athenian reads the situation one way, a Visigoth another. Postman hoped there would be more Athenians among us than Visigoths. So do I.
It's too bad that "Think and Grow Rich" isn't required reading for those in public office. Had Mayor V. and Arnold read Napoleon Hill's classic, then those unpaid furlough days wouldn't have entered their minds. They may have even highlighted the part about a good leader never asking others to do something that he wouldn't do.
A coworker, who recently returned from her first unpaid furlough day, never read the book, but by osmosis she grasped it better than those two did.
"Why doesn't Villaraigosa and some of those other people take a furlough day?" she asked. "They are making more money than we are, so the state would take in more money from them."
'Exactly,' I thought. In addition to politicians, athletes should also be included in the mix for raking in millions for dribbling, running, jogging around and for their many contributions to humanity.
Whenever interviewed by sports journalists, dj's and such, it is often the athlete who will come out with answers like, "Hkjdklhf wllkhfshd. Hhah," no matter what the question or what it is supposed to mean, so they should be included for adding to the downfall of the English language.
Sports figures, the Mayornator, the Governator and all others who helped land us in this mess should go on a mountain retreat where they will gaze up at the trees that are still standing while chanting and meditating. Things would probably run about the same anyway.
Terri Carlson is one lucky - and practical- lady in the love arena. All she did to get marriage proposals was to post a YouTube video saying that she was looking for someone with health insurance, and her inbox ranneth over with at least 1,000 proposals. She didn't have to buy any new earrings, develop that come hither look, or sit in a coffee shop trying to look coy. Had I known it was that easy, I would have gone and posted something myself.
Though there are other things I would have put in mine. Looking for a Superman with a mortgage or banking background who can wipe out credit card debt. I don't care what you look like, if you have onion breath or if your idea of a romantic dinner date is a two for one coupon. Just give me that ring or in Carlson's case, a copy of your health insurance card, and I will take it from there.
I understand her reasons for making the video. I know it is a partial ploy alerting others to the plight of the uninsured and to help her with a genetic condition that may cause her to sell her house. My fear is that another misguided wedding may take place. When looking for love, most people look compatibility, looks and a bank account, thought not necessarily in that order. Carlson is looking for proof of insurance first and other things maybe a distant fifth. Hopefully, a sound healthcare plan will pass long before anyone goes traipsing down the aisle.
I'm launching my new book about the so-called clash-of-civilizations Wednesday night at USC. Info on the event is here, and parking info is here. We'll have some copies of the book available for sale, and I'll be around to sign them after my chat with USC religious life dean Varun Soni. Come join us if you can!
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be making a truly terrible mistake, one that could set the Middle East on fire--starting with Iran. The late and unlamented Saddam Hussein of Iraq liked to pose, posture and pretend that he had weapons of mass destruction. He thought that it gave him "street cred." What it gave him was a necktie party. He didn't believe that we would attack and invade based only on his braggadocio and without solid evidence. He bet on ambiguity and lost.
Is Ahmadinejad making the same mistake? He is saber rattling very loudly and dramatically. He is bragging about his uranium enrichment centrifuges, all the while test-firing missiles that could reach Israel. He is stalling talks about solutions to the world's objection (except for China) to developing nuclear weapons in Iran. He keeps promising to shock the world--sounding like a young Mohammad Ali, but without the charm. What does he expect Israel to do as he calls for its destruction and keeps talking about his military programs?
The normal political calculus is that nations act in their own perceived interests. It is not in Iran's interests to provoke Israel, or any western nation, into attacking it. But could it be in Ahmadinejad's narrow political interests? Ahmadinejad is wildly unpopular at home. He clearly lost the last election and lost the people in the street. The economy is terrible, they are isolated from most of the world and Iran with such a long history of culture and achievement finds itself in fiscal, cultural and social decline. They understandably do not like it.
When in trouble most politicians know that the surest way of getting the support of the people is to have an outside threat, an enemy. The best thing for Ahmadinejad, but obviously not the people of Iran, is a limited military strike against some part of their nuclear program. A mass attack or a nuclear strike would be catastrophic for Iran and Ahmadinejad, but a limited strike aimed at setting their nuclear development back four or five years would help Ahmadinejad. This seems like a possible aim of his otherwise inexplicable blustering.
