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A letter to Frances Scott Key from Harlan Lewin July 4, 2011

2011-07-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Frances,

The poem you set to the music of a wild British drinking song is still sung in our schools and our sporting events. By law (United States Code, 36 U.S.C. § 301) when your song is played all men (except in the military) “should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold it at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart.” I rarely see that done with baseball caps at ball games; perhaps it was more appropriate when men wore top hats or fedoras. Nevertheless, that law is certainly a tribute to the sacred quality your song has gathered since you wrote it.

As for the question you asked,

“O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

The answer is a definite, yes. In fact the U. S. has between 700 and 800 military bases in about seventy countries and I assume that The Star Spangled Banner waves over all those bases on multiple HQs, hangars, officers’ clubs, munitions depots, garages, ports, etc., etc. The flag is definitely still waving.

And there’s plenty of “rockets’ red glare” and “bombs bursting in air.” Notably from drones in Pakistan and airstrikes in Afghanistan. There are a lot of bombs bursting on the ground, too, mainly intended to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. So there’s no lack of fireworks similar to what you were looking at near Baltimore in 1814, though, I venture to say, on a rather larger scale today.

With all due respect, Frances, I might say that you guys had it easier fighting the Brits on your home territory. You could see that they were out to get President Madison and his nice wife Dolly as well as lay waste to your towns and farms. As you wrote,

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home and the war's desolation!

But the situation’s a wee more complicated today when we have the paranoid suspicion that everyone, everywhere is against us. (By the way, it turns out the Brits have now stopped burning our cities and have also stopped burning Afghan cities. They tried to teach us how not to do colonialism, but I’m afraid their friendly suggestions didn’t work any better than our own strategies.)

The problem today, and which leads us to have 700-800 bases all around the world (with about 130,000 troops in foreign countries beyond the million or so in North America), is that your country, Frances, has become so wealthy that we think we can afford to stop attacks on the U.S. before they land on our soil as they did in 1814. So, in a way, all the world is now American soil. That’ll probably make you stop and think, Frances.

My last point is, that your country was relatively poor in 1814-relative to England, France, etc. The U.S. could hardly afford a military in its early years. Strangely, we are now asking how much of a military we can afford in the 21^st century. We aren’t exactly going from riches to rags, though our pockets are a lot less full. Singing your Star Spangled Banner helps us retain our optimism. But with more of our own expensive bombs bursting all over the world maybe we should think a little more about the end of your fine anthem:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Perhaps we should have a few less of our flags waving over the homes of others and bring them back to wave over our own little post offices and ball parks. I guess the government, out of necessity is really contemplating that. If you were around today, you’d probably agree that your, may I say, rather bombastic anthem, can also be interpreted to stand, as I’m sure you meant it for a nation with pride and an interest in defending itself but without grandiose dreams of patrolling from the Diego Garcia to Germany, Bahrain, Libya, and Korea, taking pre-emptive measures against groups that dislike us as much as the Brits did in 1814.

The future is upon us, as it was in your time. We have major quandries and difficult challenges. The breeze of our own battles regarding resources, the economy, the environment, and quality still “fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses.” We will see if the flag, the symbol of our future as well as our past “catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,” as it did for you over fort McHenry.

Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior

2011-01-11T11:32:00.000-08:00

Can a regimen of no playdates, no TV, no computer games and hours of music practice create happy kids? And what happens when they fight back?

By AMY CHUA

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it's like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I've done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:
Read the article-click here

My take on this article:

This is a very debatable article. And I mean both pro and con. It is well worth reading.

1. I agree the kid glove treatment of self-esteem in the U.S. has gone a bit far in some families. I think the whole obsession with Freud and that kind of psychology was luckily avoided by the Chinese.
2. This was written by a Yale law prof who is obsessed with achievement. Does she speak for all Chinese parents?
3. Until Mao came along with his Western/Confucian ideas, very few Chinese had any spare time for music or school. They were trying to escape the predations of the British and then the Japanese and their own ruling class. Most people as they rise from utter poverty are very, very achievement oriented.
4. What happens to Chinese kids who never become #1 in their class? How do they and their parents adjust?
5. To me, there'a a chicken and egg question about the adaptation of our children to our society. From the 20's we became more and more of a service and marketing economy. So our kids majored in negotiating with other people, not having performing or scientific skills. I don't know which came first, the new economy or the new psychology (or the crush on Freud). Obviously, Americans are more concerned about what others think of them than what they think of themselves. New achieving people like the Chinese in America are often more concerned with what they think of themselves than how they appear to other people. There was a famous book of the fifties called The Lonely Crowd, which described the change in America from "inner directed" people to "other-directed" people.
6. Which leads me to say that in fact American parents aren't really so concerned to the "self-esteem" of their children that they give lip-service to as they are to how well their children get along with others. (Big generalization.)
This article is good because it really draws an exaggerated polarity. I expect her book will sell well. And I think her children will be well-adjusted, but a bit snooty regarding other directed Americans.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html?mod=WSJ_myyahoo_module

January 06, 2011 Breaking: First New Hampshire GOP Primary Poll Results Are In

2011-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney holds a commanding lead in New Hampshire in the early stages of the race for the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination, according to a new survey commissioned by NH Journal and conducted by Magellan Strategies. The survey is the first statewide survey of Granite State Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in 2011.

