Abortion foes begin to make their case in Russia: Doctors and politicians are quietly struggling to change the nation's casual attitude toward the procedure. (Megan K. Stack, 9/20/08, Los Angeles Times)
Abortionist Marina Chechneva remembers the old-style Russian gynecologists who worked in state hospitals and churned out back-to-back abortions like Soviet factory workers. She remembers the women who "used to use abortion as a kind of vacation, because in the U.S.S.R., they got three days off from work."These days, Chechneva is writing magazine articles about fetus development in hope of raising public opposition to abortion. After years of handling fetuses, she explains, she has come to feel a responsibility toward the unborn children.
"They should realize that what they're doing is already a murder," she said.
A fledgling antiabortion movement is beginning to stir in Russia. Driven by a growing discussion of abortion as a moral issue and, most of all, by a government worried about demographics, doctors and politicians are quietly struggling to lower what is believed to be one of the world's highest abortion rates.
"The attitude has changed," abortion practitioner Alexander Medvedev said. "Even in community clinics, doctors are trying to dissuade patients from abortion. Now teenagers come to see us with already two or three abortions, and it's horrible."
Mass poll shows Labour wipeout across country (Gaby Hinsliff and Toby Helm, 9/21/08, The Observer)
Gordon Brown is set to lead Labour into an election bloodbath so crushing it could take his party a decade to recover, according to the largest ever poll of marginal seats which predicts a landslide victory for David Cameron.Eight cabinet ministers, including the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary, would be swept away in the rout as the Tories marched into Downing Street with a majority of 146, says the poll, conducted for PoliticsHome.com and exclusively revealed to The Observer. Seats that have been Labour since the First World War would fall.
The sheer scale of the humiliation is almost as bad as that endured by the Tories in 1997, suggesting it could take Labour a similar time to claw its way back to power. The party would be virtually extinguished in southern England and left with only its hardcore redoubts in northern England, the Welsh valleys and deprived inner-city areas.
Obama hammers McCain over Social Security (Sasha Johnson, 9/20/08, CNN)
Barack Obama told voters here that if John McCain became president he would “privatize” their Social Security – a debate over the program that could resurface as a major issue in the closing weeks of the campaign given the wild swings in financial markets.
Massive Bomb Attack Kills Dozens in Pakistan's Capital: Explosion Rips Through Marriott Hotel in Islamabad; at Least 40 Dead (Pamela Constable, 9/20/08, Washington Post)
Television footage of the Islamabad Marriott Hotel, located just blocks from many major government buildings, showed flames leaping from almost every window in the five-story hotel and bloodied survivors staggering from the lobby.There were unconfirmed reports that more than 1,000 people had been inside the hotel at the time of the attack, and police said the death toll was expected to rise. Ambulances and other vehicles ferried dozens of injured survivors away from the scene.
Islamabad has been the site of several other bombings in recent months, including a suicide attack at the Danish Embassy and a planted explosion at a garden Italian restaurant frequented by foreign visitors.
More from the AP-Yahoo News Poll on Race (Mark Halperin, 9/20/08, The Page)
–More than a third of all white Democrats and independents agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don’t have such views. [...]–Nearly four in 10 white independents agreed that blacks would be better off if they “try harder.”
–Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton’s white backers plan to vote for McCain.
Nothing funny about Obama losing, funnyman Woody Allen says (AFP, Sep 19, 2008)
"It would be a disgrace and a humiliation if Barack Obama does not win," he told Spanish journalists at the ongoing 56th San Sebastian film festival, where his latest film "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is being screened.
New Abortion Study Fuels Criticism of Obama and Praise of Palin (Liz Halloran, September 19, 2008, US News)
The study for the Family Research Council was conducted by Michael New, a University of Alabama political science professor and senior FRC fellow. [...]New analyzed national data from 1985 to 1999, compared the types of state parental involvement laws, and attempted to assess their effect on abortion rates. In the period studied, the overall abortion rate fell 50 percent, New says, suggesting that "parental involvement laws are an important causal factor" in the decline. He says his most dramatic finding was the drop in the rate of abortions among minor girls. Between 1985 and 1999, the abortion rate for girls between the ages of 13 and 17 dropped from 13.5 for every 1,000 girls, to 6.5 per 1,000.
Thirty-six states currently have parental involvement laws, ranging from requiring minor girls contemplating an abortion to notify a parent, to compelling them to obtain consent from both parents - currently the law in three states. The states with the most stringent consent requirements, New says, have been the "most effective in reducing abortion rates among minors."
New says his findings, which the FRC has characterized as the first comprehensive nationwide analysis of abortion rates among minors, has "clear policy implications" and provides a "unique opportunity" to influence debate on the proposed federal legislation that would make it a crime to take a minor to another state to avoid parental intervention, and to highlight the importance of future U.S. Supreme Court appointments.
