November, 2005 archive
Jimmy Carter on Faith, Fundamentalism, and Freedom 0
President Jimmy Carter has a new book, Our Endangered Values, in which (according to the review from Publisher’s Weekly quoted at the preceding link), he criticizes
Christian fundamentalists for their “rigidity, domination and exclusion,” (and) he suggests that their open hostility toward a range of sinners (including homosexuals and the federal judiciary) runs counter to America’s legacy of democratic freedom. Carter speaks eloquently of how his own faith has shaped his moral vision and of how he has struggled to reconcile his own values with the Southern Baptist church’s transformation under increasingly conservative leadership.
He was interviewed today on Morning Edition, and I think he will be on Fresh Air for a more in-depth interview soon:
I commend this interview to your attention, especially if you are one who thinks that “Christian Fundamentalist,” “Born Again,” and “Right-Wing Theocratic Republican” are synonyms.
Heck, I might even buy the book. Then it can join the 30 or so other unread books I have in my library and the half-dozen or so Project Gutenberg E-Texts I have on my HDD.
My Little Gas Price Survey, 11/4/2005, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books Edition 0
I went to Pine View Farm today to visit my mother.
Gas prices on the Eastern Shore of Virginia were at $2.19. There were a couple of renegades at $2.17, but everyone else was $2.19.
Gas prices in Dover, Del., were pretty uniformally $2.13, though there were a couple of $2.15s.
My route did not take me by any gas stations in My Little Corner of Upper Delaware.
Be Careful When You Click “OK” 2
I’ve been reading about rootkits on alt.comp.virus for several months now.
From NPR’s Morning Edition:
More about rootkits.
Valerie Plame, the CIA, and William F. Buckley, Jr. 0
Mr. Buckley (one of the few conservative intellectuals whom I have always respected for his intellectual rigor and consistency) seems to have little sympathy for anyone who would disclose the identity of a covert agent.
Curing the Deficit 2
Robert J. Samuelson, never one to be accused of being liberal, or, in some cases, of being moderate, has a recipe for curing the deficit:
First, you’d repeal the Medicare drug benefit, scheduled to take effect in 2006. For the next five years (2006-2010), the savings would total about $300 billion, estimates the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Preserving an existing drug benefit for low-income recipients might reduce savings by 5 percent.
Second, you’d repeal a tax cut scheduled for 2006 that would benefit mainly people in the top brackets (taxable incomes exceeding $182,800 and $326,450 for couples in 2005). These groups have already received big tax cuts; the new reductions involve repealing limits on deductions and personal exemptions. The 2006-2010 savings: about $30 billion, estimates the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.
Third, you’d eliminate all “earmarks” in the recent highway bill. These are projects targeted by congressmen and senators for their own districts. The highway bill contained $24 billion in earmarks, says Citizens Against Government Waste, a watchdog group.
Makes sense to me. As one nearing retirement age, I could easily support each of these proposals. Even the Medicare drug benefit (that reminds me: I forgot to take my blood pressure medicine today; better stop reading the news) was ill-conceived, ill-enacted, and, with its provision that the government could not negotiate drug prices, more a gift to Big Pharma than a benefit to the needy.
And I must note that all of the legislation he would undo was enacted under the current Federal Administration and the current Republican Congress. None of it was initiated by the so-called “tax and spend” liberals. It all resulted from the “spend and spend” conservatives.
Call It What It Is 2
I read this story earlier today.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The story goes on to say
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
and later
“We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy,” said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. “Everything was very reactive. That’s how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don’t say, ‘What are we going to do with them afterwards?’ “
Read the story.
Call it what it is.
We, citizens of the United States, are becoming the enemy under guise of protecting ourselves.
The current Federal Administration has reduced this country to running concentration camps.
I feel sick.
My Little Gas Price Survey, 11/2/2005 0
Still dropping in my little corner of Delaware:
Claymont, Del., Exxon, $2.21.
Claymont, Del., Sunoco $2.23.
Claymont, Del., Wawa, $2.15.
Claymont, Del, BP, $2.20.
Claymont, Del, Getty, $2.19.
Claymont, Del, Cumberland Farms, $2.17.
Claymont, Del., Gulf, $2.29.
Holly Oak, Del., Mobil, $2.21.
Philly Newspapers on the Block? 1
According the Blinq, the Philadephia Newspapers (the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Daily News) may be up for sale. Apparently the huge profit margin of Knight-Ridder, the current owner of the papers, is not enough for them.
I have read the Inquirer for years. It has had its ups and downs, like any enterprise, but it ranks among the ten best papers in the country, as far as I am concerned–and, as a traveling man, I read papers from all over the country; wherever I go, I read the local rag, because it’s always more interesting than USA Today, the MacDonald’s of Newspapers.
It seems, however, that providing a quality product and making a profit is no longer the issue. The issue is making some ginormous profit that meets Wall Street’s “expectations,” whatever that means, and quality be damned.
