This afternoon, I looked up at my muted TV and saw President Obama and Rep. Boehner. I unmuted. What followed was a solid hour of amazing TV. Not just amazing political TV. Seriously, I encourage you to watch the entire Q&A session between Obama and members of the House GOP.
We need more dialogue like this. But I don’t expect it to happen. Apparently, the House GOP now believes this session was a mistake…because it made Obama look good. Who cares that it made our democracy look good too!
I haven’t written here for a couple of weeks…I’ve been busy buying my first home! It’s a great 105-year old bungalow in Arlington, VA.
I’m blogging about our efforts to buy appliances, products, fixtures, etc. for the house that are manufactured in the U.S. over at ManufactureThis. I’ll be cross-posting here as well. Please add your recommendations for relevant products made in the U.S. in comments on either site.
My husband and I just bought our first home! It’s new to us, but was built in 1904. Despite being in great shape for being more than 100 years old, there are a lot of improvements we need to make.
So, why am I blogging here?
Well, we are going to do our best to practice what we preach and buy American-made products for our new home. We need all kinds of things: appliances, insulation, fixtures, etc. How many of these items are still made in the U.S.? We’re about to find out.
We made our first trip to Home Depot this weekend. We needed new door locks. Made in America? Not at Home Depot. We had three options: two made in Mexico and one in Taiwan. We went with Mexico – we figured buying something from North America was the best we could do. If anyone knows of door locks made here, please note it in comments.
We also needed a couple of tools. We were able to find American-made pliers after picking up and replacing lots of tools made in Taiwan and Mexico. The measuring tape we bought was partially made in the U.S.
And the new air filter has components made here, but it was assembled in Mexico.
If any ManufactureThis readers have some good resources for finding products that are made in the U.S., please note them in comments. We have lots of work to do (and products to buy) over the coming months! Thanks!
P.S. Some things that are still made in the U.S.: cardboard boxes and packing tape.
Arlington County, Virginia is quite a liberal oasis.
I heard this story this morning on our local, Washington, D.C. NPR station about one of our middle schools. Apparently, while teaching critical-thinking skills to our next generation, a teacher assigned a mock United Nations debate topic where one team of students had to represent the Taliban. Imagine having to learn WHY the Taliban does what it does!
Anyway, the principal pulled the plug on the exercise after some parents complained.
Now, why I love living in Arlington: 1) a teacher actually had the balls to try this exercise and 2) other parents publicly supported the exercise saying “students need to understand more than one side of such a crucial conflict.”
Maybe I’ve just lived inside the beltway too long, but I don’t see parents sticking up for learning about the Taliban in other parts of the country (or even in other parts of my state!).
I picked up the book to give it another try after Thanksgiving. My annoyance with the first 15 pages had faded. All I remembered was the boredom. So, I gave it another shot.
Then, on page 22, she quoted “french writer Blaise Pascal.” I wondered if that was someone I should know from college philosophy or political science. Couldn’t recall, so I made a note to google it.
But within two more pages, when Palin supposedly quotes Plato, I had had enough. I closed the book, put the cover back on and stuck it in the corner.
I’m sorry, but I don’t know anyone who goes around quoting Plato. And does anyone seriously think Sarah Palin is one of the few who has those quotes filed away in her head? Is that supposed to make her sound smart? More likable? Blah.
Wanting to know if she correctly quoted Plato, I googled “Palin and Plato”. Funny. Andrew Sullivan wrote a post with just that title yesterday. His post links to this one by John Mark Reynolds, who is (from what I can tell) a conservative Christian writing for a blog called Evangel related to a magazine called First Things.
He actually got through the book (applause, applause!) and wrote this blog post about it called Rogue Thoughts: Chapter by Chapter on Sarah Palin. About this Plato thing, he writes:
But the ridiculous use of quotes or “big ideas” from great writers that one does not really read or know should end as well. When Palin artlessly writes: “Plato said it well, ‘Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,’” did she know the context of the quotation? Is it even in Plato? I cannot find it, don’t remember reading it, and I suspect that it is spurious. Can someone give me a reference?
It looks like the sort of thing Google tells you Plato said, but where the reference is impossible to find.
I am willing to bet at this point that Plato never said it, but if he did I am even more willing to bet that Palin and her writer are quote mining. If Plato said such a thing, it was likely in the context of the battle of each man against his lower nature. For Plato the chief battle was the inner one, but Palin uses it to reference our need to sympathize for people’s physical pain and life torments.