While neither Israel nor any western nation wants Iran to have nuclear weapons, the calculation of the need to strike is complex. Civilian deaths must be measured against strategic gains. And the political ramifications of the damage to Israel and the west if there is a strike must be balanced against any military advantage. Finally, the political cost to the west has to be set against the political gain by Ahmadinejad personally. We don't want to give him what he wants.
©2010
www.Dobrer.com
KCRW's treasure, Warren Olney, could not make it for the final day of the fundraising drive. He was felled by a bicycle accident, and while they assured us that he was cognitively intact, they implored us to make our contributions "in honor of Warren."
Both KCRW and Warren Olney deserve our support, but this is mawkish, tasteless and belongs on Jerry's telethon. Will our contributions help Warren get well, and if we don't make a pledge, will he, like Tinkerbell, just tragically fade away? We are accustomed to programs being held hostage during pledge drives (10 more pledges and you can listen to your show...) but the health and healing of a host?
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I've noticed the tabloids in recent months are signaling a meltdown in the Brangelina situation. It does remind me of my puzzling over why social conservatives didn't complain loudly about how Hollywood's glamour couple was redefining marriage far more dramatically than two guys in West Hollywood: the two guys in West Hollywood are seeking the legal rights that accompany a lifelong commitment; but Brad and Angelina left lifetime vows in the dust in order to shack up, adopt and have babies, and then crack this large new family up too. Unless you believe that being gay could become a pandemic, the Brangelina situation seems like a far bigger influence on straight 16-year-olds.
Brangelina posed a far greater "threat" to the traditional definition of marriage. But social traditionalists didn't hit them the way they hit gays. Why is that?
My ruminations about the intersection of religion and politics have caused quite a ruckus among many people. What I find fascinating is a particular division among Christians: conservative Christians find my stuff to be awful and misguided, while liberal & progressive Christians find it to be exhilarating and eye-opening. Go figure. What's even more interesting is that I once sided with the conservatives in hating the kind of person that I am now.
But if you're going to read one book relating to my spiritual processings, I'd rather you read this one, by the Rev. Greg Boyd.
In it, Boyd offers precisely the sort of Biblical evidence that some readers here are demanding regarding the contention that the current conservative mix of faith & politics constitutes a kind of flag-waving idolatry. He uses Pauline theology skillfully to dismantle notions that any country can find "favor" in the eyes of the Lord within a world which Paul says is ruled by sin. If you're a conservative who can read this and not be challenged or even changed, you're spiritually and intellectually dead.
Many of my evangelical friends are disappointed with how I drifted from the Church, after spending all those years studying Calvin, Luther, Barth, Brunner, Schleiermacher, Yancey, Nouwen, Lewis, Merton and countless others.
I tell them that if there were more guys like Boyd, I'd be serving communion with them this Sunday. But the fact that there aren't many guys like this does have an impact on what I see God in heaven up to, as it relates to evangelicals.
This stuff is all so deeply personal, I know it is. I know some friends feel I'm being uncharitable in how I assess Christians and how I'm so outraged by the "rightwing clump" that I see in my imagination. I myself spent 15 years saying, "These folks aren't the real Christians"... and finally I decided, "Actually, maybe they are the real Christians, and the rest of us are the imposters...."
But as for Mr. Newland on this board, I find it interesting that he believes the Roman Catholic Church is the one true authority on Christian faith, when his last two popes have taken a sharply different view of politics than he does. Cafeteria Catholicism strikes again...?
Continue reading Bail out Could Cost Taxpayers Thirty Times more than Reported.
History is written by the winners. It is written by the folks who, as Mohammad Ali used to say, "Have the complexion and the connection" get their story told. Sometimes they write just for each other and sometimes to a distant posterity. Either way other stories, view points and truths get left out or distorted.
Feminists in the 60s observed that "History was too often His story and forgot all the hers. A Women's Week to make up for what was left out, on purpose or forgotten in error, is fine by me. If Black Folks are left out of history, and they are, except for slavery, shouldn't we know the part they played in our common history? Shouldn't we know that Crispus Attucks, a Black man, was the first to die in the Boston Massacre? Our history is only a shared history when it is, well, shared.
I'm fine having a Jewish Week and learning about Haym Solomon who saved our bacon (okay, bad metaphor) by helping to finance the American Revolution. Arab American week is also by me just fine. People ought to know that heart transplant pioneer Michael DeBakey, Donna Shalala and Sec. of Transportation Ray LaHood are of Arab ancestry. Not to mention Steve Jobs whose father comes from Syriah.
