The Reagan I Remember

Just to keep the memory of Ronald Regan fair and balanced I thought I should add this cartoon strip which does an excellent job of remembering him for me.

He got credit for several accomplishments that he had no part in making happen, most notably the economic recovery and the fall of the Soviet Union.  He was the wrong man in the right place at the right time.

He will be remembered as the first modern president who aggressively promoted the idea of trickle-down economics, that when we help the rich get richer their largess will trickle down to the common people.

As I remember him he was mostly style and not a whole lot of substance.  He was a great communicator.  As the cartoon says, he made a lot of people feel good about themselves and the USA.

You know you are getting old when you can't believe you actually saw a Bayer aspirin commercial where an airline flight attendant tells a passenger aspirin can be used as a pain reliever. It's not just for heart attacks.

Why Japan embraced nuclear power after suffering the atomic bomb

This animated clip was  made in Japan during  the early 50's and depicts the destruction of Hiroshima from a little boy's perspective.  The video contains some horrifying but historically accurate scenes.

The Japanese are the only people in the world who have had the direct experience of nuclear destruction.

I have read that when the Gojira (Godzilla) movies were first shown in Japan the audiences were silent with sounds of occaisional weeping as people relived their wartime experiences watching the radioactivity-created monster wreak death and destruction.  So with all this national baggage concerning the dangers of nuclear energy and radiation why did Japan put so much dependence on nuclear energy?

This article from the Canadian Globe and Mail explains that the Japanese embraced nuclear energy because it is a resource-poor country which needs lots of energy for economic growth and self-sufficiency is a matter of national  pride.

Whatever the future now holds for Japan’s shattered nuclear dreams, how could it so easily have overlooked its past? The answer begins with the country’s astonishing postwar recovery and its success in undoing the devastation of which Hiroshima remains the most potent symbol.
The turning point was the international oil crisis of 1973, an Arab oil embargo that shocked an emerging superpower dependent on imported energy to fuel its 10-per-cent annual growth rate. Unlike other major powers, Japan doesn’t have oil or natural gas.
Suddenly, as oil prices quadrupled, the emerging superpower recognized its greatest vulnerability: It was a resource-poor island committed to high-tech industrial growth and nonstop consumption of electricity. The progress promised by endlessly optimistic politicians in the wake of war’s destruction could only be achieved with an extreme version of self-sufficiency. And so discovering an alternative to imported oil was turned into an issue of national security, where the spectre of Hiroshima is nowhere to be found.
“They don’t see the anomaly,” U.S. historian John Dower says. “Nuclear power is for the good of the country.”
Security is a complicated idea in Japan. Its political security has been tied to the United States since the end of the Second World War, a client-state relationship that undermines feelings of national pride. So any areas where independence can be expressed become more attractive, whether it’s protecting rice farmers from cheap imports or developing a domestic energy network that stabilizes the Japanese economy and frees it from the unpredictability of the Arab world.
“The Japanese talk about security in terms of cultural sensibility,” says Ian Condry of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s as much an idea of sovereignty as it is of protection. So there’s an effort to balance the fear of nuclear power with the desire to be independent of foreign oil suppliers.”
To allay the fears, Japanese advocates of nuclear power have gone out of their way to stress its virtues: It’s safe (because it’s in the control of punctilious engineers), clean (in a country that prizes purity) and proudly Japanese. The Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the Fukushima Daiichi plant, features a plucky little cartoon mascot on its website who promotes the “safety and necessity” of atomic energy. Mascot characters recalling the nuclear-powered manga character Astro Boy (known as Mighty Atom in Japanese) have also been used to brand power stations as tourist destinations for families, Concordia University history professor Matthew Penney says.

“The Japanese public has been ambivalent about nuclear energy,” he says, “but many people are won over by the idea that the industry represents an example of Japanese ingenuity supporting national prosperity.”

It is ironic that Japan's energy policy is responsible for the new nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.  Maybe nuclear energy is necessary to move away from fossil fuel energy but it is clear that nuclear energy can be very dangerous.

I wonder what the extra cost of moving to wind and solar energy would be as an alternative to continuing with nuclear energy, especially since the cost of safety for nuclear energy seems to have been lowballed.

Let's all keep our focus on real news and stay away from the fake stuff

Someone posted a link to this article on Facebook as an example of liberal bias in the MSM. The article says that Mike Huckabee misspoke about Obama's childhood in Kenya and has since apologized for saying that Obama grew up in Kenya but that Chris Matthews will probably not apologize for stating that Obama "has never spent a day of his life in Kenya".

Let's compare Huckabee's statement that Obama "grew up" in Kenya with Chris Matthews statement that Obama "has never spent one day of his life in Kenya".  The misstatements and their importance are an order of magnitude apart.

First, Huckabee made his statement to back up a thesis that Obama dislikes the British (who happen to be The US's closest ally in all the world) because of his early years growing up in Kenya.  Huckabee went way beyone just getting one fact wrong or accidentally saying Kenya instead of Indonesia.  He actually used his misstatement to draw a conclusion about Obama's worldview today.   Here is what Huckabee said: "When he gave the bust back to the Brits, the bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted . his grandfather".

Second, Huckabee's statement also falsely claimed that when Obama had the White House return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British it was a "great insult".  In fact, the bust was on loan to the White House and it was simply being returned to its rightful owner.  Where is the insult?

Third, it is unlikely Huckabee accidentally misspoke by saying Kenya instead of Indonesia because he went on to talk about what Obama's childhood was probably like growing up in Kenya.  On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Chris Matthews did accidentally misspeak by saying "never spent one day of his life" instead of "never lived".  Obama has visited Kenya 3 times during his lifetime but he has never actually "lived" there.

