The Generation Game-Sunday Open Thread

Posted on August 19, 2012 by lmsinca

I’ve been looking around all afternoon for something to begin a new thread with and found this piece from Crooked Timber fairly interesting.  We keep hearing a lot about Baby Boomers and Gen X and Y or whatnot and so I thought this might be a conversation starter.  While I was reading the comments I came across one guy who was insistent that the boomers were the worst generation ever and a bunch of narcissistic destructive dolts or something along those lines.

One of the standard ploys in journalism, marketing and political commentary is the generation game. The basic idea is to label a generation ‘X’ or ‘Y’, then dissect its attitudes, culture, and relationship with other generations. The most famous generation, of course, is that of the Baby Boomers, born between the end of World War II and the early 1960s, and their most enduring contribution to the generation gap is the ‘Generation Gap’ between children and their parents.

The generation game is played with particular vigour in cultural commentary, but its reach seems to be extending all the time. No US Presidential election would now be complete without voluminous commentary on the generational backgrounds of the contenders. There is even a branch of economics called generational accounting, which is supposed to show whether one generation is subsidising another through the tax and welfare system.

Once we strip out the more-or-less constant social distinctions associated with membership of a given age-group, the idea that we can say much about any particular cohort becomes far more dubious. In fact, cohort effects are only of much importance between the ages of 16 and about 25. The experience of childhood is dominated by family and school, and, while both families and schools have changed since the 1950s, the rate of change from one decade to the next has been quite slow.

On the other hand, by the time the members of a given cohort reach their late twenties, their live courses have diverged so much that they cease to form a well-defined group with common experiences. The differences between men and women, rich and poor, workers and bosses, married and single, parents and nonparents count for much more than the commonality that comes from sharing a date on a birth certificate.

For the crucial decade from 16 to 25, however, common experiences related to growing up at a particular time can be very important. Whether the labour market is in a boom or a slump when you finish school can make a big difference to your subsequent career. For males, an even more important question is whether the years of military age coincide with a major war. Peacetime and wartime generations, or boom and slump generations, can be very different.

This is a re-publication of a piece written prior to this recession but I thought this was interesting and I think we all know how both the 16-25 and the over 50 crowds are suffering this time.

It was not until the recession we had to have, from 1989 to 1992, and the waves of downsizing in the 1990s, that the end of postwar prosperity really hit the Vietnam generation and the baby bust cohort. Although the focus of policy attention remained firmly on youth unemployment, the real story of the 1990s was the disappearance of jobs for workers over 50, and particularly for men over 50. The employment rate for this group has fallen from nearly 100 per cent during the postwar boom to around 50 per cent today.

Filed under: 2012 | Tagged: | 6 Comments »

I, Judas – A Book Review

Posted on August 18, 2012 by lmsinca

James Reich is both novelist and poet.  If you accept that he has the soul of a poet, then I, Judas is one of the most difficult and lengthy poems you’ll ever read.  I say difficult not in an “oh my God, what lousy poetry” way, but in the sense of being “uncomfortable while reading” way.  I felt, while I was reading, as if I were a child being allowed to sit at the adult’s dinner table for the first time and discovering that it was much more fun at the children’s table.

Perhaps you disagree that he is a poet, then I offer this passage about that fateful morning in Dallas in November of 1963:

“jackals careened about the passenger door. Scarlet broth ran down her sunglasses. His back brace held him corseted to his cross, and the shot pealed again.”

Judas pops up in numerous momentous, and not so momentous, occasions like a modern day Lucifer peddling his influence as he skips around the globe and history.

I was raised by atheists to be a Christian.  As such I’ve always had great difficulty accepting Jesus as the Son of God but even I, perhaps because I still attend church for inspiration and solace, was shocked to contemplate biblical characters in such brazen terms.  For example, Mary Magdalene as the reckless whore and Joseph crafting the rude cross of his own son’s crucifixion, in the hopes that his wife’s lover will one day hang from one.

Recently, I was discussing the Lochness Monster with my six year old grandson as he has been doing research on Nessy lately.  I asked him if he believed the Lochness Monster was real or not and he said “I believe in all the legends Grandma”.  Reading I, Judas would cure him of that……………………….luckily he’s too young still.  I sort of wished I hadn’t read the book, if you know what I mean.

