To be white or not to be

On one side of the world, people use whitening creams to appear rich and prosperous, on the other side of the world, rich  people use tanning sprays to maintain a healthy glow!

Commercial skin-lightening creams have been popular among black South Africans since the 1930s, although political opposition to the products has been on the rise since the 1960s. (Several African countries have banned lightening creams, either for medical or cultural reasons.) The skin-lightening cream Fair and Lovely has been a mainstay at shops in India since 1978, and Western cosmetics companies are now peddling their own lighteners to men and women in the subcontinent. It should be noted that Indian consumers aren’t striving for the translucent skin of European courtesans but rather for a hue known on matchmaking websites as “wheatish.” Chinese beachgoers are so concerned about tanning that many don a balaclava-like accessory known as a “face-kini” to shield their delicate skin from the sun.

In the 1920s. Many Europeans and Americans considered pale skin a mark of wealth and leisure until the early 20^th century. Around that time, doctors began to prescribe sunbathing for a variety of ailments, most notably tuberculosis, which was the second-leading cause of death in the United States in 1900. Wealthy sufferers loaded up their trunks and headed for sanatoriums, where they did little other than lie out on chaise lounges. As the sun gained currency as a medication, monied Europeans flocked to resorts on the French Riviera. If there was a single person responsible for popularizing the tan, it was Coco Chanel, who bronzed herself on a yacht in the Mediterranean and declared in 1929, “A girl simply has to be tanned.”

It didn’t take long for celebrity males to pick up the trend. Hollywood icon Cary Grant actively worked on his tan. Even today, politicians like Mitt Romney and speaker John Boener, to name two, use spray tan to maintain their healthy glow

But when did tanned skin come to be considered attractive?

Studies have shown that modern white Americans, Australians, and Europeans believe tan skin is a sign of health. In a 2006 study of Australian teenagers, for example, respondents overwhelmingly found tanned models healthier and more attractive. Participants found darker tans healthier in men than in women. A 1996 survey of Swedish adolescents turned up an interesting fact: High self-confidence was associated with more sunbathing among boys but less sunbathing among girls.

The tanning trend, though, is still something of a flash in the pan, if one considers the long history of pale-skin worship. Minoan women avoided the sun more than 4,000 years ago to keep a porcelain-like complexion. The Western literary canon is bursting with praise for white skin. (Shakespeare’s sonnets are particularly rich in such references.) Renaissance European women drew blue lines onto their faces to create the illusion of translucency. Until the late 19^th century, European and American women used lead- and arsenic-based lightening treatments, which put many courtesans into early graves. The men were sometimes affected as well: Hundreds of unhappy Italian wives in the 17^th century poisoned their lustful husbands with the arsenic-based cosmetic Aqua Tofana. (Authorities executed the product’s purveyor in 1659.) Antebellum Southern women chewed on newspaper, because they believed the ink whitened their skin.

The grass- or in this case skin- it seem is always greener( or whiter) on the other side!

How to die- random musings

It had been months since I had thought of dying. That ghost had been at my elbow for a long time but had largely faded away in the past few years as the prognostications of the doctors failed to materialize and I continued with my life.

Then suddenly the ghost was back again. And two completely contrary events caused this. One was the visit of my little grandson for a few weeks. The utter joy of that visit did a lot to drive all brooding thoughts away and gave me a new lease of joy and life. The second was the shingles attack that often left me willing for the end.

And now both are over and I am left to again plan my life and death.

I recently learned of a protocol called the Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient, which was conceived in the 90s at a Liverpool cancer facility as a more humane alternative to the frantic end-of-life assault of desperate measures. Today the  Hippocratic oath just drives clinicians toward constantly treating the patient, right until the moment they die,” said Sir Thomas Hughes-Hallett, who was until recently the chief executive of the center where the protocol was designed. English doctors, he said, tell a joke about this imperative: “Why in Ireland do they put screws in coffins? To keep the doctors out.”

The Liverpool Pathway brings many of the practices of hospice care into a hospital setting, where it can reach many more patients approaching death. “It’s not about hastening death,” Sir Thomas said. “It’s about recognizing that someone is dying, and giving them choices. Do you want an oxygen mask over your face? Or would you like to kiss your wife?” The fact is that people would prefer to die gently, loved and knowing it, dignified and ready.

As one patient said “I have fought death for so long. It is such a relief to give up.” We should all die so well. Perhaps one day the Hippocratic Oath -- "First, do harm" -- will mean refraining from aggressive, painful and pointless efforts to prolong life at the expense of the quality of those precious few remaining days.

Morrie in (Tuesdays with Morrie) advises: “Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?"

The truth is once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

Most of us walk around as if we’re sleepwalking. We really don’t experience the world fully because we’re half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do. 

The utterly brutal fact is  "Learn how to die, and you will learn how to live.”

A tragic mea culpa

Rajat Gupta, a doyen of the Indian industry, was sentenced to two years in prison. Here is his statement  to the court prior to his sentencing:

"Your Honor, thank you for the opportunity. The last 18 months have been the most challenging period of my life since I lost my parents as a teenager. I have lost my reputation that I have built over a lifetime. The verdict was devastating to my family, my friends and me. Its implications to all aspects of my life — personal, professional and financial — are profound. Much of the first year seemed surreal to me; however, since the trial, I have come to accept the reality of my life going forward.

Your Honor, I want to say here that I regret terribly the impact of this matter on my family, my friends and the institutions that are dear to me.

