<p>Her insistence on her own foreign policy? You mean the Syria smear? That’s been debunked. If you mean the withdrawal bill, that’s well within Congress’ role, and someone has to step up to be the adults.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, I don’t remember Murtha being indicted for anything. Not like the corrupt crew that just left office. If you mean Abscam, that was 30 years ago. Back in the days when Karl Rove was forging campaign materials for the other side to make them look bad.</p>
<p>Murtha is a fine man who has proposed some very common sense things for our troops…like that they be ready to go into combat before they go into combat. He fought ably to defend this country and is hardly unworthy of support. </p>
<p>The Del Monte thing was another smear attempt that backfired. Del Monte didn’t even lobby Pelosi over the Samoan minimum wage law. Del Monte in the past five years has given money to Republicans only. </p>
<p>In fact, before it occured to them to smear Pelosi over it, conservatives were against breaking with historical precedent and established economic policy in American Samoa: </p>
<p>
</code></pre>
<p>No smoking gun here, regardless of what Fox may be pushing. Corruption, when only Republicans make any money? And when liberals are supporting the same policies that conservatives do?</p>
<p>“That’s what the Hee-Haw style rednecks down here say. They also say “bidness” for business. Makes a person sound real intelligent. You certainly don’t see Dem’s calling Republicans “Re-pubes” do you? Have some class.”</p>
<p>nice, curm. I’ve never been anything but respectful, and as you know, I live in NYC. I have no personal knowledge of rednecks. I happen to be in hour 14 at work today and am just too darn tired to hold the shift key or type extra strokes. And you know what? I still don’t understand the perjorative here.</p>
<p>“You mean the Syria smear? That’s been debunked”</p>
<p>Actually, it hasn’t. But, anyway, I’m too tired to fight and brief on issues tonight. I am, however, as entitled to my opinion as you are. That’s my personal objection to so many liberals, although I don’t know you well enough to lump you in there, the inability to accept that others can have a point of view that doesn’t match theirs.</p>
<p>This issue isn’t that your opinion doesn’t match mine. It’s that it doesn’t match reality.</p>
<p>Reality? The trip was bipartisan. Additionally, Republicans had just been in Syria that same week on a similar trip. </p>
<p>More reality? Pelosi was briefed by the State Department prior to the trip; State Department officials were in every meeting that she was. State Department officials report not one single instance of her going off the State Department’s message.</p>
<p>More reality? Gingrich did much, much worse things while Clinton was in office, including telling countries to ignore the White House completely and deal only with Congress.</p>
<p>Pelosi delivering the State Department’s message, chapter and verse, in their presence, is hardly conducting one’s own foreign policy, by any objective measure.</p>
<p>“Gingrich did much, much worse things to conduct his own foreign policy while Clinton was in office, including telling countries to ignore the White House and deal only with Congress.”</p>
<p>So you find that ok. I don’t. That’s cool. We don’t have to agree. I have a very firm grip on reality, I just don’t share your opinion of that reality. See the difference? Anyway, I may finally get out of here shortly, so have a lovely evening.</p>
<p>I don’t find what Gingrich did acceptable, I’m not sure how you got that from my post.</p>
<p>The facts show that Pelosi didn’t do what the neocons are attempting to smear her with. One can choose to believe those smears, certainly, but it won’t make them true.</p>
<p>The sexy lie is always more enticing that the bland ole truth, isn’t it?</p>
<p>The rich may not cause poverty, but anyone can tell you that scarcity means that wealth disparities are likely to be a bad thing. That, and while $1/day poverty has decreased over time, $2/day poverty has skyrocketed.</p>
<p>The question, at least from an economic point of view (I won’t get into the ethics), is whether or not high consumption by the wealthiest necessarily means that the poorest cannot consume at a necessary level. Most neo-classical economists don’t seem to disagree on this one: a highly bowed Lorenz curve is bad-- and the US’s and UK’s and Japan’s are getting more bowed. </p>
<p>But are the “rich” at fault? Maybe not. Maybe. But we can’t throw it out as simply “liberal” bleeding heart leftism.</p>
