I live in St. Louis County, Missouri, with my husband the genuine conservative (not wingnut) and hawk. My husband thinks strongly that New Orleans should never have gotten to be more than 300,000 people.
Book Review: "Shaku Maku: On The Ground In Occupied Baghdad"
Phil Borden, "Shaku Maku: On The Ground In Occupied Baghdad". Denver, CO: Outskirts Press, 2008.
Phil Borden is a relative by marriage from Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, a PhD in history of ideas, and an expert in small business development including women-owned businesses. In 2006, he was asked to save an economic development contract related to setting up the Baghdad Private Business Center for the Department of State. After the contract was finished, he visited Baghdad twice more to try to continue helping the brave members of his Board, all but two of whom had moved to Amman. His experiences included both the surge and the pre-surge. While in Baghdad, he wrote a weekly email report for all the people he knew who were worried sick about him. This report, a dry series of observations on daily life in the Red Zone, grew far beyond Phil's immediate circle and was even posted under other people's names. His wife got him to publish the reports as a book, combined with excerpts from letters to individual people and some material to introduce the chapters. (Outskirts Press is a self-publishing outfit as one can find out with The Google.) I am happy to use Daily Kos, the biggest bullhorn I have, to promote this book.
I am writing this diary essentially to get Devilstower's attention, because his diary of yesterday has probably died. This is why it has not been crossposted elsewhere.
DT wrote in his post that the Catholic Church having the "means of salvation" and the other churches being merely "ecclesial communities" means that non-Catholic Christians are going to hell. I wrote that this didn't make sense to me, because in my limited understanding faith in JC is the source of salvation, and the means of salvation above all others. (As anyone who knows me, or looks at my blogroll, knows, I don't really have a dog in this...) The NYT today wrote about this document today. I will discuss the two significant paragraphs on the flip.
I am writing this diary to encourage Kossacks to read the front-page essay in Harper's by Jeff Sharlet. The view advanced in the essay differs in illuminating ways from that which might be gleaned from reading Frederick Clarkson diaries. In particular Sharlet believes that Rushdoony is most important for proposing the view that there is a Christian view of history which promotes the right-wing causes of capitalism being Christian and the importance of Christians being prepared for war. Rushdoony is also important because Francis Schaeffer was his student (I didn't know this before).
Sharlet starts the article with a bang: we cannot assume that fundamentalists are the fundamentalists of the past. For two points, they are middle class and not willing to believe that heterosexual sex is intrinsically sinful. The view of history being peddled by influential fundamentalist sources is a clue to the relationship between fundamentalists and secular society. Please continue on the flip.
In wclathe's diary a few days ago I posted a very long comment near the end saying that St. Louis was a racist town. I apologize if anyone was offended. My husband has experienced diversity training at what we consider to be a highly non-racist workplace and confirms that you should never call a person a racist directly, much less an entire city or even yourself. I notice that MLK did not use this sort of language but kept the focus on the positive things which he and his followers wanted to accomplish, even when the situation was very difficult. As shanikka and AlisoninSeattle pointed out, racial mistrust can be highly justified and not come up to the level of racism, where you believe the group you mistrust is naturally inferior to you. (This came up when my husband asked me if I had been troll-rated lately and I said, "I was surprised I was not troll-rated for this one comment.")
As I type, the last four meaningful games are about to begin. Philadelphia begins to play at Washington with Jon Lieber vs. Hector Carrasco, and Chicago begins to play at Cleveland. An hour later we will have the Yankees at the Red Sox with Schilling vs. Mussina, and Chicago vs. Houston. Of course, today is the last regular season game at Busch Stadium. The Cardinals are attempting to win their 100th game vs. helpless Cincinnati :) The wild-card positions are at stake today. With an Indians win and a Red Sox loss, there will be a tie for that wild-card spot; with a Phillies win and an Astros loss, there will be a tie for that wild-card spot. Please use this diary for your baseball-related comments. Thank you.
This post was originally meant to go on my pathetic little blog as a sign of aggravation with right-wingers who know one leftist, Michael Moore. I did not think that this had to go on Daily Kos, where we have the posts of AGG to remember and set us all right. But I had a conversation with Another Family Member, Who Was There (TM) about this whole hippie thing, which went as follows:
Me: What can Democratic Party activists of today learn from hippies? Kos called some people hippies and hurt their feelings.
Family Member: Are you spending all your time on the Internet?
Me: No..I'm not spending all my time on the Internet...two things: this is an intra-blog discussion. It has little to do with anything crucial for other Democrats. Second, hippies wanted nothing to do with the Democratic Party anyway.
Family Member: That's right, they weren't into institutions.
So the liberal/leftist difference reared its ugly head. More on the flip.
(Anyone who follows the link should look for "Puro, Marsha Bell" as author, because the session timed out.)
This evening begins Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks. The holiday extends two days here in the Diaspora until Tuesday evening an hour after sunset. I am sorry to have started this after the East Coast Kossacks are likely to see it.
As I type, Mikulski is giving her speech on the Senate floor. C-SPAN is giving the debate about 3 more hours. Please see the other diaries, which I am going to put up in a few minutes. We have cheered Kerry, thrown up at Santorum, and may be running out of energy...but this diary is here.
As always, please do not post images, recommend this diary, and unrecommend the previous diary.
Baucus is up again.
On reviewing this week's parsha, I found that the "kos" is one of the birds forbidden to eat. Rashi believes it to be an owl. This can be nothing more than a kol mishamayim! Besides, I am getting all my entertainment value from Dov Bear anyway.
