Sunday, March 22, 2009
FDA Approves Salmonella
WASHINGTON—Calling it "perfectly safe for the most part," and "not nearly as destructive or fatal as previously thought," the Food and Drug Administration approved the enterobacteria salmonella for human consumption this week.
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FDA director Stephen Sundlof okays the bacteria for eating, drinking, and applying directly to the skin.
The federal agency, which has struggled in recent years to contain the food-borne pathogen, and repeatedly failed to prevent tainted products from reaching store shelves, announced Monday that salmonella was now completely okay for all Americans to enjoy.
"Rigorous testing has shown that salmonella is...fine," FDA director of food safety Stephen Sundlof said. "In fact, our research indicates that there's no need to pull any more foodstuffs from the market. Not raw chicken. Not contaminated spinach. Not thousands of jars of harmful peanut butter. Not anything."
"It's approved," Sundlof continued."Healthy, delicious salmonella is finally approved."
Following the announcement, the FDA released a 20-page report, which included evidence that salmonella is barely more dangerous than other live-culture products such as yogurt, and results from a clinical trial which found that participants who ingested salmonella were totally fine for up to three minutes.
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A variety of products containing the newly approved food-borne microbe will hit non-refrigerated shelves this month.
The report also concluded that salmonella has been around American kitchens for centuries now, and must therefore be at least harmless, if not actually good for us.
"Of course, as with everything, we encourage moderation," lead FDA researcher Phillip Millar said. "Don't just eat a whole pint of salmonella in one sitting. It's like ice cream or, for example, E. coli in that respect."
Added Millar, "A little bit goes a long way."
According to FDA officials, the intracellular bacterium will be commercially available in a variety of forms. Plans are already in the works to offer salmonella as a flavorful topping, food spread, powdered drink mix, dessert gelatin, and as a "no frills" yellow liquid guaranteed to enhance one's overall eating experience.
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Salmonella is said to contain the seven essential forms of bacteria growing infants need.
With hundreds of possible applications, the newly approved gram-negative microbe will also open the door for many innovative and exciting products.
"This is thrilling news," Hellmann's CEO Robert Reichert said. "We've been waiting for the federal go-ahead to produce salmonella for decades now. In fact, we have an entire line of lukewarm, sun-soaked, and partially turned mayonnaises that we just know Americans will love."
One of several new foods to feature the motile microorganism is Salmonell-Os—an O-shaped breakfast cereal packed with hearty typhoid clusters—which is expected to hit grocery stores by April.
Other products currently in development include Salmonella Helper, Kraft's Extremely Painful Mac, 'Nella Wafers, and peanut butter.
"Now that salmonella's been approved, we're working overtime to get our products to market," said David Wellbrook, head of sales for Oscar Mayer, the nation's leading producer of bologna-based goods. "I've never seen so many orders come through in a single year, much less a single day. It's incredible."
News of salmonella's approval also comes as a relief to many homemakers, who, until now, had been cautioned against letting the bacteria spread.
"It used to be such a pain to have to sanitize my kitchen," Chicago resident Margaret Thewles said. "Now all I need is one cutting board. I'll cut raw poultry on it, prepare my salad veggies on it, and then use it to serve dessert when I'm done."
Michael Weinback, a California native and father of two young children, agreed with Thewles.
"This is…arrghhh…great," Weinback said from the bottom of his living room stairs. "Oh, Jesus…here it comes agai—uuuuhhhhh, Christ. Get hel…just get…aarrghh
BUSH ON IRAQ
Bush Says He Still Believes Iraq War Was The Fun Thing To Do
Onion News Network:
Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency 07.02.08
Onion News Network:
In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly? 02.27.08
WASHINGTON—Despite harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the U.S. populace, and former members of his own administration, President Bush once again defended his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, saying that, in the end, it was the fun thing to do.
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Bush asserts that the fight for freedom in Iraq is a blast.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, we as a nation faced a difficult decision, an important decision, a decision between what was fun and what was wrong," Bush said during a speech before Pentagon officials Wednesday. "We could have backed down and allowed the terrorists to win. But instead, we stood up to the challenge before us, and we said, 'Bring it on—bring the good times on!'"
"Mark my words," Bush continued. "When the dust settles and the smoke clears, history will look back on the Iraq War as a total blast."
Throughout his speech, Bush remained unapologetic about his commitment to the ongoing mission to live it up in Iraq, repeatedly saying that sacrifices had to be made to ensure the most pleasurable course of action. The president also stated that he would not succumb to those who had pressured him to set a date for withdrawal, insisting that U.S. troops would remain in the region for as long as his administration was enjoying itself.
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An Iraqi family trips the light fantastic in Basra.
"Withdrawing from Iraq when we're all having such a fantastic time would only serve to empower those intent on spoiling our fun," Bush said. "And I have to say, right now, we're having a ball."
Bush went on to defend his decision to remove troops from Afghanistan and "bring the party" to Iraq. He maintained that while policing the region wasn't "a bore or anything" it wasn't all that entertaining, either. Furthermore, the president said that had the United States not shifted its focus away from Afghanistan, military forces never would have had the opportunity to kick up their heels in Iraqi cities such as Basra, Baghdad, and Tikrit.
"Tell me 'Shock and Awe' wasn't an absolute riot," a visibly confident Bush said.
Bush maintained that he had no regrets about invading Iraq, and that all he needed to do to know he made the right decision was look at the smiling, happy faces of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Following the president's speech, Rice herself lashed out against critics of the war, painting them as "real downers" who wouldn't know how to let their hair down and have fun if their lives depended on it.
"I urge those who have grown tired of this war to lighten up and live a little," Rice said on CBS Evening News, adding that Bush had furthered his commitment to having a rip-roaring time in Iraq with a recent troop surge. "What detractors of this war don't understand is that when it comes to fighting terrorism, there's no harm in letting loose and painting the town red."
While Rice admitted that the Bush Administration could have better planned its exit strategy and more fully equipped troops to deal with the Sunni insurgency, she questioned how much fun that ultimately would have been for U.S. troops.
"The best times are had when there's no preparation in place. When everything is loud and spontaneous and you just throw caution to the wind," Rice said. "Sure, we might have been able to prevent a massive civil war had we taken a few precautions—but come on, where's the joy in that?"
Bush, who claimed he could see America having a great time in Iraq for decades to come, and called the war in the Middle East the most fun the nation has had since Vietnam, agreed with Rice.
Said Bush, "Frankly, if we're not going to enjoy it, why even invade Iraq in the first place?
Onion News Network:
Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency 07.02.08
Onion News Network:
In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly? 02.27.08
WASHINGTON—Despite harsh criticism from both sides of the political aisle, the U.S. populace, and former members of his own administration, President Bush once again defended his 2003 decision to invade Iraq, saying that, in the end, it was the fun thing to do.
Enlarge Image
Bush asserts that the fight for freedom in Iraq is a blast.
"On Sept. 11, 2001, we as a nation faced a difficult decision, an important decision, a decision between what was fun and what was wrong," Bush said during a speech before Pentagon officials Wednesday. "We could have backed down and allowed the terrorists to win. But instead, we stood up to the challenge before us, and we said, 'Bring it on—bring the good times on!'"
"Mark my words," Bush continued. "When the dust settles and the smoke clears, history will look back on the Iraq War as a total blast."
Throughout his speech, Bush remained unapologetic about his commitment to the ongoing mission to live it up in Iraq, repeatedly saying that sacrifices had to be made to ensure the most pleasurable course of action. The president also stated that he would not succumb to those who had pressured him to set a date for withdrawal, insisting that U.S. troops would remain in the region for as long as his administration was enjoying itself.
Enlarge Image
An Iraqi family trips the light fantastic in Basra.
"Withdrawing from Iraq when we're all having such a fantastic time would only serve to empower those intent on spoiling our fun," Bush said. "And I have to say, right now, we're having a ball."
Bush went on to defend his decision to remove troops from Afghanistan and "bring the party" to Iraq. He maintained that while policing the region wasn't "a bore or anything" it wasn't all that entertaining, either. Furthermore, the president said that had the United States not shifted its focus away from Afghanistan, military forces never would have had the opportunity to kick up their heels in Iraqi cities such as Basra, Baghdad, and Tikrit.
"Tell me 'Shock and Awe' wasn't an absolute riot," a visibly confident Bush said.
Bush maintained that he had no regrets about invading Iraq, and that all he needed to do to know he made the right decision was look at the smiling, happy faces of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Following the president's speech, Rice herself lashed out against critics of the war, painting them as "real downers" who wouldn't know how to let their hair down and have fun if their lives depended on it.
"I urge those who have grown tired of this war to lighten up and live a little," Rice said on CBS Evening News, adding that Bush had furthered his commitment to having a rip-roaring time in Iraq with a recent troop surge. "What detractors of this war don't understand is that when it comes to fighting terrorism, there's no harm in letting loose and painting the town red."
While Rice admitted that the Bush Administration could have better planned its exit strategy and more fully equipped troops to deal with the Sunni insurgency, she questioned how much fun that ultimately would have been for U.S. troops.
"The best times are had when there's no preparation in place. When everything is loud and spontaneous and you just throw caution to the wind," Rice said. "Sure, we might have been able to prevent a massive civil war had we taken a few precautions—but come on, where's the joy in that?"
Bush, who claimed he could see America having a great time in Iraq for decades to come, and called the war in the Middle East the most fun the nation has had since Vietnam, agreed with Rice.
Said Bush, "Frankly, if we're not going to enjoy it, why even invade Iraq in the first place?
AIG AND FAIRNESS
Taxing Bonuses: A Matter of Fundamental Fairness
Rep. Earl Blumenauer Wed Mar 18, 10:41 pm ET
Never since the Great Depression has the financial industry had less credibility than at this moment. Since the beginning of this recession in December 2007, more than 3.6 million Americans have been added to the unemployment roles, and the losses of U.S. financial firms has totaled more that $700 billion. Yet as families have cut their spending to the bare necessities, financial firms, who have received more than $700 billion in federal bailout money under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), have handed out more than $18 billion in bonuses.
Giving out $18 billion in bonuses at a time when ordinary Americans have seen their life savings collapse is outrageous. To give out these bonuses using federal bailout money is over the edge. However, the financial barons of our day maintain that despite the nonexistent capital in their firms, they need to continue their extravagant practices. This is readily apparent in this week's announcement that AIG, who has received multiple federal bailouts, will be doling out an additional $165 million in bonuses paid for with taxpayer money, including millions to the idiots in the unit who drove the company to ruin.
I don't buy the notion that they need lavish bonuses to keep the best and brightest. After what they have done to their companies, the economy and the savings of everyday Americans, we can't afford such brilliance. At AIG let them quit or fire them. It is hard to imagine who would do a worse job regardless of how much or little they were paid. If they insist on enforcing contracts that reward reckless incompetence, which some claim they have a legal right to collect, then I say fine, let them collect it, but Congress has the right to tax it.
For years the tax code around here has been tortured to reward people who need tax cuts absolutely the least. Hopefully we can use it this time to impose a little tax justice. I've signed on as a co-sponsor to a bill coming out of the Ways and Means Committee which will make it a federal law that all employees of companies collecting more than $5 billion in TARP funds, and earning more than $250,000 a year in gross salary will have to pay a 90% tax on any bonus money they receive.
At a minimum, AIG should be stopped -- and other firms that collect bailout money should be prohibited from issuing large cash bonuses. This is not about outrage; this is about taking action. The financial stability of our nation and our communities depends on reasonable use of taxpayer dollars. It is a matter of fundamental fairness to the American people that their hard-earned dollars are spent in a manner that will grow the entire economy, not just the bank accounts of these weasels that took our money on the guise that they would save our economic system.
HOMELAND SECURITY A FLOP?
The New Republic
Man-Made Disaster by Jeffrey Rosen
Six years on, the Department of Homeland Security is still a catastrophe.