Please add your comments below if you’ve read the book.  If anyone misunderstands my comments above, I enjoyed the book, in a rather painful way.

Filed under: 2012, Book Review | Tagged: | 74 Comments »

Domestic Terrorism

Posted on August 10, 2012 by lmsinca

I was really busy with family matters from 2007 to early 2009 and then became consumed with the health care debate from 2009 to 2010 but I remember this story and thought it was fascinating at the time.  Remember that Homeland Security report that raised such a ruckus regarding domestic terrorism in 2009.  I think the report was probably badly worded in a few areas, such as referring to “right wing” extremists a little too frequently and it pissed a lot of conservatives off.  It also referred to environmental extremists but that was lost in the brouhaha I think.

Anyway the DHS nixed the report and actually eliminated the entire department except for one analyst.  The rest of the staff was shuffled around to other departments and according to the guy who was in charge pre shuffling, Daryl Johnson, basically given the big cold shoulder treatment or worse, and he at least left with a story to tell.

I love these kind of insider or whistle blower stories, and yes I know they’re not always completely believable, but this one sounds intriguing to me.

Spencer Ackerman tackles some of it here:

Johnson, who has written a forthcoming book about far-right extremist groups, concedes that the definition of “right-wing” in his product was imprecise. In retrospect, he says he should have clarified that his focus was on “violent” right-wing organizations, like white supremacists, neo-Nazis and so-called Sovereign Citizens who believe the U.S. government is an illegitimate, tyrannical enterprise. Much like mainstream Muslims denounce terrorism and object to over-broad analysis portraying Islam as an incubator of extremism, so too do mainstream conservatives denounce neo-Nazis and white supremacists and dispute that those groups are authentically right-wing.

Johnson left DHS in April 2010 after “they dissolved my team,” he says. Had he still been at DHS, he says he would have published an analysis calling attention to a growing number of attacks on mosques, which he thinks could serve as a “warning” to Sikh communities that are often mistaken for Muslim ones. But finding so-called “lone wolf” terrorists like Page is a challenge no matter their motivations, since they operate outside established extremist cells and often don’t have criminal records, making it difficult for law enforcement or homeland security officials to spot them.

Amy Goodman has an interesting interview with Johnson here:

(Scroll down the link for transcript)

AMY GOODMAN: What were the critical findings?

DARYL JOHNSON: Basically, that we were seeing a resurgence. We had experienced very early on, right after the election, we saw arson activity at black churches, we had a bombing out in the Pacific northwest where some police officers were killed that were carried out by anti-government extremists. We had a neo-Nazi up in Massachusetts that went on a shooting spree, and we saw a lot of extremist chatter talking about how they were fearful of an African-American president and possible gun confiscations, gun bans and the immigration issue was still being unresolved. So all these things kind of came together into the perfect storm which we saw very clearly and put out very clearly what our findings were.

AMY GOODMAN: Back in 2009 a handful of Republicans in the House called for Janet Napolitano to step down as head of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of your memo that warned of right-wing political extremism in the United States. House Majority Leader, John Boehner, said the report focused on “[A]bout two-thirds of Americans who might go to church, who may have served in the military, who may be involved in community activities… I just don’t understand how our government can look at the American people and say, ‘You’re all potential terrorist threats.’” Those were Boehner’s comments. Daryl Johnson, your response.

DARYL JOHNSON: That is a gross misrepresentation of what was said in the report. Basically, I think what Boehner is alluding to is a very broad, vague definition that was in the footnote of one of the pages. Basically, the definition was written very broadly so it could encompass the wide range of extremist groups we were talking about which were primarily the white supremacist movement which has neo-Nazi groups, Ku Klux Klan groups, Christian Identity groups which is a racist religion that thinks whites are the true Israelites. We have skinhead groups. We have other types of white supremacists. It also was alluding to sovereign citizens, those that reject federal and state authority in favor of local authority. It was also talking about the militia extremists. So, basically, some of the conservative radio talk show hosts took this definition out of context, and without the scope of talking about violent extremism and terrorism which was stated upfront in the scope note, and took this definition out of context and applied it to a broad range of people. I think it was done deliberately as a political maneuver to use against the new administration.

