As folks might know my Dad is here visiting from Israel, and TBG is in the midst of a serious demolition/reconstruction job on our front porch. So my time on-line has been a bit curtailed. But an NPR report on California’s proposition 54 earlier this week, and Prometheus_6’s August 4th post, “But what do you do in the meantime?” have been simmering in the rear of my mind for a few days and so I thought it was time to be blogging it.

This will be a very long post; continue reading it here, ...

1:44:49 PM    

Winds of Change reminds me that is a good day to feel a little sad and contemplative.  And I am particularly grateful for the link to this post on a Jewish response to "senseless hatred."

Tisha B'Av is a holy day on the Jewish calendar that the vast majority of non-Jews have never and will never hear of.   Frankly, I would imagine that the vast majority of reform, loosely affiliated, or culturally identified Jews haven't heard of it.  It's a day of mourning -- for the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and for the many many tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people since then.  It is a fast day.  I spent one summer as a camper and nearly 5 summers as a staffer at the Jewish camp for teens, Tel Yehudah.  The camp is not affiliated with any particular denomination of Judaism; but rather was committed to pluralism.  The intention was that whether one was an Orthodox Jew or an unaffiliated one, you should be able to fairly comfortably attend.  Accordingly the camp was Kosher and Shomer Shabbat and had a short prayer service every morning.  And of course, observed the holidays that fell in the months of July and August -- including Tisha B'Av. [Literally the "ninth" day of the month "Av"].  No one was required to fast; small, cold, dairy meals were available buffet-style all day long at camp. [Egg salad, tuna fish, and peanut butter sandwiches, veggie sticks, apples, and bananas.]  But there were no regular activities offered -- no swimming, or sports.  There was free time to spend quietly, and small discussion groups.  And in the evening....

One of the most indelibly etched memories from my camping experience.  In the evening as dusk approached, the 200-some teenage campers and staff would congregate at the doors of the "Beit Ha'Am" [literally "House of People"] the cavernous, wooden hall used for all assemblies, plays, dances and indoor basketball games.  Inside, the staff would have already set up the hall with dozens and dozens of white candles, lit and melted to the floor.  Passing through the doors to the Beit Ha'Am, you would receive a much used photocopied set of papers -- the book of Lamentations -- and you would slowly file in and form small groups around the candles. And for the next, almost 2 hours, the entire camp assemblage would sit on the dusty wood floor of the Beit Ha'Am, lit only by candlelight, and read and chant and sing the mournful poetry of prayers traditional on this day.  

I, like just about every other person in that dark hall, had never observed Tisha B'Av before my summers at camp.  And I have not marked a Tisha B'Av since my last summer as a staffer at Tel Yehudah more than 10 years ago.  Yet the sense of that night, sitting quietly with a hall-full of typical hormone- and fad-obsessed American teens and reciting words and singing melodies almost 2000 years old ... well, it still gives me goosepimples.   Sure we dribbled the candle wax onto the floor and rolled the hot soft goo between our fingers.  We yawned.  We flipped through the photocopied packets to see how many pages there were left.  And by the time we wandered back to our cabins under the crisp stars of the Delaware valley the spell had dissipated and we were back to being the ironic smart-asses we were supposed to be.  But something took.  And now, I realize the miracle and magic that for those few short hours our hall resonated as an electric bead on a wire of living history that delineated at least pieces of who we are and connected us millenia back to who we were.

Thanks to those bloggers who marked this day and provoked my memories and reflection.

4:05:12 PM    

I have been reading and reading and following links to links for months now. Looking for the political blogs that inspire me.  I've been looking in particular for two things.  (1) Right-leaning blogs which read like the writer(s) are actually open to reasoned discourse. [And I have found too few of these, so if you know of one, dear reader, please do alert me to it]  And (2) left-leaning bloggers with some fire, some passion -- that are not simply pundits, political analysts or policy wonks.

And then I read a couple of posts from two left-wing firebrands, Conceptual Guerilla and Mykeru.  Really passionate, angry, activist stuff - but also very smart and seemingly well informed and rooted in reality. [For example, this recent post at Mykeru deconstructing a sliver of Bush's recent press conference is well worth the read].  And I feel hopeful for this first time in a long time. After reading it I flashed back to a post I wrote on my old blog in April.  Which I think I submitted to the Truth Laid Bear's New Weblog Showcase at the time. Rereading it I still like it and I think it captures a point relevant again now.  So here are the key points:

Why does it seem like all the inflammatory, rabble-rousing lefties are wearing birkenstocks and holding up placards at the World Bank and IMF? Why is the "establishment" left so freakin' conservative?  It's like once leftists grow up and become parents and investers in 401Ks and wearers of suits and assumers of mortgagers we feel we have given up the right to be truly radical in our idealism.   So we play it safe.   Once we assume the guise of grown-ups in mainstream North American culture, we seem to give up our power, our passion.   It's like we know that we sold out ... that somehow we have internalized and accepted the myth of those back and white dichotomies : "You are either part of the solution or part of the problem." 