Post Date Wednesday, December 24, 2008
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Michael Chertoff needs an office. When I interviewed the secretary of Homelan Security this summer, we met in a pair of temporary locations between which h shuttles--first in the decaying Nebraska Avenue Complex of the naval station at War Circle (a center for signal analysis during World War II) and later in an unmarked an unfurnished office in the nondescript headquarters of U.S. Customs and Border Protectio in the Ronald Reagan building, near the White House. Chertoff hasn't settled into an offic partly because the six-year-old Department of Homeland Security (DHS) still has n permanent, consolidated headquarters. Instead, the unwieldy amalgam of 22 separat federal agencies operates out of 70 buildings at 40 different locations in the Washingto area. And the lack of a real home is just the beginning of the department's bureaucrati problems. The most recent survey by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on the jo satisfaction of federal employees in 36 agencies ranked Homeland Security last or nea last in every category. Meanwhile, officials from the Pentagon who have tried to d business with DHS complained to me of organizational chaos at the department Homeland Security employees, they said, are often unaware of overlapping initiative championed by their colleagues, and even by Chertoff himself
This can't have been what Democrats and Republicans had in mind when they celebrated the creation of the department in November 2002--arguably the last moment of bipartisan cooperation that Washington would see for six years. Although hastily thrown together, DHS was hailed by most of official Washington as a necessary response to the extreme vulnerabilities exposed by the September 11 attacks. Today, that bipartisan consensus remains largely intact. In fact, as Barack Obama prepares to take office, some Democrats want to increase the department's budget, which is now over $40 billion per year. "I do think more money has to be spent, order of magnitude twenty to twenty-five percent more," I was told in July by James Steinberg, who emphasized that he was not speaking for the Obama campaign. (He is now expected to become deputy secretary of state. ) "I don't think Secretary Chertoff has fought hard enough within the administration for his share of resources," P.J. Crowley, a homeland security expert at the Center for American Progress, told me in June. "If we continue to suggest we are at war, I wonder if DHS really is on a war-time footing." More recently, the nomination of the charismatic Janet Napolitano to head the department suggests that Obama himself is committed to a strong DHS. In announcing her nomination, Obama said, "She understands the need for a Department of Homeland Security that has the capacity to help prevent terrorist attacks and respond to catastrophe be it man-made or natural." It may still be years away from having a permanent headquarters, but the Department of Homeland Security, apparently, is here to stay.
Should that be cause for celebration or concern? This summer, I talked to security experts on both sides of the political spectrum, and had several conversations with Chertoff, in an effort to answer the following question: Is DHS achieving its mission of making us safer? My reluctant conclusion is that, although Chertoff has performed impressively in an impossible job, the department is hard to justify with any rational analysis of costs and benefits. On the contrary, it's arguably one of the most expensive marketing ventures in political history--an enterprise that seeks to make us feel safer instead of actually making us safer. The best argument for DHS is that the illusion of safety may itself provide tangible psychological and economic benefits: If people feel less afraid, they may be more likely to fly on planes. But even if conceived on these terms--as a more-than-$40-billion-dollar-a-year pacifier--the department is hard to defend, since there's no good evidence that it has, in fact, calmed Americans down rather than making us more nervous.
The only way of calming people down is political leadership that puts the terrorist threat in perspective. But, despite efforts by Chertoff to avoid the color-coded hysteria that defined the department in its early days, DHS officials inevitably feel pressure to exaggerate the terrorist threat--scaremongering that creates further public demand for promises of security that can't be fulfilled. And so the very existence of DHS creates a chain reaction of self-justifying insecurity. For this reason, Republicans (who used to be the stiff-upper-lip party of limited government) and Democrats (who don't trust the government to run the war in Iraq and are generally cautious about spending too much on defense) are willing to sink billions into an institutional money pit that has more to do with symbols than substance. Both parties seem incapable of acknowledging an uncomfortable but increasingly obvious truth: that the Department of Homeland Security was a bureaucratic and philosophical mistake.
THE NEW REPUBLIC
The Supplicants
Sucking up to the White House-in-waiting.
Dave Jamieson, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, December 24, 2008
For Cecelia Prewett, the phone calls and e-mails began pouring in immediately. On November 6, her former boss, Representative Rahm Emanuel, had just been named chief of staff to President-elect Barack Obama. Suddenly, it seemed everyone Prewett had ever met in Washington was getting back in touch with her. Her inbox filled with notes from well-wishers. Her cell phone rang so incessantly that she had to turn it off at work. When she logged onto Facebook (her profile mentions her previous work as Emanuel's spokesperson), she saw that she was getting pummeled with friend requests--and not just from D.C. climbers. She had new admirers from around the globe, including Europe and South Korea. One pushy New Yorker made three failed passes at Prewett before she blocked him, and an enterprising Frenchman sent her an open letter of counsel ("lettre ouverte a Monsieur Obama"), in the apparent hope that she would slip it to the incoming president.
"It was absolutely ridiculous," says the 37-year-old Prewett, now a vice president at the American Association for Justice, who was "with Rahm before being with Rahm was cool."
In recent weeks, just about all of Emanuel's staffers, current and former, have found themselves under similar assault from new friends, old friends, and friends of friends. Many of the calls and e-mails seemed to follow a suspicious pattern: an initial show of excitement (Did you have any idea he was in the running?); some strained small talk (Is the Rahm dead fish story really true?); and, finally, the business at hand--resumés. "There's a good selection of people who want to know if I can get their resumé into the hands of the right person," says John Borovicka, a municipal bond banker in Chicago who was a top aide to Emanuel for several years. "That's followed quickly by the question of whether I have any inaugural tickets."
If career jockeying is an age-old sport in Washington, then Democrats are now caught in the throes of World Cup fever. With Obama headed to the White House, 22 seats picked up in the House, and at least seven more in the Senate, Democrats are staring slack-jawed at the best political job market they've seen in at least a generation. Add to that the groupie-level enthusiasm for the incoming president, along with the worst private-sector employment numbers in 14 years, and you wind up with plenty of Democrats who are worried they may get trampled by their friends in a race down Pennsylvania Avenue.
The hysteria is particularly acute among the more spry Democrats, say, 35-ish and under. There are the new kids on the block: Obama's sprawling campaign drew on the energies of thousands of youthful staffers and volunteers from around the country, many of whom now feel entitled to a share of the spoils. Then there are the junior Beltway wonks who toiled through the dark days of Washington: Aside from the House and Senate gains in 2006, these young politicos have known nothing but electoral defeat and poor employment prospects since they first arrived on the Hill. Now, the problem is no longer a dearth of quality jobs. Quite the opposite: It's as if too many opportunities beckon. There's the Obama administration! There's the House majority! There's the nearly filibuster-proof Senate!
Even lobbyists are trying to get in on the fun, despite the president- elect's pledge to make it difficult for them to walk freely in and out of the revolving door. Frightened by the prospect of missing out on an epoch-making presidency, some current Democratic lobbyists are now laying plans to bolt for the Hill, where they'll undergo a roughly two-year delousing process, and then gun for a job with the administration. "You think of Kennedy and the sixties, and the people who were part of that," says one starry-eyed campaign staffer, predicting an exodus from K Street.
Add in an untold number of bandwagon-hoppers who are eager to ditch their recession-plagued, non-political jobs to become a part of Camelot Redux, and the result is a Democrat free-for-all. "I was trying to explain this to my mom the other day," says a senior Democratic campaign official. "Imagine you have a dog pound. You've had these puppies in this pound for years and years, all of them eating the same kibble. But then they're let out of the pound, and they've got a lot of different opportunities to eat whatever they want. At the beginning, there's going to be a little cooperative feel to it. But, at some point, it's going to be every man for himself."
Even in this cutthroat environment, young Dems quickly learn not to make a show of their ambitions. This is part of the etiquette of job-seeking in a No Drama Obama administration. "Right now, it's that first string of e-mails going around--the 'Hey, congratulations' kind of e-mails," explains one young D.C. Democrat, who works on congressional campaigns. "You start with the soft stuff. " (Like other administration job seekers quoted in this story, he spoke on condition of anonymity: "I don't want to say anything that hurts my own prospects.")
Democratic strategist Steve Rabinowitz, who was around for Bill Clinton's transition and has found himself informally advising administration job seekers in the last few weeks, says a combination of aggressive networking and feigned modesty is the key to success. "You have to understand, little of this comes to you entirely on merit. And yet, nobody likes somebody who insists or demands that they deserve it. So you have to find the balance between these two."
There are no easy ways to get one's resumé on top of the pile. Aside from knowing someone who's close with one of Obama's early appointees, the surest bet is to know a member of the transition team. Every few days after the election, Obama's team would blast out a press release naming another handful of new team members. Whenever these names became public, Hill staffer e-mail groups took notice. "Someone would always send out an e-mail: 'Do you know anyone on this list?'" says a Democratic lobbyist. Not once did the lobbyist see a response to that question. "If I do know someone, I'm not going to say anything," she explains.
Job seekers recognize that everyone else is angling for a post-election gig--even those who already have desirable jobs--which is why networking itself can be perilous. Rabinowitz has been counseling job seekers to step lightly around just about every Democrat they know, including close friends and roommates. "Someone you're asking to make a call on your behalf may not have known about the opening, and they may have somebody in mind who they think is a better pick. "
The lobbyist offers a case in point. She heard from an old friend who said some plum jobs were going to open up on a particular congressional committee. The old friend wanted to know if the lobbyist could make a few calls and put in a good word. The request got the lobbyist's wheels turning. "I'm thinking, I could do that job," she says. "Maybe I should put in a call for myself."
Rabinowitz says a job seeker will know immediately whether a connection can help by how many calls he or she makes on the job seeker's behalf. (Telling--but increasingly common--is none at all: The lobbyist used to arrange informational interviews for friends of friends whenever she could. "Now, I'm not going to use my chips for somebody like that," she says. "I know that sounds bitchy, but the stakes are just too high.") The worst sign, Rabinowitz says, is when a possible connection steers the job seeker to the online application process.
That would be Change.gov. "I've been referring them all to Change.gov," says Aaron Fischbach, a former Hill staffer who experienced a surge in popularity when his old boss, Tom Daschle, was tapped by Obama to be the secretary of Health and Human Services. Within just five days of going live after the election, the website had received more than 140,000 job applications, making it about as good a portal to the White House as Monster.com.
Many of those applications to Change.gov no doubt have come from Chicagoland. "I think there's a general perception among people in Chicago that it doesn't get any better than it does here, as far as learning how politics works on a door-to-door level," says Borovicka, who's heard from many of his former Chicago-area interns who are now looking east. "This is the first time people are actually considering leaving."
Dan Shomon was campaign manager during Obama's 2000 run for the House, and his relationship with the president-elect goes back to the statehouse, where he served as Obama's staffer. In recent weeks, Shomon has heard from so many hyper-aggressive jostlers that he had to create a log to keep track of all the correspondence. Since the night of November 4, he's handled more than 600 phone calls, e-mails, and text messages from more than 150 people who are fishing for one thing or another, including an estranged former girlfriend he dated in college in 1986. (Admittedly, not all of them are gaming for a cabinet slot--two parties wanted to hook the Obamas up with a shelter dog.) The very morning after the election, Shomon got an urgent message from a woman he hadn't talked to in years. He quickly responded, worried she might be ill. "I think she wanted to be social secretary to Michelle Obama," says Shomon. The woman later called back to apologize. "Ninety-nine percent of politicians would trade for these overzealous supporters," Shomon says. "Still, I have a life, too, and they have to be sensitive to that."
Shomon shouldn't count on resuming that life anytime soon: Most Democrats agree the jockeying will only get worse as they head into winter. After all, the more positions Obama fills, the more people there are to network with. Resumepolishing will soon give way to backbiting, and anyone who ever knew anybody headed to the White House will be hearing from acquaintances old and new.
"It's been a steady stream--I hope it dies down," Shomon says, sounding a bit weary as he wades through his e-mails. "Just today, a guy told me, 'I need to talk to you right away--it's urgent.' So I know it's definitely got something to do with Obama."
NEWSWEEK GETS IT WRONG
Opponents of gay marriage often cite Scripture. But what the Bible teaches about love argues for the other side.
Lisa Miller
NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Dec 15, 2008
For feedback on this story, head to NEWSWEEK's Readback blog.
Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?
Of course not, yet the religious opponents of gay marriage would have it be so.
The battle over gay marriage has been waged for more than a decade, but within the last six months—since California legalized gay marriage and then, with a ballot initiative in November, amended its Constitution to prohibit it—the debate has grown into a full-scale war, with religious-rhetoric slinging to match. Not since 1860, when the country's pulpits were full of preachers pronouncing on slavery, pro and con, has one of our basic social (and economic) institutions been so subject to biblical scrutiny. But whereas in the Civil War the traditionalists had their James Henley Thornwell—and the advocates for change, their Henry Ward Beecher—this time the sides are unevenly matched. All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections.
The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."
To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.
In the Old Testament, the concept of family is fundamental, but examples of what social conservatives would call "the traditional family" are scarcely to be found. Marriage was critical to the passing along of tradition and history, as well as to maintaining the Jews' precious and fragile monotheism. But as the Barnard University Bible scholar Alan Segal puts it, the arrangement was between "one man and as many women as he could pay for." Social conservatives point to Adam and Eve as evidence for their one man, one woman argument—in particular, this verse from Genesis: "Therefore shall a man leave his mother and father, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh." But as Segal says, if you believe that the Bible was written by men and not handed down in its leather bindings by God, then that verse was written by people for whom polygamy was the way of the world. (The fact that homosexual couples cannot procreate has also been raised as a biblical objection, for didn't God say, "Be fruitful and multiply"? But the Bible authors could never have imagined the brave new world of international adoption and assisted reproductive technology—and besides, heterosexuals who are infertile or past the age of reproducing get married all the time.)