Somewhat tangentially I read this in The Atlantic yesterday and it gave me the chills as it’s almost exactly what some of us here have been talking about for months.  The author here is referring to the attack last weekend at the Sikh temple.

Attacks like his are disconcerting to some white Americans for a seldom acknowledged reason. Since 9/11, many Americans have conflated terrorism with Muslims; and having done so, they’ve tolerated or supported counterterrorism policies safe in the presumption that people unlike them would bear their brunt. (If Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD sent officers beyond the boundaries of New York City to secretly spy on evangelical Christian students or Israeli students or students who own handguns the national backlash would be swift, brutal, and decisive. The revelation of secret spying on Muslim American students was mostly defended or ignored.)     

In the name of counterterrorism, many Americans have given their assent to indefinite detention, the criminalization of gifts to certain charities, the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens, and a sprawling, opaque homeland security bureaucracy; many have also advocated policies like torture or racial profiling that are not presently part of official anti-terror policy.

Filed under: 2012 | Tagged: | 16 Comments »

Mystery Saturday

Posted on July 28, 2012 by lmsinca

This is a very strange story.  I’m not saying I believe it as I have no idea how the pool of people was identified or how large it is, but it is curious if the pool is relatively small.  I’m a mystery nut though.  This would make a great “Pelican Brief” type of story if anyone has writing aspirations.

The Mysterious Deaths of Nine Gulf Oil Spill Whistleblowers

In the past year, nine vocal critics or potential whistleblowers of the Gulf oil spill all died in extremely mysterious ways. [Ed note: two others are also included here: one missing, one jailed.] Their deaths could be strange, unrelated coincidences. Or they could have been killed as part of a conspiracy to silence those who were speaking out against the worst oil spill in American history.

*****************************************************************

I’d love to hear what Mike thinks of the story below.

Two more men with HIV now virus-free. Is this a cure?

Two men unlucky enough to get both HIV and cancer have been seemingly cleared of the virus, raising hope that science may yet find a way to cure for the infection that causes AIDS, 30 years into the epidemic.

The researchers are cautious in declaring the two men cured, but more than two years after receiving bone marrow transplants, HIV can’t be detected anywhere in their bodies. These two new cases are reminiscent of the so-called “Berlin patient,” the only person known to have been cured of infection from the human immunodeficiency virus.

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And if you’re interested in this sort of thing here’s a story from Africa.

Signs Found of Mysterious Neanderthal ‘Sister Species’

Newly discovered bits of “foreign DNA” in modern Africans indicate that a mysterious “sister species” may have walked the earth with Neanderthals and humans, according to scientists. The DNA doesn’t resemble DNA from any modern-day humans, nor from Neanderthals, whose DNA sometimes shows up in modern-day Europeans. “We’re calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa,” said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington. He believes human interbreeding occurred with the mystery species 20,000 to 50,000 years ago when Neanderthals were waning in Europe, and modern humans were beginning to spread out from Africa, reports the Washington Post.

Filed under: 2012 | Tagged: | 38 Comments »

Why I Love Mark,

Posted on July 14, 2012 by lmsinca

even though he’s clearly too old for me, he and I are both happily married to other people and he lives in Frickin’ Texas.  Here’s part of a comment he made at the PL that didn’t get enough coverage.  We can still be friends though.

I sometimes come here just to read Shrink’s links, or john’s, or jncp’s, or suek’s. When I see a substantive discussion, if I have time I might join in. But this place bogs down if it celebrates the momentary gain from political low blows which is always followed by a further obfuscation of the real discussions that could be had here, if not by the nominees. 
 
Which is why I want Gary Johnson to do better in the polls. We need another voice in the TV debates or they will sound like…”Obamacare”…”Romneycare”…”Bain”…”tax and spend”…”tax cuts for the rich”…and no one will even mention that CONGRESS HAS NOT DONE ITS JOB< EITHER D, R, OR MIXED, IN YEARS and the American people will go on being told by the challenger that the POTUS can do everything while the incumbent is bound by the fact that the POTUS can do little [after having campaigned saying the POTUS can do it all].  
 
But here, we could agree that POTUS cannot do what any nominee promises, and then talk about what should be done by Congress and by POTUS. No matter what we say here about the horse race of politics it will happen. It would be more difficult but more rewarding to focus on issues, here.

