Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain appeared Tuesday to suggest rationing of veterans’ health care may be needed so combat veterans can receive the care they deserve.
I am a veteran (Vietnam Era) who (a) did not serve in combat, and (b) has never had to make use of the VA health care system. Still, I feel an obligation to fully fund the appropriate health-care needs of ALL who have served, and thus recent statements by the Senator from Arizona, including his proposals to partially privatize veterans' health care by offering vouchers for service at private medical facilities, concern me as indicating an abandonment of the solemn commitment we have previously made to those who have served on our behalf.
In this diary I want to explore the cited article and some related issues, and I invite you to join me below the fold.
Let me reiterate what I say in the title. This is one person’s perception.
Let me put that into context. I have attended all three conventions, and organized and led at least one panel at each. I also write this as a long-time member of this community and someone who lives in the National Capital region and is somewhat politically active here. That sentence is offered solely to perhaps help readers understand some of what I will offer. While this is my perception, my observations, my analysis, I hope that this diary can provide an occasion of conversation, where others can provide evidence supporting or gainsaying what I have offered. After all, I was but one of 2,000 attendees, and only saw a small fraction of the sessions.
We were honored. Yes, only about 50 people were there at any one minute, maybe 70 or so total with those who came and went during the 70+ minutes of the panel.
There were several other good panels at the same time, 10:30 on Friday morning. Also, that was the only time the organizers could schedule former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman.
The first minute or so of sound is missing (I will explain that and more below the fold).
I am going to suggest that, even though it will take more than an hour to watch panel, you consider recommending this diary. Let me explain that, and more, below.
Really. As I write, it is a bit past 7 AM in my room at the Hilton in Austin Texas, on what promises to be another fairly hot day. It is also quite warm already. Saying the day will be fairly hot refers to how this day will begin, with our Ask the Speaker event with Nancy Pelosi. And I am sure that more than one person will offer opinions about that event, perhaps even several live-blogging it as it occurs.
This diary, however, has an entirely different purpose. It will be my only even semi-serious writing effort at least until I arrive at the airport on my journey home tomorrow. Herein I will explain why I am not writing - even comments - most of the time I am here, and offer a brief explanation of what has been for me the most significant moments of this trip Deep in the Heart of Texas. Since both of these are likely of importance only to me, perhaps that will explain the title.
Continue reading if like the proverbial feline (aka pootie) you find your curiosity being piqued.
As I write this, I am at the gate at National Airport here in Arlington Virginia, on my way for the 3rd consecutive bloggers conference, this year known as Netroots Nation 2008. And I can think of nothing more important for me to do with the rest of my week.
Why is it so important? Because we need to come together for the sake of the future of this nation. If we have any doubt, the events of recent days should make that absolutely clear. Yesterday we saw the results yet again of packing the courts, when a divided en banc 4th Circuit upheld the right of Bush to detain indefinitely civilians taken custody in the United States. Really? How would Madison and the other Founders have reacted to such an assertion of uncontrolled executive power? We have seen EPA trying to avoid following Federal Court mandates, HHS trying to redefine birth control as abortion, and a president knowing he would be overridden vetoing the Medicare fix on the grounds it was unfair to insurance companies!!
Below the fold I will remind myself - and you if you are still reading - why our getting together is so important. And why, even if you cannot be with us physically, you should be supporting what we are doing
It was 11th grade English with Mr. Turner at Mamaroneck High School. He was fond of summarizing great works of literature with a single phrase. And for Macbeth his line was simple: "Anticipation is greater than realization." He argued strongly that we invest so much in our goals and dreams that even when we completely achieve them we are inevitably disappointed because "anticipation is greater than realization." Mr. Turner did not view this as a bad thing, for if we did not look for the big things ahead we would not be motivated sufficiently to take the actions to move us forward even to the lesser achievements we eventually do accomplish. But he also warned us that if we allowed ourselves to be disappointed by what we actually achieved, then we would find nothing satisfactory enough, that our accomplishments would sour on us, and eventually we would stop trying, because since we never fully realized the fullness of our wildest dreams, the perpetual disappointment could sour us on life.
