On the Road to Hana

Made in the Shade

Aloha!

Man, do I love this place! Hawaii even has compulsory employer-provided health insurance for anyone who works at least twenty hours a week. Believe it or not, everyone here seems pretty laid back despite this blatant theft of their "freedoms" by the state. How could they be so blind? They're living in a police state and don't even know it. It's a frightful price to pay for the knowledge that when you're sick you can go to the doctor or the hospital and worry only about your illness...

Even the BFI himself has nothing but good things to say about Hawaiian health care...

I took the photo above from our table at dinner. T. saw a pair of whales cavorting in the distance...



This is our view from the restaurant where we had dinner. T. saw a pair of whales cavorting in the distance.

Alleged Birthplace of the President, Here We Come!

Eleven years ago, my youngest son came home from school the first day back after Christmas and asked if we could go to Hawaii over mid-winter break. Neither my wife nor I had ever had much interest in going to the 50th state, in part because everyone in the northwest who doesn't ski goes there. But it turned out that I could get tickets and a place to stay on Maui. I still don't know how I pulled that off: Getting to Hawaii from Seattle during midwinter break takes the same degree of advance planning as going to Yellowstone in the summer.

Well, we had a great time, and I've been going there off and on ever since. And for me, February is the month to go because that's when the humpbacks migrate to LaHaina Bay to calve. There are so many that you can't help but see them from the beach, from the hotel room, from any boat ride taken. My inner seven-year old comes out, I guess, because they are what I most look forward to.

That, and fresh frozen mangorita from the H'aile M'aile General Store in the part of Maui called Upcountry, near the western slope of the Haleakala volcano. It's not the kind of drink I usually order, but someone talked me into it once and I'm glad they did.

Pictures to follow!

St Ignatius Chapel, Seattle University

Hipstamatic iPhone app; John S lens, Float film

Egypt

A young friend is currently pursuing an advanced degree in Middle Eastern studies. His take on the events in Egypt:

There are definitely a few interesting observations on consensus opinion among the professors and students in my department with strong ties to Egypt, whether through academic expertise, long-term residency, or nationality. First, most everybody has assumed, or at least hoped, this would not end well for Mubarak since the president of Tunisia abdicated. The vast levels of hatred of Mubarak and his cronies throughout the Arab world cannot be overstated enough. The level of corruption in Egypt is truly astronomical and pervades really all levels of government and business. Likely any remotely decent job in the country is filled on the basis of patronage or corruption (and even if this weren't true, everybody assumes it is true). Egypt also suffers from a huge lack of opportunities for my generation. There are millions of Egyptian recent college graduates with no jobs and no real prospects for future employment. Therefore they delay getting married and continue living in crowded slum apartments well into their thirties. This is a common problem in the region, for example, the Tunisian who set himself on fire and set off their protests was a well educated college graduate who had been selling fruits and vegetables from a cart for years because he could find no other job, and he was protesting a highly uneducated policewoman, appointed to her position because of some patronage connection, confiscating his cart. However, Egypt suffers these problems most acutely. 

Another crucial observation is the widespread trust in the military by the Egyptian people. The military is not seen as merely a tool of the regimes' power, like the police (especially the mukhabarat, or secret police) and has a fairy widespread membership in their enlisted and officer ranks. This is in stark contrast to countries like Syria and Saudi Arabia. For example, most key positions in the Syrian military and state security apparatuses are held by Alawites, a tiny minority religion from a specific geographic area of Syria that the president's family belongs to. Furthermore, the military absolutely did not like Mubarak's attempts to designate his son as heir apparent. In an incredibly corrupt society, the Egyptian military is seen as a (relatively) fair arbiter of power and everybody I've talked to seems to trust the military to get rid of Mubarak. Whether or not this will lead to a civilian government or yet another military coup (it is worth mentioning that Mubarak, Sadat, and Nasser were all army officers) is the only question. Many also say the army will never allow the Muslim Brotherhood to lead Egypt. 

