Sunday Worthy Reads (October 5, 2008)

Here are some newspaper and magazine articles that I found insightful about topics I may not have time to blog about, but that are definitely worth reading:

International

Christina Lamb at the London Times examines the suggestion by a senior British general in Afghanistan that the war against the Taliban cannot be won and that the West should strike a deal with them, and provides context with a companion piece on Taliban fighting tactics and another one about the failure of the Western governments to truly reconstruct the country.

Syed Saleem Shahzad at Le Monde Diplomatique examines the deepening Taliban campaign on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border and investigates the influx of Turkish and European-born fighters to the area who are planning to support the Taliban.

James Risen at the New York Times reports on the links between Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and the growing heroin trade that is corrupting wide swaths of the Afghan government.

At The New Yorker, Steve Coll analyzes the recent replacement of Pakistan’s spy-in-chief and whether that will end the Pakistani intelligence agency’s not-so-tacit support for the Taliban.

Coll also takes a close look at the inheritance that still funds Osama bin Laden.

Walter Mayr at Der Spiegel International reports on the ever more tense struggle between Russia and the Ukraine over the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol on the Crimea, which the Russian navy appears to be hog-wild about forcing under Russian control, by whatever means necessary.

Thom Shanker at the New York Times reports on the establishment of a separate U.S. Armed Forces Command for Africa to counter Chinese, Russian, Middle Eastern, and Indian influences there. American attention will become more important now that South Africa’s future as a viable leader for the contintent has come into question.

Chris Kraul and Patrick J. Mcdonnell at the Los Angeles Times report on the emergence of Brazlilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as the major mover and shaker of the South American continent; Brazil is a legitimate regional power, and Lula is finally beginning to shift attention away from Hugo Chavez, who is mainly known for being outspoken and for advocating disastrous economic policies, and who has occupied an inflated role in our collective attention, as Venezuela is a decidedly second-rung power in South America.

Alex Perry in Time Magazine investigates the growth of piracy off the coast of Somalia, a strategically vital area for world commerce.

United States

Charles Duhigg at the New York Times examines the pressures that transformed Fannie Mae from a bank set up by the government to help Americans avoid bad home loans into one of the most profitable and defunct lender failures in history.

Adam Liptak at the New York Times previews the most important cases the U.S. Supreme Court will deliberate in its upcoming session. David Savage at the Los Angeles Times analyzes whether Roe v. Wade might be overturned this coming year (or at least curtailed), now that the Supreme Court appears less in favor of killing children out of convenience.

Peter Baker in the New York Times Magazine examines the story of U.S. Representative Tom Davis, a former GOP star now quitting Congress out of disappointment with his party, to continue the series begun two weeks ago by David Frum’s excellent piece on how the Republican Party is trying to redefine itself as a party that better represents the interests of the American people than it has for the last eight years. In the Atlantic Monthly, Ross Douthat considers how that challenge to the GOP is similar to the one facing the Democrats a decade ago.

Corby Kummer at the Atlantic Monthly analyzes how the recent food tainting scandals are a reflection of the same attitude towards regulation that led to the economic crisis at large.

Culture, Books, and Everything Else

Charles McGrath at the New York Times discusses comments made by Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, who said that U.S. literature is not relevant to world literature because it has become increasingly insular.

David Martin in the London Times Literary Supplement assesses the importance of VP candidate Sarah Palin’s Pentecostal faith, relates it to the movement’s strong influence and massive growth world-wide, and gives some reading suggestions.

Garrison Keillor in the New York Times Book Review reviews Julian Barnes’ new novel, Nothing to Be Frightened Of, in which Barnes explores the worries and fears agnostics have about death and about the meaning of life. The novel begins with the line, “I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.”

In the London Sunday Times, six British writers describe hilariously and thoughtfully what makes a perfect woman.

At What Time and On What Channel is the Vice Presidential Debate on Oct. 2?

In case you were wondering about when the vice presidential debate is taking place and on what television channels it is showing:

The October 2nd vice presidential debate between Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin on the Washington University campus in St. Louis, Missouri, is scheduled to take place at 8 pm Central Time (9 pm Eastern Time, 7 pm Mountain Time, 6 pm Pacific Time). The debate will be aired on television channels ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and BBC America.

UPDATE: Hold On A Second, Sister Palin

Here’s an update on my earlier post about Sarah Palin’s flexible relationship with the truth.

It appears that the Alaska governor may have said no thanks to to bridge, but she sure did build the road that goes to the bridge that goes to nowhere — a road that serves no other purpose now than to run through the woods and end in a cul-de-sac. Built with $26 million of taxpayer money from federal earmarks. That’s even worse waste than if the bridge had gotten built in the first place.

For a good Christian, that woman sure shows all signs of being a pathological liar.

The full story is here and here.

Hold On A Second, Sister Palin

That John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate went over well with social conservatives – about that there is no question. In fact, Palin at times seems to have energized that base so much that it’s not always clear whether she is running as a vice presidential candidate or for the presidency itself.

One major factor in that enthusiasm has been Palin’s enormous popularity among religious voters. Palin has declared herself on the right side of many issues religious voters care about: She is pro-life, supports prayer in schools, advocates abstinence-only sex education for teens, opposes gay marriage, and so on.

As her rationale for those positions, Palin often cites her Christian faith. She has suggested that this faith is what leads her to be a person of higher integrity than the average Washington insider and that it makes her someone voters can trust to be honest. And that’s a good thing.

