I’ve been following the events in Ukraine with some interest, but the US press has generally been more interested in reporting on the holiday sales figures instead. One of the Kos diarists has posted an excellent primer on the situation here.
It’s a rare day that I am in agreement with anything the Bush administration says or does, but this time they do seem to be siding with the right guy.
We’re back home after a nice trip to see friends and family. I’m trying to fight off a cold but have been unsuccessful for the last few days, hence the dearth of posting.
Having a lovely time in cool, rainy NY. This triggered my pissed-off meter though:
Vietnam Vet, 53, Called for Duty in Iraq
A 53-year-old Vietnam veteran from western Pennsylvania has been called up for active service with the U.S. military in the Iraq war, The Tribune Review of Greensburg, Pennsylvania reported on Wednesday.
Paul Dunlap, a sergeant in the Army National Guard, will join an armored division next month as a telecommunications specialist in Kuwait, and expects to be there for at least a year.
They must be getting damn close to the bottom of the barrel. This guy has not been in combat since serving as a 19-year-old Marine in Vietnam. WTF is the DOD doing him calling him to go to Iraq?
I read things like this and it reminds me that one of the many things I am thankful for this Thnksgiving is that our friend the ex-Marine has not gotten a similar call. Yet. I fear that day.
Scott and I are flying to NYC today to spend a week eating, cooking, and spending time with family and friends. I’ll have net access but posting will undoubtedly be light until we return.
Have a happy holiday, all!
And yet again, Digby goes and posts something that makes me wonder why I even bother blogging. This time it is a long, excellent look at the rural/urban psychosocial divide in America. He’s covering ground another of my favorite bloggers, Orcinus, covers, and it also ties in with what I taked about in my last post.
Here’s a sample:
We cannot make a populist case to rural America as long as rural America continues to believe, as it has for centuries, that the government only takes their money and gives it to people they don’t like. This belief is why people who should naturally support our programs instead vote for tax cuts. In the past, populists often shrewdly coupled their argument with nativist causes and were able to scapegoat either immigrants or blacks as part of their argument, thus partially nullifying this cultural resistence. Even FDR agreed to set aside the issue of civil rights for the duration. Needless to say, we aren’t going to go down that path.
So, Democrats are left with a difficult problem of how to deal with a region that is in economic distress but whose culture traditionally believes that government only helps people unlike themselves.
[snip]
Yes, if people were rational about these things you could sit down and have a nice discussion with spreadsheets and diagrams showing that the rural red states benefit far more from federal redistributon of wealth than the metropolitan blue states. You could explain that many of the social changes that have happened have benefitted them in their own lives while acknowledging that there has been a cost and that changes of this magnitude can be frightening and destabilizing. You could show that the massive New Deal programs and the post war expansion benefitted primarily the middle class, not the poor. You could rally the people to the side of their own class instead of the corporations who benefit from the policies currently in place.
But, as we’ve seen, people are not rational.
Go read the rest. If Digby’s not in your bookmark list yet, he should be.
DH in MI, one of the Kos bloggers, has an interesting piece on another of the many disconnects between Republicans, Democrats, and the public. Worth a read.
In short, a lot of Democrats are great at creating good policies, but too few of them are good at creating appealing atmospheres. The former is essential to being a good legislator or executive, but you need to latter to get elected.