It is hard to imagine the Socrates of Phaedo making such a statement. So even if Plato said it (and he wrote so much it is hard to be sure), I am guessing that the context is wrong.
Why do I care? Partly, this is a live blog of my reading and I am a Plato guy so you are stuck with reading what I am thinking, but mostly because I find this kind of misuse of Plato irritating. Why do it? What is gained? Why quote mine?
So, there you go. So much for my adventure with Sarah Palin. I am going to read the rest of Mr. Reynolds’ blog post though. He wraps it up with the ten things he learned from the book.
[Note: This is the 5,000th post here at Plunderbund. Ironically enough it is not really about politics. also ironic - and typical - is that it blew up in comments. Very Plunderific! YaY milestones!]
Should Powerful Men Not Get Married? My TV-boyfriend Dylan Ratigan thinks so.
His theory is that men with power – in this case Tiger Woods because he’s a celebrity worth $1 billion – should not get married because they are in too many situations where they will be tempted to sleep around. These men constantly have women “making themselves sexually available” to them. (If taken literally, this statement makes me laugh.)
So, he thinks these men should just not commit to one woman by getting married.
I get the argument, but it’s also a very sad statement about men and their abilities to control themselves and live up to their commitments. (And, yes, it is also a sad statement that some women have no problem sleeping with married men.)
Men of Plunderbund, what do you think?
UPDATE: Here’s the video of Dylan making his argument.
Honestly, I did not think Going Rogue was going to be any sort of challenge to read (of course, I also didn’t think I’d be in the process of buying a house this week!).
But the book is boring.
After reading a page or two, I think to myself, “Why did Sarah Palin think anyone would want to read that anecdote?”
And then there are the times she just confuses me.
One example: in the first few pages of the book, she wrote that when oil production started booming in 1977, “billions of dollars flowed into state coffers…And the politicians spent it.” Government grew, yada, yada. Then the economy crashed. Then government stopped working for the people. Then she ran for governor.
Ok.
But not 20 pages later she wrote:
“By the mid-1970s…High-paying pipeline jobs brought thousands of new workers to the state. It was a gold rush that sent truckloads of cash into the state’s economy. Jobs were plentiful…
The employment boom and energy production were the upside of development. The downside was the concurrent spike in social problems. Without law enforcement resources to keep things in check, prostitution, gambling and illegal drugs proliferated…The boom also stressed local infrastructure, including schools and health care facilities.”
Um. Could that be part of the reason that the government also grew during those years (as she mentioned just a few pages before)? To provide the law enforcement, schools, health care facilities, etc. to help meet the needs of a growing population? Who – other than the government – did she think was going to provide all that?
She makes my head hurt.
I’m going to enjoy my Thanksgiving and be thankful that I leave this book behind for a few days.
I had to skip my second night with the Palin book to attend (and work at) a town hall meeting in Baltimore about U.S. manufacturing policy, or rather, the need for a U.S. manufacturing policy.
I’ve been working on this issue for a while but I finally understood more about why U.S. manufacturing has declined so significantly. I always understood that China was part of the problem, but I just assumed it was because they were winning in the market place: they could make and sell products more cheaply than we could. I thought this was only because they paid their workers much less and ignored the environmental damage their manufacturing methods cause.
That is only part of the problem.
China is not competing with U.S. manufacturers in an open market place. They are cheating.
“Chinese currency manipulation” is a term that gets thrown around by people who understand these issues.
I had no idea what this meant, other than the fact that “manipulation” is a bad thing. Last night, I finally understood and I think it’s important that more people do too.
Basically, if China operated as other countries do (and as they are supposed to do under international agreements), our trade imbalance would tilt out of their favor, jobs would be saved and created here in the U.S. and we could fairly compete (and even win) in the international marketplace.
China is artificially setting the exchange rates of their currency in order to gain an unfair advantage. That’s why Chinese products are so cheap. As AAM, the host of last night’s town hall, describes it:
“This made China’s exports to the U.S. relatively cheaper than they should have been and made U.S. exports to China more expensive than they should have been. This had two-fold negative effects on American industry. On one hand, the relatively cheap Chinese imports drove domestic manufacturers, who could not compete with that price, out of business. On the other, the relatively expensive imports of U.S. products into China limited consumption of U.S. goods there, putting many export-intensive U.S. companies out of business.”