But that claim also means that Palin is accountable for what she says in ways that those who don’t claim a religious influence on their life aren’t. Religious people are big on personal accountability and hate hypocrisy. They care about what’s called “walking the talk.”

As such, Palin needs to dispel some doubts about how truthful she has been with some of her recent stump slogans. They appear to be, well, lies.  And if Palin wants to claim that the Bible guides her moral compass, then she knows the biblical standard is a higher one: You Shall Not Lie – not even a little bit.

Specifically, Palin will need to explain the following claims:

“I told the Congress, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ on that Bridge to Nowhere. If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves.”

Palin repeats this line in nearly every speech. Yet, Palin is on the record in support of the project until Congress had already effectively killed it. In fact, she told residents of Ketchikan Island, where the bridge would have led, that she didn’t consider their island Nowhere and that critics just didn’t understand how Alaska works, and has angered many of them with her claim that she opposed the project. Palin only put a formal end to the project when she knew the money was not going to come and after the GOP let her know it was hurting their reputation nationally. Contrary to what Palin suggests – that she turned downed the $233 million Congress was prepared to pay for the bridge and sent it back to Washington – Alaska kept the earmark money and spent it on other projects. What is more, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin secured almost $27 million in Congressional earmarks and as Alaska’s governor requested $160.5 million for 2008 and $198 million for 2009.

Palin’s statement about how she handled federal earmarks at best a half-truth, and her self-portrayal as someone who refuses them is blatantly misleading.

“That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay.”

Palin uses getting rid of the gubernatorial jet as an example for her penchant to cut ridiculous spending. That part is true, and Palin has used the move to suggest to voters that this sort of hard-nosed folksy attitude is what she will bring to all excess spending. What Palin does not mention, however, is that she did not sell the plane on eBay. In fact, it was not Palin, but the speaker of the Alaska House of Representatives who arranged for the sale, and at a $600,000 loss to tax payers.

Some might call that a “white lie,” lying by omission, but being the model mom she is, it probably wouldn’t fly with Palin if one of her teenagers told her that they’d spent the evening hanging out at a friend’s place doing their homework when really they spent five minutes there, then handed the homework to the friend’s younger sister and moved on to a party somewhere else. White lies are still lies. Especially when they’re about something worth $2.1 million.

Drilling in ANWR would have minimal impact, covering only “2,000 out of 20-million acres.”

Alaska has gotten rich off oil drilling, and Palin has repeatedly argued that drilling should be extended to the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve because the drilling would only cover a tiny area. Technically, the numbers she cites are accurate. However, she omits to mention that these 2,000 acres aren’t all in one place, or two, or three. They would be spread out like patchwork all over ANWR and would require many more acres of connecting roads, pipelines, airstrips, and gravel mines. The existing drilling area, which technically takes up 12,000 acres, ends up actually sprawling industrial infrastructure over 640,000 acres. That’s a proportion of 1:53. If the same ratio applies to the new sites, the true extend would be 106,000 acres. That might not seem like much out of 20 million, but then why hide it?

For someone who touts herself as an honest accountant, shrinking the true cost of something 53-fold isn’t exactly acceptable.

In the same vein, Palin should account for her claim that she led the way to energy independence by creating an Alaska oil pipeline stretching more than 1,700 miles from the North Slope of Alaska to the lower 48 states. Palin said, “When that deal was struck, we began a nearly $40 billion natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.” The trouble is, the project is far from beginning. In fact, the project exists only on paper, oil companies have been backing out, and the pipeline may never be built. Instead, it could end up costing taxpayers $500 million in subsidies for what amounts to a nice idea.

Thinking about doing isn’t the same thing as doing, and to claim having done something when one hasn’t is called lying.

On the same topic, Palin has claimed that “America needs more energy; our opponent is against producing it.” This is also patently false. Whether or not one agrees with him, Obama has said that he does not oppose drilling for more oil, and he has suggested a $150 billion program to develop more clean energy.

“Listening to him speak, it’s easy to forget that [Barack Obama] is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or even a reform, not even in the state Senate.”

Depending on one’s standard for what counts as major, that could be accurate. However, Palin touts her own moves to restore ethics to Alaska politics as a major qualification, and Obama cosponsored an even more extensive ethics reform as an Illinois senator and did so again in Washington. He also worked with GOP senators on important anti-corruption laws and on a law to track and reduce weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, it’s common for candidates to downplay the other side’s accomplishments, and Governor Palin has certainly suffered her share of equally distorting attacks. But a double standard for oneself and others is dishonest nonetheless, and if Palin advertises herself as someone who rises above Washington dishonesty, she needs to actually do so.

“To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House.”

Religious people put great stock in caring for the helpless, so Palin’s promise certainly resonates with them. But as governor of Alaska, Palin actually reduced funding for schools that serve children with special needs by 62% in her 2008 and 2009 budgets from her predecessor’s 2007 budget. In those same budgets, Palin cut health care spending by more than $4.5 million and funding for seniors by $600,000.

Since she has also championed states’ rights on education and health care issues, she cannot reverse her record once she is a federal executive without clearly having lied about one of the two issues.

This list goes on, unfortunately, and it’s beginning to scare the social conservatives who would like to trust Palin and support her as one of their own. Saying she is bringing the integrity of her Christian values to her candidacy is admirable. But then turning around and being loose with the truth, hoping her base won’t notice or won’t care, gives it the lie. It’s patronizing and downright contemptuous of the religious vote.

It is time for Sarah Palin to explain her misstatements and to assure anyone who wants to take her by her word that their trust in her is not wasted. Or else, she may cost John McCain the very base he put her on the ticket to win.