Well, yeah.  If you are what I consider a real bleeding heart liberal in your soul, then your heart does bleed for all of it.  All the ways that as a species we are fucking up the planet and fucking over each other.  And you are willing to bleed because you have hope and you can't but help believe that it can get better and that it will get better and that people really want it to get better -- you have to believe that or you can't take your next breath.

But holding that all in your heart and in your head.  Well it freakin' paralyzes you doesn't it?  I mean our whole socio-economic set-up here is an enormous, snorting, gas-guzzling, ravenous, soul-crushing, consumption-crazed, out-of-control behemoth.  And you gotta put food on the table, right?  And take a well-earned vacation every now and then, right? And who could begrudge us a few perks of our labours?  And before you know it, ye gods, you look in the mirror and, GASP, you are one of them.

So no wonder grown-up liberals are so damn apologetic and accomodating and friggin' reasonable.  We're all a little embarassed and feeling guilty.  And there goes our grip on our righteous anger, our passion, our zeal, our fire -- all those things that one can hear on any given afternoon on AM radio.   But not on NPR. 

I still think there is truth there.  The establishment left won't engage in a real political knifefight not just because it's incongrous with our ideals, but also because we all feel just a little guilty.  We all feel just a little part of the problem.  Until we let ourselves off the hooks for not being sod-house living, mass-transit riding, TV-forswearing, vegetarians who never pass a homeless person without taking them to lunch and spend each and every weekend and holiday preparing food baskets and tutoring less-advantaged children; until we forgive ourselves for being successful in a system we recognize as inherently stacked against some folks; until we get over our liberal guilt -- well, we aren't gonna be able to channel the outrage, the anger, the passion, and the energy that we need in order to mobilize and act on the scale that is required to defeat the forces of evil that have control of our nation.

And yes, I am willing at this point to say forces of evil.  I have been hedging on it and tip-toeing around it for years now.  Willing to believe that I must be misunderstanding something, or that I must be misinformed because it couldn't possibly be as bad as it seemed.  But the things that this administration has done seem insane.  Insanely stupid or insanely evil.  And I think it is a little bit of both depending on where you point the finger.

Evil.  What a wonderful word to be able to claim. To reclaim from the sanctimonious conservatives to whom we have far-too-long ceded the moral arena.   That is yet another weakness of the left we must dedicate ourselves to overcoming.  Just because we revolt against the totalitarian legislation of morality desired by the right, we must not relinquish the language and logic of moral reasoning in the public arena.  [Oh yes, there is at least another post's worth of passion there ... but it is late and my mental energy is waning.]

Before I go -- and because I imagine that most reasonable and self-respecting left-leaning folks who may be reading this have recoiled at my use of the word -- the definition of evil from Merriam Webster on-line:

1 a : morally reprehensible : SINFUL, WICKED <an evil impulse> b : arising from actual or imputed bad character or conduct <a man of evil reputation>

3 a : causing harm : PERNICIOUS <the evil institution of slavery>

I, for one, am perfectly comfortable characterising the current admin in those terms.

12:10:08 AM    

Given that I have already invested many hours in researching Head Start and the Bush administration’s proposed changes, I feel compelled to share some of what I have learned. What follow will be a series of posts giving more background, analysis, and suggestions for further reading. Before I begin I want to make a plea. I know this issue is not as black and white or sexy as most of what folks are discussing on-line and around watercoolers. But it is so important. In some ways more important than the issues currently crowding the headlines. There is no doubt in my mind that the only lasting and truly revolutionary way to change the course of human history is by investing in children. It is the most important challenge we face; and unfortunately it is one that, globally, we are failing.

Head Start serves nearly one million children under the age of 5 each year. And that is still only 60% of the children who are eligible for those services. Who are the children that Head Start serves? Children whose families are at or below the federal poverty line. From the National Center for Children in Poverty: 

The federal poverty level for a two-parent family of four (in 2001) is $17,960.  16% of American children—almost 12 million—live in poverty, meaning their parents' income is at or below the federal poverty level. This is about the same number of children who lived in poverty in 1980.