I have recently been very much reminded of that teaching as I observe the political processes, especially as we explore them here. And I have finally come to the conclusion that Mr. Turner was at best partly right.
Each Tomahawk missile that the United States fires in Afghanistan costs at least $500,000. That’s enough for local aid groups to build more than 20 schools, and in the long run those schools probably do more to destroy the Taliban.
That is from Nicholas Kristof's column, It Takes a School, Not Missiles. My title? Well, consider the first sentence of that column:
Since 9/11, Westerners have tried two approaches to fight terrorism in Pakistan, President Bush’s and Greg Mortenson’s.
And perhaps this draws my attention because I am both a Quaker who views the use of military force not as the first thing to be taken from our toolbox of international relations, and I am a school teacher who has learned the helping lift up others is far more effective in changing behavior than is strict discipline. I encourage you to read what Kristof offers, and I invite you to consider my reflections thereupon.
That’s why the Bush White House’s corruption in the end surpasses Nixon’s. We can no longer take cold comfort in the Watergate maxim that the cover-up was worse than the crime. This time the crime is worse than the cover-up, and the punishment could rain down on us all.
Strong words. The final words in a column appearing in tomorrow's New York Times by Frank Rich entitled The Real-Life ‘24’ of Summer 2008. While the column title invokes Jack Bauer, the column is in fact an exploration of a new book by Jane Mayer of THe New Yorker entitled The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals. Rich's discussion makes the book seem like a must read. Of greater importance, what he describes from the book should lead us all to demand MEANINGFUL investigations by the Congress, NOW, even if that requires an impeachment investigation to accomplish.
a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
Hope:
the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best
In each case, the first definition of the noun form of the word as found at Dictionary.com Both conditions/emotions can be real, but both can be illusionary, leading us to act overly defensively or not at all in the first case, or blindly without regard for consequence if in the second case it approaches a pollyanish attitude.
I am a realist. I recognize that there are bad things, that there are people who intend other than good for me and those about whom I care. But if that were my dominant emotion, I would be paralyzed, unable to act in a fashion to make a difference in the world around me. Had I any doubt, I would merely need to look at how fear has distorted our politics and our policy.
A personal note: I have seen children dying of AIDS and hunger; I have had malaria and been chased through the jungle by militias. I want the G-8 to address all the aspects of global poverty, yet nothing affects me as much as what I have seen in Darfur.
I tilt obsessively at the windmills of Darfur because, quite simply, its people haunt me: the young woman who deliberately made a diversion of herself so the janjaweed would gang-rape her and miss her little sister running in the opposite direction; the man whose eyes were gouged out with a bayonet; the group of women beaten with their own babies until the children were dead.
After what you have just read, there is only one sentence left in the column by Nicholas Kristof entitled The Pain of the G-8’s Big Shrug. I will add a few words of my own.
`When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
Between these alternatives there is no middle ground. The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it.
If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act contrary to the constitution is not law: if the latter part be true, then written constitutions are absurd attempts, on the part of the people, to limit a power in its own nature illimitable.
If you do not recognize them, the first quote is from Through the Looking Glass and the second from Marshall's opinionMarbury v Madison. Until today I could hope that the 2nd would be the operable principle in the operating of our democratic republic, but with the vote today I will no longer have any doubt that instead the words penned by Charles Dodgson under his pen name of Lewis Carroll take precedence, the role of the speaker, Humpty Dumpty being shared equally by the President and the Senate. And thus I have a problem.
Then perhaps you should consider joining or supporting the 2008 Patriot Corp Program from Russ Feingold's Progressive Patriots Fund. Take a moment to look at this video:
Please bear with me. I have to explain. Partially as a result of my visibility here, I often get asked to write about books, particularly on education. Sometimes they show up at home or at school without notice. Even if they are good books, often it is not relevant to write about them here.
Also, people who try to turn the material from doctoral dissertations into books often find it exceedingly hard going, as my dearly beloved has discovered over the past few years.