Ozzie and Harriet are nowhere in the New Testament either. The biblical Jesus was—in spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically unmarried. He preached a radical kind of family, a caring community of believers, whose bond in God superseded all blood ties. Leave your families and follow me, Jesus says in the gospels. There will be no marriage in heaven, he says in Matthew. Jesus never mentions homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).
The apostle Paul echoed the Christian Lord's lack of interest in matters of the flesh. For him, celibacy was the Christian ideal, but family stability was the best alternative. Marry if you must, he told his audiences, but do not get divorced. "To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): a wife must not separate from her husband." It probably goes without saying that the phrase "gay marriage" does not appear in the Bible at all.
If the bible doesn't give abundant examples of traditional marriage, then what are the gay-marriage opponents really exercised about? Well, homosexuality, of course—specifically sex between men. Sex between women has never, even in biblical times, raised as much ire. In its entry on "Homosexual Practices," the Anchor Bible Dictionary notes that nowhere in the Bible do its authors refer to sex between women, "possibly because it did not result in true physical 'union' (by male entry)." The Bible does condemn gay male sex in a handful of passages. Twice Leviticus refers to sex between men as "an abomination" (King James version), but these are throwaway lines in a peculiar text given over to codes for living in the ancient Jewish world, a text that devotes verse after verse to treatments for leprosy, cleanliness rituals for menstruating women and the correct way to sacrifice a goat—or a lamb or a turtle dove. Most of us no longer heed Leviticus on haircuts or blood sacrifices; our modern understanding of the world has surpassed its prescriptions. Why would we regard its condemnation of homosexuality with more seriousness than we regard its advice, which is far lengthier, on the best price to pay for a slave?
Paul was tough on homosexuality, though recently progressive scholars have argued that his condemnation of men who "were inflamed with lust for one another" (which he calls "a perversion") is really a critique of the worst kind of wickedness: self-delusion, violence, promiscuity and debauchery. In his book "The Arrogance of Nations," the scholar Neil Elliott argues that Paul is referring in this famous passage to the depravity of the Roman emperors, the craven habits of Nero and Caligula, a reference his audience would have grasped instantly. "Paul is not talking about what we call homosexuality at all," Elliott says. "He's talking about a certain group of people who have done everything in this list. We're not dealing with anything like gay love or gay marriage. We're talking about really, really violent people who meet their end and are judged by God." In any case, one might add, Paul argued more strenuously against divorce—and at least half of the Christians in America disregard that teaching.
Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition (and, to talk turkey for a minute, a personal discomfort with gay sex that transcends theological argument). Common prayers and rituals reflect our common practice: the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer describes the participants in a marriage as "the man and the woman." But common practice changes—and for the better, as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice." The Bible endorses slavery, a practice that Americans now universally consider shameful and barbaric. It recommends the death penalty for adulterers (and in Leviticus, for men who have sex with men, for that matter). It provides conceptual shelter for anti-Semites. A mature view of scriptural authority requires us, as we have in the past, to move beyond literalism. The Bible was written for a world so unlike our own, it's impossible to apply its rules, at face value, to ours.
Marriage, specifically, has evolved so as to be unrecognizable to the wives of Abraham and Jacob. Monogamy became the norm in the Christian world in the sixth century; husbands' frequent enjoyment of mistresses and prostitutes became taboo by the beginning of the 20th. (In the NEWSWEEK POLL, 55 percent of respondents said that married heterosexuals who have sex with someone other than their spouses are more morally objectionable than a gay couple in a committed sexual relationship.) By the mid-19th century, U.S. courts were siding with wives who were the victims of domestic violence, and by the 1970s most states had gotten rid of their "head and master" laws, which gave husbands the right to decide where a family would live and whether a wife would be able to take a job. Today's vision of marriage as a union of equal partners, joined in a relationship both romantic and pragmatic, is, by very recent standards, radical, says Stephanie Coontz, author of "Marriage, a History."
Religious wedding ceremonies have already changed to reflect new conceptions of marriage. Remember when we used to say "man and wife" instead of "husband and wife"? Remember when we stopped using the word "obey"? Even Miss Manners, the voice of tradition and reason, approved in 1997 of that change. "It seems," she wrote, "that dropping 'obey' was a sensible editing of a service that made assumptions about marriage that the society no longer holds."
We cannot look to the Bible as a marriage manual, but we can read it for universal truths as we struggle toward a more just future. The Bible offers inspiration and warning on the subjects of love, marriage, family and community. It speaks eloquently of the crucial role of families in a fair society and the risks we incur to ourselves and our children should we cease trying to bind ourselves together in loving pairs. Gay men like to point to the story of passionate King David and his friend Jonathan, with whom he was "one spirit" and whom he "loved as he loved himself." Conservatives say this is a story about a platonic friendship, but it is also a story about two men who stand up for each other in turbulent times, through violent war and the disapproval of a powerful parent. David rends his clothes at Jonathan's death and, in grieving, writes a song:
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother;
You were very dear to me.
Your love for me was wonderful,
More wonderful than that of women.
Here, the Bible praises enduring love between men. What Jonathan and David did or did not do in privacy is perhaps best left to history and our own imaginations.
In addition to its praise of friendship and its condemnation of divorce, the Bible gives many examples of marriages that defy convention yet benefit the greater community. The Torah discouraged the ancient Hebrews from marrying outside the tribe, yet Moses himself is married to a foreigner, Zipporah. Queen Esther is married to a non-Jew and, according to legend, saves the Jewish people. Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of the Shalom Center in Philadelphia, believes that Judaism thrives through diversity and inclusion. "I don't think Judaism should or ought to want to leave any portion of the human population outside the religious process," he says. "We should not want to leave [homosexuals] outside the sacred tent." The marriage of Joseph and Mary is also unorthodox (to say the least), a case of an unconventional arrangement accepted by society for the common good. The boy needed two human parents, after all.
In the Christian story, the message of acceptance for all is codified. Jesus reaches out to everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author, cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well— no matter that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of Christ's all-encompassing love. The great Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann, emeritus professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, quotes the apostle Paul when he looks for biblical support of gay marriage: "There is neither Greek nor Jew, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ." The religious argument for gay marriage, he adds, "is not generally made with reference to particular texts, but with the general conviction that the Bible is bent toward inclusiveness."
The practice of inclusion, even in defiance of social convention, the reaching out to outcasts, the emphasis on togetherness and community over and against chaos, depravity, indifference—all these biblical values argue for gay marriage. If one is for racial equality and the common nature of humanity, then the values of stability, monogamy and family necessarily follow. Terry Davis is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Hartford, Conn., and has been presiding over "holy unions" since 1992. "I'm against promiscuity—love ought to be expressed in committed relationships, not through casual sex, and I think the church should recognize the validity of committed same-sex relationships," he says.
Still, very few Jewish or Christian denominations do officially endorse gay marriage, even in the states where it is legal. The practice varies by region, by church or synagogue, even by cleric. More progressive denominations—the United Church of Christ, for example—have agreed to support gay marriage. Other denominations and dioceses will do "holy union" or "blessing" ceremonies, but shy away from the word "marriage" because it is politically explosive. So the frustrating, semantic question remains: should gay people be married in the same, sacramental sense that straight people are? I would argue that they should. If we are all God's children, made in his likeness and image, then to deny access to any sacrament based on sexuality is exactly the same thing as denying it based on skin color—and no serious (or even semiserious) person would argue that. People get married "for their mutual joy," explains the Rev. Chloe Breyer, executive director of the Interfaith Center in New York, quoting the Episcopal marriage ceremony. That's what religious people do: care for each other in spite of difficulty, she adds. In marriage, couples grow closer to God: "Being with one another in community is how you love God. That's what marriage is about."
More basic than theology, though, is human need. We want, as Abraham did, to grow old surrounded by friends and family and to be buried at last peacefully among them. We want, as Jesus taught, to love one another for our own good—and, not to be too grandiose about it, for the good of the world. We want our children to grow up in stable homes. What happens in the bedroom, really, has nothing to do with any of this. My friend the priest James Martin says his favorite Scripture relating to the question of homosexuality is Psalm 139, a song that praises the beauty and imperfection in all of us and that glorifies God's knowledge of our most secret selves: "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made." And then he adds that in his heart he believes that if Jesus were alive today, he would reach out especially to the gays and lesbians among us, for "Jesus does not want people to be lonely and sad." Let the priest's prayer be our own.
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With Sarah Ball and Anne Underwood
CHANGE YOU CAN GET HIGH ON
U.S. won't prosecute medical pot sales
The statement by Eric H. Holder Jr. represents a landmark shift from the Bush administration's zero tolerance toward the use of pot by people with cancer and other serious ailments.
By Josh Meyer and Scott Glover
March 19, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington -- U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that the Justice Department has no plans to prosecute pot dispensaries that are operating legally under state laws in California and a dozen other states -- a development that medical marijuana advocates and civil libertarians hailed as a sweeping change in federal drug policy.
In recent months, Obama administration officials have indicated that they planned to take a hands-off approach to such clinics, but Holder's comments -- made at a wide-ranging briefing with reporters -- offered the most detailed explanation to date of the changing priorities toward the controversial prosecutions.
Photos: Tension over Eagle Rock...
• Taxing pot could become a political toking point
• Medical marijuana supporters fuming over Westside dispensary raids
• Ban on medical pot cases quickly lifted
The Bush administration targeted medical marijuana distributors even in states that had passed laws allowing use of the drug for medical purposes by cancer patients, those dealing with chronic pain or other serious ailments. Holder said the priority of the new administration is to go after egregious offenders operating in violation of both federal and state law, such as those being used as fronts for drug dealers.
"Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target," the attorney general said.
Medical marijuana activists and civil libertarians embraced Holder's latest statement as the most forceful affirmation of what long had been anticipated: a landmark turnaround from the Bush administration's policy of zero tolerance for cannabis use by patients.
"Whatever questions were left, today's comments clearly represent a change in policy out of Washington. He's sending a clear message to the DEA," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Cultivating, using and selling medical marijuana are allowed in some instances under California law. But such actions are outlawed entirely under federal law, which supersedes those of the states. A dozen other states have laws similar to California's, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization that supports the legalization of the drug.
In the 13 years since California voters made the state one of the first to legalize medical marijuana, federal officials have won all the major legal battles, including one at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 in which their right to prosecute marijuana sellers was upheld. But supporters of medical marijuana have fought back on the political front, and Holder's announcement is their biggest victory so far.
Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the office already focused on egregious offenders such as those who sell drugs to minors and people with bogus prescriptions or those who operate away from their approved location.
"In every single case we have prosecuted, the defendants violated state as well as federal law," Mrozek said.
Despite the abundance of medical marijuana dispensaries in Southern California, Mrozek said prosecutors have charged only four operators and their associates in the last seven years.
Obama suggested during the presidential campaign that medical marijuana dispensaries operating within state law would not be subject to prosecution if he were elected.
But soon after his inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided several dispensaries in the Los Angeles area and near Tahoe, in what appeared to be a continuation of policies enforced under previous administrations. At Wednesday's briefing, his first major sit-down with reporters, Holder was asked if the Justice Department planned to raid any more clinics.
"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law," Holder said. "Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign."
A Justice Department official confirmed that Holder's comments effectively articulated a formal Obama administration policy of not going after such clinics.
"Before, he didn't really lay out the policy. Today, he stated the policy," said the Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"If you are operating a medical marijuana clinic that is actually a front, we'll come after you," the official said. "But if you are operating within the law, we are not going to prioritize our resources to go after them."
Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project said he still has some concerns: What happens to dispensary operators caught up in raids during the last days of the Bush policy, and would federal drug agents resist "trumping up" violations to circumvent the Obama administration's edict.
"The devil is going to be in the details of implementation," Mirken said. "I think you have to assume that there are people within the DEA and some in local law enforcement who still don't like medical marijuana and would like to find an excuse to continue making arrests of law-abiding dispensary operators.
The statement by Eric H. Holder Jr. represents a landmark shift from the Bush administration's zero tolerance toward the use of pot by people with cancer and other serious ailments.
By Josh Meyer and Scott Glover
March 19, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and Washington -- U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said Wednesday that the Justice Department has no plans to prosecute pot dispensaries that are operating legally under state laws in California and a dozen other states -- a development that medical marijuana advocates and civil libertarians hailed as a sweeping change in federal drug policy.
In recent months, Obama administration officials have indicated that they planned to take a hands-off approach to such clinics, but Holder's comments -- made at a wide-ranging briefing with reporters -- offered the most detailed explanation to date of the changing priorities toward the controversial prosecutions.
Photos: Tension over Eagle Rock...
• Taxing pot could become a political toking point
• Medical marijuana supporters fuming over Westside dispensary raids
• Ban on medical pot cases quickly lifted
The Bush administration targeted medical marijuana distributors even in states that had passed laws allowing use of the drug for medical purposes by cancer patients, those dealing with chronic pain or other serious ailments. Holder said the priority of the new administration is to go after egregious offenders operating in violation of both federal and state law, such as those being used as fronts for drug dealers.
"Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target," the attorney general said.
Medical marijuana activists and civil libertarians embraced Holder's latest statement as the most forceful affirmation of what long had been anticipated: a landmark turnaround from the Bush administration's policy of zero tolerance for cannabis use by patients.
"Whatever questions were left, today's comments clearly represent a change in policy out of Washington. He's sending a clear message to the DEA," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.
Cultivating, using and selling medical marijuana are allowed in some instances under California law. But such actions are outlawed entirely under federal law, which supersedes those of the states. A dozen other states have laws similar to California's, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, an organization that supports the legalization of the drug.
In the 13 years since California voters made the state one of the first to legalize medical marijuana, federal officials have won all the major legal battles, including one at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001 in which their right to prosecute marijuana sellers was upheld. But supporters of medical marijuana have fought back on the political front, and Holder's announcement is their biggest victory so far.
Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, said the office already focused on egregious offenders such as those who sell drugs to minors and people with bogus prescriptions or those who operate away from their approved location.
"In every single case we have prosecuted, the defendants violated state as well as federal law," Mrozek said.
Despite the abundance of medical marijuana dispensaries in Southern California, Mrozek said prosecutors have charged only four operators and their associates in the last seven years.
Obama suggested during the presidential campaign that medical marijuana dispensaries operating within state law would not be subject to prosecution if he were elected.
But soon after his inauguration, the Drug Enforcement Administration raided several dispensaries in the Los Angeles area and near Tahoe, in what appeared to be a continuation of policies enforced under previous administrations. At Wednesday's briefing, his first major sit-down with reporters, Holder was asked if the Justice Department planned to raid any more clinics.
"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law, to the extent that people do that and try to use medical marijuana laws as a shield for activity that is not designed to comport with what the intention was of the state law," Holder said. "Those are the organizations, the people, that we will target. And that is consistent with what the president said during the campaign."
A Justice Department official confirmed that Holder's comments effectively articulated a formal Obama administration policy of not going after such clinics.
"Before, he didn't really lay out the policy. Today, he stated the policy," said the Justice Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
"If you are operating a medical marijuana clinic that is actually a front, we'll come after you," the official said. "But if you are operating within the law, we are not going to prioritize our resources to go after them."
Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project said he still has some concerns: What happens to dispensary operators caught up in raids during the last days of the Bush policy, and would federal drug agents resist "trumping up" violations to circumvent the Obama administration's edict.
"The devil is going to be in the details of implementation," Mirken said. "I think you have to assume that there are people within the DEA and some in local law enforcement who still don't like medical marijuana and would like to find an excuse to continue making arrests of law-abiding dispensary operators.
NEWSWEEK WRONG TAKE ON RELIGION
that means you just go to city hall and apply for a marriage liscene and stand before a judge. the church feels like they have this control over the word of marriage but it is really more of something that just guarantees gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples. gays arent asking for church recognition. they just want to be able to travel across the country with their spouse and be able to visit them in the hospital and make medical decisions for them.
Such gross misinterpretation of scripture is incredible! The fact that this reporter was able to publish such a biased, unfounded, and presumptive piece of literature through a mainstream media outlet is beyond comprehension. Only in a sin-laden and out of touch society could such nonsense resonate with enough people to get any positive attention and feedback. Please refrain from backing up your ideas with sacred writings.
argument that only will pass with those who aren't really paying attention, have no real thought of their own and/or are so incredibly emotion based that logic and rational thought are completely impossible for them
s Christianity Today says (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/decemberweb-only/150-21.0.html) their article and their argument is not serious nor intellectually honest.
I could give a rat's patootie what the bible says about anything, it is not relevant to my life. Religion is for scared superstitious individuals who are petrified of their mortality. If what they say about god and how you get to heaven and what happens when you don't make it is utter nonsense. There is no god, never was, and Jesus is long dead and will remain that way, as will we all, for eternity. Get over it, and keep your damned stupid superstitions out of the schools, government, and most certainly my bedroom.
Such gross misinterpretation of scripture is incredible! The fact that this reporter was able to publish such a biased, unfounded, and presumptive piece of literature through a mainstream media outlet is beyond comprehension. Only in a sin-laden and out of touch society could such nonsense resonate with enough people to get any positive attention and feedback. Please refrain from backing up your ideas with sacred writings.
argument that only will pass with those who aren't really paying attention, have no real thought of their own and/or are so incredibly emotion based that logic and rational thought are completely impossible for them
s Christianity Today says (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/decemberweb-only/150-21.0.html) their article and their argument is not serious nor intellectually honest.
I could give a rat's patootie what the bible says about anything, it is not relevant to my life. Religion is for scared superstitious individuals who are petrified of their mortality. If what they say about god and how you get to heaven and what happens when you don't make it is utter nonsense. There is no god, never was, and Jesus is long dead and will remain that way, as will we all, for eternity. Get over it, and keep your damned stupid superstitions out of the schools, government, and most certainly my bedroom.
START THE WAR ON THE WAR ON CHRISTMAS NOW
would it be possible to buy some bumper stickers for less. twenty bucks is too much and i already got your book from the library and loved every minute.
see what you can do.
they really should be rushed out for sale in stores, and offered by you at a cut rate, no book included if you must. tim is short this season.
by the way, kudos to target for using the c word (christmas)
And shame on Keith Olberman and John Stewart for not being on board on this. even Joe Biden agreed with us, publicly, though it was not mentioned in the media.
I used to be a liberal, but too many nutters joined in. now I'm just a good guy stranded between good intentions and good economics.
Hey, this guy is good.
see what you can do.
they really should be rushed out for sale in stores, and offered by you at a cut rate, no book included if you must. tim is short this season.
by the way, kudos to target for using the c word (christmas)
And shame on Keith Olberman and John Stewart for not being on board on this. even Joe Biden agreed with us, publicly, though it was not mentioned in the media.
I used to be a liberal, but too many nutters joined in. now I'm just a good guy stranded between good intentions and good economics.
Hey, this guy is good.
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)
Now It Can Be Told (Except in North Carolina)
By STEVE CONN
Attention Progressives. It’s official: Now it can be told.
Three weeks after the Presidential vote. Now it can be told. Norm Chomsky says Joe Biden’s nomination by Obama was a slap in the face (he used stronger words) to Obama’s supporters because of Biden’s positions on foreign policy and his special job of destroying credit card debtors’ pathway of escape by means of loan-shark- friendly bankruptcy reform. Now it can be told. Rob Emanuel is Wall Street’s Guy and the ultimate hawk on the War in Iraq. (Israel? Forget about it.) Now it can be told. The line- up of economic advisors and hedge fund managers who Obama selected to get us out of the mess are the very ones who got us into the mess (along with other lovely kleptocracies like the former Soviet Union). They ought to be indicted, not nominated.
Now it can be told. The Progressives were “intellectually dishonest” when they ignored the role of the Clinton administration in initiating the financial debacle by pressing for deregulation as they joined Obama’s army and sought not a single programmatic debt from the transformational candidate. Now nobody will call you a racist unless you use a metaphor like Nader did. Just say we have a “transformational” candidate who is bringing us Back to the Future.
Now it can be told. That, for Chomsky, Obama is simply “Brand Obama”, sold as a symbol of change without serious inquiry into what changes, domestic or foreign. Marketed like Animal Crackers or Ajax, (the foaming cleanser), in a campaign honored by the advertising profession as even better than Apple’s I Phone? Progressives, beware. “Brand Obama” has, you know, unpleasant historical referents for people treated like property until World War Two (and beyond) by Golem corporations (like US Steel) who enjoyed their own civil rights by treating Blacks leased from sheriffs like property. Norm could be in trouble like that other old, white guy, Nader, for labeling our new leader. Now still may not be the time, so well has this brand been crafted..
Oh yes, Obama’s campaign promises? Now it can be told. Abolishing the Tax Cuts for the Rich. Wait a minute. That’s abandoned now. No more torture! But, wait a minute. The Torturer in Chief is guiding the transition in national intelligence. Some psychologists wrote Obama a letter of complaint for his shredder.
Bush and the Congress turned over trillions (not billions) to the financial sector while Obama appoints all the guys who lost the money to give their former colleagues blank check authority to spend public money to gobble up smaller banks and think about
lending some to the rest of us. “Conflict of Interest?” “Appearance of “Conflict of Interest?” Phrases that are so, so very out of fashion. Who Ya Gonna Call when you your phonebook says “Clinton Administration” on it? Bill Murray or Larry Summers?
Two weeks (not three) after the election Professor Weather Underground pops out of his office and opens his book reissue tour on Democracy Now and then slides over to the morning talk shows because Now It Can Be Told (and there’s a buck to be made).
Then there is the $200 billion infrastructure program, a Nader idea since 2000 when it would have cost less and there was a budget surplus. Where will the money come from now? Probably, we now learn, from the private sector using our Corporate Welfare to make more money for themselves and their shareholders. Buying, and then selling the property along the new rightaways, just like the Robber Barons did when railroads ruled the world. Back to the Future.
And in the meantime, with gold spiking and oil on the way back and the dollar declining against the Pound, the Yen and God knows what else; the new national motto is “How much is that in real money?” Your savings and pension? Butkus in Real Money.
Was that Ralph Nader’s real crime, the one that kept him off the air? That he never got the message, to hide out until the signal was given and to keep his mouth shut? Real Progressives hid under rocks until after election day. Then it could be told. Then they could talk about grand social movements someone should organize like the 1930s to take on Obama’s friends in high places and Obama’s star-struck armies, as they waited for orders like trade unionists in Argentina (Evita was not just a great Broadway show. Now it can be Told).
On the lighter side, (just an expression), North Carolina had 13,942 write-in votes from malcontents who still wanted to hop the barriers the Tar Heel State places in front of candidates who have the audacity to want to have their names on the ballot. Until today, three weeks after the election, the breakouts of those votes were not offered for those silly enough to have voted for third party candidates or independents. But now freedom reigns (or is reined-in, depending on your political preference).. Unfortunately, 88 percent of the write-ins were disqualified by county board of elections, leaving just 1692. Why? Poor penmanship? The ghost of the Jessie Helms still operating at the local level? Who of importance really cares if you didn’t have the good sense to vote for Obama or McCain? Still, 1510 votes for Ralph Nader and 158 for Green candidate, Cynthia McKinney, were apparently readable. These Nader and McKinney voters, out of 13, 942, must have printed in Large Block Letters. My advice to the odd balls in the world famous Research Triangle who want to exercise their franchise by voting for a minority candidate (in the sense of substance, not skin tone), is keep voting where you used to live and just maybe it will get counted. Even Alaska.
In North Carolina, you can get a grilled cheese sandwich and a cherry coke at the counter at Woolworth’s (if you can find one), but in matters of voting against the majority, Now It Still Can’t Be Told.
By STEVE CONN
Attention Progressives. It’s official: Now it can be told.
Three weeks after the Presidential vote. Now it can be told. Norm Chomsky says Joe Biden’s nomination by Obama was a slap in the face (he used stronger words) to Obama’s supporters because of Biden’s positions on foreign policy and his special job of destroying credit card debtors’ pathway of escape by means of loan-shark- friendly bankruptcy reform. Now it can be told. Rob Emanuel is Wall Street’s Guy and the ultimate hawk on the War in Iraq. (Israel? Forget about it.) Now it can be told. The line- up of economic advisors and hedge fund managers who Obama selected to get us out of the mess are the very ones who got us into the mess (along with other lovely kleptocracies like the former Soviet Union). They ought to be indicted, not nominated.
Now it can be told. The Progressives were “intellectually dishonest” when they ignored the role of the Clinton administration in initiating the financial debacle by pressing for deregulation as they joined Obama’s army and sought not a single programmatic debt from the transformational candidate. Now nobody will call you a racist unless you use a metaphor like Nader did. Just say we have a “transformational” candidate who is bringing us Back to the Future.
Now it can be told. That, for Chomsky, Obama is simply “Brand Obama”, sold as a symbol of change without serious inquiry into what changes, domestic or foreign. Marketed like Animal Crackers or Ajax, (the foaming cleanser), in a campaign honored by the advertising profession as even better than Apple’s I Phone? Progressives, beware. “Brand Obama” has, you know, unpleasant historical referents for people treated like property until World War Two (and beyond) by Golem corporations (like US Steel) who enjoyed their own civil rights by treating Blacks leased from sheriffs like property. Norm could be in trouble like that other old, white guy, Nader, for labeling our new leader. Now still may not be the time, so well has this brand been crafted..
Oh yes, Obama’s campaign promises? Now it can be told. Abolishing the Tax Cuts for the Rich. Wait a minute. That’s abandoned now. No more torture! But, wait a minute. The Torturer in Chief is guiding the transition in national intelligence. Some psychologists wrote Obama a letter of complaint for his shredder.