Europe face uphill struggle after Faldo's picks backfire (Lawrence Donegan, 9/20/08, The Guardian)
Only a fool would draw definitive conclusions from the opening exchanges of any Ryder Cup but after a day at Valhalla golf club characterised by brilliant golf and boisterous behaviour this much can be said of the 37th edition of the sport's most compelling event: It won't be a European walkover.Paul Azinger and his fist-pumping, high-fiving, crowd-inciting men will return to the golf course this morning with a three-point advantage over the visiting team, having won five and a half points from an available eight.
Meanwhile, Faldo and his players will arrive knowing they are the first European side to "lose" the opening day since 1995.
US learns lessons from Swedish banking crisis (Bo Lundgren, 20 Sep 08)
[Bo Lundgren at the Swedish National Debt Office] was finance minister in the 1991 right-wing government and, together with current and former Riksbank heads Stefan Ingves and Urban Bäckström, was the architect behind the bank support committee (Bankstödsnämnden or Bankakuten) which did much to alleviate the crisis that raged in the Swedish banking system from 1990-94.Several years of hysterical property and commodity speculation in the 1980s plunged Sweden into its worst financial crisis since the 1930s.
"There are significant similarities between the current American financial crisis and our own financial crisis at the beginning of the 1990s. It concerns a finance and property bubble that has lead to large losses in the the banking sector."
Lundgren argues, like the US president George Bush, that governments have a major part to play in such exceptional situations, adding that there is a good chance of reclaiming the money.
"The sums that we had to cover amounted to 60 billion kronor ($9.83 billion). But together with the resurrection of Nordbanken meant that by 1997 the outlay had been more than halved by reclamations," said Lundgren.
"And since then the state has probably been reimbursed all of the money. "
For at least a month, Mr. Paulson and Treasury officials had discussed the option of jump-starting markets by having the government absorb the rotten assets -- mainly financial instruments tied to subprime mortgages -- at the heart of the crisis. The concept, dubbed Balance Sheet Relief, was seen at Treasury as a blunt instrument, something to be used in only the direst of circumstances.
If markets were rational a sharp instrument might work, though it's doubtful even rational bureaucrats could figure out how to use it effectively.
MORE:
WWRD... What Would Roosevelt Do? (Richard Reeves, 9/20/08, Real Clear Politics)
When the capitalists go too far, the government, at least in the most capitalist of countries, the United States, bails them out and tells them not to do it that way again.Then whoever is in charge of the government looks for a bracelet with the letters "WWRD." "What Would Roosevelt Do?"
Real Men of Genius: a review of SOLDIERS OF REASON: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire By Alex Abella (JACOB HEILBRUNN, NY Times Book Review)
Abella correctly focuses on the role of Wohlstetter, who made his name in the early 1950s with a study diagnosing the vulnerability of the Strategic Air Command’s nuclear bombers to a Soviet pre-emptive strike. As the decades went by, Wohlstetter never stopped emphasizing the importance of being prepared for a surprise attack (his wife, Roberta, had brilliantly chronicled one in a study of Pearl Harbor). His contribution was to argue for a version of deterrence that relied on what became known as a second-strike capability — the ability to absorb a first blow and retaliate. According to Abella, Wohlstetter believed that “it behooved someone with his knowledge to anticipate the worst eventuality, so that once ready for it, it might not happen at all.”As Abella reminds us, Wohlstetter was at the forefront of the intellectual battle, in the 1970s, to knock the struts out from Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s (and later Gerald Ford’s) support for détente with the Soviet Union. Wohlstetter warned that both Democrats and liberal Republicans were underestimating the size of the Soviet arsenal.
One result was the government’s creation of “Team B,” made up of hawks who challenged the C.I.A.’s estimates of the Kremlin’s nuclear force. How influential Team B really was is questionable. But it did serve as a precursor of the Bush administration’s efforts to prod the C.I.A. into offering worst-case assessments of Saddam Hussein’s regime. (Indeed, earlier this year The New York Times reported that the Army had buried a 2005 RAND study that was highly critical of the planning for postwar Iraq.) Abella traces it all back to RAND analysts and neoconservatives, whose gloomy view of the cold war, he argues, triumphed during the Reagan years. But the truth is that the Reagan administration wasn’t simply the handmaiden of the RAND Corporation and the neocons. It was responding to a real threat.
Abella, co-author of “Shadow Enemies: Hitler’s Secret Terrorist Plot Against the United States,” is too quick to dismiss American apprehensions as “paranoia.” Also, some of his assertions lack context. He writes that the Reagan administration’s “cavalier attitude toward nuclear war and its insistence on placing new midrange missiles in Europe provoked a crisis in the Soviet Union.”
Who Do They Like, Who Do They Hate (Barry Rubin, September 19, 2008, GLORIA)
These two polls are very interesting especially when compared to each other, and are not so bad.Contrary to what we think there are basically two models:
1. Strong support for Israel as against the PA: US
2. Relative evenhandedness: France, Germany, and UK. [...]Some points:
* Australia, the US, and the UK are by far the most tolerant. Despite European "sweetness and light" and "multiculturalism", they are far more bigoted. Note that Americans are ridiculed as narrow-minded and intolerant by Europeans. The shoe is on the other foot.