In theory I'd be okay with a National Lutheran Week, but they don't need to play catch up. Every week is National Lutheran Week with Garrison Keillor!
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
One of the cornerstones of being a Libra is that we are always interested in what's fair. Even as a kid if a candy bar is divided one fraction of an inch unevenly, we will go to bat for the one who got shortchanged, especially if we are the ones being shortchanged.
Which is why I don't really believe in Black, Asian, Hispanic or Women's History Month as it is all so unfair. After all, they aren't the only ones who've contributed to the rise and downfall of this country. They weren't the only ones who have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune and toiled. Others have, too, so they should be getting all the credit or blame.
So here are my recommendations.
First and foremost, I propose that we have a Jewish History month featuring things like recipes for matzo ball soup, falafel and kugel along with things about our culture, history, philosophy and a few prayers for rain and things like that in a calendar format. They can also feature prominent Jews in the arts and entertainment. And in the section of genius Jews, my profile will appear on some prominent page.
Jonathan will appear in Liberal History Month, which will happen in about twenty years from now after we run through the Hmong and all those other history months. There will be a disclaimer about how wrong he's been and how sorry he was voting for who he voted for and for supporting some of those candidates.
Earl will be featured under Black History Month, which we will get to keep. There we will feature some of his columns and a pictorial about how wonderful I've been and how easy I am to work with.
Rob will be under Pakistani-American History Month. His smiling and ecstatic mug will replace Gustavo Dudamel's, which have been on Ventura Boulevard way too long and which I am sick of seeing.
And last but not least, we will have Editor's History Month where we will have our overworked and underpaid Friendly Fire editor, Mariel, and her boss, if he wishes to appear there. There will be a pictorial of them on the phone and signing checks for a humongous raise.
Maybe there will be world peace by then and we will all just get along.
While the term Idaho Baptists sounds like a sports franchise, this refers to the, well, the Baptist missionaries from Idaho currently jailed in Haiti and charged with trafficking children. I'm somewhat surprised at the passion and anger all over the Blogosphere concerning these folks. Some are condemning the Haitians for daring to enforce their laws and statutes--particularly in times of chaos and need--and even more particularly against people who only meant well. Others, with equal passion and moral clarity, consider the Baptists to be racist kidnappers who show utter disregard for the law, the truth or the sovereign rights of Haiti.
Let me break the first law of punditry and admit that I don't know the truth. I can't read into the hearts of the missionaries. I am relatively sure that most bad things are done by people who are sincere in their convictions and insulated from any other visions of truth. I also have to admit that it is only by a willful effort that I feel compassion for the plight of these less than divinely guided missionaries. My natural empathy is circumscribed by the sure and certain knowledge that they believe that I, as a Jew, am on my way to hell. None-the-less, keeping them all in a Haitian prison is a very bad idea for several important reasons.
1. It's way too easy to treat the whole group as co-conspirators. Only a couple, most likely, were in charge.
2. It is easy in the heat of the chaos to feel the need, the call to action and want to cut through the Gordian Knot of rules that impede care.
3. Getting paperwork done in chaos and tragedy is often difficult.
4. Getting paperwork done in a system that is derived from the French model of bureaucracy is impossible. Believe me, this I know from having lived in the developing world in a formerly French colonized country.
5. Prosecuting probably well-intentioned volunteers will likely massively diminish the charitable response from the world, this nation and certainly the Christian community.
6. No, of course the Haitians shouldn't sell their children or their sovereignty for foreign aid. They must make some kind of example to stop others, but their arrest and charging are probably sufficient to deter others.
I think that self-interest, compassion and possibly justice should move the Haitians to release the Minnesota Baptists immediately.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
I have never been one to join organizations and go to meetings because I hate sitting around and listening to other people yammer and generally spout off hot air. I'd rather stay home and de-flea the dog or varnish the bathroom vanity.
But there is an organization I am a card-carrying member of, and that is the Fashion Police. It's an international organization made up mostly of women whose chief activities are rolling our eyes, chortling and commenting on what other people are wearing. Joan Rivers is the honorary president; Melissa Rivers is the Secretary and I am the Honorary Chair of the local chapter.
