: for the sake of argument; purely in order to discuss a matter or illustrate a point
Nicolle Wallace, a top adviser to Mr. McCain, described the clothes as a wardrobe necessary for an extraordinary circumstance and said the clothing would be given to charity at the conclusion of the campaign.
I wonder if the high-end “fashionable-but-sensible on-the-go working mother” clothes would be donated to the Support Ex-Investment Bankers charity fund. Afterall the homeless on the street aren’t really interested in Oscar de la Renta, are they?
I am not Christian but I know enough that no where in its doctrines does Christianity promote such abysmal lack of tolerance.
Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish
MC Yogi sings it the way it should!
Hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan @ The Daily Dish
A friend sent one of these clips of two comedians from across the pond satirizing the financial industry and the subprime crisis. A wonderful reminder of just how great Brit humor has always been.
Yesterday’s NYT has an interesting op-ed from Roger Cohen. I was surprised to perceive residual cold-war mentality, and a prevailing sense of America’s role as safe-keeping democracy. The following paragraph in particular jumped out at me:
But Zapatero’s more concerned about “certain gestures that may provoke Russian nationalism.” He seems to buy into Vladimir Putin’s nonsense about the “encirclement” of Russia, which spans from Eastern Europe to Northern Asia, by the likes of Lilliputian Georgia, if it were allowed into NATO.
“To think that Georgia will be more secure if it’s in NATO, that won’t be the case,” he said. “All we’ll achieve is a greater divide between Moscow and the rest of the world.”
Wrong. NATO locks in liberal democracy. It brings stability and prosperity, not threats, to Russia’s environs.
America: wake up. We are in a different global political dynamic. Our influence and power has lost the potency it used to have (debates are on about whether it waned or because other nations have gained) whereas other nations have developed greater influence. In fact when the dividends of investing in international relationships start paying for countries like China, the world will wake up to a new order where sole US dominance is no longer obvious and going it alone will no longer be an option. NATO will cease to be the center of military power when the interests in dispute will be in places far from Europe such as Africa and South America. In that scenario, where there is no single dominant power, the UN or multi-lateral cooperation organizations/groups will be guiding global interaction.
Mr. Cohen does not see the world in which, although Russia is concerned about its national security, it next political movement is entirely economic. Conflict with Russia will occur more outside Europe (although Ukraine and its natural gas will continue to play a part) thereby rendering an expanded NATO a poor choice of investment for the US.
This pragmatic view is also at odds with Mr. Cohen’s assessment of NATO locking in liberal democracy. Such as support for General Musharraf in Pakistan? Sarcasm aside, NATO offers no such guarantees as global conflict has moved away from political philosophy (capitalism vs communism) to the pursuit of economic interests. NATO has not been used to defend liberal democracy in the recent past and has its role is questionable in a world where economic interests drive issues. With multi-faceted, and in some cases diverging, economic interests it is hard to think of too many scenarios where a NATO alliance will be consensually willing to intervene – as clearly evident from the Iraq war that despite being couched in terms of global security, then terror and finally spreading democracy, is ultimately only explained by the US seeking energy security.
Finally we hear about the schadenfreude from many about the so-called collapse of a US-style capitalist system but make no mistake, free-markets are not going away and frankly it is a little naive to perceive Russia as looking to extend totalitarianism and tyranny. Yes, Russia has shown political movement in that direction, and to some extent, it seems to sit between western free-market based democracies, and Iranian-style oligarchical governance. But what is the lesson from Bush’s efforts in Iraq if not “what is good for the goose may not be so for the gander”.
I encountered this interesting post about Governor Palin when logging into my wordpress account. The author and several commentators are Alaskans and provide an enlightening insight into the state’s politics.
http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/10/08/the-palins-imperfect-union/
Today’s entry on religion and politics from Stanley’s blog Think Again at the NYT.
Perhaps Stanley needs to think again. The Constitution was so crafted precisely to avoid the conundrum that he refers when he says “there is no way for Lynn and Stanley really to speak to one another because each begins with a different conception of the proper scope of religion. No court or legislature could adjudicate that difference, for if there is one thing everyone agrees on, it is that the state cannot specify what religion is or is not, cannot tell its citizens what should be the content of their faith.” In computer science, we would term this a deadlock solved by breaking a link in a cycle of dependencies. Here the cycle of dependencies involve the negation of state dictating to religion and the negation of religion specifying what constitutes permissible boundaries for state jurisdiction.
So what did the writers of the Constitution do? They realized that there is a single state but many religions, that religions are often at loggerheads with each other, and that the people wanted to be governed via democracy and not religion (the very tenet of Calvinism that led to the pilgrims). So they broke that cycle of dependencies by establishing boundaries for religion with respect to governance. And this is where Stanley makes a mistake when he says that the state cannot specify what religion is or is not – the state does not define religion but instead the limits to which religion can be accomodated into our framework of governance.
The tax-exempt status debate is a side-issue. Religion exists in a society organized by government. It must follow those rules. The petitioners will not win that one in court. But the underlying debate is of supreme importance and must be never lost. We will relive the tyrannies of the past if we were to ever let religion govern us again.