Bush and the Congress turned over trillions (not billions) to the financial sector while Obama appoints all the guys who lost the money to give their former colleagues blank check authority to spend public money to gobble up smaller banks and think about
lending some to the rest of us. “Conflict of Interest?” “Appearance of “Conflict of Interest?” Phrases that are so, so very out of fashion. Who Ya Gonna Call when you your phonebook says “Clinton Administration” on it? Bill Murray or Larry Summers?
Two weeks (not three) after the election Professor Weather Underground pops out of his office and opens his book reissue tour on Democracy Now and then slides over to the morning talk shows because Now It Can Be Told (and there’s a buck to be made).
Then there is the $200 billion infrastructure program, a Nader idea since 2000 when it would have cost less and there was a budget surplus. Where will the money come from now? Probably, we now learn, from the private sector using our Corporate Welfare to make more money for themselves and their shareholders. Buying, and then selling the property along the new rightaways, just like the Robber Barons did when railroads ruled the world. Back to the Future.
And in the meantime, with gold spiking and oil on the way back and the dollar declining against the Pound, the Yen and God knows what else; the new national motto is “How much is that in real money?” Your savings and pension? Butkus in Real Money.
Was that Ralph Nader’s real crime, the one that kept him off the air? That he never got the message, to hide out until the signal was given and to keep his mouth shut? Real Progressives hid under rocks until after election day. Then it could be told. Then they could talk about grand social movements someone should organize like the 1930s to take on Obama’s friends in high places and Obama’s star-struck armies, as they waited for orders like trade unionists in Argentina (Evita was not just a great Broadway show. Now it can be Told).
On the lighter side, (just an expression), North Carolina had 13,942 write-in votes from malcontents who still wanted to hop the barriers the Tar Heel State places in front of candidates who have the audacity to want to have their names on the ballot. Until today, three weeks after the election, the breakouts of those votes were not offered for those silly enough to have voted for third party candidates or independents. But now freedom reigns (or is reined-in, depending on your political preference).. Unfortunately, 88 percent of the write-ins were disqualified by county board of elections, leaving just 1692. Why? Poor penmanship? The ghost of the Jessie Helms still operating at the local level? Who of importance really cares if you didn’t have the good sense to vote for Obama or McCain? Still, 1510 votes for Ralph Nader and 158 for Green candidate, Cynthia McKinney, were apparently readable. These Nader and McKinney voters, out of 13, 942, must have printed in Large Block Letters. My advice to the odd balls in the world famous Research Triangle who want to exercise their franchise by voting for a minority candidate (in the sense of substance, not skin tone), is keep voting where you used to live and just maybe it will get counted. Even Alaska.
In North Carolina, you can get a grilled cheese sandwich and a cherry coke at the counter at Woolworth’s (if you can find one), but in matters of voting against the majority, Now It Still Can’t Be Told.
Ralph Nader calls Obama "Uncle Tom" and Fox News calls him out.
Ralph Nader calls Obama "Uncle Tom" and Fox News calls him out.
As if Ralph Nader wasn't a big enough tool already, he went on Fox News on election night - the very night Barack Obama broke the racial barrier on the presidency - and uttered the words "Uncle Tom." Not only that, after being called out on the words (which he initially said in a radio interview) by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith - and given a point-blank chance to apologize and take them back, Nader said he wouldn't. It's a stunning bit of television, and a lot of people missed it. (No doubt a good portion of the Bay Area, not exactly a bastion of Fox News watchers, did). Up until he spewed out the words, the biggest shocker in this scenario was A) That anybody still cared enough to talk to a washed-up political hack like Nader and B) That Nader could actually hear Smith call him on the offensive language. Nader rarely stops his mouth moving - he's always so caught up in his monotonous blather and meritless belief that he's making points people want to listen to.
Give Shep Smith a lot of credit here. "Really? Ralph Nader - what was that?" And then he just fried Nader. (I love the look on his face when Nader calls him a bully - it's that same look people should be giving Nader right about now for completely not getting it.)
So, let's go to the big board here for the tally: Nader helps the Democrats lose the election in 2000 and then slanders the Democratic winner in 2008? Well played, Ralph. At least this moment brings you (temporarily) back out of obscurity and irrelevance.
As if Ralph Nader wasn't a big enough tool already, he went on Fox News on election night - the very night Barack Obama broke the racial barrier on the presidency - and uttered the words "Uncle Tom." Not only that, after being called out on the words (which he initially said in a radio interview) by Fox News anchor Shepard Smith - and given a point-blank chance to apologize and take them back, Nader said he wouldn't. It's a stunning bit of television, and a lot of people missed it. (No doubt a good portion of the Bay Area, not exactly a bastion of Fox News watchers, did). Up until he spewed out the words, the biggest shocker in this scenario was A) That anybody still cared enough to talk to a washed-up political hack like Nader and B) That Nader could actually hear Smith call him on the offensive language. Nader rarely stops his mouth moving - he's always so caught up in his monotonous blather and meritless belief that he's making points people want to listen to.
Give Shep Smith a lot of credit here. "Really? Ralph Nader - what was that?" And then he just fried Nader. (I love the look on his face when Nader calls him a bully - it's that same look people should be giving Nader right about now for completely not getting it.)
So, let's go to the big board here for the tally: Nader helps the Democrats lose the election in 2000 and then slanders the Democratic winner in 2008? Well played, Ralph. At least this moment brings you (temporarily) back out of obscurity and irrelevance.
Nader's Stubborn Idealism
Nader's Stubborn Idealism
By William Greider
October 25, 2008
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Ralph Nader is a man of political substance trapped in an era of easy lies. He pierces the fog of propaganda with hard facts and reason, but the smoke rolls over him and he disappears from public view. A lesser man might go crazy or get the message and give it up. Nader instead runs for president again, as he is doing this year, campaigning in fifty states and addressing crowds wherever he finds them, smaller crowds this time but still eager to feed on his idealism. Ralph is not delusional. He knows the story. He is stubborn about the facts and honest with himself.
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"I believe in I.F. Stone's dictum that in all social justice movements, you've got to be ready to lose. And lose and lose and lose. It's not very pleasant, but you have to accept this if you believe in what you're doing," Nader explained.
He was conducting a "newsmaker" press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Friday before moving on to Massachussetts, where he planned to deliver more than twenty speeches in one day, in hopes of earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Five or six reporters showed up at the Press Club event (including several old admirers). The only camera was a documentary film maker. Nader stood at the podium and read from a lengthy speech describing the corporate dominance of politics, the stranglehold exercised on dissent by the two-party system, the presidential candidates packaged like soap and cars, the failure of left-liberal progressives (including The Nation) to demand conditions on their support for the Democratic candidate.
"The hypocrisy of liberals, which may in some ways be unconscious, is empowering the forces that are destroying our nation," Nader asserted in an even-tempered voice. "The left in this country has been successfully cowed by the Democratic Party," he continued. "The votes of progressives are taken for granted by Democrats.... By allowing ourselves to be manipulated, we have demonstrated that we have no moral substance. We have no line that can be never be crossed, no stance so sacred and important that we are willing to stand up and fight back."
So long as progressives are willing to settle for the "least worst" alternative, they will remain ignored and excluded from power, he suggested.
This kind of talk from Nader drives some people to rage against him. He returns the favor by discussing "the rage that many in our nation feel towards liberals." Barack Obama, he insists, does not intend to alter anything fundamental about the causes. "This rage is a legitimate expression of very real betrayal," Nader explained. "The working class, most of whom do not vote, watch Democratic candidate after Democratic candidate run for office promising to support labor and protect jobs and then, once elected, trot off to Washington to pass the corporate-friendly legislation drawn up by the 35,000 lobbyists who work for our shadow government."
Whatever you might think of Nader's jeremiad, it is exceedingly timely. Democrats are on the brink of losing their old excuses for timidity and retreat. If the election produces stronger majorities in Congress and a new president who has promised big change, Nader's analysis will be tested in the clearest terms. For the first time in thirty years, the Dems will have nobody else left to blame. If Obama does not turn the page as he promised, if the Congressional majority does not step up forcefully, then we may fairly conclude Nader was right. The decay of democracy is deeper than we wished to believe.
The hard warning Nader poses is not about himself but about how the left and other elements of the old Democratic coalition will respond to their new situation. Nader is not optimistic. "I see a lot of anger around the country, but I don't see it organized," he said. "Anger that's unorganized has no power." The rationale behind his serial campaigns for president was always about this vacuum in politics. His conviction was that third-party campaigns could help mobilize a popular counter-force to leverage the Democrats and break up the two-party monopoly. For many reasons, he failed in this, as he frankly acknowledges.
"The question usually asked," he said, "is, 'Has there been a pull or a push on either political party?' I'm sorry to say there hasn't been any indicator of that, which to me means people's resignation to politics-as-usual has deepened further." Both major parties are deeply skewed in their allegiances to corporate power, and Nader believes this unnatural condition must be altered to reverse the decline and decay of society. He thinks this will happen sooner or later, but probably not in the way he has approached it. "My personal preference is a grassroots movement," he said, "but more likely it's going to be some billionaire--a progressive or liberal billionaire who makes it a three-way race. If people get used to voting outside the two parties, then things can change."
So what has his presidential candidacy accomplished in the meantime? Nader offered a modest list. His presence encouraged others to run independently for public office and showed them ways to do it. He identified the many barriers to ballot access for third-party candidates as an important issue of civil liberties as meaningful as access to voting. He brought young people into clean politics and helped them develop their skills. What else? "We kept the progressive agenda alive for the future.
By William Greider
October 25, 2008
Share
Buzz up!
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del.icio.us
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Ralph Nader is a man of political substance trapped in an era of easy lies. He pierces the fog of propaganda with hard facts and reason, but the smoke rolls over him and he disappears from public view. A lesser man might go crazy or get the message and give it up. Nader instead runs for president again, as he is doing this year, campaigning in fifty states and addressing crowds wherever he finds them, smaller crowds this time but still eager to feed on his idealism. Ralph is not delusional. He knows the story. He is stubborn about the facts and honest with himself.
Share this article
Related
Also By
The Sleaziest Campaign Ads of 2008
Presidential Election 2008
Talking Points Memo : Here are five nominees for the most revolting, dishonest and remarkably sleazy campaign ads of the year.
Obama's Latino Vote Mandate
Presidential Election 2008
Steve Cobble & Joe Velasquez: Latinos backed Obama by a 2-to-1 margin on election day and could be the biggest force behind a longterm, center-left political realignment.
Big Election Losers
Presidential Election 2008
The Daily Show : Sarah Palin launches a PR blitz to show voters all they missed by not electing her queen of America.
» More
Fixing the Fed
Banks & Banking
William Greider: To restore the nation's broken financial system, Washington must reform the Federal Reserve.
The Future of Social Security
Our Readers & William Greider
Labor's Man Joins Treasury Team
U.S. Economy
William Greider: Ron Bloom, a former I-banker with the head and heart of a labor activist, has been tapped to advise the Obama administration on the auto bailout. Let's hope they listen to him.
"I believe in I.F. Stone's dictum that in all social justice movements, you've got to be ready to lose. And lose and lose and lose. It's not very pleasant, but you have to accept this if you believe in what you're doing," Nader explained.
He was conducting a "newsmaker" press conference at the National Press Club in Washington on Friday before moving on to Massachussetts, where he planned to deliver more than twenty speeches in one day, in hopes of earning a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Five or six reporters showed up at the Press Club event (including several old admirers). The only camera was a documentary film maker. Nader stood at the podium and read from a lengthy speech describing the corporate dominance of politics, the stranglehold exercised on dissent by the two-party system, the presidential candidates packaged like soap and cars, the failure of left-liberal progressives (including The Nation) to demand conditions on their support for the Democratic candidate.
"The hypocrisy of liberals, which may in some ways be unconscious, is empowering the forces that are destroying our nation," Nader asserted in an even-tempered voice. "The left in this country has been successfully cowed by the Democratic Party," he continued. "The votes of progressives are taken for granted by Democrats.... By allowing ourselves to be manipulated, we have demonstrated that we have no moral substance. We have no line that can be never be crossed, no stance so sacred and important that we are willing to stand up and fight back."
So long as progressives are willing to settle for the "least worst" alternative, they will remain ignored and excluded from power, he suggested.
This kind of talk from Nader drives some people to rage against him. He returns the favor by discussing "the rage that many in our nation feel towards liberals." Barack Obama, he insists, does not intend to alter anything fundamental about the causes. "This rage is a legitimate expression of very real betrayal," Nader explained. "The working class, most of whom do not vote, watch Democratic candidate after Democratic candidate run for office promising to support labor and protect jobs and then, once elected, trot off to Washington to pass the corporate-friendly legislation drawn up by the 35,000 lobbyists who work for our shadow government."