Gupta said he has lost his reputation built over a lifetime and apologised to his family and colleagues.AFP

I had the privilege of touching many lives in many fields. I mentored many young people, and many more view me as a role model. I served on many boards and many advisory positions with institutions that I hold in the highest regard. I have given a lot of thought to them during these last 18 months. These are extraordinary institutions and outstanding people, and I feel terrible that they have been burdened with totally undeserved negative attention. I apologize to them and ask for their forgiveness.

I spent my entire professional career at McKinsey. It is a close-knit, value-driven partnership; known for the highest standards of integrity, for always keeping client confidences, for always acting in the client’s best interest. I am extremely sorry for the negative comments from clients and the press that McKinsey has had to deal with. I take some comfort that, given the strength of the firm, I hope that it will not suffer any long-term reputational harm.

I also often thought in particular about three not-for-profit organizations that I was fortunate to help create — the Indian School of Business, the Public Health Foundation of India and the America India Foundation. These are very young institutions and in the early years of developing a reputation. I love these institutions as if they were my own children. I never want to hurt them in any way. It is a great disappointment that I have not been able to serve with any of these institutions during this time and may not be able to do so going forward. Most importantly, I regret terribly any potential damage to their outstanding reputations.

I have been blessed with many friends, going all the way back to high school and college, and I have stayed in touch with them. Many of them have followed my career, have cheered me along and taken pride in my accomplishments. They continue to support me, and for that I am enormously grateful, but they have endured a sense of loss as a result of what has happened, and for that I feel responsible.

Finally, and most importantly, my family has always meant the world to me. We are a large, extended close family.

Anita and I often played the role of elders for both of our families. Our home has always been open to all. The extended family has been devastated by the turn of events and rallied around us with extraordinary support. My brother, sisters, in-laws, nephews and nieces have all surrounded me in these 18 months to comfort me and to give me courage. Every time I look at their faces, I get overcome with a deep sense of letting them down.

Anita’s and my daughters’ happiness mean more to me than anything else. Anita and I have brought up our daughters with the values of honesty, integrity and hard work. We are a close and loving family. They have had to endure a barrage of negative press about their father and husband, unkind comments from their colleagues and classmates, uncertain prospects for their future careers and a host of other negative outcomes.  It is unbearable to me to see how much they have suffered. I just feel terribly that I have put them through this.

Your Honor, as I come before you to be sentenced, the overwhelming feelings in my heart are of acceptance of what has happened, of gratitude to my family and friends, and of seeking forgiveness from them all. It is with these feelings that I hope to move forward and dedicate myself to the service of others.

Thank you, your Honor, for listening."

The Choice

The New Yorker magazine has a brilliant article on the choice facing the US electrolate next November and it is worth a read.

Here are some of the highlights of the article:

" Obama succeeded George W. Bush, a two-term President whose misbegotten legacy, measured in the money it squandered and the misery it inflicted, has become only more evident with time. Bush left behind an America in dire condition and with a degraded reputation. On Inauguration Day, the United States was in a downward financial spiral brought on by predatory lending, legally sanctioned greed and pyramid schemes, an economic policy geared to the priorities and the comforts of what soon came to be called “the one per cent,” and deregulation that began before the Bush Presidency. In 2008 alone, more than two and a half million jobs were lost—up to three-quarters of a million jobs a month. The gross domestic product was shrinking at a rate of nine per cent. Housing prices collapsed. Credit markets collapsed. The stock market collapsed—and, with it, the retirement prospects of millions. Foreclosures and evictions were ubiquitous; whole neighborhoods and towns emptied. The automobile industry appeared to be headed for bankruptcy. Banks as large as Lehman Brothers were dead, and other banks were foundering. It was a crisis of historic dimensions and global ramifications. However skillful the management in Washington, the slump was bound to last longer than any since the Great Depression.

At the same time, the United States was in the midst of the grinding and unnecessary war in Iraq, which killed a hundred thousand Iraqis and four thousand Americans, and depleted the federal coffers. The political and moral damage of Bush’s duplicitous rush to war rivalled the conflict’s price in blood and treasure. America’s standing in the world was further compromised by the torture of prisoners and by illegal surveillance at home. Al Qaeda, which, on September 11, 2001, killed three thousand people on American soil, was still strong. Its leader, Osama bin Laden, was, despite a global manhunt, living securely in Abbottabad, a verdant retreat near Islamabad......

"Barack Obama began his Presidency devoted to the idea of post-partisanship. His rhetoric, starting with his “Red State, Blue State” Convention speech, in 2004, and his 2006 book, “The Audacity of Hope,” was imbued with that idea. Just as in his memoir, “Dreams from My Father,” he had tried to reconcile the disparate pasts of his parents, Obama was determined to bring together warring tribes in Washington and beyond. He extended his hand to everyone from the increasingly radical leadership of the congressional Republicans to the ruling mullahs of the Iranian theocracy. The Republicans, however, showed no greater interest in working with Obama than did the ayatollahs. The Iranian regime went on enriching uranium and crushing its opposition, and the Republicans, led by Dickensian scolds, including the Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell, committed themselves to a single goal: to engineer the President’s political destruction by defeating his major initiatives. Obama, for his part, did not always prove particularly adept at, or engaged by, the arts of retail persuasion, and his dream of bipartisanship collided with the reality of obstructionism...."

