I can hardly write.
I’m overwhelmed with the joy that only immigrants and American expatriates can know: the eager anticipation of an imminent move to the USA. On March 14, the man and I will turn in out clogs and return to the land of the free(ish).
More to follow…
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Filed under: Uncategorized
Too often in Europe, the pendulum of political sentiment swings wildly between fervent multiculturalism and democratic authoritarianism without stopping in the middle for a reasonable position. It’s dizzying, and it’s no wonder that it inspires feelings of persecution and paranoia from the resident Muslim communities.
The burqa issue is complicated. There are legitimate questions about whether most women freely choose to wear it, or whether they’re forced or pressured into wearing it by their families or communities. Burqas impede identity verification, and therefore there may be some limited circumstances in which they jeopardize public safety.
But, by entirely banning the burqa from the grounds of all public schools and universities, the Dutch are unfairly punishing fundamentalist Islamic women and contributing dramatically to their marginalization by isolating them from Dutch society and impeding their educations. This law would also prevent adult women who wear the burqa from visiting school grounds, meaning that they wouldn’t be able to take their children to school, attend school events, or meet with teachers and administrators.
It’s religious discrimination, and it’s only going to worsen the integration problem.
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Filed under: Holland, crazy europeans
One of the best things about living in an international city like The Hague is meeting and socializing with people from all over the world. I recently attended an informal gathering of such a group, and, unsuprisingly, the conversation turned to the upcoming US Presidential election. One man, an Australian, casually remarked that if we listened to the rest of the world, the choice between candidates would be very clear.
I responded that, “If we listened to the rest of the world, we wouldn’t be Americans!” Everyone laughed, probably thinking that I was being self-depricating by tapping into the widely-held view of Americans as contrary, wayward bumpkins too stubborn to listen to reason. But, of course, I was being perfectly sincere.
It’s undeniable that the US and the majority of the world have some diametrically opposed interests.
Most of the world would like to see the US dislodged from its position at the top of the economic food chain. Do you want the American economy to sink?
Most of the world would like to see the US lose its position as the world’s leading military superpower. Would you like to see America surpassed by China or a resurgent Russia?
Most of the world enjoys hearing moderately bad news about America - it can’t even be called schadenfreude because it’s so normalized that the “shame” component has disappeared. Does bad domestic news fill you with a little malicious glee?
Most of the world would vote for Barack Obama. Would you?
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Filed under: politics
Is it just me, or is Sarah Palin getting the greatest praise from Fred Thompson supporters? I started thinking that she’s probably the closest thing to a female John McClain that’s ever graced American politics. And of course, she’s running with his virtual namesake.
I feel that’s a connection worthy of pictoral celebration.
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Filed under: politics
Capitulation is becoming an art in Western Europe. Today brought news that the Dutch Van Abbemuseum has caved to the demands and threats of extremists who object to a planned march against the institution of Zwarte Pieten (”Black Petes”), the Dutch Santa’s helpers.
I’ve discussed Zwarte Piet previously, but as a recap, he is a black servant (slave?) of Sinterklaas who beats and/or kidnaps bad Dutch children. Just about every town in The Netherlands holds a Sinterklaas parade, wherein Zwarte Pieten are played by white men in blackface who wear Moorish style costumes and Afro wigs, speak deliberately poor, accented Dutch, and behave like buffoons.
The racist overtones are, in my opinion, overwhelmingly apparent. Even those who believe that it’s a harmless tradition should see that there is a strong argument about its perpetuation of negative racial stereotypes. The organizers of the protest march, artists Annette Krauss and Petra Bauer, hoped to draw attention to the issue and foster more debate on the controversial topic - and controversial it certainly is. Many Dutch, including prominent politician Rita Verdonk, a vehement supporter of the Zwarte Pieten, have reframed the debate to focus on the right to freedom of expression. But, ironically, Zwarte Pieten supporters finally accomplished their goal of quashing public debate on the issue by taking a page from radical Islamists and threatening violence. Said the museum:
We received a lot of vehement reactions. Those responses, with threats of violence, steer the debate more and more away towards one about subsidies, freedom of expression and the public order. This only detracts from what we want to address. A march will only strengthen that effect. Therefore we feel obliged to cancel the march.