It's in Italian, BIPM. I will edit the title if you want.
There have been mainpage posts on the Oscars and the Super Bowl, both of them with very good responses. (The Super Bowl one was slightly more related to the event). Also, there have been March Madness-related posts in C&J, including my ill-fated ones. But there have been no real trash-talking conversations there! So I post this thread for all college basketball fans to post cheers for their team(s) and bracket speculation and criticism.
I am aware of the corruption in college basketball. This is why I feel more comfortable rooting for elite universities, because I can assume that the players can at least read, and even write(you never know). The NCAA tournament also provides publicity for the things that state universities do very well. For example, I found out about the NC State chemical engineering program last year. (I need 6 or 7 courses to start the master's degree program at Wash.U., which is very expensive.)
My No. 1 seed picks are Illinois; Duke; Louisville; Kentucky or Washington. The Big 12 winner could sneak in too.
I wrote the first part in the previous diary.
La Repubblica has filled in where Il Manifesto left off, and I translated that part as well in the previous diary! (Not like anyone read it or anything) The rest of the article is on the flip.
I can get a page and a half from Il Manifesto today. I can translate the rest of it tomorrow. Italiti tov m'od m'ivriti. Imparai l'italiano invece del francese--importava per tutto.
Mille grazie a SneakySnu per dirigere l'attenzione dei Kossachi alla stampa italiana per quel racconto.
I will have to defer to the real Italians for the story of her encounter with the Americans unless I can get it from La Repubblica or something. (mmm...calcio..) What I have here is at least very dramatic.
Translation begins on the flip.
My mom lent me "Jefferson's Demons" by Michael Knox Beran because "there were a lot of classical references in it". On my sad and pathetic blog I linked to a
review in the Claremont Review of Books, associated with the Claremont Institute of Powerline fame. This is not a wingnut review. Dr. Yarbrough described the book accurately.
Beran first of all points out that after Washington died, many Americans expected the remaining Founders to contend for supreme imperial power.
Quotes on the flip.
Because the caucus switched hotels in the middle of Friday, I reached the Airport Marriott at 9:10 am and did not find out that the caucus was at the Hilton until 11 am. (The room was booked for Democrats at 10 am on the meeting screen.) I got to the Hilton at 11:30, in time for the end of the reading of the rules changes but not in time to have breakfast with Dean or Rosenberg. I visited the hospitality suites of Webb, Roemer, and Fowler. I also shook Howard Dean's hand! This was at the end of the forum. I was surprised at the very strong handshake, since he did not know me from a hole in the wall.
Response to "I am writing a diary for Daily Kos": Webb: not sure what Daily Kos is. "Markos Zuniga" seems to strike a bell. Roemer and Fowler: beaming smiles. "Come, sit down and talk to me." Dean: didn't mention it because of nice handshake.
ademption, I didn't forget you. Answers to versions of your question are immediately below.
I received a blogging credential for the DNC Regional Caucus in St. Louis on Saturday. I am not sure if I will be able to do any thorough research by then. Please submit questions you would like me to ask the candidates or general millers around. I will post a diary about the experience. I will not be able to attend the Dean meeting with activists on Friday because that is on the cusp of Shabbos and it is too far to walk back to my mother-in-law's house in the dark. (I have this opportunity because my husband absolutely, positively has to watch the new Battlestar Galactica and we don't have cable in our house.)(If you turn on the TV before Shabbos and leave it on all day, you didn't do anything wrong. "Jewish casuistry" in action.) (I am not sure how to handle the writing problem.)
The [State] Department's first-ever Report on Global Anti-Semitism, mandated by a new congressional law signed by President Bush in October, documents anti-Semitic acts around the world between July 2003 and December 2004.
The State Department already reports on anti-Semitism in its International Religious Freedom Report and its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. But legislators, led by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-California), the only Holocaust survivor elected to Congress, found such reporting inadequate and pushed for the legislation requiring the separate annual report, and also the appointment of a new US special envoy on anti-Semitism. That position has not yet been filled.
"The increasing frequency and severity of anti-Semitic incidents since the start of the 21st century, particularly in Europe, has compelled the international community to focus on anti-Semitism with renewed vigor," the report says.
I have just read Kos's entry and thought that it would be interesting to run a news source poll on the DKos community. If one gets Internet news from the website of an already existing news organization in the country where one lives, such as nytimes.com or cnn.com, select that organization. If one gets Internet news from a domestic website such as Atrios, select domestic Internet source. If one gets Internet news from a foreign website such as BBC, the Guardian, or Haaretz, select foreign Internet source.
In the New York Times Book Review today, Virginia Postrel reviewed "Liberty and Freedom" by David Hackett Fischer. Fischer evidently believes that successive immigrations to the USA brought different ideas of liberty. The New England idea of liberty was community focused and allowed for some restriction on individual rights. The Scotch-Irish and German ideas of liberty were more individualistic and suspicious of government. Postrel says that the book portrays these ideas as reaching a defining conflict over Prohibition. Amazon has not noticed any controversy over the book. Postrel noted that the author is nostalgic for the "vital center" idea of liberty. The review suggests that "blue state" and "red state" political beliefs go back almost to the beginning of the country and have never been shared by everyone. This idea should be pondered by Kossacks.
Kossacks may also face conflict based on religious beliefs about what a leader is. Religious beliefs based on "all simple aphorisms" (author's mother) will have more tolerance for Bush than religious beliefs that value complexity.