<p>We have a society - an economic system, everything - that seems to mandate a permanent underclass. Everyone can’t be rich. You may see it as “entitlement”, I see it as a civilized society taking reasonable steps to protect their most vulnerable citizens. We have children dying of poverty. In 2007 in the United States of America I open the paper and see the story of a child who died as the result of tooth decay spreading to his brain, because he did not have access to a dentist because his family didn’t have insurance. Sorry, but this is unacceptable. There is no justification for that, while people all over this country live in excess. Not to mention that once he did get sick enough to warrant care, your taxes paid about a thousand times in serious emergency care than he would have needed had the problem been taken care of in routine care. If people in general would look around and do something, then government programs might not have to pick up the slack, but sadly the “entitlement” is pervasive in the upper class too. Because I was born with money, supposedly I have the right to look down upon people who “brought it on themselves”, never mind if I was born in poverty all evidence points to the conclusion that I would remain trapped in that cycle. </p>
<p>Reform is not easy. There’s no magic solution here. I’m not saying that randomly pouring money into random social programs is the answer. It isn’t, because ours are at this point poorly equipped and designed (see above: spending more on emergency care than we would on routine care). But ignoring the problem really isn’t helping either. There are a lot of societal problems that result from poverty, and I think it’s safe to conclude that these things can be minimized in certain situations. I am tired of seeing kids who grew up with money (I did too, but I’m realistic about it) turn a blind eye to poverty because they perceive these people as inferior and at fault for their situation. These are kids who haven’t worked a day in their life and will always have the middle to upper class connections that make life so much easier, no matter what happens. The ability to turn away from gross inequities in society is not something I can really understand. </p>
<p>Sadly, our society has changed. I don’t think people really think about it. What worked a couple decades ago doesn’t work today. Social institutions, churches and other religious communities, and private citizens used to pick up more slack in order to feed the hungry, take care of the poor. The last decade or two has seen the rise of mega churches designed to make a profit and increasing distrust within communities, a security dilemma, if you will, that makes everyone less safe. I feel that pieces are no longer being picked up as well and problems have grown nearly unmanageable for those institutions still trying to help (and there are many, don’t get me wrong, but like I said, there is just too much to do). The problem is no longer being managed. I suppose you could also say that as the rich grew richer, and the poor poorer, some segregation has occurred where poverty is concentrated in pockets, maybe making the problem less manageable than if it were dispersed throughout various communities. The answers aren’t very easy. But I don’t like to see them ignored. BTW I don’t think either side really does these problems justice. I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I’m not a politician and I don’t have to win any elections, so a political party makes little practical sense. It is probably not surprising though, that I find it difficult to justify our current administration. I like Barack Obama though. Someone has to win anyway. Probably won’t be him but right now I can pretend.</p>
<p>For those of you who say that the Speaker violated the Logan Act:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I also pulled the original excerpt from the Digest, so if you’d like a JPEG format of it (just to verify what I’m saying), please feel free to PM me.</p>
<p>Actually, most economists agree that the bowing of the Lorenz curve (widening gap between rich and poor) is a result of the changing economy, not social institutions. While some political scientists like Robert Putnam decry the deterioration of American social capital, it seems that everyone can agree that it’s in large part globalization and the dissemination of the industrial value chain throughout the world to countries with comparative advantages that has really exacerbated the problem.</p>
<p>In other words, where in 1960 you had everything done in one country, today it’s done in 15. </p>
<p>Now, here’s the interesting part: in the US, per capita PPP has gone up, but real wages have gone down for most lower-middle class and “blue-collar” workers. Those of us with a college/graduate education will have more buying power than the previous generation. High school grads? Well, let’s just say that they’re now competing against a worker in Malaysia who will do the same thing for maybe a tenth of the cost.</p>
<p>But yes, social capital deterioration is a problem if you listen to Putnam and his advocates. I tend to worry about it myself, but I disagree with him on the notion that electronic social capital is somehow inferior.</p>
<p>UCLAri - Is the same thing happening in Europe? Because over the past 30 years I’ve seen lots of subtle changes in legal philosophy in this country, and echoed in legal doctrine followed in court, which most people wouldn’t know about (or recognize the significance of even if they did) which work subtly but inexorably to the advantage of the economically powerful and against the poor and middle class. Is “the economy” independent of “social institutions”? Or are changes in the economy part and parcel of the social institutions and underlying values and implicit assumptions in which “the economy” operates?</p>
