Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 9:01:34 PM     The Airforce Times, of all places, has an excellent up to date on Bush's air service. http://www.airforcetimes.com/story.php?f=1-AIRPAPER-357916.php Bush’s Air Guard stint started well, then faded into mystery By William H. McMichael Times Staff Writer John F. Kerry’s service in Vietnam and his postwar testimonials have been targeted all summer by Republican-funded critics and veterans groups — so much so that for several months they have obscured George W. Bush’s much-criticized Vietnam-era service in the National Guard. A renewed interest in Bush’s service raised by a critical CBS News report exploded in controversy over whether some recently unearthed Bush documents were actually forgeries. From most accounts, Bush appears to have received preferential treatment to get into the Air National Guard and avoid the draft after he graduated from Yale University in 1968. He was initially regarded as a good pilot, but his performance faded over his final two years in the Guard and he was suspended from flight status. He did not fly for the remaining 18 months he served in the Guard, though he was obligated to do so. ********

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 11:04:18 AM     Jeff Sachs was a key US advisor to Russia after the collapse of the USSR. I find him too tied to open markets and insensitive to human concerns. So this caught my eye. (published in the german press, not the american!) Three Years and Three Lessons since 9/11 http://www.facts.ch/dyn/magazin/ausland/411320.html By Jeffrey D. Sachs On the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I want to discuss three political lessons since that date. The first is about the Divided States of America. The Bush Administration response to 9/11 has profoundly divided the country, and has brought deep cultural divisions within the U.S. into much sharper focus. The second lesson is about American military might, and what it means for the world. The neoconservative quest for American empire has been exposed as completely hollow. The American military has a fantastic capacity to destroy but little capacity to enforce the U.S.’s political will on others. The third lesson is that the world will be made safer only by adopting a strategy based on solving the root causes of global instability: poverty and political conflict. ********

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 10:50:41 AM     This has got to be interesting, if only a sideline. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry agreed Monday to meet in three debates over a two-week period starting Sept. 30 that will include separate forums on foreign and domestic issues. The two sides agreed not to include independent candidate Ralph Nader, or any other candidate, in the presidential debates. The two sides basically accepted the recommendations of the non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which called for three 90-minute Bush-Kerry debates: Sept. 30 at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. Oct. 8 at Washington University in St. Louis. Oct. 13 at Arizona State University in Tempe [...] The campaigns also agreed to one debate between Vice President Cheney and Kerry's running mate, Sen. John Edwards, on Oct. 5 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. ********

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 10:48:55 AM     US population growing at 3.2 million per year. (http://www.npg.org/popfacts.htm and we have http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040921/economy_6.html Housing Construction Highest in 5 Months Tuesday September 21, 10:50 am ET By Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press Writer Housing Construction Climbs in August to Highest Level Since March, a Sign of Economic Expansion WASHINGTON (AP) -- Housing construction in August surged to its highest level in five months, a dose of encouraging news for the economy's expansion. The number of housing projects launched by builders clocked in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2 million units, a 0.6 percent increase from July's level, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. That means about one new house for every new 1.6 people. That is, we are keeping up. Builders in the Northeast broke ground on 196,000 units, on an annualized basis, last month, a 6.5 percent increase from July's level. In the Midwest, housing construction rose by 4.8 percent to a rate of 370,000. In the South, housing starts went up by 1 percent to a pace of 907,000. But in the West, housing construction dropped by 4.7 percent to a pace of 527,000. ********

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 10:35:10 AM     Another way of looking at the previous: the progressives and conservatives both believe in economic production, but split between openness and control on social issues. But this split is not the key that people feel in their gut. The problem is, much of the country (and all of to some degree) are not happy with the model of continually expanding production. But to stop economic growth would be to create crisis in the whole system because there is not a flow of income to support much of the population. We are on the edge of negotiating our way through this edge where more will lead to collapse, but stopping will lead to chaos. What to do? A major question seems to me to be how politics and technology intersect. And can new tech, nano for example, offer a way toward more economics with less stuff? What can of governance can make these decisions? Is one dollar one vote the model? Or does it just lead to the tech that aids centralized control? ********

Posted here Tuesday, September 21, 2004 at 9:54:25 AM       I continually am puzzled by the depth of confusion about "liberal". To many it means the expectation that markets and production will create a better world and that the tensions between ownership and employment can be managed. In its modern form it leads to neo-liberalism, which is the belief in markets and individual property uber alles. (and then we have the neo-cons, who really are neo-liberals in many ways). Yet another tradition of "liberal" means generosity, tolerance, and the belief that if people are given education and hope the can do well without coercion. The problem is that the American liberal is seen as being in favor of big world forces  by the American small world folks. (who paradoxically it seems, seems, would use military to impose restraints on change).   A challenge to the liberals is   Christopher Lasch's (from the preface to The Only True Heaven, a critique of the critiques of the concept of progress, 1991)   The political economists of progress hoped to unleash wealth creating desire; Emerson and Carlyle reaffirmed the ancient folk wisdom to which overweening desire invites retribution, the corrective, compensatory force of nemesis. …It is most simply described, perhaps, as the sensibility of the petty  bourgeoisie…I have no intention of minimizing the narrowness and provincialism of nor do I deny that it has produced racism, nativism, anti-intellectualism, and all the other evils so often cited by liberal critics. But liberals have lost sight of what is valuable in lower middle class culture in their eagerness to condemn what is objectionable. Their attack on "Middle America," which eventually gave rise to a a counter attack against liberalism—the main ingredient in the rise of the new right - have blinded them to the positive features of petty-bourgeois culture: its moral realism, its understanding that everything has its price, its skepticism about progress. Whatever can be said against them, small proprietors, artisans, tradesmen, and farmers—more often victims of "'improvement" than beneficiaries—are unlikely to mistake the promised land of progress for the true and only heaven.   In the back of my mind is comparing why George Lakoff is so popular in his analysis of political language of the republicans and democrats when Lasch's seems the more powerful - and usable.  I think the answer is that Lasch forces us all to reconsider who progress and our own social position is being resisted by the red states, the country conservatives, the religious resistors. Lasch assumes that our own position is OK. ********