We fully support the artists. The cancellation is in the interest of the artists and art in general. Art can add a major contribution to the rethinking of current topics, provided they are recognized as art. [Via The English Parliament.]
What sad rationale. On one side, “We have the absolute right to freedom of expression, and we’ll kill you for saying otherwise!” And on the other, “We believe there is a serious problem of racism inherent in this tradition. But if we say so, they’ll yell at us. Better to go with the flow.”
Oscaar van den Boogaard, a Dutch writer, famously said, “I’m not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it.”
It sounds like an epitaph for the death of a free society.
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Filed under: Holland, crazy europeans
Maybe McCain has been listening to the blogosphere, because I haven’t heard the mainstream media or the Republican machine pushing for Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and, until yesterday, it seemed likely that McCain would choose his Vice President from a short list of solid, yet uninspiring candidates.
I’m pretty lukewarm about McCain, but Palin is a candidate I can get behind. She hunts (and reportedly butchers her own kills), she worked for a commercial fishery, she tells it like it is (even to members of her own party), she has executive experience, she has a proven reputation as a reformer: in short, she kicks ass and takes names. YES! I think a lot of women, especially the “bellicose woman” demographic, as Glenn Reynolds might say, have been waiting a long time for a candidate like this.
What I like most about her, though, is that, while she certainly isn’t afraid to be assertive, she doesn’t seem to have embraced the supercilious, academic, ball-busting persona that a lot of highly successful women display. Yes, I’m talking about Hillary Clinton, but I’m also speaking from my own experience at a high-powered boys’ club law firm in Washington, D.C. Many of the successful female attorneys I worked with directly or encountered as co-counsel (particularly those over 40) simply couldn’t renounce femininity strongly enough; it seemed like they thought the only way to succeed and earn the respect of their male peers was to overcompensate and out-man the men. Many of them made a point to use foul language at work, to behave stridently toward underlings, to take extremely aggressive stances on the legal issues in their cases, and even to dress mannishly. Some were childless, but those who did have kids proved to have little ability or desire to find a work/home balance, and overwhelmingly chose absentee motherhood instead. And the sad thing is, these choices didn’t earn them one bit of respect, but rather made them disliked and unhappy.
I know that I owe a debt of gratitude to these women for being pioneers in male-dominated fields. I can’t imagine the crap they had to deal with to fight their way to the top, and I appreciate their efforts, because their successes will make it easier for me and other women to follow and succeed in turn. On the other hand, I see in our modern society that girls are increasingly taught to replace equality with misandry, assertiveness with bitchiness, self-confidence with brashness, and aspiration with naked ambition. Is it any wonder when their role-models are political bitch-queens and celebrity poptarts?
In my opinion, Sarah Palin comes off as a capable, confident woman, a no-nonsense mother of five who doesn’t treat her gender as a handicap or a get-out-of-jail-free card. Her neutral treatment is what allows her gender to be a non-issue, and I’d love to see her in the White House, so that at last, women can run as reformers, or conservatives, or beltway outsiders, and not as gender novelties.
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Filed under: politics
There are plenty of legitimate problems with the American heath care system. Medical insurance companies are bogging doctors down with truckloads of paperwork and ensnaring them in a Gordian knot of red tape. Malpractice insurance is dramatically cutting into their profits, pushing a lot of them to retire or to leave private practice. As doctors become scarce, burdens are shifting to overworked, underpaid nurses, who are themselves in short supply. Following the lead of Medicare and Medicaid programs, large private insurers have negotiated ridiculous discounts on procedures for their insured, leading to huge price inflation as hospitals try to recoup lost revenue by overcharging everyone else. Sometimes, the patients who need health insurance the most are unable to get it because of preexisting conditions. And on and on.