Perhaps inevitably, the President has disappointed some of his most ardent supporters. Part of their disappointment is a reflection of the fantastical expectations that attached to him. Some, quite reasonably, are disappointed in his policy failures (on Guantánamo, climate change, and gun control); others question the morality of the persistent use of predator drones. And, of course, 2012 offers nothing like the ecstasy of taking part in a historical advance: the reëlection of the first African-American President does not inspire the same level of communal pride. But the reëlection of a President who has been progressive, competent, rational, decent, and, at times, visionary is a serious matter. The President has achieved a run of ambitious legislative, social, and foreign-policy successes that relieved a large measure of the human suffering and national shame inflicted by the Bush Administration. Obama has renewed the honor of the office he holds:

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009—the $787-billion stimulus package—was well short of what some economists, including Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, thought the crisis demanded. But it was larger in real dollars than any one of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal measures. It reversed the job-loss trend—according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as many as 3.6 million private-sector jobs have been created since June, 2009—and helped reset the course of the economy. It also represented the largest public investment in infrastructure since President Eisenhower’s interstate-highway program. From the start, though, Obama recognized that it would reap only modest political gain. “It’s very hard to prove a counterfactual,” he told the journalist Jonathan Alter, “where you say, ‘You know, things really could have been a lot worse.’ ” He was speaking of the bank and auto-industry bailouts, but the problem applies more broadly to the stimulus: harm averted is benefit unseen.

As for systemic reform, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which Obama signed into law in July, 2010, tightened capital requirements on banks, restricted predatory lending, and, in general, sought to prevent abuses of the sort that led to the crash of 2008. Against the counsel of some Republicans, including Mitt Romney, the Obama Administration led the takeover, rescue, and revival of the automobile industry. The Administration transformed the country’s student-aid program, making it cheaper for students and saving the federal government sixty-two billion dollars—more than a third of which was put back into Pell grants. AmeriCorps, the country’s largest public-service program, has been tripled in size.

Obama’s most significant legislative achievement was a vast reform of the national health-care system. Five Presidents since the end of the Second World War have tried to pass legislation that would insure universal access to medical care, but all were defeated by deeply entrenched opposition. Obama—bolstered by the political cunning of the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi—succeeded. Some critics urged the President to press for a single-payer system—Medicare for all. Despite its ample merits, such a system had no chance of winning congressional backing. Obama achieved the achievable. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the single greatest expansion of the social safety net since the advent of Medicaid and Medicare, in 1965. Not one Republican voted in favor of it.

Obama has passed no truly ambitious legislation related to climate change, shying from battle in the face of relentless opposition from congressional Republicans. Yet his environmental record is not as barren as it may seem. The stimulus bill provided for extensive investment in green energy, biofuels, and electric cars. In August, the Administration instituted new fuel-efficiency standards that should nearly double gas mileage; by 2025, new cars will need to average 54.5 miles per gallon.

President Obama’s commitment to civil rights has gone beyond rhetoric. During his first week in office, he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which protects women, minorities, and the disabled against unfair wage discrimination. By ending the military’s ban on the service of those who are openly gay, and by endorsing marriage equality, Obama, more than any previous President, has been a strong advocate of the civil rights of gay men and lesbians. Finally, Obama appointed to the Supreme Court two highly competent women, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, the Court’s first Hispanic. Kagan and Sotomayor are skilled and liberal-minded Justices who, abjuring dogmatism, represent a sober and sensible set of jurisprudential values.

In the realm of foreign policy, Obama came into office speaking the language of multilateralism and reconciliation—so much so that the Nobel Peace Prize committee, in an act as patronizing as it was premature, awarded him its laurels, in 2009. Obama was embarrassed by the award and recognized it for what it was: a rebuke to the Bush Administration. Still, the Norwegians were also getting at something more affirmative. Obama’s Cairo speech, that same year, tried to help heal some of the wounds not only of the Iraq War but, more generally, of Western colonialism in the Middle East. Speaking at Al Azhar University, Obama expressed regret that the West had used Muslim countries as pawns in the Cold War game of Risk. He spoke for the rights of women and against torture; he defended the legitimacy of the State of Israel while offering a straightforward assessment of the crucial issue of the Palestinians and their need for statehood, citing the “humiliations—large and small—that come with occupation.”

... Still, he proved a sophisticated and reliable diplomat and an effective Commander-in-Chief. He kept his promise to withdraw American troops from Iraq. He forbade torture. And he waged a far more forceful campaign against Al Qaeda than Bush had—a campaign that included the killing of Osama bin Laden. He negotiated—and won Senate approval of—a crucial strategic-arms deal with the Russians, slashing warheads and launchers on both sides and increasing the transparency of mutual inspections. In Afghanistan, he has set a reasonable course in an impossible situation.

The unsettled situations in Egypt and Libya, following the Arab Spring of 2010, make plain that that region’s political trajectory is anything but fixed. Syria shames the world’s inaction and confounds its hopes of decisive intervention. This is where Obama’s respect for complexity is not an indulgence of intellectual vanity but a requirement for effective action. In the case of bin Laden, it was necessary to act alone and at once; in Libya, in concert with the Europeans; in Iran, cautiously but with decisive measures."

.....

The choice is clear. The Romney-Ryan ticket represents a constricted and backward-looking vision of America: the privatization of the public good. In contrast, the sort of public investment championed by Obama—and exemplified by both the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and the Affordable Care Act—takes to heart the old civil-rights motto “Lifting as we climb.” That effort cannot, by itself, reverse the rise of inequality that has been under way for at least three decades. But we’ve already seen the future that Romney represents, and it doesn’t work.