7% of American children—5 million—live in extreme poverty. This is a 17% increase from 2000. The parents of these children make half the federal poverty level, or $8,980 for a family of four.

Research shows that, in most areas of the United States, it takes roughly double the federal poverty level to provide a family with the basic necessities of life like food and housing.

Head Start costs the federal government just under $7 billion/year. And the pay-off in investing in children can be measured in dollars. From the Children’s Defense Fund:

Early childhood programs can result in significant cost savings in both the short and long-term. For example, a study of the long-term impact of a good early childhood program for low-income children found that after 27 years, each $1.00 invested saved over $7.00 by increasing the likelihood that children would be literate, employed, and enrolled in postsecondary education, and making them less likely to be school dropouts, dependent on welfare, or arrested for criminal activity or delinquency. A study of the short-term impact of the Colorado prekindergarten program found that it resulted in cost savings of $4.7 million over just three years in reduced special education costs.

So, after spending hours and hours on-line reading this is what I think:

(1) The School Readiness Act of 2003 [HR 2210] as passed by the House on Friday is not a death knell for the program, but it is a step in the wrong direction.

(2) Head Start programs are successful – and even diehard supporters say that there is room for improvement.

(3) HR2210 does not address the areas where the biggest improvement to Head Start could be leveraged – the need for better trained, more qualified teachers. While calling for more qualified teachers, the bill does not authorize the funds needed to hire and retain them. [See  “Battle over head start – what the research shows”  in which a study of 104 child care centers in Boston, Central Virginia, and Atlanta found that classroom quality was most strongly associated with teacher wages;  and the “Low Wages = Low Quality: Solving the Real Preschool Teacher Crisis,” policy brief by NIEER]

(4) The house bill, as passed, weakens Head Start by insufficiently funding it and allowing for the erosion of national quality standards. From the Center for Law and Social Policy:

Several of the bill’s provisions are positive, including the emphasis on teacher credentialing and the enhanced collaboration requirements. However, 

• The bill establishes a set of significant new goals for Head Start programs without providing the funding that would be needed to meet the goals;

• The bill reduces the federal commitment to training and technical assistance, a key part of any strategy to improving program quality;

• The bill would allow religious discrimination by faith-based providers receiving Head Start

• The bill would give eight states the option to receive Head Start funds in the form of a block grant without full application of the current Head Start Performance Standards, adequate accountability, or sufficient coordination requirements.

For a more comprehensive summary of the ways that HR 2210 weakens Head Start, please see the joint statement of the Children's Defense Fund, United Way of America, National League of Cities, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), National Women's Law Center, Child Welfare League of America, Easter Seals, Service Employees International Union, American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, National Council of Jewish Women, and the National Head Start Association.  Please read this.  It’s very clear and specific and I would post it here but this entry is already ridiculously long.

Believe it or not, I have more sources and background info to come… In the interim, you can take action now to ensure that the Senate’s version of the bill corrects these deficiencies.

1:35:45 AM    

i think this is what they call "fisking."  Lee at  Right Thinking from the Left Coast lauds Stephen Den Beste's Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Why We Won't Back Down.  I so disagreed with the paragraphs that Lee quotes that I took a look at the whole piece.  And, well, here is the result: [DenBeste in italics]  

Opponents of American foreign policy in Iraq are attempting to focus the entire debate on one small and extremely unimportant event. They're trying to claim that the inclusion of one specific sentence in this year's State of the Union address is the total political issue, and since that sentence appears to have been based on faulty intelligence, they are trying to claim that this somehow shakes the entire foundation of the case for war.

(1) As argued and elucidated here and by many others more educated and informed than I, the “one specific sentence” is not the “total political issue.” The issue is that this one sentence brings into sharp relief the question of whether the administration was dishonest with Congress and US citizenry about the need to launch a preemptive war.

(2) I have yet to hear anyone claim that faulty intelligence “shakes the entire foundation of the case for war.” I have heard folks claim that they question the urgency of the war and/or the need for a pre-emptive strike. I have heard folks claim that there were plenty of humanitarian reasons for going after Sadaam’s regime. What I have heard folks say is that faulty intelligence shakes the administration’s case for war as it was presented to the world.

In fact, the real reason we went into Iraq was precisely to "nation build": to create a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation. To create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators. This would demonstrate to the other people in the Arab and Muslim worlds that they can succeed, but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back.