But, instead of exploring these legitimate problems, today’s IHT articlechose instead to trot out the tired lefty boilerplate and polemicize the issue of insurance access and affordability.
More than romance, the couple readily acknowledge, it is Huggins’s Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO policy that is driving their rush to the altar.
In a country where insurance is out of reach for many, it is not uncommon for couples to marry, or even to divorce, at least partly so one spouse can obtain or maintain health coverage.
I’ve heard of couples who were already engaged getting married on paper before their “actual” wedding ceremony because it covered a gap in health insurance - such as in the transition between grad school and employment. But getting married for health insurance despite clear reservations? It’s certainly uncommon.
However, the author would have us believe that it’s a regular occurrence. To support this prevarication, he presents some of the weakest evidence I’ve seen in a straight “news” article. He leads with the obligatory sketchy pseudo-statistic:
In a poll conducted this spring by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group, 7 percent of adults said someone in their household had married in the past year to gain access to insurance. The foundation cautions that the number should not be taken literally, but rather as an intriguing indicator that some Americans “are making major life decisions on the basis of health care concerns.”
I’m curious as to why this figure is solid enough to be evidence that people are making marital decisions on the basis of health care concerns, but not solid enough to be taken “literally.” Either it was a good poll that produced a result reliable within expected margins, or it was not. If not, it’s not evidence of anything, other than that the MSM will report as fact any garbage that suits their agenda. I suspect that the foundation’s cautionary qualifier is due to the fact that the number is nonsensical to anyone who can multiply.
There are an estimated112 million households in the US. Assuming the 7% described in the poll, that makes about 7.8 million Americans who married for health insurance last year. However, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, in 2005 there were only 2.2 million marriages in the US. Survey says: your poll is trash. Appallingly, while trying to explain this wonky result, the Kaiser Family Foundation confused their own 7% figure for 7% of the total American population, not 7% of American households. But, hey, it’s only a difference of 13.4 million people. Being off by a factor of 3 is no big deal in a health care policy foundation.
The only other evidence offered to support the author’s argument (and it’s an argument, not a news report) is the unsupported one couple in ten statistic offered by a single wedding chapel officiant in Covington, Kentucky, and the anecdotal tales of woe described in the article.
I empathize with Ms. Brady, but she isn’t without resources. Her monthly disability check more than covers her Medicare AND private supplemental insurance costs (even at the new, higher rate) with a few thousand dollars a year left over. Assuming she’s a Louisiana resident, she probably qualifies for food stamps and public housing. She seems to be exactly the type of person these programs were designed to help - a hardworking woman who fell onto hard times because of an extreme medical condition - and therefore the government would take care of her food, housing, and all medical costs. The author has presented her case as a false dilemma: get married or die.
A few days ago, Jason at PoliGazette wrote a thoughtful, intelligent, balanced post about the strengths and weaknesses of America’s current health care system. It’s well worth a read. But I suspect that this author doesn’t know the first meaning of “thoughtful,” “intelligent,” or “balanced,” and is primarily concerned with painting America in a bad light at all cost. It’s a damn shame.
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Filed under: MSM, health
Russia invaded Georgia, perhaps with Georgian provocation. Who’s to blame? Why, the United States, naturally.
I don’t expect the sport of ‘Merikkka! bashing to fade in popularity any time soon, but I do wonder that there are people who take this kind of drivel seriously.
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Filed under: MSM, crazy europeans
I’ve posted before about what ”helpful” allies we have, but the Germans are at it again. Ahead of Barack Obama’s visit to Berlin, the German Social Democrat Party (SPD) cautioned him against calling for greater German participation in Afghanistan.