* Jews are always less unpopular than Muslims.
* Spain, Poland, and Russia can be fairly described as anti-Semitic nations in terms of popular opinion. History is pretty consistent.
* The level of anti-Semitism in France and Germany is quite high although not characteristic.
* Who would have dared dream 20 years ago that one in five Germans would be anti-Semitic? I wonder what the figure would have been if a poll had been taken there-or in France for that matter--say, in 1900?
* Muslims have legitimate concerns about high levels of hatred.
Burn Her!: Why it's dangerous to be a witch in a recession. (Tim Harford, Sept. 20, 2008, Slate)
Why did people murder suspected witches in Renaissance Europe?
Our love affair with the train: Commuting by train brings us together in a very down to earth way - something flying and all its associated queues and security cannot do (Lisa Jardine, 9/20/08, BBC Magazine)
Ever since my childhood I have particularly enjoyed travelling on trains. Trains give me a comforting feeling of independence and self-sufficiency, of being in control.From the station where you start your journey to your destination you know precisely in what direction you are going and how long it will take. You can make an excursion of it, choosing your route so that you admire the countryside and glimpse cathedral spires from your speeding train window.
On long journeys, you watch the landscape gradually unfolding, modulating from familiar to unfamiliar as you travel, and adjust your expectations while you are in transit.
By contrast, a plane journey from a chilly, rain-soaked London to the south of France tumbles you out onto the hot tarmac at Nice airport still wearing your waterproof shoes and heavy overcoat, and dazed by the easy Mediterranean pace of life after the hurly-burly of the city. [...]
My daily journey also reminded me how taking the train keeps you connected to your fellow human-beings. Everyone in Holland takes the train.
You mingle with people from all kinds of background, and everyone seems to look out for one another - helping with heavy bags, offering information, or simply chatting about the weather. The well-to-do and the hard-up travel side by side. It takes no time at all to feel at home with the Dutch as a people when you travel amongst them by train.
Questions for Charles Murray: Head of the Class (Interview by DEBORAH SOLOMON, 9/21/08, NY TImes Magazine)
Although attending college has long been a staple of the American dream, you argue in your new book, “Real Education,” that too many kids are now heading to four-year colleges and wasting their time in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree.Yes. Let’s stop this business of the B.A., this meaningless credential. And let’s talk about having something kids can take to an employer that says what they know, not where they learned it. [...]
I’m sure you’re aware that unemployment is very high right now. There are very few unemployed first-rate electricians.
I can get a good doctor in a minute and a half. Getting a really good electrician — that’s hard. If you want jobs that are in high demand, go to any kind of skilled labor. And by labor, I mean things that pay $30 or $40 an hour.
Lebensraum: a review of HITLER’S EMPIRE: How the Nazis Ruled Europe By Mark Mazower (JAMES J. SHEEHAN, NY Times Book Review)
As Mazower explains in “Hitler’s Empire,” there was often something improvised and disorganized about the Nazis’ rule: they wildly underestimated, for example, the demographic and logistical challenges involved in Germanizing the conquered lands of Eastern Europe. [...]The Third Reich was a national enterprise, run by and for a racially defined German Volk. But the empire, Mazower makes clear, could not have functioned without swarms of international collaborators, who supported the Germans because of conviction or self-interest or some complex combination of the two. When they were winning the war, the Nazis could set the terms for this collaboration, encouraging or discouraging it to suit their ideological inclinations and immediate advantage. As the tide of battle turned, people’s willingness to collaborate with the Germans ebbed, until at the end there was no one left but the deluded and desperate, like those members of the French SS unit who died fighting the Red Army in the streets of Berlin.
One of the most striking themes in “Hitler’s Empire” is the contrast between the Nazis’ military prowess and their political incompetence. Hitler was simply not interested in developing a program that might appeal to potential allies, for whose national interests and aspirations he had little sympathy. He left the political direction of his Eastern European regime to Alfred Rosenberg, who — as Hitler expected — wasted his time on elaborate but irrelevant programs and pronouncements.
Trends in Candidate Preferences Among Religious Groups (Pew Research, Sept. 19, 2008)
Linking Obama to Ex-Fannie Mae Chief Is a Stretch (Washington Post, September 20, 2008)
"Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for 'advice on mortgage and housing policy.' Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed 'extensive financial fraud.' Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill."McCain campaign video release [...]
So what evidence does the McCain campaign have for the supposed Obama-Raines connection? It is pretty flimsy, but it is not made up completely out of whole cloth. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers points to three items in the Washington Post in July and August. It turns out that the three items (including an editorial) all rely on the same single conversation, between Raines and a Washington Post business reporter, Anita Huslin, who wrote a profile of the discredited Fannie Mae boss that appeared July 16. The profile reported that Raines, who retired from Fannie Mae four years ago, had "taken calls from Barack Obama's presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters."
