I’m not too sure how I feel about this, other than the commercialism of Americans seems to only increase every other month, even in a recession. Still, here’s Cowboys Stadium, opening this fall. Have fun, Cowboys fans.
There is something deeply disconcerting about the idea that those in the military are the best that American society have to offer, without fail:
For the record, I find what the soldiers of the American military do as brave, commendable and without a doubt, a fine service to their nation. However, it also strikes me as unfair to many aspects of our society to say these are the best that we have to offer: what of the doctor that works 16 hours in a trauma center in an lower-income neighborhood? How about the administrator of a soup kitchen or the director of a woman’s shelter?
These are all admirable positions in our society, dedicated to providing support to the most vulnerable and hope to those that have it least. It’s a problem in national discourse when we can only see the sacrifice of our military, and not of many others in society, who engage in just as selfless and thankless tasks that assure our nation’s continued prosperity and stability.
This rose-coloured look at the American military also gives us a blind spot: we forget about their mental and physical well being once they get back, and we assume that these warriors, the best our society has to offer, can always deal with the ramifications of returning home after years in a war zone.
The soldiers are human. They should be be treated as such. The top ‘percentile’ of American society is indefinable. We shouldn’t promote one group of selfless individuals over another.
I understand that it is the executive branch’s obligation to file motions in favor of current law. However, the defense of it seems excessive, given President Obama’s promise during the campaign to have the Defense of Marriage Act repealed.
I’ve always been an advocate of gay rights and its time and place. I don’t think this is the best time for President Obama to go on the offensive. This last few months, however, have been disconcerting. Jokes about gay rights, not a word in support of gay rights achievements accomplished and no movement on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell while continuing the government policy of firing homosexuals, which he could easily stop?
Mr. President, I’m not asking for much. I’ve stood by and and I’ve defended. This defense of DOMA is too much for even me. Start showing support for gay rights or you might find yourself a constituent base that isn’t willing to be spurned a second time.
In a sign of the times, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district is engaging in mass layoffs, due to budgetary concerns. The tragedy of the recession is the continued fallout in the education community, particularly as budgets and support continue to be slashed in a time when education investiture should be at its highest.
The situation in Charlotte is a little bit more complicated; TFA teachers are exempt from the layoffs. Education Week reports:
The policy directs the district not to renew any teachers whose licenses are not current, those who do not meet minimum standards on local evaluation instruments, part-time teachers, and retired teachers who have returned to teaching. After that, it exempts TFA teachers and a handful of others in shortage subject areas, such as math, science, and foreign languages, over traditionally certified teachers with more seniority or equally high performance ratings.
This isn’t surprising, though it is disheartening. TFA continues to be treated as a program that can combat years of societal indifference to teaching and the twisted rewarded system in the United States. TFA makes it more difficult in the long-term. It continues to feed into the canard that teaching is easy. It continues the trend of giving teachers poor training.
Additionally, TFA in this circumstance continues the quest to de-professionalize teaching, rewarding individuals that went through an obscure process and five-week training program, compared to those that planned to enter into education as a methodological practice.
Anyway, this kind of curriculum and teaching battle is going to continue. As a student currently in one of the best teaching programs in the country, I’m certain that the way we improve teacher quality is through additional resources, better monetary compensation, and intense training that assumes that a teacher is not an automaton, but a fully functional professional that should be treated with respect and given the proper support. It’s about understanding the context of American education.
More importantly, what frightens me about something Charlotte did is the following: I’m a from a school that pumps out TFA idealists. I went through a grueling preparation to become certified. Yet, I could have easily lost my job to a lesser trained individual from my own school, even though I went through the trouble of spending two years learning to teach.
This is not a good way to encourage individuals to teach.
Andrew C. Porter and Morgan S. Polikoff advocate National Standards at Education Week.
John F. McGowan discusses the false promise of ‘free enterprise’ in space travel.
Harvey Sapolsky reconceptualizes isolationism in the 21st century.
There are 47 million uninsured Americans. More than ten million are children. These are children that do not have access to quality dental, psychological or general care at a time in their lives when they are the most vulnurable.
This is what the healthcare system needs to fix. It also needs to ensure that it’s cheap. There are a couple of models out there that seem to work: Germany, Britain and yes, even France.
Maybe there are other models. However, we need to take the issue seriously. Republicans don’t seem to be able to do that.
NewMajority, David Frum’s place, seemed to provide some hope at its inception that it would take issues seriously. They do a decent job, though I tend to rag on them when they get into what I coin as the ‘Unseriousness’ Mode.
Today, we have two posts from them on healthcare which seem to follow the model. The first is from a new reporter for them, Jeb Golinkin, who seems to have a weird classist/free-market understanding of healthcare:
As the health care debate heats up, lawmakers are devoting their attention toward “extending coverage.” While reducing the number of uninsured Americans is certainly a laudable goal, making this the first goal of healthcare reform is to put the horse in front of the carriage. There are not enough primary care physicians to meet the demand for care among the existing insured population. Adding 46 million patients without addressing the shortage of care options will overwhelm an already strained healthcare system. Expanding coverage without expanding care will make an already inefficient health care system much, much worse.
This seems rather absurd. The reason we don’t have enough primary care physicians is two-fold: the government supporting a semi-cartel at the AMA, and the fact that the market has determined that boob jobs pay more than giving a kid a physical. This is one of those times where the free market fails: the people who can afford boob jobs are willing to pay a lot; the child who needs a half-a-year checkup can’t really pay the same, or his family would go broke.
Hence, you have a lot of specialists, and a lot of individuals who have turned medicine into a lucrative profession. THe reason article on McAllen that I linked to shows this.