And like those on missions rescuing people from natural disasters, our work is never done. Driving to work the other day, I spotted my first felony and all before 8:00 a.m., too. It was a teenage girl in leggings and boots bounding across the street. Sensing a violation at hand, I coasted towards the red light for a closer inspection and noticed it, a Code 409, a cellulite and leggings violation. Now I have nothing against cellulite or leggings except when they violate that code of the Fashion Police Bible, which states "thou shalt not wear leggings as pants when thou possesseth too much of the cellulite matter."
The rule further on states that no one whose measurements are ober 30-30-30 or whose body mass index is more than .00001 should even think about wearing them as pants. And this means you, Mr. & Mrs. America, or anyone who hasn't seen the inside of a gym since season one of American Idol.
The other thing that causes our Botoxed brows to wrinkle (as much as possible) and furrow is cleavage. Now we have nothing against having any when it helps fill out an outfit. It's just when it starts to look like a moody fashion designer walked off the job and didn't include the top half of a garment that we get worried. So much so that someone brought it up at our last online convention, and we agreed that an inch to 1 ½ inches of cleavage was good for men and women, no more. And forget about any tats with hearts and fluttering butterflies on it. With that, the guidelines change to ½ to ¾ of an inch. This is the public, after all, and not the inside of a surgeon's or a doctor's office.
And so long as John and Jeanette Q. Public continue acting like they were hit over the head with a mallet, we will continue to protect, render and serve.
The Daily Kos Research 2000 survey that found a majority or a significant percent of Republicans think president Obama is a Red, foreigner masquerading as an American, is marshmallow soft on terrorism, a racist, thinks Palin would be a better President, and should be booted out of office was hardly the revelation of the ages. Other polls and surveys that surveyed GOP rank and file opinion have found pretty much the same thing. The pundits mock the polls as a kind of what do you expect from a party that is chock full of loony, bigoted, paranoid cranks. A party that for the past two decades has egged on, pandered to, and openly courted a wide assortment of anti-government, frustrated Deep South rednecks.
That's a mistake, a potentially fatal political mistake. The endless pack of conservative bloggers, talk show gabbers, websites, and chatrooms that have made Obama bashing a lucrative growth industry with their endless rants, crude, racist digs, slurs, cartoon depictions has been wildly effective. Polls now show that Obama is the most polarizing president in recent American history. And Americans heap almost as much scorn on Democrats as the GOP for the political bickering, infighting, and paralysis. This is not an accident. The GOP has partly tuned the political tide by re-energizing and reorganizing its oldest and most dependable base, the same white males in the Deep South and the Heartland states who are routinely made the butt of fun and ridicule.
Conservative, lower income white males are the GOP's strength and they did not fade away with Obama's win. The 2008 presidential vote gave ample warning of that. Obama won a significant percent of votes from white independents and young white voters. But their numbers came nowhere close to being a majority of white votes. Among Southern and Heartland America white male voters, Obama made almost no impact. Overall, Republican rival John McCain, garnered nearly 60 percent of the white vote.
Even this doesn't tell the whole story. Rightwing populism with its mix of xenophobia, loath of government as too liberal, too tax and spend, and too permissive, and its latent bigotry has been the engine that powered two Reagan and Bush White House wins. Scores of GOP governors, senators and congresspersons have twisted and massaged wedge issues to win and hold office and to maintain regional and national political dominance. The GOP grassroots brand of populism has stirred millions operating outside the confines of the GOP mainstream. In 2008 many of these voters stayed home. Even Palin wasn't enough to budge them. Their defection was more a personal and visceral reaction to the bumbles of Bush than a radical and permanent sea change in overall white voter sentiment about Obama, the Democrats, and the GOP. Even if the GOP is, as is widely seen, an insular party of Deep South and narrow Heartland, rural and, non-college educated blue collar whites as polls amusingly like to remind this is still not a demographic to be dismissed. The numbers are huge.
Much has been made since the election that they are a dwindling percent of the electorate, and that Hispanics, Asian, black, young, and women voters will permanently tip the balance of political power to the Democrats in coming national elections. Blue collar white voters have shrunk from more than half of the nation's voters to less than forty percent. The assumption based solely on this slide and the increased minority population numbers and regional demographic changes is that the GOP's white vote strategy is doomed to fail. This ignores three major factors in voting patterns. Elections are almost always won by candidates with a solid and impassioned core of bloc voters. White males, particularly older white males, vote consistently and faithfully. They traditionally vote in a far greater percentage than Hispanics and blacks.