The reëlection of Barack Obama is a matter of great urgency. Not only are we in broad agreement with his policy directions; we also see in him what is absent in Mitt Romney—a first-rate political temperament and a deep sense of fairness and integrity. A two-term Obama Administration will leave an enduringly positive imprint on political life. It will bolster the ideal of good governance and a social vision that tempers individualism with a concern for community. Every Presidential election involves a contest over the idea of America. Obama’s America—one that progresses, however falteringly, toward social justice, tolerance, and equality—represents the future that this country deserves. ♦

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/10/29/121029taco_talk_editors#ixzz2A2SlnCyf

Selecting a president....

As the date for voting for the US president draws near, it is imperative that we select someone whose integrity is above reproach and who presents the future with hope.

The question is why would anyone vote for a candidate who:

•    has changed his position on all crucial issues multiple times
•    proposed an incoherent economic plan for recovery whose five basic features are:   

1. It would boost unemployment because it slashes public spending next year and the year after, when the economy is still likely to need a boost, not a fiscal drag. It would be the same austerity trap now throwing Europe into recession. According to theEconomic Policy Institute, Ryan’s plan would mean 1.3 million fewer jobs next year than otherwise, and 2.8 million fewer the year after; the plan would take from lower-income Americans and give to the rich – who already have the biggest share of America’s total income and wealth in almost a century. 
2. it would raise taxes on families earning between 30 and 40 thousand dollars by almost $500 a year, and slash programs like Medicare, food stamps, and children’s health What would Ryan do with these savings? Reduce taxes on millionaires by an average of over $500,000 a year; 
3. it would turn Medicare into vouchers that won’t keep up with the rising costs of health care – thereby shifting the burden onto seniors. By contrast,Obama’s Affordable Care Act saves money on Medicare by reducing payments to medical providers like hospitals and drug companies; 
4. adding money to defense while cutting spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research and development. America already spends more on defense than the next five biggest military spenders put together. Our future productivity depends on the public investments Romey/Ryan plan wants to cut; 
5. the Romney/ Ryan’s budget doesn’t even reduce the federal budget deficit – not for decades. Remember: He’s adding to military spending, giving huge additional tax cuts to the very rich, and stifling economic growth by cutting spending too early. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates Ryan’s Roadmap would push public debt to over 175 percent of GDP by 2050.

•  cannot make up his mind on abortion rights of women and wants of overturn Roe vs Wade
•  is clueless about foreign policy and is willing to start a war with Iran at the behest of Israel and enter into war in Syria, and made a fool of himself in UK where he was called Mitt the Twit
•  has not declared his taxes unlike his father but hides his wealth in tax havens of Cayman Islands etc rather than keeping them in US banks where it could help rebuild infrastructure
•  has never really run a business enterprise other than a consultancy group like Bain
• wants get rid of Obamacare and make a voucher program of Medicare,
• has proven to be a serial liar on major issues, has demonstrated a less than sterling or likeable character- as shown  in his childhood bullying, tying the family dog to the car, smuggling popcorn into theaters against policy,etc and has a family whose members never served in the army despite being eligible, and 

• to me at least seems to have no moral discernible core or convictions

The seven habits of successful people and its author

Steven Covey, the author of seven habits died recently and the daily Telegraph published an obituary that is worth a read.

" Seven Habits — in order they are: Be proactive; Begin with the end in mind; Put first things first; Think “win-win”; Seek first to understand, then to be understood; Synergise; and Sharpen the saw [ie look after yourself] — made its author a fortune by the repetitive use of words such as synergy, paradigm and interdependent, as in: “Although you cannot control the paradigms of others in an interdependent interaction of the synergistic process itself, a great deal of synergy is within your circle of influence.”

His book became a bible for aspiring middle managers and organisers of personal development courses, providing a rich new source of management-speak. It is largely thanks to Covey that terms such as “proactive” and “win-win” have become part of everyday conversation.

On the back of the book’s success, Covey, a Yul Brynner look alike from Utah, built a leadership development business...Covey’s clients included three quarters of the Fortune 500 companies as well as schools and government agencies aiming to turn this world into super-efficient managers. When Bill Clinton reached his lowest ebb in 1994, he summoned Covey to advise him; Tony Blair, not surprisingly, was also said to be a follower of Covey’s managerial techniques. “Coveyism,” as The Economist put it in 1996, “is total quality management for the character, re-engineering for the soul”. In 1996 Time magazine named Covey one of the 25 most influential Americans.

Covey followed Seven Habits with a succession of lucrative spin-offs, such as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families (1997), in which he advocated that families should come up with their own mission statements and establish “emotional bank accounts” into which members make “deposits” through such things as kindness, honesty and reliability.

Covey’s genius was to mix the language of management consultancy with the sort of moral exhortations familiar to readers of the motivational literature put out by Alcoholics Anonymous. But there were cynical souls who suggested that he was merely in the business of repackaging stale bromides as breakthroughs of world-shattering importance. One detractor described Seven Habits as the book “behind which nearly every corporate bulls-----r hides”; and there were many parodies, including one entitled The Seven Habits of Highly Defective People: And Other Bestsellers That Won’t Go Away.

One of Covey’s own habits was littering his speeches with approving references to well-managed firms which had benefited from his expertise, though in 2009 these included General Motors’ Saturn division, which was going out of business at the time.

Meanwhile, when British families in a Channel 4 documentary attempted to apply Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, mission statements and emotional bank accounts proved no match for surly adolescents. “Being proactive sounds like a good idea when you are sitting outside a mock French chateau in Utah,” noted one critic, “but less alluring on a wet afternoon with bored kids in Plaistow.”

