Monday, May 19, 2008

Siegelman: Justice Scandal Dwarfs Watergate. The Anniston Star's Markeshia Ricks reports: "Almost two months after being released from a federal prison in Oakdale, Louisiana, former Governor Don Siegelman looks noticeably healthier.... He's got color in his cheeks, a little more weight on his body and a fierce determination to not only clear his name but to do his part to expose a scandal in the US Department of Justice that he says is bigger than Watergate." [t r u t h o u t] 4:56:29 PM    comment []

Gretchen Rubin: The Happiness Of Stopping My Daughter's Tantrums. The Little Girl is a charming, ebullient, sweet-natured three-year-old. She also had a habit of throwing MASSIVE tantrums. Kicking, screaming, throwing things, pulling glasses off people's faces...it was bad. It seemed so uncharacteristic of her, I kept thinking she'd outgrow it. She was so happy and friendly. We made excuses: she was overtired, she had a cold, she didn't like rushing around. But the tantrums didn't go away, and it became a real drag. We started calling her "the girl with curl": There was once a girl Who had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good And when she was bad, she was horrid. Finally, I admitted I needed to take direct action. Her tantrums were putting a cloud over our family life, plus I realized that I was adjusting my expectations - I was putting up with behavior I would never have tolerated with the Big Girl, because I didn't want to deal with a tantrum. Not good. And on the other hand, there were pleasures I wasn't permitting the Little Girl, because I knew she'd throw a tantrum when we said "Not now" or "It's time to stop." We never let her watch any TV, for example, even though I would otherwise have been happy to let her watch a Sesame Street episode or part of a Wiggles DVD, because of the certainty of the tantrums that would follow when the TV was switched off. There's a Buddhist saying that I've found to be uncannily accurate: "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." My teacher appeared in the form of Beth Lisick, when I read her book, Helping Me Help Myself. I'd , because Beth Lisick did her own kind of happiness project: she spent a year following the advice of ten self-help gurus. One of the gurus she followed was Thomas Phelan, author of 1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-12. Beth Lisick explained all the reasons she resisted following the simple program in the book (it boils down to counting calmly "1, 2, 3" and if your kid is still misbehaving, enforcing a short time-out, with no emotion and no talking) but in desperation, she tried it, and it worked. Like magic. Okay. If it worked for Beth and her son, maybe it would work for us. I bought the book. I tried it. And you know what? It worked. Like magic. It didn't completely stop the tantrums - the Little Girl still throws it down, from time to time, but less often, and for a much shorter amount of time, and we know how to react when she does. A big comfort as a parent, I've discovered, is having a strategy. I need a theory of how to behave. This book gave me a tool to use when I didn't know what to say or how to react. Even if it doesn't always work, I know that I'm being consistent and reasonable. That feels a lot better than just flailing around, saying and doing whatever comes into my head at a difficult moment. A lot of people would say, "I'd never use 1-2-3 Magic! I don't like time-outs. That's not the kind of parent I am." I would have said exactly the same thing, as the mother of the Big Girl. But the Little Girl is different, and for us now, 1-2-3 Magic has been very helpful. So, if you've got a tantrum-y kid, I would recommend giving it a try. Has anyone else had good, or bad, experience with it? [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 4:53:48 PM    comment []

Mary Lyon: Proud of What?. On February 29, 1872, Senator Carl Schurz of Missouri made the following remark on the floor of the United States Senate: "....My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." (The Congressional Globe, vol. 45, p. 1287) The second sentence of this quote is a phrase we hear and see again and again. I can think of plenty of bumper stickers featuring this quote that I've spotted on the road for years - no, decades. But we tend only to acknowledge (or maybe want to acknowledge) the front part, not the whole thing. It seems there's this never-ending yen to stress the first five words only, and conveniently drop the rest. Which brings me to Michelle Obama, that pool-playing gun-lover and several others in a new Tennessee GOP political ad, Cindy McCain, and my friend Julie. Obama's and McCain's wives, and Mr. Guns-'n'-Pool Cues and his friends never met my friend Julie, and with the exception of Michelle Obama, most of them probably wouldn't want to. Scene one: Michelle Obama giving a speech, in which she says "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." Cut to good ol' boy at his billiard table, with a wall full of mounted firearms behind him, and the pride in the freedom to worship and bear arms bursting from his lips. Scene two: a flashback to February, 2008, when Mrs. McCain initiated a cat fight with Mrs. Obama, (over)reacting to Obama's above statement. The conservative blonde heiress scampers in with the retort "Well, I'm VERY proud of my country. I don't know about you." Proud of what? A war we were lied into, which McCain stated awhile ago he could see extending for 100 years? Proud of all the people we've killed, the fortunes we've squandered, the land we've destroyed, the enemies we've made, the lies we've told, and how we've put ourselves more horrifyingly at risk as a result of that war? Proud of an economy that's rewarded greed and arrogance, punishing the little guy, redistributing wealth upwards to those who already have plenty from coast-to-coast and sending millions of jobs off our shores altogether? Proud of