Belly Full of Wine

Dante's Inferno

2008-07-15T21:44:00.002-05:00

This evening I sat down to sup on gourmet leftovers from a dinner party on Saturday. I had a lovely salami, Tuscan bread, bruschetta topping, Tuscan tapenade, and a salad of baby arugula and Romaine lettuce. As I ate, I read The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, that most famous of Tuscans.

Four and a half years ago, I named my son Dante. I didn't intend to name him particularly after the Florentine, but I must admit that Alighieri was the only Dante I had ever heard of. I always knew that meant I would have to read the Divine Comedy sooner or later, and this seemed like a good time. With my wife and son in Spain without me, I have time on my hands.

As I devoured my Epicurean feast, I followed Dante's sojourn in Hell until he reached the city of Dis and the heretics there entombed. There he speaks with souls condemned to Hell for the sin of Epicureanism. This he takes to mean not just the living of life for the pleasures of the here and now, but also the denial of the afterlife. Both of these apply to me.

I accompanied my repast with a wine called Les Heretiques (Vin de Pays d'Oc), which happened to be on sale at my local wine store. I liked the star chart on the label.

As I continued the read, Dante reached the next circle of Hell, where he encountered those poor souls tormented by a rain of fire for the sin of sodomy. At this point, my phone rang, and the caller ID said, "HRC." I knew this to be the Human Rights Campaign, the country's largest gay rights lobbying organization. They asked me to renew my membership, and I agreed, though I talked them down from $100 to $50.

A Humanist Creed

2007-08-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

I believe in the real world and in people.
I believe in beauty and in the beauty of truth.
I believe in separating myth from reality.
I believe that people can solve their problems by using imagination and common sense applied with courage and by following basic moral principles.
I want to make peace, democracy, and well-being in the world while respecting the freedom of people everywhere.
All my life I want to learn and develop, and to enrich the lives of other people.
I want to feel the joy of life.

-- Peter and Catherine Bishop

Moving to new Digs

2005-05-17T23:49:00.000-05:00

Belly Full of Wine now has a post in its new home, http://jmarkgilbert.com/bellyfullofwine. Please join me over there for more of the same.

Thanks.

Why Kerry Lost

2005-02-15T22:02:00.000-06:00

Errol Morris, writing in the NY Times at inauguration time, gave the explanation of Kerry's loss that makes the most sense to me.

Mr. Kerry and his campaign believed that certain things could not be mentioned. Foremost among these was Mr. Kerry's opposition to the war in Vietnam, which was largely erased from the candidate's life. That was a mistake. People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends.

Kerry's life story is an impressive one of courage and honesty. He fought the war his generation was asked to fight, and when he came home he opposed it because he knew it was wrong. It makes a good story, but he didn't tell it.

I remember a particular conversation about Kerry with a friend who was undecided. I had a Run Against Bush T-shirt, and she agreed that Bush had negatives, but she didn't see the positives of Kerry. I knew that Kerry would govern better, that he would promote better policies, that he would engage with our allies and be a better leader. But, I didn't have a simple, straight-forward story that explained who he was, because Kerry didn't give us one.

Krugman on Dean

2005-02-15T21:47:00.000-06:00

I was a big supporter of Howard Dean from early on. I went to an early meetup and raved about him to my friends. Krugman, commenting on Dean's election as DNC char, just summed up exactly why Dean is so great. It's because he is a fighting moderate. He is like Arthur M. Schlesinger, another hero of mine, in this. Schlesinger was not a radical, but he was a New-Dealer and a liberal, and his beliefs were strongly held. Dean is not far to the left, but he is a Democrat and believes strongly in the things that Democrats stand for.

Elections in Iraq

2005-01-31T22:02:00.000-06:00

The election in Iraq has left me feeling rather hopeful. No, the Sunnis didn't vote, but the Shiites who were elected are apparently inviting the Sunni parties to help write the constitution anyway. And, on NPR I heard from a representative of at least one of these parties that they will accept the invitation.

My uncle John, who is a professor of political science and a politician himself, nailed it when he said,

I think the election yesterday in Iraq was good news for Iraq, the Middle East generally, and for the U.S. Our loathing for George Bush and misguided American policies shouldn't lead us to forget that democracy is better than tyranny, nor does a successful election yesterday justify the lies and the base motives that led us to make war on Iraq in the first place.