Stephen Richards Covey was born into a Mormon family in Salt Lake City on October 24 1932. After taking a degree in Business Administration at the University of Utah, and an MBA at Harvard, he went on Mormon missions in England and Ireland. Part of his work involved training fledgling church leaders: “I got so turned on by the idea of training leaders that it became my whole life’s mission,” he explained in 2004."

Some thoughts on the Presidential campaign

As the Presidential campaign moves towards closure and as the frenzy over the debates reaches a crescendo fueled by the media, it is well to sit back a little and reflect on the choice before us. Here is a summary of what we need to really consider in depth before casting our votes:

Obama's case for reelection

Obama's achievements

The many lies of Mitt Romney

The many lies of Mitt Romney- Part II

And one more thing to remember, with Romney will come the tea party and all the evil it represents. Are you really ready for this?

In the heart of the tea party

27 Lies in one debate..Need we say more

27 Lies In One Debate

In the heart of the tea party

I recently met a very interesting personality, who gave an after dinner speech to a few of us explaining the birth and rise of the tea party in the US political scene. Leonard Zestkind is one of those rare self taught scholars who has been writing  on racism, anti-Semitism and the white supremacist movement for more than thirty years. He was awarded the  John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation genius grant in 1988 and has written a book Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Blood and Politics is not only a brilliant account of the origins, modes of operation, collaborations, and internecine disputes of white supremacist, neo-Nazi, Holocaust-denier, and anti-Semitic groups in America, but alerts us to the fact that despite—or perhaps because of—significant improvements in race relations and changing demographic patterns, we are likely to witness a resurgence of their activities. And so it behoves us to learn a little bit more about them. And here Leonard is an invaluable guide.

"The Tea Parties are a little bit like a poison apple--with three layers" he began. "At their center is a hard-core group of over 220,000 enrolled members of five national factions, and hundreds of thousands more that we have not yet counted but are signed up only with their local Tea Parties. At the next level is a larger less defined group of a couple of million activists who go to meetings, buy the literature and attend the many local and national protests. And finally there are the Tea Party sympathizers. These are people who say they agree with what they believe are the Tea Parties' goal. These rank at about 16% to 18% of voters, depending on which organization is doing the polling. That would mean somewhere between 17 million and 19 million adult American voters count themselves as Tea Party supporters." 

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 926 hate groups active in the United States in 12002 -- a 4% increase from the previous year but representing a 50% increase since 2000. Demographically speaking, this involves a tiny slice of the populace: Zeskind estimates that 30,000 men and women constitute the white nationalist hard core, with an additional 250,000-plus forming a periphery of supporters. In a country of more than 300 million people, that is one-tenth of 1%.

"This is an overwhelmingly white and solidly middle class slice of the population, slightly older and less troubled financially than the rest of us. Please, remember this point when some political pundit or the other tells you these are economically strapped Americans hitting out at scapegoats. These are not populists of any stripe. These are ultra-nationalists (or super patriots) who are defending their special pale-skinned privileges and power."

 There are six national Tea Party factions: FreedomWorks Tea Party, headed up by Dick Armey, a former head of the republican party. There is Tea Party Nation, which held the convention in Nashville last February where Sarah Palin of the "real Americans" spoke. There is 1776 Tea Party, the leadership of this group comes directly from the Minuteman Project, the anti-immigrant vigilante group. There is the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, responisble for organizing the cross-country Tea Party Express bus tours. There is also ResistNet which sponsors Tea Parties and Tea Party Patriots. ResistNet and Tea Party Patriots are the largest of the six national factions.

The Tea Parties are not just about taxes and budgets. They are against everything we progressives are for, beginning with President Barack Obama. From health care reform to immigration reform, from a jobs program to unemployment benefits to union check off. And, as Rand Paul the Republican candidate from Kentucky has shown us, they are also against federal civil rights legislation. Indeed, major sections of the Tea Party movement are opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment and equality before the law (because the oppose birth-right citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants). And some--the followers of Texas Cong. Ron Paul among them--are even opposed to the Seventeenth Amendment and the direct election of United States Senators.

The common thread in all of these groups, despite a difference in orientation, is a sense of cultural dispossession: the Christian right sees 1962, when the U.S. Supreme Court decided to ban prayer in public schools, as a prominent marker of that dispossession. White nationalists see the court's decision to desegregate public education, in Brown vs. Board of Education, to have "stolen their national birthright." For others, a hot point was the 1993 passage of the gun-control Brady Bill, just months after the incineration of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, following which, in Idaho, Montana, Michigan and the South, "militiamen popped up like cardboard targets on a rapid-fire shooting range," Zeskind says.The groups include skinheads, Christian Identity adherents and Ku Kluxers; individuals such as David Duke, Patrick Buchanan and Pat Robertson; many driven by racism, anti-Semitism, opposition to abortion, antipathy toward homosexuality, hatred of the federal government (and especially the Internal Revenue Service), gun-rights activism, millennial beliefs, anti-immigrant fervor and a taste for Holocaust denial.