Filed under: Trivia | 9 Comments »

Desolation Canyon

Posted on July 5, 2012 by lmsinca

Final pictures of Desolation Canyon, UT and CO River.  It’s pretty quiet tonight so I figured I might as well put up the final group of pictures from Utah.  She only needed 3 weeks to finish up her research and so ended up on another trip down the Colorado River through Cataract Canyon once her three weeks were finished.  She spent a night between trips in Green River and then hopped on a small plane for a quick flight to catch up to a group that was already poised to put in the water.

This is her rowing the raft loaded for three weeks.  They all took turns and got to her research area in 1 1/2 days instead of the 3 it normally takes.

One of her buddies below.

Colorado River…………….view from the air.  Haze is smoke from various fires.

Exploring a canyon close to camp below China Doll Peak.

Hiking down from the peak.

Working their way to Lake Powell.

View from the peak.

Filed under: 2012 | Tagged: | 5 Comments »

Late Sunday Funny

Posted on July 2, 2012 by lmsinca

For some reason this reminds me a little of ATiM.

 

Filed under: fun stuff | 7 Comments »

SCOTUS Decision (Open Thread)

Posted on June 28, 2012 by lmsinca

So today is the day. I thought we could just use an open thread for comments as the decision and opinions come in.  Anyone have a link to that liveblog we can add here?

Filed under: aca, Supreme Court | 158 Comments »

Sunday Funnies Open Thread

Posted on June 24, 2012 by lmsinca

 

 

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Nuns on the Bus

Posted on June 21, 2012 by lmsinca

Yesterday jnc4p mentioned a slight difference between men and women that I found provocative.

It appears that when there is a financial crisis there is a gender divide on what the appropriate resolution is.

The male outlook as represented by Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke seems to favor the make a deal approach as the way to resolve it with the government assisting/backstopping private entities. If a deal goes bad, make a bigger one until confidence is restored. I believe this is part and parcel of having the regulators captured by the mindset of the Wall Street banks they are supervising.

This is contrasted with the female outlook as represented by Sheila Blair and Brooksley Born which is more in line with follow the rules and let the chips fall where they may.

He went on to say how much respect he has for women like Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born.  His comment made me think of another woman who’s doing her part right now, not in the financial world, but in the political arena nonetheless, as a response to the spending cuts in the Ryan Budget, the increase in poverty since the beginning of this recession and in defiance of the Catholic Bishops’ rebuke.  Have you heard of Sister Simone?

(CBS News) JANESVILLE, Wis. – Fourteen Roman Catholic nuns on a nine-state bus tour are in Chicago Wednesday, after several stops in Wisconsin. Officially, they’re protesting cuts in federal programs for the poor. But the “Nuns on the Bus” tour is also an act of defiance against criticism from the Vatican.

Sister Simone Campbell is a Roman Catholic nun and the executive director of Network — a liberal social justice lobby in Washington.

“Nuns on the Bus” website

She’s been under siege, but she’s not fazed.

“Into every life a little rain must come,” she said.

Sister Simone is also a bit of a provocateur.

“Catholic sisters have always been out on the edge,” she said. “And quite frankly we have a long history of kind of annoying the central authority.”

The central authority they’ve recently annoyed is the Vatican itself. In April, sister Simone’s group and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — representing 80 percent of the nation’s nuns — were attacked by the church hierarchy for focusing too much of their work on poverty and economic justice, while being silent on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican reprimands U.S. nuns over “radical feminist themes”
U.S. Catholic nuns go about work after rebuke

Simone says she pleads guilty to part of that charge: “That I spend too much time working for people in poverty. I wear that as a badge of honor.”

The Vatican has appointed a bishop to correct what the church calls “serious doctrinal problems” in the way the nuns work.

They’ve been called radical feminists.

Simone’s response: “Oh my heavens. I actually have to laugh. We are strong women. We’re educated women. We ask questions. We engage in dialogue. That’s all we do. We stay faithful to the gospel and trying to live it.

From the AP via the Washington Post:

While the nuns say they aren’t opposing any specific Republican candidate, they plan stops at the offices of several closely tied to the budget process, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of the House-passed budget. Their first stop Monday was Rep. Steve King’s office in Ames. The tour will end in Washington on July 2.

Social activism at its finest.

Filed under: 2012, Poverty | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

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