Joementum?

Don't let the screen door hit ...

by blogSpotter

There is buzz now that Connecticut's Senator Joe Lieberman will receive a large Republican backing in his 2006 senate race, even though he's running as a Democrat against Republican Alan Schlesinger. Lieberman has already received the endorsements of conservative talk show hosts Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Lieberman has also incurred the wrath of Democratic party pillars like moveon.org and Howard Dean.

Lieberman, an observant Jew, is a frail man with a bad comb-over -- the man who probably took half the wind out of Al Gore's 2000 campaign as the Vice Presidential nominee. Lieberman's biggest claim to fame on the national stage is that of Clinton Admonisher -- the Democratic Senator who publicly chastised Clinton for his indiscretions with Monica Lewinsky. Gore's selection of Lieberman was a failed and cynical ploy to appease Democrats morally affronted by Clinton's behavior. The ploy failed for simple reasons: Lieberman has a dry, dull speaking style, and all the charisma of a folding chair. Also, Democrats were more affronted by an anemic turn-coat than by a philanderer.

There is more. Lieberman has achieved prominence by supporting Bush's Iraq incursion, and tearing down some of the wall between church and state -- the wall which keeps America from behaving like the religiously torn Middle East, by the way. He's also been associated with video game regulation, which many equate to censorship. Lieberman's stands are conservative enough that they have earned him a moniker like "Dino" (Democrat in name only). He ran as a presidential nominee in 2004, thinking that he would ride the conservative 'wave' only to be shut out in the first five primaries. Imagine that so many people fail to find the man credible or interesting.

There has now been talk of Lieberman switching over to the Republican Party -- the GOP loves him. Well Joe, just follow that "Joementum". Just don't let the screen door hit you on the way out.

© 2006 blogSpotter.

The Mommy Files

The Hand that Rocks the Cradle?

by blogSpotter
Linda Hirshman, a retired philosophy professor tells young mothers, "Get to work!". In this week's Newsweek magazine, she expounds on the virtues of the work world for mothers. She says that a woman should have work that brings her honor, compensation, influence, a way of being political and a hand in shaping the world. When presented with the concept of stay-at-home mom, she flatly rejects it as unworthy and less than honorable for a woman. Already as I read this, I'm sensing an extreme point of view.

My own cards on the table -- I agree that women should have career training and aim for some type of career besides that of 'hausfrau'. However, I see nothing wrong with a woman taking a career hiatus to raise small children at least thru the early years. Day care is exorbitantly expensive for middle class families, and it's better for children to imprint on their mother than a nanny or a day care employee. Most American companies don't provide or even subsidize day care for young mothers so the choices are limited.

Ms. Hirshman expounds further. She believes that women should require husbands to do half the housework or kick in for a maid. OK, no disagreement there. I figure whichever spouse is home more will 'default' into doing more of the housework, but a deal can always be struck. Then, however, Ms. Hirshman heads toward the direction of shrillness and militancy. She recommends that women deny sex to their husbands if the husbands disagree with any of her marital demands; she also recommends having only one child. Most women probably value marriage and family as much as Ms. Hirshman values her career. They'd be foolish to risk a treasured relationship to make a political point. Compromise and diplomacy are the words that come to mind. If everyone stopped at one child, the population would dwindle to zero, as one child isn't even sufficient to replace the parents (much less account for accidental deaths, etc). Ms. Hirshman would do well to reflect on the phrase "To each his own". Her intense career juggernaut isn't mine or yours -- it's hers. Let's leave it that way, and then to each his or her own.

© 2006 blogSpotter.

Conservatism's Dominatrix

Ann Coulter -- the Girl Can't Help It

by blogSpotter
"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo." - Ann's column December 21, 2005

This is one of hundreds of quotes coming from conservative author Ann Coulter. She's touched nerves on a number of topics over the years. Try this quote about conservation:

"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet — it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that's the Biblical view."

The latest tempest, following, is from her comments about 9/11 widows on NBC's Today Show 3 days ago:

"They were millionaire widows and they were using their grief in order to make a political point while preventing anyone from responding."

This latest volley, while hardly her worst, has caused a torrential backlash from other commentators. Many of these commentators are conservative. They must fear that Ann will make them look bad as a group. Her words are cruel, mean-mouth words -- the words of a harpy. People in polite society shudder at the thoughts so forcefully expressed. Why can't Ann be nice? Does a girl such as her even want to be nice? As Molly Ivins would say, "nice" is a pallid virtue; “nice” does not garner viewers, readers or headlines. There are a couple of things to say about Miss Coulter. With her short skirts and extreme sassitude, men are secretly turned on by her. As Cosmopolitan magazine once pointed out, men will decry a 'bitch' in daytime and dream about her at night. The very things about Ann that veer from Pollyanna correctness are what make her fun, unique and exciting. She's anything but nice, and lots of men are OK with that.

Now obviously, a second group also likes her. That group is the liberal commentators who have a golden, glistening target at which to aim. Some conservative writers are careful in their wording and cannot be easily cited. William Buckley and George Will come to mind. Some conservatives dilly dally with politically correct euphemisms and delicate phrases. The thing to love about Ann is that she doesn't dilly and she doesn't dally. She lays it on the line. Some people just can't handle Ann’s unvarnished 'truth'. Those people have to get over it. Just let it be known -- there is a growing fan club for Miss Coulter. She’s that crazy dame with the wicked tongue. Look at what she said about her own sex:

"Women are not as bright as men, have no capacity to understand how money is earned."

