Links With Your Coffee - Wednesday
- The Democrats & National Security - The New York Review of Books
Since the Vietnam War the Republican Party has developed a reputation for having a superior approach to national security. Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call "issue ownership."
(tip to Adam) - The Crisis Papers on DU - Evil as the Absence of Empathy
1946, Dr. Gustav M. Gilbert, a psychologist fluent in German, was assigned by the U.S. Army to study the minds and motivations of the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg tribunals. The following year, his Nuremberg Diary was published, containing transcripts of his conversations with the prisoners. In words consistent with what I have read of, and about, Gustav Gilbert, he is portrayed in the 2000 TV film "Nuremberg," as telling the Head Prosecutor Robert Jackson (Alex Baldwin), "I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants: a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
- Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds
- The Cagle Post -- Column -- Andy Borowitz -- Obama Releases List of Approved Jokes About Himself
- The Satirical Political Report - An Offbeat Look at the Hot-Button Issues of the Day » John McCain Resubmits His Op-Ed to The NY Times
- McCain Gets History Of The Surge Wrong, CBS Doesn't Air Footage
- Op-Ed Columnist - The Culture of Debt - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com
Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight. . . Norms changed and people began making jokes to make illicit things seem normal. Instead of condemning hyper-consumerism, they made quips about “retail therapy,” or repeated the line that Morgenson noted in her article: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
Comments
Bahhh, Obama condemns one bad joke and suddenly he is humorless.
As I said when this happen, the problem with that cover was that it lacked timing and context and therefore wasn't all that funny.
Make an unfunny joke about serious topics and people are going to condemn you for being stupid and tasteless. If it had been LOL funny it wouldn't really be much of an issue. That's how Colbert does it every night without Obama condemnation.
Re: David Brooks'Culture of Debt. This is one of his columns which makes me think along useful lines. Assigning blame is often a dubious use of time: sometimes it's a matter of trying to find a way to justice, and sometimes just a matter of ritualistic hand-wringing. In the current case of American private and public debt, I think Brooks is right: it's a cultural phenomenon, and there is plenty of blame to go around. Government refused to regulate, corporations sent credit cards to those who just declared bankruptcy, and individuals who are old enough to know better, didn't. Any diagnosis that lays blame on one to the exoneration of others is, IMHO, flat-out wrong. We are all to blame, individually and collectively, and all need to make good on our debts. It's what adults would do.
McAndrew - Assigning blame is not a dubious use of time when it's trying to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again and whether people are doing their job and whether laws are protecting people.
That is how you find out how to fix the problem or, at least, not to repeat it.
What adults do is stand up and take responsibility for their own mistakes and not try to pass the buck or say there were no mistakes made.
I agree concerning Brooks' column - he finally earned his pay for once. I agree with him and John McA. - there is both blame for individuals and institutions. My brother is a person who sank himself in the mortgage debt fiasco, and I don't excuse his behavior. He's a financial wreck - he has –$60,000 in equity on "his" home. I asked him how he could possibly take out a 120% loan on his home (and the price collapse has only made it worse). His reply: It was so easy to get!
There is one thing to remember: my brother is paying big time. He's losing his home, his business - everything. So I don't feel any need to dump on him. But what kind of lunatics deregulated the banking/financial institutions of this country to the extent that lenders would make millions of idiotic loans like this?
(Answer: Phil Gramm, architect of John McCain's economic policy.)
@RedSeven: Obama is the entity who defeated Our Girl, therefore his motives must be evil. In this case, that's what makes him humorless.
Post a comment