<p>Yes, the gap between rich and poor has widened in almost every major industrialized country. Furthermore, we have seen (to a lesser extent, perhaps) the degrading of social capital in Europe, the UK, and Japan as well. </p>
<p>It’s interesting what different schools of thought blame for this. Putnam “believes the “movement of women into the workforce” (par. 36), the “re-potting hypothesis” (par. 37) and other demographic changes have made little impact on the number of individuals engaging in civic associations. Instead, he looks to the technological “individualizing” (par. 39) of our leisure time via television, Internet and eventually “virtual reality helmets””</p>
<p>Fu.kuyama, on the other hand, seems to disagree. So do I. With all due respect to Putnam, the quality of social capital online is quite robust-- I suspect he just doesn’t partake in it.</p>
<p>Oh, before I go to bed, here’s a neat little chart from The Economist that demonstrates how Japan, once considered a bulwark of income equality, has seen an increasingly large GINI coefficient:</p>
<p>What people miss about the conservative vs. liberal divide is that it’s no longer relevent. The relevent divide is neoconservatives against the rest of us, liberal and conservative.</p>
<p>I don’t think any true liberal or any true conservative would support this kind of thing:</p>
<p>PERINO: The Congress does not have oversight over the White House. [Press briefing, 3/26/07]</p>
<p>PERINO: We understand that the Congress has a role to play, which is oversight over the executive branch.[Press briefing, 4/27/07]</p>
<p>George W. Bush: “Congress’s failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines. Others could see their loved ones headed back to war sooner than anticipated. This is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to me, it’s unacceptable to our veterans, it’s unacceptable to our military families, and it’s unacceptable to many in this country.”
[Speech to American Legion, 4/10/07]</p>
<p>Less than 24 hours later, the administration had to admit that it already had planned to do this thing that was so “unacceptable” no matter what Congress did…they were simply hoping to conceal their plans a while longer.</p>
<p>If our politicians got caught in such blatent contradictions, deep down, liberal or conservative, we’d know it was wrong. But when a neocon politician does it, the neocons are only mad that the conservatives and liberals didn’t fall for it.</p>
<p>Time for conservatives to take back their brand.</p>
<p>…perhap I am not old-school enough to subscribe to the latter-day truism that the domatic enemy of my dogmatic enemy is necessarily my dogmatic friend. </p>
<p>The people two standard deviations away from the mean are very different from the rest of us, whatever our differences. And the neocons are just <em>out there.</em></p>
<p>Beyond which, the neocons created the divide by treating us both with such open contempt.</p>
<p>By DIG MEDIA | Posted Friday, April 27, 2007 2:30 PM MT
The thing I like best about being a liberal is that I don’t have to believe the lies of conservatives. I don’t have to pretend that men and women are exactly the same, but I do want them to have equal protection under the law. I don’t have to declare that our failed and oppressive administration is the best America has to offer.</p>
<p>Nor do I have to say that only Republican Christians are special or that the rich need to get richer or that only MY religion is the path to God. I don’t have to claim that a bad person like Ann Coulter is a good human being or that a good person like John Edwards is a f****t. I don’t have to pretend that a Crusade against Islam is protecting our way of life.</p>
<p>Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. Politics based on compassion and humanity will, by nature, be rejected by those who could care less about anyone other than themselves. All nations on this small, fragile planet are intimately intertwined, and so liberals, with this wider view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of not being nationalistic enough. It’s not really nice, you know, to describe things as they should be…</p>
<p>The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I can always lie. I can say that men are more capable than women and all my friends agree. I can righteously condemn failed or oppressive cultures and completely ignore the failings and oppression of my own.</p>
<p>I can believe that I am special or that I really deserve the wealth I inherited or that I am a moral person even when I commit adultery or accept bribes. I can ignore the hypocrisy of a buffoon like Rush Limbaugh and defend the incompetence of Alberto Gonzales. I can admire Pat Robertson.</p>
<p>Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, something I do not understand and will not embrace. Lying and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their self-serving view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of being delusional. It’s not really to our advantage, you know, to describe things as they are.</p>
![http://www.economist.com/images/20060617/CAS860.gif]Chart[/url](http://www.economist.com/images/20060617/CAS860.gif%5DChart%5B/url){kind=link}