Social Security FUD

2005-01-05T22:48:00.000-06:00

My friends Dave and Aaron got to talking about Social Security after my last post. Dave calls it a "busted Ponzi scheme" and wonders why he should support Social Security "when there is virtually zero chance of me ever seeing a penny of it." Aaron calls it "unsustainable."

These ways of thinking about Social Security have been repeated over and over by the program's detractors. They represent an attempt to frame the debate about Social Security, trying to get people to assume that Social Secuity must be "reformed." But, they don't hold up to even modest scrutiny.

In fact, Social Secutiy is not a Ponzi scheme, it's a welfare program. It's a popular welfare program that works, and that's why Bush doesn't like it - he is ideologically opposed to welfare, so welfare that works is abhorrent to him.

It works because we all agree that old people should be able to live with dignity, and that they are no longer capable of providing for themselves. We can niggle about what age qualifies as old for this purpose, but people generally agree on these basic premises.

Under current law, the SSA predicts that the trust fund will run out in 2042, and that's with rather pessimistic assumptions about the future growth of the economy. The well-respected CBO predicts 2050 or so. (Anybody who thinks either of these can predict the economy 40 years out is an idiot, but these predictions are what the fuss is all about.) So, what happens then? The program collapses, right? Dave's checks stop coming? Not at all. Under current law, the SSA predicts that the payroll tax is enough to continue to cover 60-80% of promised benefits. (Which fraction is expected to total as much or more than current benefits, even in inflation adjusted terms. (This is because benefits are indexed to wage growth, not to inflation.))

Dave worries (quite rightly) about the fact that the rest of the government is spending the money borrowed from the trust fund. The rest of the federal budget is grossly out of balance. Social Security is over funded, to the tune of an accumulated trillion dollars. Tell me again how this demonstrates that Social Security is the problem?

Go to morningstar.com to see an evaluation of the risk vs. reward of the S&P 500. They compare the expected return of the stock market to the expected return of the safest investment they can think of. Is that gold? Or maybe Euros? No, it's T-bills, just like those held by the SS trust fund. Are you really suggesting that some politician is going to pass a law that defaults on the debt sold to the trust fund, thus impoverishing lots of hard-working, patriotic, American retirees? This while we continue to pay back the debt held by the Chinese and Japanese central banks?

Will we have to raise the income tax to cover all that debt? We might do that if we ever again elect a responsible politician. But, if we keep electing irresponsible assholes like Bush, we'll just sell the debt somewhere else. Just like we do to fund a war or a big tax cut.

The size of the predicted long-term gap between receipts and benefit payments is about 2% of GDP. Coincidentally, that is about the size of the Bush tax cut. We can afford to pay all the promised benefits if we have the political will to do so. If we don't want to pay those benefits, we can change the program.

Who will make that choice? People who vote. And who votes? Old people. As I come up on retirement age behind the bubble of the baby boom, I predict that Social Security will be better than ever. All those boomers will want their Social Security - they won't want it cut. They will get their AARP magazine every month, read about Social Security, and go out and vote for their benefits.

If there is a threat to my receiving Social Security when I retire, it comes from people like Bush - people who are ideologically opposed to the program and seek to eviscerate it.

Paul Krugman Is My Hero

2005-01-02T23:00:00.000-06:00

Social Security privatization will be the most significant domestic policy debate of the next two years. The issues aren’t that complicated if you dig just a little bit, but much of the public debate will be carried out with buzzwords and FUD.

For example, the other day I heard President Bush say that Social Security will be in the black only until 2018. What he means is that the Social Security Administration has predicted that payments to SS recipients will first exceed income from the payroll tax in that year. What Bush didn’t mention is that the SS trust fund will have a trillion dollar balance in that year and will actually be growing, despite the imbalance in payments, because of interest on the bonds held by the fund.

Paul Krugman has written the definitive article on Social Security privatization. If you read only one article on the subject in all that time, you must read this article.

Krugman promises to continue to talk about Social Security in his NY Times column. You will also find ongoing commentary on the issue at Kevin Drum's Political Animal blog. Here, for example.

Krugman's is the best summary of the topic I have seen, but there is also lots of more specific analysis of Social Security in posts by Max Sawicky at MaxSpeak.org. Here, for example.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has also been following the privatization debate. He is especially trying to make sure that Democrats in Congress don't give in to Bush and compromise on a partial privatization, which would amount to acquiescing to a phase-out of Social Security.

