It’s tragic that a Kansas physician, Dr. George Tiller, was murdered while ushering at church this morning by a terrorist (yes, a terrorist. When you kill a person in hopes of intimidating and striking fear in an entire group of people, it’s terrorism). It’s crazy to me that anyone who claims to be “pro-life” would take a life in this way. Also crazy to me is that media outlets including the AP continue to refer to him as “late term abortion provider George Tiller.” Really? Which one aspect of Jon’s profession should I choose to refer to him by? “Lumbar puncturer Jon [Bufflo]?” Maybe “Lung sounds listener Jon [Bufflo]?” No, accurately, it’s “pediatrician Jon [Bufflo].” George Tiller was an OB/Gyn. Who sometimes performed “late term abortions” in the course of his care for his patients. To refer to him as “late term abortion provider George Tiller” is to further inflame the divisions that caused this tragedy in the first place, and it’s bad journalism.
For the first time since 2002, we are providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
is a dig at the previous administration’s decision to get bogged down in a war in Iraq, which did not attack us on 9/11 nor have connections to those who did until after we invaded their country, distracting that administration from the necessary conflicts in Afghanistan-spilling-into-Pakistan.
This:
We are building new partnerships around the world to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its affiliates. And we have renewed American diplomacy so that we once again have the strength and standing to truly lead the world.
is also a nod to the previous 8 years whose diplomacy manual seemed to be “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.” Despite all the handwringing that talking or shaking hands with people with whom we disagree is making us less safe, diplomacy is a smart and essential national security strategy, and it makes us safer.
But this:
I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never – ever – turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.
is where we get to the good stuff. Cheney recently misquoted his own Oath of Office saying he swore to protect and defend the American people, rather than the Constitution of the United States. This, I believe, belies a fundamental misunderstanding on Cheney’s part about our democracy and our leaders’ role in it: their job is not first and foremost to protect us from outside threats, but to protect our system from threats, both from within, by those seeking to compromise our laws and freedoms for the sake of safety, and from without, by those seeking to compromise our safety perhaps because of how they feel about our laws and freedoms. You can’t compromise the system in order to keep it safe. Continue reading “Obama’s National Security Speech”
Speech). He summarizes most of the Bush years and then says:
So we’re left to draw one of two conclusions – and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event – coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort.
ONLY those two conclusions are possible? Must we think the Bush administration EITHER did everything right or everything wrong? Or can we not look and see that in some areas, they were right, such as centralizing intelligence gathering and going to war in Afghanistan, but wrong in deciding to get sidetracked in Iraq, lie to the American public and the UN, spy on Americans, and torture detainees? I mean, I minored in history, and the way we tend to judge history is to look at successes as well as failures in the life or administration of a figure. For example, FDR is known for many successes, but Japanese Internment was a definite FAIL. Continue reading “Dick Cheney said about what I expected”
I have no idea how the Republican Party can misunderstand the fact that the founders set up our system such that parties would HAVE to embrace moderates in order to win majorities. And yet apparently there is debate about whether the party should be more purely conservative or more of a proverbial big tent. I’m all for them being more purely conservative in the sense that they stick to their fiscal principals and give up social conservatism, though. (And I must say, I actually agree with Lindsay Graham as he is quoted in the article- way to not embarrass me on this one, Sen. Graham!)
Nicholas Kristof continues to be my favorite New York Times columnist (yes, I know how pretentious it must be to even have a favorite NYT columnist), and today’s column about the appalling backlog of rape kits in this country is a great example of why I love his writing.
I’m happy to read about the Justice Department pushing for changes in mandatory drug sentencing which may help to reduce the racial disparities evident in our nation’s prison system.
I really recommend this well-written essay by a surgeon pondering how he has become habituated to cutting humans open and wondering if those who justified torture, as well as those of us reading and seeing about it in the news, have become habituated to these atrocities. He writes,
While our current president speaks of moving forward, and not looking back at this chapter of our history, can we afford to turn away? In doing so, we accept how we have become habituated. We risk seeing the brutality not as an atrocity but as part of who we are. We become the surgeon who might have shook when first taking the knife in hand but who now dares to cut with eyes closed.
Yglesias writes that we might be wrong in repeating the mantra that “torture doesn’t work.” He notes that it works just fine for what it’s intended: generally producing false confessions for show trials and propaganda under dictatorships, and little else.
Until I read this article, I had no idea that any educated woman would be able to bring herself to defend female genital mutilation. I still don’t agree with her, but now I have a greater appreciation for the nuance of an argument that seems to many of us extremely straightforward.
And, finally,Ezra Klein explains what Jon’s been saying to me the last few days as I wondered why we’re flipping out about a flu that’s way less deadly, so far, than the regular flu. Jon keeps telling me, “It’s because it is spreading so fast.”
Klein writes:
It’s true that the flu is, as of now, not especially deadly. Survival rates are quite high. That’s a very good thing. And there’s some evidence that this flu will prove mild. Possibly even more mild than a bad flu season. But it’s not the end of the story. Influenzas mutate. The question is whether it mutates out of existence or towards lethality. ‘Towards lethality’ becomes more likely if more people catch the flu and thus more mutations emerge. So being aggressive in stopping the spread of the largely non-lethal variant is important if we want to avert the development of a more lethal strain. It’s not about stopping this flu. It’s about stopping what this flu can become.
So, wash your hands, cover your mouths when you cough or sneeze, call your doctor if you’re running a fever, take this thing seriously, but don’t panic.
I hope to make this a daily place to share links I’ve found interesting as I’ve browsed the net throughout my day. Perhaps this will make me less annoying to my Facebook friends who become weary of my constant shared links.
My love for Olympia Snowe grows as she discusses the Arlon Specter defection. I agree we need two strong parties in this country, and the future of the GOP is in moderation, not increasing white-wing radicalism.
Glenn Greenwald makes clear why Democrats should be wary of getting too excited about Arlen Specter defecting to their side. Sure, he gives us 60 votes to prevent filibusters. But other than that, he’s still a conservative (in the traditional sense of the word), and his defection only underscores both the fact that the Republican party has moved too far to the right for even some of it’s normal, conservative members, and that Democrats are willing to sacrifice electing a real Democrat from that district in 2010 in exchange for some fili-busting now.
And to round things out, an interesting suggestion from an interesting character (Eliot Spitzer) that the government use its sheer gun purchasing volume to achieve gun control without legislation through pressure on its suppliers.
erniebufflo's south & west kitchen 