And personal narratives can also be frustrating, because regardless of the success portrayed in the book, one immediately wonders if that success is transferable beyond the individual personalities, the specific context in which it occurred.
I have recently finished a book that is a personal narrative, derived from a doctoral dissertation. And I am going to suggest that even for a general audience such as this, it is not only worthy my writing about it, but also encouraging you to read it. It is entitled Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way: Lessons from an Urban Classroom and was written by Brian Schultz.
In 1973, when OPEC imposed its oil embargo, U.S. oil imports composed 30 percent of our needs; today, they make up more than 60 percent, with a growing proportion of that crude coming from the world's least stable regions. At around $145 a barrel, the United States, by my calculations, will spend more on imported oil this year than it will spend on its own defense budget, and much of that money will flow into the coffers of those who wish us ill.
Okay, we know all that, don't we? So why I am writing about Gal Luft's Washington Post piece Iran and Brazil Can Do It. So Can We.? Look at the two countries in that title. Both are in the midst of lots of oil. Israel is near oil-rich but hostile nations. Iran produces lots of oil but has no meaningful refining capacity. And both are moving away from gasoline as the primary means of powering transportation. How they and other countries are doing it is certainly worth our exploration.
For nearly two terms in office, Team Bush has been undermining what constitutional conservative scholar Bruce Fein calls the "very architecture of the Constitution." And they've had a pretty good run at it.
Let's see. we've already destroyed the Fourth Amendment on unreasonable search and seizure. Has that stopped terrorism cold? Does Osama Bin Laden quiver in fear because we have crippled the Fifth and Sixth Amendments?
And the First? Have we defanged Islamist extremists by damaging the First Amendment? Are we any safer? Does this strike you as an effective remedy to terrorism?
The words are from the last book of Molly Ivins, cowritten with Lou Dubose. These are Mollys' words, from her introduction, entitled with the words of Ben Franklin: "A REPUBLIC - IF WE CAN KEEP IT."
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
ALL MEN.
That should have included Brandon Mayfield, but the FBI lied about his fingerprint. For those lies, and more, it cost us $2 milion.
That should have included Steve Hatfield, but Attorney General Ashcroft called him a person of interest. For those words and more, it cost us $4.6 million.
That should have included John Walker Lindh, but we denied his repeated requests for a lawyer, and we stripped him, blindfolded him, bound him, and held him in a shipping container. For that treatment he got 20 years, but it cost us our honesty
That should have included Jose Padila and Yaser Esam Hamdi. Hell, it should have included Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
we hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . .
Far too much of our educational assessment has been to rely on tests, often limited to multiple choice answer, or at best including some writing expected to be completed in a formulaic fashion (think 5 paragraph essay) in a fixed period of time. But such tests do not necessarily offer us the best way of evaluating what students know and can do.
Performance assessment goes beyond that, and can often be used in conjunction with tests. Think for a moment about the 3 things you must in most states complete before you get a driver's licence. First you must pass a vision test, which ensures at a minimum you have the physical capability to safely operate a motor vehicle. Then you must also pass a test on knowledge of the rules of the road as defined by your state. Pass both of these and you can get a learner's permit, which will allow you to operate a motor vehicle under the supervision of a licensed driver. But you cannot be fully licensed to drive by yourself until you can pass the road test. That road test is an example of performance assessment, one in which you demonstrate the ability to use your vision and apply your knowledge of the rules of the road to safely operate a motor vehicle.
How convenient that the peculiar perspective of the oil-obsessed Bush administration can now be put to use advising the Iraqi government on its contracts with big oil.
The contracts themselves are not huge. They are like the keys on a coveted ring that will begin opening the doors to Iraq’s vast oil reserves. As The Times reported Monday, "At a time of spiraling oil prices, the no-bid contracts, in a country with some of the world’s largest untapped fields and potential for vast profits, are a rare prize to the industry."
A prize, yes. But at what cost?
Bob Herbert asks us that question in his column today, entitled ‘Oh Happy Day’ because he tells us that is what one would here sung in the executive suites of oil companies after the deals they just made in Iraq. The question is what achieving the happy day for the oil companies has cost the rest of us.