His latest post covers the problem of government debt and how it relates to Social Security. Our debt is huge, but not because of Social Security, which is actually over-funded. The debt problem is with the rest of the budget, which has been thrown out of whack by Bush's gihugic tax cuts and profligate defense spending. (And by Reagan doing the same things in the 80's.)

Intelligence and Richard Pipes

2004-12-30T23:38:00.000-06:00

Power Line's current paean to Daniel and Richard Pipes includes this:

Many of those who "marginalized" Richard Pipes for his anti-Communism are still around. It would be nice to think that a few of them, at least, learned a lesson from the collapse of the Russian Empire and the downfall of socialism generally.

The funny part is that it is Pipes that should have learned something from the collapse of the USSR. Team B, which Power Line mentions, was established in 1976 to second-guess the CIA, because hardliners like Pipes thought that the CIA was underestimating the threat posed by the Soviet Union. As it was intended to, Team B concluded that the USSR was far more threatening than the CIA thought. With hindsight, we can now see that even the CIA was overestimating the threat, as they themselves concluded in a report in 1989. The collapse of the USSR underscores the weakness that Pipes didn't see.

This same sort of ideological second-guessing of our intelligence professionals is continuing today. Read about it in this article at the Center for Defense Information. Feith did a similar thing with his Office of Special Plans which corrupted our intelligence on Iraq, and it may be that Porter Goss is bringing this ideological corruption of intelligence into the CIA itself.

Friedman on Iraq

2004-12-28T22:31:00.000-06:00

I don't much care for the writing of Thomas Friedman. I'm supposed to like him, since he is from Minnesota, and when he comes back here he is very popular. But I don't.

I think he has a bad case of finding fault without making useful suggestions. This is often the problem with opinion writers - they don't like the status quo, but can't think of anything to do about it. But with the good ones, even if they don't make concrete policy proposals, they at least suggest a general direction for change.

In his latest column, Friedman says, "What is terrifying is that the noble sacrifice of our soldiers, while never in vain, may not be enough."

He seems to be saying that the sacrifice of our soldiers is never in vain, by definition. This is outrageous and wrong-headed. It implies that whatever fool errand our president sends them on becomes instantly a noble crusade, not because the goal is worth the sacrifice, but for the very reason that our sons and daughters are dying.

I honor the service of our troops, and they serve by following our president, who represents our country. But, he can represent us well or poorly, and this president is doing it poorly. The service of our soldiers is always noble, but in this case it is being squandered in vain by our idiotic leader. It was similarly squandered in Viet Nam.

Friedman goes on to say, "We may actually lose in Iraq. The vitally important may turn out to be the effectively impossible."

No shit, Sherlock. He needs to read Max Sawicky, who points out:

the moral case for liberal interventionism does not imply the practical feasibility of any such project. The moral case borders on triviality: elsewhere in the world, people are doing awful things and somebody ought to stop them.

and also Bob Woodward's Plan of Attack. Woodward makes it clear that Colin Powell was against the war on Iraq from beginning to end. Powell thought that Bush never understood the ramifications of war.

Our military is powerful, but understanding our military prowess doesn't answer the question of whether a war, even one that is well fought, can achieve our political ends. A war on Iraq was never going to make us safer from terrorist attacks, no matter how well it was fought militarily.

Now we are out to establish a democratic social order in Iraq, and we hope to do it with our military power. What idiocy.

Consider Fallujah. The problem in Fallujah was that there were people there who didn't accept the government we appointed and didn't want to participate in the elections we were planning. To fix this problem, we drove 100,000 people from their homes and bombed and shot up the place, killing resisters and bystanders alike. Now they are sure to come around to our point of view, don't you think?

God and Disaster

2004-12-28T22:23:00.000-06:00

In one episode of the Simpsons, Springfield is hit by a hurricane. The next day, the Simpsons go to church, and the sign out front says:

God Welcomes His Victims

Disaster Relief

2004-12-28T22:08:00.000-06:00

Wouldn't it be a nice idea for the US to pay for a tsunami early-warning system in the Indian ocean? I read that Japan has offered their expertise to help build one. There is obviously a need, and our image in that part of the world is sorely tarnished. Not that this would make us popular overnight, but it wouldn't hurt.

I also hope that our aid effort will be large and, most importantly, sustained. It is wonderful to respond immediately to a humanitarian crisis, but once the affected people have a place to sleep, sanitation, and something to eat, the job of recovery is really just started.