More importantly blue collar white male voters can be easily aroused to vote on the emotional wedge issues; abortion, family values, anti-gay marriage and rights, and tax cuts. The GOP simply snatched a page from its standard playbook and turned these emotional drenched issues against Obama and the Democrats. The twist is that the backlash came early in Obama's White House tenure, and the GOP governorship wins in New Jersey, Virginia and Scott Brown in Massachusetts are the results.
Tarring Obama as a tax and big spend, closet socialist is not the only ploy that the GOP has used to drag itself off the political mat and do more than fantasize about seizing back congressional power in 2010. It also banks that pundits will continue to mock the GOP as a washed up fringe party stocked with frustrated bigots and political dregs. That's more than a big mistake; it's a prescription for political disaster.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is, How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge (Middle Passage Press) will be released in January 2010.
My thanks for Mariel G. for running this new piece adapted from my new book.
Will corporations and consumers ever snap to their senses and realize what a con job Super Bowl advertising is? To me, the commercials only remind me how most mass advertising (a $150 billion annual expense) is a poor use of our economy.
It was Al and Laura Ries who spelled out how ad agencies are more focused on raising their own prestige through spurious award competitions than on helping clients move merchandise.
Yet the epiphany that never comes is the realization that, in the age of information overload, commercials generally don't sell anything, whether pretty animals or pretty girls or pretty funny jokes are involved. People generally buy what they buy because of family traditions, because of peer pressure, because of factors that advertising can rarely influence in a demonstrable way. Mass advertising, in that sense, is the great Hail Mary of American capitalism, a sign of desperation or a lack of better ideas.
I do expect some Mad Men to be tossing their martinis at their computer screen, arguing back that Entrepreneur magazine just this month spotlighted ten brilliant marketing and advertising themes that boosted companies or even whole industries.
I have two responses: First, it says much that Entrepreneur had to go back more than seventy years to find ten compelling anecdotes about marketing brilliance. Considering the $150 billion annual price tag for advertising in the greatest and most innovative country on earth, let's admit that most advertising is underachieving.
Second, there's nothing wrong with brilliant marketing and strategic thinking; I'm just amused that bright CEOs are still being suckered into marketing to mass audiences at a moment when our country and world are breaking into subcultures that have few tastes in common.
And when the Mad Men counter that the $2 billion spent on Super Bowl commercials over the past two decades have handsomely rewarded advertisers with "buzz" and free news coverage, I defy them to show me a meaningful correlation between such trivial news coverage and actual sales. The only group that benefits from such coverage are the ad execs, who print up the clips on glossy paper to attract new corporate suckers.
Some psychologists worry, and Mad Men boast, that advertising could seduce people subconsciously. In a free society, that's fine if corporations can justify the expense through such seductions. But the potential to seduce is quite different from an ad agency's ability to carry out the seduction. Like the braggart pseudo-Lothario we all knew in high school, the Mad Man is all talk, no action.
The Pasadena Playhouse is closing but wants to reopen if only they can get rid of their $2 million debt. Ah, wouldn't we all. Reopening and getting a new group of season ticket holders could be a problem if they leave their current subscribers and supporters in the lurch. So far, they have announced that they are not ready to announce if subscribers would get their money refunded. Not smart or ethical. With this kind of business acumen, it's no wonder that they're in extremis.
Their two leaders, Sheldon Epps and Stephen Eich, were bragging today on Larry Mantel of KPCC how great their subscribers are. It's hard to imagine how keeping them happy would even be a question. There are issues of business smarts here, but more importantly question of good faith versus the appearance of fraud.
They collected $8 million in a capital campaign in 2006. About $5 million remain. All understand that capital funds are restricted from general budget demands. Those who contributed gave for a living theatre, which if they close and abandon their ticketholders, will no longer exist. A new entity that might come into the space would be critically handicapped by former supporters who feel betrayed and would likely not purchase season tickets.
As recently as three weeks ago, they were still soliciting season ticket subscribers. If they knew they were in danger of closing, they engaged in bad faith. If they didn't know how deeply in trouble they were, then there is at least incompetency on the part of senior executives.
The Pasadena Playhouse cannot solicit funds one week and disappear the next. This we expect from a gym, not from a rightly revered cultural institution.
©2010 Jonathan Dobrer
www.Dobrer.com
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