leadership that rules by intimidation, deceit, and fear-mongering? Proud of a country whose Supreme Court actually dared to stop the counting of the American vote - so that a scheming, well-connected loser could wind up winning? Proud of a government that's taught this country you can lie, cheat, steal, cut corners, and repeatedly violate the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, and nothing punitive will happen to you? Proud of an America now known as a torturer? Proud of a country in which a powerful, monopolistic media hate machine is allowed to run amok, peddling fraud and distortion, fostering mean-spiritedness, racism, sexism, ignorance, and a win-at-all-costs/"screw-you" mentality? Proud of a nation so divided that it's now eating itself alive? Proud of an America now obsessed by holy wars, intolerance, and bedroom busybodies? Proud of a country whose unchecked, unrestrained government runs up oceans of debt in reckless, misbegotten spending priorities? Proud of a nation in which almost 50 million people - many of them children - don't have health insurance, and many more have "coverage" that's woefully insufficient? Proud of a government whose preemptive war nickels-and-dimes its soldiers and their loved ones so well-heeled, pampered chickenhawks back home can have more? Proud of the nauseating new template that's been set nearly in stone by the behavior of this administration - of absolutely no accountability? Proud of a leadership that cares nothing about tapping your phone, reading your emails, and snooping into your online activities - without having to offer any explanations? Proud of a so-called opposition party so cowed and spineless that it fumbles at slowing these high-level offenders down, much less doing anything gutsy and decisive to stop them? Proud of a nation that prizes the achievements of overinflated sports divas, trainwreck twinkies, and media meanies over teachers, scientists, and courageous dissenters? Proud of an America in which the least of our brethren are shoved to the back of the line - and locked in there? I'm sorry. I don't see a whole lot to be proud of, and that's a partial list, at best. And coincidentally, neither does my friend Julie. I've known this woman for decades - since we were in elementary school. A few months ago, she called me and we had what I think was our first-ever purely political conversation. Amazingly enough, in all this time, through all the ups and downs of a cherished and long-running friendship, politics just never came up before. Now, however, it's unavoidable. Julie was clearly distressed. Three words blurted out of her mouth, to start: "I'm so ashamed!" She then proceeded to confess that she's a lifelong Republican, and voted for George W. Bush twice. And then, for a second time, she declared - "I'm so ashamed!" Ashamed of What? Well, of all those things in the list above, according to my friend. Julie continued in our conversation to lament how she trusted George and was so gravely disappointed in the fruits of that trust. She'd believed in the Republican Way, indeed she'd been brought up believing in it, and it let her down bigtime. It disspirited her so resoundingly that, for the first time in her life, she was seriously considering leaving her party and voting with the Democrats. She said she found Barack Obama particularly encouraging - finally a cooling drink of fresh water after a long and bitter political drought. My friend has also thus come to the realization that she can do something about that, when the country she loves has gone so desperately insane. I know how Julie feels. I couldn't agree more. I've been deeply ashamed of my country's pursuit of the crooked path extolled by the GOP. My own personal distress arises from the decline of sensible and adult governance, truly objective and honest bipartisanship, and an increase in just flat-out money-grubbing, while selling fairy stories about regulations = bad, unfettered corporatism = good/social responsibility = bad, greed = good. It's gone on since the dawn of the Reagan era, and reached a culmination after seven-and-some years of George W. Bush. It's not Lady Liberty we revere any longer. It's Machiavelli. It's narrow-mindedness, not expansiveness. Fear rather than courage. Money trumping peace, as Dubya himself has said. The America I see now is one I no longer recognize. Evidently, the rest of the world concurs. This election finally offers us a chance to pull ourselves out of The Mess That George Built, and it can't come soon enough for me. Like my friend Julie, I too love my country enough to try to correct her when she's wrong - particularly when she's this wrong. Perhaps from where Mr. Pool-Player Rifleman and the others in that commercial, and Cindy McCain all stand, things look just ducky. Change? What change? Things are great, aren't they? Nothing we have to repair, nor anything over which we need to repent. Stay the course! More war and international aggression! More tax cuts for the rich! More Bushonomics! More cronyism and even less accountability! More societal crippling! Let's have at least four more years of everything that has so dismally failed up til now, shall we? No reason to try to set our distraught country back on a sensible, reasonable, and thoughtful road, or to steer our troubled ship of state away from the icebergs. Icebergs? What icebergs? They evidently think you can steer only to the "right" and be just fine, and our country, right ONLY. There IS no wrong. Perhaps Michelle Obama feels a surge of pride only now because of what her husband's candidacy promises if he's the Democratic nominee - a drastic change in the rotten, disgraceful, veritably Un-American affliction that's sickened our 300-million member American family. He's given her hope, also. Apparently, Michelle Obama sees the runaway train about to be slowed down, at long last, and directed safely and surely away from the track to utter calamity. My friend Julie agrees with Michelle. So do I. We see our country in trouble and are more eager than ever to rescue it - especially since we now see there's actually a fighting chance that we can. "...If wrong, to be set right." Conservative nay-sayers and YouTube ostriches, go ahead and be proud of the most disastrous reversal of fortune in our nation's history. We, in turn, will be very proud when we've brought that shameful condition to an end. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 3:50:17 PM    comment []