Whatever you might think of Nader's jeremiad, it is exceedingly timely. Democrats are on the brink of losing their old excuses for timidity and retreat. If the election produces stronger majorities in Congress and a new president who has promised big change, Nader's analysis will be tested in the clearest terms. For the first time in thirty years, the Dems will have nobody else left to blame. If Obama does not turn the page as he promised, if the Congressional majority does not step up forcefully, then we may fairly conclude Nader was right. The decay of democracy is deeper than we wished to believe.
The hard warning Nader poses is not about himself but about how the left and other elements of the old Democratic coalition will respond to their new situation. Nader is not optimistic. "I see a lot of anger around the country, but I don't see it organized," he said. "Anger that's unorganized has no power." The rationale behind his serial campaigns for president was always about this vacuum in politics. His conviction was that third-party campaigns could help mobilize a popular counter-force to leverage the Democrats and break up the two-party monopoly. For many reasons, he failed in this, as he frankly acknowledges.
"The question usually asked," he said, "is, 'Has there been a pull or a push on either political party?' I'm sorry to say there hasn't been any indicator of that, which to me means people's resignation to politics-as-usual has deepened further." Both major parties are deeply skewed in their allegiances to corporate power, and Nader believes this unnatural condition must be altered to reverse the decline and decay of society. He thinks this will happen sooner or later, but probably not in the way he has approached it. "My personal preference is a grassroots movement," he said, "but more likely it's going to be some billionaire--a progressive or liberal billionaire who makes it a three-way race. If people get used to voting outside the two parties, then things can change."
So what has his presidential candidacy accomplished in the meantime? Nader offered a modest list. His presence encouraged others to run independently for public office and showed them ways to do it. He identified the many barriers to ballot access for third-party candidates as an important issue of civil liberties as meaningful as access to voting. He brought young people into clean politics and helped them develop their skills. What else? "We kept the progressive agenda alive for the future.
IN PRESIDENT
IN PRESIDENT '08
With Charles Gibson, the schoolmaster who crushed Sarah Palin.
His answer to the big question. Republican responsibility for the Economy.
,,,a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so
before I arrived in President.
FOLLOWED BY THE NEVER TO BE FORGOTTEN "DURING I ARRIVED IN PRESIDENT".
He wanted to use in, not as. And he wanted President not the presidency.
IT'S A REGAL PHRASE.
PROBABLY THE STUPIDEST THING EVER SAID BY ANYONE SINCE YOGI BERRA.
"This is like deja vu all over again."
• "You can observe a lot just by watching."
• "He must have made that before he died." -- Referring to a Steve McQueen movie.
• "I want to thank you for making this day necessary." -- On Yogi Berra Appreciation Day in St. Louis in 1947.
• "I'd find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I'd return it." -- When asked what he would do if he found a million dollars.
• "Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?"
• "You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
• "I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."
• "If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else."
• "If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."
• "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six."
• "Baseball is 90% mental -- the other half is physical."
• "It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much."
• "Slump? I ain't in no slump. I just ain't hitting."
• "A nickel isn't worth a dime today."
• "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."
• "It gets late early out there." -- Referring to the bad sun conditions in left field at the stadium.
• "Glen Cove." -- Referring to Glenn Close on a movie review television show.
• Once, Yogi's wife Carmen asked, "Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey, and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried?" Yogi replied, "Surprise me."
• "Do you mean now?" -- When asked for the time.
• "I take a two hour nap, from one o'clock to four."
• "If you come to a fork in the road, take it."
• "You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn't enough in the second half you give what's left."
• "90% of the putts that are short don't go in."
• "I made a wrong mistake."
• "Texas has a lot of electrical votes." -- During an election campaign, after George Bush stated that Texas was important to the election.
• "Thanks, you don't look so hot yourself." -- After being told he looked cool.
• "I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
• "Yeah, but we're making great time!" -- In reply to "Hey Yogi, I think we're lost."
• "If the fans don't come out to the ball park, you can't stop them."
• "Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel."
• "It's never happened in the World Series competition, and it still hasn't."
• "How long have you known me, Jack? And you still don't know how to spell my name." -- Upon receiving a check from Jack Buck made out to "bearer."
• "I'd say he's done more than that." -- When asked if first baseman Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations for the current season.
• "The other teams could make trouble for us if they win."
• "He can run anytime he wants. I'm giving him the red light." -- On the acquisition of fleet Ricky Henderson.
• "I never blame myself when I'm not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn't my fault that I'm not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?"
• "It ain't the heat; it's the humility."
• "The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase."
• "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours."
• "I didn't really say everything I said."
GETTING OUT OF AMERICAN COLONIES
Getting Out: Learning from Past Exit Strategies
By Editors
"Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run," the gambler says in a popular song. But in the aftermath of imperialism and war, walking away is not so simple. Dissent's editors asked several scholars and writers to look at British, French, and American exit strategies--and to pay special attention to the difficulties, above all, the need to protect friends and collaborators and to minimize violence. In these pages, the focus is on each particular case--the American colonies, the Philippines, India, Korea, Algeria, and Vietnam--but we are obviously looking toward an American withdrawal from Iraq. We will write about that in the Spring Dissent. - The Editors
The American Colonies: Stanley Weintraub
How does one recognize the looming inevitable? In the 1760s, the British, having defeated the French in America and expanded George III’s overseas empire, saw only profit and prestige ahead. A New England cleric, the Reverend Samuel Cooper, told his congregation that the colonists were indebted “not only for their present Security and Happiness, but, perhaps for their very Being, to the paternal Care of the Monarch.” The legitimacy of royal rule was little questioned. In that future seedbed of sedition, Boston, Thomas Foxcroft declared, “Above all, we owe our humble Thanks to his Majesty and with loyal Hearts full of joyous Gratitude, we bless the King, for his Paternal Goodness in sending such effectual Aids to his American Subjects. . . when we needed the Royal Protection.”...Continue
The Philippines: Stanley Karnow
However much their methods differed, the British, Dutch, and French intended to cling to their colonies forever. But, from its start in 1898, the United States meant to limit its control of the Philippines—and, to that degree, the American-Filipino experience was unusual in the annals of imperialism.
The conquest of the Philippine archipelago was initially masterminded at the swanky Metropolitan Club in Washington by a covert coterie of obdurate men—the highbrow senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the naval strategist Captain Alfred Mahan, and particularly the belligerent Theodore Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy. The conquest of the Philippines was ancillary to their paramount goal of dislodging Spain from Cuba, but they realized that by propelling American power into the Pacific, businessmen could boost their lucrative trade with China and Japan and profit from tapping their thriving markets and rich sources of raw materials....Continue
India: Rajeev Bhargava
Scholarly writing explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain’s expansive involvement in the Second World War and the sustained anticolonial struggle of Indians led by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. This is not a complete explanation, but at least it nudges us in the right direction.
However, crucial questions remain unanswered. Why was their departure moved up by over a year—from June 1948 to August 1947? What explains the timing of the withdrawal? What were its moral costs? Could displacement have been averted and the mass killings prevented if withdrawal had been delayed? Did political actors taking these decisions foresee the looming moral disaster? Did the British have information about the extent and depth of violence once they announced the decision that the country would be partitioned? If they had adequate intelligence reports, what measures were taken to quell the violence? And finally, what lessons can be learned from the calamity that followed, during which an estimated one million people died and millions more were displaced? Here, I focus on these questions and limit myself to the period immediately prior to independence....Continue
Korea: Fred Smoler
Any close analogy between “getting out” of Korea and American withdrawal from Vietnam, French withdrawal from Algeria, or British withdrawal from India necessarily fails, because in the sense implied by those cases, the United States has not gotten out of Korea.
As recently as 2004, the United States still deployed 37,500 United States troops in Korea. That year the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) agreed to reduce the American deployment to 25,000 by 2008, so we are still in Korea, and likely to remain for some time. The reductions to date have never been intended to culminate in the withdrawal of all troops by a date certain, and their pace was for many years uneven. At the height of their wartime strength, American forces numbered 326,363, in the year following the armistice 225,590, and in 1955 the United States maintained a garrison of 75,328. After that, the numbers seesawed, in part according to the level of perceived threat, so that while in 1956 there were 46,024 American troops in the ROK, by 1964 U.S. troop strength had increased by almost a third to 62,596, and five years later it increased again, to 66,531....Continue
Algeria: Todd Shepard
In March 1962, in the eighth year of the Algerian War, the French government signed off on the Evian Accords, which established a ceasefire as well as a process that led to the July 5 proclamation in Algiers of independence—one hundred and thirty-two years to the day after the Ottoman ruler of that city had surrendered to French invaders. Few people were surprised—the only surprising thing was that ending the French occupation took so long. The end was, after all, inevitable, or so it can seem in retrospect. But the war was long, and its violence was shocking to contemporaries both in its forms—the French Armed Forces’ systematic use of torture on suspected nationalists and the embrace of terrorism by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN)—and its effects: the dead numbered some 17,000 French soldiers, about 3,500 French civilians, and (according to current estimates) between 250,000 and 578,000 Algerians, the vast majority of whom were noncombatants....Continue
Vietnam: Frances FitzGerald
In the wake of the Tet offensive, on March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, initiated peace talks with Hanoi, and declared he would not run for a second term. In that election year, Richard Nixon called for “peace with honor” and defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who could not attack Johnson for waging what had become a hugely unpopular war. Many Americans assumed that peace would come in short order. But, though the peace talks had begun, fighting in Vietnam continued for another seven years. In those years, Nixon gradually withdrew American troops from Vietnam but expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos, and with extensive bombing campaigns wreaked more destruction on the Indochinese than had been visited upon them in all the preceding years of war. More than twenty thousand American troops died, and upheavals in the United States tore the country apart, creating divisions that remain with us today....Continue
By Editors
"Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, know when to run," the gambler says in a popular song. But in the aftermath of imperialism and war, walking away is not so simple. Dissent's editors asked several scholars and writers to look at British, French, and American exit strategies--and to pay special attention to the difficulties, above all, the need to protect friends and collaborators and to minimize violence. In these pages, the focus is on each particular case--the American colonies, the Philippines, India, Korea, Algeria, and Vietnam--but we are obviously looking toward an American withdrawal from Iraq. We will write about that in the Spring Dissent. - The Editors
The American Colonies: Stanley Weintraub
How does one recognize the looming inevitable? In the 1760s, the British, having defeated the French in America and expanded George III’s overseas empire, saw only profit and prestige ahead. A New England cleric, the Reverend Samuel Cooper, told his congregation that the colonists were indebted “not only for their present Security and Happiness, but, perhaps for their very Being, to the paternal Care of the Monarch.” The legitimacy of royal rule was little questioned. In that future seedbed of sedition, Boston, Thomas Foxcroft declared, “Above all, we owe our humble Thanks to his Majesty and with loyal Hearts full of joyous Gratitude, we bless the King, for his Paternal Goodness in sending such effectual Aids to his American Subjects. . . when we needed the Royal Protection.”...Continue
The Philippines: Stanley Karnow
However much their methods differed, the British, Dutch, and French intended to cling to their colonies forever. But, from its start in 1898, the United States meant to limit its control of the Philippines—and, to that degree, the American-Filipino experience was unusual in the annals of imperialism.
The conquest of the Philippine archipelago was initially masterminded at the swanky Metropolitan Club in Washington by a covert coterie of obdurate men—the highbrow senator Henry Cabot Lodge, the naval strategist Captain Alfred Mahan, and particularly the belligerent Theodore Roosevelt, then assistant secretary of the navy. The conquest of the Philippines was ancillary to their paramount goal of dislodging Spain from Cuba, but they realized that by propelling American power into the Pacific, businessmen could boost their lucrative trade with China and Japan and profit from tapping their thriving markets and rich sources of raw materials....Continue
India: Rajeev Bhargava
Scholarly writing explains British withdrawal from India in terms of a crisis of the colonial state precipitated by Britain’s expansive involvement in the Second World War and the sustained anticolonial struggle of Indians led by leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. This is not a complete explanation, but at least it nudges us in the right direction.
However, crucial questions remain unanswered. Why was their departure moved up by over a year—from June 1948 to August 1947? What explains the timing of the withdrawal? What were its moral costs? Could displacement have been averted and the mass killings prevented if withdrawal had been delayed? Did political actors taking these decisions foresee the looming moral disaster? Did the British have information about the extent and depth of violence once they announced the decision that the country would be partitioned? If they had adequate intelligence reports, what measures were taken to quell the violence? And finally, what lessons can be learned from the calamity that followed, during which an estimated one million people died and millions more were displaced? Here, I focus on these questions and limit myself to the period immediately prior to independence....Continue
Korea: Fred Smoler
Any close analogy between “getting out” of Korea and American withdrawal from Vietnam, French withdrawal from Algeria, or British withdrawal from India necessarily fails, because in the sense implied by those cases, the United States has not gotten out of Korea.