Well, for the sake of argument, let’s just grant for the moment that this was indeed the “real” reason. In light of all the post “victory” operational challenges on the ground in Iraq, I fail to see how this makes the administration any less culpable. If we grant that the goal was to “create a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation,” then why on earth was the administration in such an all-fired hurry to invade? Why couldn’t they take the time to do the serious, in-depth analysis of what would be needed the instant shooting stopped in order to lay a solid foundation for a stable post-Sadaam transition. Why weren’t they prepared for civil unrest?Why were they so woefully unable to restore even basic services to the Iraqi people?

And, quite frankly, I can’t think of a person in the world who, if their goal was, “to create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators,” would choose the US military to achieve this goal. An occupation by the United States military is supposed “to create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy?” Can you even propose that with a straight face? If that was the goal, the administration should have taken the time and the care to ensure that there were thousands of civil support personnel mobilized and ready to move into Iraq as soon as the military was in control there.

Finally, the sentence, “This would demonstrate to the other people in the Arab and Muslim worlds that they can succeed, but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back” is so dripping in racist and Eurocentric assumptions that the author should be embarrassed to have given us this ugly glimpse of his true worldview.

We are not doing this out of altruism. We are not trying to give them a liberalized Western democracy because we're evangelistic liberal democrats (with both liberal and democrat taking historical meanings). We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self-interest. We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it's the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us.

Once again, I will concede the point about our motivations, for the moment, in order to make another. If one’s goal is “to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it's the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us,” then I will again point out that making a civilian population angry and fearful and withholding their autonomy is clearly counterproductive.

So why did George W. Bush and Tony Blair, in making the case for war, put so much emphasis on U.N. resolutions and weapons of mass destruction? Honesty and plain speaking are not virtues for politicians and diplomats.

The latter statement is so galling and reflects a world-view so fundamentally different than mine that I hardly know where to start.The assumption that the citizens of two of the oldest and most successful democracies on the planet are to be lied to and manipulated as a matter of course is fundamentally incompatible with the principles upon which are nation was founded.[Where the hell is that Jefferson quote when I need it?]

If either Mr. Bush or Mr. Blair had said what I did, it would have hit the fan big-time. Making clear a year ago that this was our true agenda would have virtually guaranteed that it would fail. Among other things, it would have caused all of the brutal dictators and corrupt monarchs in the region to unite with Saddam against us, and would have made the invasion impossible. But now the die is cast, and said brutal dictators and corrupt monarchs no longer have the ability to stop the future.

But does America have the stamina to finish the job? Yes. This kind of thing takes on momentum. Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968 on a platform that essentially opposed the war in Vietnam. (The catch phrase was "Peace with honor.") But we fought for several more years before finally giving up.

I will only say that, at this juncture, it would seem unwise for an ally of the Bush regime to refer to Nixon within one paragraph of the sitting president. One wouldn’t want to draw unflattering parallels, would one?

Whenever Mr. Bush leaves office, whether in 2005 or 2009, whoever follows him will face a situation in which he'd take far more political heat for pulling out with the job half done than for continuing the process. There's another year and a half in Mr. Bush's current term, and by the end of it, the process will either be a complete shambles or else it will clearly be on the road to success, and I think it's unlikely to be a shambles.

Well. On that last point, we will have to agree to disagree, Mr. Den Beste.

Mistakes will get made, and there will be problems. We're going to be making a lot of this up as we go. But if there's anything you should know about Americans by now, it's that we're problem solvers. Americans have gained a reputation elsewhere for being flighty, mercurial; there's some truth to that, but it's also true that we can stick with things for decades if we think it's worthwhile. We stuck with the occupations of Germany and Japan for 50 years. I feel confident we'll stick with this, too.

Ummm … somehow the suggestion that we may be occupying Iraq for decades is not reassuring.

Much of the reputation we've gained in the world comes from how we act when we're not challenged. There's steel in us, too, but we don't show it much. It only really comes out in war, and when we've been at peace for several decades there's a tendency to think that we used to have that kind of steel, but that we don't any longer. That's wrong, and every generation the world learns that anew. Going into World War II, many in Europe said that Americans used to be willing to fight back in the days of Lincoln but had become decadent and soft. History proves otherwise, of course.

The remainder of Den Beste’s piece can be found here. It is offers the usual critique of the Democrats and a final bit of John Wayne rhetoric.  Looking forward to hearing what you think.