Obama Or McCain: Who's Really Underestimating Iran?. Before commencing his economic address in Chicago this morning, Sen. John McCain took a quick detour through Iran. Responding to remarks made in Oregon by Barack Obama on Sunday -- in which the likely Democratic nominee suggested that if Presidents Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan could talk to the titans of communism, perhaps the next president might want to talk to Tehran -- McCain once again thumped Obama's "inexperience and reckless judgment" for failing to accurately judge the threat posed by the Islamic Republic. Leave aside for a moment logic which holds that the more powerful an enemy is, the more strenuously one should pretend not to notice it. By dinging Obama for underestimating Iranian power, McCain may have opened himself up to a debate he's in no position to win himself, according to experts and regional observers who say Iran's increased power in part due to the diplomatic freeze under the Bush administration -- the same policy McCain now favors on the campaign trail. Rami Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, said recent events in Lebanon -- where Iranian-backed Hezbollah forces recently shut down the U.S.-backed government in Beirut without breaking a sweat -- are key to understanding America's current impotence in the face of growing Iranian influence. "Lebanon is a great example of how this policy of [non-engagement] backfires," Khouri told The Huffington Post. "When the U.S. decides to rigorously ostracize Islamist movements that have some public or nationalist legitimacy, it's almost inevitably going to lose. ... The sad thing is that this posture is making the U.S. a more marginal player in many situations. More and more people around the world feel they can actively resist the United States. This generates a terrible backlash against the U.S. and really requires a serious re-think." Vali Nasr, the Iran-born author of The Shia Revival and an expert on Middle Eastern affairs at the Council on Foreign Relations, says the problem even goes beyond the question of whether to talk to Iran or not about bilateral disputes. "It's not only that the United States has not engaged Iran, but that it has excluded Iran from a dialogue in every other arena in which it has an interest -- even in Afghanistan, where Iran is a neighbor," he said. "We haven't served ourselves well, because while Iran is clearly a stakeholder, they have no vested interest in cooperating. Consequently, not only hasn't it gotten us anything, it's made them more of a headache." Not surprisingly, McCain national security adviser Max Boot sees it differently. Claiming there's nothing the United States can discuss with Iran "except the terms of our surrender," he nevertheless concedes that the recent Hezbollah offensive in Lebanon represents a "limited victory" for Iran. But Boot, who along with Nasr is member of the Council on Foreign Relations, rejects the notion that the Bush administration is at fault for Iran's newfound strength. "Look, [Iran] has been fairly effective in terms of carving out a role for themselves by providing arms to Hamas and Hezbollah, and that's worked," he told The Huffington Post. "I don't really see what kind of leverage we could have to negotiate at this point. What would we give them? I think Sen. McCain is right when he says we have to turn up the heat, with diplomatic and economic action. Perhaps even military action if necessary." Nasr, however, disputes Boot's claim that there are no potentially fruitful avenues of discussion. "The Bush administration's problem, and to an extent McCain's, is they think that there is a single silver bullet meeting to be had with the Iranians where you can come away with what you want. That's not the way it's going to happen. It's not the way it happened with China, or [in the Anbar Awakening] in Iraq, or any other conflict. The way it happens is with patience and strategy. And then we gradually and incrementally get things out of it." In a perverse, self-defeating turn of events, Nasr says, America's refusal to talk to Iran may have left us ignorant about what its leaders might want from us. "The Washington feedback loop is just guessing about Iran," Nasr said, "because no one knows what they [Iran] want. The same things were said about the [Sunni] insurgent commanders in Iraq -- that you couldn't talk to them, they had American blood on their hands. And when General Petraeus adopted a more pragmatic strategy: Surprise, surprise! They did want something. The same thing happened in North Korea and Libya. Everywhere we've done this it's been a success." Though Nasr doubts Iran will change its own aggressive stances in the last nine months of the Bush presidency, he believes a new administration will bring new opportunities to engage, if only on small matters at first. Similar opportunities may emerge after Iran holds its next presidential election in 2009. As the Washington Post reported last week, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is now musing in public as to "whether there was a missed opportunity" for dialogue with Iran before Mamhoud Ahmadinejad's election in 2005. If that's true, than the real danger for the next president may not reside in underestimating Iran's power, but in underestimating its willingness to cut a deal. [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com] 3:41:10 PM    comment []