Romney leads former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by 23 points, with Romney earning 39% and Palin earning 16%. Mike Huckabee (10%), Newt Gingrich (8%), Texas Congressman Ron Paul (7%), former MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty (4%), Rick Santorum (3%) and MS Gov. Haley Barbour (1%) all trail significantly behind. Romney finished second to Sen. john McCain in the 2008 New Hampshire Republican Presidential primary.

Cold Hearted Odds Makers

2011-01-02T16:29:00.000-08:00

Good news or bad news, depending on your perspective, from the cold-hearted odds-makers on the 2012 election.

Presidential betting odds for Palin in 2012 same as they were for Obama two years before 2008 presidential election

There's many a slip between the cup of 2011 and the lip of November 2012. But odds makers-has anybody started betting???-are throwing up some longshots. They are showing odds for the likes of Hilary Clinton (I doubt it), Jeb Bush (very imagineable-independent of his brother), Condoleeza Rice (I'd say too tagged with Bush. They even have odds for odd John Edwards (no chance and perverted even to mention it).

But, of course the name that still is making the rounds is the woman with the magic publicist (no, not Paris Hilton) Sarah Palin. Yes, the odds for the Alaskan hockey-mom today are the same as they were for Obama two years before the presidential election.

Christopher Harrell of the Daily Caller betting journal says:

President Obama

was given 10/1 odds of becoming the next president by Sportsbook.com numbers in early December 2006, identical odds to what Sportsbook now gives Palin for being elected the 45th President of the United States in 2012.

Two other major betting sites, BetUSA.com and 1800-Sports, a betting information site, have Palin at 10/1 odds of becoming the next president of the United States, while Bodog has Palin at 12/1.

‘Political betting like politics itself is all about momentum and once a candidate starts to gain support, bettors start to follow,’ said Richard Gardner, Bodog Sportsbook Manager, in a statement to The Daily Caller. ‘This can be a very good indicator of opinion, people betting on politics tend to be quite shrewd rather than blindly loyal as they can be in sports.’

That's an interesting take: that people betting on politics are shrewder than people who bet on sports. May hold for some, but for many know, party loyalty is a form of fanaticism.

Obama's Race for Re-Election Isn't Against Republicans, It's Against Unemployment

2010-12-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

Obama's real race for re-election isn't totally against Republican candidates, no matter how much hair they have, how many times they say "You betcha," or how much tea they consume. The 400 pound gorilla in the race is the unemployment rate-as the rate goes up, the president's chances for re-election go down.

Another big factor is how many of the unemployed will vote at all in 2012. They may be so down that they won't make it to the polls, which, to speak with the inhumane calculation of a political surgeon, would be good for the President, though I'm sure Obama tries not to discuss such nasty stuff with his advisers. And the voting rate of discouraged job-seekers is probably not easily predictable.

In July, 2010, the U.S. Federal Reserve printed the following estimate:
"The unemployment rate is projected to average 8.3 to 8.7 percent in 2011, up from 8.1 to 8.5 percent in the April estimate. The Fed is also less optimistic about the unemployment data in 2012, lifting the estimate to 7.1 to 7.5 percent from 6.6 to 7.5 percent."

In its report for August, 2010, the Federal reserve said:
"Likely reflecting the relatively weaker near-term growth profile, the Committee shaded up its already dour unemployment rate projections through 2012. Th e unemployment rate projections for 2012 now range from 6.8 percent to 7.9 percent, well above the Committee’s longer-run 'sustainable rate' projections."

Some projections from other sources see the unemployment rate for 2012 as around 8%.

Even with unemployment numbers around 7% or 8% it is possible that Obama can be re-elected. Inflation will probably hold steady at a low rate. Housing values may well edge up slowly.

And other factors, of course will weigh in. Such as whether people have begun to have positive experiences with health care reforms, credit card reforms, etc.

It's definitely "the economy, stupid," but there are fine points to the effects of the economy on the election.

Read more at: Economic Projections from the June FOMC Meeting
And at: Fed cuts growth forecast for 2010, lifts unemployment estimate