Fourth, news about Huckabee is news about a potential presidential candidate while news about Chris Matthews is news about a sometimes insufferable talking head on a liberal cable news network.

The Jack Coleman article you attach is a snarky example of "gotcha" journalism which has turned political commentary into a blood sport.  It is factually true but completely misses the point that a potential presidential candidate either actually believes Obama has a personal dislike our closest ally or he is willing to purposely spread lies to endear himself to the Obama haters in his base.

Quote of the day

The Iraq war cost up to a trillion borrowed dollars, thousands of American lives, tens of thousands of American casualties, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives, and seems to have resulted in replacing a crazy anti-Iranian dictator with a smarter, Iranian-influenced one. -

Comment by Andrew Sullivan on his blog today

A little meteor learns the biggest lesson of life on it's way down to earth.

This short video is a simple and profound lesson about learning to live in the moment.

Fallen from Sascha Geddert on Vimeo.

I came across this video a few months ago and watching it again still has an emotional impact on me.

Notice how the meteor comes to realize that the good times are not going to last forever and how he learns to deal with it.

Congratulations to  the creators of this video for the creativity and technical skill with which they brought it off. It's awesome.

Realized by Wolfram Kampffmeyer and Sasha Geddert.
Compositing by Sebastian Nozon.
Music and sound design by David Christiansen.
Produced by Stina McNicholas at Filmakademie Baden Württemberg.

Reganist Ideas in a Leninist Framework

Werner Herzog's Bear has an interesting post comparing the similarities between the mindset of the current American right-wing ideologues and the mentality of Marxist-Leninism. 

• The root of all evil can be reduced to one thing whose elimination will bring about a paradise on earth.  Big government is bad and must yield to private enterprise and the free market.
     
• Both believe that you are either for us or against us - there is no in-between.  Are you a sensible conservative or a left-wing socialist-leaning lib?
     
• Ideology trumps reality.  Both will do anything to twist the facts when their policies result in disastrous consequences.  The current recession is the result of  excessive taxation and government regulation and meddling with the financial industry.  The recession has been made worse because of government bailouts and other non-conservative solutions the current government has attempted.

     

Here is a link to the full posting:  Reganist Ideas in a Leninist Framework

Tea Party Definition of Liberty

Here is an insightful column by Natalie Villalon, who wonders exactly what the Tea Party folks have in mind when they refer to "liberty".  More liberty is good; less is bad.  Liberty is your most precious asset.    They reject the importance of other social goals.  Don't trade away your liberty for anything.  They  fail to understand that liberty doesn't seem so important when you are starving and unable to find food, or when you are sick and cannot obtain medical care.  Liberty is an important social goal, but it cannot be the only social goal.

Here is an excerpt from her article

"... the movement’s extreme adherence to minimalist government is based on a superficial understanding of the notion of “liberty.” The group defines liberty as the free market, gun rights and limited taxation—essentially, the ability to “do” something without restriction, mainly in economic terms. But, these values don’t take into account other ideas of freedom—freedom from hunger and freedom from economic exploitation, for example. Unrestrained capitalism doesn’t result in a perfectly competitive, ideal market. Not regulating businesses, for example, can lead to monopolies and too-low wages for workers. While superficially unrestrained capitalism grants the individual “liberty” to do what they please with their money, it is difficult to see where the freedom lies in a job that pays too little. Absolute faith in the free market also assumes that everyone will get what they deserve, based on hard work and merit. But this is not always a reality. Case in point: Paris Hilton. Gun rights also allow citizens the “freedom” to arm themselves easily; but, what happens when one person’s easy access to a gun interferes with another’s freedom to live safely? While there is no easy answer to any of these issues, it is important to take into the account the idea that “freedoms” and rights do conflict with each other—a fact this movement seems to ignore.

"The whole premise of living in a society governed by laws is the relinquishing of some freedom—the freedom to bash one another’s brains in with rocks, for example. Touting “freedom” as an absolute guarantee of social stability is absurd—it comes into conflict with other values such as justice. It’s more difficult to get a fair shake in the legal system without a lot of money, for example. Equating liberty with a lack of economic restraint can lead to great disparities in wealth as well as exploitation; it also sells short the concept of liberty. Freedom implies choice and opportunities, but it’s difficult to pursue a “free” lifestyle when you’re miserably poor. People rarely like to be told what to do, so “liberty” and “freedom” are popular catchphrases. However, in order to have a civil society, individual freedom has to be weighed against societal good—a concept that the Tea Party movement seems to miss."

Today on C-SPAN there was a discussion of Cornelius Vanderbilt'r rise as the first American tycoon.  I was surprised to find out that the established gentry at the time were scandalized by his belief that competition should be completely unfettered and free.  They felt this was socially harmful because it harmed the people already doing business.  How dare that Cornelius Vanderbilt come along and undersell us!  These were the people from which our founding fathers came.   They had quite different feliefs about capitalism and the freedom to innovate and compete. 

I am not defending their attitude toward Vanderbilt.  I am simply mentioning it to show that the founding fathers did not believe that personal liberty should always trump every other social goal.  They felt they had a right to their privileged position in society and resented uncouth upstarts like Vanderbilt presuming to be as good as them.  I happen to disagree with them but want to point out that they definitely did not share the belief in the absolute supremacy of personal liberty that the Tea Partyiists seem to have..

Natalie Villalon is a freshman in Arts & Sciences and writes for Student Life, the independent newspaper of the University of St. Louis.  This article first appeared on March 10, 2010