We should help rebuild houses, villages, and economies. These people will be rebuilding for years - let's stick with them. We could easily afford to help rebuild houses and villages, and we could provide small loans to help restart local economies.

Starry Starry Night

2004-10-10T21:47:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine is a teacher, and she told me a funny story this morning. She took a group of 50 sixth graders to a camp up on the north shore of Lake Superior. They went to an evening teaching program, and she was walking the kids back to the building where they were staying. The night was pitch black and though they could see the light from the dorm as they walked toward it, it was too dark to see the ground or even the people right around you.

Now, some of these kids were inner-city tough-guys, and at one point, my friend heard the thud of a punch and somebody cried out. Some kid had punched another kid, knowing that he couldn't be seen. A commotion was starting around her, and my friend knew she had to do something, even though she couldn't see a thing. She reached out and grabbed some kid near her, then called out, "Look up!"

At the sight of the myriad stars and the Milky Way above them, the kids fell silent, except that one of them said one word - "Damn!"

This story reminds me of this, by Claudius Ptolemaeus:

I know that I am mortal and the creature of a day;
but when I search out the massed wheeling circles of the stars,
my feet no longer touch the earth, but, side by side with Zeus himself,
I take my fill of ambrosia, the food of the gods.

If you want to taste of the ambrosia, start at space.com:
http://www.space.com/spacewatch/sky_calendar.html

Kick Some Arab Butt

2004-10-07T07:04:00.000-05:00

During the first presidential debate, Bush was asked about pre-emptive military action. In defense of his pre-emptive strike on Iraq, he said, "the enemy attacked us."

Kerry jumped on this, saying, "Saddam Hussein didn't attack us. Osama bin Laden attacked us. Al Qaeda attacked us," and went on to criticize the administration for relying too heavily on Afghan warlords to prosecute the campaign in Afghanistan.

The president responded, somewhat petulantly, "Of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that." But, this response doesn't explain why he blurted out, "the enemy attacked us" to justify Iraq in the first place. Is it possible that at heart he really doesn't distinguish one group of Arabs from another?

Unfortunately, I think this is broadly true of Americans. Whatever the justifications they use now, the administration originally justified the war on the basis of WMD, and the war was extremely popular among Americans. When the WMD didn't appear, and it became clear that the intelligence was hyped, Americans continued to support the war. Support has slowly eroded, but it is taking a long time.

I couldn't figure out at the time why more people weren't outraged. We had been misled into a war, and few seemed to care. But, Americans in general never supported the war for the reasons the administration gave. They just wanted to kick some Arab butt, and which particular set of Arabs got their butts kicked wasn't a concern.

This is consistent with the theory that Bush is politically like a Guy in a Bar. He works from gut reactions, makes up his mind early (he likes to say he's "decisive") and isn't interested in complex analysis.

Cheney v. Edwards

2004-10-06T08:17:00.000-05:00

I'm from Minnesota, so I know the aircraft company Cheney mentioned is http://www.cirrusdesign.com/. He claimed they could hire 200 more employees if they didn't have to pay for liability insurance. Of course, even if the Bush/Cheney limits on lawsuits succeeded, the company wouldn't stop buying liability insurance.

Small aircraft manufacturers are probably the worst case for product liability, but it is interesting to note that all Cirrus aircraft have an innovative parachute system that can bring the plane down safely in an emergency. Liability concerns and liability insurance companies have played a role in promoting this kind of technological innovation in product safety.

Cheney's comments on El Salvador gave me the creeps. During the cold war, we supported brutal dictators in El Salvador and other places, asking only that they be stridently anti-communist. The covering lie was that we were supporting freedom or democracy - it seems to me the core of the neocon movement consists of people who promoted this policy and eventually started to believe their own lies.

Edwards is an excellent debater. Sometimes Cheney would run down a laundry list of details, and Edwards would just ignore them and return to the main points he wanted to make. Given that he had only 30, 90, or 120 seconds to speak, this let him make the points he wanted and prevent Cheney from controlling the debate. He would also sometimes use the last 30 seconds on a question to introduce some new criticism of the administration, knowing that Cheney wouldn't be allowed to respond. Hee hee.

How Americans Torture

2004-10-01T23:01:00.000-05:00

Dennis Hastert and others in congress are attempting to legalize the transfer of suspects in US custody to countries where they may be tortured. This would make us torturers, plain and simple. This is a democracy, so if my government condones torture, then I am a torturer.