And China has taken full advantage – to our detriment – since they entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 and then established Normal Trade Relations with the U.S. Check out this graphic:
I grew up in Cleveland in the 1980s and my dad was a machinist. I remember the dips shown on this graphic. I had no idea how much worse it’s been in this decade! Looking at this graphic, it is NO wonder our economy is in the shape it’s in now.
But it also points to some solutions – like requiring China to compete fairly. If they don’t, we should do exactly what the Obama administration has started doing: enforce international trade rules. Tariffs were recently added to Chinese tires which had been flooding U.S markets at artificially low prices (and costing U.S companies and U.S. workers). The result of the tariff: American companies have actually been able to successfully compete and have even started rehiring workers.
Imagine what would happen if we fully enforced the trade rules. It’s only fair.
I bought the book yesterday. I seriously considered going to a bookstore in another town where there was no chance of me running into someone I know or having the cashier recognize me, but I just took a deep breath and went into my neighborhood B&N.
Then, I circled the store. Who knew buying a book would be stressful (especially for a book addict like me)!?
I picked up the latest US Weekly and Harper’s (which has a cover story about the future of newspapers) and then took the plunge, grabbed the book and headed to the checkout.
I let out a nervous giggle when the cashier asked if I found everything I was looking for.
And I didn’t tell him to skip the bag like I normally do.
By the time I got home – after a long and stressful day – I really didn’t have it in me to start reading. I managed to get through about 5 pages.
It only took that long to read my first disturbing fact about the Palins: That cute little girl, Piper, was photographed when she was a baby to be the poster child for the Alaska Right to Life group. They still use the photo and it makes Sarah Palin so proud.
I don’t have a child, but if I did, I can’t imagine I’d let his/her image be used by any sort of polarizing group – on the right or the left! Just doesn’t seem fair to the kid.
Eh, I probably won’t even remember being bothered by this by the time I finish the book!
The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), released findings from their analysis of three surveys related to veterans and volunteering. Their report shows that volunteering helps bolster ties to the community and eases the transition back to civilian life.
Fifty-five percent of volunteering veterans say the transition is going well, a full 9 points higher than non-volunteering veterans. Forty-eight percent of volunteering veterans also report that the needs of their family are being met, compared with 38 percent of non-volunteering veterans.
CIRCLE is one of my firm’s clients- and they do some interesting research! I never would have thought of looking into a connection between veterans and volunteering.
My friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing directed me to this depressing article on the “Fastest Dying Cities” from Forbes. It says that Youngstown, Canton, Dayton and Cleveland are among the “worst” cities.
Luckily, AAM also linked me to this video about how this destruction of my home state can be reversed:
It looks like the federal government is extending a hand, but where are the companies – and the jobs? The fact that 84% of the stimulus money set aside for investing in clean energy has gone to foreign companies tells me something is lacking in our corporations and entrepreneurs (not to mention in the legislation)!
I know we can do better.
And unless everyone in Ohio simply wants to decide between a career as a stockbroker or a hamburger-flipper, we’d better speed things up. (Watch the 3-minute video to hear one of my heroes, Leo Gerard, on this career choice!)
I thought it would be a good idea to investigate whether or not I should switch to my husband’s health insurance plan.
I had no idea how HUGE the price difference would be!
My company struggles every year to figure out how to continue covering our employees – my boss covers all of our premiums and gives us the best insurance he can. There have been years when we decide to skip any pay increase so that we can maintain our health insurance coverage (which has gone up 30% in one year).
Now, switch to my husband’s insurance.
He works for a large international corporation. We have 7 employees; his firm has more than 170,000.
They can provide me similar coverage for 1/6th the price my company pays! Seriously, for what my boss pays to cover me for TWO months, the large company can cover me for an entire year!
Two lessons:
No matter what they say, our policymakers don’t care about small businesses.
When a large institution can spread the costs/risks associated with health care among its people, it can save A LOT of money. I wonder how much money a government program made up of 300 million people could save!? Hmmm…
I haven’t posted anything here in a long time, but when I saw this story, I had to write something.
I have to hand it to Bill Bush, the reporter, for this lead:
School districts across central Ohio learned yesterday that the list of things parents want their children protected from — drugs, predators, violence — now includes the president of the United States delivering a “stay in school” message.
As he notes, George Bush also addressed the nation’s students in a similar back-to-school message and I don’t remember stories about parents ranting and raving then.