Does she risk enraging her own sex? That's quite all right; she has a large fan base among men; she won't need the other sex any time soon.

© 2006 blogSpotter.

Up in Smoke

Clipart from Clipartheaven.com

by JD
Disclaimer: Views of guest editorialist do not necessarily reflect views of editor

I'm sitting in my company cafeteria, watching three older ladies light up. The ladies all three have gray hair, squat bodies and Elton John-looking eyeglasses. All three are pushing retirement age. Their liver-spotted, nicotine stained fingers belie the elegance of jeweled cigarette cases. Gone are those Humphrey Bogart days when cigarettes looked cool; nowadays they lend a decidedly trashy squalor to the smoker. Never mind lung cancer, let's talk about hygiene. Long before cancer sets in, your smokes will give you nicotine fingers, cigarette breath, and a house or car covered with a fine coat of ashes. Cigarettes have an immediate bad effect on your heart and blood circulation. Completely apart from lung cancer, they can steal ten years from your life, and make you look like a trailer park denizen all the time you’re alive. One must ask why anyone in his right mind would ever pick the habit.

I'll admit my attitude is at one extreme; general attitudes toward cigarettes have followed a tortuous path over time. A few years ago, you heard a lot about smoking. There were lots of studies showing its health effects. Smokers sued tobacco companies for health problems caused by years of smoking -- few of these suits were successful. Those who won judgments usually saw them reversed on appeal. States also sued the tobacco companies because healthcare systems were overloaded by smoking-related cases. Some of those suits ended up in settlements of astronomical figures. However, these large settlements didn’t put a dent in the coffers of Big Tobacco. Many cities and states attempted to ban smoking in public buildings, restaurants, and bars. Building and restaurant bans were mostly successful; however, efforts to clear the bars of smoke were mightily resisted by the tavern industry.

I love the clean air, where bans are in place. Fortunately, it’s been years since I worked in a building that allowed work-area smoking. As far as restaurants go, everywhere I eat around Dallas I can enjoy a smoke-free meal. Didn’t realize how nice this was until I recently visited my home state of Tennessee and sat in a white fog for an hour while eating supper. Whenever I visit California, one of the things I enjoy most is the smoke free bars. What we need is smoke free bars, nationwide.

We should redouble our efforts to discourage cigarette addiction. First, we should stop all smoking in public places nationwide. If people want to ruin their own lungs, that's their business; however, making others breathe their second hand smoke is unacceptable. The second thing we should do is increase taxes on cigarettes. Start with $1 per year increase until we reach $10 tax per pack. That tax money should go to reimburse unpaid medical bills by smokers. It’s time that smokers paid for their fair share of increased costs to the health care system. And you ladies in the cafeteria -- get some Nicorette gum, some hand lotion for the liver spots and add a healthful year back to your life.

© 2006 blogSpotter.

A Policy of Containment

Rethinking Iraq

by blogSpotter
Peter Beinart is the author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals - and Only Liberals - Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again. He has an editorial in this week's Time which examines our thought processes regarding Iraq. He, like many of us supported the war early on, only to discover later that it was a quicksand pit. He says that we were all holding to a "catastrophic" point of view -- one which boils down to "get them, before they get you".

His example of an earlier "catastrophist" was James Burnham, a foreign policy maker of the early 50's. Burnham thought we should attack China and Russia before either developed nuclear proficiency like ours. It boggles the mind to think how protracted, disastrous and wrong-headed such a policy would have been. Somehow, and one may suppose it's because we're dealing with a smaller enemy, we were all "catastrophists" with regard to Iraq. Beinart gives a 3-point technique for dealing with these situations, each technique accompanied with an example. His logic is very clear and one has to wish we had followed a form of it, or shift some priorities to start following it now.

• Practice containment and strengthen allied relationships. I.E., we could've contained Saddam Hussein, who was presiding over a stultified government and economy. We did containment in Europe with the Marshall Plan. It helped to win struggling democracies over to our side, and the 'false Gods' that threatened us (Leninism, totalitarianism) fell of their own accord.
• Nurture alliances based on consent, not brute force. Such alliances will have longer staying power than alliances based on coercion alone. Thus, the Soviet republics are no more, but NATO is still alive.
• Clean up your own back yard. When Sputnik launched in 1957, many Americans thought that the Soviet launch should be a call to arms by itself. Instead, under the leadership of Kennedy, we ramped up the science/math offerings at American schools and became competitive with the Soviets at what was initially their own game.

Notice that the three policies above helped to avert crises, strengthen ourselves, strengthen democratic ties -- and they turned a negative into a positive. We showed leadership and a steady hand in a complex world that could've easily rushed headlong into another world war. Such restraint is sorely needed now; I'm wondering how other administrations might have confronted the events surrounding 9/11. Islamic terrorism strikes me as something as unstable as Leninism. They practice not a life style but a "death style" -- something that might be contained until it dies its own death.

I think Beinart's 3-point plan above worked well against secular, visible enemies; not so sure how it might work against furtive, Islamic terrorists. Common sense says that oppressed people should finally see the light and throw off oppression. But where fundamentalist religion takes root, it's hard to predict that such a light of comprehension will ever shine. This kind of situation might be answered with a super strict definition of 'containment', much as Israel has contained Palestine. At least the insurgents and perpetrators are given little range to destroy anyone else's piece of mind. And so, maybe Beinart is on to something -- though it could use some refinement, based on the enemy we face.

© 2006 blogSpotter.