This is just wrong, and it is sad. The fact that Hastert can propose this without fear of being chucked out of office is a clear indication that Arabs and Muslims are being dehumanized in the American psyche.

Here is the low-down from Obsidian Wings, including information about contacting your representative to help make sure this doesn't happen.

Blog Roll

2004-10-01T22:42:00.000-05:00

I read three blogs continuously:
www.talkingpointsmemo.com
Josh Marshall is a professional journalist and he comments astutely on media and on politics.

www.washingtonmonthly.com
Kevin Drum must be a very level-headed person indeed to be able to post several times a day and always remain so sensible.

www.maxspeak.org/mt
Max Sawicky is an ex-/neo-/kinda/-marxist and an atheist, but mostly he is an economist who can connect two dots on a graph with the best of them, and has more interesting ideas than most of them.

This one is also good, but she isn't posting much lately:
http://respectfulofotters.blogspot.com/

I ought to be able to add these links as a blog roll to my blogspot page, but I'll have to figure that out later.

Introduction

2004-10-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

I guess I should introduce myself. I am Mark Gilbert, and this is my blog. I like the idea of blogging, because I think I sometimes have interesting ideas, and this will be a way to record them and share them (if anybody shows up). But, I am not sure how consistent my posts will be - I don't have a lot of spare time at the moment because of this fellow:

Dante is 9 months old (tomorrow) and gol'-darn-it if he isn't the most wonderful critter ever to inhabit our Earth. I might be biased.

I expect to blog about politics (I'm center left, a la Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), religion (I'm against it), and whatever else I find interesting. If you read my blog and find anything interesting, please post a comment or drop me a line - I'd like to know what people think.

Cheers.

Critters Is All Alike

2004-10-01T20:31:00.000-05:00

On my 40th birthday, my dog, Nanuk, died. We got her at 1 year old and had her for more than 10 years. I walked her every day for that entire time, unless I was sick or on vacation. For most of those years, we walked twice a day, but we dropped the morning walk when I started running in 2000.

Nanuk was extremely beautiful. Watching her run was a wonder of natural beauty and a pleasure; she was so well-proportioned and graceful. She was also the sweetest creature I've ever met. She loved people, but after greeting you, she wasn't pushy or demanding of attention.

Here she is the day before she died:

I started writing about Nanuk because I wanted to tell this little story about my other dog, Raggs:

We got Raggs when she was 5 months old, and she has always been dominated by Nanuk. She was depressed after Nanuk died and didn't know what to do with herself. She is recovering now, some 7 weeks later.

Nanuk died on the operating table at the vet's. We told the vet we wanted to go by and see her afterwards. We were packing up to go, and we had to take our baby, since we had nothing else to do with him. So, we thought we might as well take Raggs, too. I figured that seeing Nanuk's body might help her understand what was happening when Nanuk didn't come home.

We went to the vet's and saw Nanuk on a table. Raggs sniffed and smelled her, but couldn't see over the edge. So, I picked Raggs up to let her see. She briefly saw Nanuk, but then turned her head away and refused to look. Even when I rotated in place to try to put Nanuk in front of her, she turned her head away.

This demonstrates an interesting trait in humans, which I now know we share with dogs. We don't think very well about death. We just don't think about it at all, if we can help it, and when we must think about it, we don't think clearly. Raggs didn't want to be shown that Nanuk was dead. Humans make up all kinds of stories that deny, in various ways, the reality if death.

Religions all around the world agree on very little. They agree on a minimal set of moral principles, and they agree that death is somehow not real. The moral principles are basic to human nature and are merely adopted by religion (I will write about that sometime), and the incapacity to clearly understand death is apparently also universal. A religion may say we are reincarnated or that we go to heaven (or hell) or that we are influenced by ancestors or that the dead come back for dinner once a year. Whatever it is, the denial that people are really just plain dead is universal in religion.

Invitation to Denial

2004-10-01T06:03:00.000-05:00

In the debate, Bush repeatedly asked, "I don't see how you can lead this country to succeed in Iraq if you say wrong war, wrong time, wrong place. What message does that send our troops?"

That really is something a soldier would not want to hear. But, what if it's true?

Isn't Bush asking us to join him in his state of denial? A state where this was a war of necessity? Where Saddam was in league with Bin Laden? Where we really did find the WMD? Where things in Iraq are going swell?

In the real world, things aren't going so swell in Iraq, and the the Iraq war is a diversion from the war on terror. We need a president who knows that and says it, even if it's hard to hear, because it is true.