So these are not a string of disconnected organizations sharing only a common set of hatreds. Rather, this is a single movement, with a common set of leaders and interlocking memberships that hold a complete and sometimes sophisticated ideology. The movement’s foremost aspect is its regard for white skin color as a badge of national identity. Many of the organizations and leaders look back to the Constitutional order prior to the Civil War, when the national-state was a whites-only republic. Others look forward to the creation of a new white nation-state carved out of the lands of North America. While these ideas were present in the movement from its re-inception in the mid-1970s, they only became dominant in the 1990s, after the end of the Cold War ushered in a new era. Across the globe, nationalism became a language of opposition to the New Global Order, and racial and ethnic nationalism became more salient than its liberal civic opposition. In the United States, racial nationalism meant white nationalism, and the old white supremacist movement was thus transformed into 21st-century white nationalism.

How did this movement grow so powerful? First, through the slow accretion of organizing week-in, week-out events: Klan rallies, Bible camps, survivalist and gun shows, white-power music concerts, etc. Second, when David Duke won a majority of white votes while running in two Louisiana statewide elections in 1990 and 1991, he uncovered a middle-American constituency that supported at least a portion of his national socialist ideas. Third, a group of respected (if not respectable) ultra-conservatives broke with the Bush 41-era Republican consensus during the first Persian Gulf War and headed in the white direction. These were the Buchananites [led by current television commentator and author Pat Buchanan] and they helped create a realignment of forces that continues to plague us today.

This movement shows itself primarily in the anti-immigrant movement—the lobbyists, Minuteman vigilantes, and racist think tanks that support them. It is here that the idea that the United States is or should be a “white” country takes on the form of a policy issue. If you follow the discussion among anti-immigrant groups, the dominant discourse is about how the United States is becoming a “Third World” country because of all the brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people crossing the Rio Grande—never mind the fact that these same people have been on this side of the border ever since 1845.

"With Obama in the White House, I think we can expect more of the same, plus some" he concluded. "Some white nationalists will focus on tending to their current base—which is not inconsiderable. They will continue to push for secessionist-style white enclaves and might engage in militia-style violence. Others will attempt to widen their base, and carve out a larger niche among conservative Republicans. Without an electoral vehicle of their own, they will suffer from the vicissitudes of the Republican leadership. Their natural base, however, will be the five percent of white voters who told pollsters last summer that they would never vote for a black person for president. More than Rush Limbaugh will get ugly. "

The Tea Party threat goes far beyond its supposed mantra of debt and taxes. It seeks to undermine the gains made by progressives over the last century, including eroding key pillars of civil rights and democracy. In fact it is not economic insecurity that animates Tea Party animus; rather it is the larger questions around race, culture, and national identity at the core. In short, in their efforts to "take America back" the Tea Party have taken up the question of who and what we are as a nation—defining America as a white Christian, heterosexual nation.

Unfortunately Tea Party support remains dangerously strong, no matter what level you're looking at. It has become a one-stop-shop for numerous forms of bigotry and threats to democracy. This poses a unique challenge for all of us today. As Dr. King once wrote, "We may have all gotten here on different ships, but we're in the same boat now." We can face the fear together, and stop allowing the Tea Party to control the narrative through intimidation and bullying. And we can remember to be bold—to share with the world our vision of what we think this country should be like and re-define who we are as a nation. We can't wait for a leader, or a party, or anyone else to do it for us. The Tea Parties say they want to "Take This Country Back." We have to ask, from whom do they want to take the country away? Who do they want to give it to?

Our response has to be to say: One Nation. One Dream.

Obama's achievements

In all the monday morning punditry and hand wringing, it is well to remember what Obama has already achieved : 

• he won passage of a stimulus bill that prevented a 1930’ type depression in the U.S and a severe downturn in the world economy, 
• passed a landmark healthcare bill that Democrats had been trying to pass for the better part of a century, 
• signed a financial reform bill, and much needed reform of student loans. 
• he was responsible for a firm end to the Bush torture regime, 
• passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and a hate crimes bill, 
• led a successful rescue of the American car industry, 
• helped the resuscitation of the NLRB. 
• approved new regulation of the credit card industry, 
• new regulation of the tobacco industry, 
• a national service bill, 
• expanded stem-cell research, 
• the most sweeping land-protection act in 15 years, and 
• the confirmation of two Supreme Court justices, both women.

Even in the case of the much maligned accord on the debt ceiling, it’s worth keeping in mind that Obama got a lot out of that deal. In the end, he got

•  a food safety bill, 
• passage of the START treaty, 
• a stimulus package, 
• repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and 
• a 9/11 first Responders bill. 

Oh, and he killed Osama bin Laden too.

The fact is that Obama has done more to enact a liberal agenda in three years than George Bush did for the conservative agenda in eight. A conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan notes “given his inheritance, this has been the most substantive first term since Ronald Reagan's. And given Obama's long-game mentality, that is setting us up for a hell of a second one.”

Obama's case for reelection

One of the progressive magazines, The TNR, makes a case for the reelection of President Obama:

IN THE WINTER OF 2009, the president was grasping for a phrase to sum up his agenda, a slogan that would capture his ambitions. He settled on the “New Foundation.” You didn’t need to be Ted Sorensen to understand that the phrase was straining too hard; and as the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told the president over dinner, it was a bit too evocative of a woman’s girdle. And yet, a new foundation is precisely what he has built.

Health care reform, if it is properly nurtured, largely completes the social safety net. Financial reform, if the lobbyists don’t shred it, will curb maniacal risk-taking in the markets. The stimulus provided the seed money to launch Race to the Top—perhaps the most significant wave of experimentation in the history of public education—and to remake the energy grid. It created industries from scratch: biofuel refineries and plants that manufacture batteries for electric cars.

