Man Ray?! Okay

"...there's not enough art in our schools," this ad for Americans for the Arts concludes.

I support more art in school, but knowing about Man Ray seems like a weird yardstick to measure progress by. I'd settle for kids knowing about Picasso or Rembrandt, or more importantly, having a chance to draw, sculpt, and make music in school. Maybe even more than once or twice a week. On the other hand, maybe "settling" is the problem. So good for these guys after all.

As far as the arguments the organization presents, I don't doubt there are some tangible benefits to art education, but I'm just as interested in the intangible ones. So something countering the everything-must-have-a-rising-test-score approach to education is fine with me.

Maddie gets one music hour and one art hour per week at her kindergarten, and then sometimes more-or-less canned connect-the-dots type "art" activities connected to other ideas (math, French, etc.) during the day. She makes up for it with practically non-stop drawing, doodling, doll play, story-telling, etcetera once she gets home. Go Maddie go! posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:05:00 PM -- |    

 
Nonproliferation baby steps
President Bush made a good start towards a serious nonproliferation initiative -- considering the things he's done in the past, like shelving the ABM treaty. But as Fred Kaplan writes in Slate, Bush's speech was devoid of any significant gestures, let alone sacrifices, by the biggest nuclear weaponeer of them all -- us.

Kaplan points out that Bush could have offered to end the new nuclear weapons development helping bust this year's defense budget. And there's already a perfectly good program in place to help corrale loose weapons-grade fissile material, the Nunn-Lugar program. But Bush's commitment to this program has been spotty, Kaplan points out:

Bush mentioned expanding the largess of Nunn-Lugar to any and all countries that give up the bomb, but he's been less than lavish with those that already have. In the budget that Bush just sent up to Congress, he cut the level of Nunn-Lugar assistance from $451 million to $409 million. Sam Nunn, who co-sponsored the measure when he was in the Senate, has complained of the administration's meagerness on this score.

I welcome Bush's attention to this matter. But I wonder if this is going to be another "Mars" or "AIDS"initiative: long on talk, short on funding, and likely to dip into some other important program's accounts for what funding there will be. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:15:00 PM -- |    

 
Early valentine




(make your own) posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:00:00 AM -- |    

 
Risk, 9/11, and Iraq
Ken Pollack: Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong, Atlantic Monthly, January 2004:

Imagine that you were a CIA analyst in June of 2000 and heard Saddam make the following statement: "If the world tells us to abandon all our weapons and keep only swords, we will do that. We will destroy all the weapons, if they destroy their weapons. But if they keep a rifle and then tell me that I have the right to possess only a sword, then we would say no. As long as the rifle has become a means to defend our country against anybody who may have designs against it, then we will try our best to acquire the rifle."

President Bush, 2003 State of the Union address:

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans -- this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Former CIA director Robert Gates to Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker:

"If the stakes and the consequences are small, you're going to want ninety-per-cent assurance. It's a risk calculus. On the other hand, if your worry is along the lines of what Rumsfeld is saying -- another major attack on the U.S., possibly with biological or chemical weapons -- and you look at the consequences of September 11th, then the equation of risk changes. You have to be prepared to go forward with a lot lower level of confidence in the evidence you have. A fifty-per-cent chance of such an attack happening is so terrible that it changes the calculation of risk." (via 'Armed Liberal' in "Winds of Change"; emphases added here and above)

I agree with Bush's and Gates' statements above. But I also agree with George Will -- at least this part:

It would have been much better if the president and others, speaking about Iraqi weapons, had said "we believe'' rather than "we know.''

After the war, in May, on Polish television, President Bush said, "We found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories.'' No, we did not. "So what's the difference?'' said the president in December about the failure to find WMDs, because "if (Saddam) were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.'' Such casualness, which would be alarming in any president, is especially so in one whose vaulting foreign policy ambitions have turned his first term into Woodrow Wilson's third term, devoted to planting democracy and "universal values'' in hitherto inhospitable places.

Bush and others in his administration oversold a good case. While some -- Powell, Rice -- stayed within the bounds of the assertable, I think, at least in their most famous comments, others -- Cheney, Rumsfeld -- did not. Bush is responsible for that, and for allowing an exaggerated case to take root in American public opinion. Even if you consider the war a good development, on balance, getting there by a message that was deceptive at worst and artfully muddled at 'best' was not.

There are plenty of other reasons to vote against Bush, including Ashcroft, Delay, the Supreme Court, and the debts my kid will face paying off tax breaks for the wealthy. But I would prefer to vote for a Democrat who won't give the Saddams of the world the benefit of the doubt, and who will hunt Bin Laden and his ilk relentlessly. And I don't mean that I want Osama or Zawahiri 'brought to justice.' I mean that I want them dead.

I think -- I hope -- the remaining strong Democratic candidates 'get it,' though I think Gephardt or Lieberman were stronger on that score. I disagree with Kerry if he truly considers Al Qaeda style terrorism merely a 'criminal' matter. It isn't. It's a war with stateless pirates. I also disagree with Dean if he truly thinks we're not safer with Saddam out of the picture. We are.

If a Democrat is to be elected president of this country, I don't want him to have secured his election on such ground that he's not inclined to aggressively defend it -- pre-emptively and unilaterally, if necessary. We shouldn't make that decision without good intelligence. But neither should we insist on proof positive of an imminent threat with dictators and war criminals like Saddam Hussein. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:16:00 AM -- |    

 
Is shabbiness contagious?
Gore endorses Dean without so much as a courtesy call to his one-time running mate.
Dean dumps Trippi once it looks like he's losing.
AFSCME dumps Dean once it looks like he's losing.

Anyone ever heard of sticking with your friends? posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:21:00 AM -- |    

 
Monitor this: Feds win right to war protesters' records
Via 'centrist' Jarvis via 'leftist' Atrios, this AP report by Ryan Foley:

DES MOINES, Iowa -- In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.

In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said.

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Ben Stone, executive director, Iowa Civil Liberties Union:

"The best approach is not to speculate and see what we learn on Tuesday."

That's when the four protesters will have to testify. Even though, as far as I can see, they shouldn't have to be in court. But we'll see what we learn on Tuesday. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:15:00 PM -- |