As recently as 2004, the United States still deployed 37,500 United States troops in Korea. That year the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) agreed to reduce the American deployment to 25,000 by 2008, so we are still in Korea, and likely to remain for some time. The reductions to date have never been intended to culminate in the withdrawal of all troops by a date certain, and their pace was for many years uneven. At the height of their wartime strength, American forces numbered 326,363, in the year following the armistice 225,590, and in 1955 the United States maintained a garrison of 75,328. After that, the numbers seesawed, in part according to the level of perceived threat, so that while in 1956 there were 46,024 American troops in the ROK, by 1964 U.S. troop strength had increased by almost a third to 62,596, and five years later it increased again, to 66,531....Continue
Algeria: Todd Shepard
In March 1962, in the eighth year of the Algerian War, the French government signed off on the Evian Accords, which established a ceasefire as well as a process that led to the July 5 proclamation in Algiers of independence—one hundred and thirty-two years to the day after the Ottoman ruler of that city had surrendered to French invaders. Few people were surprised—the only surprising thing was that ending the French occupation took so long. The end was, after all, inevitable, or so it can seem in retrospect. But the war was long, and its violence was shocking to contemporaries both in its forms—the French Armed Forces’ systematic use of torture on suspected nationalists and the embrace of terrorism by the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN)—and its effects: the dead numbered some 17,000 French soldiers, about 3,500 French civilians, and (according to current estimates) between 250,000 and 578,000 Algerians, the vast majority of whom were noncombatants....Continue
Vietnam: Frances FitzGerald
In the wake of the Tet offensive, on March 31, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced a partial halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, initiated peace talks with Hanoi, and declared he would not run for a second term. In that election year, Richard Nixon called for “peace with honor” and defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who could not attack Johnson for waging what had become a hugely unpopular war. Many Americans assumed that peace would come in short order. But, though the peace talks had begun, fighting in Vietnam continued for another seven years. In those years, Nixon gradually withdrew American troops from Vietnam but expanded the war to Cambodia and Laos, and with extensive bombing campaigns wreaked more destruction on the Indochinese than had been visited upon them in all the preceding years of war. More than twenty thousand American troops died, and upheavals in the United States tore the country apart, creating divisions that remain with us today....Continue
Should We Still Make Things?
Should We Still Make Things?
Dean Baker - March 11, 2009
I HAVE often thought that economists should be required to have a better grasp of simple arithmetic. It would prevent them from repeating many silly comments that pass for conventional wisdom, such as that the United States will no longer be a manufacturing country in the future.
Those who know arithmetic can quickly detect the absurdity of this assertion. The implication of course is that the United States will import nearly all of its manufactured goods. The problem is that unless we can find some country that will give us manufactured goods for free forever, we have to find some mechanism to pay for our imports.
The end of manufacturing school argues that we will pay by exporting services. This is where arithmetic is so useful. The volume of U.S. trade in goods is approximately three and half times the volume of its trade in services. If the deficit in goods trade were to continue to expand, we would need an incredible growth rate in both the volume and surplus of service trade and our surplus on this trade in order to get to anything close to balanced trade.
For example, if we lose half of our manufacturing over the next twenty years, and imported services continue to rise at the same pace as the past decade, then we would have to see exports of services rise at an average annual rate of almost 15 percent over the next two decades if we are to have balanced trade in the year 2028.
A 15 percent annual growth rate in service exports is approximately twice the rate of growth in service exports that we have seen over the last decade. It would take a very creative story to explain how we can anticipate the doubling of the growth rate of service exports on a sustained basis.
The story becomes even more fantastic on a closer examination of the services that we export. The largest single item is travel, meaning the money that foreign tourists spend in the United States. This item alone accounts for almost 20 percent of our service exports.
There is nothing wrong with tourism as an industry. However, the idea that U.S. workers are somehow too educated to be doing for manufacturing work, but instead will be making the beds, bussing the tables, and cleaning hotel toilets for foreign tourists is a bit laughable. Of course, with the right institutional structure (e.g. strong unions) these jobs can be well-paying jobs, but it is certainly not apparent that they require more skills than manufacturing.
The category “other transportation” accounts for another 10 percent of exported services. These are the fees for freight and port services that importers pay when they bring items into the United States. This service rises when our imports rise. It is effectively money taken out of our consumers’ pockets because it is included in the price of imported goods.
Royalty and licensing fees account for another 17 percent of our service exports. These are the fees that we get countries to tack onto the price of their products due to copyright and patent protection. It might become increasingly difficult to extract these fees as the spread of the Internet increasingly allows more movies, software, and recorded music to be instantly copied and exchanged at zero cost. It’s not clear that the rest of the world is prepared to use police-state tactics to collect revenue for Microsoft and Disney. The drug patent side of this equation is even more dubious. Developing countries are not eager to see their people die so that Pfizer and Merck can get high profits from their drug patents. This component of service exports is likely to come under considerable pressure in future years.
Another major category of service exports is financial services. This category accounted for approximately 10 percent of service exports in recent years. It is questionable whether this share can be maintained in the years ahead. Wall Street had been known as the gold standard of the world financial industry, with the best services and the highest professional standards. As a result of the scandals that have been exposed in the last year, Wall Street no longer has this standing in the world. After all, investors don’t have to come to New York and give their money to Bernie Madoff or Robert Rubin to be ripped off; they can be ripped off almost anywhere in the world. Perhaps the Obama administration will be able to implement reforms in the financial sector that will restore its integrity in the eye of world investors, but that will require serious work at this point.
Finally, there is the category of business and professional services, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of service exports. This is the area of real high-tech and high-end services. It includes computing and managerial consulting.
Rapid growth in this sector would mean more high-end jobs in the United States, but the notion that it could possibly expand enough to support a country without manufacturing is absurd on its face. First, even though it is a large share of service exports, it is only equal to about 0.8 percent of GDP. Even if quadrupled over the next two decades, it wouldn’t come close to covering the current trade deficit, to say nothing of the increase due to the loss of more manufacturing output.
More important, it is implausible to believe that the United States will be able to dominate this area in the decades ahead. The United States certainly has a head start in sophisticated computer technologies and in some management practices, but it is questionable how long this advantage can be maintained. There are already many world-class computer service companies in India and elsewhere in the developing world, and this number is increasing rapidly.
The computer and software engineers in these countries are every bit as qualified as their U.S. counterparts and are often prepared to work for less than one-tenth of U.S. wages. Furthermore, unlike cars and steel, which are very expensive to transport over long distances, it is costless to ship software anywhere in the world. Given the basic economics, it seems a safe bet that the United States will lose its share in this sector of the world economy. In twenty years it is quite likely that the United States will be a net importer of this category of service, unless of course wages in the United States adjust to world levels.
In short, the idea that the United States can survive without manufacturing is implausible: It implies an absurdly rapid rate of growth of service exports for which there is no historical precedent. Many economists and economic pundits asserted that house prices could keep rising forever in spite of the blatant absurdity of this position. The claim that the U.S. economy can be sustained without a sizable manufacturing sector is an equally absurd proposition.
Dean Baker - March 11, 2009
I HAVE often thought that economists should be required to have a better grasp of simple arithmetic. It would prevent them from repeating many silly comments that pass for conventional wisdom, such as that the United States will no longer be a manufacturing country in the future.
Those who know arithmetic can quickly detect the absurdity of this assertion. The implication of course is that the United States will import nearly all of its manufactured goods. The problem is that unless we can find some country that will give us manufactured goods for free forever, we have to find some mechanism to pay for our imports.
The end of manufacturing school argues that we will pay by exporting services. This is where arithmetic is so useful. The volume of U.S. trade in goods is approximately three and half times the volume of its trade in services. If the deficit in goods trade were to continue to expand, we would need an incredible growth rate in both the volume and surplus of service trade and our surplus on this trade in order to get to anything close to balanced trade.
For example, if we lose half of our manufacturing over the next twenty years, and imported services continue to rise at the same pace as the past decade, then we would have to see exports of services rise at an average annual rate of almost 15 percent over the next two decades if we are to have balanced trade in the year 2028.
A 15 percent annual growth rate in service exports is approximately twice the rate of growth in service exports that we have seen over the last decade. It would take a very creative story to explain how we can anticipate the doubling of the growth rate of service exports on a sustained basis.
The story becomes even more fantastic on a closer examination of the services that we export. The largest single item is travel, meaning the money that foreign tourists spend in the United States. This item alone accounts for almost 20 percent of our service exports.
There is nothing wrong with tourism as an industry. However, the idea that U.S. workers are somehow too educated to be doing for manufacturing work, but instead will be making the beds, bussing the tables, and cleaning hotel toilets for foreign tourists is a bit laughable. Of course, with the right institutional structure (e.g. strong unions) these jobs can be well-paying jobs, but it is certainly not apparent that they require more skills than manufacturing.
The category “other transportation” accounts for another 10 percent of exported services. These are the fees for freight and port services that importers pay when they bring items into the United States. This service rises when our imports rise. It is effectively money taken out of our consumers’ pockets because it is included in the price of imported goods.
Royalty and licensing fees account for another 17 percent of our service exports. These are the fees that we get countries to tack onto the price of their products due to copyright and patent protection. It might become increasingly difficult to extract these fees as the spread of the Internet increasingly allows more movies, software, and recorded music to be instantly copied and exchanged at zero cost. It’s not clear that the rest of the world is prepared to use police-state tactics to collect revenue for Microsoft and Disney. The drug patent side of this equation is even more dubious. Developing countries are not eager to see their people die so that Pfizer and Merck can get high profits from their drug patents. This component of service exports is likely to come under considerable pressure in future years.
Another major category of service exports is financial services. This category accounted for approximately 10 percent of service exports in recent years. It is questionable whether this share can be maintained in the years ahead. Wall Street had been known as the gold standard of the world financial industry, with the best services and the highest professional standards. As a result of the scandals that have been exposed in the last year, Wall Street no longer has this standing in the world. After all, investors don’t have to come to New York and give their money to Bernie Madoff or Robert Rubin to be ripped off; they can be ripped off almost anywhere in the world. Perhaps the Obama administration will be able to implement reforms in the financial sector that will restore its integrity in the eye of world investors, but that will require serious work at this point.
Finally, there is the category of business and professional services, which accounts for roughly 20 percent of service exports. This is the area of real high-tech and high-end services. It includes computing and managerial consulting.
Rapid growth in this sector would mean more high-end jobs in the United States, but the notion that it could possibly expand enough to support a country without manufacturing is absurd on its face. First, even though it is a large share of service exports, it is only equal to about 0.8 percent of GDP. Even if quadrupled over the next two decades, it wouldn’t come close to covering the current trade deficit, to say nothing of the increase due to the loss of more manufacturing output.
More important, it is implausible to believe that the United States will be able to dominate this area in the decades ahead. The United States certainly has a head start in sophisticated computer technologies and in some management practices, but it is questionable how long this advantage can be maintained. There are already many world-class computer service companies in India and elsewhere in the developing world, and this number is increasing rapidly.
The computer and software engineers in these countries are every bit as qualified as their U.S. counterparts and are often prepared to work for less than one-tenth of U.S. wages. Furthermore, unlike cars and steel, which are very expensive to transport over long distances, it is costless to ship software anywhere in the world. Given the basic economics, it seems a safe bet that the United States will lose its share in this sector of the world economy. In twenty years it is quite likely that the United States will be a net importer of this category of service, unless of course wages in the United States adjust to world levels.
In short, the idea that the United States can survive without manufacturing is implausible: It implies an absurdly rapid rate of growth of service exports for which there is no historical precedent. Many economists and economic pundits asserted that house prices could keep rising forever in spite of the blatant absurdity of this position. The claim that the U.S. economy can be sustained without a sizable manufacturing sector is an equally absurd proposition.
E BOOKS AND THREE D
Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold
By BRAD STONE and MOTOKO RICH
IGNORING A PRODUCT TO DEATH.
Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?
ONLY WHEN WE TRULY PROMOTE IT. STILL NOT SEEN IN ANY TV DRAMAS, AND CERTAINLY NOT ADVERTISED. PUBLISHERS ARE EFFECTIVELYY...BLAH BLAH, I REFUSE TO EXPLAIN THIS. FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.
For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. YES CONSUMERS IGNORED IT. IT WASN'T IN A SINGLE STORE. NOWHERE. NOBODY KNEW ABOUT IT. PUBLISHERS MADE SURE PEOPLE KEPT BUYING BOOKS.. OH, NO, NOT THE PROFIT HUNGRY CAPITALISTS HOLDING BACK SUPERIOR PRODUCTS...
THAT IS A LIE. ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE. HUGE NUMBER OF BOOKS AVAILABLE, AT HALF PRICE OR BETTER. IT WAS SIMPLY NOT PROMOTED, WHICH ALMOST ALWAYS ENDS A PRODUCTS LIFE.. WHY WOULD ANYONE LIE FOR NO REASON?