Obamaism itself is perhaps this administration’s most important innovation. The president has used New Democratic means to achieve Old Democratic ends. In pursuit of old liberal dreams, he has relied heavily on the insights of markets: spurring competition, reforming bureaucracies, and leveraging small investments to achieve big goals. Two of his signal programs—health care’s individual mandate and cap and trade—were tellingly conceived by conservatives.

The list set out above of his domestic accomplishments, both the ACA and the industrial policy, demonstrates that Obama himself saw his presidency as truly transformational - but not in the sense it was understood by most. What he did is try to use the stimulus and the levers of powers to change the economic and social dynamics of the country. BUT he could not advertise that fact, principally because of that virulence - even without admitting that he was transforming the country, Obama was and is being attacked for the socialist communist Kenyan anti-colonialist Muslim radical program of reforms - imagine if he actually gave a speech to that effect.

This approach helps explain, in part, why he has received insufficient political credit. It’s the stuff of technocracy, largely invisible to the public. But this invisibility is also President Obama’s fault. The president may have built a new foundation, but he hasn’t sufficiently made the case for it. Nor, crucially, has he crafted a sustained argument that might help erode the American aversion to government. (His convention speech barely mentioned health care reform, the essence of his legacy.) His oratorical and explanatory shortcomings have been maddening to watch, given the strengths he displayed in the 2008 campaign.

Of course, Obama’s pitch is hardly easy. His stimulus staved off depression—and prevented untold human suffering—but it wasn’t large enough to fully curb rising unemployment or spur a robust recovery. His administration’s response to the collapse of the housing market, in many ways the nub of the whole crisis, was particularly weak. By populating his administration with disciples of Robert Rubin and former denizens of the investment banks, he cloistered himself off from aggressive proposals—the kind that might have propped up homeowners with the same vigor that the government supported the banks.

The first term has a list of meaningful international accomplishments—chiefly his ruthless pursuit of Al Qaeda, the deft intervention in Libya, and the conclusion of the Iraq war. The president’s open hand to China and initial overtures to the Iranian regime have smartly been replaced by a new assertiveness. This willingness to change course has helped preserve American power in an era where it could easily have slipped away. But there have been times when Obama’s pragmatic impulses have yielded unfortunate policies. While his Cairo speech anticipated the Arab Spring, he never reaped the credit for his prescience, because he has largely sat on the sidelines as dictators have attempted to crush revolutions in Syria and Bahrain. His decision to authorize the surge in Afghanistan seems to have yielded few tangible results for the high cost of the operations in dollars and lives.

But these shortcomings do not compare with what his opponent might do if elected. Mitt Romney is the perfect avatar for a party in the throes of ideological convulsion. When he first considered running for president, in 2006, he seemed an archetype desperately missing from American politics. As a governor, he presented himself as a rigorous empiricist; his record formed a coherent pattern of bucking GOP orthodoxy on climate change, health care reform, and gay rights. But six years of pandering to Republican primary voters and donors will apparently distort even a first-rate mind. Far more than Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, he has promoted a libertarian vision filled with substantive and rhetorical hostility to the poor. His foreign policy is similarly wild, urging the escalation of military hostility with nations who pose no meaningful strategic threat.

At times, Barack Obama has failed to appreciate the virulence of the modern Republican Party. He has earnestly entered negotiations with adversaries interested in breaking his presidency, not splitting the difference. It took him painfully long to arrive at a realistic assessment of his foes. But over the course of this campaign, he has emerged as a different kind of politician—a populist bruiser capable of skillfully and passionately assailing his opponents, while remaining indifferent to the hand wringing of establishment opinion. Perhaps this is a style better suited for the next four years, in which his primary task will be managing a fiscal crisis that his opponents will cynically exploit. Having extended the safety net, he must now protect it. Without a second term, the accomplishments of his first would evaporate. 

This is not a poetic rallying cry, but there is human suffering to be minimized and a new foundation to defend. 

A day in the life of .. Revisited

A few weeks ago I had written about the books of the future - how they would include photos, videos, etc and that reading would become a much more complete satisfaction than merely words on the page.

Here I try and attempt to rewrite one of my articles to see if the inclusion of photos and videos does indeed make for a more satisfying read.

See what you think?

---------------


Our grandson was visiting us over the past few weeks and every day with him was a wondrous voyage of discovery.

It would begin early in dawn, when this sleepy, tousled eleven month old would toddle into our bedroom and climb on to our bed.

Good mornings said, he would set about exploring his environs. I introduced him to the remote for the window curtains, which entertained him enormously as he watched them go up and down with wondrous eyes. And to music on my IPAD - he became partial to the lilting tunes of the quawaali and would dance to its rythmns. His grandmother plied him with various toys - among them a singing camel from Jordan and an improvised drum. Soon, too soon, he would be plucked away by his parents for the morning ritual of drinking his milk, an exercise he vigorously disapproved of as an interruption to his morning.


Even though he was tied up in his high chair- to make sure he did not make a bolt for it- he had by now perfected various ways of expressing his dislike of the milk. Among his tactics were to close his eyes and pretend it was not there, another to turn his head 180 degrees so he would not see his mother, a third was to shake his head vigorously sideways to express his non approval and finally to pretend to vomit in disgust. When none of this worked, he kept looking at the floor so the milk would not go in from his now full cheeks down. It took three of us to make sure he drank his milk and even then half the time half the milk ended up on his clothes instead of his mouth.