Finally, the most debate concerns the regional implications. If the Muslim Brotherhood were to take power in Egypt (something that I think is highly unlikely for numerous reasons, its more a threat being wielded by Israeli hawks rather than a serious claim), the Egypt-Israeli peace treaty could be threatened. However, I can't imagine the Egyptian military turning away their multi-billion dollar yearly bribes by the U.S., much of which is diverted by the top military and civilian leadership into their Swiss bank accounts, to keep the peace. The bigger question is will this movement continue in other Arab countries. Lebanon and Yemen barely have governments to be angry at, and any protests you see there are likely from other long-standing country specific problems. People are always obsessed with the possibility of the al-Assad family falling and democracy spreading to Syria. However, Syria has been in the process of progressive reforms for the last seven years and many Syrians see their social and employment prospects improving rather than getting worse. There is also less corruption, or at least obvious corruption, and the president is much better liked among Syrians than Mubarak. Most importantly, the Syrian security service has a much tighter stranglehold on the country than in Egypt, which, while an authoritarian dictatorship, can't really be described as a police state in the same way Syria can. 

Where I see the strongest likelihood of this movement spreading is in Jordan, which has a serious demographic problem of tons of angry citizens of Palestinian descent who significantly outnumber the ruling Heshemites. It is also worth mentioning that for all the talk of the importance of Mubarak to the U.S., I think Jordan is significantly more important. We only really support Mubarak because of Isreal, however, our State department, CIA, and DoD have incredibly strong relationships with their Jordanian counterparts and Jordan is of crucial importance to Iraq. 

Finally, I'm sure this goes without saying, but do try and watch al-Jazeera English for coverage, and if not, the BBC. AJE easily has the most comprehensive English language news coverage in the whole region. As the major US news agencies have been pulling people out of the Middle East to cut costs, AJE has been investing huge amounts of resources on their bureaus in the region. Reuters also has a good liveblog. 

The Fighting Side

In response to this recent story, a conservative commenter repeated the standard Republican canard that the deficit had skyrocketed under Barack Obama, it presumably having been under control before then. I responded by explaining that while, yes, the deficit had risen dramatically in 2009, the federal government fiscal year had begun on October 1, 2008. Which essentially lays the 2009 deficit at the feet of the final Bush budget. I then enumerated the main contributors to the deficit: two unfunded wars, unfunded Medicare Part D, TARP, etc.

The commenter responded by calling me a liar.

Upon which it occurred to me that this exchange was emblematic of the two-year rhetorical food fight that passes for public discourse in this country. The bones of it are this:

1. A conservative repeats an unfounded right-wing talking point about Barack Obama
2. A liberal refutes the assertion with facts that require some effort to put across
3. Challenged by facts, the conservative denies reality by making an ad hominem attack on the liberal.

This dynamic plays out over and over. Here's another one:

Ireland's fiscal calamity is due to its socialist economy and welfare state. 

That might be the case were Ireland socialist, but it isn't: This is a crisis of capitalism, not a cautionary tale about socialism.

You are a socialist elitist libtard.

Or:

Obama is a socialist because he socialized the auto industry.

No, he didn't. Two of the three auto companies were temporarily and partially nationalized. That's a different thing altogether. Plus, the auto companies asked the federal government to step in.

How does it feel to be a tool of union bosses?

One side assumes an error of fact and responds appropriately. The other assumes duplicity and responds as if personally attacked.

Read the conservative comments on MSNBC some time: They are basically one unfounded assertion after another, without the slightest effort at providing supporting evidence. One of the latest is to ascribe every piece of negative economic news about health care to the Affordable Care Act, without bothering to account for medical inflation. (The ACA has barely begun to take effect, so any attribution of negative impact is bound to be an overstatement.) Then there are the obvious attempts to spread rumors. Take this one: The health care law has caused private physician practices and long-term care facilities all over the country to close. No evidence is cited of this because there is no evidence of it.

Which is no surprise, as conservatives, like Pavlov's, dog, have been trained by their masters at Fox News and on talk radio to respond to reality with a snarl. (Although surely their mouths water first.) There's no such thing as debate in conworld: Only attacks on their wallets and way of life. Well, their wallets are being attacked, just not by who they think. As for their precious way of life -- the one in which shooting and God are equal moral values -- they've somehow drawn the contorted conclusion that anyone who doesn't want to share it is attacking it.

Seriously, does Mark Holwager actually believe that gay marriage is going to bring Sodom and Gomorrah to Monroe City, Indiana (pop. 548). Or that regulating firearms in Washington, D.C., will keep him from shooting? Do the Cosgrays fret that $33,000,000.00 in federal grants will end Life As They Know It in White County? Or that a blogger in Redmond, WA hates them with every fiber of his being? Apparently, they do.

It's old news, I suppose, but conservatives have gone from hiding behind a distortion of facts to showing blatant contempt for them. That's a fact.