“Obama should only ask of us what we are able to deliver,” Niels Annen — a member of Germany’s federal parliament, with the left wing of the SPD — told SPIEGEL ONLINE Monday. “We won’t increase our number of troops.”
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, however, has approved a plan to increase the number of troops from Germany’s armed forces in Afghanistan by 1,000 to 4,500 soldiers. All troop deployments of the Bundeswehr require a mandate from the German parliament, which is expected to consider the issue in the autumn. And SPD party chief Kurt Beck made clear over the weekend that 4,500 was the ceiling of what could be expected from Germany.
Another party member managed to be even more effete:
The party’s defense policy spokesman, Rainer Arnold, also called on Obama to be cautious. “It’s part of NATO custom not to overburden partners,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “There is no point in issuing demands that the partners cannot fulfil.”
Germany can only be expected to produce a maximum of 4500 troops from its large professional military and ranks of conscripts?? I find that hard to believe, but the interchangeable use of “can’t” and “won’t” is telling. I suspect they “can’t” because they “won’t.” I just wish they’d be forthright about it.
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Filed under: crazy europeans, politics
I’ve been doing a lot of traveling recently (London, Paris, Aachen, Prague, DC, and the Outer Banks just in the last 4 weeks) and I’ve unfortunately run into some really obnoxious people along the way. Now, some of that is to be expected, because ALL tourists are annoying, myself included. Tourists get lost, move slowly, get in the way, butcher the language, do things wrong. It’s just a given. But in the last two weeks, I’ve run into some people who ought to be punched in the face, Rachel Lucas style. And the thing is, not one of them was an American.
In London, watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace (which is a total mob scene), a tiny little Asian woman reached out with both hands and tried to shove me out of her way so that she could get in front of me for a better view. I must have had 8 inches and 30 pounds on her, and I don’t respond well to shoving, so she gave up and pushed her way through the crowd to wedge in between some other people. Later, on the tube, a group of nearly naked spice girl wannabes paraded on and proceeded to have the most vacuous, inane, self-absorbed conversation I’ve ever heard, at max volume. One girl took up a seat with her giant tote bag even though people were standing, and another kept putting her feet up and blocking people trying to get on and off. When they got off, everyone else in the car executed a simultaneous eyeroll. The girls were locals.
In Paris, as I mentioned in the last post, we had the good fortune to see the world’s most obscene tourist. I didn’t stop to get his nationality, but he appeared to be Eastern European, or maybe Russian.
In Prague, we hit assholes before we even got out of the airport. A small group of people in their early twenties was standing in the baggage claim, openly mocking the Czech airport announcements, and generally being boorish and obnoxious. They were Dutch. When we got to the city, we saw probably half a dozen different groups of young British men walking around shirtless, acting like they owned the place. In the airport on the way back, I had the misfortune to sit next to a Canadian family whose spoiled, bratty, whiny teenage kids were arguing loudly and incessantly with each other and with their mother, using a tone that I wouldn’t think of using with my mother. The mother got tired of hearing it, and responded by dragging the father into the fight, which deteriorated into a loud fight between the two of them. This went on for about 45 minutes.
On the other hand, the Americans we saw abroad were pleasant, quiet, friendly, and unobtrusive. They wore deodorant, they stood in line, they didn’t push or yell. And this is typical of what I’ve seen everywhere I’ve traveled these last few years. Surely, there are some poorly behaved American tourists, but the more I travel, the more I realize that the Ugly American tourist stereotype has almost zero basis in reality. What’s worse, I think it’s likely that a lot of bad behavior is falsely attributed to Americans. Many Europeans have a difficult time differentiating between the different accents of English-speaking people, and it’s easy to see that the Canadians, Brits, and even the Dutch (who were speaking English) could be mistaken for Americans.
It’s time we stopped letting people (including our own people) run us down. By the standards of the world, we are good, friendly, helpful, pleasant, polite people. That may not be the hip opinion, but it is the objective truth.
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Filed under: rant, travel