But once the irritating- for him anyway- ritual was over, he would imperiously beckon his father - the mother was the one holding him down- to take him from his prison and reward him with his favorite pastimes. One of that was the living room window from whence he could look down on to cars on the road while manipulating the levers to open it.

Soon he would tire of this limited challenge and demand to be put down on the floor so that he could explore the house on his own. Of course, it was a given that his course would now be a path of destruction to equal Tamerlane with no piece of paper left unshredded.

He often made a beeline for a little wooden toy he had brought with him from Vietnam. It had six different shaped slots with wooden shaped pegs to match. He would spend hours - well not actually hours but a sufficient time for an eleven month old- putting these wooden pegs into the slots. And he was mightily pleased when he could match the wooden peg with the hole. Since all of us were so impressed by his cleverness, he was invariably rewarded by a hearty round of claps. Indeed by the end of his three week stay, he had not only mastered this little toy but also was able to join in the approval claps. Soon we had to go searching for something more challenging.

The car seat was a challenge not to his liking till we agreed to turn it around so that he could see up front. It seems if you are over 10 kilograms, the car seat can be fixed so that he could observe his father driving the car with all the various knobs and gadgets and lights.

In the mall he loved to flirt with all the older girls he met. And of course every storefront was a new world to be discovered and, if allowed, to be ravaged.

Once back home, he would have his dinner quietly, listen to some music and hear his father read his nightly stories about the fire engine that could or the various dogs and cats that populated his life. A big yawn was the signal for the end of the day and he would sleepily call for his mother for his last "snack" of the day and then off to bed.

Another day over and a new one to look forward to. What a wonderful world indeed!

In praise of praise

In our world, everyone seems to be a critic. Everyone seems to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. And they are not afraid to talk about the price either. But for some reason the doling out of praise is way more meagre amongst us. It is as if we are afraid to lavish praise but not criticism. 

Praise and blame are closely connected with the concept of moral responsibility for an action, omission, or a trait of character. When someone is morally responsible for doing something wrong we say that his or her action is blameworthy. By contrast, when someone is morally responsible for doing something right, we may say that his or her action is praiseworthy.There are of course other senses of praise and blame that are not ethically relevant. One may praise someone’s good dress sense, and blame the weather for the crop failure. 

Philosophical interest in praise and blame derives from questions surrounding the appropriateness praise and blame responses. What makes it appropriate to praise and blame someone? There are two main schools of thought on this question. Firstly, utilitarian thinkers argue that praise and blame are appropriate just in case they bring about useful results. The second school of thought may be called the desert theory. According to this theory, praise and blame are appropriate only when they are deserved. Immanuel Kant is an important proponent of the desert theory.

Various analyses have been offered as specifying necessary conditions for appropriate moral praise or blame. Aristotle says that praise and blame are only proper responses to voluntary actions and states of character. He defines a voluntary action as an action that is done with knowledge of what one is doing (i.e., not in factual ignorance) and which one brings about by one’s own ‘will’ or determination. This latter ‘control condition’ on voluntariness becomes particularly prominent in the free will / determinism debate. In this context, some philosophers have argued that moral responsibility for actions, particularly, blame for wrong actions, requires a certain strong sense of freedom which involves exemption from causal order of natural events. Finally, also in relation to the conditions of praise and blame, some have asked whether the conditions of praise and blame are structurally analogous. In this respect, Immanuel Kant famously argued that praiseworthiness requires more than voluntary action, but also includes a requirement that agent do the right thing for the right reason. In Kant’s terminology, this amounts to doing the right thing out of the desire to do one’s duty.

We know that people are responsive to praise and will demonstrate an increase in self-esteem or confidence if a suitable amount of praise is received. Some psychological theories hold that a person's life is largely made up of attempts to win praise for their actions. Yet it remains a scarce commodity.

Appreciation and praise, especially when expressed specifically, inevitably make employees feel more loyal and more engaged, all too few bosses practice the art of gratitude, says Chester Elton, a motivation consultant. A recent study found that between 75% and 80% of American workers said they got little or no recognition from their managers in the last year. In that book, Elton and Gostick include the results of a survey they commissioned of 200,000 American workers that demonstrates a link between bosses who recognize employees with praise, along with other signs of appreciation like holiday parties and handwritten notes, and a company's financial performance. The survey shows return on equity three times higher for companies that engage in employee appreciation. Their workers are more creative and more dedicated to the business's success, and they have a stronger bond to their company and its goals, according to the research.

Though it costs a company nothing, verbal praise can be as effective as a cash award, he says. Hard Rock Café, the restaurant chain, did a study on the effect of managers welcoming their shifts, thanking employees for coming in and making a few inquiries about their personal lives and families. Just a minute a day of verbal appreciation reduced employee turnover by 3%, Elton says.

But how does a manager avoid the impression that his praise is hokey or maudlin? Specificity, says Elton. "General praise has no meaning," he explains. "If a manager says, 'Great job, you rock,' that isn't effective." Instead, the boss should single out an accomplishment and compliment it. Tell the counter person you appreciated the way she handled that upset customer, or praise the craftspeople producing your product for turning out zero defects over the last three weeks. Make the praise timely, Elton says. Don't wait until the end of the year to offer your appreciation at the holiday party. When you see a job well done, say so.

When all is said and done, I agree with the famous philosopher Will Durant: "To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves. Nothing is often a good thing to say, and always a clever thing to say." It is better to praise than to criticize. We little realize what effect little word of praise uttered at just the right time can have. And as the old jingle has it,

" Little words of kindness

Spoken everyday

Make a home a heaven and

Help us on our way"