But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.
The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.
The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season.
ANOTHER LIE. THE SONY ADVERTISING WAS NOT INTENSE. NOT ON TV AT ALL. INTENSE?? AND ONLY THE AMAZON PRODUCT ALLOWS FOR DOWNLOADING WITHOUT A COMPUTER. ANOTHER READIER DID THAT AS WELL, BUT THEY TOOK THAT FEATURE AWAY. SO NOBODEY UNDERSTANDS THE MYSTERY OF INFERIOR PRODUCTS, OR AT LEAST, EVERYBODY THINKS THERE IS NO MYSTERY OR WRONGDOING. BUT, WELL, SORRY. THAT IS JUST ME TRYING TO HAVE AN ORIGINAL IDEA.
The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device. STILL WAITING FOR AN AD IN MAGAZINES OR TELEVISION.
“The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division. “But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.”
Sony’s efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon’s. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.
THE ODD THING IS YOU CAN'T BUY THE KINDLE AT A STORE, WHICH COULD HELP SALES. THEY DON'T WANT TO UPSET THEIR PUBLISHING INTERESTS. BACK TO KARL MARX.
The company’s latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400. FIFTY BUCKS MORE THAN THE KINDLE. WHY BUY IT.
and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Mr. Haber said Sony’s sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in the Target, Borders and Sam’s Club chains. WHAT?? TARGET. I DON'T BELIEVE IT. I WAS WRONG. GOOD. I WISH I WERE WRONG MORE OFTEN ABOUT HOW BADLY MANUFACTURERS FUCK UP.
OH, THAT'S SONY. SECOND RATE PRODUCT. AND COSTS MORE
He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.
It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts’ estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.
Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Mr. Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.
OF COURSE. THROW AWAY YOUR READING GLASSES.
So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.
Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.
The Kindle version of the book, which can be downloaded by the device itself through its wireless modem, costs $9.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. The Reader version costs $11.99 from Sony’s e-book library, accessible from an Internet-connected computer.
Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalog, their agents say.
“E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.
Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.
BORING.
At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company’s books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.
Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.
Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple’s do-it-all gadget, the iPhone.
Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin.
All of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys.
Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.
Meanwhile, the quest to build the perfect e-book reader continues. Amazon and Sony are expected to introduce new versions of their readers in 2009. Adherents expect the new Kindle will have a sleeker design and a better microprocessor, allowing snappier page-turning.
Mr. Haber of Sony said future versions of the Reader will have wireless capability, a feature that has helped make the Kindle so appealing. This means that the device does not have to be plugged into a computer to download books, newspapers and magazines.
Other competitors are on the way. Investors have put more than $200 million into Plastic Logic, a company in Mountain View, Calif. The company says that next year it will begin testing a flexible 8.5-by-11-inch reading device that is thinner and lighter than existing ones. Plastic Logic plans to begin selling it in 2010.
Along the same lines, Polymer Vision, based in the Netherlands, demonstrated a device the size of a BlackBerry that has a five-inch rolled-up screen that can be unfurled for reading. There are also less ambitious but cheaper readers on the market or expected soon, including the eSlick Reader from Foxit Software, arriving next month at an introductory price of $230.
E Ink, the company in Cambridge, Mass., that has developed the screen technology for many of these companies, says it is testing color screens and hopes to introduce them by 2010.
Many book lovers are quite happy with today’s devices. MaryAnn van Hengel, 51, a graphic designer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., once railed against e-readers at a meeting of her book club. But she embraced the Kindle her husband gave her this fall shortly after Ms. Winfrey endorsed it.
Ms. Van Hengel now has several books on the device, including a Nora Roberts novel and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” She said the Kindle had spurred her to buy more books than she normally would in print.
“I may be shy bringing the Kindle to the book club because so many of the women were so against the technology, and I said I was too,” Ms. Van Hengel said. “And here I am in love with it.
AGAINST THE TECHNOLOGY??? WHY. THAT'S STUPID. WHY BE AGAINST SOMETHING THAT CAN'T DO ANY HARM. WHAT HARM DID THEY SEE. BOOKS FOR LESS, AND YOU COULD TRAVEL, CARRY SIX OR SEVEN OR 200 BOOKS WITH NO BULK.
WHERE IS THE HARM.
By BRAD STONE and MOTOKO RICH
IGNORING A PRODUCT TO DEATH.
Could book lovers finally be willing to switch from paper to pixels?
ONLY WHEN WE TRULY PROMOTE IT. STILL NOT SEEN IN ANY TV DRAMAS, AND CERTAINLY NOT ADVERTISED. PUBLISHERS ARE EFFECTIVELYY...BLAH BLAH, I REFUSE TO EXPLAIN THIS. FIGURE IT OUT YOURSELF.
For a decade, consumers mostly ignored electronic book devices, which were often hard to use and offered few popular items to read. YES CONSUMERS IGNORED IT. IT WASN'T IN A SINGLE STORE. NOWHERE. NOBODY KNEW ABOUT IT. PUBLISHERS MADE SURE PEOPLE KEPT BUYING BOOKS.. OH, NO, NOT THE PROFIT HUNGRY CAPITALISTS HOLDING BACK SUPERIOR PRODUCTS...
THAT IS A LIE. ABSOLUTELY UNTRUE. HUGE NUMBER OF BOOKS AVAILABLE, AT HALF PRICE OR BETTER. IT WAS SIMPLY NOT PROMOTED, WHICH ALMOST ALWAYS ENDS A PRODUCTS LIFE.. WHY WOULD ANYONE LIE FOR NO REASON?
But this year, in part because of the popularity of Amazon.com’s wireless Kindle device, the e-book has started to take hold.
The $359 Kindle, which is slim, white and about the size of a trade paperback, was introduced a year ago. Although Amazon will not disclose sales figures, the Kindle has at least lived up to its name by creating broad interest in electronic books. Now it is out of stock and unavailable until February. Analysts credit Oprah Winfrey, who praised the Kindle on her show in October, and blame Amazon for poor holiday planning.
The shortage is providing an opening for Sony, which embarked on an intense publicity campaign for its Reader device during the gift-buying season.
ANOTHER LIE. THE SONY ADVERTISING WAS NOT INTENSE. NOT ON TV AT ALL. INTENSE?? AND ONLY THE AMAZON PRODUCT ALLOWS FOR DOWNLOADING WITHOUT A COMPUTER. ANOTHER READIER DID THAT AS WELL, BUT THEY TOOK THAT FEATURE AWAY. SO NOBODEY UNDERSTANDS THE MYSTERY OF INFERIOR PRODUCTS, OR AT LEAST, EVERYBODY THINKS THERE IS NO MYSTERY OR WRONGDOING. BUT, WELL, SORRY. THAT IS JUST ME TRYING TO HAVE AN ORIGINAL IDEA.
The stepped-up competition may represent a coming of age for the entire idea of reading longer texts on a portable digital device. STILL WAITING FOR AN AD IN MAGAZINES OR TELEVISION.
“The perception is that e-books have been around for 10 years and haven’t done anything,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony’s digital reading division. “But it’s happening now. This is really starting to take off.”
Sony’s efforts have been overshadowed by Amazon’s. But this month it began a promotional blitz in airports, train stations and bookstores, with the ambitious goal of personally demonstrating the Reader to two million people by the end of the year.
THE ODD THING IS YOU CAN'T BUY THE KINDLE AT A STORE, WHICH COULD HELP SALES. THEY DON'T WANT TO UPSET THEIR PUBLISHING INTERESTS. BACK TO KARL MARX.
The company’s latest model, the Reader 700, is a $400. FIFTY BUCKS MORE THAN THE KINDLE. WHY BUY IT.
and a touch screen that allows users to annotate what they are reading. Mr. Haber said Sony’s sales had tripled this holiday season over last, in part because the device is now available in the Target, Borders and Sam’s Club chains. WHAT?? TARGET. I DON'T BELIEVE IT. I WAS WRONG. GOOD. I WISH I WERE WRONG MORE OFTEN ABOUT HOW BADLY MANUFACTURERS FUCK UP.
OH, THAT'S SONY. SECOND RATE PRODUCT. AND COSTS MORE
He said Sony had sold more than 300,000 devices since the debut of the original Reader in 2006.
It is difficult to quantify the success of the Kindle, since Amazon will not disclose how many it has sold and analysts’ estimates vary widely. Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company, said he believed Amazon had sold as many as 260,000 units through the beginning of October, before Ms. Winfrey’s endorsement. Others say the number could be as high as a million.
Many Kindle buyers appear to be outside the usual gadget-hound demographic. Almost as many women as men are buying it, Mr. Hildick-Smith said, and the device is most popular among 55- to 64-year-olds.
OF COURSE. THROW AWAY YOUR READING GLASSES.
So far, publishers like HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster say that sales of e-books for any device — including simple laptop downloads — constitute less than 1 percent of total book sales. But there are signs of momentum. The publishers say sales of e-books have tripled or quadrupled in the last year.
Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.
The Kindle version of the book, which can be downloaded by the device itself through its wireless modem, costs $9.99 in the Amazon Kindle store. The Reader version costs $11.99 from Sony’s e-book library, accessible from an Internet-connected computer.
Even authors who were once wary of selling their work in bits and bytes are coming around. After some initial hesitation, authors like Danielle Steel and John Grisham are soon expected to add their titles to the e-book catalog, their agents say.
“E-books will become the go-to-first format for an ever-expanding group of readers who are newly discovering how much they enjoy reading books on a screen,” said Markus Dohle, chief executive of Random House, the world’s largest publisher of consumer books.
Nobody knows how much consumer habits will shift. Some of the most committed bibliophiles maintain an almost fetishistic devotion to the physical book. But the technology may have more appeal for particular kinds of people, like those who are the heaviest readers.
BORING.
At Harlequin Enterprises, the Toronto-based publisher of bodice-ripping romances, Malle Vallik, director for digital content and interactivity, said she expected sales of digital versions of the company’s books someday to match or potentially outstrip sales in print.
Harlequin, which publishes 120 books a month, makes all of its new titles available digitally, and has even started publishing digital-only short stories that it sells for $2.99 each, including an erotica collection called Spice Briefs.
Perhaps the most overlooked boost to e-books this year — and a challenge to some of the standard thinking about them — came from Apple’s do-it-all gadget, the iPhone.
Several e-book-reading programs have been created for the device, and at least two of them, Stanza from LexCycle and the eReader from Fictionwise, have been downloaded more than 600,000 times. Another company, Scroll Motion, announced this week that it would begin selling e-books for the iPhone from major publishers like Simon & Schuster, Random House and Penguin.
All of these companies say they are now tailoring their software for other kinds of smartphones, including BlackBerrys.
Publishers say these iPhone applications are already starting to generate nearly as many digital book sales as the Sony Reader, though they still trail sales of books in the Kindle format.
Meanwhile, the quest to build the perfect e-book reader continues. Amazon and Sony are expected to introduce new versions of their readers in 2009. Adherents expect the new Kindle will have a sleeker design and a better microprocessor, allowing snappier page-turning.
Mr. Haber of Sony said future versions of the Reader will have wireless capability, a feature that has helped make the Kindle so appealing. This means that the device does not have to be plugged into a computer to download books, newspapers and magazines.
Other competitors are on the way. Investors have put more than $200 million into Plastic Logic, a company in Mountain View, Calif. The company says that next year it will begin testing a flexible 8.5-by-11-inch reading device that is thinner and lighter than existing ones. Plastic Logic plans to begin selling it in 2010.
Along the same lines, Polymer Vision, based in the Netherlands, demonstrated a device the size of a BlackBerry that has a five-inch rolled-up screen that can be unfurled for reading. There are also less ambitious but cheaper readers on the market or expected soon, including the eSlick Reader from Foxit Software, arriving next month at an introductory price of $230.
E Ink, the company in Cambridge, Mass., that has developed the screen technology for many of these companies, says it is testing color screens and hopes to introduce them by 2010.
Many book lovers are quite happy with today’s devices. MaryAnn van Hengel, 51, a graphic designer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., once railed against e-readers at a meeting of her book club. But she embraced the Kindle her husband gave her this fall shortly after Ms. Winfrey endorsed it.
Ms. Van Hengel now has several books on the device, including a Nora Roberts novel and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “Team of Rivals.” She said the Kindle had spurred her to buy more books than she normally would in print.
“I may be shy bringing the Kindle to the book club because so many of the women were so against the technology, and I said I was too,” Ms. Van Hengel said. “And here I am in love with it.
AGAINST THE TECHNOLOGY??? WHY. THAT'S STUPID. WHY BE AGAINST SOMETHING THAT CAN'T DO ANY HARM. WHAT HARM DID THEY SEE. BOOKS FOR LESS, AND YOU COULD TRAVEL, CARRY SIX OR SEVEN OR 200 BOOKS WITH NO BULK.
WHERE IS THE HARM.
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