"The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible.".....

[joeycola]

I tend to agree (last paragraph)--which can be applied to the health car debate also--translated-anything for a bill-Any bill.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/opinion/18dowd.html?em

October 18, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Fie, Fatal Flaw!
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

One singular leader who wrote elegantly about his ideals, was swept into the presidency and then collided with harsh reality had some advice for another.

In an interview with Alison Smale in The Times last week, Vaclav Havel sipped Champagne in the middle of the afternoon and pricked Barack Obama’s conscience.

Havel, the 73-year-old former Czech president, who didn’t win a Nobel Peace Prize despite leading the Czechs and the Slovaks from communism to democracy, turned the tables and asked Smale a question about Obama, the latest winner of the peace prize.

Was it true that the president had refused to meet the Dalai Lama on his visit to Washington?

He was told that Obama had indeed tried to curry favor with China by declining to see the Dalai Lama until after the president’s visit to China next month.

Dissing the Dalai was part of a broader new Obama policy called “strategic reassurance” — softening criticism of China’s human rights record and financial policies to calm its fears that America is trying to contain it. (Not to mention our own fears that the Chinese will quit bankrolling our debt.)

The tyro American president got the Nobel for the mere anticipation that he would provide bold moral leadership for the world at the very moment he was caving to Chinese dictators. Awkward.

Havel reached out to touch a glass dish given to him by Obama, inscribed with the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. “It is only a minor compromise,” he said. “But exactly with these minor compromises start the big and dangerous ones, the real problems.”

Our president would be well advised to listen. Havel is looking at this not only as a moral champion but as a playwright. Obama (who, as Robert Draper wrote, has read and reread Shakespeare’s tragedies) does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition.

As Leon Wieseltier writes in the upcoming New Republic: “The demotion of human rights by the common-ground presidency is absolutely incomprehensible. The common ground is not always the high ground. When it is without end, moreover, the search for common ground is bad for bargaining. It informs the other side that what you most desire is the deal — that you will never acknowledge the finality of the difference, and never be satisfied with the integrity of opposition. There is a reason that ‘uncompromising’ is a term of approbation.”
.......................

[90-percent]

1. Good ole Vaclav

When the wall came down, he hooked up with Frank Zappa, who was pursuing a venture called "Why Not", which was to be a trading company to get eastern European and Russian stuff to the American market.

Vaclav wanted to appoint Zappa to be a special USA trade envoy, but Mr. James Baker was having none of it. Baker's wife was amongst the "Washington Wives" that Zappa took on back in the PMRC days of the mid eighties.

Some of us hardcore Zappa fans have a theory that Zappa was irradiated with prostate cancer waves from the cameras of Sixty Minutes, which was to do a story on Zappa's 1988 Tour and his efforts to get kids to register to vote.

Sixty Minutes never ran their Zappa story. I'm more inclined to believe the CIA got to Zappa's Doctor, who didn't figure out he had prostate cancer until it was inoperable. Zappa was always a cynic, I just wish he had been more cynical with his Doctor! Based on events in my life, it pays to be extremely cynical of what ever a Doctor tells you about serious health matters!

-90% Jimmy

[izquierdista]

2. "Tobacco is a vegetable"

That quote of Frank's told me all I needed to know about where his cancer came from. As for other speculation -- :tinfoilhat: :tinfoilhat:

[90-percent]

3. Tobacco

Tobacco does not cause prostate cancer, so I've been told.

yes, CIA death rays may be a little on the tin foil hat side, isn't it?

-90% Jimmy

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Smoking is strongly correlated with getting prostate cancer

and also with encouraging the growth and spread of prostate cancer.

[snagglepuss]

5. Dowd writes "Obama does not want his fatal flaw to be that he compromises

so much that his ideals get blurred out of recognition." However perhaps compromise is the thing Obama really values. Or sure looks like it.


K & R

[joeycola]

6. Obama sank really low when he did not even listen to single

payer advocates. Just kicked them under the table. It put him in a weak spot from the beginning. Now he is little to bargain with.