Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Bolton, Yoo: Did Voters Go To the Polls With Nuclear Policy in Mind?

Clearly, the election results mean conservative Republicans should get their way on everything. But serious question: Did voters go to the polls with America's nuclear policy in mind? Because that's what John Yoo* and John Bolton want you to believe:

"THE sweeping Democratic midterm losses last week raise serious questions for President Obama and a lame-duck Congress. Voters want government brought closer to the vision the framers outlined in the Constitution, and the first test could be the fate of the flawed New Start arms control treaty, which was signed by President Obama and President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia last spring but awaits ratification. The Senate should heed the will of the voters and either reject the treaty or amend it so that it doesn’t weaken our national defense."


Of course, one could argue that by leaving the Senate in Democratic hands -- even with a diminished majority -- that the Senate would be pursuing the will of the voters by pursuing Democratic priorities that are within the Senate's purview. Treaty approval, of course, falls under that purview.

More to the point, though, I'd love to see any evidence that the "will of the voters" was being expressed on nuclear policy. If you look at the GOP-leaning Rasmussen Reports poll taken just before the election, national security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rank among the bottom three of the 10 "most important" issues to voters. I'm not saying that voters don't or shouldn't care about nuclear policy; I'm just saying we have little reason to believe that was part of the message they were trying to send. Casually invoking "the will of the voters" without any foundation is cynical to the point of false.

* You know my beliefs about John Yoo. I hate that the Times is giving him space as a respected commentator on the issues.

My New iPad: First Impressions

I bought a new iPad yesterday -- the 3G, 16 GB variety -- and after 24 hours, it's safe to say I'm in love. Three first impressions:

* FLIPBOARD IS THE FUTURE: Have you seen this app? It take links your Facebook and Twitter friends post, and turn them into a magazine. The video explains better than I can:



This is such a marvel of design and functionality that, frankly, going back to run-of-the-mill Facebook and Twitter apps seems a little disappointing. This app alone makes the cost of the iPad seem worth it.

* IT'S AN EXCELLENT E-READER: My long angst over whether to buy an e-reader is over. I read three chapters in a new book yesterday, using the Kindle application on the iPad. I suspect that this will be the primary way I read non-fiction, information-consuming books from now on. (The Luddite lover in me would like to say I'll stick with paper for novels and similar leisure reading, but I suspect I'm fooling myself on that score.)

* BUT IT'S BEST FOR CONSUMING: I haven't fully tested the New York Times and Washington Post applications on the iPad yet. Why? Because when I read the news, I want to be prepared to blog it immediately. (The Blogger extension for the Chrome browser on my regular computer has actually been a pretty marvelous tool in that regard.) The iPad isn't quite as handy when it comes to me reprocessing information and spitting it back out into the world. Which is why my morning headlines scan will probably continue to take place on the computer.

* BONUS THOUGHT: The iPhone, a cherished device in my pocket for two years now, seems a bit diminished. Instead of seeming a vital piece of technology, it now seems to augment a technology ecology in which my iPad is closer to center stage. If I want to read Instapaper or the headlines, I'll probably use the big iPad instead of the phone. The joke I -- and everybody else -- made when the iPad came out is that it's a big iPhone. That's not true. The iPhone is a small iPad.

Actually, We Undercounted Philadelphia Police Corruption

Correction of the day!:

"_ Tuesday's Daily News erroneously reported that police Inspector Daniel Castro was the 14th city police officer charged with crimes since 2009. In fact, Castro is the 15th officer to face criminal charges since October 2009."

Why the Daily News Is An Essential Philadelphia Institution

It tackles the dearth of public potties in the Italian Market. You won't find that in the Inquirer!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

About American Exceptionalism, and Footnotes

I'm a couple of chapters into Dominic Tierney's "How We Fight: Crusades, Quagmires, and the American Way of War" when I stumble onto this factoid:

"But since the nineteenth century, no country has engaged in the mass killing of civilians on as many separate occasions as the United States."

Yikes! Luckily, there's an explanatory footnote:

"Between 1816 and 2003, the United States was responsible for five out of the eighteen cases in which one country intentionally or indiscriminately killed more than fifty thousand enemy civiliansin interstate war. Prussia/Germany was responsible for three episodes of mass killing, and Britain and Russia were responsible for two each. Data from Downes, Targeting Civilians in War, 44-47."

I don't have Downes' book at the ready, but the numbers indicate to me that such incidents were in the United States' "big wars," and there's pretty much universal agreement that the country was justified in entering most of those wars. (World War I being a possible exception, and we won't even get into the debates over the Civil War.)

Which brings me back around to yesterday's discussion of Jonah Goldberg and American exceptionalism. I suspect that American exceptionalism blinds us to these kinds of facts, frankly, so that we see ourselves as likely to be "greeted as liberators" instead of as a force that brought (or unleashed) bombs and death into a country. It's possible to be both, actually, but we don't think hard enough about the second part of the equation. A little less of the exceptionalist attitude would be helpful in such cases, actually.

A Cure For Bullying?

There are probably limits to this approach, because some people are just jerks. Still, this approach to reducing bullying is intriguing:

"Here’s how it works: Roots arranges monthly class visits by a mother and her baby (who must be between two and four months old at the beginning of the school year). Each month, for nine months, a trained instructor guides a classroom using a standard curriculum that involves three 40-minute visits – a pre-visit, a baby visit, and a post-visit. The program runs from kindergarten to seventh grade. During the baby visits, the children sit around the baby and mother (sometimes it’s a father) on a green blanket (which represents new life and nature) and they try to understand the baby’s feelings. The instructor helps by labeling them. “It’s a launch pad for them to understand their own feelings and the feelings of others,” explains Gordon. “It carries over to the rest of class.”"

Larry Mendte: Ed Rendell for President?

I don't know what to make of a disgraced newsman who goes from committing felonies a felonny against co-workers to making stuff up. But will Ed Rendell mount a primary challenge against Obama? No. Ed Rendell likes to win. He plays the odds carefully. And the odds against a successful primary challenge to an incumbent president -- well, those are pretty steep. No reason not to speculate, though!

Stubborn desperation

Oh man, this describes my post-2008 journalism career: If I have stubbornly proceeded in the face of discouragement, that is not from confid...