October 29, 2013

An autumn moon. There is something breathtaking about my early morning walk this time of year, heading west, seeing a full moon hanging in a cobalt blue Colorado morning sky!

DAM (Denver Art Museum). This past weekend my wife and I went to the members' preview of the current exhibition, “Passport to Paris.” There are three parts to the show, the major one, of course, was the display of French paintings, furniture, and fashions from Louis XIV to the mid-20^th century. Most excellent!

     I have often said that winning the powerball lottery would afford the luxury of a monthly long-weekend visit to a major gallery (here or abroad). Major galleries always have something new to offer the visitor.

Teacher training. Leave aside the usual media- and legislative-driven questions about student performance on“compulsory tests.” Instead, begin by examining teacher training. The story linked below explores this area, in the US at best terribly inconsistent. At one point in an after-class math lesson critique, master teacher, Bill Jackson, who teaches in a NYC school in Harlem, asked his adult observers this very prescient question: “Does ‘get it’ mean getting an answer?...Or does it mean really understanding what’s going on?”

      I would venture that if Jackson's goal was for his students to understand “what's going on” his classroom lesson on the mathematics of ratios was successful. Wouldn't it be wonderful if more classroom lessons produced real understanding, not just the ability to regurgitate answers on compulsory tests? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/opinion/keller-an-industry-of-mediocrity.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=all&_r=0

Those pundits for action against Syria... and what you did not know/were not told. In the story linked below, the Public Policy Initiative notes that during the Syria debate twenty-two “experts” were quoted or interviewed 111 times by various commentators, but only thirteen times were these “experts” identified as having connections with military and/or intelligence contractors. Undisclosed verbal pork-barreling? http://www.democracynow.org/2013/10/18/the_military_industrial_pundits_conflicts_of

ACA rollout and medicaid expansion. I will use the actual title, Affordable Care Act, not Obamacare; after all Congress authored and passed ACA. It turns out the program's touted success in Oregon was because OR's medicaid expansion site was simple to use and quickly enrolled 55,000+ applicants – not true of their ACA site, where few (if any) were enrolled.

     News reports continue to filter in that the ACA sites are still plagued with problems. Clearly, the “best and brightest” were not in charge of writing these programs; like too much of what Congress does, this rollout was a half-assed operation.

     Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen lamented,

Where is Casey Stengel when we need him? In 1962, as the manager of the brand new and determinedly hapless New York Mets — 40 wins, 120 losses — he looked up and down his bench one dismal day and wondered, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” That phrase kept coming at me recently as I watched the impressively inept performance of the Obama administration in both foreign and domestic policy. On a given day, this administration makes the ’62 Mets look good.

Nuclear safety. This past week I checked out Eric Schlosser's Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. It seemed appropriate, especially since the Air Force has recently relieved two officers involved with the Minuteman III missile program. (Silo blast doors left ajar, etc.) Also, a Navy Vice Admiral was recently relieved of command for alleged improprieties while gambling at an Iowa casino. The admiral was the second-highest ranking officer at the U.S. Strategic Command and oversaw the military's nuclear forces, missile defense, and cyber warfare operations. I dare say most readers were unaware of how many “close calls” there have been with America's nuclear arsenal. One has to wonder just how secure our arsenal is today?

On the book's fly leaf, former US Representative Lee H. Hamilton said,

The lesson of this powerful and disturbing book is that the world's nuclear arsenals are not as safe as they should be. We should take no comfort in our [current] skill and [past] good fortune in preventing a nuclear catastrophe, but urgently extend our maximum effort to assure that a nuclear weapon does not go off by accident, mistake, or miscalculation.

Mr. Hamilton currently serves as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council and was vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-08-25/world/41446587_1_minot-air-force-base-commander-weapons

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57606844/u.s-navy-vice-admiral-fired-from-nuclear-post-amid-gambling-probe/

Saudi Arabia. It was one of strangest diplomatic moves in recent memory. After campaigning hard for a seat on the United Nations' Security Council, the Saudis turned down the proffered seat, proclaiming their refusal a signal to Washington of their Kingdom's displeasure with America's middle eastern policies, especially with regard to Syria and Iran. They, like Israel, want Iran to be economically and militarily crushed – not simply freed from the current economic sanctions. In the piece cited below, Dan Murphy explores this extraordinary turn of events.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2013/1024/The-US-Saudi-breakup-that-isn-t

The New Nullification Movement. Add this article to my comments last week about the “51^st State” secession movement in northeastern Colorado. http://www.thenation.com/article/176808/new-nullification-movement

Tennessee and Lamar Alexander. The Volunteer state may well play a special role in 2014. Apparently, the Tea Party and their financial backers have settled on one opponent (TN state Senator Carr) to oppose the state's long-serving senior Republican senator, Lamar Alexander. This could well be the head-to-head, two-candidate primary the pundits have wanted, testing the relative strength of the Republican party's centrist establishment vs its right wing elements.

George Will and family disintegration. In his Saturday Washington Post column, Mr. Will quotes George Orwell's 1948 comment, “At any given moment, there is a sort of all-prevailing orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss some large and uncomfortable fact.” Will continues,

Today that fact is family disintegration: 41 percent of American children are born to unmarried women, including nearly half of first births, 53 percent of Hispanic children and 72 percent of African American children. In 2015, these facts will be discussed in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Moynihan Report. In March 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a 37-year-old toiling in the Labor Department’s office of policy planning and research, published “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action.” It said that in inner cities “the center of the tangle of pathology” was the fact that 23.6 percent of African American children were born out of wedlock, compared to just 3.07 percent of white children.

     While the figures for minority vs white children born out of wedlock have undoubtedly changed, they will remain highly controversial.