Secondly, Golinkin seems to have admitted what we’ve always known: there are millions without access to the healthcare system. I’ve always found the Republican canard about emergency rooms to be insulting to anybody with a mind, however, at least this gentlemen admits that they are not in the system…and that’s a GOOD thing!.
I’m sorry. More children need coverage. I don’t care if you have to wait an extra day to get to a doctor. However, this isn’t a binary choice: the government, especially with a public option, can enter healthcare and make mandates for what kinds of doctors we need.
He’s not the only one at NM that seems to be dedicated to the “hold the poor at the gates, they are demanding access!” routine. Another writer, Henry Clay (a pseudonym) writes similarly:
As NM contributor David Gratzer has ably argued in the New Atlantis, the Democrats’ modest sounding public option would in fact deal a fatal blow to the private health insurance most Americans enjoy.
This is acceptable. The system is broken. Most Americans healthcare is actually much more expensive. Furthermore, just because a majority enjoys a system does not mean it should be kept. I could make similar analogs to many civil rights issues in the history of the United States. Point being: we do not exist solely in the tyranny of those that have.
We have a moral imperative to ensure that families are able to provide healthcare for their children. I don’t know what the best government-involved way is, and I don’t plan on getting in the middle of this dispute. I’m not a healthcare expert. However, what is needed is an America where people don’t fear going to their doctors because of expense, where children have full access, and where individuals can go for treatment as they need it, not as they can pay for it.
This isn’t a right. It’s a mark of a moral society. Are we one? Let’s find out.
In a move that certainly makes me ashamed of my fellow Americans, the small, island nation of Palau has offered to take the 17 Uighurs, or Chinese Muslims, that we have in Guantanamo Bay. They were found to be innocent and have been in legal limbo for several months.
This is embarassing on several levels. It would be one thing, if, as soon as they were announced to be innocent, Palau decided to make their offer as a supportive ally. Instead, they assumed, like everybody else, that Americans would have a little bit more backbone than to fret about innocent Muslims who were at G. Bay. At least we didn’t give them to China, who continue to call the Uighurs ‘terrorists’. If the US wants to point to at least one country its better at human rights at, it is definitely China.
I’m curious to see what happens with the rest of the prisoners. President Obama came out forcefully that they should be brought to the United States. He hasn’t come out as forcefully behind the idea that they DESERVE and we NEED a fair trial for each prisoner. If you have a case against them, prove it. It’s what we stand for.
All these episodes show is, once again, America fails to be serious. We don’t want to deal with the fact of what we did, which was wrongly imprison individuals. We don’t want want to deal with the fact that we tortured them. We want to ignore it all. It’s not just the politicians; it’s the chattering classes, like Noonan, talking about some things being ‘mysterious’.
America isn’t about mystery. It’s about action. Let’s take the right ones, today.
I finally got the computer fixed, however, some last minute stuff will take up all of my time today. Expected a Nightly Reading tonight, that’s about it.
I tried an upgrade to Windows 7 and the keyboard is having some problems. I’ll be back blogging hopefully by Tuesday.
Andrew Sullivan links to Andrew Sprung, who suggests, based on some student reactions to Obama’s speech, that there was a “frightening glimpse here of the depth of hatred for Israel among educated young Arabs”.
I read the comments, but I definitely did not read it the same way that Sprung did. One of them, a student questioning the ‘official numbers’ of the Holocaust, seemed inappropriate, but the other two that he mentions, did not.
Here they are, as presented by the New York Times, including a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman:
But he has clearly failed to understand that the problem Muslims have is not seeing both sides of the conflict, but seeing the conflict in historical context. I can safely say that Muslims do not and never will feel responsible for the Holocaust, and do not think it justifies setting up a Jewish state upon Palestinian lands. Lands, which, have shrunk over the decades as settlements have continued to rise and more and more territory has been annexed.
–
Iran’s nuclear controversy is just filling white space, but claiming the Holocaust justifies a Jewish homeland and then saying it’s wrong too, what was it? Oh, uttering the same about Jews because it revokes past emotions is atrocious. For 60 years the Palestinians have been displaced, killed and terrorized and it’s disparaging to think of it as a tragic event rather than a genocide.
–
The Holocaust was not the doing of the Muslims, it was the Europeans, and it should not come at the cost of the Palestinian people or the Arabs and Muslims
I’m not too sure what the problem here is. I don’t think these statements are a rejection of the right of Israel’s existance: rather, it’s a counter-narrative against the prevailing one that uses the Holocaust as a justification for a Jewish state in the Middle East. Let us be frank here: to deny that there was a travesty done to the Palestinians that lived in the area at the time is to reject history. Our continued attempt to enforce Western guilt over the Holocaust onto the Muslim world is going to cause a continued backlash.
I don’t think these individuals are rejecting the right of Israel to exist; rather, it seems they are attacking the original justification. I doubt many Arab students would advocate the forced removal of Israel’s status. However, it is something we have to deal with in the West: how we forced our deep shame onto a whole other group of people.
Mind you, I’m also of the opinion that we should have offered the Jewish people…Montana or part of Germany as consolation, rather than move them to the Middle East but I understand the appeal of the Holy Land. What’s been done has been done. Anybody that rejects that Israel should and is going to exist from here on out is out of it. But we should not try to force a narrative down the throats of Palestinian supporters that this was the best solution, because of the ‘Holocaust’. That’s unfair to them.
I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty ticked if you moved to the Palestinians to South Texas as a way to deal with the Middle Eastern situation. Let’s see all the sides to this disagreement, can we please?